Dr. M'Benga's daughter, kept in a transporter buffer to hold off a terminal illness until a nebula offered her a new existence.
Rukiya is the daughter of Dr. Joseph M'Benga. Suffering from a rare terminal disease, she was held in stasis in the pattern buffer of an old transporter aboard the Enterprise, emerging only for brief visits while her father searched for a cure. She was played by Sage Arrindell as a child and Makambe Simamba as an adult.
When a conscious nebula sensed her loneliness, it transformed the ship into the setting of her favorite storybook and cured her, but only while she stayed within it. M'Benga agreed to let her become an energy being inside the nebula, and he later saw her as a grown woman who had lived a life of adventure.