There wasn’t anything she could put her fingers on exactly, beyond the gradual absence of animal noise in the surrounding jungle, but years as a peace officer had taught her to trust her instincts when her hackles rose even the slightest bit. Right now they were at full attention.
Something was watching her and moving with her, a few meters beyond the densely clustered vines and leaves. Of course there would be predators in a place like this. Of course some of them would be big enough to give her trouble, especially considering the new scents her simian-descended body had introduced to this place and the amount of noise she made as she went. She could only hope she was too alien to be recognized as prey.
Heartbeat slow, she told herself, remembering her survival training. Pace regular, body relaxed and calm.
In a normal jungle, even one that was exceedingly lush, there would be bamboo shoots or tree branches or even stones she might use as weapons, but this was Orisha. The vines and leaves were either too spindly or too thick or too supple to allow her to make anything more dangerous than a length of rope, and the crystal formations, while certainly durable enough to cause damage, were also too solid to break or even damage with her bare hands.
She was just thinking about maybe trying for some higher ground at least when the thing attacked. It was so fast she barely had time to react. It whipped out at her from her left side, barely disturbing the flora. In the glimpse she caught of it as she spun out of its path she saw something long and thick like a constricting snake but with thousands of tiny legs running in two rows along its belly.
She hit the ground hard as it passed and looked up to find it had disappeared into the thick foliage the way a shark disappears into an ocean.
There was a tear in her undershirt but not in her flesh, thankfully.
The thing ripped out at her again, just as she was getting to her feet, this time giving her no time to dodge.
She managed to get her hands up as it smacked into her, catching its head between them even as it bore her to the ground.
It was a monster, all right, its skin a shifty scaly texture that modulated its color to match the plants around it.
Its face, if you could call it a face, was a nightmare, little more than a gaping hole filled with multiple rows of tiny fishhook teeth. Its breath stank like a hundred corpses left too long under a hot sun, sweet and musky and full of blood.
As it lunged at her, its throat let out an ugly gurgling sound as if it, rather than she, were being constricted to death.
She could feel its million legs clawing at her as its serpentine body tried to wrap itself around hers.
“No!” she said through her teeth, forcing the hideous maw away from her face. “I’m…not…your…dinner!”
Of course it ignored her. If there was a brain in there at all, it was just complex enough to tell the thing to eat and eat often.
She tried to shift her weight, to get some leverage against it, but its lower coils already held her legs fast. The tiny legs had encircled her torso by then and were in the process of squeezing off her air. She had minutes, maybe seconds, to think of something, but with that slaughterhouse of a mouth bearing down on her, she had no attention to spare.
Her lungs burned as they struggled against the increasing pressure. Her heart raced. This thing was going to kill her, right here in the sopping decay of the alien jungle, and then it would eat her or drink her blood or whatever it did to survive.
The giant maw forced her hands back and back again until it was in kissing distance of her face. She felt the crushing tightness around her stomach and chest forcing her breath out in short ragged gasps.
She told herself to fight, but her arms were numb and there was music and her mother scolding her about something and why did her head hurt so much?
Then there was a sound she recognized, a humming noise that brought with it a flash of incandescent light. Suddenly the monster was gone.
Standing nearby, with a phaser in his hand, was a big man in a mud-spattered Starfleet uniform. His thick mustache did nothing to hide the look of profound relief on his face.
“Keru!” she rasped at him as she struggled to stand again. “Took you long enough.”
“Sorry, Commander,” he said, moving to help her. “I’ll try to be quicker next time.”
Keru’s report was better than expected, considering. He and the others, Troi and Ra-Havreii, had materialized close to each other along with many of the survival supplies they would need.
While Troi and Ra-Havreii tried to get their malfunctioning equipment working, Keru had concerned himself with searching the jungle for Vale, Jaza, and Modan. There was no sign of the latter two as yet.
“Something’s interfering with the combadges,” said Keru as he let Vale walk on her own the final few meters to their camp. “Dr. Ra-Havreii is working on the problem. I located as much of our gear as I could. Some of it is still missing. I was actually looking for it when I found you.”
“Lucky me,” she said.
“Me too,” he said, managing a grin.
Vale was glad of Keru in that moment. He was a rock, as unshakable as they came, and without his support, she wasn’t sure she would be able to continue, in light of their larger dilemma.
“We can’t be sure what happened, Christine,” said Troi once Vale had gotten some field rations in her and injected herself with a broad-spectrum inoculant.
The counselor looked surprisingly unfazed by the current circumstances, which somehow irritated Vale. She was alert, relatively free of mud and other detritus and working, as best she could, to assist the engineer with his repair of the communications pack.
Ra-Havreii, by contrast, seemed little more than a robot, working away in silence on whatever task was set him and looking none of his companions in the face or speaking. His body was there, but as was increasingly the case with him, the Efrosian’s mind was far, far away. This time Vale didn’t begrudge him that. She wished she could escape too.
“I’m sure, Deanna,” she said. “I know what I saw.”
“And I know what I felt,” said the other woman. “But the Enterprise-”
“We’re not on the Enterpriseanymore, Counselor,” said Vale, suddenly angry and wanting to hit something, many times, as hard as she could. “ Ourship is dead. Everyone on it is dead. I saw it happen. I don’t know how it got so close so fast, but I know what I saw. So, please, shut up about the Enterpriseand let me try to figure out how we’re getting out of this mess.”
“I know what you’re feeling, Chris,” said Deanna evenly. “I feel some of it too. But my own experience tells me to wait until we have real solid proof of whatever happened to Titan. You may not like to hear it now, but Will and I have been in this place before and survived. I’m not declaring him dead or any of them dead, until I see it.”
“You’re in denial,” said Vale.
“You’re not qualified to make that assessment, Commander,” said Troi. Then she went back to work with Ra-Havreii without another word.
They had limited resources and fewer options, so Vale’s eventual plan was about as basic as they came: Find the shuttle. Find Jaza and Modan, alive if possible. To that end, armed with phasers and the four now working combadges, they had set off in opposite directions, each describing a circular search pattern that would eventually bring them back to the camp, hopefully with the shuttle’s location and with their two missing companions in tow.
Troi was left to work with Ra-Havreii, and it was all uphill. He wouldn’t speak, or, if he did, it was only to ask for some tool or to correct her clumsy attempts to follow his repair instructions. Beyond that, the engineer had folded up inside himself and, she knew, was currently building a very solid door to lock himself behind.
She understood it. His response, while somewhat unhealthy, was neither unnatural nor unexpected. He had helped to design Titan, after all, as he had all the Luna-class vessels.