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Her heart thudding, she watched as her crew raced for the door. She'd acted in time; the last two people ran for it and Torres herself slammed a hand down on the controls that sealed off engineering and ran, literally, for her life.

The door descended. She wasn't going to make it! Grimly, Torres launched herself forward, landing hard on her stomach but sliding to safety just as the door slammed down centimeters from her toes. As Yorik and Carey helped her to her feet, she braced herself.

The sound was deafening, and the ship bucked. The emergency hatch at the bottom of the engineering hull blew off, and the entire warp reactor core was ejected into space. Just beyond the safety afforded by the closed door was the vacuum of space. If anyone had been a few seconds slower, she and they would be dead by now. Torres felt the adrenaline which had so efficiently fueled her ebb, leaving her weak and shaky.

"Carey," she said in a voice that trembled, "we've got to transfer the reserve warp engine core from its storage bay. You and I will-"

But apparently, she was not going to do anything with Carey, or Yorik, or anyone else in engineering.

She lost the battle she'd been fighting for the last lew hours and was promptly violently sick.

"Dammit," growled Chakotay. "We're still lightyears away from that Shepherd planet"

"Engineering, report," snapped Janeway.

"Almost all of the automatic systems failed," came Lieutenant Carey's voice. "We had to eject the core manually."

"Any casualties?"

'Torres got us all out safely."

Apprehension washed through the captain. Those words sounded ominous, and why wasn't Torres herself making the report?

"Is Lieutenant Torres safe?"

Janeway saw Paris's shoulders tense, but he said nothing. Good for him. She was glad she'd chosen to keep him on the bridge.

There was an awkward silence, then, "Captain, Lieutenant Torres is... indisposed. She's not injured, though. She's on her way to sickbay."

"Well, mat's good news. What's the bad?"

"The warp core was ejected and should... Wait a minute. Captain, can you get it on screen?"

Kim had already done so, and Janeway and the rest of the bridge crew saw their ejected warp core turning slowly in space.

"I don't understand. The computer gave us all the warnings that the core was about to breach!" Carey sounded frustrated and utterly confused. "But it seems to be unharmed."

"I'd call that more good news than bad," said Janeway mildly, "though it's unnerving that we don't seem to be able to trust the computers. Paris, bring the ship about and let's go fetch our errant warp core." She glanced over at Chakotay. "We'll lose a few hours, but that's better than losing the entire core."

He didn't answer. His handsome face was set in a scowl, the tattoo on his brow furrowed by the frown. Janeway didn't pursue the conversation. The dark matter was affecting all of them, and she knew better than to take Chakotay's sullenness personally.

"I regret to say that I can offer some bad news," said Tuvok.

Janeway groaned and rubbed her throbbing temple. "What now?"

"The main weapons systems have also just gone off-line. And our shields are weakening as well."

Janeway closed her eyes, gathering her strength. Once, she'd hungered for knowledge of the mysteries of space. Dark matter had always intrigued her. But now, after having so personal an encounter with the stuff, she wished she'd never heard of it. It was crippling them, hamstringing them the way a pack of wolves hamstrung an elk to bring it down. Not a final, vicious attack, not yet; a little here, a little there, a headache, hallucinations, a quicker temper, the warp core ejected in error, the weapons systems down. Would they even make it to the Shepherd planet?

"Harry, prepare to record a message."

Kim thumbed the controls, then said, "Go ahead, Captain."

Janeway gazed at the slowly spinning warp core set against the light of stars in the blackness of space and spoke