Disclaimer: All concepts and characters belong to UPN and the Paramount Network and are borrowed here for non-profit entertainment.

Spoiler: Fifth season finale

Rating: PG (Space violence, you know)

Chapter One

When the transporter was finished taking Harry Kim apart and putting him back together, he opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by blackness.

From his left came Seven of Nine’s irate voice: "Why is it dark?" She made the word sound like a personal insult.

It was an interesting question. "Auxiliary power’s down," B’Elanna Torres murmured on Harry’s other side. "How did that happen?"

"All scans showed it functioning when we beamed down from Voyager," Seven informed her.

Harry flipped a switch on the small box attached to his wrist and saw a wide beam of light sweep out. B’Elanna opened the tricorder in her hand and he was able to make out the ridges of her face in the green glow. Seven managed to turn on her light and open her tricorder simultaneously.

"I dislike the dark," she said gravely, and Harry repressed a smile.

"Torres to Voyager."

"Chakotay here." Over the comm-link, he sounded like a ventrilaquist’s version of himself.

"The vessel appears to have lost power while we were beaming down. Should we continue?"

"Does anything look suspicious?"

"So far, it’s all pretty ordinary."

Ordinary like the distress call had been ordinary. Harry had been on the bridge when it came in. Not on a Federation channel, naturally, so it had taken him a few minutes to properly thread it through the computer. Even then, all he could get was an audio.

"This is a distress call. If anyone is listening, I am Ensign Brittanya Kryech of the Fivan vessel Luneita. We have crash-landed on the moon of the fourth planet in the Vesyn system. Most of the crew is dead, we have heavy damages and are loosing life support. We are a science vessel with no weapons and intend you no harm. Please respond."

The bridge had been silent while Harry played the message. As it finished, he looked up to Commander Chakotay.

The Commander touched his commbadge. "Chakotay to Neelix."

"Neelix at your service, Commander."

"Do you know anything about the Fivan people in this sector?"

"It doesn’t sound familiar."

"Have you ever been to the Vesyn system?"

"Yes, several times." He made the recollection sound pleasant. "I visited the area repeatedly when I needed sarrium. The foliage on several planets it quite nice-"

"Thank you," Chakotay said, when it was obvious that Neelix was about to launch into a long story. "Harry?"

He had already run the scans. "I’ve located the moon. It’s class-M, a little chilly but inhabitable."

"The ship?"

He drew his fingers lightly over the console and an image of the planet appeared on the viewscreen. The orb was slightly lop-sided and mostly covered by dark heliatrope waters. Like splatters of paint from the brush, a few gray-green islands of land hung near the equator.

"It’s on the southern-most continent, so to speak."

"Life signs?"

"Four—no, five. Only two are stable enough for transport, and they’re losing back-up power rapidly."

Chakotay thought a moment, his brown eyes darkening to black, and then gave a rapid series of orders. "Harry: you, B’Elanna and Seven beam down to the Luneita. Doctor, prepare for casualties. Ensign Linge, take us in closer."

Harry met B’Elanna and Seven in the transporter room. "What’s the situation?" B’Elanna asked, as she arranged her feet inside the glowing circle.

"Crashed science vessel with almost no survivors. They have auxiliary life support, but not for long."

"Are they hostile?" Seven wanted to know.

Harry barely had time to shake his head before the transporter’s tingle had started in his feet, and a moment later she was demanding to know why it was dark.

"Continue, but keep me updated," Chakotay told B’Elanna, when she asked if he wanted her to keep going.

Harry moved his arm in a slow circle in front of him so that the light brushed over everything. They’d transported into a cramped hallway with metal flooring and one wall brunt to crumbling ash. The ceiling had fallen in several feet behind them, creating a blockage it would take half an hour to dislodge.

Images of his first few moments on the Equinox flashed in Harry’s mind. He didn’t know which was worse, having everything in sight remind him of other Star Fleet ships and home, or not being able to see anything at all. Even on the Equinox, there had been consoles blinking, humming, trying to put themselves back together.

"Like a graveyard," B’Elanna muttered.

"Life support is off-line," Seven informed her. "At this rate, we will run out of oxygen in approximately eighteen minutes."

Harry and B’Elanna both reached for the small oxygen masks attached to the belt packs they wore. Seven of Nine had already donned hers, and tendrils of hot breath slipped out around the edges of it.

"I’m not sure we won’t freeze to death first," Harry said. He could already feel the chill through his uniform.

"I’m reading life signs from this direction," Seven told them.

"There’s another one over here," Harry replied. He gestured to the mountain of metal and wiring that was corking the hall. "On the other side of this mess. I don’t know if the blockage is affecting my tricorder readings or the signs are just very faint."

"Seven," B’Elanna said, "try to move that stuff out of the way. Harry, come in this direction with me."

She kept her voice low as they began creeping down the hallway, cringing each time a metal floor plate clanged or one of them bumped something with an elbow. "Why does she get to lift all the heavy stuff?" Harry whispered, half as a joke and half because the silence was starting to get to him. Shouldn’t there be some sound?

"Don’t get all sexist on me, Harry, you know she’s stronger than you."

A door had fallen into the hallway like an open drawbridge. "I’m reading life signs," he said, and slipped through the empty doorway. No sound came from behind him. He stuck his head into the hall. "Coming?"

"I’m going to try to restore power, get life-support working again. If you find anyway, stabilize them and then beam them back to the ship."

His eyes traveled to the line where B’Elanna’s flashlight faded away. "You sure you want to go down there alone?"

She gave him half a grin. "If Seven of Nine can do it, so can I."

He watched her back until it turned a corner and felt his stomach sink. His Borg and Klingon shipmates might be able to handle a ship entirely devoid of life, but he wasn’t sure he could. Except for the soft whirling of his oxygen mask and an occasional clank from Seven’s direction, he was back to silence.

The blackness pressed in around him and he found himself swinging his lighted wrist again. The room was small and circular, about the size of Harry’s quarters back on Voyager but more cramped. Something resembling a bed had sunken into the floor when the supports collapsed. Two sets of cubby-shelves took up most of the wall space, but there was still enough empty space so that Harry could see how the metal had melted. The shapes created were almost pretty.

The floor was covered in water. Harry grimaced as it soaked into one of his boots, and was startled to realize that it was warm. His light shone through it, bounced off the silver floor and came back to him, as if the liquid weren’t even there.

He ran his tricorder over the lower half of the room. It wasn’t water at all, but a liquid form of sarrium.

He only half heard the curse he muttered as his wrist snapped against his 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."

It was radioactive, of course, and he had no idea how long he could stand in it without doing permanent damage to himself. He’d scanned the ship and read unusually high sarrium levels but assumed it was normal, since Neelix had mentioned coming to the area specifically to stock it.

"Get out of there, Harry," came B’Elanna’s voice. "Beam directly to sickbay."

Beam directly to sickbay. Terrific. Even spending an hour listening to the Doctor’s rambling chatter would be better than staying in this black hole.

"Kim to Voyager," he said.

No response. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the sarrium might be several inches deeper than it had been when he walked in.

"Kim to Voyager, please respond. I need an emergency transport."

Still no response. Harry felt a first stab of real fear streak through him. "Harry to B’Elanna."

Nothing.

He ran a hand through his hair, accidentally shining the light right into his eyes in the process. Could radiation knock out a commlink? He didn’t think so, but…

He tried shouting, sticking his head into the hallway. The liquid was definitely rising; it had splashed out onto the fallen door. "Seven? Can you hear me? My commbadge is down!"

There was a series of banging sounds, and then Seven called. "I hear you, Ensign Kim."

"There’s been a spill, I’m up to my knees in radioactive sarrium. Can you tell Voyager to beam me to sickbay?"

He thought he heard her sigh. He could just image what she must be thinking: The little Ensign stumbled right into trouble, didn’t he?

"My connection to Voyager has also been severed," she informed him finally. "Where is Lieutenant Torres?"

"She went ahead."

He was beginning to feel sick, but he didn’t know if it was the sarrium or his own rising panic responsible. "I would suggest that you attempt to find her," Seven called. "I have located a survivor and am attempting to reach him."

There was somebody alive in this trap? Harry swallowed and told himself to get a grip. He still had options. His commbadge was programmed to send out a distress signal if the casing was smashed, but the fact that Seven couldn’t contact Voyager, either, suggested that the signal was being interrupted during transit. Better to find B’Elanna and see if she could get the Luneita’s communication system running again.

He turned toward the door, relieved to be moving again and…

Something behind him began to moan.