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Chapter Five


Captain Janeway didn't realize she'd been pacing her readyroom until the comm came through and she
stopped.

Tuvok's voice filtered through the channel: "Captain, we have an incoming message from the planet."

Janeway smiled. 'At last.'

"Patch it through, Mr. Tuvok," she ordered, and sat down at her desk, opening the terminal on its top just as
Chakotay's face filled the screen.

"Commander, I hope you have..." and then her words died away. If she'd been looking for good news, the
expression on her XO's face had just told her that that search would be futile.

"Chakotay, what is it?"

To say the commander's face, his voice, were grim would be a simplification. "We've found the shuttle,
Kathryn."

Janeway thought she felt ill. Kathryn. Not Captain, just Kathryn - a bad sign.

"We'll need to run some more scans on the crash site, but I think you should send down another team to do
it. B'Elanna...I need to get her to Sickbay, Captain. She fainted."

The Captain frowned. "Fainted?" Concern for her friend mixed with despair over the obvious. If what
they found was bad enough to cause B'Elanna to faint...

"Oh, Chakotay, what..."

And then he moved and she saw it - the shuttle, bent and broken, lying in a twisted heap on the planetside.
And beside it, two graves.

"We've scanned them," he informed her, not needing to clarify the word 'them'.

"And?"

"They're both human."