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Tower at the Top of the World

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

Antori and I have managed to reach the control room of the Solarii communications base. In doing so, we've acquired a working Jem'Hadar rifle and neutralized most of the base's defenders in this section. However, there was a price. My phaser has run completely out of power and Antori's leg has gotten much worse.

My only hope is that this will be worth it, that we'll be able to send a signal to the Nautilus and find out where the Solarii are holding Doctor Mor and Sam. We need to get off this planet, and quickly!

As Carlin and Antori approached the control room, a Solarii cutlist rushed out at them, screaming and weilding a rusted axe. Antori shot him with a blue-white beam from his rifle. "Stun setting," he explained as she helped him limp past the cutlist's body.

"I think that's the last of them, at least in this part of the base," Carlin said. "My tricorder's not showing any other lifesigns within twenty meters."

"Good, let's get down to business."

The door to the control room had been beaten down long ago. They stepped over it and into the chamber beyond. Antori immediately swore. Carlin didn't have to ask why. A panel on one of the consoles had been ripped opened and the isoliniar rods inside had been smashed and roughly chopped apart. Above it, a crude message had been painted on the wall in lime. "Father Matan will set us free. Fear the demons," she read. Free from what? she wondered. And what are the demons? The Oni?

"Sabotoge and propaganda," Antori observed, simply. "So that's what the last Solarii was doing in here. Let's see how bad it is."

With her help, Antori knelt by the panel and scanned the damaged sections. "The console's a wreck," he declared at last. "It looks like they completely took out the primary and secondary control circuits for the transmitter. We can't shut down their communications, and we can't reconfigure the transmitter for a long-range signal."

"Then this is it?" she asked. "We can't contact the Nautilus or find Sam?"

He lowered himself fully to the floor and fished a small translucent crystal from the mangled circuitry. "These data crystals are still intact. If I reconfigure my tricorder to read them, I can still pull up a communication's logs from the past few hours. That should allow us to find out where they're holding Sam eventually, especially if Matan has made an announcement. The distress signal is another matter. We'll need to patch it through the maintenance panel."

"Okay, that sounds simple enough," she said, looking around at the unfamiliar, jury-rigged, Dominion technology. "Where's that?"

Drel sighed. "That's the problem. It's not here. During the War, when the Dominion had to quickly assemble facilities like this one, they installed the panels high up."

"How high up?"

"Very," he said. "Near the top of the transmitter tower. From what we've seen, the tower is over fifty meters high, and is very likely guarded."

"I was afraid you would say that." Carlin sat down heavily. "Climbing again, and fighting."

"And from the state of my ankle, I'm guessing I'm not doing either any time soon," he said.

"As your doctor—or the closest equivalent at this point—I'd advise against it," she said.

"Then that leaves you," he said, handing her the shuttle's transponder.

She nodded. "That leaves me, alone."

Antori turned to her. "We have to do this, and you can do it," he said. "I believe in you. After all, you're a Starfleet officer."

She met his eyes and shook her head slightly. "I don't think I'm that kind of Starfleet officer."

"Sure you are," he said and placed the assault rifle in her hands. "You just don't know it yet."

She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still feel the weight of the rifle in her hands. She knew he was right: they had to do this or there was no way they were getting of the planet, no way they would be able to rescue Sam. She closed her hands around the rifle and met his eyes again. "Well, let's hope I'm a fast learner then," she said. "Show me the controls again."

"Disintegrate, three-shot burst, kill, and stun," he said. "You should be able to tell them apart visually, the bolts all look different." He laid his hand gently over hers. "Just be careful, and come back alive," he said. "Nothing is more important to me than that."

"You do the same," said Carlin, kissing his cheek. "When this is over, I have a very important question I want to ask you." She hoped that wasn't saying too much, but she couldn't help it. It needed to be said.

He gave her a smile and returned the kiss. "And I have a very important answer," he said, then they parted. "You'd better get moving. The Solarii won't wait forever, and neither will Sam."

She nodded and rose, throwing the carrying strap of the rifle over her shoulder. She scanned the room. "It looks like there are only two ways out of this room, the main door, and that maintenance crawlway."

"Don't worry about me," Antori said, laying out the Lethian's bow beside him. "I'll stay here as long as it takes to retrieve the information from the data crystals, and for the muscular regenerator to do what it can for my ankle. After that, I'll make my own way out. One of these data crystals should contain the base schematics, so I should have no problem finding a route the Solarii won't think of. You just worry about yourself and that tower. Focus is key."

She nodded. "Focus," she said. She knelt and pried open the access hatch to the maintenance crawlway. It was dark, damp, and it stank. She wondered how many decades it had been since someone last opened it. She switched on her palm beacon. "That panel better work after all of this," she muttered to herself, then crawled into the interior, leaving Antori behind.

A few minutes later, the crawlway she was following dead-ended at a dented hatch. She opened her tricorder. There's open air behind this door and the subspace signals are significantly stronger. This could be what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, the controls had corroded. The only good news was that the door had corroded as well. I could probably get it open with a few good kicks...or one good shot from the rifle. She checked the charge. It was near full. Whoever had owned this rifle before them had obviously taken good care of it. She switched the setting to disintegrate, aimed at the hatch, and fired.

A blue-white ball of light shot out from the rifle and the hatch vanished, vaporized. Cool air rushed inside. Not cool, cold! Carlin realized, stepping out into the light. The storm clouds had mostly cleared, leaving a blue sky with only patches of white clouds. Before her stood a rocky mountain top, covered in snow. More snow swirled around her as she stood, taking in the sight. Snow? This isn't normal, she thought. Their initial survey of the planet had indicated a warm climate with an axial tilt of only around 19 degrees. At this latitude, snow shouldn't even be possible—let alone the fact that there was rain and fog at this elevation not half an hour ago when we entered the base! But there was no trace of rain here, and just over a centimeter of snow coated everything, crunching under foot. She rubbed her arms to ward off the chill. Thankfully, Starfleet uniforms were designed for all sorts of weather conditions: she'd be warm soon enough.

In the meantime, she had more important things to worry about. Focus, Antori had told her. She was on a catwalk on the exterior of one of the base's thermal-concrete buildings. From here she could see another thermal concrete building waiting twenty meters away: and rising from its roof was the tower itself. Between them lay a deep gorge, spanned by a duranium-framed bridge. Which, obviously, was not designed to withstand impacts from flying ground vehicles. There was, in fact, the body of a Jem'Hadar ground vehicle lodged halfway through the roadbed next to a large hole in the bridge's structure, but it was obvious from the angle at which it rested that it had come up through the hole from somewhere further down the mountain. Carlin looked around, but could see no obvious roads where it might have come from—and certainly no place it could have jumped off of with enough force to smash up through the bottom like that. Truly this is a bizarre planet.

She would have time to investigate the mystery of the flying ground vehicle later. For now, it sufficed that neither the vehicle nor the bridge looked like they'd be going anywhere. The roadbed was destroyed, but there was still a sturdy-looking support beam joining the two halves of the bridge. She only wished it was wider. It was only thirty centimeters thick—not a tightrope, but certainly an uncomfortable reminder of how deep the gorge was. But, it was the only way across. She stepped out onto it and tried to focus on just keeping one foot in front of another. The beam was snowy, but she kept her feet well clear of the edges and soon, she was across. Not soon enough! she thought, stepping onto the roadbed on the other side and laying a hand on the ground vehicle. It was good not to be able to see the bottom of that gorge any more. It must be over 50 meters down, she thought.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the ground vehicle. "I hear the Outsiders have taken the control room. Stay alert!" said a man's voice. He was close, clearly already on the bridge. There was no way Carlin could get back to the other side in time. She started to raise her rifle, but it was already too late. The man, a muscular Acamarian, came around the corner of the ground car and saw her.

She squeezed the trigger, but he knocked the rifle aside. The blue-white blast tore into the side of the gorge, causing an explosion of rock. The rifle itself was knocked from her hands, flying around on its strap to hit her in the back. She reached for the disruptor pistol, but there was no time to draw it. The Solarii man stepped into her, grabbing her and spinning her around with a blow to her shoulder. She tried to run, then, but he caught her from behind, arms locking around her waist. "I got one, Brothers!" he shouted. "The Outsiders are here!"

Carlin grabbed hold of the side of the ground vehicle. "Let go of me!" He pulled on her, trying to fling her to the edge. She managed to wrap her forearm around one of the grab-bars on the ground vehicle. His grip slipped down around her knees. She wriggled, struggling and kicking with her feet. At last, she managed to get one foot free. She braced her other foot against the Acamarian's chest and aimed a powerful kick to his face with the other. His head snapped back and he lost his grip on her leg. While she fell back to the roadbed, he tumbled over the edge of the bridge into the chasm below, screaming as he fell. It took several seconds for the screams to fall silent.

When they did, she heard shouts from the building ahead. The Solarii were rousing themselves. "How many of them are there?" she wondered out loud. She reached around and grabbed the disruptor rifle, setting it to burst-mode.

"I only see one of them," a Solarii shouted from the rooftop. "I'll get her!" He fired an arrow at her, but she dodged behind the ground vehicle, then fired a burst from the rifle in reply. She missed, but the shots passed close enough to make the archer cry out in alarm. "Where'd she get an assault rifle?"

"Brother Jormek had a rifle like that," said another voice, also from the roof. "She must have killed him!"

"Damn her! She musta killed everyone in the base!" This voice came from a small outbuilding to the left. "I'll kill her!"

A Solarri with a large fuel can came running from the outbuilding. She could see a glass bottle of fuel already in his hand, a makeshift fuse lit. There'll be none of that! she decided, and targeted him with a burst. Her aim was true. He fell and his fuse went off, igniting an inferno next to the main building.

"We need some help out here!" someone shouted.

More arrows pinged off the front of the ground vehicle. "She's got cover! Somebody get to ground level and rush her!"

So that's how it's going to be? There was barely ten meters between herself and the door of the main building. If they rushed her from there she'd have very little time to react…and she would need every second of it. She could not afford to hide from the archers any more. She had to deal with them. She sent another burst toward the rooftop then risked exposing herself for a clearer shot.

"She's out! Fire everything!" one of the archers shouted. One of them exposed himself for a shot, but she'd seen his position before, there behind the rusted containers. Her burst caught him full in the chest, flinging him backwards. Then she dove to the ground before the other archer could fire, hoping to spoil his shot. She was lucky. The arrow skipped off the roadbed behind her. Her second burst caught the archer before he could duck back into cover.

"What the hell! She's still alive?!" shouted someone from inside.

"We've got to protect the tower!" shouted another. "Let's get her! Send the big guy out!"

The doors opened and three Solarii men came rushing at her with crude bladed weapons, counting on their speed to reach her. Carlin had been expecting this though. She fired one burst, then two, each felling a Solarii. The third hesitated, hanging back, and for a moment Carlin thought he might flee. Then, a huge Pakled came up behind him and knocked him aside. "Outta the way! She's mine!" The blow was so hard it sent the smaller man sprawling. Once he regained his feet he quickly scrambled away. The Pakled, however, advanced.

The Pakled was not like any other melee opponent she had ever faced. He was armored, with pieces of duranium strapped to his arms, legs, and head. He also held a massive duridium shield with one hand, and a large machete in the other. Carlin fired a burst at him, but he blocked it with his shield. That duridium's got to be at least three centimeter's thick. There's no way I can get through it with the rifle. Duridium's too efficient at absorbing polarons. Her only chance would be the Klingon disruptor at maximum power—but of course, the fire-selector was broken, and without it there was no way to get a high enough power setting out of it to make any difference.

The Pakled stalked toward her. Carlin forced herself to stand, and keep her hands from reaching for her hair. Think, Carlin! What would Antori do? She had seen him in plenty of mismatched simulated fights on the holodeck. She looked around herself. Okay, first he would get off this bridge. I'll be cornered here if that Pakled gets any closer. She sidestepped quickly, moving off the bridge and around to the left. The Pakled followed her movements, continuing toward her at a steady pace. Okay, next he'd look for a weakness—but what good does that do me?! This enemy has no weakness. He's covered in high-grade armor, stalking slowly toward me, wielding a machete the only thing he can't do is hit me with a ranged weapon, or catch me in a footrace.

That was when it hit her. Of course! He's stalking slowly, and all of that high-grade armor must also be high-density. The shield alone probably masses twenty kilograms! With that much weight, it's surprising he can even move! In fact, it was surprising. He was moving fairly quickly and easily, all things considered. Even a Pakled should have found that much armor impossible to move around in, much less fight in. He must have sacrificed something for mobility, she realized. But what? Armor in the back? Circling around to the right confirmed it, but the Pakled turned his unarmored back away from her before she could get a shot. There must be something else…he shouldn't be able to move that quickly… She tried circling left again.

Then, she got a glimpse at his chest. His unarmored chest. Of course! With a shield that big, he must have decided a breastplate wouldn't matter. And it wouldn't…unless she could get an opening. The Pakled was being smart, though, keeping his shield facing her at all times. He was slower than she was, but not so slow that she could circle around him, and not so slow that he wouldn't eventually catch her. And when he does, he's going to cut me in half with one swing of that machete… Her eyes widened, but not from terror. Terror, she'd expected, but her mind was still busy analyzing, and it had thrown up one last gem of insight to surprise her. And when he swings, his upper body will turn with the swing, moving his shield away to the left and giving me a perfect opening. If she could live to take advantage of it, that is.

The rifle was too bulky for this. She let it hang from its strap and reached for her disruptor. The Pakled stepped closer and she let him. She held the disruptor low, pretending to adjust the settings. Come on, rush to the attack, put yourself off balance, one part of her mind urged the Pakled…while another part of her mind wondered fervently if she'd gone insane. The Pakled seemed to listen, though, his steps quickened to almost a trot. He rushed at her, and at the last moment moved his shield aside for the deadly swing.

There was no time for Carlin to take aim before the blow fell, but she'd known that. Instead, she focused on avoiding it. She fell backwards, under the swinging blade. She felt her back hit the snow and raised the disruptor a few degrees. Since it had already been in position—relative to her—before she dropped, that was all she needed. She fired. The Pakled took the shot full in the chest. He reeled backward, his weapon and shield falling from his hands. She fired again. This time, it was the Pakled himself who toppled.

Carlin pushed herself back to her feet. She was less than five meters from the door now and she could see another Solarii inside, the third man who'd charged at her, the one the Pakled had knocked aside. He was Tiburon and very thin. He held up his axe, aghast. "Tzdat! You're still alive?!"

"Yes…I'm still alive." She pointed the disruptor at him. She did not want to risk taking the time to reach for the rifle again—not when the man looked crazed enough to charge her at any second. "Don't make me use this!" she warned.

"You're crazy! Crazy, Outsider!" said the Tiburon. "You killed all of them!"

Carlin closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I did what I had to do, and only that," she said. "I need to get to the transmitter tower to send a distress signal. Please, let me pass. There's no need for you to die, too."

"Distress signal?" the Tiburon repeated. "You're insane! No one leaves! No one leaves!"

"Me and my shipmates are leaving, and soon," she said. "You're welcome to come with us, but I need to get to that tower."

"Come with you? Tzdat! You are insane!" said the Tiburon. "No one leaves and no one uses the tower."

"You can't stop me," Carlin warned. "I'll have to kill you if you try."

"Then I'll just have to kill you first!" The Solarii charged, raising his axe. But Carlin had kept him in her sights all along. She fired. The Tiburon dropped, a smoking hole in his chest. "T-tzdat…," he swore one final time, then fell silent.

Carlin squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself not to cry. Tears came anyway. "You stupid, stupid man! Why? Why did you do it? You knew I would have to kill you! Why?" She holstered her disruptor and surveyed the scene before her. Five men lay dead in the snow, with two more on the rooftop. Her way was clear to the tower now, but the price was high. What have I become?

"Antori to Carlin!" her combadge chirped.

She swatted it. "Carlin here!"

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said, drying her eyes. "I'm fine. The way to the tower is clear. The last man guarding it tried to take me in a suicide charge. I had to kill him."

There was a moment's silence from the other end. "I'm sorry, I know this isn't easy for you," he said. "Don't blame yourself, though. Remember, actions and motivations."

She nodded. "Are you still safe in the control room?" she asked.

"Actually, that's what I wanted to tell you. The Solarii managed to force the blast doors in the mess hall and have overrun the control room. It's only a matter of time before they figure out where you are. I want you long gone before they do!"

"And what about you?"

"The muscular regenerator gave out before they came. My ankle's a little better, enough that I was able to duck into a waste chute in the mess hall before they broke in. I'm making my way through the old refuse and maintenance sections. It's not pleasant, but it'll keep me well clear of the Solarii," he said. "There's something else I found, the way they're transmitting their signals. They're using a theta band carrier amplified by the tower to overcome the polaric radiation. Do you think you can duplicate it?"

"I'll have to read their frequencies off of the panel on the transmitter, but yes, once I do that, it should be relatively simple to modify our combadges to piggy-back on the tower's signal. Communications technology has come a long way in the last thirty years."

"Do it," said Antori, static beginning to cut in. "I'll continue…search the data crys…Sam…Good lu…" Then, the channel went completely to static.

Carlin closed it. She looked up at the tower. She still needed to climb it, do the work, and get down again before the Solarii figured out where she was. And with a trail of bodies for them to follow, it won't be that difficult, she thought bitterly. She made sure her rifle, her medkit, and the shuttle's transponder were all securely strapped to her, and then she started her climb. Anticlimactically enough, the climb started with a broad staircase leading through the abandoned Dominion building to the roof, from which she could access a broad catwalk circling the base of the transmitter tower. On one side of the tower was a ladder, stretching up almost twenty meters to the next level.

Carlin began to climb. The cold metal stung her fingers, but she didn't mind that so much as she disliked the way it rocked every time she took a step. This doesn't bode well, she thought as she passed the fifteen-meter mark. The duranium's badly corroded, and it was thin to begin with. I'm not sure it's entirely sta—

Suddenly, sheer terror cut off the thought. The ladder groaned and popped beneath her feet. She scrambled to pull her feet up as an entire section of the ladder fell away, tumbling to the base of the tower and then down the steep mountainside.

Carlin squeezed her eyes shut and clung to the remaining section of ladder. She was trapped now, with no way down. The support beams of the tower were too far apart to climb. The only way off of this tower for her now was via transporter—and the only way she was ever going to get beamed off this planet was if she reached the transmitter and managed to send that distress signal. She forced herself to open her eyes and look up. She was only a couple of meters from the catwalk at the top of this section. She forced herself to climb on, reaching the catwalk and continuing on to the second section of ladder. She managed to ascend that one without incident, though her fingertips were beginning to go numb from cold. When she reached the safety of the third catwalk, she rubbed them together in front of her face to warm them. Then she confronted the final ladder. This ladder wasn't like the others. Instead of being a proper ladder with thick rungs set between two supports, this was a series of rungs jutting out into empty space, welded to the side of the pole that made up the final segment of the tower. Just don't think about it, Carlin told herself, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. Just don't think about it and just keep climbing.

She pulled herself up the rungs one at a time, not looking down, trying not to even think of down! Everything seemed to be going fine until, about halfway up, she reached up for the next rung and it wasn't there. Her balance wavered and she caught herself, hugging the bars tightly. If she hadn't been hanging onto the bars for dear life, she would have torn every hair she'd ever grown straight out of her head right then and there. She forced herself to look up. Above her three of the rungs—about a one meter segment of the ladder—was missing, with only stubs of them remaining, barely enough for a foothold or handhold. "Oh, God," she whispered, sending up a silent prayer to a deity she didn't believe in but felt—at the moment—that she desperately needed…one that was good with heights and had mercy on falling Trill. She reached for the stub of the first rung and pulled herself up…then the second…then the third. The hardest part of this is going to be looking down so that I can put my feet on those tiny stubs, she decided, reaching for the next intact rung.

The rung bent under her weight, nearly snapping off. Carlin almost lost her balance and fell. As it was, she briefly wondered whether the panic attack the treacherous rung had just given her would be any less lethal. She quickly moved her hand one rung higher and began pulling herself up, placing her feet on the stubs of the broken rungs by feel alone—refusing to look down lest she suffer a complete mental breakdown.

Finally, she reached the top. At the top was a small metal seat, enclosed by a cage of safety bars and built just over the end of the final "ladder." She seated herself gladly, even more glad that the seat was firm and securely held her weight. That there was a Dominion maintenance panel situated directly in front of the seat seemed, at the moment, to be purely a bonus. She rubbed her hands together to warm them again and took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. I solemnly swear that if I get out of this alive, I will never again climb a ladder as long as I live, she told herself.

She tapped the maintenance panel, then, activating it. The green and purple lines of Dominionese script flowed across the panel. Carlin opened her tricorder and ran a translation algorithm. It didn't take her long to decipher the controls after that. Not much different from the communications array back on the Nautilus really, she mused. Just a lot more powerful and with a significantly less convenient user interface. She pulled up a communications display and noted the frequencies in use. 6.02 gigahertz, in the theta band…that's just within the combadge's range. She carefully removed her combadge and turned it over, tapping the tiny adjustment nodes on the back with her fingernail. There, that should do it. She entered a sequence into the panel to integrate the new channel and keep it out of the Solarii computer database, while simultaneously disabling the Solarii channel. They would probably find another way to communicate, eventually, but this would put them off balance for a little while at least.

She tapped her combadge. "Carlin to Antori!"

"Go ahead, Carlin," the response came, though static.

"I've shut down Solarii communications and got my combadge set up to piggyback on the tower's signal. The frequency is 6.02 gigahertz," she said.

"Got it." A moment later, the static cleared from the channel. "It sounds better on my end. You?"

"The same." She smiled. "We should be able to contact each other any time we like now."

"Good," he said. "I take it you made it to the top of the tower, then."

Carlin touched her hair, but made herself let go. "I did, but I can't get down again. I don't even think I can get down to the next-highest level. The ladders are pretty badly damaged and a good three-meter section of the lowest one fell off the tower on my way up."

"We'll have to get you down somehow," said Antori. "Do you still have our rope?"

Carlin reached around her back and felt for it. "I do," she said.

"If you've got something secure up there, you should have enough of it to lower yourself at least to the first platform. I think I saw some cables there for anchoring the tower," he said.

Carlin peeked down. "Yes, I see them too. They look pretty sturdy, but how is that supposed to help me?"

"Use them to zipline down," he said.

"I was afraid you were going to say something like that." Carlin pulled at her hair. The ends were frayed in one part and for the moment she couldn't remember why. "I'd much rather just wait here and be transported off by the Nautilus," she told Antori.

"Being that close to an active transmitter that powerful may make transport impossible," he pointed out. "Besides, there's no telling how long it will take a rescue party to get here. It could be days before they can arrive safely."

Carlin squeezed her eyes shut and made herself release her ponytail. "Alright. I'll go back down." She had to admit, having solid ground underneath her feet would feel a thousand times better after this. She tapped the maintenance panel and placed the transponder in the cradle on top of it. "I'm activating the emergency transponder and routing the signal through long-range communications. I'll try a theta-band carrier. That should help…" Lines of text began to scroll up the panel, indicating a strong signal. "Alright, here goes."

She keyed the audio pickup. "Mayday! Mayday! This is Lieutenant Carlin Agran of the Federation starship Nautilus. We are stranded on a planet inside the Dragon's Head Nebula. We need help, tactical assistance, and medical supplies. Please respond!"

There was silence. She knew she didn't need to wait for the signal to carry. It was a subspace band, it should reach any rescue party almost instantly. "Come on, come on," she urged. She keyed the pickup again. "Mayday! Mayday! This is Lieutenant Carlin Agran of the Nautilus—"

Suddenly, a familiar woman's voice interrupted. "This is Lieutenant-Commander Rejes Joslin of the Nautilus aboard Shuttlecraft Two. It's good to hear your voice again Lieutenant Agran! We've been searching the main island for almost an hour and we'd almost given up hope."

"So had we," Carlin said. She smiled and almost laughed, forgetting about the climb.

"We have your approximate position, ma'am, but we have too much interference for a transporter lock," said another voice, Ensign McKensey's. "We can clear some of it up with a subspace differential pulse, but I'm also reading a strong theta-band source nearby. You'll need to get clear of it."

"Right," said Carlin, feeling for the rope. It looks like I'll be going down again after all. "If you're in a shuttle, the range on the subspace differential pulse won't be very great. You'll have to get close."

"That's what we plan to do, Carlin," said a the thick voice Carlin recognized as Maiava.

"In the meantime, where are the others? Are they alright?" Rejes asked.

"Antori's leg is injured and he's nearby. Sam and Doctor Mor have gone missing. They were taken by a hostile group of survivors from previous crashes—a very large, very organized group," Carlin said. "We have to find them."

"We will. You can count on it," said Rejes. "We're heading your way now. ETA ten minutes. Shuttlecraft Two out."

Carlin closed the channel and turned back to her combadge. "Did you hear that, Antori?"

"I did," he said. A cheerful tone she hadn't heard him use in entirely too long was in his voice. He sounded on the verge of laughter, actually. "Carlin Agran, you are my hero!"

Carlin did laugh. It's finally over! "Thank you, Antori! You're my hero and so much more!" We're going home! she thought. We're going to beam up, find Sam and the Doctor, and go home! "I love you," she said into the communicator.

"I love you, too," he said. "And after this is all over, I'll find a place where we can be alone."

Carlin's heart skipped. She didn't know if she was ready to propose right now, but then again everything she'd been through these past two days made her wonder if there was really any wisdom in waiting. "I'll see you in the shuttle," she promised.

"Same to you," he said. "Antori out."

Carlin closed the channel and placed her combadge carefully back on her breast. She smiled broadly. We're going home!

Author's Note: Well, that's it! They all lived happily ever after! …At least until next week!

The first part of this chapter is a combination of Lara's entrance to the control room of the Solarii communications base in the game and an earlier conversation she has with Roth before setting off on her quest for the tower in the first place (remembering that in the game she leaves Roth before tackling the falls, whereas Carlin and Antori have stayed together up to this point). The Roth/Lara scene had excellent parting dialogue that I wanted to use, and at this point I felt it was actually plausible that Antori's non-life-threatening leg injury might force the pair to temporarily separate, while giving him a separate mission (locating Sam in the Solarii logs) would make it more palatable for both of them.

There were other changes. I shortened the approach to the tower. In the game, Lara must traverse the bridge, two switchbacks, and two small buildings before reaching the base of the tower, fighting Solarii all the way. I felt that would be a bit long and repetitive, so I compressed the space and reduced the number of enemies accordingly. Before the approach, though, there's the outer hatch on the crawlspace and the bridge itself, both of which saw changes. In the game, Lara kicks open the hatch, but that just didn't seem like Carlin's style to me, considering she had a rifle with a "disintegrate" setting to try out. In the game, also, there is no mysterious flying ground vehicle. There is a hole in the bridge, and there is a car, but there is no obvious connection between the two. I decided to make one. My explanation? Strong updrafts—exceptionally strong updrafts!

It's been said that Jem'Hadar rifles have no stun setting (which would be consistent with their character), but Kira was seen to take a direct hit from a blue beam fired from a Jem'Hadar weapon once and was knocked out but otherwise unharmed, indicating that a stun setting does exist (DS9: "The Search, part 1). The beam is different from the usual blasts fired from the rifles, and the disintegration shots look bigger than the usual blasts too (in my opinion; DS9: "By Inferno's Light"), thus the basis of Antori's observation.

Memory crystals are used for data storage in Jem'Hadar fighters, though they have never been seen on screen (DS9: "The Ship"). Acamarians are a race in Federation space that was once partially a group of nomadic scavengers (TNG: "The Vengeance Factor," also the STO mission "Acamar System Patrol"). Assuming Carlin's estimate of the gorge's depth (~50 meters or 160 feet) was correct, the Acamarian would have taken at least 3 seconds to fall, assuming Yamatai's gravity is the same as Earth's (sometimes physics is fun, sometimes it is deadly—and sometimes both). Tiburons are Federation members seen briefly in the DS9 episode "The Ship" (where one of them gets shot) and the Original Series episode "The Savage Curtain." I don't know any Tiburon swear words, so I made Tzdat up. Other than being some sort of swear word, I have no clue what the tzdat it's supposed to mean! Speaking of things I made up, there's theta band communications. Theta radiation is a type of toxic radiation in Star Trek which can affect subspace, but I'm not sure whether the two should be related. I picked the term because it sounded cool. Similarly the only significance to the frequency used by Carlin is that it falls in the low end of the microwave spectrum (if it is EM radation), which is supposed to be good for communication and that "6.02" is the first three digits of Avogadro's number (I was quite the chemistry nerd at one point).

In the game, the ladder-climbing sequence was very well done, but, for me much less frightening and personal. After all, as a player all I had to do was hold down the right key and Lara would continue climbing without a hitch, except for the occasional cutscenes. I could sit back and enjoy the ride, watch the beautiful mountain-top sunrise…it was pretty detached for me, though I still enjoyed it. For some reason writing the scene was way more intense for me. I found myself feeling very, very grateful to not be climbing any ladders.