What About Rampart

A rock had been fused with his skull, pushed in a few inches, then given a swift kick by a foot made of lead.

That was what it felt like, when Jordan Rampart awoke.  If he awoke.  He was not certain that he had been unconscious.  The jungle was a smothering cloak, thick and green, closing around him as he stirred, choking him with its humidity.

His legs had been severed.  He couldn't feel anything below the knees.  They sprouted from the grass and brush.  His head had been taken off of his shoulders, and dangled; he was staring at his pelvis, upside down.  Throbbing pains told him he could still feel his neck, after someone twisted and snapped it in ten different places.  He reached out a hand, without thinking; felt cloth.  Fabric – stiff inside.  Maybe one of his calves.  Fighting to clear his blurry vision, he saw an arm, then another head, with blond hair, attached to a body.  Two pips, dim in the fading light.  A Starfleet uniform.  Lieutenant Pembroke.  Fingers searched for the man's pulse... or lack thereof.  Warm, but dead.

Rampart tried to look around, and the world went into a crazy spin.  The ground lifted above him and pressed into his back.  The fading twilight sky appeared, between tattered silhouettes and towering trees.  Shadows moved.  Voices spoke, distant, then closer, closer still.  He couldn't make out the words.  A figure descended towards him out of the dusk.  An invisible bolt of lightening struck and burned through his brain; he gasped for air, trying to scream; he failed.

The pain simmered down.  He could see again.  No, it was not dark.  Sunlight shafted through the trees.  Someone had poured sand in his mouth.  He tried to salivate, wet his tongue, but it wouldn't move.  He couldn't speak.

Rampart knew of aborigines on Earth – primitive tribal types who clung to ancient ways, as they had for centuries, in remote regions... Oceania, Africa, Suram.  How did he end up on Earth?  What was one doing here, standing above him, staring down at him?  The primitive brandished a long spear, face hidden inside a mane of thick, wild hair.

The head tipped, studying him.  Prominent gray-skinned neck bones stood out in the light.  Cardassian.  He was still on Cardassia.  It was only... what, late afternoon?

Half-dressed, mostly naked, gray figures emerged from the jungle on all sides.  They wore loincloths, necklaces and bracelets and anklets made of animal bones and assorted trinkets – pieces of tricorders, phasers and disruptor-rifles, disassembled and jammed together in odd-angled jumbles.  Jewelry.  Andy Warhol, meet Pablo Picasso. Oh, by the way, this is the 24th century.  One sported an unexpected breastplate over his scaly gray chest: a piece of runabout control-console, painted with dark green Cardassian hieroglyphs.  Many had feathers or sculpted wood carvings braided into their hair, around tattooed faces.  All carried spears, clubs; some brandished shields.  Short swords or knives dangled from the belts of several.

It took a few seconds to pull it together.  Rampart had heard of the Pleknareth tribes of Cardassia – but never expected to set eyes on them before now.  One of the tribes, at least.  He was surprised, in the next minute: Not only were there Cardassians.  Indistinguishable at a distance, but now clearly resolving themselves at close range, were also Jem'Hadar, skin pigmentation nearly matching the Cardassians'.  The variation didn't end there: A Klingon, a Romulan, and a Tellarite stepped forth, similarly primitive in appearance.

Very, very slowly, Rampart sat up, searching their faces.  The Pleknareth rejected modern technology, preferring rustic lifestyles in the most rural areas of Cardassia Prime.  He knew that much about them, and little else.  He did not know if they had a chief, or if they followed the same patterns of hierarchy as similar tribes did on other worlds.

His throat burned.  He rubbed it; he still had his limbs; then wiped at his nose, wet, stuffy, running.  Felt like he'd contracted Urodelean flu again... five times more intense.  He tried to clear his throat, which made it worse.  Cramps clenched his stomach; he thought he would throw up, and tried to breathe.

"Um... hello," he managed.

The primitives gathered around.  Rampart knew those looks: One sudden wrong move and he'd find out, maybe, what it felt like to get speared.  He already knew what it felt like to be hit with a club.  He licked his lips with the piece of sandpaper his tongue had been turned into.  It tasted awful.  Drugged.  Must have been drugged.  Maybe not a club.

Shouts drew his attention.  More of the unlikely tribal types clustered near the runabout half-buried in jungle growth, gesturing at it and chattering wildly.  They casually ignored the corpses littering the ground between them, across the small clearing artificially carved into the jungle floor: The bodies of the excavation crew.

Other than the obvious, something else was wrong: Rampart could not understand their killers.  (He assumed they had killed them.)  His translator wasn't working.  As he regained his wits and attempted to fire off a distress signal via complant – the nearest com-station would automatically pick it up – it dawned on him that the internal communicator was not functioning either.

But body language conveyed a clear impression, again: They were in an uproar about something... and the runabout played a part.