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.
Sacrifice and Loss
USS Nautilus, Shuttle One Crew, Senior Science Officer Carlin Agran's Log, Stardate 81630.8:
Antori and I have left the crash site of shuttle two and are proceeding on foot to the Solarii city. We found a road, which Antori believes will lead us there through the mountains, but it will still be a long journey. We have to try though. If Rejes and the others can't rescue Sam and Doctor Mor while the Solarii communications blackout is still in effect, they'll need all the help they can get to break her out.
Antori took a couple of phaser sniper rifles from the shuttle's armory. He thinks he can find the parts between the two of them to get one working, but for now the only thing they're being used as is crutches. Antori's ankle injury is getting worse, and I'm becoming concerned.
Carlin glanced at Antori as he leaned on one of the phaser rifles. "Are you sure you'll be alright?" she asked.
Antori nodded. "Fine," he said. "I just need a moment to rest."
Carlin pulled out her tricorder and ran a scan of his ankle. She frowned. "I can give you something for the pain and to take down the swelling, but the ligaments are still torn. They'll get worse if I can't treat it soon," she said guiltily.
He accepted her treatment and offered her a smile. "At least we found this path," he said, indicating the worn stone-paved road that cut through the trees along the slopes of the mountain. "It'll make getting to the Solarii city a lot easier."
Carlin regarded the winding road dubiously. She set her tricorder to a general scan, but the range was too limited to offer any clue as to where the road led. "Are you sure the road will take us there?"
Antori nodded. "All roads lead to Rome."
She gave him a quizzical look.
"It's an expression," he said, "shorthand for a universal design principle. Every transportation system has to have at least one central hub, and invariably it will be at a place of importance, whether by original design or by virtue of the importance of the hub itself. It's why villages and trading stations tend to pop up at terrestrial and interstellar crossroads, why any turbolift on a starship can be used to gain access to the bridge, why the Jeffrey's tube system centers on main engineering, and why a mountain villiage on Yamatai - if that's what this island actually is - must have a main road connecting it to the palace Shuttle Two saw from the air. Even if we picked the wrong path, we're sure to find the right one eventually."
"You make it sound so easy," said Carlin.
"It is easy," he assured her, putting an arm out for her support. "You'll see."
She was about to put away her tricorder and join him when her combadge went off. "This is Lieut...Hayashi of...Nautilus to anyone! I need help! I repeat..."
Carlin tapped her combadge before she could finish. "Sam! This is Carlin. Hold on, we're on our way to rescue you!"
"No need," she said. "I've already escaped...Solarii, but Alex McKensey and Doc...oward were captured and the Solarii are holding them in my place. They killed Lieutenant...Rejes."
Antori straightened. "They killed Rejes?" But Sam couldn't hear him.
"Where are you now?" Carlin asked.
"...arid canyon...Oni...north of the second shuttle crash site...There's a large golden statue of Himiko..." Sam's voice trailed off into static.
"Sam, you're breaking up!" said Carlin. "Adjust your combadge to transmit in the theta-band, frequency 6.02 gigahertz." There was no reply. "Sam! Sam, do you read me?" She tugged at her hair. "She can't hear me. I've lost her." She checked her tricorder. "I have a vector for her transmission, but nothing more."
"She's free of the Solarii," said Antori. "Alex and Doctor Howard are our main concern now. Rejes is dead and they're captured. From what Sam said, they're being held in the same place she was."
"We should get Sam first," she said. "She's nearby and she said she needs help."
He shook his head. "We have no idea where she is."
"I have a vector, and she mentioned a large golden statue." Carlin turned and pointed back the way they'd come. "It's right there!"
"And where is she in relationship to the statue?" Antori asked pointedly.
Carlin tugged at her hair. She had no answer for that. "Well we can't just leave her!" she said. "She was talking about the Oni, the race the Vorta talked about. She may be in trouble!" She began to pace nervously.
"Meanwhile Ensign McKensey and Doctors Howard and Mor are definitely in trouble. We can't save everyone. You have to make a sacrifice."
Carlin glared at him and tugged her hair sharply. "Don't talk to me about sacrifices," she said, her voice low and strained. "I watched Maiava die: I know about sacrifices!"
Antori shook his head gently. "No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make, loss is a choice made for you."
Carlin shot him an exasperated look. "Antori! This is Sam, we're talking about: Sam! I can't just choose to let her die!" She took a deep breath and brushed her hair back. "I'm going after her," she said.
"We need to keep moving to the old palace," he said.
"You do that," she said. "I'll go get Sam and meet up with you. I'll move faster without your injury." It was true, but it was also a low blow and she knew it. She couldn't help it though: Sam was one of her closest friends, her only friend from the Academy days, and when she'd mentioned the Oni, Carlin's stomach had gone cold. There was no way she was going to abandon her.
Antori sighed and pulled off the polaron rifle. He handed it her. "Be quick and be careful," he said.
"I will," she said, taking the rifle and strapping it on. "You do the same." Then, she turned and walked away before she could change her mind.
She walked quickly, trying to settle her turbulent emotions. She and Antori had experienced their share of disagreements before, but nothing like this: never with someone else's life at stake. And now it's with three lives at stake, maybe four if Doctor Mor is still alive. Carlin shuddered. She knew intellectually why Antori had made his decision. Captain Sokar would probably have agreed with it: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or something like that. But logic isn't the only way to make decisions, she thought. She had seen Maiava die and she had seen the wounds on the body of the Vorta, listened to his logs, his dying words...and she knew Sam. I have to find her! If she didn't and Sam later turned up dead, she knew she'd never forgive herself.
She reached the village surprisingly quickly, crossing over an old swinging wooden bridge to enter the ruins. The golden statue of the Japanese woman stood atop the cliff across from where the bridge entered the village. At first, Carlin couldn't see anything near it but unbroken cliff face, but as she came closer, she noticed a narrow opening that lead into a canyon. The canyon looked dry and its mouth was choked with wood and stone debris. Looks like that transport that went down under the falls grazed the cliff here and took out a few houses as well, she thought. She scrambled up the debris pile. Beyond it she could see a couple of wooden huts built into the cliffside and a couple of gnarled trees sprouted up out of the sand. She started past them toward the opening of the canyon, pulling out her tricorder to double-check her vector.
Suddenly, something grabbed her ankle and pulled her off her feet with a snap. The world turned upside down. She felt herself dangling a meter in the air, arms flailing. She screamed.
A Kressari in ragged clothes poked his head out of one of the huts built onto the cliff. "It's one of the Outsiders!" he said. "She's alone and caught in the snare: get her!" Two more Solarii rushed down the stairs from the other hut, one with a pair of machetes and the other with a makeshift bow. They saw Carlin and started toward her with malicious smiles.
She fumbled for a weapon. The polaron rifle had fallen to the ground, out of reach. Maiava's phaser was still secured to her hip, though. She drew it. "Stay away from me!" she shouted, brandishing the phaser unsteadily in one hand while the other hand fumbled at the rope on her ankle.
"Look out! She's armed!" said the man with the bow.
"Just rush her!" said the Kressari.
The man with the machetes rushed her. She fired. She scored a glancing hit to his torso, but it was enough to fell him. The other man drew his bow. Carlin had no time to shift her aim.
Just then, a long arrow pierced the base if the skull and neck of the Solarii archer. He collapsed lack a sack of stones. Carlin looked for the source of the shot and saw a dark-haired young woman in a soiled Starfleet uniform standing just inside the canyon, her large bow already half-drawn for another shot. "Sam!"
The Kressari ducked inside the hut, leaving them momentarily alone. Sam shifted her aim towards Carlin. "Hold still, I'll get you down," she said.
Carlin gave her a concerned look. She would have tugged at her hair, too, if she hadn't been upside down. "Sam...if you're thinking what I think you're thinking..."
"Just trust me...and brace yourself, too," she said. Then she muttered something in Japanese, exhaled, and released.
The arrowhead sliced through the snare just above Carlin's foot, dropping her back to the ground. She managed to roll with the fall and avoid injury, though the initial impact was still painful. She picked herself up and found Sam already beside her. "You know, when I came here, I thought I was going to rescue you," she said.
"You're welcome," Sam replied with a smirk. She picked up the polaron rifle. "Where did you find this?"
Before Carlin could answer, there was a sound from inside. The Kressari had returned, and her eyes went wide as she recognized what he was carrying. A plasma mini-gun! "Look out!"
Sam and Carlin ran for the cover of the debris pile as a stream of green plasma-bolts sliced through the air behind them. They ducked behind a large rock as bolts scored the debris around them. Then they were safe for a moment, though Carlin knew the cover wouldn't last long. Already she could hear weapnsfire pounding against the far side of the rock, trying to drill through it. They had less than a minute.
Suddenly, green energy swirled a dozen meters ahead of them. Four Solarii armed with a mix of modern rifles materialized in front of them and immediately started firing at the pair of Starfleet officers. Sam and Carlin ducked as a barage of energy bolts and beams slammed into the rocks above and around them. The minigun continued to hammer through the rock from the other side. "We're surrounded!"
A Solarii with a Jem'Hadar rifle fired a large bolt at them, vaporizing a rock beside them. Sam slung her bow across her back and hefted their own polaron rifle. "How do you change the settings on this thing?" she shouted.
"There's a lever on the left!" said Carlin. "Forward for vaporize, back for single-shot and stun. It's already on three-shot burst!"
Sam pushed the lever forward and braced the rifle against her shoulder. "Get ready to run into the canyon!" she shouted. "I've got a plan!" She turned and fired a large blue burst at the hut on the cliff, even though Carlin knew there was no way she could have a clear shot at the Kressari from her position. The blast vaporized the support beams beneath the hut and it collapsed. The mini-gun's fire immediately ceased.
Carlin and Sam rushed around the rock and dashed toward the opening of the canyon, staying low to avoid fire from the Solarii behind them. Carlin could see no sign of the Kressari, but she did see the minigun lying amongst the debris, venting plasma. She aimed her phaser at what looked at a vital part and fired as they ran past. The gun exploded, nearly throwing them off their feet. Behind them, the shockwave reverberated off of the cliff walls, causing rockslides from one face, then the other. In a matter of seconds, the entire mouth of the canyon was blocked by debris.
"That should hold them off for a while," said Sam. "Nice shot!"
"Same to you," said Carlin, holstering her phaser. She gestured up the canyon. "Do you know where this leads?"
Sam shook her head. "I beamed in halfway and headed straight here."
"I guess we find out together," said Carlin and they started up the canyon together. "How did you escape from the Solarii?"
"I was about to ask the same of you," said Sam. "I thought Matan captured you while we all slept together in that camp."
Carlin shook her head. "He left me. Doctor Mor and I ran into another group of Solarii later, though." She shuddered. That was not a pleasant memory. "I escaped, but I haven't seen Mor since."
"Matan brought him in," said Sam. "The little weasel traded his archaeological expertise for his freedom."
"Well, I guess any opportunity to escape is a good one to take: you can't help free your fellow prisoners if you're in a cell yourself," said Carlin. "I didn't know the Solarii had any interest in archaeology, though."
"It's a long story."
"It looks like a long canyon," said Carlin. "Tell me."
Sam explained her own imprisonment, Matan's interest in the story her grandmother had told her - the tale of Hoshi the Priestess of the Sun. Along the way, Sam wound up telling Carlin the legend herself. It was intriguing, but - as Sam had said - completely fictional. Even if it hadn't been, Carlin could see no reason why the Solarii would be so interested in it.
After the story, Sam told Carlin about Rejes' death, her own escape, and her previous escape plan that involved charging the shuttlepod's engines for a brief uncontrolled burn using her tricorder. "The thing is, when it goes off, it'll destroy the shuttle...and anyone inside who isn't wearing a crash harness," said Sam, frowning.
"Have you tried to warn Alex and Doctor Howard?"
Sam nodded. "Half a dozen times, but I can't get a clear signal."
Carlin stopped walking. "Here, let me reset your combadge," she said. Sam handed over the badge and Carlin adjusted the settings on the back, like she had her own. "When Antori and I got into the Solarii communications base, we set up our own communications network, backed the by the tower the Solarii were using." She handed the combadge back. "That should allow you clear transmissions anywhere on the island, and on most of the planet."
"Thanks," said Sam, reattaching the combadge to the breast of her uniform jacket. She tapped it. "Sam to Doctor Howard!...Sam to Ensign McKensey!" They both waited. Sam and Carlin each repeated the call twice, but there was no reply. "They must have confiscated their combadges," Sam said at last. "It would be the smart thing to do if they realized we were coordinating our actions."
"Then I guess we'll just have to rescue them before the thrusters go off," said Carlin. "And to do that, we'll need to get out of this canyon and rejoin Antori." They started walking, setting a faster pace.
"Where is the Commander?" asked Sam.
"On the road to the Solarii city, where they were holding you," said Carlin. She explained what had happened to her since she met with Antori above the burning ruins of the mountain village. When she finished describing the second shuttle crash, she hesitated. "There's one other thing," she said. "I heard something when the shuttle went down, a woman's voice in the storm...it said, Dare mo nokosanai. I think it means-"
"No one leaves," said Sam, before she could finish. "You'd better not be joking about this."
"I'm not!" Carlin insisted. "You know me: I've never pulled a practical joke in my life." She paused. "So, I was right: that is the interpretation? No one leaves?"
Sam nodded. Then she pursed her lips and frowned. "As gratifying as it is to know that teaching you Japanese and forcing you to watch anime with me turned out to have a useful purpose besides your cultural enlightenment, the creepy-voice-in-the-storm kind of overshadows it: especially when you combine it with the Oni."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, as much as it galls me to admit it, Mor was right when he told you about the origin of the name," said Sam. "The Oni are trolls, ogres, spirits, demons in the flesh, and flesh-eating demons. The word is unique to traditional Japanese culture. No one this far from Earth should have ever heard of them, much less be afraid of them."
"Or be killed by them, like the Vorta I found," said Carlin.
"Exactly." Sam shook her head. "There's too much of ancient Japan to this place: more than any twenty-two hundred year old site has a right to. Something of Himiko's kingdom is still here, something unnatural."
Carlin shook her own head. "There's always a scientific explanation."
"For creepy Japanese voices that come out of shuttle-crashing storms?"
"We were right next to an old Dominion communications base," she pointed out. "They probably had loudspeakers."
"Uh, huh," said Sam, sounding unconvinced.
Carlin climbed over a rock. "Well, it's better than resorting to the supernatural."
"I don't see anything unreasonable in admitting that it's there," said Sam. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Carlin, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Carlin looked at her friend for a moment. Something about that line seemed familiar. "That was a paraphrase of something, wasn't it?" she asked. "Shakespeare?"
Sam nodded proudly. "Hamlet, Act One, Scene Five. I'm surprised you know him."
"It's hard to miss an author so popular that even the Klingons are obsessed with him."
"Granted," said Sam. They came around a corner and she paused to examine a six-meter-high statue of a robed woman carved into the cliff before them. Sun rays were drawn spreading out from her in a relief behind the statue. Other statues of shorter robed women stood around it, though one of them had fallen. "Speaking of hard to miss..."
"Himiko?"
"And members of her court, yes, or at least probably yes," said Sam. "It could be any Sun Queen, really. These ruins predate the Kofun period."
"I thought Himiko was the only Sun Queen," said Carlin.
Sam shook her head. "She was just the first, and the most famous. The Yayoi period lasted for six hundred years, during which time Japan was always ruled by a Sun Queen reigning out of Yamatai. It couldn't have been the same one. Human lifespans are too short. There must have been a dozen or more of them." She moved on to a smaller relief scene carved into the cliff face a little further on. The scene incorporated three statues of women, their hands outstreched as if to receive some gift, as they walked up a path through stylized swirling clouds. "A pilgrimage," Sam interpreted. "This may be its old route. If so, it should end at a shrine or a monastery of some sort - probably a big important one, judging from all of the statues leading here."
"Do you think they'll have a way out there?" asked Carlin.
"There should be," said Sam. "A large important monastery should have at least one other way in or out, so that supplies can be run without interrupting the flow of pilgrims. We'll find out soon enough, one way or the other. We can't be far now."
They weren't. Just five minutes later the canyon opened up and dropped into an even deeper, narrow gorge that cut straight across its path. The pilgrim's road continued, though, crossing the gorge via a stone-paved bridge supported by thick wooden beams. Beyond it stood the facade of a three-story building, complete with two large jade statues of robed women Carlin could only assume were meant to be the Sun Queen and her attendants. The building stretched for two dozen meters on either side and featured two towers and a large decorated" bronze door directly across from them.
Sam gasped and smiled broadly. "Incredible!" she said. "When you told me the polaric radiation had preserved the buildings, I never expected anything like this! It has some storm damage, but otherwise it looks completely intact." She stepped toward it, muttering to herself. "Somewhat advance in materials and construction, but definitely Yayoi period architecture..."
They started across the bridge. Wind howled down the gorge, throwing up dust across their path and whipping Carlin's hair into her face. She brushed it away with both hands, spitting out stray strands of hair and dust - only to have another gust push it all right back into her face. She staggered a bit, but managed to keep moving forward. When she was able to get and keep enough of the hair out of her face to be able to see, she noticed that Sam had gotten ahead of her. She seemed to be having an easier time of it. Carlin thought something rather uncharitable regarding people with short hair, long legs, or any combination of the above.
Sam was already across the bridge and heading up the steps that led to the large bronze doors when Carlin reached the middle of the bridge. Carlin looked up and watched her friend approach the shelter of the doors, only to have them swing open before she could touch them. On the other side, a Solarii man stood - the human man who'd escaped the burning ruin: Brother John. He held a Jem'Hadar rifle in his hands, already leveled. He shot Sam without a word. The blue beam caught her square in the chest and she crumpled.
John stepped over her while more Solarii stepped out of hiding places in the monastery and among the rocks on the other side of the bridge. All of them had modern weapons drawn and pointed at Carlin. "For a girl, you've caused us a great deal of trouble," said John, "but you're just as naive and predictable." He adjusted the setting on his rifle. "Kill her!"
Carlin didn't have time to draw her phaser, much less aim it. She didn't try. She was surrounded, outnumbered twelve to one, and she was alone. She didn't need any tactical training or lessons from Antori to know that her only chance of survival was in escape - if she had any chance at all! She ducked. Blue bolts flew over her head from multiple directions. She turned to run. A gust hit her, knocked her off balance. Her feet slid. A thick wooden handrail slammed into her head. There was pain, then numbness. She found herself lying on the roadbed of the bridge. She could not move. It hurt too much to try. Darkness ate away at the edges of her vision. Concussion, she thought, probably severe. She knew that should worry her, but her mind couldn't seem to handle the concept of worry at the moment. She fought to stay awake.
Blue bolts continued to fly by overhead, missing her by more than a meter. She wondered how anyone could have such terrible aim. Then her ears registered shouts and screams. "The Oni!" someone said.
"The Guardians are here!" said another. "Run!"
More blue bolts flew, followed by arrows and more screaming. She heard a roar loud enough to shake her bones, then guttural voices shouting orders in a language she could not understand. Japanese, she thought, though her mind seemed to have misplaced the word's meaning.
Feet pounded across the bridge. She saw a raggedly dressed man run past, pursued by a figure in heavy gray and red armor. The armored figure swung a slender, curved sword and the Solarii man fell. The armored figure then planted a stockinged, sandalled foot on his back and thrust once more with its sword, stilling him. The figure said something in Japanese, then moved on, ignoring her. Carlin's mind refused to process any of this, barely acknowledging that it was happening at all. She had a moment to feel afraid, then the encroaching darkness claimed her...
Author's Note: The road on which Carlin and Antori have their argument is not in the game, but their argument (largely) is, including Antori's line about the difference between sacrifice and loss. I admit working this scene in was a challenge. I tried to make both sides make sense from the perspectives of the characters enacting them. In the game this is accomplished by playing Lara's guilt over the rescue pilot's predicament and her sympathy for all (non-Solarii) life against Roth's pragmatism and responsibility to their own crew. Since the only people to fight over rescuing are their own people and since having an extra armed Starfleet officer around when raiding an enemy stronghold makes pragmatic sense, I had to change things up with uncertainty about Sam's location and certainty about where to find the others. My intention was to maintain Antori's decision as the more pragmatic survivalist decision while Carlin's was more emotional (though still not completely irrational.
The snare-trap/mini-gun ambush is one of the things that happens to Lara in the game as she approaches the pilot's position. The differences here are that I refuse to arm either Carlin or Sam with physics-defying magical rope arrows (seriously, the arrows disappear wherever their fired, leaving behind perfectly tied rope ziplines and they never use up ammunition: they are clearly magical) or hide them behind indestructible wooden crates (Lara takes cover behind a couple of these while rigging her rope arrow - during which time the humble wooden crates sustaine far more machine gun fire than would later be used by Nikolai to chew through a cement wall). I also needed to find some way of convincing them to head up the canyon, rather than escaping into the mountain village and foiling my plot. Otherwise, the ambush is much the same, down to taking out the supports of a hut built into a cliff face (although Lara does it with a rope arrow, since she doesn't have any weapon with a "vaporize" setting).
The widespread influence of Shakespeare is attested by many episodes of Star Trek. Klingon obsession with it was established by General Chang's character in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, who claimed that Shakespeare's plays were best appreciated "in their original Klingon" and personally would. not. stop. quoting. Shakespeare! By the movie's end, I was ready to kill him just for that! However, in a strange twist of reality following fiction, this reference eventually resulted in Trekkie Shakespeare fans translating and producing several of Shakespeare's plays in Klingonese using actors in Klingon costume. Awesome levels of nerdiness were achieved by all.
The Kofun period was the era of Japanese history directly after the Yayoi period, in which Himiko ruled. In the game Lara comments that some statues and ruins in the arid canyon map predate the Kofun period. The statues and reliefs in this chapter are but a small sample of the ones present in the game during this part. It's a very beautiful area. The ambush, of course, happens differently in the game, but I tried to keep it as consistent as I could. In the game, Matthias ambushes her himself and Lara is chasing down an NPC whom she finds staked to the stairs outside the monastery, and she is then punched out by a Solarii. Due to the characters present, I had to change it up a little (John is subbing for Matan, and I didn't kill Sam - remember, the beam is the stun setting!), but I preserved Matthias' appropriate taunt. I did decide to go with something else knocking Carlin out rather than a Solarii, because the Solarii really have no reason to hit her when shooting her lethally is so much more convenient (though it has the drawback of being so inconvenient for my plot that I cannot allow them to do so).