Chapter Two

B’Elanna knew a bad situation when she walked into one. It was a feeling she got, an ache high up in her scull as though a warning were being sent from above. It made her hands fist and her hair fluff up.

Wandering through the Luneita, breathing oxygen that would only last another hour, she realized that her fingers were clenching. She had been through a lot of bad times with the Maquis, seen a lot of unpleasant things, but she couldn’t remember ever feeling this wrongness. No moaning survivors, no bleeting consoles. No windows at least letting in a few rays of starlight.

The hallway continued on until she realized that it was beginning to curve and was, most likely, a walkway that circled the entire ship. Her hands groped and stumbled along the wall until she found a smooth panel that, although dark, appeared to have its controls intact.

Out of the pack slung at her waist came a systems converter unit and a battery. Initially, there didn’t appear anything to plug either piece of equipment into; she ended up prying the panel open to see its circuitry. Once she found something to hook into, the systems converter hummed to life. She punched a few buttons and instantly readings began flashing across her tricorder.

The Luneita wasn’t nearly as large as her endless quarters would seem to imply. Her layout resembled slightly the plans for a Norway-class starship B’Elanna had seen before leaving the Alpha Quadrant, except that the hallways that were always so spacious on Federation ships were nothing more than narrow chutes leading between doorway. There didn’t appear to be a bridge either, most of the ship’s controls were located in Engineering.

"Fine with me," B’Elanna said to herself, but even as she spoke the words she was getting damage reports.

Unreal. How the ship had landed in one piece was a miracle she would never understand.

"Computer, locate the warp core."

It was the tricorder she spoke to; the Luneita wasn’t equipped with an internal audio-communications system.

"The warp core has been dismantled."

Dismantled? Although she found the idea unexpectedly offensive—that was not how you treated a warp core—the larger question was why someone would want to dismantle the warp core to begin with.

"Can you locate the pieces?"

The screen on her tricorder flashed, showing five points like those of a star. Each point represented a large portion of the core’s components dragged as far from each other as possible.

She stared at the image for several seconds. It looked familiar…

"Computer, show the damages report in diagram form."

Exactly as she had suspected. She tapped her commbadge. "Torres to Voyager."

Chakotay’s deep, familiar voice was reassuring in the cold hallway. "Voyager here. Go ahead."

"I’ve tapped into the ship’s computer. I can’t say for sure, but it looks like the crew dismantled their warp core and then the pieces ignited. I’m downloading the information now."

"How is that possible?"

"My first guess is that their matter/anti-matter containment units weren't strong enough. That would explain why all five lost control."

"I’ll have Tuvok look at the information you’ve sent. Any luck finding survivors?"

"Not yet, but Harry and Seven might have. I’m working on getting life-support running again."

"Our readings show that the survivors only have eleven minutes worth of oxygen left."

She hadn’t needed him to bring that up. "I’m aware," she said tartly. "Torres out."

Not the most polite thing to do, but Chakotay would probably understand. In all the years she’d known him, she couldn’t remember him ever holding a grudge.

The panel she had tapped into was an environmental control. Lighting, temperature, humidity. On Voyager, life-support was part of the same system, but not here. No, B’Elanna would have to find her way down to the engineering room to get air pumping again.

The map she downloaded didn’t thrill her. Even on science vessels, she didn't think anyone should design a stairwell, and the Fivans didn’t have anything resembling Jefferies tubes.

She glanced at the ceiling, then lifted her wrist to shine some light on it. The Fivans must not be tall; she was able to lay her palm flat against the metal panel and thrust upward by only going on tiptoe. A square section of ceiling flapped up on hidden hinges and then clattered back into place, but not before she had seen the glimmer of emptiness beyond.

She backed up in the hallway a few feet and got to her knees. There was charcoal an inch thick on the floor, another uniform ruined, and she had to sweep it out of the way with her arm in order to clear a panel. The latch was easy enough to find, just a bowl-like indention with a slender bar running across it. She gave it a futile jerk that hurt her shoulder, then changed position and pulled the other way. The section swung open easily, throwing soot all over B’Elanna.

She released a low growl of disgust and shone her flashlight into the hole. Just as she’d suspected, another hallway ran beneath. She rubbed the ash out of her eyes. The Fivans must have strong ankles to always be jumping between decks like this.

The second hallway felt even more empty and desolate than the first had. Getting to her feet and shining her light in one direction and then the other, she wonder how it was possible for everything to be so still. Distress calls were usually made either just before or just after a crash, but she’d never encountered a people that waited for the ship to settle and the most severely injured to die before asking for help. If she hadn’t been told differently, she would have thought that the Luneita had been abandoned for years.

She jumped a foot into the air and landed in a fighting stance with her phaser drawn when Harry’s voice came through her commbadge. "B’Elanna, there’s a problem. There’s been a leak on this deck, I’m standing in half an inch of liquid sarrium."

She swallowed her dry throat and lowered her phaser. "Glad Seven can’t see me now," she said to no one in particular. Although upon further thought, Seven might be just the one to talk to. She probably knew more about sarrium radiation than B’Elanna knew about engineering.

Well, she knew it wasn’t the kind of stuff a person wanted to be wading in. "Get out of there, Harry," she told him, wondering why it hadn’t been obvious. "Beam directly to sickbay."

He didn’t reply, so she pulled out her tricorder and continued down the hallway.

More ash. Was there anything on board that hadn’t caught fire at one point or another? She could feel the soot building up between her boot treads, causing her feet to roll slightly as she stepped.

All around her, doors stood motionless in nightmarish invitation. She used the sleeve of her uniform to wipe one doorplate clean and it thumped lightly. Personal quarters of Shyne Kryech. According to her map of the ship, that mean Engineering was…

"Hello?"

The word was spoken so softly that for a moment B’Elanna thought she might have said it to herself. But the voice was sweet and high, and it came again a moment later. "Mom?"

She backed up without thinking and scanned the room. One light sign, small in size. "I’m not your mother," she called out, only realizing a moment later how threatening it might sound. There was no response from the other side of the door. "I’m from the Federation Starship Voyager," she tried again. "We received your distress call and we’re here to help."

The silence began to close in on her again. She rubbed at the wall and found a button that she supposed was a doorbell, but nothing happened after she touched it. Of course, the power of still out.

"Are you injured?" she asked. "Can you open this door? Can you say anything?"

Dead air. Fine. "I’m coming in."

Cramming her tricorder into her hip pouch, she dug her fingers around in the soot on the door until she found a groove. With a few well-placed kicks, she was able to slide the two envelope doors far enough apart that she could get her hands between them.

Horrible grinding accompanied the sluggish, reluctant motion of the metal sheets in their tracks. "I should have blown it open," B’Elanna muttered, then ducked as the wall over her left shoulder exploded.

She instinctively dropped to the ground. Her tricorder made a cracking sound when it hit the floor; the contents of her supply pouch clattered soon after it. A hole the size of her head appeared in the door, then another in the wall. She rolled, fumbling for her phaser in the mess of wires, boxes, chips, being variously crushed or shattered as she scrambled for cover.

Her flashlight swung wildly. For one moment she saw a face illuminated, a tiny, iridescent face with huge gray eyes. Too small for even the short Fivans, was a child shooting at her?

"Cease fire!" she shouted, taking refuge behind a low bed that didn’t even allow her to sit up. Her hand searched the floor above her head for the lost phaser. "I’m not going to hurt you!"

The well-fluffed pillows burst and the mattress caught flame. The flashlight on her wrist was giving away her position.

She clicked it off and the firing stopped. What was his name? Blast and wretch, now was not the time to be forgetting names. "Myech?" she tried. No, K, it started with a K. "Kryeck? Krycek?"

The kid probably wasn’t used to be addressed as an adult to begin with. B’Elanna’s hand slapped the floor again and was suddenly pinned by the hard sole of a shoe.

"Ow!" she shouted. Her other hand closed around something that felt like an ankle just as a bright light was shone into her face. She jerked and the shadowy, humanoid form fell backwards, its feet pulled out from under it.

Rolling to her stomach, she grabbed the first piece of equipment her fingers closed around – which happened to be a hypospray – and aimed it like a weapon. The light continued to shine on her, but as her eyes adjusted she was able to make out that face again, and now with it the outline of a hand held up toward her, fingers open. A circular disc had been strapped to the palm. Its center was glowing bright purple.

"It’s a stand-off," she informed him. "Look, I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to get you off this ship before we run out of air in a couple of minutes."

The face tilted. It was slender and earless, and the shape of the head was an almost perfect sphere. Below the enormous gray eyes with lashes so long B’Elanna could have curled them all the way around her finger was a wide, clever mouth painted the color of sunshine. The skin was thin and fragile like the petals of a flower, and she could make out the vague shape of organs and bones beneath it.

"Where’s my mother?" it asked. He, she corrected herself. He was dressed in an outfit that reminded her enough of Tom’s off-duty wardrobe that she couldn’t help classifying him as male.

"I don’t know. We’re trying to find her."

The fingers on the hand with the weapon wiggled, and B’Elanna jerked her hypospray toward it. "I’ll shoot," she warned.

The Fivan glanced at her strangely and continued to move his fingers until the disc slid off. She let out a long breath of air and thanked the stars she hadn’t shot. Not that a dose of painkillers would have hurt the kid, but Janeway had these funny ideas about diplomacy and first contact.

"My name is B’Elanna Torres," she told him instead, sitting up slowly. "I’m from the-"

"Federation Starship Voyager," he filled in. "You received my distress call and you’re here to help."

His impression of her voice was almost flawless. She climbed to her feet. "Smart little bugger, aren’t you?"

"Yes." He made no move to follow her. "Where’s my mother?"

"I don’t know." She touched her commbadge. "Torres to Voyager. Two to beam up."

"Two to beam up," he repeated under his breath. "Torres to Voyager."

The kid had responded but the ship hadn’t. "Chakotay, this is B’Elanna. Can you read me?"

Why wasn’t he replying? She slapped her commbadge with an open palm and listened for the beep.

Wasn’t there. She must have broken it when she fell, although she didn’t see any marks in the casing.

The Fivan child watched her with his gigantic eyes, blinking slowly and infrequently. "What’s your name?" she asked him finally.

"What’s your name?" he mimicked. He didn’t sound like he was mocking her, just trying the words out. "My name is Shyne Kryech."

Kryech. That had been it.

"Nice to meet you, Shyne."

"Nice to meet you, B’Elanna."

He has no idea what he’s saying, does he? she thought. She kept her eyes on him as she reached down to pluck the disc weapon from where it sat by his knee.

"Look," she said, "I’m trying to help you. You and your mother, and everybody else on board. Do you know how to get to Engineering?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"We need to go there now. Okay?"

"Okay?"

Not a mimic, the word hadn’t translated. "Take me to Engineering," she tried instead.

Shyne smiled for the first time, his small mouth pursing, and said, "Okay."