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.
Woman vs Wild
Samantha Hayashi's Log, Supplemental:
The thing about nightmares is that sooner or later, you wake up. But I'm not waking up, which means I'm really here, on this planet, stranded, alone, and with a rusty piece of rebar impaled in my side. It means the things I saw, the things I did in that cave were real. Oh, God help me!
Get a hold of yourself, Sam. Don't think about it—it won't help. I just need to remember my training with Saganami. God, I never thought I would value those days! But now I need to survive, I need to find the others…if they're still alive.
Sam was not really sure how long she cried, but eventually the pain in her side and the warmth of the sunlight brought her mind away from the horror of what she'd endured to the problems that still confronted her. She tried her combadge again. There was still no answer. She hadn't really expected different. Whatever was jamming her tricorder and combadge was still around, which meant she would have to find the others on her own.
Alright, the first thing I need to find out is where I am in relation to where I was. She remembered being dragged along the ground after she'd been knocked out, and the scavenger didn't seem to have a transporter, so it was safe to assume the place where she'd come ashore was somewhere nearby. She pushed herself to her feet and winced as the motion brought renewed pain to her side. She staggered forward a few steps and rested against the trunk of a tree. She was on a broad ledge running about halfway up a cliff face. Below her was the ocean, rocks and wrecks protruding from the crashing waves. Looking further down, she could see the beach. Something seemed familiar there. She moved closer to the edge to get a better look. "The knoll!" she said. It was the place where she'd last seen Carlin, Antori, and Dr. Mor. She recognized the large rock in the center of the knoll, scorched by phaser fire. There was no sign of anyone nearby now, though. "They must have headed inland," she told herself. It's what Commander Saganami had taught his students to do if they ever had to survive on an island.
Sam studied the lay of the land. Unfortunately, the cliff blocked her view of any path inland from the knoll, but if she continued along the ledge she was on, she would probably find it, or even run across it. She pushed off the tree and began walking.
She hadn't walked long when she came to a steep slope that provided access to the ledge she was on from the bottom of the cliff. Not far from where they joined, a small ravine cut through the cliff-face, forming a gap in the ledge that was bridged by a fallen tree. Beyond the gap, the ledge seemed to turn inland. On this side of the log bridge, she found a pile of abandoned carrying cases. One of them immediately caught her eye, one with a logo of two snakes entwined around a staff—the traditional symbol of medicine. A medkit! She staggered forward as fast as she dared and fell to her knees beside it. She took a moment to examine the cover. Beneath the medical logo was written: USS Nautilus NCC-31910: Shuttle 1.
"This is one of ours!" she said. "They must have passed this way." She grinned and opened the medkit, but its contents turned out to be an unpleasant surprise.
The medkit was empty, except for a small unloaded hypospray. Her face fell and she felt like crying again. She supposed it had been too much to hope for that Carlin or Commander Drel would leave a fully stocked medkit just lying around in case Sam happened to find it. Probably this was just stuff the others had discarded when they'd needed to take the log across the ravine. Her search of the other containers confirmed this theory. Most of them were of Ferengi design and contained various scientific instruments, three holo-recorders, and an entire collection of Ferengi PADDs—none of which would be terribly helpful while trying to survive on an island on a strange planet after a shuttle crash. She did happen across a couple of useful items that must have been dropped by accident, though. The first was a fire-starter stick, still in its protective package. There was also a small vial that she almost crushed on accident. It fit snuggly into the small hypospray she'd found. She used her tricorder to identify the contents. The name meant nothing to her, but the entry on her tricorder said it was a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Definitely useful for fighting infection city over here, she thought, glancing at the rebar in her side, but I'll still have to have someone take it out first, preferably in a way that won't leave me bleeding out.
She tucked the fire-starter and the hypospray into her uniform pocket and pushed herself to her feet. It looked like the rest of the away team had used the log to cross the ravine up ahead. She needed to follow them. There were clouds rolling in, and if they stopped to take shelter from the storm, maybe she'd be able to catch up.
Sam started slowly across the log. Crossing it turned out to be more difficult than she'd imagined. The log shifted beneath her with every step, and the pain in her side was making keeping her balance harder. She was within a meter of the other side when the shifting of the log caused her to misstep. She began to fall, and in desperation she threw herself forward, reaching for the ledge of the other side. She caught it with one hand, despite her side screaming in protest. She reached up with her other hand to pull herself up when suddenly the ledge gave way. Sam found herself falling, then sliding along a slope. At last she tumbled to a stop on the ravine floor.
She moaned in pain, but forced herself to stand and take stock of her situation. Her right arm was a little skinned, but otherwise all her pain from the fall seemed to be coming from the previous injury to her side. There was no way she was getting back up to that ledge, though. She was at the bottom of the ravine, three meters down from where she'd started. The slope back up wasn't too steep, but in her present condition, it was more than steep enough. Behind her, the ravine floor dropped off the remainder of the cliff into the sea. That left going forward, and inland, as her only option. She hesitated, though, reluctant to leave the trail of her shipmates, but the touch of a cold droplet of rain on her face—followed by another, and another—convinced her that, for the moment, she had to worry about herself. I need to survive first before I can find the others. That means finding the basics: food, water, fire, and shelter—especially the last two! She shivered.
A little ways inland, the ravine opened up into a forest of leafy trees growing among rocks and brush. By the time she reached the forest, she was already drenched and the rain was starting to fall in sheets. The trees blocked out some of the downpour, but not enough. Up ahead she saw a small sheltered ledge and she staggered toward it as fast as she could move. She ducked under the overhang and found herself in a small crevice about one meter tall, between the overhang above and the ledge beneath. She moved forward along the ledge and the crevice became taller, almost high enough for her to stand up in comfortably. There was a ring of stones there, filled with ash and black lumps of burned wood. The camp looked abandoned, though she could not say how long it had been that way. It doesn't matter, she told herself, rubbing her arms in a vain effort to warm her chilled body. Right now, I need a fire.
She managed to find enough small sticks and dried brush around the margins of the crevice to build a small stack. She arranged the fuel as she'd learned in her survival class, the sticks formed into a rough cone shape and the kindling beneath. Then she carefully unwrapped the fire-starter stick, praying she would be able to use it well. It was, realistically, her only chance of starting a fire under these circumstances. She placed the fire-starter in amongst the kindling and carefully broke it in two.
The fire-starter worked beautifully. Saganami had told them the sticks contained a chemical that spontaneously ignited and burned at high temperatures in the presence of oxygen, surrounded by an inert protective coating. He also said they were a cheap technological trick and that his students should not rely on them to start fires in an emergency…but for the moment, Sam was glad to have this one cheap trick up her sleeve. The kindling ignited, and in a matter of moments, a small campfire came to life before her.
She warmed her hands and arms, and that was enough to stop her shivering. Still, she realized that in order to truly protect herself from hypothermia she would need to get out of her soaking uniform—and doing that meant dealing with the piece of rebar her uniform was currently keeping from moving around inside of her. I need to get this thing out and get the antibiotics into me before an infection starts…before I even consider performing the totally-unsexy wilderness-survival striptease.
She looked around, trying to see if she could find any medicinal plants that might be used to at least stem the bleeding, but while most of the species seemed recognizably Earth-like, she saw nothing she could use, at least among the plants. She did notice a bundle of old cloth jammed under a rock deep in the crevice. It's not great, but I could use it for a bandage in a pinch. She pulled the bundle out and got another surprise: it wasn't a bundle of cloth, it was a quiver of arrows. The arrows were primitive, handmade from wood and bird's feathers, but they looked effective nonetheless. The design was aerodynamic and the heads were broad, sharp, and made of metal. She examined one of them and got an idea that Carlin or anyone with modern medical training would have probably killed her for.
I could cauterize the wound, she thought. It'll hurt like nothing else, but it'll stop the bleeding much more reliably than a cloth bandage—which I don't have—and the antibiotic should protect me from infection…at least, I hope. She removed one of the arrows and placed it by the fire, so that the metal head was exposed to the flames. While it heated, she gingerly removed her uniform jacket and pulled her (formerly) gray undershirt away from the wound. She could see the wound now, caked in layers of dried blood, and still oozing fresh blood around the base of the rebar. She told herself the time for feeling queasy would come later. Slowly, carefully, she gripped the rebar with both hands and steeled herself for the pain of what she was about to do.
"Okay…I pull this out on three," she said. "One…two…two and a half…" She bit her lip. "Come on, girl, you can do this! Just don't think about it…THREE!"
She pulled as hard as she could. The rebar slid out of the wound in one smooth motion—one smooth motion that left Sam lying on the ground, screaming in pain and then gasping for breath. Her vision blurred and for a moment she was afraid she would pass out, but she forced herself to sit up, to look at the wound. Blood was coming out of the hole in her side in spurts now. She needed to stop the bleeding fast! She picked up the arrow from the fireside, its head now glowing red-hot, and brought it toward the wound. At the last minute, she dug out a second arrow and quickly stuck its shaft between her teeth. It helps in holovids, right?
It didn't seem to help much in real life. The only thing it did was it prevented her from screaming her lungs out when the flat of the hot arrowhead seared her stomach. She made herself look down quickly to check her work. There was an ugly-looking burn, but no more bleeding. She could still feel blood running down her back, though. She held the arrowhead over the flames again for a moment, reheating it, and then reached around her back, straining to see what she was doing, and cauterized the entry wound. Again, biting down on the arrow in her mouth was the only thing that muffled her screaming in agony. She felt her back with her hand. There was plenty of blood, but none of it flowing from inside of her any more. Her shoulders slumped. She dropped the arrow in her hand and removed the other one from her mouth. The hard wood was now bent and had deep bitemarks. At least I know I have strong jaw muscles, she mused. Then she fished out the hypospray and injected herself. Hopefully that's enough to protect me from whatever was on that piece of rebar…because that's all the medicine I've got.
Her wound dealt with for the moment, Sam carefully undressed and laid out her clothes by the fire. She then tried to find a place to sit and wait for them to dry that wouldn't be totally uncomfortable. She wound up going with her uniform jacket. Body heat'll dry it faster, right?
Just then, her combadge started making noise. There was a chirp, followed by static. For a moment, Sam thought she heard a voice. She picked up the combadge and tapped it. "This is Lieutenant Sam Hayashi! Do you read me?" The static continued. "Carlin? Commander Drel? Are you there?" The static faded, and the combadge was silent once more. She frowned and set it down within easy reach. Looks like there's a chance I'll get an intermittent signal, but more than likely I'll still have to locate the others the old-fashioned way.
Still, I'm not doing bad, she told herself. Mentally, she reviewed her score in an effort to raise her spirits: Death by crazy Bolian scavenger, averted. Death by impalement, averted. Death by cave-in, averted. Death by bleeding out, averted. Death by hypothermia, averted…I've had a busy day, but so far very successful on the not-dying front! Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she wasn't safe and sound yet. Up next, averting death by starvation. Fun.
After an hour or two (it was difficult to say, and she could not remember the exact rotation period of this planet anyway), her clothes were dry and she dressed again, dressing her wounds first. She cleaned them with rainwater caught in her cupped hands. For bandages she tore sections from the cleanest pieces of cloth she had on hand, which happened to be from her uniform's underpants. I always thought they could shorten the legs on these anyway. By the time that was done and she was fully dressed again, the rain had stopped. The sun was shining again and Sam's stomach had become more insistent.
"I need to find something to eat." She pulled out her tricorder, but it was still jammed. So much for just scanning for edible plants or wildlife. She hadn't recognized any edible plants so far either. Well, as dear Commander Conrad used to say, 'If you can't find something where you are, the only way to get it is to go look for it!'
Sam slung the quiver over her shoulder and left her makeshift camp. She studied the environment around her carefully. She could hear birds in the distance, so she knew there were animals around—and those animals had to eat something, so that meant at least some of the plant life here was edible. The question is, can I find any that's edible for humans?
As she was thinking about that, something caught her eye. She spotted a small deer grazing nearby and she froze. From the tanned color of its hide to the antlers it bore, it looked exactly like one of the Earth species. But what is it like on the inside? Sam slowly pulled out her tricorder and ran a scan, muffling the speakers with her hand. She watched the deer for any reaction, but it continued grazing, apparently oblivious to her. She glanced down at the tricorder and frowned. It wasn't registering anything beyond six meters, and the deer was at least ten away through the brush. Sam bit her lip and slowly, carefully stepped toward the deer. She kept her eyes on the animal, ready to freeze at the slightest sign that the deer might be alert to her.
As it turned out, she needn't have worried about the deer. Before she had gotten halfway to it, a black bird—a crow, Sam would have said on Earth—burst from the bush in front of her, cawing loudly enough to wake the dead. The deer's head snapped up and its black eyes landed on Sam. It stepped back, then turned and fled, leaping away through the bush with apparent ease. Sam envied it. She glanced down at her tricorder. It showed a successful scan of the deer, and the crow, too. After wading through all the medical jargon, it seemed that—according to the tricorder, the two creatures were indistinguishable from their Earth-counterparts. Maybe whoever brought pottery to Earth from here also brought some of our wildlife back with them. At the moment, it didn't matter. What mattered was that the deer was definitely edible…supposing she could find a way to catch it.
That could prove problematic, she thought. She didn't have much to work with. Saganami had made sure to teach his students several snares that could be rigged even working with practically nothing, but Sam didn't have the time or the patience to rig snares and wait for one of them to catch something. Carlin, Commander Drel, and probably even Dr. Mor—the little rodent—were still out there and she needed to find them. I can't wait around for snares, she thought. I need a weapon.
That seemed like a problem she could much more easily solve, though. Whoever had abandoned that camp before her had also abandoned a quiver full of arrows there, which meant that this person had also owned a bow. With any luck, I'll find it abandoned, too…or, failing that, I'll make my own. Improvised weapons were a part of the training Saganami had put her and the other cadets through, and Sam had already learned how to handle a bow from her grandmother, Iku, an 84-year-old Kyudo master. And unlike snares, a bow could be used on things other than prey animals, if the need arose…
Just then, Sam came around a cluster of boulders and saw a small, squat, square building made of duracrete. It looked like a bunker of some kind, but it was not what held her attention. What held her attention was the corpse hanging from the tree beside the bunker. It was a humanoid, dressed in some kind of tattered uniform, decomposed beyond recognition, and suspended by its feet with a thick rope. Sam recoiled in spite of herself. "Oh, God…what's going on here?" Then, she noticed something, slung across the corpse's back: a makeshift longbow fashioned from willow branches taped together. "Wait, I can use that bow!"
She hurried across the stream. She tried the bunker first, but the external controls were smashed and inoperable and the door refused to open. She turned her attention immediately to the bow on the suspended corpse. She noticed a fallen sapling leaning halfway up the tree the corpse dangled from. From there, she thought she could just reach the bow. She climbed carefully to the top and leaned out. The corpse was swinging slightly in the breeze, just at the edge of her reach. I have to time this just right…, she thought. She held her breath, waited till the bow was approaching its closest, and caught it.
Unfortunately, she underestimated the momentum of the swimming corpse and the tenuous nature of her position. She fell, but fortunately it was only a fall of a couple meters, and she managed to land well enough. She checked herself for injury quickly and, finding none, looked up to find that the corpse had fallen beside her. She snatched the bow away from it and retreated quickly, disgusted by the sight and smell.
Alright, now it's time to find that deer again. She backtracked to the place where she'd first spotted it and looked for tracks. She had never been a great tracker, but Saganami had drilled the basics into her head well enough. She found the trail and followed it. She checked the wind. The animal's trail twisted and turned amidst the boulders and trees, but it seemed to be headed roughly downstream and upwind. Good, that should keep it from finding me, and eventually pin the deer against the cliffs or the sea, if it doesn't stop first.
It wasn't long after that she spotted the deer. It had settled down again and was drinking from the stream, about thirty meters away through the trees. Sam crouched and pulled an arrow from the quiver. The deer kept drinking, oblivious to her. She carefully nocked the arrow to the string and stood up. Okay, remember Grandma Iku's training, she told herself. Seisha hicchu was the phrase Iku had taught her. Proper shooting equals certain accuracy.
Check your target, check your footing, check your posture, she told herself. Last thing I want to do is thwack myself in the ear with a bowstring today. She raised the bow. It was much shorter than a traditional Japanese yumi, but hopefully it would work just as well. The range was a little greater than what she'd practiced at, but she had seen kyudoka make shots at twice that range in competitions. Iku claimed to be able to make shots at nearly 200 meters. She took a deep breath and cleared her mind. This wasn't competition: this was survival—she needed to make this shot count. She drew the bow to the corner of her mouth, lowering it as she did so. She took aim at where she believed the deer's heart was, and released the arrow as she exhaled.
She hit her target perfectly, but the arrow did not penetrate very deep in the animal's chest. It certainly got its attention, though. The deer bellowed, turned, and fled. As it did, it staggered a little, its right foreleg moving sluggishly and catching on rocks and branches. Even so, it did not take the deer very long to vanish from sight.
Sam swore. So much for seisha hicchu, she thought bitterly. Give me a phaser and I'll hit the deer lethally for sure, and cook it too. But she didn't have a phaser, so she would have to make due. She crossed the stream and scrambled up a pile of boulders, wanting to see if she could spot the deer from up there. She could. It was standing, stamping and breathing hard, an arrow lodged in its right shoulder. I must have grazed a bone or something, she thought. She nocked another arrow to her bow and drew again, aiming slightly further back. She released. The deer flinched and tried to take a step, but fell over onto its side.
Sam hurried toward the downed animal. It lay in the grass, its legs spasming, its breath coming in ragged pants. It was dying. She bit her lip. "Sorry," she whispered. She had never killed something up close and personal like this before. She didn't even know if the animal was aware of her. It breathed its last and then was still. Sam lowered her bow. "I can't let this go to waste." She needed to harvest all she could from the animal, but principally, for the moment, she needed enough meat to feed herself.
"Right, field dressing game using only a sharpened broadhead." She stripped off her uniform jacket and knelt beside the carcass. "This ought to be fun…"
Author's Note: Sam now follows Lara's footsteps through the first camp in the game. In the game, Lara comes across things that Sam (Nishimura, not Hayashi) left behind, taking a camcorder (for sentimental reasons, and to allow the game to establish what happened before the shipwreck using cutscenes of replayed footage), a two-way radio, and a single match. Obviously, Sam Hayashi only needs one of these things. I decided to make up a futuristic equivalent to a match, though, since I doubt anyone still makes them in the 25th Century.
I also included the medicine for her to treat herself, in accordance with my desire to address the issue of her wound more realistically than in the game. In the game, Lara does cauterize her wound with a flame-heated arrowhead, but she does so after a day or so of letting it go completely untreated, not even bandaged, and though she finds "relics" containing ancient medicines, she apparently does not think of using any to address the fact that she probably has every infection in the encyclopedia.
Another thing the game does not address is the wet-clothes issue. While Lara obviously suffers from being cold and wet before starting the fire, drying her clothes is neither seen nor implied—but then again, we are talking about the gray tanktop and camisole bra that are somehow magically able to stop her from bleeding out when she rips a piece of rebar out of her side in a cave. Perhaps they're also waterproof? Ah, but it is a fun game, despite the fridge-logic…
Sam's log entry is again based on one of Lara's journal entries. Her trip to the bottom of the ravine is a combination of two things that happen to Lara on the way to the Coastal Forest area. The first is her crossing an unstable log (successfully), the second is her perfectly grabbing a ledge, only to have it crumble and dump her down a steep slope. The cool platforming scene with the WWII-era bomber was something I couldn't really see Sam doing in her condition—not to mention I couldn't think of any suitably similar Star Trek craft—so I left it out even though I loved it in the game.
The title of this chapter comes from the name of the first quest you get after making it to this camp: hunting a deer for food, which proceeds pretty much exactly the same here as in the game. For some reason, no matter how I try I can never kill the deer on my first shot. When the deer is finally run down and killed, Lara apologizes to the dying animal and then dresses it using only the sharpened edge of a broadhead, which I suppose is theoretically possible. Of course, she manages to dress the animal by making a single cut down the length of its torso, which is somehow all she has to do to get meat off of it. I've read descriptions of the actual process of dressing game and it's…somewhat more involved, but I'll spare you the details!
But speaking of other details, Kyudo is the Japanese practice of archery, and it can be as formal and intricate as any other form of martial arts. Practitioners are called kyudoka and use the world's longest longbow, called a yumi. Many Kyudo schools emphasize the phrase seisha hicchu, which means "true shooting, certain hitting" and conveys the idea that proper form and technique in shooting a bow guarantees accuracy. Before writing this chapter, I had a vague idea that kyudo existed. I am indebted to the wisdom of Wikipedia for bringing me up to speed on what it actually is…but like Sam, I would really rather have a phaser—though for totally different reasons!