Chapter Ten

"What I wouldn't give for a sharp machete," Rebecca grumbled as she wriggled her way underneath a particularly thick patch of undergrowth, preferring not to push her way through it and simply take the path of least resistance. She also chose to ignore that it was the most ungraceful path.

Well, at least Leonard's taking point, she thought, glad that she didn't have to forge her way through for the rest of their group. Besides, she wasn't good at reading game tracks, or looking for such signs in the forest. When she was out in the jungle, she usually relied on things like rivers or streams to help her keep track of where she was going, or she followed her father, who seemed to have the uncanny ability not to get lost even in the thickest forests.

She paused, and looked back over her shoulder, watching as Spock chose to walk through the bush, whereas she had to go under it. It made much more sense with him, because he was taller and could easily walk through, whereas she, as the smallest one in their group, either had to look for ways around or under things – like a terrier, she thought, and snorted in amusement at the idea.

"Did you find something amusing?" Spock asked as he brushed off leaves from his uniform and started walking again, this time alongside her.

Rebecca smiled. "I did, but it was just something in my head. It's nothing to do with you."

"Indeed. And what thought did you find amusing?"

"I just happened to notice that you can manage to walk through most of this thick vegetation with relative ease because you're taller than I am, while I have to go around or under obstacles. So I had this image of myself as a kind of terrier, and I thought it was kind of funny." She shrugged, and gestured to her uniform, which was far dirtier than Spock's, since she had been crawling on the ground. "I certainly feel like one, at any rate."

Spock nodded. "Terrier-type canines are indeed small, so I suppose the comparison is apt. But just as their size is an advantage to them, given that they were meant to chase small prey through thick vegetation and into burrows, so are those traits your advantage in our current predicament."

Rebecca couldn't help but laugh at that. "I'm not that small, but I guess you're right. Thanks for the compliment." Well, she thought, it was one, even if it was a little backhanded. Then again, he was just telling the truth; compared to most of the other women on the Enterprise, she was likely the smallest one at five-foot-five.

Just then they both had to duck under several liana-like structures that dangled off the tree branches, and she sighed. "I just wish we had a machete. It would make going through so much easier."

Spock nodded in agreement, but after a while, he turned to her, and said, "Perhaps it would be easier for you if I went ahead to clear the path. At the very least, you will not have to crawl in certain areas."

Rebecca smiled, considering the offer. It was kind of him to ask her, but she knew it would only slow their progress if he tried to clear the path for her, instead of her just making her way as best as she could. "Thank you, but it's not necessary. It'll take too much time, and we don't have that, not right now."

"Agreed."

They walked in silence for a while; thankfully they had reached an area of the jungle where the vegetation was relatively thinner, and they could get around with more ease. Up ahead, Kirk and McCoy were still following the game trail the latter had spotted earlier by the river; apparently it ran deeper and farther than any of them expected.

Better something than nothing, Rebecca thought, as she followed Spock, who had just increased his walking speed to get to where the Captain and the Chief Medical Officer were. And when they got close enough, Rebecca could hear McCoy complaining about how they had been following the game trail for ages but had gotten nothing.

"It's the best thing we have for now," Kirk replied patiently. "I don't think we could navigate through this forest without that trail to follow." He glanced at Rebecca then, and grinned. "Well, someone's been up close and personal with the vegetation."

Rebecca punched him on the arm for that, and he responded in kind.

"Will the two of you stop that?" McCoy snapped irritably. "I'm a doctor, not a nanny."

Kirk nodded, but not before swiping at a smear of mud on Rebecca's cheek in an attempt to wipe it off. "Right now you're a doctor and our navigator, so: have we got any other alternative besides this game trail? I don't think so."

"True," McCoy sighed in agreement. "I've got sense enough not to get turned around too much in Georgia woodland, but this jungle is a whole different problem."

"Because it's a monster that eats everything up," Rebecca and Kirk chorused, and they exchanged a grin, while McCoy and Spock stared at them.

At length, Spock asked, "And why do you consider the jungle a monster that consumes everything?"

Kirk shrugged. "Just something Uncle Daniel used to tell us all the time. Said you needed to have proper respect for the Green Monster, because if you didn't it'd eat you whole, just like it ate up the Khmer and the Maya and the Olmec."

"He used to scare us all the time with stories like that," Rebecca said, smiling at the memory in spite of the fact that the trail had gotten rougher again, and they were forced to struggle through the brush. "And then Jim and I grew up, and we realized he was just referencing history."

"Didn't stop us from agreeing with him, though."

"True."

"Jim, Rebecca, I suggest that you maintain silence," Spock said. "Something is approaching."

Rebecca immediately closed her mouth, and paid attention. And then she heard it: a soft snuffling sound, followed by a low, menacing growl.

Whatever it was, it did not sound friendly.

"Do not make a sound," McCoy whispered, "and keep very, very still."

None of them needed to be told twice, especially when a very large, very ugly creature that none of them had seen before – certainly not something Rebecca had seen in her Exobiology classes.

The creature continued snuffling, walking through the jungle with remarkable ease despite its bulk (or perhaps precisely because of its bulk), and came within nearly three feet of where they were. Rebecca held her breath, hoping that the creature wouldn't hear them, just in case it had hearing sensitive enough for that. She watched it carefully, not moving a muscle, praying as hard as she could that it would pass them by – and not pass through them.

Somehow, somewhere, there was a God, because her prayers were answered, and the enormous creature shifted its bulk away from them, and headed deeper into the forest, cutting a wide swathe of trampled vegetation behind it.

They all stood up slowly, quietly, not certain just how sharp the thing's hearing was, but when it didn't turn around and charge at them, they all sighed quietly in relief – except Spock, who only relaxed his shoulders slightly, but uttered not a sound.

"That," Kirk said, "was not normal."

"If I didn't know any better I'd say that it was a cross between a drayjin and an Andorian bull (1)," McCoy muttered, his eyes narrowed in the direction of where the creature had gone. "It had the horns of the Andorian bull, but the build and the face are all like those of a drayjin."

Kirk narrowed his eyes as he looked around them. "Something doesn't seem right here," he muttered. "I'm no exobiologist, but somehow every animal we've encountered so far is just completely wrong."

McCoy nodded thoughtfully. "And you can't get those combinations of animals unless you've done some serious meddling of the genetic sort. Which means a lab. Which means-"

"People," Rebecca finished darkly. "Or person. With a lot of patience, a lot of time, and the right equipment, one person could run a genetic engineering lab fairly easily."

"The question, though, is who would want to do this sort of thing," Kirk added, frowning as he tried to put the puzzle pieces together. "You think the Klingons could pull something like this off?"

"Doesn't make sense," McCoy replied with a shake of the head. "If they were playing around with genetics, they'd apply them towards making a bio-weapon of some sort. They wouldn't waste their time playing Doctor Frankenstein."

"Maybe the person we're dealing with is Human," Rebecca suggested. "It seems about right, but I can't imagine who would try to do something like this."

"I think I can," Spock said then, and they all turned to look as he reached for his communicator. "Spock to Enterprise. Mr. Sulu, I would like you to pull up the coordinates of this planet, and cross-check it against a list of lost scientific expeditions. See if the coordinates match or are close to the last known coordinates of any of the lost expeditions."

"Yes, sir."

While they were waiting for Sulu to find the information Spock had requested, Kirk asked, "What are you thinking, Spock?"

"Listening to the speculations you, Bones and Rebecca were discussing, it occurred to me that perhaps such speculation might not be entirely illogical. Connecting the threads of your reasoning has allowed me to put together a hypothesis which, though tenuous by my estimations, may just prove to be more than mere speculation."

"Which is just a fancy way of saying you have a hunch," McCoy stated blandly, and Rebecca chuckled at that, since the look Spock gave the doctor indicated that he didn't like what he was doing simply being called a "hunch," and she speculated it was because of the implications of non-logical thought processes connected to the word.

Any further ribbing was cut short when Sulu's voice came through Spock's communicator: "I checked the coordinates against the records, and only one stands out: the USS Al-Rashid, a Ptolemy-class transporter (2) which was supposed to go to the planet Varkaleth in Theta Librae (3), but en-route to their destination she stopped reporting back to Starfleet, despite repeated attempts to contact her. Her last confirmed location was within this area."

"Please check the crew manifests, and focus on any geneticists they may have had onboard."

"Let's see here… Okay, there were only three people who listed genetics as their specialty: Doctor Sheila Rossi, Doctor Colin Cabral, and a Vulcan named Sarn."

"Colin Cabral?" McCoy asked slowly, then rubbed his face with both his hands. "Well, that explains everything."

"I take it you know who he is," Spock stated, closing his communicator and returning it to the case at his waist.

"Colin Cabral's one of the most brilliant genetic engineers in Starfleet," McCoy explained. "He was an instructor on the subject at Starfleet, and his students are considered up-and-coming stars in the field today. Around 2240 he announced that he was leaving Starfleet and that he was going on an expedition to Varkaleth, then only newly discovered. We figured he was lost, along with the Al Rashid."

"I've heard of him," Rebecca murmured. "He was the one who suggested that transgenesis (4) should be explored more frequently on a larger scale, like crossing genes between animals from other planets with Terran animals so as to produce unique hybrids where such a thing would normally be impossible. He said it would help boost productivity and survival rates on Federation colonies."

"Exactly," McCoy replied, nodding grimly. "But what they don't mention in the press releases is that Cabral was crazy: he had aspirations to become a god, to create an Eden of his own where only things he created would live."

"And this could be it," Kirk concluded, gesturing to the jungle around them. "If that's the case, then where's the crew of the Al Rashid? Even if he commandeered the ship he couldn't have gotten here on his own. The Ptolemy-class ships would require some sort of crew to fly it."

"I can answer that, if you'd like."

Rebecca whirled around, but before she could react, she briefly heard the high-pitched chirp of a phaser, and then felt something collide straight into her chest, knocking the wind out of her and slamming her against a tree trunk. The double impact made stars burst across her field of vision, before everything went black.

She came to slowly, and in the midst of a massive headache. Phaser set to stun, she thought, realizing what had hit her. She'd been hit by a phaser blast on such a setting before, during one Away Mission on her first month on the Excalibur, and the experience didn't make this one any better.

"Are you conscious now?"

Rebecca opened her eyes slowly to a dim, featureless room, the quiet hum of a force field telling her that she was in a holding cell in some ship. But what ship, she wondered. Certainly not the Enterprise.

Warm fingers touched her lightly on the arm, and she all but threw herself across the room in surprise. "Who are you? Where am I?" she demanded, trying to get her eyes to focus as quickly as possible to the limited lighting conditions.

"I am Sarn, a geneticist. You are on what remains of the USS Al Rashid." It was a masculine voice, and the cadence and rhythm in the words was vaguely familiar. Rebecca's eyes adjusted to the dark, and she saw a slim-figured humanoid kneeling by the spot where she had been lying. The dark hair, pointed ears, and slanting eyebrows all told her that this male was a Vulcan.

Sarn stood up, but did not approach her. "Who are you?"

Rebecca saw no point in lying at this stage. "Doctor Rebecca Sanders, of the USS Enterprise."

Sarn nodded thoughtfully. "The USS Enterprise. I see. A Constitution-class ship, being built at the Riverside Shipyards in Iowa, the United States of America, Earth. But that was several years ago."

"What are you doing here?" Rebecca asked then, her wits coming back to her more quickly now that she had something to focus on. "What happened to the Al Rashid?"

"Doctor Cabral hijacked the ship while we were on our way to Varkaleth," Sarn explained as he sat down on the bed built into the wall on one side of the cell. "He held us under threat of a biological weapon, which he said he would unleash unless Captain Kitani stopped contacting Starfleet, and instead, proceeded where Doctor Cabral ordered her to go. His threat was real enough, and so it was logical that we obey his orders, in hopes that we would be able to fight back when we were someplace else."

Rebecca stood up slowly, testing her balance, and was glad to note that the sensation of vertigo was gradually starting to disappear. She glanced out, and noticed that the other cells were empty. "Where's the rest of the crew? Are they prisoners here, like you? And what about my companions?"

"The crew was gone long ago. Your companions will soon meet the same fate."

"Gone? What do you mean, gone? Are they dead?"

"No. They are alive."

"Then where are they?"

Sarn's gaze was level, and Rebecca felt a shiver travel up and down her spine at the complete and utter lack of emotion in them. "They are in the Medical Bay. It is my logical assumption that Doctor Cabral is currently altering their genetic structure, though my assumption does not extend to what sort of alteration he is performing to them."

Rebecca froze, the straightforward explanation of what was going to happen to Jim, Bones and Spock suddenly overwhelming her other thoughts. "He's going to experiment on them? Is that what he did to the rest of the crew?"

Sarn nodded. "Yes. The only reason he has spared me so far is because the Vulcan genome, while similar enough to Humans to allow procreation, is complex enough that it has taken him time to decipher it. Although the information is readily available, we have been cut off from the rest of the Federation for a very long time, and much of the data in the Al Rashid's computers has been destroyed. It was only recently that he started experimenting with Humans, since it was only recently that he was able to reconstruct the Human genome."

That meant Spock was still around here, somewhere. If he was around, then maybe they stood a chance at getting out somehow. "Spock!" she yelled down the hallway, knowing that although she couldn't get past the force field that blocked the wide entrance of the cell, she could still certainly get her voice through. "Spock! You there?"

And then, finally, a faint voice responded from what seemed like the very end of the hall: "I am here, Rebecca. Are you injured?"

"No, I'm fine! What about you?"

"I have only recently recovered consciousness. Please wait a moment, I shall need some time to comprehend the circuitry of this force field, and then disable it."

Rebecca stepped back from the force field, and turned to Sarn. "We'll get out of here soon enough. I'm sure Jim would be glad to offer you sanctuary aboard the Enterprise until we can find a way to get you to New Vulcan."

Sarn tilted his head. "New Vulcan? There is no such thing. There is only Vulcan."

And then Rebecca remembered, quite abruptly, that Sarn could not have heard about the destruction of Vulcan, which had happened only two years ago. All of a sudden, she found herself in an incredibly awkward position: how was she going to explain to Sarn that his home planet was destroyed?

Fortunately, she was spared having to explain anything by the sound of the force field coming down, and when she looked, she saw that Spock had managed to get out of his cell, and had just disabled the force field in front of her and Sarn's cell.

As soon as the force field was down he approached her, and gave her what looked like the belt she had brought with her, to which were strapped her phaser, communicator, and medikit, as well as the pouch with her medical tricorder in it. The only thing he didn't bring her was the other pouch, the one with her sample containers. She wanted to ask him about it, but then she was distracted by his hands: they looked scorched – and then she remembered that he'd had to rewire the force fields for his cell in order to get out.

"Give me your hands," she said, to which Spock frowned at her, obviously reluctant to do so. So in response, she gave him the look she used on all her recalcitrant patients: the one that said, "If you don't let me do this now, you're going to regret it later."

"I'm just going to put some burn ointment on your hands," she said, indicating his singed fingertips. "If I don't do it now, they might get infected later, and you and I both know Bones will give us hell for it if that happens."

He stared at her for a while, perhaps weighing her argument, but after a while, he nodded. "Your argument is correct," he muttered, and stretched his hands out to her, palms up.

Rebecca didn't need to do a tricorder scan anymore to figure out what was wrong, so she reached for her medikit, and took out two tubes: one was a disinfectant, while the other was a burn ointment that would protect the burns from further infection, as well as soothe the pain. She sprayed the disinfectant on her hands, and then onto Spock's burns. Once assured that everything was clean, she carefully applied two drops each to his hands, and carefully rubbed the ointment into the burns.

"There," she said, satisfied. She glanced at Sarn then. "Sarn, this is Commander Spock, First Officer of the Enterprise. Spock, this is Sarn, one of the geneticists of the Al Rashid."

The Vulcans considered each other from across the cell, but neither moved or said anything to greet the other. Rebecca watched them, and wondered at the silence. She had seen Vulcans interacting with each other before, and this was unusual, even for a normally distant race.

At length, Sarn closed his eyes, and leaned back so that his head rested against the wall behind him. That must have been some sort of signal, because immediately after Spock turned to her, and said, "Rebecca, we must leave him here for now. We may come back for him later, when we are less distracted."

"Less distracted?" She glanced back at Sarn even as Spock took her arm and started pulling her out into the hall and towards the exit. "Spock, I don't think he looks too well."

"I can assure you, he does not need your assistance right now. He will be able to ease his condition quite well on his own."

"What condition?" Rebecca yanked her arm from Spock's grasp, causing them both to halt in their progress to the exit from the brig. "Spock, if Sarn has some sort of medical problem, then as a doctor I'm duty-bound to-"

Spock rounded on her, his face still as that of a marble statue's in the dim light. The only indication that there was any emotion behind that mask were his eyes, and even those were cool and icy. "I am under no obligation to explain this to you, Doctor, as it is a very private topic amongst Vulcans and hence I am in no position to mention anything about it." He paused. "Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant (5)?"

But in the span of time it took him to explain his stand, Rebecca felt her temper kindle – and it amazed her, because she thought she had lost her temper to Gamble long ago. Encouraged at rediscovering this, she narrowed her eyes and drew herself up to her full height – not that it compared to Spock's, but it didn't really matter. "With all due respect, Commander, my obligation as a doctor takes first priority in this case. I swore an oath when I became a doctor, and I have to honor that oath. If there is a patient who needs care, then I must see to them as best as my abilities will allow."

"But according to Starfleet Regulation your oath can be subsumed by a direct order from a superior officer, and in this instance I am your superior officer. As such, I order you to leave Sarn behind, and to join me in rescuing the Captain and the Chief Medical Officer."

Rebecca stood there, gaping at Spock. How could be he so cold?

But the Vulcan merely turned away and started down the hallway again, expecting her to follow him – knowing, rightly, that she would have no choice. After all, he had given her a direct order, and as her superior officer in McCoy's absence, she could not question his authority, and hence had to follow him.

In the end, all Rebecca could do was scowl at his back, and catch up to him before he disappeared into the turbolift at the end of the hall.

NOTES:

1 - The drayjin is a very big pig-like creature from the rogue planet Dakala, and was featured in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Rogue Planet." The Andorian bull, on the other hand, is a creature native to the ice-moon Andoria, capital world of the Andorian Empire and of the Andorian and Aenar races, the former being one of the founding members of the Federation. It was used in a simile by Keiko O'Brien from Deep Space 9 in reference to her husband Miles. Though the first reference to the Andorian bull comes almost a century after the original series (and hence this alternate universe) was set, it doesn't seem too far-fetched to assume that most people belonging to the Federation would know what an Andorian bull is.

2 - Another actual starship class and starship name, drawn once again from the Star Trek Technical Manual. Ptolemy-class ships were supposed to serve as tugs and transporters in Starfleet, and I speculate they could have been used for exploratory and colonization missions to planets with no known threats on them or in the immediate area around the star system.

3 - Varkaleth is a fictional planet, and so is the star system it belongs to, though I have used typical star-naming conventions in naming and locating the star.

4 - Transgenesis is the insertion of genes from an unrelated organism into another unrelated organism, thus forcing that organism to exhibit the traits from the other organism. This chapter already shows two examples: a Terran crab-Vulcan scorpion hybrid, and a drayjin-Andorian bull hybrid – completely unrelated species, but showcasing traits from both.

5 - Rank tended to be a bit vague when it came to doctors and nurses in Starfleet, but as a rule, it seems that nurses were at least lieutenant junior grade, at most full lieutenants; doctors were at least lieutenants, at most commanders. McCoy is likely ranked at lieutenant commander, since the office of Chief Medical Officer is a senior-staff level position and hence can only be filled by someone of lieutenant commander rank or better. Rebecca is here given the rank of lieutenant because although she is the Enterprise's chief trauma surgeon and hence has the right to the title, she has neither the experience nor the qualifications to have earned the higher title of lieutenant commander, and hence ranks lower on the ladder than Spock, who, as commander, can issue orders she cannot disobey.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Again, I would like to thank everyone who's been reading this story so far. I hope I have yet to disappoint you all. As for those who do not comment, but who enjoy adding me to their favorites or alerts, please, feel free to speak up and say something about the story, even if it's to point out something I may have gotten wrong. Just adding my story to your favorites, or putting me on your author alert, tells me absolutely nothing about what I'm doing right, or even what I'm doing wrong. So please, leave a review! They are always much appreciated.