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.

No One Leaves

USS Nautilus, Shuttle Two Crew, Junior Science Officer Alex McKensey's Log, Stardate 81630.5:

We've been searching the island where Shuttle One went down for over an hour, using subspace differential pulses to compensate for the polaric radiation. We started at the structure that sensors indicate to be the source of the polaric energy, but scans revealed no lifeforms there. We set up a search pattern and managed to find the remains of the shuttle settled on the seabed about a hundred meters off shore. We also detected numerous humanoid lifeforms scattered across the island, but no signs our missing landing party...until now.

We just received a distress signal from Carlin...I mean, Lieutenant Agran. She says Commander Drel is nearby and that Lieutenant Hayashi and Doctor Mor have been captured by hostile natives. We're on our way to pick her up now. If Lieutenant Hayashi has been captured, we need to free her as quickly as possible. I'm also concerned about some of the activity I've been seeing on long-range sensors: there's a good possibility that a Klingon ship is observing us from the other side of the Dragon's Head Nebula.

"We're approaching the Lieutenant's coordinates," said Lieutenant-Commander Rejes. "Prepare the subspace differential pulse."

"Yes, ma'am," said Alex. He tapped a quick series of sequences into the shuttle's science console. "Deflector ready, transporter standing by." He looked to her. "Waiting for your signal."

"Do it," Rejes said.

Alex triggered the pulse a blue-white disortion spread out from the prow of the shuttle, fading into the snowy peak ahead. But before Alex could even begin to decipher the sensor data, something slammed into the shuttle. The deck bucked, throwing him back in his seat as sparks showered from an overhead line. The shuttle began trembling.

"What the hell was that?" Rejes demanded.

"An polaric ion discharge, 800 megawatts!" Alex reported. "The transporter's targetting sensors are damaged."

"Our starboard nacelle's ruptured!" said the large Bolian crewman at the helm, Maiava. "We're venting plasma!"

"Where did that much energy come from?" asked Doctor Howard, hanging onto his seat.

"That's what I'd like to know," said Rejes. "I'm raising the shields. Alex, is there any chance we caused that discharge with our subspace differential pulse?"

He shook his head. "We've been doing this for more than an hour and there's been no change in ion concentration. It's not natural for that much polaric energy to be in one place either. It has to be artificial!"

"Then somebody's shooting at us," Rejes concluded.

"But there's nothing on sensors, and the discharges are coming from above us!" said Alex.

The shuttle bucked again. "Another ionic discharge," said Maiava.

Alex's studied his readouts in dismay. "That one was over a gigawatt! Shields at 53%! There's still no visible source."

"Whoever's generating the polaric radiation must be able to manipulate it," said Rejes.

"But we scanned the structure at the origin of the subspace distortions. There were no lifeforms! Besides, the level of technology you'd need-" Another discharge interrupted him, throwing him into his console. He picked himself up immediately and concentrated on his displays. He could debate theories with the Lieutenant-Commander later. "Shields are failing!" he reported.

"Mr. Maiava, get us out of here!" Rejes ordered. "We're not going to do our people any good if we get shot down!"

The engines whined as the damaged shuttle clawed toward the sky. Alex saw black clouds boiling overhead, though he remembered the sky had been almost completely clear a moment ago. Suddenly, a white-hot bolt of lightning crashed down on them, skewering the shuttle. The helm console exploded, hurling Maiava from his seat. Half of Alex's sensors went to static as they overloaded. Flames erupted in the back of the cockpit. Then, the shuttle slewed sideways and fell.

"Dare mo nokosanai!" a woman's voice hissed, but it wasn't Rejes.

"What the hell was that?!"

"No idea!" said Alex. "Communications are offline! All engines are dead! We're losing altitude!"

Doctor Howard knelt over the downed Bolian, who was already beginning to stir. "No burns, no concussion...he's lucky: he'll be alright," he pronounced. "But we'd better get him and ourselves off of this shuttle."

Rejes nodded. "I show fifteen seconds to impact. Alex! I need an emergency beam-out now!"

"I've got to clear the ionic interference!" he said, fingers flying over the console. "If we beam out now we'll be scattered all over the area, and I mean all over: meters up in the air, halfway through the ground..."

"I get it, I get it," said Rejes impatiently. "Just fix it! Ten seconds to impact!"

No pressure, Alex lied to himself. He punched in a final sequence. "I'm going to try a subspace differential pulse at maximum power. It should burn off the interference for a couple of seconds," he said. "Initiating the pulse!"

Sparks flew as the deflector shorted out, but another blue-white distortion, stronger than the first, spread out of the mountainside before them. "The interference is clearing!" said Alex. "We just need a few more seconds-"

"It'll have to do," said Rejes. "There's no time to wait!" She tapped her combadge. "Computer! Four for emergency beam out: energize!"

The transporter effect shimmered blue-white around him and the world disappeared...

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

After Antori and I infiltrated the Solarii communications base, I went alone to climb the transmitter tower and use it to send a distress signal. It was a hard climb - one I couldn't repeat if I wanted to, but it was worth it. I made contact with a rescue shuttle sent from the Nautilus. They're on their way here now! We're going to find Sam and Mor, and then we're going home!

Now, all I have to do is get down off of this tower so they can get a clear transporter lock. Antori suggested using one of the support cables as a zipline...I am not looking forward to this...

On a tranquil mountain slope beneath the transmitter tower, a large snowdrift suddenly exploded. A blue-and-black shape of a young woman in a Starfleet uniform tumbled through it, rolling for several meters before coming to rest. Carlin picked herself up, slowly at first, and then vigorously brushed off the stinging snow as she found that she was unharmed. She glanced back up at the anchoring cable she'd descended on and picked up her climbing axe, which had a freshly polished groove in the handle. "Well, I guess that's one way to get down," she said. Not that I ever want to do that again!

She walked down the slope a short distance to a level patch of ground and scanned the sky. It had taken her several minutes to descend from the maintenance panel to the highest catwalk on the tower, using the rope Antori had given her to rappel down (which unfortunately meant leaving it on the tower - but that wouldn't matter once she was aboard the rescue shuttle). Then it had taken her several more minutes to convince herself to zipline down the anchor cable. The descent after that had taken less than ten seconds. Still, it should have been plenty of time for the rescue shuttle to arrive.

She spotted movement then, against the blue sky. There it is! The sleek form of a Type-11 Shuttle swooped out from behind a jagged peak. A blue-white distortion shot from the front of the shuttle, dissolving into the landscape around Carlin. Was that a subspace differential pulse? she mused. She supposed that might help with the polaric radiation, if there was some kind of underlying subspace field. Who would have thought of that, though? she wondered, then shook her head. Whoever it was, she would own them her thanks later. For now, she needed to signal Antori and get ready to beam up herself.

She tapped her combadge. "Carlin to Antori," she said. "The shuttle's just arrived. They should be beaming us up any moment now..."

Her voice trailed of as she noticed that the blue sky above and behind the shuttle was clouding over rapidly, very rapidly. Before her eyes, black clouds appeared, boiled, and spread over the shuttle like a malevolent hand. White lightning crackled in their depths as the shuttle banked toward her. Then, a bolt of lighting lanced out at the shuttle itself, ripping open it's starboard nacelle. A blue stream of warp plasma trailed from the wounded shuttle. A second bolt slammed into the shuttle then, this one met with a flare of the shuttle's shields.

Carlin stared up in shock. This can't be happening! It isn't real! But it was real. A third bolt slammed into the shuttle, causing its shields to flare and die. The shuttle angled upward, trying to escape. Impossibly, the roiling black clouds followed it, remaining above it like an outstretched hand poised to swat the craft from the sky. A final bolt of lightning impaled the shuttle from above. Its engines trailed fire and smoke.

"Dare mo nokosanai!" a woman's voice murmured over the storm. Then the shuttle was falling. It listed to the side and began to dive. Carlin realized with alarm that it was heading straight for her.

"Carlin? Carlin!" Antori's voice called from her combadge. "Carlin, what's going on?"

"The shuttle...the shuttle's going down!"

"What?!"

"There's no time to explain!" Carlin said, backing away. "It's coming this way - it's coming down on me!" She slapped her chest to cut the channel, then turned and broke into a run. There was a road just down the slope, running down off the mountain between two boulder fields, then along the bottom of a shallow ravine. She sprinted down it. Behind her she could sense the shuttle growing closer. She heard it hit. The shockwave knocked her off her feet. She tumbled down the road several meters before she regained her feet and continued down the road at a dead run. Rocks tumbled past her, then pieces of duranium. The road bent to the right ahead, leaving the ravine. Down the slope she saw wooden ruins, then a cliff.

A shadow came over her and she ducked. The fuselage of the shuttle passed overhead, smoke and flames boiling from it. Heat and chemical smoke burned her lungs. It passed by and hit the wooden ruins ahead, ripping the roof off the the building. The walls gave way as well, tumbling over the side and down the cliff.

Something smashed down behind her. Rocks sprayed at her from the right as a nacelle tumbled past on that side, cutting off the bend in the road. Warp plasma and flame spread out from it. Carlin veered left, slipped as she left the road, and began to slide on the loose rock. Behind her, the nacelle exploded. She felt the heat. She lost her feet entirely, tumbling helplessly toward the cliff. Her hands clawed at the rock, at the wood floor of the ruin, desperate for any hold. She felt her body go over, her legs swinging through empty air.

Then, her right hand caught something, a board on the edge. She held on for dear life. Her arm strained, her shoulder was wrenched painfully, but her grip held. She reached up with her left hand and pulled herself up, clambering onto the wooden floor, which was all that remained of the ruin. It groaned under her weight. She saw a similar, intact ruin built into the edge of the cliff on her right, but over a meter of open air separated the remains of this floor from the balcony of the other ruin.

As she was contemplating jumping, she heard more crashing from above. She looked up to see several boulders and the twisted remains of the second nacelle tumbling straight at her. There was no time to contemplate anymore. She made a running leap for the other ruin, rolling as she hit the balcony. Behind her, the nacelle and the accompanying rockslide crashed over the floor of the other ruin, destroying it completely and falling with it down the cliff.

Carlin lay on the wood floor of the balcony for a second, breathing hard. She pushed herself up gingerly and looked around. She was in a series of wooden houses, ancient ruins built into the side of the cliff. A weathered, narrow path led between them, down toward a wider ledge near a break in the cliff.

Suddenly, she spotted movement down in one of the other ruins, one house down. There was a large Bolian man in a red shirt - a red uniform jacket: the modern uniform of a Starfleet crewman! He was picking himself up. She recognized him. "Maiava!" she shouted.

The big Bolian turned and waved at her, a smile spreading across his face. "Carlin! Lieutenant! It's good to see you!" he called.

She laughed in relief. "It's good to see you too!" she shouted back. He must have beamed out just before the crash, she realized. But where are the others?

Then, she saw more movement: two figures in dark, dirty clothes were making their way up the path, toward the ruin where Maiava stood. She saw the glint of metal on one. The other carried a large duridium shield. Solarii! "Maiava! Look out!" she cried, pointing.

She unslung her rifle - silently thanking whatever god watched over falling Trill that she hadn't lost any of her gear - , but before she could take aim, the Solarii passed behind the outer wall of the ruin Maiava was in and were shielded from her view.

They were not shielded from the Bolian's view, though. He drew his phaser and turned to them, but he didn't fire. "I don't want any trouble," she heard him say. "Just keep your distance, or I'll have to stun you." It would have been a perfect approach for crowd control on a civilian transport or in a rowdy messhall, but with the Solarii it was like asking a rabid predator to kindly back away from a defenseless child.

"You have to shoot them!" Carlin shouted, rushing through the ruin to the narrow path.

"I don't want to shoot anyone," Maiava said. "Just stay away." She could see him backing away. She still couldn't see the Solarii, but she could imagine them stalking him, closer every moment.

"You can't reason with them, Maiava!" She ran down the path, struggling to keep her balance and avoid the long fall down the cliff. She could not afford more time and caution, though. "They're the people who took Sam!"

"Stop now!" the Bolian warned. "Stop now or I'll shoot!"

"Do it, Maiava!" she screamed, scrambling around the ruin between them. "Shoot them now! ...That's an order!"

She dashed out over the final stretch of path, rifle in one hand, the other skimming along the cliff face for balance. She heard a phaser whine. Then it fired again. "What the-?" Maiava said, but cut off abruptly. She heard a heavy thud, then the sounds of a struggle.

She came around the corner, boots skidding on the gravel. One of the Solarii was down, the one without a shield. She could see Maiava was down as well, fallen on a pile of wood at the edge of the ruins. His phaser had been knocked from his hand and dark-skinned Orion was standing over him, shield in one hand, makeshift sword in the other. His blade was already moving, thrusting downward. Carlin swung her rifle around, bringing it to bear, but she knew it was already too late. Maiava cried out in pain.

An instant later, Carlin's finger squeezed the trigger. The rifle spat out a three-shot burst, but only the last blast hit the Orion, grazing his shoulder. The Orion grunted and reeled, coming to his feet at the edge of the ruin. She fired again. This time, she hit him squarely in the head and he fell backward over the edge and disappeared.

Carlin let her rifle hang and ran to her crewmate's side. Maiava was still conscious, his hand hovering over an ugly tritanium blade sprouting from his chest, where a human's heart was. Fortunately, a Bolian's heart was on the other side and lower down. She didn't know if that would save him in this case, though. She knelt over him and opened her tricorder.

"Sorry, Lieutenant," he said, his breathing shallow. "I should have...shot sooner..."

"You were trying to do the right thing," Carlin assured him, scanning the wound. It was massive, penetrating his right lung and puncturing his left. He was losing blood fast, too fast. The right pulmonary artery's been severed, and there may be damage to the left as well. Already a bright blue bloodstain had spread across much of his uniform. Her training told her he was going to die. Her mind refused to accept it. She clawed open her medkit and rifled through the contents. "Hold on, I'm gonna get you through this."

He laid a large, gentle hand on hers. "Don't trouble yourself...Carlin...I can tell...I can tell when my time has come."

She shook her head, willing herself not to cry.

"Let me go...in peace," he asked. "Let me return...to the First Mother..."

"You're not going to die," Carlin said stubbornly. Her fingers closed around a dermal regenerator, even though she knew it was useless for a wound this large.

"It's alright, little one..." he assured. His breathing was becoming more labored and she could see blood trickling down his chin, but the smile he gave her was not forced. "It's alright...I'm going home...just let me...go home..." His hand fell on hers and his breathing slowed. His eyes looked to the sky, which had cleared again to a flawless blue. He smiled, staring up at it. A few moments later, he stopped breathing an a long negative tone from her tricorder announced his death.

Carlin closed his eyes with trembling fingers. She gently removed his combadge and tucked it in her uniform pocket beside that of Chief Petty Officer Heidi Cook. Her whole body spasmmed and she realized she was crying, sobbing actually. She squeezed her eyes shut and the emotions boiled forth. Sorrow, guilt, rage, loss...they overwhelmed her. She had known Maiava for almost a year. Nautilus was a small ship, so enlisted and officers mixed pretty regularly, and the big Bolian man had always been friendly and exuberant, with kind words and a welcoming hug for everyone. He'd been a good shuttle pilot, too - not of Sam's caliber, but still very good. And now he was gone, dead. She had experienced loss before. Death had struck on the Nautilus more often than she cared to think about - they were at war, after all - but it had never been this close, this personal. She had never knelt there, helpless, as one of her friends died in front of her. It crushed her. Knowing he was there because he and the rest of the shuttle crew had come looking for her, in response to her distress signal, made it worse. It should have been me! Why couldn't it have been me? her heart cried out.

But there was no answer, only the blue sky above and the silent ruins around her. As her mind searched for meaning, she recalled the woman's voice during the crash. Dare mo nokosanai, the voice had said. Carlin recalled the little bit of Japanese Sam had taught her while they were roommates at the Academy, enough to piece together a translation: Dare mo - the subject: "everyone" or "no one"...nokosanai - the verb, a command: "do not leave"...

..."No one leaves!"

Author's Note: So, clearly last chapter was not the end. My apologies for the fake-out, but it is true to the plot of the game. The game does make you wonder, about thirty minutes in, whether you've downloaded the real thing or just the demo when the story line appears to be resolved with the rescue plane receiving the distress call - and then the writers laugh at you and drop that plane on Lara!

I made some superficial alterations to the nature of the subspace differential pulse. In the TNG episode "Parallels" the pulse appears as a translucent-blue stream the originates from the bow of the Enterprise-D, not from the deflector, and it is continuous (in fact, plot points hinged on the Enterprise being unable to disengage the pulse). However, I wanted the pulse to be a true pulse rather than continuous. I then changed the appearance to what suited me more and made it something the deflector generated (because between the deflector and a tricorder, you can do anything in Star Trek - in fact, interstellar law probably prohibits hooking the two together because it would grant god-like powers of technobabble).

I do not speak Japanese any more than I speak Russian or Klingon, so Google is my source on the Japanese translation. In the game, the voice speaks twice, as the plane is being hit, but it is so difficult to make out that most players were not aware it was anything but a part of the background music and effects. I only became aware of it when Lara mentioned it in dialogue later in the game and I went back to view the scene with subtitles on. The subtitles do not give the Japanese phrase used, only the translation. Even knowing it's there, I can barely make out more than the first word, but there is, in fact, a voice saying "No one leaves!" in Japanese...and it does make sense that there would be such a thing once you know what's happening on Yamatai!

700 megawatts was the power output of a Cardassian warship's weapons, according to a display in TNG: "The Wounded." The shot that took down the runabout in DS9: "Battle Lines" was at least 900 megawatts (probably more). It may seem a little off for a Bajoran to use a human curse (WTH, etc), but it is canon from the DS9 episode "The Search, Part 1" where Kira uses it. The location of the Bolian heart was established in DS9: "Field of Fire." The "First Mother" being a goddess-figure of Bolian religion comes from the Pegasus Fleet wiki article on Bolians, which was the only source on their religious beliefs I could find.

One thing I cut out of the game was the sequence where Lara jumps and runs through the collapsing ruins to reach the pilot. Even in the game, I could see no reason for the ruins to start collapsing in the first place, and in the story one of the things I want to do is make everything a little more accessible. Lara may be able to exist in a platformer-world, but Carlin is established to find climbing difficult, so I'll try to keep gratuitous climbing physics problems, and platforming out. The upshot of doing it this way here, was that I got to increase the suspense with the Solarii attack on the pilot and make Carlin more of a participant, verbally at least - which also serves to show her character development since her first encounter with the Solarii. Of course, I also changed the identity of the pilot to be Maiava, whose personality is based on Jonas Maiava in the game. In the game, of course, Jonas is a member of the original Endurance crew that is stranded on the island with Lara from the beginning, and he doesn't die (though he does say he would give himself to death if the others perished), but then, in the game there are plenty of nameless crewmembers who get slaughtered in droves. Comparatively, the away teams from the Nautilus have thusfar led charmed lives on Yamatai. It was time for that to end as Carlin begins to realize just how high the stakes really are.

Also, Maiava was wearing a red shirt. He should have known better. That never ends well in Star Trek.