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.

Meeting Matan

Samantha Hayashi's Log, Stardate 81629…give or take:

Well, I have food now, and I'm no longer impaled with a piece of metal. Go me. I'm still alone, though, and wounded. I need to find the others, or find some way to make sure they find me—without anyone else finding me first. The problem is, I can't think of any way at all…And the other problem is it seems I can't cook the food I have. So that's what venison smells like when it's burning...Ugh!

Night found Sam back in her camp, roasting deer meat on a spit. She hoped this piece turned out better than the last one. It had been barely edible, burnt on one side and raw on the other. No one ever accused me of being a good cook. Her stomach rumbled. God, I would kill for a replicator right now.

At least she had meat to cook badly, and though her side was still in constant pain, it was no longer a life-threatening injury—at least, she didn't think so. Her last tricorder scan of the wound showed no infection, and nothing that was obviously serious to the untrained eye.

All this means is that I need to start moving again soon, she thought. I need to find the others, I need to get back to the Nautilus, and I need medical aid from someone who actually knows what he's doing. But even without a gaping hole or a piece of metal in her side, that was going to prove difficult. Climbing up the ravine to the place where she'd last seen her shipmates' trail was going to be difficult or impossible with her injury. She supposed that, given enough time, she could figure some way around it, like a crude ladder made from a fallen tree or something—but in that time, all trace of the others' trail would be washed away.

If I can't get to them, maybe I can get them to come to me, she thought. But there were problems with that idea, too. So far, her communicator had shown only the briefest hint of functionality against whatever it was that was jamming it and her tricorder. She didn't have much hope that a signal from it would reach anyone, which left her with more primitive means, like large smoky fires that would be visible to searchers from the air. But the problem with that was that any such primitive signal would be equally visible to any other survivors living on this island, and if the Bolian in the cave and the fate of the archer were any indications, she would really rather not meet the natives…ever!

And that leaves me with precisely zero good options. Sam frowned. Then she wrinkled her nose. She smelled something burning…besides the campfire.

She looked up and found that the piece of meat she'd been roasting had caught fire. Hungry yellow flames were devouring it and growing by the second. Sam yelped and tossed the spit down into the dirt. She kicked sand over it until it was half buried and fully extinguished. Then, she gingerly removed it. The meat was ruined, of course. The spit probably was, too. She tried removing the charred meat and the wooden spit broke in half. Yep, definitely ruined. Sam sighed. I need to learn how to cook or I'm gonna starve to death while sitting next to a pile of fresh meat…dying alone on an unnamed island on an unexplored planet in the middle of nowhere.

She felt tears welling at that last thought and she shook it off. Get a hold of yourself, Sam. Nautilus will come for you. I don't know how they'll find you, but they'll figure out a way. You're going to make it off this planet and everything is going to be fine, she told herself. To which another part of her replied, Liar.

She was about to get up to see if she could find another branch to use as a spit, when suddenly her combadge came alive without warning. It chirped once and a man's voice began: "This is Commander Antori Drel, first officer of the USS Nautilus, to anyone in range. We've crashed on a planet inside the Dragon's Head Nebula."

Sam snatched up her combadge and tapped it frantically. "Drel? Drel!"

"Sam!"

"You're alive!" she said, smiling for the first time in entirely too long. "Thank God!"

"Easy, easy," said Drel. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"I remember seeing you all on a beach," said Sam. "Then I must have been hit from behind, because it all went black and I woke up in a cave. There was this crazy Bolian…and a dead body." She shuddered at the memory.

"Where are you now?" asked Commander Drel. "Are you safe?"

Sam nodded, blinking back tears. Then she said, "I'm injured, but I managed to get away and then fell down a ravine. I'm in a camp in a forested valley somewhere near the coast, and I need medical attention."

"How bad is it?"

Sam touched her side and winced. "Nothing life-threatening, I think. I did some self-treatment, and I should be alright for a little while. I can still move, hunt, and travel, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable if a professional looked at it."

"I'll tell Carlin as soon as I can get a signal to her. Meanwhile, listen," said Antori. "I took the emergency transponder from the shuttle and I think I can rig it to transmit a signal powerful enough to cut through this polaric radiation to Nautilus. I spoke with Carlin and Dr. Mor this morning. We're regrouping at my location, at the top of a cliff near the base of a mountain, just inland from the forested valley. It should be easy to find."

Sam shook her head. She had no idea how far this valley extended, and she did not feel that confident in her ability to travel. "Please come and get me," she said.

"I have to stay here, otherwise we just wind up with more people lost," said Drel. "You can do this, Sam, I know you can. The key is knowing that all you've got to do is just keep moving."

Sam smirked and dried her eyes. "You sound like Conrad Saganami."

"He still teaching…survival?" The signal began to break up. Antori must have realized as well, because his voice became more urgent. "Remember everything he taught you, Sam. You're ready for this. …and keep your combadge on."

"Okay," said Sam. "I mean, yes, sir."

There was no reply. The channel went to static and cut out entirely a few seconds later.

Sam stood. "Well, I can either sit here enjoying my loathsome cooking or I can get moving and try to meet up with the others." It wasn't a hard decision. She had eaten enough to take the edge off her hunger anyway. She slung the bow and the quiver across her shoulders, gathered up the makeshift bag she'd made for the deer meat out of the animal's pelt and tied it closed with a strip of hide, and kicked out the fire. She started hiking inland. Night had fallen, but the glow of the nebula overhead was bright enough to cast shadows.

She had not gone far when she heard something. "Music?" It was the sound of a woman singing. The words were indecipherable and the tune was like something out of the ancient Earth Orient. It was haunting to hear those sounds here, in the woods. Still, it was a sign of life. She decided to follow it. She hid the bag of deer meat under a bush, un-slung her bow, and put an arrow on the string—just in case.

Following the music led her back to the bunker where she'd found the archer's body hanging. This time, the door was open and flickering torchlight shone from inside.

"Is there someone there?" she called, but there was no answer. She stepped closer, cautiously raising her bow. The door was jammed open, its servos cycling endlessly, never moving the door more than a few centimeters. Someone had jury-rigged the exterior control panel. She peeked into the bunker, but saw only worn blank walls. She stepped past the door carefully. Inside, the room was empty its walls and floors stripped, leaving only a improvised holder for the torch that lit the interior. There were no exits except a maintenance hatch on the floor, which had been torn open, the hatch itself having been carried away somewhere a long time ago.

"Looks like someone, or several someones came through here and took everything that wasn't bolted down…and a few things that were, too." She could still hear the music though, echoing up from the maintenance shaft. She edged closer, her bow half-drawn.

Suddenly, sparks flew from the outside panel as the controls shorted out. The door slammed shut, and this time it did not reopen. Sam rushed to the interior controls, but whoever had cleaned the bunker out had also scavenged some of the critical components of the door controls—like the interface panel for one. The controls were useless and the door was very firmly sealed.

"Well, maybe that tunnel leads to a way out of here." Sam returned to the shaft. It was dark. I guess whoever ransacked this place took the lights, too. She returned the nocked arrow to her quiver and the bow to her shoulder, then took the torch down from the wall. By its light, she carefully descended the ladder into the maintenance shaft.

The shaft descended for three meters. The passageway she found at the bottom was flooded and partially collapsed. It was also decorated rather…distinctively. There were crude lime-wash paintings on the dark duracrete. One was of a stylized sun. The other was of a woman in flowing robes. It looked exactly like the painting she'd seen in the cave, the one that had been the center of the shrine with the dead Bajoran. I guess that means the crazy Bolian's the one who ransacked this place…him or one of his friends. She shuddered. Now there was a truly unpleasant thought!

The water in the passageway came up to her waist, but she waded through it easily enough. Soon, she came to a wall that had also been painted in lime-wash. Here, a stylized sun was accompanied by scores upon scores of tally marks. What is this? Some kind of a roll call for the Creepy Scavenger Society of Yamatai? She hoped not. From the looks of this wall, they had a pretty impressive membership.

Just past the wall she came to what must have once been a control room, elevated a meter above the rest of the maintenance passageway, which kept its floor above the water level. Like the rooms above, it had been thoroughly ransacked some time ago, but unlike them, it had been redecorated. This decoration went beyond simple crude white paintings. Here, there were shelves along the walls lined with skulls: many of them from animals, but some clearly from humanoids. There was also a makeshift cot here with a blanket made from the pelt of a deer. Beneath and around the cot, the floor was littered with empty bottles. Above it, on the wall, someone had written the words "No one leaves" in white paint. The eerie music was coming from an adjoining room. When Sam peeked cautiously in there, she found something that looked like what the holovids had shown of old livestock slaughterhouses. There were half-butchered animal carcasses hanging from hooks on the ceiling, and one corner of the room was full of bones and discarded body parts. Flies droned around everything. The music was coming from an antique recording device, sitting on a crude wooden table next to a slab of raw meat. There was no one in sight, but clearly someone had been here recently.

"God, this is insane!" Sam made her way back to the other room, determined to find a way out. There was a door in this room, but like the door upstairs, the controls had been torn apart for salvage. Here, though, the manual release had been exposed. She set down her torch, reached in, and pulled the release down with both hands. The metal was corroded, but it finally gave way with a snap and the door opened. Then, she picked up her torch again and left the horrible room behind her.

Beyond it was another maintenance passageway, much like the first, and like the first it led to a vertical shaft opening up into a barren room on the surface. The door on this side had been torn away by some massive force, leaving only an opening in the duracrete bunker. Beyond it, she could hear voices, one was a woman's, the other a man's. She dropped the torch and stamped it out while readying her bow. She crept forward with an arrow nocked and the bow half drawn.

The voices were coming from around a campfire surrounded by boulders on top of a small hill up ahead. "Hold on, let me find out," the woman's voice was saying.

Carlin?

"We're on the southwest side," said a male voice she did not recognize. "He'll need to follow the path. It's a bit of a climb."

"Did you get that?" asked the woman. This time, Sam heard it clearly. It was definitely Carlin!

"Got it," said the voice of Dr. Mor, accompanied with static.

"We have a fire," said Carlin. "Look for the smoke."

"Good. I'm on my way. Mor, out."

As the conversation finished, Sam stepped carefully around a boulder and into the firelight. She saw Carlin there, seated on an old cargo container. Carlin saw her too and her face lit. "Sam, you made it!"

"Carlin! Thank goodness…" Sam began, but then she spotted movement to her right. She raised her bow again automatically.

"Um…surprise," said Carlin. There was a balding Cardassian man in the camp with her, pushing himself to his feet with the aid of a wooden crutch. Sam regarded him suspiciously, but Carlin said, "It's okay, he's one of us."

"What do you mean?" asked Sam, still not lowering her bow.

"He's a crash survivor, just trying to get by."

"Sorry if I startled you," the man said. "This place would make anyone a little jumpy. We just spoke to a member of your crew. He's on his way."

Sam nodded and lowered the bow.

"Look, he helped me treat my foot," Carlin said, pulling up the leg of her uniform pants. She had removed her boot and her ankle was in a splint made of two sticks wrapped with linen. "It should hold it until the regenerator is able to fully repair my sprained ankle."

"It was the least I could do," said the man. He turned back to Sam. "My manners, I'm sorry…I'm Matan." He extended a hand in greeting. "A teacher by trade…not really cut out for island life, I'm afraid."

Sam made herself let go of the bowstring and shake Matan's hand. What are you so worked up about, girl? she scolded herself. It's like Carlin said, he's just a crash victim like us, trying to get by. There's no reason to assume that everyone on this planet is like the crazy Bolian in the cave. She set down the bow and introduced herself. "Lieutenant Sam Hayashi, Starfleet, USS Nautilus."

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Hayashi," said Matan, smiling.

"Good," said Carlin. "Now that we're all friends and we've stopped threatening each other with primitive weapons, Sam, why don't you sit down? You look exhausted…and is that blood on your jacket?"

Sam sat down and brushed at her uniform. "Blood and mud," she said.

"I'm more concerned about the former, to be honest," said Carlin. She pulled a medkit out of her pack and crossed to her friend, limping a little because of the splint. "Please tell me it's not all yours."

"It isn't. A lot of it belonged to a deer. Somehow I don't remember dressing game under Commander Saganami being quite so…messy."

"But some of it is yours?" Sam nodded and Carlin knelt beside her, pulling out a medical tricorder. "What happened?"

"I took a couple tumbles…one of them more eventful than the other."

Carlin's eyes went wide. "Eventful? Sam, you have severe burns, perforated abdominal muscles, and internal bleeding, all on your left side. What did you do?"

"I fell about three meters and met a piece of rebar on the way down. It decided it wanted to be close to me…very close, as in through and out the other side."

Carlin winced. "And the burns?"

"I cauterized the wound."

"You did what?!"

"I was afraid you'd say that," said Sam, looking down. "I didn't have much choice, though. I needed to get that thing out of me, and I had to stop the bleeding somehow."

Carlin leaned close. "Well, don't tell Doctor Howard that I said this, but given the circumstances, I think you did the right thing." She opened up the medkit. "Of course, that doesn't mean that you won't need medical attention to recover from your cure. I need to treat your burns and treat the interior of the wound channel. This'll be easier if you lie down."

"Yes, ma'am." Sam removed her quiver and set it with her bow, then lay down, taking off her jacket as she did so. She peeled back her undershirt and helped Carlin remove her bandages so she could examine the wound, but then Carlin brushed her hands gently aside, apparently wanting to concentrate on the wound alone. Sam sighed and lay back.

"Miss Agran here was telling me about your mission, before the crash," said Matan, sitting across the fire from them. "She said it had something to do with the Sun Queen."

"It's true," said Sam, turning her head to look at him. "We came here hoping to find Yamatai, the ancient land from which the Sun Queen Himiko ruled the Japanese archipelago on Earth…according to legend, that is."

"Tell me more, I'm intrigued," said Matan.

Sam settled back while Carlin rifled through her medkit. "Over two thousand years ago, Himiko ruled the Japanese archipelago. She came to the land when it was dominated by warring kings and Stone Age technology, and she brought peace, iron and bronze metallurgy, weaving, and agriculture. She was generous, but also mysterious and dangerous. The people worshiped her, and she surrounded herself with a court of Priestesses of the Sun, with only one man in attendance: the honored general of her mighty Stormguard warriors. She—Ow!"

"Sorry," said Carlin, adjusting her grip on a medical tool and running it over Sam's wound again. It still hurt, but less this time.

"It's alright," Sam assured. "It sure hurts a lot less than my treatment options."

Carlin smirked. "I'll bet."

Sam tried to ignore her and whatever she was doing. She turned her attention back to Matan. "What was I saying?"

"You were talking about the Sun Queen," he said. "I may be wrong, but I've heard she had…unusual abilities."

Sam smiled. "You can say that again. They say she had the power to summon storms, or dispel them at will. They say she could read thoughts and used this ability to manipulate spies sent to her courts. Her Stormguard was invincible: no mortal weapon could touch them, and she herself was said to be immortal, with her youth renewing each and every generation."

"Truly she was no ordinary woman," said Matan. "Do you know what happened to her?"

Sam shrugged. "No one knows. One day Himiko and Yamatai simply disappeared from the pages of history. We'd hoped we would find out here." She smiled. "Actually, it's been kind of a life-long dream for me…after joining Starfleet, of course. Ever since my grandmother told me the legend of Yamatai, I wanted to be the one to find it."

"You're from Earth, then?" asked Matan. "From Japan?"

"I wasn't born there, but it's where my ancestors come from…half of them in any case."

"Sorry to interrupt," said Carlin. "But I'm going to have to reopen the wound channel to flush out some contaminants. I'll have to sedate you."

"Go ahead," said Sam. "I could use a good night's sleep anyway."

Carlin chuckled and the hypospray hissed against her neck. It was the last sound Sam heard that night.

Solarii Field Notes, Main Island: Father Matan's record: Monday, May 28, 2407, a quarter till midnight:

I am at the site where the survivors of the most recent crash came ashore. Brother John tells me it was a shuttlecraft, of modern Starfleet design. It went down in deep water, and it is unlikely we will be able to find anything salvageable of it. I have found the survivors though. They suspect nothing, but they know much. They could prove useful in their own ways, but there is something even more important here. One of their number, Sam Hayashi, is actually of my Queen's own blood, a child of Japan. I can hear Her whispering to me: The Sun Queen wants this one for Her own. It may be she is the key we've been looking for all these years...

Matan waited patiently and made pleasant conversation while the Starfleet doctor, Agran, finished treating Sam Hayashi. He pretended to fall asleep so that she would do likewise. It took a while: she was on edge, hoping to wait up for the crewmate they had contacted, and hoping to hear from one more, apparently waiting in the ruins on the mountainside. None of that mattered to Matan, but he waited patiently. I have not spent all these years waiting and searching just to spoil everything with impatience now. He felt a smile twitch up the corner of his mouth. Besides, now that I have the key before me, there'll be no more waiting!

To be fair, he didn't actually know if this girl, Sam, was the key. She would have to undergo the Ritual, the trial by fire. Only there would the Sun Queen make Her will fully known. For now he sensed…interest. Yes, and stronger perhaps than any time before. I will free you, my Queen, he swore silently. I will find the one you seek, and you will rule once more…and I will be reborn, set free from this hellish, dark world!

Once the Trill woman was asleep, Matan rose silently, without the aid of the crutch. He let the unnecessary prop lie forgotten where it was. He pulled a communicator from his pocket, bulky with all attachments and modifications it had needed to be useful in the constant interference. "Communications Base, patch me through to the transporter operator."

"Yes, Father Matan," came the answer.

A moment later, another voice spoke. "The transporter is ready when you are, Father," said the man on the other end.

"Good," said Matan. He crept around the fire to where Sam lay and knelt over her. "Prepare for multiple transports. Lock on to my com signal and beam back two on my mark."

"You found one for the ritual, Father?"

"Yes, and understand that she is to be treated as the last one should have been. It would be a shame if I had to kill any more of you for polluting our Queen's offerings."

The man on the other end swallowed audibly. "Of course, Father," he said. "Were there any other survivors?"

"Three. The others could prove interesting. Have Vamdar get his men ready. I want them taken alive if possible, but if not…he knows what to do."

"Of course, Father," said the transporter operator. "It shall be done for the glory of the Sun Queen."

"For the glory of the Sun Queen," he repeated. Soon everyone will know Her glory as I do. He held his communicator over Sam's sleeping form. "Two to beam back," he ordered. He and Sam vanished in a swirl of green light.

Author's Note: Sam finally figured out the Stardate. Presumably, she had a chance to look at her tricorder, which probably keeps track of such things...I mean, it does everything else! Except cooking, that is, and apparently neither does Sam. I don't like characters who are good at everything-they just don't strike me as believable-so Sam's weakness is officially cooking.

The conversation between Sam and Antori is based on the first conversation between Lara and Roth in the Tomb Raider game. The only difference is that in the game Lara breaks down in the middle of the conversation and blames everything on herself, but I just couldn't see that as in-character for Sam at the moment, so consequently the conversation stayed more focused.

The music, the bunker, and its interior are all from the game. Who the bunker belongs to and why it suddenly started playing music is never explained in the game, but since it's obviously Solarii and you meet Mathias shortly thereafter, it's safe to assume it might belong to him. The meeting with Matan is much the same as the meeting with Mathias, except that Lara is just standoffish at first, whereas Sam actually holds a weapon on him.

From there, the honor of playing Lara Croft is passed to Carlin, as Sam begins to tell more about Himiko and Yamatai, as her namesake Sam Nishimura does in the game. Since I used that particular dialogue in a previous chapter, I went more in-depth. There is some real history: according to Chinese histories, Himiko was chosen as Queen after decades of fighting between various Japanese kings. It's claimed that she had one thousand women attendants and only one man. In the game, this is made out to be her Priestesses of the Sun and the general of the Stormguard. Historically, the Yayoi Period in which she ruled saw the sudden introduction of iron and bronze work, weaving, and organized rice agriculture into a land which had previously only known Stone Age civilization with limited agriculture. The rest, of course, is fiction, mostly condensed versions of concepts introduced through various documents in the game (such as her ability to manipulate spies).

I was going to have Sam stick around for a few more chapters here (she'll be back, I promise...or will she? Hee-hee-hee!), but when I presented the situation to Matan and asked my villainous character to kindly call in his baddies and exit stage left without kidnapping her, he said, "Screw this, I've got a transporter!" and I really couldn't argue with that logic. Thus, Sam disappears while her friend sleeps, just as it happens in the game.

"Vamdar," whom you should meet a couple chapters, is the Klingon answer to the game's Vladimir.