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Rendezvous Point

USS Nautilus: Shuttle One Crew, Senior Science Officer Carlin Agran's Log, Stardate 81630.0:

All those treks and climbs on the holodeck, all of that tactical training, the anniversary spent on the North Face of the Tenaran Ice Cliffs…It's as if Antori was trying to prepare me for something like this all along. Maybe, in a way, he was.

Thanks to his training, I've managed to escape from my captors. I had to kill some of them. I had no choice…at least, that's what I tell myself. It's clear that whoever these people are, they're well-established here and well-organized. They're killing and recruiting, but why? It's like some kind of cult, but a cult of what? What do they want? What are they looking for? What do they want with Sam? Why have they taken her for this Ritual of theirs? I need answers, but before I can find them, I need to meet with Antori. The outcrop that marks the rendezvous point isn't far away.

The firelight had faded behind Carlin by the time she made it to the end of the path. There was a primitive rope bridge leading to an ancient stone-paved road across a steep ravine, but most of the boards were missing. She wasn't eager to chance it, especially since the bridge also seemed to lead away from the outcrop of rock above that marked the rendezvous point. Besides, that's the obvious way, she thought. It's where the hunters will expect me to go.

It would be best if she could leave the path entirely, making her own way directly to the rendezvous point. A half dozen meters back, she remembered seeing a patch of cliff at the edge of the ruins that stretched up almost to the top of the rock outcropping. If I could climb that…

She backtracked to the cliff face and spotted a few easy grips low down, leading up into a large vertical cleft in the rock. Great, a chimney route, she thought. I can do this. It'll be just like the North Face of the Crag at the Tenaran Ice Cliffs—only on rocks at night instead of a glacier during the day. She tried to ignore the fact that she would also be climbing without any of the specialized equipment she and Antori had used climbing in the Tenaran Ice Cliffs a year ago on their first anniversary: no anti-grav harness, no climbing axe...not even so much as a rope. Still, I think I have a much better motivation for climbing today that I did a year ago. A year ago, fear had almost kept her from completing the Crag with Antori. Now fear hounded her, pushing her onward and up. There was still no sign of her pursuers, but she knew they were not far away.

Carlin scrambled up into the crevice. The night was growing darker now as storm clouds rolled in, obscuring the blue-green glow of the nebula. Carlin still had the palm beacon she'd taken from one of the hunters, but she didn't dare use it for fear of giving away her position. She would just have to be careful.

Carlin wedged herself sideways into the cleft of the rock, bracing her back against one face while pressing her feet and hands into the opposite face. The gap was about a meter wide, large enough for comfortable climbing, but not too large. She took a step, scooting her body up the crevice at the same time.

She continued like this for several minutes. Then there was a flash of lightning, followed by a resounding boom. Rain began to fall, starting with just a few drops, but building steadily. The overhang at the top of the chimney kept Carlin dry for the moment, but it wasn't long before rivulets of water began to run down the rock, slickening it. She had to be careful and press harder to keep her grip on the wet rock. It didn't help matters that she came to the overhang itself, which turned out to be a part of the chimney she had to climb. Once she was past it, the rock became even slicker and she even slipped a couple meters once. But at last, she hauled herself up onto level ground at the top of the outcrop-grateful, even if that level ground was grainy mud. She crawled away from the edge, muscles trembling from exertion.

She would have collapsed right there, at least for a few minutes, but just then she heard the nearby howl of a wolf followed by the angry buzz of phaser-fire, and fear galvanized her. She heard a shout, followed by cursing in a creative mix of English, Klingonese, Sapporan, Kolari, Romulan, and Trill. She knew only one person who could swear like that, and she recognized his voice.

"Antori!" she shouted, pushing herself to her feet. "Antori, I'm coming!"

Carlin ran around a cluster of boulders and saw him. She nearly screamed. There was a large wolf biting down on his left leg. He was struggling to stand, pointing a diminutive phaser into the darkness with one hand, while the other hand brought a climbing axe down on the wolf's neck. The creature gurgled, but did not let go. Carlin drew her disruptor and Antori saw her.

"Get back!" he warned. He brought a second swing of the climbing axe down on the wolf, this time on its chest. Its body sagged, bleeding heavily, and it fell off him. Antori ignored it eyes, peering into the darkness, toward another cluster of rocks. Carlin could hear snarling from that direction. A moment later, a wolf dashed out, running toward them. Carlin fired, but the wolf was too quick. Her disruptor bolt fizzled in the mud. The wolf ran at Antori, but he swung the climbing axe at it. It veered around him, leaping for Carlin.

But Antori had expected this. He fired his phaser and the wolf tumbled past Carlin, dead. "I think that's the last of them," Antori said. His leg gave way, but he landed on his bottom, scooting backward until his back was against a large boulder. He winced.

She hurried to his side and hugged him briefly. "Thank God you're alive!" she said, before turning her attention to his leg.

"God's got nothing to do with it," said Antori, holding up his phaser. It was an old Type-1 phaser—less powerful than the normal Type-2 hand phasers used by Starfleet today. Carlin remembered Antori explaining to her that they'd been discontinued after the Dominion War. "I'm alive because I happened to meet a couple of the men you were talking about a few minutes after we lost contact, and one of them was carrying this." He looked up and met her eyes. "But it's good to see you, too, Carlin."

Carlin let herself smile a little at his greeting, then turned to her tricorder, running it over the wound. "Sorry, they did a real number on your leg."

Antori shook his head. "It looks worse than it is," he said, trying to push himself to his feet.

Carlin laid a hand on his shoulder to keep him from rising. "You're lying to the trained doctor holding a tricorder over your leg," she reminded him gently. "Lie still, let me handle it." She opened her medkit and rifled through it, looking for the autosuture. "Have you heard anything from the others?"

"Nothing," said Antori. "You?"

Carlin shook her head.

Antori braced himself against the boulder and pushed himself to his feet.

"Wait, what are you doing?!" said Carlin, rising. She'd finally found the autosuture, but she couldn't operate with him standing. "I know you don't like being a patient, but for once would you let someone take your injuries seriously?"

"I am," said Antori. "We're not safe here. The wolves may be back and there's a chance some of those men heard the shots. Besides, it's starting to rain pretty hard."

"Which is exactly why I should finish now," said Carlin.

He shook his head. "Not in the open. There's a cave nearby, just under that building there. We'll be safe there. I even have a fire waiting." He looked at her. "Trust me, please, I'm the tactician."

She pulled a wet strand of hair over her shoulder with her free hand, but nodded.

He held out his left arm to her. "Come here," he asked.

She stepped into his embrace and he draped the arm around her shoulder, while she put her right arm around his waist, supporting him. "Alright, show me this secret camp of yours," she said.

He pushed off the rock and they took a few steps together. Carlin could see the building ahead, through the falling rain. It was a wooden ruin like the ones below, but part of the rock foundation had fallen away, leaving an opening into the space between its wooden floor and the ground beneath. They were halfway to that hole when Antori grunted. She felt his fingers relax and she looked up in time to see his head start lolling to one side. "Oh, no…no, no, no!" she said, trying to brace him, but his body became a deadweight. He fell, and the best she could to was lay him down gently on his back.

"Don't do this to me!" She checked him quickly for further injury, but his only wounds remained the severe bite to his leg. Probably blood loss, then. She had to get that wound closed, but with the rain pouring down now as it was, she didn't think she could even get the autosuture to work. She needed to get him inside. "Okay, I can do this…," she told herself, trying to calm her fears. She grabbed his arms and pulled, tugging him toward the hole. Now that she was beside it, she could see firelight coming from somewhere inside. She ducked under the floor of the wooden building and pulled Antori inside. From there, she could see that natural stone made up one of the walls of the building, and that, at this level, there was a small cave entrance, less than a meter high. The firelight was coming from just beyond that entrance. Carlin dragged Antori in that direction, across the ground and into the cave.

There was the campfire, with Antori's food pack beside it. Carlin laid him out beside the fire and scanned his vitals. She sighed with relief. "Good! Still alive!" She opened her medkit and pulled out the autosuture, laying out a selection of other tools beside it. "Right, let's get you patched up."

Author's Note: I made some changes to this section. Most notably, I left out the quest where Lara has to retrieve Roth's pack from the wolf den. There were several reasons for this. The first was that it wasn't what Carlin would do in this situation, given that chapter 12 established she still has her medkit. Even if, say, the shuttle transponder had been stolen by wolves, she would let it go and focus instead on saving Antori's life and leg. The second reason was that the whole situation of wolves running off with the supplies didn't make much sense, even in the game. In the game, the pack contains an emergency transponder and a medical kit—what would wolves want with either of those? I thought initially that I could make the situation more plausible by loading Antori's pack with rations, but not even Starfleet officers want to eat rations. No wolf is going to bother with them while there's tasty human around (especially tasty dead mook), or any other food source, for that matter. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't go to all the trouble of dragging it way up to their den. Kleptomaniac wolves just don't make sense! The third reason was that the whole sequence seemed repetitive, especially considering that I'd already used the climactic fight between Laura and the wolf in the den as a part of the wolf attack on Carlin in chapter 10.

Another change I made was Antori's hidden campsite. In the game, Roth's camp is plainly visible from any direction and doesn't even provide shelter from the rain that pounds down throughout this part of the game. Given that there are plenty of buildings and natural shelters nearby and the Solarii are hunting the protagonists, this arrangement makes no sense at all. It's great for the game, since it's easy for players to get to and navigate to and from while traversing the enormous Mountain Village map (several times, as required by the various quests in the area, and the terrain changes that occur later on), but from the perspective of people wanting to actually survive in this situation, it's a terrible idea.

One thing I didn't change much was the log. It's heavily based on the third of Lara's journals in the game. I also kept Antori/Roth well armed with a pistol (phaser) and at least one climbing axe, as he is in the game. This required that he loot the items from some unfortunate off-screen, but it's not difficult at all to imagine him doing so.

The Tenaran Ice Cliffs are a popular hiking destination on the Trill homeworld (DS9: "Equilibrium"). The Sapporan System is an independent somewhat-seedy mining colony in the Federation, centered around New Sydney (DS9: "Prodigal Daughter"). According to Memory Beta, Kolari is the language of Orions. The autosuture is a medical device used to seal cuts and deep tissue wounds where a dermal regenerator is not enough.

Type-1 phasers are the ones that look like a pack of cards or an Original-series communicator. They do not appear in any Star Trek series after The Next Generation, nor do they appear in the time of Star Trek Online (a 2265 model Type-1 Phaser can be obtained via the "Past Imperfect" mission-which sends the player back to 2265, of course-but no 2409 models seem to exist). This may indicate that the under-powered Type-1's were phased out in favor of the Type-2's or phaser-pistols that seem to have remained in use. Given the new experience with ground-combat that the Cardassian and Dominion Wars would have given the Federation, this makes sense to me.