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Scavenger's Cave
USS Nautilus: Shuttle One Crew, Senior Flight Controller Samantha Hayashi's Log, Stardate Unknown…Day 1, I guess?
How do I start?...Okay, this is Lieutenant Sam Hayashi, a pilot and xenoarcheologist from the USS Nautilus. My shuttle crashed here on this planet somewhere inside the Dragon's Head Nebula. From what we saw of this planet from space, it's incredible! There are ancient ruins here. The wrecks we saw could also date back centuries, and they're from practically every space-faring civilization in the quadrant. We're not the first to crash here, and we're not alone. Someone was good enough to prove that to me the minute after I swam ashore—separated from my crewmates—by giving me a whack on the back of the head. I have no idea where I am now, but I assume I'm still on the island where our shuttle went down. …Something isn't right about this place. If I don't get off this planet, maybe Starfleet will eventually find this tricorder and recover my log.
Sam was aware of a dragging sound, the sensation of something wet and rough against her face. Her eyes drifted open and closed. She saw candles, the rock floor of a cave, bones and human skulls. None of it made sense. Water dripped down onto her face from somewhere. She closed her eyes again, hoping that when she opened them again she would find herself back in her quarters aboard the Endurance—or was it the Nautilus? She could not remember. It didn't seem to matter, because the next time she opened her eyes, the world was upside down. She could hear the sound of creaking ropes as an engraved wall mural surrounded by burning candles lowered itself into her field of vision. Her head ached. She decided to close her eyes again until it stopped.
It seemed only a moment later when her eyes snapped open again, awareness dawning on her. The world wasn't upside down, she was. She was hanging by her feet in some kind of bundle made of heavy fabric lashed together with thick ropes. Only her head was free. She could see three other bundles of similar size hanging around her, but couldn't see anyone in them.
"Help!" she shouted. "Carlin! Antori! Help!" There was no answer. For all she knew, they weren't even on the island anymore—supposing that she still was.
She turned her head, trying to take stock of her situation. She was suspended in some sort of vertical shaft in a cave, a good three meters above the floor. There was a catwalk between her and the bottom, made of badly corroded metal sheets. To her right, carved into the wall, was some sort of shrine, surrounded by burning candles, among which she caught sight of several humanoid skulls. "Whoever owns this place needs a decorator…and I need to get out of here."
She struggled against her bonds, but the heavy fabric and the ropes kept her from moving her arms more than a fraction of an inch, and she could not move her legs at all. But when she struggled, it set her swinging, and that gave her an idea. I wonder how strong these ropes are. She swung from side to side, twisting her torso as much as she could with each swing in order to build momentum. She wondered how much strain the rope could take before it snapped—or if she would wind up knocking herself senseless against the walls of the shaft first.
Just then, she bumped into one of the other bundles. It bounced off of her, swinging on its own. It swung straight over the shrine and the flames of the candles licked at it eagerly. Within seconds, the bundle was ablaze, a flaming pendulum. It hit a wooden crosspiece that was about level with Sam's chest and lit that on fire as well. Then, the charred fabric tore and a humanoid skeleton tumbled out. It hit the catwalk and the corroded metal panels collapsed, leaving Sam suspended three meters in the air next to a flaming wooden crossbeam. Meanwhile the rope that was holding her wasn't showing any sign of strain.
"I need a new plan, or I'll be stuck here till I end up like whoever that was." She glanced at the flaming bundle. It was disintegrating rapidly, and as each piece fell off, it landed in a shallow pool of water on the floor, extinguishing itself. She looked at the burning crosspiece. It must have been soaked in some kind of fuel spill, because it was burning very well, with no sign of breaking up. If she changed her swing just slightly, she would wind up in the flames—and if the bundle holding her burned as well as the other bundle… I wish I had a better idea, she thought. At least Starfleet uniforms are flame-resistant.
She twisted a little, altering her swing. Her bundle bumped against the burning crosspiece and flames immediately began to spread across its surface. Her hands twitched. "Ow! Hot!" She hadn't been thinking about her hands. She tried to move them away from the spreading flames before the fire could chew through the fabric and touch them, but she was so tightly bound she couldn't move. This is gonna hurt! This is gonna hurt!
Just then, the rope holding the bundle closed snapped. Sam tumbled out, falling and crying in surprise. She tried to brace herself for the landing and saw just a moment too late a piece of rusty rebar sticking up out of the ground like a miniature stake. Then, she hit. Pain erupted from her left side. She screamed and rolled, but that only made the pain worse. She made herself lay still, gritted her teeth, and opened her eyes.
The rebar was there. Four centimeters of its length sprouted from her left side, covered in blood and rust. Reaching back, her hand brushed a smaller segment of it, emerging from her back on the same side. Touching it made her feel like her side was on fire. She cried out and rolled to her right side. Her hand reached up and tapped her combadge. "Sam to Carlin! Medical emergency!" There was no answer, only silence. "Sam to Carlin, please come in!" Nothing. She tapped her combadge again. "This is Lieutenant Samantha Hayashi of the starship Nautilus, if anyone can hear me please respond. I need immediate medical attention." Only the stillness of the cave answered her.
Sam groaned. Okay, don't panic…you took basic medical, remember? She told herself. Her hand fumbled for her tricorder and pulled it out. Time for Doctor Hayashi to save the day. She flipped open the tricorder and set it for a basic medical scan. Then she turned it around and held it over the wound, listening until it gave a "scan complete" tone. When the tone sounded she lay back in the water, breathing heavily and took a look at the results. She moaned. Well, the good news is I didn't puncture any organs. The bad news is there's a piece of rebar one centimeter across and ten centimeters long stuck in me, and it looks to be carrying about every kind of infection you can imagine. She shut the tricorder and shoved it back into its pocket.
"Okay, think," she told herself. I have to get it out and get some antiseptics and antibiotics in me quick…but if I take it out now, I'll have to contend with bleeding out through a one centimeter hole running through my body. The best thing to do…the best thing to do is just try to stabilize it. The question was: how?
"My uniform jacket," she said aloud. "If I can just get it off and tie it around my waist…" She unfastened and removed the jacket carefully. Each time the uniform bushed the spike in her side, it sent new stabs of pain through her body. Nevertheless, she managed to get it all the way off and tie it securely around her waist, wrapping it over the ends of the rebar, immobilizing it as best she could. Then, she lay still for a few minutes, waiting while the pain subsided to more tolerable levels.
"Alright…doctor's orders are…get medical attention as soon as possible, and don't make any sudden movements…under the circumstances, kinda contradictory." She began to laugh humorlessly, but it turned into a moan as the motion sent a fresh wave of pain through her side. Okay, I can't laugh, and I can't wait here, she told herself. Eventually whoever stringed me up is gonna come back and find out I'm not his human piñata anymore, and I don't want to stick around for that! She made herself sit up, gritting her teeth against the pain, and flipped open her tricorder, setting it to a general scan.
"Something's wrong," she muttered. "The range is too limited, barely more than a few meters…something must be interfering with its sensors." She shut the tricorder and tucked it away. "Guess that leaves us with the old-fashioned way of navigating." She could see a passageway leading away from the shaft just a few meters away from her. There was air movement from that direction, and light, too. Commander Conrad Saganami had been her Ground Survival Training instructor, and he would have killed her personally if he'd thought for a second that she couldn't find her way out of a cave with those two hints to guide her. She pushed herself to her feet and forced herself to start walking.
The cave floor was littered with bones and rocks, but at least it stopped being covered in cold water. Soon after it dried out, she reached the source of the light, another shrine, this one with a much larger profusion of red candles centered around a crude white-wash painting of a robed woman with rays of light drawn spreading out from her. That wasn't all, though, and Sam gasped at the sight of what accompanied the shrine. There was a real woman there, too, a Bajoran dressed in civilian clothing, hanging with arms spread over the shrine, suspended by ropes tied around her wrists. The Bajoran's head hung limp over her bloodied tunic. Sam fumbled out her tricorder and scanned the woman. The tricorder gave a long negative tone. "Dead," she whispered. "My God, what did they do to you?" It was then that she noticed two skeletons tied up beside the shrine. She couldn't identify the species, but both were humanoid. She shuddered. "Who would do this?" she asked, before realizing that, for the moment, it didn't matter. What matters is making sure they don't get a chance to do it to me.
She studied the chamber. There was only one way out, a darkened passageway with glass bottles strung up and hanging in front of it, but she could still feel airflow from that direction. She grabbed a torch from a bracket on the wall beside the shrine and pushed past the hanging bottles. They clanked and rattled against each other as she pushed by and the sound seemed to echo through the passageways. She thought she heard a voice somewhere in the distance. She thought of whoever tied her up, whoever killed the Bajoran, and quickened her pace.
The floor of the passage became wet again as it descended. It wasn't long before Sam was wading through knee-high water. She stumbled through the passageway, clutching her side, until she began to see light ahead, and hear the sound of crashing water. A minute later, she emerged into a large, flooded chamber. She noticed there was a passage branching off near where she came in. The entrance was blocked with a thick metal grate with several barrels tied to it with ropes. There were some electrical devices rigged up to the barrels. Sam recognized them as crude proximity detonators and stepped back. She scanned the barrels quickly. "Primitive gunpowder explosives," she said. It was crude, but easy to whip up and plenty effective in large enough quantities. "The proximity detonators are facing outwards, through the grate." Obviously whoever owned this cave didn't want any unannounced visitors from that direction, which made Sam think that passageway could be her ticket out—provided she could get past the bombs without blowing herself sky-high.
She started around the chamber, checking for an easier way out, but all the other passageways were either blocked by rocks or pieces of scavenged metal or else four meters off the ground. As she searched, water cascaded in from one of these high entrances, causing the water already in the chamber to splash over her waist. She cried out at the sudden pain as the water touched her wound. She grimaced and staggered away from that entrance before more water could splash through. Okay, judging from how much that hurt, this is salt water, which means, this is probably the ocean. Most M-Class worlds, for whatever reason, had salt-water oceans. And if this is the ocean then the water coming in is— Another wave of water cascaded into the chamber. —the tide! She searched the room for high-water marks and bit her lip when she saw barnacle-like shellfish attached to rocks on the ceiling.
"I think it's safe to say this whole place is going to flood," Sam said to herself. "And that grate looks like my only way out." She edged closer to the bombs, but she had neither the tools nor the time to disarm them. Whoever owns this place has got to have a way out, look for that. She found a motor hooked up to the grate. It was a clumsy arrangement, but it looked like it could raise the grate just enough for someone to get through without setting off the proximity detonators. Unfortunately there was another detonator wired up to the motor's controls, she supposed as a deterrent to anyone trying to activate it without the right codes. "Whoever lives in this cave is seriously paranoid," she muttered.
Just then, the water reached waist level. She flinched as the salt water stung her wound. I don't have time for this. There has to be a way around the boobytraps…maybe if I set them off remotely. She wracked her brain. Gunpowder was unstable and vulnerable to heat and electrical discharge. If she could get her torch over to the barrels where the detonators were, she had a chance of producing both. Of course, she would need to do so while somehow standing on the opposite side of the room unless she wanted to be blown to pieces. Strangely, she didn't.
She looked around for anything else flammable. There was plenty of flotsam in the chamber, and some of it would probably burn well enough when dry, but of course it was all soaked from the sea. She noticed a large cargo container, then. It was made of the cobbled-together bulkheads of shuttles that didn't even belong in the same era, but it was held about a meter over the water by a wooden frame with access from the far end provided by a rickety scaffold and this end by a long metal ramp. Both ends were open. Sam climbed up the ramp carefully. Inside the container, she found a pile of wooden crates, debris, seaweed, dead fish, and other garbage that had washed in from the sea…only this pile was dry. Whoever lives here must periodically gather all the flotsam up into this container and sort through it for anything useful…and just leave the rest. She made a face. They're almost as big of a slob as I am.
But in this case, their untidiness was her good fortune. Practically everything in the trash heap was flammable, and of course all of it would float. She even had a ramp conveniently pointing straight down at the grate. All she had to do was torch the junk, shove it down the ramp, and pray that it set off the bombs instead of just fizzling out in the seawater.
That was exactly what she did. Of course, it had seemed a lot easier when she'd first thought of the idea. The water rose nearly half a meter while she was trying to shove the garbage together into a pile she could send down the ramp all in one go, and then of course every time she bent to push something, her side felt like it was being stabbed all over again. But at last, she lit her pile and pushed it over the edge onto the ramp. The conflagration slid down into the water and drifted into the grate. A lot of the flotsam was extinguished, but enough of it managed to stay out of the water to continue burning. She noticed several pieces burning just beneath the barrels or their detonators. Already one of the detonators was sparking. It then occurred to Sam that if she didn't want to die she had better find shelter from the immanent explosion. She pulled the near end of the cargo container closed, and not a second too soon. The blast set her ears ringing and the shockwave knocked her off her feet. Something hit the end of cargo container hard enough to make a dent the size of her head in the metal.
Then it was over. She could hear rocks rumbling and seawater pouring in. That can't be good. She scrambled out of the cargo container and back down into the water. It was chest high now, and the entrance she'd just opened was rapidly closing as the rocks sagged above it. Sam cursed herself and half-swam-half-walked to the entrance as quickly as she could. Would it have killed me to run a scan on the cavern's structural integrity before I started blowing things up? Of course, that was assuming her tricorder would have been able to detect anything. A rock the size of Sam's torso fell into the water behind her and she decided she could give herself a guilt trip later.
The passageway beyond the grate sloped upward, taking her out of the water. She ran up the passage till she came to a fork. She could see daylight from the left fork, but before she could take it a huge boulder smashed down in front of it, sealing it shut. She ran through the right fork. Every stride made her wound feel like it was on fire. She forced herself to keep running.
She heard more splashing from the passageway behind her, and she could swear she heard footsteps in the pauses between the roaring of collapsing rubble. She turned just in time to see a Bolian man running after her. Only a patchwork of animal hides and rags covered his blue skin, and he wielded a small axe with a steel head. He swung at her, but she ducked and scrambled backward. The motion sent a wave of pain through her body, and for a moment she was afraid the scavenger would finish her, but he hesitated. The rocks rumbled above them and dust filtered down between them.
Scavenger smiled at her. "Come 'ere," he said. "I just want to help you!"
"I think I'll…pass," said Sam, breathing heavily.
"I'll make a quick end of it, put you out of your sufferin'…you won't get such an offer from them."
Sam said nothing, but continued backing down the passageway.
"Come 'ere! I said, come 'ere!" the Bolian lunged at her. Sam was prepared to dodge the ax again, but she wasn't prepared for the full-body tackle to her legs. It knocked her to the ground and the impact made her scream in pain. The sound must have startled the scavenger because he hesitated with his axe in mid-swing. Sam didn't give him a chance to resume. She pulled her left leg free and kicked her attacker in the nose, hard. Blue blood spurted from the broken nose. She scrambled backward, trying to regain her feet. The scavenger clutched his nose with one hand and swore, but the words were lost in the roar of falling rock. He started to rise, to pursue her, but before he could take a step a huge boulder landed on top of him, sealing the passageway.
Sam struggled to her feet and ran. She could see a ray of sunlight ahead. There was a narrow, muddy shaft leading up to the surface at the end of the passage. She raced for it, ignoring the pain. Rocks tumbled down behind her as she started making her ascent. The slope was steep, but she dug her fingers into the soil and scrambled up it madly, the sounds of the tunnel collapsing behind her spurring her on. The climb seemed to last for hours or days, with that opening into daylight always just out of reach, but it could not have been more than half a minute. Then, her head thrust through the entrance and she pulled the rest of her body out after it. Behind her, a resounding boom and a pillar of dust rose from the hole in the ground, announcing the collapse of the cave beyond.
Sam lay on the grass, muddy, battered, and wounded, her breath coming in ragged gasps between which she whispered, "Thank God…thank God I'm alive." When she'd caught her breath enough, she began to cry.
Author's Note: Here Sam continues to play Lara's role from the game, experiencing the events of the first level of the game, which is called "Scavenger's Cove." There are some minor differences, most as a result of this story taking place in the Star Trek universe rather than on modern-day Earth (ex: there are no aliens in the original). The three major differences revolve around the rebar wound, the scavenger's attack, and the bomb/grate puzzle.
The rebar wound was something that particularly bugged me and other online commentators in the original. In the game, Lara receives a wound from a piece of rebar which penetrates her side. While it looks small enough and close enough to the edge of her body that I can believe it missed anything vital, her reaction to it falls under the category of Worst Aid. She immediately pulls it out and then runs around for half the game without so much as slapping a bandaid on it, only pausing to cauterize the wound after it breaks open again due to her running into a tree. Amazingly she does not bleed out, but only has two rather small (all things considered) spots of blood on her tank top to show for it. When transporting the story into the Star Trek universe, one of the things I wanted to specifically address was more realistic treatment of this wound. Accordingly, Sam does not attempt to remove it (this is something you will find in every first-aid instruction on how to treat an impaled object) but instead wraps it heavily in order to immobilize it. She also address the fact that rusty rebar is a city of infections waiting to happen (in the game Lara seems immune to infection, or at least completely unaware of it).
The scavenger attack has been compressed and reworked. In the game, the scavenger actually attacks you twice, with a falling rock blocking his path the first time, and crushing him the second time. The first attack comes before the bomb/grate puzzle, and I didn't see any justification for the scavenger coming after her at that point (though I did hint to the justification the game used—the bottles over the entryway…though honestly Lara has made a lot more noise than those bottles by that point), plus I felt the encounters would have felt repetitive, so I compressed them and made them one encounter.
The bomb/grate puzzle was a full-fledged physics puzzle in the game, with absolutely no explanation as to why it or the mechanisms for solving it were there. I tried to avoid that here, while still keeping the challenge.
This chapter contains a couple of shout-outs to the game as well. There's the log entry at the beginning, which bears a striking resemblance to Lara's first journal entry in the game. There's also the first name of Sam's instructor: Conrad, a reference to the game character Conrad Roth. His last name is a shout-out to David Weber's Honor Harrington series, as Saganami is the name of the Manticoran Navy's training center.