Thorn in the Side
USS Pathfinder is boarded by a plant creature while investigating an enigmatic jungle planet.
2404.11.03
Investigating a planet that caught the science department's attention on long range sensors, it is discovered the planet was covered entirely with plantlife, a jungle so dense sensors were unable to reach the planet's actual surface.
Not long after USS Pathfinder entered orbit, the planet launched some sort of pod toward the ship, which tethered itself to the ship and breaching the hull at Deck 13 with a set of huge thorns.
While examining the hull breach, a tree-like creature emerged from the thorn. The creature seemed to be unable or unwilling to communicate, ignoring Pathfinder's personnel and instead entering a turbolift shaft and making its way to the Arboretum on Deck 9.
Almost cornered by the creature, Yeoman Shonn, and the children Krista, Tara, and Velma attempted to hide in an lifeboat, but the creature pursued them and as it tried to force its way through the hatch, the escape pod was ejected from the ship.
As the escape pod drifted toward the planet, Velma suddenly disappeared, revealing that the girl was actually a hologram, but Yeoman Shonn and the other two girls had little time to dwell on that before the escape pod made a not entirely gentle landing somewhere in the alien jungle's canopy.
Meanwhile, on the ship, the creature's attention was again on Velma, who had reappeared in the hallway. Security (still unaware the girl was a hologram) arrived just in time to come to her aid, and the creature was disabled and its now seemingly inanimate body was transported to Sickbay.