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To the Crash Site

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

Stardate 81630.5: the time of Crewman Maiava's death at the hands of the Solarii, the first casualty we've suffered since we crashed on this planet - supposing Doctor Mor and Sam are both still alive. I have a bad feeling that it won't be our last either...and a worse feeling, a feeling of guilt. If I hadn't sent that distress signal...if I hadn't discovered this planet, none of this would be happening. Maiava would still be alive...

But thinking about that doesn't help anyone: not Maiava, not Sam, not Antori, or Rejes and the others. The only thing that will help them is finding a way off of this planet.

I can't get my mind off of the storm either. It came out of nowhere, out of a clear sky, and brought down a shuttle. And that voice, saying, "No one leaves" in Japanese...It's not rational! You know it's not rational, Carlin. But there must be some explanation. I...I just don't know it yet.

As Carlin knelt beside Maiava's body trying to dry her eyes, her combadge chimed.

"Drel to Agran!" said Antori's voice. "Carlin, do you read? Please respond!"

She touched the combadge. "Antori! It's good to hear your voice," she said.

"Yours too," he said. "What happened?"

"This...this storm came out of nowhere. Clouds just surrounded the shuttle, lightning struck it, and there was this voice..." She made herself stop and take a deep breath, unconsciously combing her fingers through her hair. "The shuttle almost crashed on top of me. I managed to escape into some cliffside ruins, though. Some of the shuttle's crew must have also escaped. Maiava was here with me."

"Was?"

"Was," she confirmed, closing her eyes and trying to shut out the memory. "The Solarii got to him before I did. I...I watched him die, Antori."

"That's horrible," said Antori. "Are you alright? Are you safe?"

"Yes, I am." Carlin sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "The Solarii are dead."

"Good," he said. "Listen, Carlin, I'm outside the base, overlooking the mountain village where we camped last night. I saw the crash from here. You must be close to my position. We need to regroup and decide our best course of action."

"But what about the body?" Carlin asked.

"Take the combadge and anything useful," Antori advised. "Especially weapons."

"But Maiava..."

"We don't have time for a proper funeral, and none of the predators we've seen on this planet so far have the right biochemistry to bother the body. We can beam it up and give him a proper funeral later. Right now, we need to focus on rescuing the living," said Antori. "Just get back here safe, okay?"

"Alright," she said, picking up Maiava's phaser and forcing herself to rise. "I'm on my way." She clipped the phaser to her hip and closed the channel.

She looked around herself to get her bearings. She was about halfway up a cliff overlooking a steep gorge. To her right the gorge rose up the mountainside among unfamiliar crags and valleys. To her left it followed a 90-degree concave bend in the cliff face then wound around a large rocky prominence, opening up as it did so. She could see more ruins at the bottom. On the other side of the prominence she could see that the cliff continued even if the gorge did not. She also spied a familiar landmark on that side. The golden statue! I remember seeing that this morning from Antori's hidden camp in the basement of that ruin. If the statue's over there, and Antori's overlooking his old camp somewhere, she thought, then he must be on the cliff to the left, just past that rocky prominence.

She returned to the ledge path and followed it down through the ruins. The ledge followed the cliff through the bend, then broadened and turned to the left, heading up a ravine that formed a gap in the cliff between the bend and the rocky prominance, about halfway up the cliff face. Carlin had no choice but to follow. This isn't good, she thought. If this path doesn't change direction soon, it'll wind up leading me away from Antori.

But the path did not change direction again. Instead it wound steadily up the side of the mountain and past a few more Japanese ruins before petering out. Near the end of the trail, though, Carlin noticed the wreck of a Jem'Hadar ground car, and beside that a duranium door set into the side of the ravine. She scanned it. This looks like the entrance to an old mine, but there's pretty good airflow throughout. It might lead to the other side of the cliff, beyond the prominence and closer to Antori. She decided to give it a try. There was no power to the doors, but they were already partially open. She managed to force one of them back in its track just far enough for her to squeeze through. She could see light from the other side, further down, but the tunnel was still pretty dark. It must not be very long, though, she thought. She started toward the light while fishing her palm beacon out of a jacket pocket.

She should have known better. She hadn't managed to pull out the beacon yet or take more than three steps before the ground dropped out beneath her left foot. Her right foot slipped on gravel and suddenly she was rolling down a slope in the dark. She tucked her head, trying to protect herself from rocks. After a few moments, her roll stopped. She picked herself up and checked herself for injury. Nothing but a few scratches, she noted, grateful that it hadn't been any worse. She wasn't far from the other entrance now, and she could see enough by the daylight streaming in from the other side that she didn't have to worry about slipping and falling. That wasn't all she saw either. The other entrance was open, revealing an unobstructed view of the golden statue over the mountain villiage. I must be close to Antori now! she thought, hurrying forward into the daylight.

"Stop!" a voice suddenly shouted from her right. Carlin turned, reaching for her rifle before realizing the voice was Antori's. She was surprised. From the look on his face, he was equally surprised. He lowered his bow and relaxed the string. "Sorry, I thought there were a bunch of Solarii coming through that tunnel with all the crashing," he said.

"No, just one clumsy Trill," said Carlin sheepishly.

"Glad to hear it," said Antori, putting an arm around her and hugging her tightly. She hugged him back, and let herself forget the world for a moment in the comforting strength of his embrace.

But the world would not remain forgotten forever. After too brief a moment, Carlin let him go and opened her eyes. She saw black smoke rising from the ruins below. It was fresh smoke. She moved closer to the edge and saw a newwreck marring the Japanese ruins below. She gasped. It was the shuttle, or it's fuselage at least. It rested in two pieces at the bottom of an ugly scar it had gouged across the village, cutting right through the ruin where she and Antori had spent the night. It's aft section still was burning and spilling smoke.

"I'm glad you didn't go back to our old camp," she said, trembling.

"You and me both," said Antori, putting an arm around her shoulder. He gave her a concerned look. "Are you sure you're okay."

She nodded. "I can't get it out of my head though. One minute they were fine. The next, this storm came out of nowhere and brought down the shuttle. And now they could all be dead..."

"You said Maiava got out," said Drel. "He wouldn't have left alone. The others likely beamed out in time as well. Though where they went..."

"The polaric energy could have diffracted their transport coordinates, scattering the team across the island. Since Maiava was alone, I suppose that's probably what happened," she said. "And if they're scattered, they'll be easy prey for the Solarii."

"Rejes is tough and smart," said Antori. "If anyone can find her people and get them through, it's her."

"I hope you're right." She felt a tear sliding down her cheek and she wiped it away. "I'm sorry. None of this would have happened if I hadn't found this planet or made that distress call."

He shook his head. "This isn't your fault."

"I called them here."

"And if you hadn't? The shuttle was already searching for us when you made the distress call."

"Maiava at least would still be alive...," she insisted.

"You don't know that," said Antori. "And you had no way of knowing that the shuttle would crash like that, did you?"

She shook her head.

"Then don't blame yourself," he said, wiping her cheek. "A guilty look doesn't suit you."

She offered him a small smile. "Thanks," she said, then sighed. "So, what's our next move?"

"We need to go down to the shuttle," he said.

"Planning on salvaging some supplies?" she asked.

"If we can, yes, but the flight recorder is the real prize," Antori said. "If I can combine the sensor records on it with the Solarii communications logs from the data crystal, I should be able to figure out exactly where Sam is being held. The logs reference some particular ruins and wrecks which the shuttle should have been able to see from the air."

Carlin nodded. It sounded good enough. "What if the flight recorder's damaged, though?"

"It won't be," Drel assured her. "I helped design the Type-11 shuttle, or at least, Perciv did. The recorder's in an armored shell mounted in the forward section, under the co-pilot's seat. A crash like this wouldn't hurt it, and to make the data irretrievable, you'd have to do something so severe to the shuttle that the rest of it would probably be vaporized."

"Ah," said Carlin. Perciv was the Drel symbiont's first host, before Antori, and the process of joining with the Drel symbiont had given Antori access to all of the previous host's memories and experiences - most of which related to his time on the design board at Utopia Planitia. "I had forgotten you helped with shuttles, too," she said. She turned to study the ledge they were on, looking for a way down. "I hope we don't have to climb back down the falls to reach the shuttle," she said.

"No need," said Antori. "We'll rappel down."

"I had to leave our rope on the communications tower, though," she pointed out.

"We won't need it. The Solarii were kind enough to leave us a new one," he said, pointing to a rope that had been anchored to a tree a half dozen meters away and left to dangle down the cliff all the way to the bottom.

"The Solarii were here? When?"

"Three beamed in just before the crash. It kept them occupied, so they didn't notice me," said Antori. "They rappelled down to the crash site not long before you arrived."

"Then I'll have to deal with heights again, and Solarii." Carlin took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was doing this for Sam, and that Antori was going to be with her this time. She moved her hands away from her hair. "Alright, let's do this."

They moved down the ledge to where the rope hung and peered over the cliff for any sign of the Solarii. "I don't see them," Carlin said.

"They're down there somewhere," said Antori. "They probably don't expect anyone to follow them, though, so they shouldn't be watching their backs. We should be fine." He stepped back from the edge and winced.

Carlin turned to him. "How's the ankle?" she asked, pulling out her tricorder.

"It's fine," he assured her.

She studied the results of her scan and managed not to wince in sympathy. If I don't get him off of that ankle soon and get it properly treated, he may wind up walking with a limp for the rest of his life. Under the circumstances, though, there was nothing she could do for him. "You and I have very different ideas of fine," she said.

"I'll manage," he said. "Just let me go down first."

She nodded. "You'll need these then," she said, handing him the Jem'Hadar rifle and the Klingon disruptor. "I'll be fine without them. Maiava had a phaser," she explained.

He secured the weapons, then tied a loop of rope around himself as a crude harness. He backed slowly off the edge of the cliff then began a careful descent. Once he'd gone down a few meters, Carlin followed his lead, roping in and backing over the edge of the cliff to rappel down...while trying very hard not to think about what would happen to her if anything went wrong during the descent. It wasn't as bad as climbing the treacherous ladders on the communication tower, or zip-lining down the support cable, but it was still plenty nerve-wracking. Fortunately, no problems arose to justify the nervousness and they reached the bottom without incident.

Carlin and Antori untied themselves from the rope and started along a path at the base of the cliff, which led into the old Japanese village. She was just about to comment on their luck with the descent when Antori held a finger to his lips and went into a crouch, hiding behind an overturned ancient handcart in an alley between two ruins. Carlin followed suit, drawing her phaser.

Footsteps echoed off the porch of the ruin to their right. "This hut's clear," a man's voice reported.

"Check the othersss," said a distinctly reptilian voice.

"We're not gonna find anything," said another voice, coming from an overgrown courtyard at the end of the alley. "They're all dead, except the two up in the communications base, and they ain't comin' down here."

"You'rrre probably right, but we have ourrr ordersss," said the reptile. "Keep searching! I'll be down by the shhuttle." Heavy footfalls retreated off to the right.

Meanwhile, two pairs of boots shuffled around in the grass in the courtyard. "Yeah, we'll keep looking," said one of the men.

"Waste of fucking time," the second muttered.

Carlin peeked over the edge of the handcart, then ducked back behind it again. "Looks like there's just the two of them: a Human and an Andorian," she whispered.

Antori mouthed, Use handsignals. They might hear you.

But I don't remember all of the handsignals, Carlin mouthed back.

What?

Carlin shook her head and shrugged, helpless.

Antori rolled his eyes.

Suddenly, they heard footsteps close by. Carlin froze, then realized the steps were coming from the porch at the front of the house on the left. Antori peeked out, then signaled to her. He held up one finger then pointed left, toward the porch. He repeated the gesture then, pointing ahead toward the courtyard. Two men: one on the porch, one in the courtyard. He pointed to himself, hefted his bow, and jabbed a thumb toward the courtyard. Then he pointed to Carlin and jabbed a thumb to the porch. I'll take the one in the courtyard; you take the one on the porch.

She drew her phaser, but he shook his head and tapped her medkit. She nodded. The phaser would be too loud if that other Solarii was still nearby. She pulled out a hypospray instead. Since Humans and Andorians had radically different biochemistry, she prepared two vials, one containing noxihol and the other kayolane. She preset the hypospray for twenty ccs. That should be plenty of either drug. Then she waited for Antori to prepare his bow and then she stepped out from behind the handcart on his signal.

The Human was across the courtyard, his back to her while he peered through a gap in the wall of another ruin. That left the Andorian. Antori pushed himself to his feet and aimed his bow at the Human's back. He nodded to her. She loaded the vial of noxihol and crept toward the porch. The porch was raised about a meter off of the ground and the Andorian stood at the far end of it, his back to her as he stared off in the direction of the crash site. No other Solarii were visible. Carlin pushed herself up onto the deck and tip-toed up behind the Andorian. He started to turn. She injected him in the neck before he could see her, and he collapsed with a moan.

The other Solarii, the Human, turned toward the sound. He opened his mouth to shout, but Antori's arrow caught him in the throat. He gurgled blood and fell into the grass. Antori limped around the corner and nocked another arrow to his bow. He saw her standing over the downed Andorian and nodded his approval. "Let's go to the shuttle," he said, gesturing through the ruins.

"There'll be at least one more Solarii there, waiting for us," Carlin said.

Antori nodded. "It sounded like a Gorn, too," he said.

She gave him a concerned look. "If you try to wrestle it...," she began, only half teasing.

He smirked. "Don't worry. If I've learned anything from fighting them in melee on the holodeck it's to use ranged weapons on them whenever possible, and I have several of those." He tucked the bow away and rested his hand on the butt of the polaron rifle.

She repacked her medkit and they continued, moving down the street between the wooden ruins. The plume of smoke from the shuttle was their guide. It wasn't long before they came into sight of the shuttle. The crash had leveled several buildings and the forward end of the shuttle was partway through the wall of a two-story wooden house, separated from the burning aft end by half a dozen meters. Three Solarii were gathered around the aft section, prying open access panels and ripping out components while staying as far away from the flames as they could. One of the Solarii was the Gorn, a towering mass of muscle and leathery hide. Carlin and Antori ducked into the doorway of the nearest ruin before they could be seen.

Fortunately, the Solarii were fully occupied scavenging pieces of the shuttle. Peeking out, Carlin noticed that they weren't taking any of the salvageable components. The Gorn tore the cover off a storage hatch and held it experimentally in front of him, as a crude shield, completely ignoring the tricorders behind the hatch. Another Solarii, a Romulan, tossed aside a working phase discriminator but took interest in a piece of a shattered EPS conduit, wrapping part of it with a torn strip of cloth to form the hilt of a crude knife.

"Father Matan will kill us if he finds out we've scavenged a wreck without him," said the third Solarii, a Yridian who hung back a bit from the others.

"The communicationsss network isss down," said the Gorn. "I'm surrre he'll be willing to make an exssseption."

"Besides, look at all we've found so far?" said the Romulan, testing the edge of his knife. "This thing is tempered tritanium - it'll never get dull!"

The Yridian licked his lips and started prying an access panel off of the hull, closer to the flames. "We should see if any of the Starfleet weapons are still around."

"Matan will confissscate them," the Gorn warned. "Ourrr good Father doesss not like the gunsss to go to anyone but hisss lieutenantsss...unlessss it'sss an emergensssy."

"Well, you heard how those Outsiders attacked the communications base: I'd call that an emergency," said the Romulan. He tucked away his new knife and glanced in Carlin's direction. She ducked out of sight.

For a moment, she was worried he'd seen her anyway, then the Yridian shouted, "Whoa! Paydirt! The tank is full!"

She heard some kind of liquid splashing into the dirt. "They must have found the fuel tank for the landing jets," Drel muttered.

Carlin was about to ask what the Solarii would want with fuel for the landing jets when the Romulan shouted, "Fvadt! That stuff is gold! We can fill a hundred flame-bottles with that!"

"They're called Molotov's Cocktails," said the Yridian. "They're an ancient human tradition." The liquid sounds changed to the glugging of a container being filled up rapidly.

"Whatever, just don't let any of it leak out!" said the Romulan.

"My canister's full," the Yridian warned. The splashing sound of fuel hitting the mud resumed. "Quick get me another!"

"Take mine," said the Romulan.

"I sssaw some morrre in that ruin," said the Gorn. "I'll get them."

Heavy footsteps began approaching Antori and Carlin's hiding place. She felt her panic rising and gripped her phaser. Beside her, Antori pushed himself up on one knee and sighted along his rifle. He tapped her arm and she swung out as well, leveling her phaser.

"Outsssidersss!" the Gorn shouted.

The Gorn raised his makeshift shield in one hand, blocking Antori's first shot. Behind him, the Romulan drew his knife and the Yridian panicked, backing away and tripping. Fuel spilled out of his container, splashing into the flames. Carlin saw the explosion coming a split second before it happened and ducked behind the wall. The heat hit her first, even behind the wall, followed by the roar of the blast, which nearly drowned out the screams of the dying Romulan.

Carlin glanced over at Antori, to see if he was okay. His face was red, but he was unharmed. He ducked suddenly as a access hatch from the shuttle came flying through the window where his head had been a second before. "Are they all dead?" she asked him.

"Just the Yridian and the Romulan - not the Gorn!" said Antori.

As if to prove his point, a green reptilian fist pounded through the wooden wall between them. Carlin rolled away, coming to her feet outside of the ruin. She saw him then. The scales on his back were blackened, but he showed no sign of injury. And he saw her. The Gorn hissed and ripped his fist out of the wall, turning to face her with lumbering steps. Carlin raised her phaser and fired. The Gorn jerked, but did not go down. She checked the setting. Heavy stun: I'm going to need something more powerful! But the Gorn was only a few strides away. There was no time to increase the power!

Fortunately, she didn't have to. The Jem'Hadar rifle pounded out a staccato burst into the Gorn and he collapsed with a smoking hold in his back. Antori pushed himself to his feet and limped through the hole in the ruin's wall. "I agree with you," he said. "No Gorn-wrestling."

Carlin nodded. "Thanks," she said, stroking her hair with one hand. "I...I almost thought I was going to have to try out some of your moves." She adjusted the setting on her phaser up to kill and holstered it.

With the Solarii out of the way, they turned their attention to the wreck of the shuttle. Carlin moved to Antori's left side and helped him limp over to where the forward section of the shuttle rested. He stepped inside and made his way to the copilot's console, which was one of the few left intact. He brushed pieces of shattered transparent aluminum off of the surface and docked his tricorder with the console interface. The console lit up, though the illumination was weak and unsteady and the displays showed only static. "It's drawing power from my tricorder, so we'll need to be quick about this," he said, tapping in a sequence. The displays switched to displaying pre-recorded data. "There, I've accessed the flight recorder's logs."

"What are we looking for?" asked Carlin, moving to stand beside him at the console.

"A Romulan warbird," said Drel. "Dhelan-class."

"The one you pointed out back on the Nautilus?" asked Carlin.

"Possibly," said Antori. "It'll be next to an old Japanese palace and a bunch of makeshift dwellings. The Solarii communications indicate that they've gotten some of the warbird's systems up and running using some kind of natural gas to substitute for the ejected singularity core. Among them is the only working transporter on the planet."

"My initial scans of the camp where Sam disappeared indicated a Romulan transporter had been used," said Carlin.

"Exactly," he said. "The Solarii must have taken her there, and the logs indicate that they use the old palace as a fortress and that most of their dwellings are in the shantytown around the warbird."

"That makes sense," she said. "The transporter would give them rapid access to anywhere on the planet, and a quick avenue of retreat if things went wrong."

He nodded. "See, you are a quick learner," he said.

She blushed and changed the topic, pulling up the sensor logs. "The question is, where is the warbird?"

"I remember it was on this main island," Antori said.

"That's good, but the island is almost twenty kilometers across," she pointed out.

Antori pressed a few buttons, bringing up a rough map of the area the shuttle had surveyed during its search. "Try there," he said. "In the southeastern basin."

Carlin called up one of the scans of that area. "I don't see anything...wait! Is that a wing?"

"It's too small." He zoomed out. "See, it's part of a Vulcan shuttle."

"But there are definitely structures built all around it," she said. "They read as duranium, titanium, beritium, dentarium...all common hull alloys, and look at how many lifeform readings there are!"

"Could be the Solarii base," he admitted. "Let's zoom out again." They zoomed out until they were viewing a composite of three separate scans, 400 meters across in total.

"There! That elevated section definitely looks like the warbird you pointed out on the bridge," she said. "Roll in a little low fog to cover these structures around it, and you'd have the exact same image."

He nodded, integrating a couple more scans. "And there's the palace," he said, pointing to a massive, multi-layered structure on a hill above the wreck of the warbird. "This is definitely where they're holding Sam."

"But where in here?" Carlin asked. "There are lifeforms all over the place and I don't see a combadge locator beacon in any of this."

"The logs said she was being held in a cavern 'in the Starfleet shuttlepod,'" said Antori.

"Well, I'm definitely reading caverns," said Carlin. "If she was down there, the rock could block her lifesigns and transponder signal from a normal scan." She tapped up the metallurgical analysis. "As for the shuttlepod...there are several large metallic masses down there. It could be any one of those."

"This one here in the upper cavern," said Antori. "It contains ditanium. The Federation used it in building the Type-18 shuttlepods, and those are the only ones I can think of with the power to make it to this planet on their own."

Carlin increased the resolution to maximum. "It looks like it's suspended four or five meters up. That could definitely be a problem."

"It's a problem the Solarii will have to have a solution to as well, unless they just beam new prisoners in."

"Good point," she said. "They'd have to lower the shuttlepod somehow or have a ramp or lift in place. There's a small deposit of kelbonite ore between that part of the cavern and the warbird. They wouldn't be able to beam in or out."

"Then that's our prison," said Antori. "Now, what's our plan?"

"That's the hard part," said Carlin, going back to the log of the shuttle's route. "If this information is accurate, the crash site is almost ten kilometers from the Solarii main base, with mountainous terrain in between."

"We'll just have to hike it," said Antori. He moved over to one of the weapons lockers and pulled it open. He frowned and pulled out a phaser sniper rifle, then another. "Most of these look like they took some damage in the crash, fractured internal components, but I should be able to get a working one put together out of all the different parts," he said. "It could give us an edge. These things have much longer range than anything we've seen the Solarii use thusfar."

"We'll still have to get over those mountains to use it," Carlin pointed out. She wasn't confident Antori could do that with his ankle in that condition, and the shuttle's medkits had been stowed in the aft section, which had been destroyed in the explosion.

Suddenly, Antori's combadge chimed while Carlin's played static. "This is Lieu...Commander Rejes...Starfleet emergency channel. Drel! Maiava! Agran! If you can hear this...respond!"

Antori tapped his combadge. "I read you, Rejes," he said. "Switch your combadge to transmit in the theta band, frequency..."

"6.02 gigahertz," said Carlin.

"6.02 gigahertz," he repeated.

"Got it!" There was a pause, then, the transmission cleared up. "That sounds a lot better," she said. "Are you with Lieutenant Agran?"

"Yes, she's here with me," said Antori. "We saw Crewman Maiava, too, but the Solarii found him first."

"The Solarii?" Rejes repeated.

"That's what the group of hostile survivors calls themselves," said Antori. "They captured Sam and Doctor Mor, and they killed Maiava."

"Bastards," Rejes said simply. "I've managed to find Doctor Howard, he's with me. We got a signal a few minutes ago from Alex, too. We've tracked him to some sort of city underneath an old warbird and a Japanese palace."

"Be careful!" Antori warned. "That place is the Solarii main base. That's where we believe they're holding Sam and Doctor Mor."

"Well it's pretty chaotic right now. Lots of activity in the warbird, lots of shouting. Seems like their having a hard time communicating," said Rejes.

"We took out their communications relay when we sent our distress signal," said Antori. "It'll keep them off balance for a little while at least."

"Best put that time to use, then," said Rejes. "According to our last communication from Alex, he's in a cavern of some sort beneath the ruins. There aren't any Solarii there and he's found the exit. We'll get in and get out before they know we're there." She paused. "Any idea where they're holding Hayashi and Mor?"

"In a cavern under the palace," he answered. "The entrance should be just below a bridge leading to the palace gates from the highlands."

"I see it," said Rejes. "We'll break her and the Doctor out too, if we can."

"We'll join you as quickly as we can, but don't wait for us," said Antori. "We're ten kilometers away up on a mountain. It will take us a few hours to reach you."

"Got it!" said the Bajoran woman. "Good luck! Rejes out!"

Antori closed the channel and turned to Carlin. "I guess that gives us our plan," he said.

"Do you think it'll work?" asked Carlin.

"That depends on how unsettled the Solarii are by the loss of their communications, and how long they stay down," said Antori.

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Then we'd better be there to back Rejes up," he said. He handed the Jem'Hadar rifle to her while he slung both of the damaged phaser rifles over his own shoulder. "Come on, let's get moving!"

Author's Note: Carlin's log here is partially based on one of Lara's Journals, though it also tries to work in the sense of guilt Lara felt after the plane crash in the game.

Judging from the dialogue in chapter 19, at least one of the Solarii is actually still alive, since Maiava threatened to stun him and was probably not using the lethal setting. Yet on heavy stun he'd still be knocked out for a while yet and Carlin is under a lot of stress. I think it's understandable that she'd make a mistake.

Various canon references establish that Bolian biochemistry is different from that of most other species and that their blue blood does not play well with others (some have even theorized that it's acidic). Since the only wildlife seen on the island so far is relocated Earth species, it's safe to say that all of them would be ill-advised to snack on a Bolian. Perciv Drel, the Drel symbiont's previous host, was mentioned briefly in chapter 3 of "The Best Revenge" (from which also come the Gorn-wrestling references) The reminder about the realities of life as a joined Trill does have a point later in the story. Noxihol is completely made up by me. Yridians are a race of smugglers and ne'er-do-wells seen in several episodes of TNG and DS9. In Star Trek Online, they have dealings with less savory aspects of the Klingon Empire. The Dhelan-class warbird is the tier-2 Romulan ship.

In the game, the Solarii do not leave a rope for rappelling down the cliff-face. There's simply a random zipline there (and everywhere else: seriously, the whole island is covered in the things!), but I wanted to make Antori and Carlin's way down somewhat more believable, and the Solarii would hardly deploy a scavenging team directly in the path of a falling shuttlecraft, so I thought it would make sense. The mook dialogue here is very heavily based on that of the Solarii in the game. In the game, however, going to the crash site immediately will reward you with exactly nothing in terms of enemies. You can find Solarii there later, but they're doing something different from the Solarii in this chapter (one of them's cutting apart the plane with a welding torch while the other recites poetry). The Solarii dialogue at the shuttle is actually borrowed from a separate scene that occurs later in the game, where Lara comes upon three Solarii draining a gas tank from the plane, which apparently fell down separately. It is possible to kill at least two of these in a fuel explosion, but the explosion is started by Lara's shooting and not Solarii clumsiness.

There is nothing in the canon to suggest that Gorn are immune to stun settings, but given their enormous size and thick skin, it does make some sense. There is, at least, nothing in the canon to contradict it.