New Hope
Story by Penny A. Proctor
Written by Penny A. Proctor and Andra Marie Mueller

(00:03 - 00:10)

It was pitch black and eerily quiet inside the port turbolift as Voyager's command officers struggled to their feet. The lift had dropped several decks before suddenly jerking to a stop, and for a few heart stopping moments Janeway and Chakotay had feared they would meet their deaths at the bottom of the shaft.

"Are you all right, Kathryn?"

"I think I've managed to bruise a few places I didn't know could be bruised, but otherwise I'm fine," Janeway responded. "What about you?"

"No permanent damage."

"Any guesses as to what happened?"

"Off the top of my head I'd say we've landed," Chakotay answered.

"Or been attacked," Janeway added.

The XO shook his head, forgetting for a moment that she could not see the gesture. "I don't think so. If somebody wanted to take us out of commission, they would have either destroyed Voyager outright or replaced our crew with theirs. Something has happened to the ship itself."

The captain tapped her combadge. "Janeway to Bridge."

No response.

"Well communications are obviously off line," she said. "Computer, resume lift to Deck One."

Again, no response.

"I suppose it would have been too much to hope that the turbolifts would actually be functional," Chakotay remarked, unable to stifle a sudden thought that popped into his mind. This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I fantasized about being stuck in a turbolift with Kathryn.

Shaking off his inappropriate musings, he returned his attention to the situation at hand. "Where do you think we are?"

"I have no idea, but we're definitely closer to the bottom of the ship than the top. If we can climb the shaft to the nearest deck, we should be able to reach the Jefferies tubes and figure out our location from there."

"Assuming the Jefferies tubes are still accessible," Chakotay returned.

"We don't have a choice. If the lift starts falling again, then we're going straight down and I'd rather not be turned into a Human pancake. We need to get to the Bridge to find out what's happened and take stock of the casualties and damage."

"Yes, Ma'am," Chakotay concurred. "Well, it's a good two hour climb to reach the Bridge, so we'd better get started. Hopefully we'll encounter someone else along the way who can tell us what happened." He glanced upward. "It looks like we're going to have to do this the hard way. I'll boost you up first and then follow after you're safely out of the lift."

Janeway nodded and walked over to stand beside Chakotay as he jimmied with the control panel and managed to use the manual release to open to the escape hatch in the roof of the lift. Once it was open, Chakotay turned to Janeway and cupping his hands together as a makeshift step, braced himself to hoist her up. The captain placed her hands on his shoulders and used her own momentum as well as the extra inertia from Chakotay to lift herself up and into the hatch, making a concerted effort to ignore the unintentionally intimate position her proximity to her First Officer created.

Easy, Kathryn, she chided herself.

Grunting with effort of lifting herself up, Janeway at last managed to haul her body through the emergency hatch and collapsed with an audible thud on the roof of the lift.

"I'm getting too old for this," she muttered.

"Captain?"

"Just talking to myself, Commander," she responded, and reached an arm through the hatch to grab Chakotay's hand. "Your turn."

Grabbing Janeway's hand, Chakotay braced himself on the railing and used his other hand to grab the edge of the open hatch. Gritting his teeth against the strain on his shoulders and upper arms, with Janeway's assistance he managed to haul himself up and through the open hatch and collapsed on the turbolift roof beside the captain.

"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered.

Janeway smiled at his repetition of the sentiment she had voiced only moments before. "I know the feeling," she replied, and got to her feet. "Come on; it looks like Deck Nine is only about five feet above us. We can climb to the emergency manual release and open the doors, then once we're on the deck we can access the nearest Jefferies tube and make our way to the Bridge."

"Let's go."

(00:30 - 01:00)

Traveling from Deck One to Deck Eleven via Jefferies tubes normally took an hour and forty minutes, crawling and climbing at a normal pace in normal light. In darkness relieved only by his wrist light, Tom reached Deck Six in just thirty minutes, not caring that his hands were raw from friction burns caused by sliding down ladders instead of climbing, and his knees were raw and scraped through his uniform. He opened the hatch to reach the ladder that went down to the next level and almost bumped heads with Jesse Molina. "Did you come from Main Engineering?" he asked anxiously.

Molina nodded. "Yeah, I'm the runner to the Bridge. Don't worry about Lieutenant Torres. She's okay. We made sure of it."

Tom clasped a hand on his shoulder. "Thanks," he said, hoping that the depth of his gratitude showed in his voice. Then he jerked his head toward the Bridge. "Get going. Lieutenant Kim still has command and he needs your report."

Molina gaped. "Lieutenant Kim? Why? Is the Captain hurt? Where's Chakotay? And what happened, anyway?"

"The Captain wasn't on the Bridge when the systems went down. She's probably on her way, hell, she's probably there by now." Tom told himself that was most likely true and kept going, talking over his shoulder. "And I was hoping you could tell me what happened."

Twenty-five minutes, and two crew encounters later, he emerged from the tube to the darkened floor of Main Engineering. The warp core was down, and there was no light except for that of the wrist lights the staff had strapped on, sending tunnels of white light in all directions. People were moving about and shouting. He focused on the voices and finally heard the one he was seeking. "B'Elanna!" he called.

"Tom?" One of the streaks of light turned in his direction, momentarily blinding him. "Sorry," she said, and moved so that it was not shining directly into his face. "Kahless. You're all right. What happened?"

"What about you? "

She shrugged. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, he could see that she was disheveled and sporting a bruise on her face, but otherwise showed no injuries. "Fine." She rolled her eyes back, indicating the Engineering staff. "They made me lie against the bulkhead while we came down. Someone actually strapped me in."

He closed his eyes in relief. The whole time he had been trying to land the ship instead of crash it, he had fought back a mental image of B'Elanna being hurled around, injuring to herself or their unborn daughter. "I owe them," he said, and reached for the medkit.

"I told you, I'm fine. What happened? We landed some place, right? We heard the thrusters and we've got gravity when everything else is down. Were we attacked?" Without waiting for him to answer, she looked over her shoulder. "Nicoletti? Any luck?"

The response came from across the deck. "Negative, Lieutenant."

"Try rerouting the secondary couplings. Take the baffle off if you have to."

"Hold still," Tom said, as he flipped open the medical tricorder. "I want to check the baby."

She said nothing, but fidgeted as he worked. "She's okay," he said after a moment, and again felt a wave of relief.

"Of course she is," B'Elanna said, but he heard the relief in her voice, too.

"Any other injured?"

She shook her head. "Nothing we can't cope with here. What the hell happened, Tom?"

"I don't know. Everything failed all at once. Harry ordered me to set down on an M-class planet." He shook his head. "It was the strangest thing, B'Elanna. One minute we were out of control and the next it was like someone was telling me what to do. And it worked."

"Harry gave the order?" She sounded incredulous. "Where was the Captain?"

The question irritated him. "She was probably asleep in her bed, same as all the other sane Alpha shift personnel except you and me. It's Gamma shift, B'Elanna. Harry did all right."

She paused, then said in a voice that was not quite teasing, "That was some landing, Flyboy."

"We're alive, aren't we?" He looked around, peering through the darkness. He didn't need to be an engineer to know that things were very bad. "What's the ETA on communications?"

"About three minutes after we get emergency power up. The emergency power cell ruptured when we hit the planet. If we can't get a workaround in the next ten minutes, we'll cannibalize the cells from the Flyer and another shuttle. It's the only way to support all of Voyager."

He winced at the thought of gutting his beloved Delta Flyer, but made no protest. It was necessary. After slipping the scanner back into the kit, he ran his hand down her arm once. "If you don't need a medic here, I've got to get to Sickbay."

"Go," she said, squeezing his hand quickly and then turning away. "Vorik! Get a team together and get ready to head to the shuttle bay. I want you to cross-circuit the Flyer's main power cell with the auxiliary power network." She strode off and became just one more beam of light in the darkened deck.