Unadecal

It was the middle of the night. Or so it seemed anyway. Cold, dark and foreboding. He instinctively curled up in a ball on the spot where he had materialized, his senses numbed and his mind anesthetized by the effects of being transported across vast distances not only in space but in time, although he did not yet know it. And the night closed in. Or so it seemed.

He jumped to his feet suddenly, automatically, as if a switch had just been flicked. There was no somnolent transition between the sleeping and awake states, rather a sudden and total flood of consciousness. He looked around slowly taking in his surroundings and sizing up his situation while the memories of the events that led to him being there poured in. He looked up at the sky while he struggled to put those memories in the right order. As soon as he had done that, a more mundane craving took hold of him: "Water".

Water was not a difficult search for someone with a Starfleet tricorder, and it did not take long to find a couple of pockets of the liquid. However reaching it was a little harder, and he had to use his phaser to drill a hole through the rock while being very careful not to vaporize the precious liquid. He had to find a water source that was more plentiful and easily accessible, or his phaser would soon discharge completely. There was also another pressing need: Food. He decided to concentrate on the search for water confident that success in that quest would likely lead to finding nourishment of some sort. It took two days of searching, but finally he found a subterranean stream. He marched right on top of it for the best part of a day until he finally heard the soft gurgling of the brook just over a rocky shelf. He peeked over carefully and there he saw it, running past the rocky outcrop he had been walking on. Flanking the water on the other side, a rapidly expanding fringe of vegetation that became more and more lush as the valley deepened. He jumped over the ledge and landed with a soft thud on the moist soil and soft vegetation. He went down on his hands and knees and drank, splashing water on his hair and face. Not out of a desire or need for cleanliness, but out of sheer joy. He explored this little valley and soon found an orchard of exotic plants he had never seen before. A quick scan revealed that their roots and some of the leaves were edible, as well as the berries borne by a bush nearby. Edible, yes... Tasty… no.

Several days passed and he was beginning to feel complacent. He had established a rudimentary base camp where he could shelter himself. He had plentiful water and, at least for now, a decent amount of food, rich in nutrients if not variety nor flavour... and no meat. He had taken to exploring his surroundings, mostly downstream to stay near the water source and on most nights he returned to the base camp. He also kept his comm badge on a constant listening loop just in case he picked up comms traffic of any sort. He was becoming complacent and too settled into his routine. What had started as a survival exercise quickly turned into a holiday. A solitary holiday, away from the ship, away from his crew mates, away from Mimps.

Mimps…She had been entrusted to his care when they had rejoined the ship. He had been made responsible for her welfare. And he had failed. He was now stranded God knows where, God known when... and God only knew where the rest of the crew had landed, whether they were dead or alive. He knew that the Carolina was not very fond of Mimps for some reason, but would the ship kill her? He hoped not. He could no longer be in this place. It was idyllic but it was not right. He could easily stay, but he had to get out somehow. That night he resolved to find his way back somehow. He collected some provisions and at first light, after a good night's rest, he set off downstream never to return.

He had walked downstream for several days, having joined a small river almost immediately. Other tributary brooks joined it further on, turning it into a larger river. He continued walking on the bank for a few kilometres, and then he saw it. It was a pipe coming out of the water, and extending away fro it. Metallic, gleaming and definitely a sign that someone hopefully not too far away was using that water for something. He set off following the pipe. He walked the rest of that day and all of the next, stopping only for a few hours sleep but walking though most of the night. In the middle of the morning of the third day of hard marching he saw the settlement.

It was small, with clearly demarcated living quarters and something that seemed like a processing plant, with machinery scattered around. It appeared to be a mining camp of some sort. He hid behind a rock and observed the humanoids operating the camp. They did not seem to be armed so he approached.

It was a few weeks before he could get off the planet on an ore barge. Not exactly a Galaxy class ship, and capable of no more that Warp 6, but it rarely reached higher than Warp 4. The Captain was a rough, if amenable chap from a race he had never seen before who gave him passage in return for some minor maintenance work on some of the auxiliary systems which always seemed to be neglected during the regular maintenance cycles. It was on the barge, after consulting their star charts that he realized how far he had been transported, no only in space but also in time. He was now half way across the galaxy, some where in the Gamma Quadrant and somewhere in his past, but he was not sure yet how far back. He worked out his options and decided that his best bet would be to head for the wormhole and then Bajor.