Disclaimer: Star Trek and all associated characters and situations are the property of CBS studios. Star Trek Online is the creation of Cryptic and Perfect World. Tomb Raider and the situations therein are the property of Square Enix. All are here used by myself for entertainment purposes only, without permission or intent to profit. Stardates were calculated with the help of the TNG Stardate Calculator available on TrekGuide .com and may be slightly out of sync with those used in the game's lore.
Night in the Forest
USS Nautilus, Shuttle One Crew, Senior Science Officer Carlin...Drel..., Stardate 81632.0:
I always wanted to be joined, to have the memories of lifetimes coursing through me and add my own memories to the strand. I questioned it for a while, after I met Antori and he showed me what my reckless pursuit of revenge on my father was doing to me. The desire came back to me later, a longing that had nothing to do with revenge or my father, that was just...me. I was afraid though, of what it would do to us, Antori and I.
I never imagined it would be like this...Antori is dead now. His symbiont has passed to me, along with the memories of its previous hosts...but all I have is the memories...so many memories, his and mine, of days we will never spend together again...
"Tears won't bring me back, Carlin." That's what he would have said, a lesson Perciv learned the hard way when he lost his sons in the Dominion War. ...I just can't believe he's gone! No more wild training sessions on the holodeck. No more mountain climbing. No more after dinner talks or passionate kissing. I wish they'd killed me instead!
But they didn't. I'm here. I'm alive and I'm certain that no shuttle or starship is going to get us off this planet, at least not yet. I know the answer lies in the old Dominion research base on this island, and that it has something to do with a relic from Himiko's kingdom, left on Yamatai all these years. I have to find it and I have to stop it, somehow.
Perciv, Antori, Drel...and now Carlin.
Over a century of memories and experiences, thoughts and emotions, suffused her like a warm light. Consciousnesses merged, souls entwined into a single being: a new person, but old...the same, but different: Carlin Drel.
She opened her eyes, blinking slowly. The night sky overhead hung with low clouds, letting the blue-green glow of the nebula shine through only in patches. There was firelight nearby too. She started to sit up.
A weathered hand gently restrained her. "Lie still, you've been through a lot," said a voice remembered from two different lifetimes: Doctor James Howard. "Do you remember where you are?" the Doctor asked.
"Yamatai, in the Dragon's Head Nebula," Carlin answered, looking around. "And not where I remember lying down."
"We had to move you somewhere safer while you recovered," he explained. "Do you remember who I am?"
"Doctor James Howard, Starfleet, Lieutenant-Commander, Chief Medical Officer aboard the USS Nautilus...but I've been calling you Doc for awhile," said Carlin. "And before you ask the next question in your cognitive exam, the Stardate is 81631.6, plus however long I was out."
"A few hours," said Howard. "And I see that your memory is fine, at least for your current host. How about previous hosts?"
"I can remember being posted on the Bellerophon and helping design her class, if that's what you mean," said Drel, referring to the experiences of Antori and Perciv respectively. The memories were a little fuzzy, but she'd heard that was normal during the first few days of joining and that they would clear up in time. It was nothing to worry about. She squirmed. "Can I get up now?"
Howard nodded and she sat up. "How do you feel?" he asked.
She glanced over at him and realized that, even sitting on the ground beside her, Howard had nearly a dozen centimeters on her. "Short," she answered. At only 168 centimeters, Carlin was by far the shortest host Drel had ever joined, and the only female - the implications of which she was not even going to think about right now. Instead, she diverted her attentions into an inventory of all her aches and pains, which were numerous. "I feel sore all over, too," she said.
"I wasn't able to give you as much terakine as I'd have liked," said Howard.
Carlin nodded her understanding. Joining with a symbiont was among the more biochemically complicated things the Trill body could do, and disrupting the delicate balance between symbiont and host with too many painkillers could have unfortunate implications for both. Still, none of the pains were too bad. She should be able to manage. "Where's Sam?" she asked.
"Right here," said Sam, clomping over in a mismatched pair of boots. She caught Carlin staring at them and shot her a warning look. "Not one word," she said, hefting a Cardassian phaser rifle menacingly.
Carlin raised her hands. "The thought never crossed my mind!" she lied.
Sam smirked, then looked to the Doctor. "How is she?"
"If we were on the Nautilus, I'd keep her in sickbay for a week and order her in for counseling sessions at the nearest Starbase," he said. "Under the circumstances, though, she's good enough for the walking wounded."
"Your vote of confidence is appreciated, Doc," said Drel. She pushed herself to her feet, wincing at the protest of pain from her muscles. It's not the worst pain I've ever experienced, Drel reminded herself - though she had to admit that comparison was a little unfair since she'd died violently just a few hours ago.
She scanned her surroundings again and her eyes landed on a pyre a few meters away. She froze when she saw the face of the man on it: a face she'd kissed and, in another life, seen in the mirror. Antori. The sudden tangible reminder of his death hit her like a sledgehammer. His memories and soul live on, to be enfolded someday in Mak'relle Dur, the afterlife, she reminded herself. Carlin had never been exactly spiritual, and for Antori that was an understatement, but Drel had never been able to escape the sense of there being something bigger than herself. Even so, it was difficult to find solace in memory and the afterlife when the reality of her loss lay right there in front of her. Tears burned in her eyes.
Suddenly, a light touch on her shoulder brought her around. She turned to find Sam standing there, her eyes sympathetic, her arms open. Carlin stepped into the friendly embrace and closed her eyes, letting the tears flow silently for a minute.
"We moved him here to give him a proper funeral...or at least the best we could under the circumstances," said Howard.
Sam nodded, patting her friend on the back. "He died as a warrior, and we wanted to send him off as one," she said. "We wanted to wait until you were conscious again, though."
"Thank you," said Carlin. "He would have wanted that." She dried her eyes and stepped back, turning once more to the funeral pyre. There was a small fire there, with a lit torch beside it, leaning into the flames. She made herself step forward and pick it up. "Death is a part of living," she reminded herself. "We are born, we grow, we develop, and we die, passing on our memories to Mak'relle Dur and our legacy to our offspring. If we have done well, the universe is brighter for our passing." She stepped to the pyre and let the torch fall in among the wood, igniting it. "You will be missed, Antori. You made the universe a better place, and you brightened my life with your own!" She stepped back as the flames rose and her tears fell.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...in hope of resurrection by the grace of God," said Sam, laying a hand on Carlin's shoulder. "Something my grandmother taught me," she explained.
Carlin nodded. She watched the flames for a minute more, then dried her eyes. Ironically it was Antori's old insticts, honed and ingrained in the Drel symbiont, that prompted her to leave his funeral so soon. "We'll have a proper service later, when it's safe," she said. "For now that fire's going to draw every Solarii for miles around. We need to get moving."
Sam nodded, drying her own eyes. "There's also, um, Alex to consider."
"Ensign McKensey?" asked Drel.
Sam nodded again. "He was trapped on the engineering section of the bird-of-prey when it separated. Last I heard from him, he was in trouble, being attacked by a Gorn down in main engineering."
Drel's face turned grim. "Any time the words Gorn and attack are in the same sentence, there's always plenty of trouble. Do we know where he is?"
"About a half dozen kilometers southeast of here, along the coast," said Howard, hand resting on the butt of a Bajoran phaser pistol.
"Then we rescue him first," said Drel. "But we do it smart. These woods are probably crawling with Solarii."
"They are," said a hoarse voice from the shadows.
Sam raised her weapon and Carlin picked up a Jem'Hadar rifle. She was halfway to raising it when she saw Howard had interposed himself and realized why. She recognized the voice. "Captain Crusoe?" she said.
The thin, bearded human stepped out of the shadows, both hands raised and empty. "Sorry," he said. "I-I didn't mean to startle you."
"Crusoe? You know this guy?" Sam asked without lowering her rifle.
"I rescued him from the Solarii," said Carlin. "He helped me get out of the Pit so I could find Doctor Howard and Ensign McKensey."
"If you say so," said Sam, lowering her rifle. "So, Crusoe is it? How many Solarii are out there?"
"Dozens, I don't know exactly," he said. "They were spread out all over, searching the woods."
"We'll need to be careful then," said Sam, switching out her rifle for her bow.
"We also need to move now," said Drel. "If Crusoe could find us the Solarii can't be far behind!"
The others nodded and they headed into the woods. None of them had palm beacons, so they made their way slowly and carefully through the underbrush. It was this very thing, though, that saved them from the Solarii. While they moved forward with silent care, the Solarii crashed through the brush carelessly, waving around palm beacons that seemed more effective at giving away their positions than piercing the gloomy woods.
Even so, Carlin heard them before she saw them. The first notice she had of their presence was when a vile Klingonese curse rang out from somewhere up ahead. Drel winced and wondered why Perciv had gone to the trouble of learning that language in the first place. "Qu'vath guy-cha v'aka" didn't sound half so bad before I knew what it meant! she reflected.
"Are you alright, Brother?" called a voice from ahead and to the right. Carlin could see a palm beacon's beam sweeping through the trees in that direction.
"I'm fine, jay'! I just caught my foot on a Hu'tegh root," the first voice responded. Carlin spotted the light where his voice was coming from this time.
"You find anything over there?" a third voice demanded. Carlin couldn't see a light to go with this voice, but it seemed to be more distant than the others.
"No, nothing!" the first voice answered. "It's too dark, jay'! They could be anywhere."
"Are you sure they're out here?" asked the second. "Maybe they died in the crash."
"You saw what they did to the Palace, and the Communications Base before that? They're Starfleet," said the third one. "Do you seriously think a crash could kill them?"
"We'll they're not invincible, petaQ jay'," said the first voice.
"We should just have Brother Rodok sick his wolves on them," said the second.
The first one laughed. "Here that, Outsiders?!" he shouted into the night. "Best give up before the Hu'tegh wolves find you!"
"Just shut up and keep looking!" said the third voice.
The Solarii fell silent except for the crackle of underbrush and occasional curses. She could still see the nearest two easily enough by their lights, though. She sensed a presence close-by to her right. She turned to find Sam standing there, her dress ghost white against the darkened forest. She was peering ahead at the Solarii as well, her bow in hand. "The passage up ahead between those two rock formations is too narrow for us to sneak past these guys, and I don't like the idea of trying to go around, climbing over cliffs in the dark," Sam whispered.
"Neither do I," said Carlin. "We can't shoot them, though, because that'll alert the third one, and who knows what reinforcements he'll call - maybe wolves!" She shuddered. She had no desire to face wolves in the dark again. Neither Carlin nor Antori had enjoyed the experience.
"Well luckily, I have a nearly silent weapon," said Sam, hefting her bow. "That still leaves one of them. You want to try to get behind him and sedate him? Doc Howard was telling me you'd gotten pretty good at that trick."
"Not in this light," said Carlin. "I can't see to load a hypospray, and I'm as liable to kill as sedate him by injecting him with random drugs - and most of the ways he'd die would not be fast or quiet." One of Antori's memories supplied an idea though, a move he'd perfected in holodeck training sessions Carlin had never attended. The xenobiologist in her was at once intrigued and horrified by its ingenuity, but this was definitely a situation where using it could save her life and the lives of her friends. "I've got an idea," she said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder and grabbing her climbing ax. "Cover me," she said.
She crept toward the nearest Solarii, which happened to be the foul-mouthed Klingon. So much the better, Drel thought. His own swearing will cover any sound from my approach. She was right. He was viciously questioning the parentage and honor of a branch that had caught his dreadlocks when she came up behind him. She raised her ax for an overhead swing, steeled herself, and struck. The titanium blade sunk in just to the right of his neck, slicing downward between the collar bones and entering the ribcage from above, piercing both the Klingon's hearts at once. The Klingon gasped, dropping his palm beacon and disruptor, and went still. Carlin's blow had not been as clean as the ones Antori had perfected, but it had done the job well enough.
At least until it came to extracting her ax from the body, that is. The teeth of the blade caught as she tried desperately to pull it out with both hands. The struggle must have drawn the other Solarii's attention, for he began to turn, light sweeping towards her. "Hey, what's-?" he began to say.
He never finished the sentence. An arrow streaked out of the night with hardly a sound, catching him under the chin. He grasped his neck and gurgled as he fell, but made no cry of alarm. Carlin finally tore her ax free of the corpse and grabbed his palm beacon, switching it off and pocketing it. Sam did the same with the other man's beacon, and together they advanced between the rock formations and over the low hill, toward the source of the third voice. Howard and Crusoe followed behind them. What they found when they reached the top of the hill made them all stop and lie low, though.
There was a broad patch of woods up ahead, surrounding a stream. It was filled with Solarii. Though the trees made it difficult to count them, Carlin saw at least a dozen separate points of light roaming through the dark. Many of the Solarii were also talking to one another, updating each other. She could tell immediately that their strategy for the last two Solarii wasn't going to work.
"We're trapped," Crusoe whispered, trembling. "They've already come this far from the wreck. As soon as they get out of this glen they'll find us for sure!"
"It's not hopeless," Drel insisted. "We just have to think of a better strategy." Though for the life of her she couldn't imagine what.
"When all else fails, do the unexpected," said Sam. She pointed to a rock wall on this side of the glen. "There's a cave entrance there, with two men guarding it. If we can take them out, we might be able to hide inside, where they're not looking for us."
"And whatever they're guarding may be important," Drel said. "Look at what your enemy protects: that's where you'll find his weakness."
"Good advice," said Sam.
"Thanks." She shifted position. "Now how to enact it...there are two guards and we don't want a glen full of Solarii shooting at us. We need to take them down silently and you can't shoot that fast. We'll have to double team it again."
"They're not exactly going to let you sneak up on them like last time," said Howard. "You'll need a diversion."
"I volunteer," said Crusoe.
Sam shook her head, the motion faintly visible in the dark. "If a person suddenly appears in front of them they're going to shout an alarm or something and get everyone looking at them."
"There are other ways of distracting people," said Crusoe. "I can throw pebbles. I got quite good at distracting the Bajoran that way when I was in the Pit. Saved my life on more than one occasion."
"Alright, then," said Sam. "You are our designated pebble thrower, and you-" She tapped Carlin's arm. "-are our designated ax murderess."
"Thanks...I think," said Carlin.
"You're welcome," said Sam. "Go ahead and get into position while I get ready." She nocked an arrow to her bow.
"Just be sure you stand behind something, like a bush," said Drel. "That dress of yours stands out."
"It's a kimono," said Sam, indignant.
Carlin ignored her. She tapped Crusoe on the shoulder and crept forward with him for a few meters, till they were closer to the cave. She could see firelight beyond the entrance and the guards were relying on that rather than palm beacons. She left Crusoe in a patch of bushes, gathering pebbles, and tip-toed closer, keeping low and close to the rock wall in order to stay out of sight. She got as close as she dared, then readied her ax and turned back to Crusoe. She nodded, signalling to him.
The first pebble clicked off the stone wall not far from one of the Solarii guards' heads. It made him turn, but not his partner. The second pebble followed a second later, ricocheting off the mouth of the cave and hitting the fire inside, sending up sparks. Both of the men turned at that. Carlin seized her opportunity, crossing the remaining distance and raising her ax.
She was not as lucky this time. The partner of the guard she stood behind - an Antican - turned and saw her. His eyes went wide with surprise and he started to point when an arrow suddenly punched through his throat. As he fell, her man started to turn. She struck, but the blow was not as precise as last time. It entered at more of an angle and the Solarii started to struggle - thankfully too shocked to shout. She wrenched the blade backward and through its target. His body spasmed and went limp. Carlin left the ax in him for the moment, opting instead to drag him into the cave where the other Solarii wouldn't see him. A minute later, she was joined by Sam and Crusoe dragging the second corpse, followed by Doctor Howard.
"Now what do we do, just lie low?" asked Howard. "It's only a matter of time before the Solarii get curious about what happened to their guards."
"Good point," said Carlin. She grunted, pulling her ax free. She grimaced at the wet red sheen of the blade in the firelight and cleaned it on the ragged clothes of the guard, trying not to think too much about what she'd done. Think about what's ahead, Drel told herself. You can always remember later. "We've got a defensible position here, but we should search the rest of it to make sure there are no surprises - and find out what the Solarii thought was so important about this cave." She grabbed a palm-beacon off of her guard while Sam grabbed another off the Antican. Carlin's guard also had Romulan disruptor, which she handed to Crusoe. He accepted it hesitantly and Drel began showing him how to use the weapon, which was a design Antori had been familiar with.
Suddenly, a wolf's howl interrupted their discussion, followed by several more, all echoing through the cave from a passage beyond the entrance.
"Was that what I thought that was?" asked Sam.
"I certainly hope not," Carlin answered, readying her rifle and setting it to full auto. She pointed it down the passage, shining her palm beacon so she could see. There was nothing, though, except the sounds of snarls and yelps. Definitely nearby, but not getting any closer.
"One of the Solarii mentioned trained wolves," said Howard. "Do you suppose this was what he meant?"
"I guess we find out," said Carlin. She swallowed, gathered her courage, and took the lead down the tunnel, with Sam and Doctor Howard close behind, Crusoe cowering in the rear. They went down a short passage and came to a large chamber which seemed to be the source of the noises. Carlin entered cautiously, beacon scanning for any sign of the animals. A form hung in the center of the room. She almost shot it before she realized it was the half-eaten corpse of a deer, suspended by its legs from a metal stand. She saw the cages next, made from a variety of salvaged metals and lining the wall. Within them, the wolves waited, snarling at her light, but unable to attack.
"Wolves in cages," said Sam. "You were right. These are the ones the Solarii were trying to domesticate."
"I think domesticate may be a little misleading," said Carlin, scanning the nearest one, which backed into a corner of its cage and bared its teeth. "This animal's been beaten and is severely undernourished. It's more like they were trying to starve and bully them into submission."
"They treated us no better in the Pit," said Crusoe. "At least these animals get separate cages so they don't go mad and kill each other."
"Not much of a mercy at that," said Sam. She looked around. "Well, what now? The only way out of here's that little tunnel in the back, and it's filled with some creepy green fog which I'm guessing is bad."
"It's verdenicine gas," said Carlin, "and it is toxic."
"That makes it the perfect natural barrier," said Doctor Howard. "I have an antidote in my medkit that can counteract the effects of the gas for a few minutes of exposure. If we use that to get through to the other side, we'll probably be in a part of the cave the Solarii don't even know anything about."
Sam took Carlin's tricorder and scanned the passage. "There's airflow in that direction. That means there's another exit that way - and the passage seems to lead in the general direction of the rest of the bird-of-prey."
"Let's do it then," said Carlin. "Sam, you go first because you have the most experience with caves. Once you're through and its safe on the other side, the rest of us will follow."
"Got it," said Sam. Howard injected her with the antidote and she ducked into the passageway, disappearing through the shroud of green dust. A few moments later they heard her voice from the other side. "I'm through and the passage opens up a little here. It looks like it goes on for a few kilometers, but its headed in the right direction and there's definitely another entrance."
"Alright, then we're coming through!" Carlin called back. She patted Crusoe, indicating he should go next. Then she had Howard inject himself. "You go next and give me the hypospray. I'll take up the rear." Howard nodded and did as she asked, disappearing into the passage.
Carlin found herself alone in a chamber full of hungry, angry wolves. She pressed the hypospray to her own neck and backed toward the passage. She did not go through yet, though. Something about leaving the wolves here struck her as wrong. The tactician in her hated to leave a weapon like this in enemy hands, and the xenobiologist in her hated to leave even wolves in such cruel hands. Maybe it's time for a little poetic justice then, she thought. She set her rifle to vaporize and fired a series of bursts, targeting the doors of the cages. The bars vanished in a swirl of blue-white energy. The wolves shrunk back, unsure at first what to make of this, but she knew that would change quickly - and with verdenicine gas blocking this passage, there was really only one way they could go. Have fun with that, Solarii, she thought, then slipped through the veil of green dust.
Author's Note: Well, there you have it: the new character Carlin Drel! I hope you like her. According to the canon information on Trill, joining is supposed to make a new unique individual, sort of the same and sort of different. I'll be working out my own balance where Carlin Drel is concerned. I like a lot of her character as it is, but with 100+ years of experiences, including all of Antori's intense training, she's bound to be a more capable character and dangerous opponent.
While the first two paragraphs of Carlin's log are clearly just for reader review, the last two are almost word-for-word Lara's Journal entry in the game after Roth dies. Of course, some parts have been changed: Lara definitely did not list kissing as one of the things she would miss doing with Roth! Also at this stage of the Tomb Raider game, Lara pretty much has the mystery of Yamatai solved, except for a couple lacking details. Carlin is still a fair distance away from solving it, but she is on the right track. The Stardate in the log is the actual time at which this chapter is meant to play out (about midnight, after the crash of the bird-of-prey), while the Stardate quoted later is about the last time Carlin was conscious.
The USS Bellerophon was the Intrepid-class ship used for diplomatic missions in Romulan space during the Dominion War (DS9: "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges").
For those of us not used to the metric system (*cough-cough,* Americans - like, me actually) 168 cm is about 5'6", which is more of a medium height today, but is definitely on the short side of what is available in character creation in Star Trek Online. This may reflect better nutrition in the 25th Century (developed countries have greater average heights than undeveloped ones), or it may just reflect the fact that player characters represent, in part, player fantasies - and who fantasizes about being short or even average height?
Terakine is an analgesic (painkiller) that was used on Riker after he broke a rib in bat'leth practice with Worf (TNG: "The Pegasus").
Mak'relle Dur is the Trill afterlife, according to the DS9 novel Unjoined. It's supposed to be a place in the core of the Trill planet where the memories of joined Trill are "enfolded." As noted, Antori's atheist character probably would not have believed in it, but Carlin might vaguely believe in it, especially in a hard time like this.
Qu'vath guy-cha v'aka is an untranslated Klingon curse which was vile enough that Picard shooting it back at an angry Klingon governor was enough to startle the Klingon into giving him respect (TNG: "The Mind's Eye"). Hu'tegh is an untranslated expletive that can be used as an adjective, and jay' as previously mentioned is a modifier added to the end of the sentence which adds intensity like adding a swear word adjective somewhere in the middle would, so "I'm fine, jay'" would be "I'm ****ing fine" and "It's too dark, jay'" would become "It's too **** dark." There would be two ways to read "They're not invincible, petaQ jay'" consequently: either "They're not ****ing invincible, idiot" or "They're not invincible, ****ing idiot." I won't say which this Klingon meant. Drel knowing Klingon was established in chapter 13 when it was among the languages Antori swore in. I decided Perciv should have been the source of the knowledge, though, since he lived in times when relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire were much more peaceful.
This chapter is based on Roth's funeral in Tomb Raider (notably the only person who gets a funeral, though hopefully I've justified that here by giving the heroes some natural down time) and the stealth level immediately following it. It's the one I mentioned before where if you fail at sneaking you get shot to death and eaten by wolves. Whenever I play it, I clear the level (which involves killing way more than four Solarii) with a bow, but I've seen videos of people doing it by sneaking up behind the mooks and stealth-killing them with Lara's climbing ax (which is what Carlin demonstrates). Either way, you eventually reach the cave where the Solarii are keeping all of their horrifying pet wolves. You have the option of killing them or leaving them. You can't do as Carlin here does and sick them on the Solarii themselves, though that would be awesome if you could ("Here Solarii, you wrestle with wolves for a change!").