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.

Raiding the Base

USS Nautilus: Shuttle One Crew, Senior Science Officer Carlin Agran's Log, Stardate 81630.3:

Antori and I have reached an old Dominion communications base. While the base is held by the murderous cult of survivors that follow Matan, it is our best chance of getting a distress signal out, so that we can be rescued by the Nautilus. Since the communications base is also used by the cultists to organize their activities, it's also our best chance to keep them off balance, and to find out where they've taken Sam and Doctor Mor...if they're still alive.

One thing's for sure: this isn't going to be easy. Antori is skilled and experienced, and he's trained me some on the holodeck, but the base is sure to be heavily guarded. Antori's also suffered a sprained ankle that could slow him down. I took the opportunity to put a splint on it while we dried of in an abandoned camp just outside the base, but it will still take several hours for the muscular regenerator to heal the injury.

"According to the cultists we overheard on the falls, the transmitter's going to be pretty heavily guarded. Our best chance is to use stealth and surprise to take out as many of the guards as possible before the fighting starts," said Antori, shrugging into his uniform jacket, which was stained with mud. "How do I look?"

"Like a crash survivor on a mysterious planet," said Carlin.

"A murderous cultist survivor?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Not to me, but maybe to the cultists...if they aren't already on the lookout for a couple of Trill in Starfleet uniforms, that is."

"Best to stick to the shadows, then," he said, pushing himself to his feet. The new splint on his left ankle hampered him a bit, but not much. He turned his attention to Carlin. "I definitely want you to stay out of sight," he said.

"My uniform's even worse than yours," she said. "I thought it was soiled enough to pass as cultist garb." Beneath layers of dust, mud, blood, and scorch-marks, it was only still blue in patches.

"True, but there's no way to disguise the fact you're a woman," he said. "We haven't seen any female cultists so far, and from the way they talk, they may not have any female members."

Carlin shivered, remembering the body of Heidi Cook, and Sam's abduction. She was afraid to know what the cult did to the female crash survivors-and she certainly didn't want to find out from personal experience. "I'll stay out of sight until the shooting starts," she promised.

"Good," said Antori. He picked up the bow that the Lethian had been using and threw the quiver over his shoulder. "Let's get on with this."

They started down the tunnel toward the communications base. Their tricorder readings had told them there were no lifeforms within a hundred meters of the camp at this end, but they were still cautious as they came around the wreck of the old Dominion ground vehicle, their weapons ready. The tunnel was clear though. There were figures moving in a pool of artificial light down at the far end, almost a hundred meters away, but there was no sign of anyone closer than that and the figures appeared to have their backs to them. Still, they didn't want to chance the guards seeing them just yet, so Antori led them into the shadows along the tunnel wall.

Voices echoed down the tunnel toward them. "It's freezing out here!" one of the guards complained.

"You'll get used to it," said another guard. "It's even colder up by the transmitter tower."

"The weather on this planet is crazy."

"Everything about this planet is crazy, Brother."

Carlin had to agree. Creeping closer to the tunnel mouth, she could see an open courtyard where the rain was still falling-gentler now, but still there. There was a thick mist in the courtyard too, which made it almost as dark as night outside of the harsh light of a floodlight mounted on the thermal cement wall opposite the tunnel mouth. In the pool of light, three guards were standing. Two were standing to one side talking while another stood by a burning barrel of trash, taking deep swigs from a bottle. Carlin and Antori crouched in the shadows by the tunnel's mouth.

"I count at least five," Antori whispered.

"Five?"

"Two on that wall over there and three in the courtyard," he said.

Carlin squinted toward the light. Sure enough, she could see two more figures up on top of the wall. "You have good eyes."

"Just experienced ones," he said. "Best not to trust them too much, though. Run a quick scan. I don't want any surprises."

She opened her tricorder, muffling it in her cloak so it wouldn't be seen or heard. She peeked at the screen. "There's seven all together. The five you saw and two more on another wall, three meters to the right, just out of sight."

Antori frowned. "We have no way of telling when they're looking away from the courtyard or of taking them out. We need a distraction."

Just then in the courtyard, one of the two guards who'd been talking turned and started walking away. "I'm going to go check in," he said.

"Good idea," said the second guard. "Let us know if there's any word about the escaped Outsiders."

"Yeah, I heard she has a gun," said the guard on the wall standing behind the spotlight.

"Speaking of which, get that plasma minigun off of me!" said the guard in the courtyard. "Ever since you rewired it, I don't trust it."

"A plasma minigun?" Carlin repeated.

"A heavy weapon," Antori whispered. "High rate of fire, too."

"We definitely need a distraction."

Antori readied his bow. "We can start by taking out that spotlight."

"With that?" she asked.

He nodded. "I've trained with primitive and improvized weapons. I can make the shot."

"Do you think they'll see the arrow?"

"Not unless they happen to be looking in exactly the right place at the moment of the shot," he said. "They'll figure it out in a couple minutes, but meanwhile they won't be in a very observant mood."

"The two guards in the courtyard might still try to stop us."

"It's dark enough we can probably take them out if we're silent about it. The guards on the walls will probably be too busy trying to figure out why the spotlight went out to notice," said Antori. "You said you sedated some cultists last night. Do you think you can do it again?"

Carlin opened her medkit and fished out two hyposprays and loaded them with vials of kayolane. "There's a Human on the right, a Bajoran on the left. Their biochemistry is pretty similar. Ten ccs apiece should keep both of them down for a while." She handed one of the hyposprays to Antori.

He pocketed it and raised his bow. "You take the one on the right," he said. "Try to stay close to the wall so the guards up top don't see you. Once you're done, go through that door across from us and meet me on the other side."

She nodded and set her hypospray. She watched as Antori stood, drew his bow smoothly, and fired.

The spotlight flared and died. Darkness descended on the courtyard at the tunnel mouth instantly. Several of the guards swore at once. One in the courtyard demanded, "Did you rewire the spotlight too?!"

"It wasn't me," said one of the guards on the wall. "Something hit it!"

Before they had a chance to figure out what that something was, Carlin and Antori were on the move. Carlin went right, sticking close to the wall. She could see the Human guard, backlit by the burning rubish in the barrel. He was staring up at the spotlight, still nursing that bottle. She slipped up behind him and pressed the hypospray against his neck before he knew she was there. Off to the left, she could just make out the shape of the other guard going down, too. She stepped around the barrel of rubbish and went to the door.

Antori arrived at almost the same moment. He pointed to a flight of worn stairs to the right. "We'll need that gun out of commission if we want to be able to come back out this way."

She nodded. They crept up the stairs. Sure enough, there was the minigun, a hulking weapon sitting on a tripod next to the spotlight. One guard was trying to turn the spotlight around so he could get a better look at it while another peered over the edge of the wall at the courtyard below. Antori motioned her to the guard by the spotlight. While she sedated him, Antori took aim at the second guard with his bow. The shot was silent, and in a moment they had this section of the wall to themselves.

Antori wasted no time getting to the plasma weapon. He opened up the casing and scanned the interior with his tricorder. "This thing is so jury-rigged a sneeze could put it out of commission," he whispered. "The biggest challenge will be taking it out in a way that draws more attention to it than us...and makes it impossible for whatever mad genius jury-rigged it in the first place to get it working again." He reached inside and pulled on several wires. Sparks flew and he withdrew his hand quickly. "Let's go," he said. "That's the best I can do. With any luck, it'll overhead the plasma and cause the gun to overload."

"And if it doesn't?" Carlin asked, dragging the unconscious guard back away from the gun before moving to the stairs.

"Then the gun will still be working when we come back this way."

Carlin swallowed audibly. "Let's hope for a big expolsion," she whispered.

They made their way down the stairs. According to their tricorders, the best way to the transmitter was down a long downward-sloping corridor. It was partially flooded toward the end and Carlin flinched as the water came over her boots. "It's freezing!" she hissed.

Antori held up a hand for silence. There were voices from up ahead, echoing from around the corner. "Give me a hand with this, Brother," one of them said.

"I just wanted to check in." There was the sound of men grunting as muscles strained. "Any word from...Father Matan?"

"Not yet...expect it any minute though," said the first voice. "Careful! It's full of fuel!"

"No kidding!...What do they need so much for?"

"It's for the transmitter...Father Matan likes to...keep full power...available."

The sounds of laboring men retreated deeper into the base. Antori motioned for Carlin to continue. They waded through the water till they came to the corner. There, a set of stairs provided a way up and out of the water. From here, she could hear the men struggling up ahead still. There was a resounding thump as something heavy was set down. "Great, how are we supposed to get it through here?" one of the voices said.

"Good question...let's get some of the Brothers up front to help."

Carlin's eyes went wide. "They're coming back this way," she whispered urgently.

Antori opened his tricorder. "There's a maintenance crawlway right over here..." He removed some debris from the wall, revealing a dented metal door.

She immediately pulled him away from it. "We can't go in there! It's flooded with toxic gas," she said.

"I'm not reading anything on my tricorder."

"It's verdenicine gas. It doesn't show up on tricorders, but it reacts visibly with oxygen," she pointed to a puff of greenish-yellow dust rising from a crack in the maintenance hatch.

"Good catch. I guess the maintenance crawlway is out," he said, stepping back.

Suddenly, there was a resounding boom from down the corridoor, back the way they'd come. Carlin gasped. The plasma gun! she realized, even as she heard the cultists down the hall break into a run. Our own sabotage backfired on us! "We need to get out of here, now!"

"There's nowhere to go," Antori said, flattening himself against the wall and drawing his disruptor. He motioned for her to do the same on the opposite wall. "We still have surprise for the moment. Time to use it, and pull out all the stops. We'll fight our way in from here!"

Carlin drew her phaser and thumbed up the power setting. She flattened herself against the wall and forced herself not to reach up for her pony-tail. Any moment, armed, murderous men would come running around that corner. She needed to be ready.

It only seemed like half a breath later that the first of the men came around the corner. He moved so quickly he was halfway past Carlin when he saw her and began to turn. Antori shot him in the back. The next man, a heavily-built Pakled, came around the corner with a drawn knife. He turned on Antori, but before he could stab at him, Carlin fired, toppling him.

Antori motioned to her, and they hurried around the corridoor. "Which way?" he asked.

Carlin pulled out her tricorder. "The transmitter's about two hundred meters that way." She pointed. "There's no telling if that's where the control center is, though."

"It's our best guess," said Antori. "It'll have to do." Another guard came around the corner and reached for a machete, but Antori fired before he could draw it. "Look's like we need to go down this passageway," he said, not even breaking stride. "Follow me!"

Carlin ran after him. They squeezed past a large canister of fuel and down a narrow hall. She saw a series of old labs on their left, behind heavy bulkheads with dusty transparent aluminum windows. Just past them, the hall ended in a junction guarded by thick blast doors.

Suddenly, a siren wailed through the base, startling Carlin. A moment later, the blast doors in front of them ground shut. Antori tore the cover of the door controls off, but several of the isolinear rods behind it were smashed or missing. He swore. "These controls are useless. They must have the doors wired to some control center."

"The blast door is a duridium alloy, almost eight centimeters thick. We'll never cut through." Carlin turned her tricorder toward the labs. "It looks like there's a passageway through here," she said. "It leads deeper into the compound, in the general direction of the transmitter. Best of all...this door is weakened." She pointed.

"How weakened?"

"It's only half a centimeter of of noranium with carbon scoring near the locking mechanism and 60% deformation of the door frame on the inside..." She turned and caught his blank expression. She smiled, and said simply, "It's very weakened."

"Good enough for me!" He rammed the door with his shoulder and it groaned and collapsed inward. Unfortunately, so did he, groaning in pain and falling to the floor clutching his leg. Carlin rushed in and knelt over him. "Perhaps that was a bad idea...considering my ankle."

"Maybe." She scanned the injury. "You've put some more strain on it, but nothing the muscular regenerator shouldn't be able to handle-with a little more time."

"Supposing we have it." They heard the sound of men splashing through the flooded corridoor, coming this way. "We need to get out of here!"

Carlin nodded and helped him to his feet. The lab was abandoned and mostly empty, with only a few pieces of broken equipment lying around-mostly the large tachyon inversion chamber that was bolted to the floor in the back. There were two entrances, with the other one being across the room, a door next to a large transparent aluminum panel that led into the next lab. They headed for the door, with Carlin supporting Antori on his left side. As they reached the door, a forcefield flared to life, repelling Carlin's hand with a stinging jolt.

Men appeared. Two came into sight from the corridoor, but stayed on the other side of the lab's doorway. A third man, a Reman, entered the next lab, beyond the large window. He cradled a Jem'Hadar rifle in his arms and raised it as he saw them. But instead of firing it immediately, he stopped and smiled. "So, you found our trap, Outsiders?" He fired a quick burst from the rifle into the window, shattering and vaporizing it. The forcefield lit up, just behind the window, and absorbed the weaponsfire harmlessly. The Reman's grin broadened. "No escape for you. No one ever escapes!"

Antori limped backward and fired his disruptor at the men by the door. They didn't even flinch as the green bolt hissed harmlessly against another section of the forcefield.

"Incredible, isn't it?" said the Reman. He propped his rifle against the wall and moved to a flickering console on the wall. "We think it was originally intended to protect the base, to contain any possible accidents, but it's equally effective against weapons-fire. It also works against people and toxins...like this for instance." He punched a command sequence into the console.

There was a hiss and a plume of greenish-yellow dust began to spread out from a broken conduit in the ceiling, slowly filling the room. Carlin stepped away from it, helping Antori to do the same.

"Where do you think you're going?" the Reman taunted. "There's no escape."

"There's a way out of any prison," Antori said. "It's just a matter of finding it."

The Reman chuckled. "You're running out of time, Outsider."

Antori raised his disruptor and pointed it at the Reman. "Maybe it's time to test this forcefield against weapons-fire again. That rifle's pretty powerful, I bet it weakened it," he said. "Carlin, set your phaser to maximum and fire with me at the same point."

She shook her head and laid a hand on his arm. "We could fire our weapons all day at that forcefield before it failed, and we don't have all day. The verdenicine gas is spreading too fast." Already the dust plume that marked its boundary was occupying a quarter of the room.

"The girl's right," said the Reman. "Why fight the inevitable?"

"That's not what I said!" Carlin pulled her hair sharply, trying to think. "Verdenicine gas can be used to transfer energy, which is probably what it's being used for here. It's also explosive, especially when it's mixed with oxygen to form that green dust. Since the gas was off until a second ago, that entire conduit is probably chock full of dust, and it's spreading back into the power network in this room as fast as it's flooding the lab itself-probably even faster...and that forcefield has to be drawing power from the conduits somewhere."

"So, what's the ignition temperature?" Antori asked, angling his disruptor toward the ceiling, where the broken conduit waited, shrouded in a cloud of yellow-green dust.

"With this much dust-high, but not too high." She pointed her phaser at the same point.

The Reman took a step back and reached toward his rifle. "Hey, what do you think you're doing..."

Before he or any of the other cultists had a chance to think of a way to stop them, Carlin and Antori fired. Green and red beams merged inside the yellow-green dust. A moment later, a fireball formed in the heart of the dust cloud, spreading swiftly. The two of them dove for cover behind the tachyon inversion chamber a moment before the concussion wave hit. The blast set Carlin's ears ringing and hurled the remains of the lab's door across the room.

When the noise died down, they peeked out from behind the heavy equipment. The corridoor they'd entered by had collapsed, burying two of the cultists in rubble. The windowed wall between the labs had collapsed, blown outward at the ceiling, with chunks of it strewn around the room beyond. Small fires burned near where the wall once stood, spreading freely between the labs. Nothing remained of the greenish-yellow dust.

Carlin's eyes scanned the room. "There's no trace of verdenicine gas. We must have tripped an emergency shut-off somewhere...which is good, because otherwise we could have blown the whole base sky-high," she said sheepishly.

"No risk, no reward," said Antori. She helped him to his feet and he limped across the room, pointing his disruptor toward the rubble. "We've got two down in the corridoor. Where's the third?"

Carlin moved to his side to support him and pulled out her tricorder. "I'm reading faint lifesigns: Reman, 4 meters ahead." She pointed to indicate the exact direction, and he turned his disruptor toward it. The only thing she could see in that direction was slabs of fallen thermal concrete.

They moved carefully over the remains of the wall and started through the opposite lab. About halfway through, Antori stopped and toed something on the floor. It was the Jem'Hadar rifle. "Phased polaron assault rifle, Dominion standard issue about thirty years ago," he said. "A little beat up, but in good working order, as the Reman demonstrated. Think you can handle it?"

Carlin shrugged and picked it up. The weight felt a little awkward. "I've handled Klingon disruptor rifles-on the holodeck at least-but never something like this." She sighted along the emitter assembly experimentally.

Just then, she caught sight of the Reman, his body half-buried in rubble with a large slab of thermal concrete on his chest. Instinct and years of medical training took over. She handed the rifle to Antori and rushed over to the injured Reman, scanning him with her tricorder. "He has severe fractures, a collapsed lung, and third-degree burns," she said. "The only way to save him would be an emergency transport to a well-equipped medical facility."

"Just...kill me," said the Reman, his voice faint.

Antori limped closer. "Didn't you hear her? You can still be saved if your friends or brothers or whatever transport you out. Tell us how you do it, and we'll be happy to send you on your way."

The Reman laughed, but the sound devolved into a sickening cough. "We Solarii have no friends...not even among ourselves. If a Brother saw me right now...he would kill me...for my failure."

"Then let me put this another way." Antori pushed the emitter of the rifle up under the Reman cultist's chin. "This is a good rifle. The Dominion built these with a variety of settings. Most of the settings, of course, would be instantly lethal to you. If I recall correctly, one of the other settings just delivers an anti-coagulant and a neuralogical stimulant that affects the pain receptors in most humanoids. In your condition, it guaranties a slow painful death. At the end of this conversation, I'll shoot you. Which setting I use depends entirely on your answers."

Carlin gave him a shocked look. What the hell are you thinking? it said.

In return, he mouthed, Just trust me.

The Reman's breath rasped. "What do you want to know, Outsider?"

"Where is the control center of this base? We need to access the transmitter," said Antori.

"Just down this hall and through the...messhall," the Reman said, pointing febbly. He tried to laugh again. "You'll never make it, Outsider."

"Let us be the judge of that," said Antori.

"Where is Sam?" Carlin asked.

"I don't...know any Brother named Sam," said the Reman.

"Sam's not with the Solarii," said Carlin, using the name the Reman had used. "She's with us, a Starfleet officer. Matan took her."

"Then she's probably being held for the Ritual," said the Reman. "We were to receive word from Father Matan soon."

"What is the Ritual?" she demanded. "Where is Sam being held?"

"I can't tell you that," said the Reman, glaring at her.

"Can't, or won't," asked Antori, prodding him with the rifle.

The Reman turned his eyes to Antori and spat green blood. "Go to hell, Outsider."

"Same to you," said Antori. He fired. The Reman jerked once, then went still.

"What did you do that for?" asked Carlin.

"He wasn't going to give us any more information," Antori explained. "And, under the circumstances, it was the most merciful thing I could do for him." He paused. "By the way, I was lying about the slow-death setting on the rifle. It doesn't exist, but if he thought it did, I figured he'd be more cooperative."

Carlin pulled her pony-tail over her shoulder. "This is a side of you I don't think I've seen before."

"As I've said before, I've had a...complicated past, at times," he said.

"Well, you'll have to explain it to me a little more fully, once we're all safely back to the ship," she said, helping him to his feet.

"I'll be happy to-at least, whatever isn't classified," he said with a grin.

Carlin rolled her eyes and helped him out into the hall. "Let's get to that control room before this whole place is swarming in Solarii cultists."

They headed down the corridoor in the direction the dying Reman had indicated, which corrisponded well to the direction the of the transmitter tower. The blast doors in this section of the base were all still open, and up ahead there was a room where all of the lights were out. Maybe when we blasted our way out of that lab we disrupted the power to this part of the base, she thought.

But Antori seemed more nervous. He slowed down and placed a hand on her arm when she went to fish out her palm beacon. "Something's not right here," he said. "Keep your phaser ready and follow my lead." He raised his rifle and switched on the light mounted above the emitter, sweeping the darkened chamber in front of them. She followed suit, turning on her palm beacon with one hand and using the other hand to keep her phaser at the ready. The room ahead was large and littered with overturned tables and cargo containers. There were also some darkened spotlights sitting in there. She saw no sign of the Solarii, though. Antori and Carlin stepped into the room.

Immediately, the blast door slammed closed behind them. "There they are! Light 'em up!" a voice shouted. The spotlights came alive. Light slammed into Carlin, blinding her. She could make out vague shapes in the sea of light-men rushing toward them.

"Take cover!" Antori shouted, shoving her away. She fell to the ground on one side of the door, Antori on the other. Something-an arrow-hissed through the space between them. The Jem'Hadar rifle fired a staccato burst. One of the shapes went down. Carlin concentrated an another and fired her phaser blind. She was lucky. A gruff man's voice cried out and the shape went down. The Jem'Hadar rifle fired another burst. Two of the spotlights spat sparks and went out. The light dimmed and Carlin could see again.

She almost wished she couldn't. The room was swarming with Solarii. Armed with primitive, makeshift weapons, they jumped out of cover and rushed to attack the pair of Starfleet officers. Three of them were charging them right now, bladed weapons raised. Antori swept the group with a three-shot burst from the rifle. Two of them went down. The third stood over Antori with a hatchet. Carlin shot him in the back. An arrow grazed the floor next to her.

Another arrow hissed by, missing Antori by centimeters. He moved toward the cover of an overturned table, struggling with his good leg under him. Carlin rushed to his side. A glass bottle shattered nearby, spewing flames. She fired toward a Solarii with a torch, but missed. Antori fired as well, and his shots hit home. The Solarii man burst into flames. Carlin grabbed Antori under the shoulders and dragged him to cover before any one else could take pot-shots at them.

"There's a lot of them," Carlin said. "At least three archers."

"Not too many," said Antori, "considering our technological advantage. Help me up." He braced himself against her and peeked above the table they was taking cover behind. Two arrows hissed by and a third clanged into the table. Antori fired a burst from his rifle, then another before lowering himself back under cover. "That evened the odds a little. Now there's just one archer."

"If you try peeking out again like that, he'll shoot you. He barely missed this time as it was," she said.

"I'm all for not trying the same thing twice-it's too predictable," Antori agreed. "We'll need to draw his fire. You're quicker than I am right now. Run out and take cover behind those barrels over there-and don't get shot!"

She nodded and dashed into the open. Something tugged at her hair-an arrow! It clacked against the wall behind her. She fired her phaser at the archer. The red beam grazed him and he ducked, cursing. Carlin ducked behind a barrel. As she did, she saw Antori hoist himself above the table. He pointed his rifle toward where the archer had taken cover. He waited. A few seconds later, his rifle pounded out a stacatto burst, followed by another. No arrows flew out in reply. Antori pushed himself to his feet and motioned for her to do the same.

Before she could, a Solarii man-a Nausicaan-lept at Antori from behind a crate. He swung a crude machette. Antori used his rifle to deflect the blow and both weapons spun away. Carlin fired at the Nausicaan's back, but the beam fizzled and went out, doing no damage. She searched herself for other weapons and found only one: her climbing axe.

Meanwhile, Antori was trying to fight the Nausicaan hand to hand, but his leg gave his opponent the advantage. Soon the larger alien had knocked him off his feet and was stepping on his bad leg. It drew another knife slowly.

Carlin did not give it a chance to use it. She ran in from behind, screaming. She swung her climbing axe at the knee joint. The jagged titanium blade had been meant to bite into stone, not bone. It pulversized the joint, ripping through muscles and tendons. The Nausicaan roared in pain and staggered away. The axe stuck and was torn from Carlin's hands. She was suddenly unarmed.

But Antori wasn't, and the opening was all he'd needed to draw the disruptor pistol. He fired from the ground and the Nausicaan toppled over backwards.

He wasted no time in trying to get himself back to his feet. Carlin moved to help, but he shook his head. "Scan the room," he instructed. "I don't want any more surprises."

She pulled out her tricorder and ran a quick scan. "There's only two lifeforms in this room, both Trill. There's another lifesign in a room down the hall that way. I'm also picking up a fair amount of energy readings from there. It could be the control center."

"Only one more guard to go," said Antori. He tried to take a step and winced. She put her arm around him and helped him over to sit on a nearby cargo container. Then she scanned his ankle. "You've aggrivated the sprain and the regenerator is barely functional. It may still get the job done, but there's no telling when it will run out of power."

"Speaking of things that are out of power, your phaser seems to have run out," he said, taking it from her and checking it. "The Type-Ones never did carry much charge, and there's no telling how much use this one saw before we got it. We'll have to try to recharge it. In the meantime, I don't want you to be unarmed. Go get the rifle."

Carlin found it and picked it up. The weight of it still felt awkward in her arms. "Are you sure about this?"

"It's either that or the disruptor, and the rifle at least has a non-lethal setting," he said. He pointed to a small set of controls on the side of the rifle. "This is the fire selector. It cycles through stun, kill, three-shot burst, and disintigrate."

She examined the controls and hefted the rifle experimentally. It still felt too heavy. She then let her eyes take in the room around them. Neither of them had been using the stun setting during the ambush. Nine Solarii lay dead around the room-nine men who would just as soon have killed them, who followed the twisted madman that had kidnapped Sam and probably intended to burn her alive...men who did not deserve mercy, who would probably take any mercy offered them as an opportunity to kill the one who gave it. She handed the rifle to Antori. "Give me the disruptor, then," she said. "It's more familiar...and sometimes you don't need a stun setting."

"I know what you mean." He took the rifle back and handed her the disruptor pistol.

She strapped on the holster and then carefully removed her climbing axe from the body of the Nausicaan, trying not to think too much about how it had gotten there. When that was done, she helped Antori to his feet and together they headed on to the control room.

Author's Note: I made mostly superficial changes to the course of events in the game in this chapter. The biggest departure, of course, is that Antori and Carlin are raiding the Solarii communications base together while Lara Croft does it alone in the game. During the first scene at the base entrance, there are only two changes of note. The first is that Antori and Lara complete the entire entrance sequence in stealth. In the game, this is possible, but difficult (I've never pulled it off, but then I admit to not being the greatest of players). Most players will instead break stealth halfway through and finish off the remaining Solarii in combat. But doing this leads to a weird contrast where Solarii are alerted to the Outsiders and (loudly) engaging them and calling for help and yet just down the hall inside the base another group of Solarii are blissfully unaware. I also chose to deal with the machine gun and use it as a way to eventually break stealth (in the game the gun is never used and appears to have somehow become non-functional by the time the player reaches it).

The second major change is that entrance to the base is not provided by zipline from the top of a tower which can only be reached by acrobatic leaps. In the game this means that getting from point A to point B serves up some interesting challenges, but it does induce a bit of fridge logic when one tries to consider how the Solarii manage to get around the island, especially when some places are completely inaccessible before Lara comes along. In this part of the game in particular, it raises the question of how the Solarii got heavy barrels of fuel into the base in the first place-they attest to having difficulty getting it up stairs in the dialogue, and yet the only possible way to get into the base in the first place is to make a five-foot jump and zipline in? For this reason, I also removed the Solarii mooks jumping down on Lara from the ceiling (how'd they get up there? What were they doing up there?) and changed the way the first Solarii are encountered inside the base. In the game, Lara manages to turn off a gas valve to make a previously-inaccessible crawlspace safe and uses that to access an empty room adjacent to a main hallway. Three Solarii mooks then surprise her (and themselves) when they come around a corner into this room while on their way back to the front entrance of the base-the problem being that the Solarii could not possibly have used this route to reach the front before Lara cleared it! So the coming-'round-the-corner surprise was preserved, but shifted to a main hallway which the Solarii would logically use.

The lab scene was extended. In the game, it's little more than a physics puzzle with a random Solarii pounding on the window with the butt of his machine gun. However, it doesn't make much sense for him to pound on the glass rather than shooting through it, and it makes even less sense when upgrading everyone to phasers, disruptors, and polaron rifles. Thus, the forcefield trap. I also enjoyed giving the Reman a bit of a monologue. Afterwards, of course, Lara immediately mercy-kills the Solarii mook with his own rifle (or whatever weapon the player chooses), but Carlin and Antori would at least try to get information first.

The Jem'Hadar rifle is obviously the replacement of the rifle in the game. As such, I gave it a burst-fire mode. It will probably also stand in for the shotgun. The rifle was not my favorite weapon in the game-all I could ever use it for was spray-and-pray-but it was nevertheless useful for a lot of the intense battles. I preferred the handgun, though, which can deliver a high rate of fire as well, but with greater accuracy (long live the headshot!).

Speaking of underfavored weapons, there's the climbing axe. Lara doesn't get to use it as a weapon until around this point in the game, after acquiring a special skill for knee-strikes. It still can't be used to kill except with an additional skill.

Thermal concrete was a material used in the construction of emergency shelters by Starfleet in the 23rd Century (TOS: "The Devil in the Dark"). Here I assume it might also have been used by the Dominion, since regular concrete (used by the Japanese in the game) is seemingly out and duracrete (incorrectly used in Chapter 8) is a material from Star Wars.

A plasma minigun is a Romulan heavy weapon from Star Trek Online. 10 ccs of Kayolane was used by Dr Crusher to knock out a human patient for a few hours (TNG: "Identity Crisis"). The Pakled are a heavyset race native to the Alpha Quadrant who are mostly neutral, but available as a playable race to Federation characters. Isolinear rods were used in information storage and circuitry in Cardassian systems, and may have been incorporated in Dominion systems during their alliance. Duridium barrels were able to withstand fire from Jem'Hadar rifles (DS9: "Blaze of Glory"). Noranium was a common building material with low scrap value and toughness which could be easily vaporized by a phaser (TNG: "The Vengeance Factor").

I have no idea what a "tachyon inversion chamber" is or would do, since I made it up. Apparently, though, it's large, should be bolted down, and is good at enduring explosions. Verdenicine gas is my own invention, based on the word verde, which means "green." It's a replacement for the green gas in the game which is said to be "some kind of natural gas." However, natural gas, as we know it is a colorless odorless gas (methane) with the familiar spoiled-egg smell being added only as a precaution and not as an inherent property of the gas itself. I suppose it's possible that the natural gas was green in the game because of a similar chemical additive, though I don't know what would cause this. A better explanation is that the developers correctly found that it's nice to give players a visual cue before introducing clouds of explosive, lethal fumes to the game!