An Atrocity Aboard the USS Enterprise

by Persephone67

Rachel Deveaux, the Enterprise's biochemistry officer, is researching the unique foliage of a planet that the crew is surveying. When this plant life turns out to have some adverse effects on three of the crew's male officers, Rachel will find herself trapped in a horrific situation. Her only chance at escaping from her captors, lies with a terrorist by the name of John Harrison.

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Rachel ate her meal and continued running tests while she tried, in her head, to push her many questions about the mystery man aside, but to no avail. How could such a seemingly polite man be capable of killing thousands of people? What was his motive? Why was he about to attack the planet we are surveying? Is the federation base that is on the far side of the planet hiding something? What is his real name? Rachel took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind into a meditative state where these questions couldn't attack her.

"Getting tired yet?" McCoy suddenly asked her as he noticed her sighing.

"Oh, yeah…. I, uh… guess that all the craziness of today has finally caught up with me." She replied half-telling the truth, and wanting to share with neither him nor Spock the interaction she had with the terrorist in the adjacent room. She tried to refocus on her work as she realized that none of the questions that her mind had just bombarded her with had related to any scientific aspect of the man.

"Sister, you should have been on the ground team with Kirk and Spock and me this morning while we were cutting through the jungle brush trying to bring you back your samples. That'll really tire you out, not to mention the huge flower that sprayed its pollen all over us just as we were leaving, we're lucky it didn't have any weird effects on us," McCoy joked.

"Actually, we cannot be certain that there have been no effects until a period of at least seventy-two hours has passed." Spock stated matter-of-factly.

"Well I haven't seen any yet, and I'm thinking it's a good sign. Say, what was the name that the native's gave that flower again?" McCoy asked.

"Flira Lunara, or a literal translation would be 'the moon flower'." Spock answered.

Rachel and McCoy listened to Spock as he shared his theory about the flower having a special place in the ritual that the natives were currently performing, and how he believed that the properties affected the natives in a sort of aphrodisiac sense, but that he believed the natives were the only ones whose physiology reacted to the pollen.

"Well, if that would be the only side effect, I don't think that that would be the worst reaction I've ever had to a plant," McCoy said as he continued to tell the two about the experience he had with a nasty rash he got from the plant life on one of the more primitive planets he had visited a few years back.

It was now approaching 22:00, and the captain was on his way to the mini med-bay to check up on his officers and their data on the man he had recently taken as a prisoner.