Chapter Two

Bad News

On the U.S.S Voyager,

Down in engineering, B'Elanna, the chief engineer of Voyager was going over some readings of the bio-jel packs. For some reason two of them were not working. According to the readings there was nothing wrong with them, but they would not work.

She wanted to scream and destroy everything within arms reach. No matter what she tried, she couldn't find a single thing wrong with them.

After much thought, she decided that the Doctor should have a look at them, since there seemed to be nothing wrong with the mechanical parts there might be something wrong with the biological parts, which may explain why she couldn't find anything.

"Ensign, come over here." she ordered a near by engineer only a few feet away from her. He quickly came over to see what his superior wanted.

"Yes Ma'am?" he asked.

"Bring these bio-jel packs to sick bay and ask the Doctor to run some tests on them." she ordered him.

"Right away, Ma'am." he took the bio-jel packs and left for sick bay. Hopefully the Doctor will find something she could work with. Now she had to work on all the other malfunctions that were popping up everywhere.

On the bridge, Captain Janeway was sitting in her captain's char with a cup of coffee in her hand. Only the Captain, Commander Tuvok, Ensign Kim and a few nameless crewman were working on the bridge.

"What's our status?" she asked.

"At our present speed we will arrive at the planet in eighteen hours, twenty-two minutes and ten seconds." Tuvok, said in his cool Vulcan voice.

"Good, how is the ship? Any new problems I should new about?" she asked.

"Yes, unfortunately the ship seems to be losing extra power, but not at a frightening level. The Engineering crew is working on the problem as we speak." Tuvok said matter-a-factly.

Captain Janeway didn't like the sound of that, but knew that there was little she could do. She will just have to let her Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres work on it and hopefully she'll fix it.

Thinking about this plant some more, she wondered if there would be any intelligent life forms there. If it was like Earth then there is a good chance of humanoid life forms living and thriving on the plant. Of course many other Star Fleet captains have thought the same things of unexplored planets in the past and most of the time they find out that the closest thing to intelligent life on the plant is no smarter than a common Earth monkey.

"Ensign Kim, please take a look at the long rang sensors and see if there is any more information on the planet." she ordered.

"Right away, Ma'am." Kim said as he looked up the incoming information of the plant. " It appears that there is large bodies of water all over the plant, taking up eighty point twenty-five percent of the planet's surface. Most of the water is salt water with the about the same percentage of salt as Earth's oceans. As for fresh water, there is only fifteen percent of it making most of the land a desert like claimant. Even with the fresh water only a few places look like plant life can grow there." he reported.

"So, that planet has more water than Earth, but has less drinkable water and plant life." she said, sounding amused by the facts given to her.

"It would appear so, Captain. The theory of a nuclear war may explain the planet having a desert like claimant in most places, but that would mean an intelligent society would have lived there at one point or is still living on the planet." Tuvok pointed out.

"Is there any sign of artificial buildings or structures of some kind on the planet, Ensign Kim?" she asked, looking back at him.

"No, ma'am. If there were, they would have to be no bigger then a two-story house for us not to see them this far away." Kim replied.

"What of life forms? If there are plants on the planet's surface then there could be life forms as well." Tuvok asked.

Pushing some buttons, Kim looked frustrated as he tried to check the readings. Giving up he told them: "It looks like something has gone wrong with the long rang sensors. It will not give me any information on the planet except that it's there."

"What about the close rang sensors?" the Captain asked.

Checking, Kim said: " They are still working, but they are starting to acting up and I don't know what's causing it."

Tuvok moved over to where, Kim was at to look at the problem and hopefully be able to fix it. As he was looking at the computer, he know there was something extremely wrong. Not only was it the sensors, but many other systems were acting up. Knowing there was little he could do at this point, he tapped his Star Fleet badge and said:

"Commander Tuvok to Engineering."

"I know, I know! We are working on it. There is reports flooding in about different malfunctions all over the ship!" B'Elanna shouted.

"Lieutenant Torres, please lower your voice and calmly explain these malfunctions. The bridge has not been informed of theses multiple problems." Tuvok said, looking over at the Captain to see what human emotion she was showing. As he expected, she had a look of pure concentration and determination.

"About ten minutes ago, we began to receive all kinds of reports of malfunctions all across the ship. At first they were small things that were not important, but then they started to get more and more serious. The reason the bridge may have not been warned is, because most of the communication systems are not working. At this rate we will loss all of the ships systems that includes the life support, weapons, and all the other major ones." she explained.

Janeway had a grave face, she know this was bad and that they needed to fix it soon.

"B'Elanna, what do you suggest for us to do?" Janeway asked.

"In less if these problems are not fixed within the next twenty-four hours, we will need to dock the ship somewhere." B'Elanna said.

"Understood. But where could we dock if need be?" she asked, more to herself than anybody else as she thought.

"With our long rang sensors out of commission, it will be impossible for us to locate any near by docking stations if there is any within the rang that Voyage can travel to in time." Tuvok said.

Thinking of all the possible options they could take, she made up her mind.

"Alright, put the ship on yellow alert." she said, getting up from her Captain's chair. "Ensign, send out an S.O.S. to anybody for help." she ordered a random officer that was working on the bridge.

"Captain, what if there is no ships close enough to received our distress signal?" Ensign Kim asked.

" Don't wary about that, I have already thought of that. The planet we are currently heading to appears to be safe for us to land Voyager on its surface, but that will be our last resort. First, we must try everything you can to fix whatever it is that's causing all these problems."

The atmosphere was now heavy with weary as everyone went to work. Janeway knew she could be caught up in the other's emotions; she was their leader and it would be very bad for the crew's morale if they see the Captain show any signs of being wearied.

On the Planet of the Apes

Doyok had left three hours early to go to work. No one else was there, yet, but he didn't care. All night he couldn't sleep, the mystery of the scrolls kept him awake and he knew he needed to find out what they say. There was one scroll that he had over looked, so that was the first he tried to translate and to his surprize, it was in good condition making it easy to read. It only took him an hour to read it and write down what he had translated on a different scroll, but now that he had read all of it, he wished the elements would have destroyed the scroll and the heathen writings within it.

As Doyok looked over the scroll in his hands, a feeling of dread or anxiety washed over him like a massive hurricane flooding and destroying the lands.

"This can't be, there must be some mistake." he muttered under his breath. "I...I must go tell Dr. Zaius." He picked up the only scroll that he was able to completely translate along with some other things and put them inside his briefcase. Quickly, he ran out to tell Zaius of what was written on the scroll that shouldn't even exit.

Author's Note

Hello readers thanks for reading my fanfiction story. I know the chapter is short and I could have done better with it, but it was taking forever to write it.

Please write a review and tell me what you think of my story.