Foundations Book Two Read online

  From the viewscreen, Scott said, "Take heart, sir. You at least have the presence of mind to know the dangers and limitations of allowing computers to have so much control. There have been numerous societies that dinna have that luxury."

  Smiling, Gold said, "If anyone here would know about that, it's you, Captain Scott. How many planetary supercomputers did Captain Kirk end up convincing to turn themselves off, anyway?"

  "More than his share, I'm afraid," Scott replied, chuckling. "And of course ye know about one of them, that blasted contraption they called Landru."

  Gomez could not help smiling as she remembered the da Vinci's recent encounter with a group of Ferengi who had managed to acquire components from the world computer that Captain Kirk and the Enterprise had encountered more than a century before.

  "That was one of Captain Kirk's earlier missions," she said, a playful grin on her face, "so he hadn't quite polished his computer deactivation skills yet. If your mission to Beta III had come a few years later, there would have been nothing left for us." Of course, Gomez knew that the Enterprise's original encounter with the Landru computer had been at least indirectly responsible for the evolution of the S.C.E. into the organization it was today.

  "We only thought we were finished with Landru when Captain Kirk turned the beastie off," Scott replied. "But it was really just the beginning."

  Chapter

  2

  Stardate 3176.9

  Will this never end?

  Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott leaned into his stride as he slogged through watery muck that rose above his knees. A worklight attached to the hood of his orange environmental suit helped guide him through the tunnel, its illumination reflecting off the water's brackish surface and the damp slime coating the walls around him. Sloshing sounds marked his progress and echoed up and down the sewer pipe, all but drowning out the crinkling and crunching of his suit's protective material. In an effort to fight the oppressive heat in the tunnel, Scott had shrugged off the upper half of the suit and tied the sleeves around his waist, leaving him clad in a standard Starfleet undershirt.

  But the headgear stays on, Scotty, lest this ungodly smell make you lose your breakfast.

  "So, how's the view down there?" said a voice from the communicator Scott carried in his other hand. The voice belonged to his friend and fellow engineer, Lieutenant Commander Mahmud al-Khaled.

  "Oh, it's quite the visual treat," Scott replied as he trudged onward. "You'll hafta let me give you the tour before we go."

  Laughter came through the communicator's speaker grid. "Well, you know that you could put a merciful end to this."

  "Don't I know it." With a simple call to the U.S.S. Lovell, orbiting somewhere above the surface of Beta III, this sweaty, smelly, dirty walk could be swapped for an almost-instant journey to where he was already headed. However, skipping a naked eye tour of this main sewer connection might have meant his overlooking a fouled pump or a cracked seam or anything else that would lead to a malfunction of the village's wastewater treatment system.

  Besides, if you'd not taken the easy ride yesterday, he chided himself, maybe you'd not find yourself back in this stinkin' place.

  Scott continued through the pipe, the tricorder in his hand adding a smaller measure of illumination as it outlined the engineer's course. On its miniature display a blinking dot indicated his goal: a broken proton pump inhibitor located just a few meters ahead. From his review of the sewer system, he knew that the inhibitor played a rather minor role in the overall scheme of things. However, experience had taught him with hard-learned lessons that even a simple problem could quickly escalate into a major crisis if left unattended.

  "You should be getting close to the inhibitor assembly's access panel," al-Khaled said over the communicator.

  Sloshing a few more steps through the muck, Scott spied the slightest swelling in the left side of the tunnel, the outline of what looked to be a panel perhaps a meter square.

  "Aye, I've found it."

  Donning the pair of gloves that came with his sullied environmental suit, he traced a finger through the film on the tunnel wall, further distinguishing the panel from the metal surrounding it. He wiped the surface of the panel until he found the recessed pull handle that had been buried under years of accumulated slime and grime. Gripping the handle, Scott tugged the panel free from the wall.

  A torrent of cold black water exploded outward, striking the engineer square in the chest and instantly dousing him in more of the same filthy mess that he had been wading through for the past hour.

  "Oh, for the love of…"

  Only the voice of al-Khaled kept him from unleashing a particularly vile string of Scottish oaths.

  "Scotty? Is everything all right?"

  Even as the sludge began to soak through his shirt, Scott raised his communicator to his mouth. "Oh, never better, thank ye very much." Sighing, he added, "Well, ye wanted payback after gettin' shocked by that power converter I sent ye to fix yesterday. I dare say ye've gotten it, lad."

  "That bad, is it?"

  "Let me just say that I'm glad I decided to keep my hood on."

  "Spare me the details until I can really enjoy them. Can you see the inhibitor?"

  Peering into the access panel, it took Scott several seconds to spy the pump inhibitor, tucked away as it was beneath a layer of wiring and other components. There was no mistaking the heavy layer of corrosion coating the gadget's exterior, which itself looked to be brittle and cracked. A quick scan with his tricorder showed what a visual inspection had already told him: The inhibitor definitely needed to be replaced.

  "Aye, the wee beastie has given up the ghost, all right," he said, speaking more into the compartment than his communicator. "I'll have it replaced and tested within half an hour."

  "So what you're telling me is that you'll be ready to beam out in about ten minutes. I've worked with you long enough to understand your repair estimate methodology."

  Scott smiled. Only a few short years had passed since his first meeting with Mahmud al-Khaled on Starbase 10. They, along with a contingent of Starfleet engineers, had been brought together to assist in the repair efforts of several Federation observation outposts that had suffered damage in a massive ion storm near the Romulan Neutral Zone. While Scott had been preparing to assume his posting as chief engineer of the Enterprise, al-Khaled had been a lieutenant serving on the Lovell. Starfleet had seen fit to retain the obsolete Daedalus-class starship, along with a few of its sister ships, on active duty and detailed to the Corps of Engineers. The ships were used to transport their equipment and personnel from one mundane, even boring assignment to another. It was a decrepit excuse for a starship, or so Scott had thought at first.

  Assigned to work with engineers from the Lovell, he had quickly found himself in the uncustomary position of working with an entire crew of technical specialists who shared his passion for discovering unorthodox solutions to problems. Both the ship and her crew had comported themselves admirably during that mission, with Scott and al-Khaled becoming fast friends once their work had been completed.

  Despite their differing career paths, with al-Khaled remaining on the Lovell and Scott continuing with his assignment aboard the Enterprise, fate had conspired to bring the two friends together here, overseeing the operation to help the people of Beta III get back on their feet again.

  "When a system works for me, Commander, I stick with it." Setting the communicator on the edge of the access compartment opening, Scott dug around in his bag again until he produced a tool to assist him in removing the useless pump inhibitor. Leaning forward, he craned his head for a better view. The environmental suit's hood was not designed to facilitate easy viewing of one's workspace, though. Sighing in resignation, Scott took a final breath of clean air before pushing the hood over and off his head. The unfiltered stench of the sewer pipe wasted no time wafting up his nostrils.

  "Och."

  "Something amiss, Commander?" came al-Khaled's mildl
y taunting voice over the communicator. Scott glared at the unit, sorely tempted to toss it into the dark sewage.

  "Nothing I canna handle. As nasty as it might be down here, it still beats bein' in the captain's chair of the Enterprise right about now."

  Al-Khaled laughed. "I heard rumors that Captain Kirk got his aft shields chewed up rather severely."

  "You dinna know the half of it, lad." Suppressing a gag, Scott leaned into the access panel once more.

  As friendly as he had become with al-Khaled in the past few years, it still would not do to discuss what had transpired in the wake of Captain Kirk's decision to disable Landru, the mammoth computer that had ruled the people of Beta III for more than six thousand years. Memories of the post-mission briefing, held with the Enterprise senior officers, remained very clear in his mind, as did the urgent call from Starfleet that had interrupted it. He also remembered the one very important lesson of command he had learned that day.

  Never take an admiral's call in front of your crew.

  After reviewing how Captain Kirk had convinced the Landru computer to deactivate itself upon realizing that its programming and actions had stifled the growth of the Betan people, Admiral Nogura had not been a happy man. His comments on the subject were both succinct and memorable.

  "You pulled the rug out from under an entire civilization…and then you just left?"

  Not exactly, of course, Scott conceded as he pulled the broken proton pump inhibitor from its recess and stuffed it in his satchel, only to snatch up its replacement.

  Though Kirk had left behind a team of cultural and sociological experts to aid the Betan people in transitioning away from life under the rule of Landru, it had become apparent that more assistance in a wide variety of areas would be required. The Enterprise was ordered to return to Beta III in order to provide engineering assistance in assessing the technology and its usefulness in the wake of Landru's deactivation. More important, however, they were tasked with determining just how much influence the supercomputer had actually held over day-to-day operations of "the Body" of Betan society.

  To their relief, Landru's grip had not been as tight as they had originally feared. While the computer had controlled their actions, the Betan people were more skilled technically than their architecture, dress, and mannerisms might lead a casual observer to presume. They were capable of operating electrical generating plants, waste water systems, food distribution centers, and the like. What they lacked was the ability to determine on their own when and how tasks ranging from the mundane to the critical needed to be accomplished. Without "the will of Landru," the people of Beta III simply had no direction.

  Therefore, it had become the job of Scott and other engineers, to say nothing of the team of sociologists and cultural scientists the Enterprise had provided, to teach the Betans about "the will of the people." Since beaming down from the ship, he and a dozen of his engineers had quickly become mother ducks to the suddenly "orphaned" Betan citizens.

  It took less than two days for the assignment to gnaw at Scott's patience.

  Thankfully, it had also taken less than two days for reinforcements to arrive. To assist the Enterprise, Starfleet had also assigned a crew of crack problem solvers already known to Scott: the Lovell. Once they had established orbit, wave after wave of technical and mechanical experts appeared to help the now-leaderless people begin to make their own way.

  "That's got it," Scott said as he felt the satisfying click of the inhibitor snapping into place. Picking up his communicator he added, "She's in. Now I just need to run a diagnostic before we reactivate this section."

  "Excellent," al-Khaled said. "You just may make a decent engineer one day, Commander. Sure you don't want to stay on with the Lovell?"

  Scott laughed. "It's only a temporary assignment, lad, just until the Enterprise comes back to get me. I figure they're about halfway to the rendezvous with the Lexington by now."

  Despite the proverbial can of worms that Captain Kirk may have opened here, it did nothing to alleviate his other responsibilities. Indeed, at this very moment the Enterprise was on its way to pick up an ambassador en route to the starship's next assignment.

  "That's right," al-Khaled said. "You're going to ferry Ambassador Fox to his diplomatic mission in that star system with the two warring planets. I hear that he's a hard man to get along with."

  Scott had heard the same thing, mostly from colleagues on the Lexington who had informed him that life with the ambassador was something akin to being consigned to the Third Concentric Circle of Hell. Faced with two weeks in the volatile company of Ambassador Robert Fox, slogging through the sewers of Beta III did not seem all that bad.

  Is it too much to hope that the captain might forget to pick me up on the way to NGC 321?

  His work with the inhibitor finished, Scott mopped sweat and grime from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, then closed the access door.

  "All right, Mahmud, I'm ready to reactivate the inhibitor assembly."

  "What? Has it been thirty minutes already?" Scott smiled as al-Khaled paused for a moment. "Stand by, Scotty. We're setting it up now." Several moments passed before Scott heard the telltale vibrations and groans of ancient machinery, much of it embedded in the concrete all around him, returning to life. After the initial few seconds, the hum of the equipment settled into a comfortable rhythm.

  "Sensors show the pump inhibitor is working perfectly," al-Khaled reported. "A job like that should earn you a beam-out, unless you'd rather hike back to base."

  For a fleeting moment Scott pictured himself hurling his friend headfirst into the depths of the murky water, followed closely by the communicator in his hand.

  "Energize."

  Mahmud al-Khaled closed the flap on his communicator and returned the device to his belt, chuckling at the expense of his friend. That minor yet welcome distraction completed, he drew a breath before returning to his own apparently unending task. Looking up from his desk and the pile of status reports that seemed to multiply every time his attention was drawn elsewhere, al-Khaled saw that the line of engineers and other specialists waiting to see him had grown as well.

  "And I traded Scotty's job for this one?" The question was voiced just low enough that none of the crewmen waiting to see him had heard it. Looking up, he waved the first man, an ensign he recognized as a member of the Enterprise crew, to step forward.

  The ensign offered an electronic clipboard containing his status report. "We're finished checking the water treatment systems with the new automation computers and everything is working fine, sir. Actually, the system's working a bit above specifications, if I may say so."

  "You may," al-Khaled replied. "And great work there, too." Quickly signing the report and returning it to the ensign, he looked up at the line of men and women still waiting to see him. "Now, who's next?"

  The process was repeated, with al-Khaled reviewing and approving report after report from the engineers who had come to him, watching as even more of them filled in the ranks of those who left the room with new assignments. As he worked he listened to the voices of crewmembers from the Enterprise and his own ship rise above the ambient noise within the makeshift command center that he and his team had established here in the first hours after arriving on Beta III.

  It almost sounds like the bridge of a starship, al-Khaled thought, except busier.

  In the wake of Landru's deactivation, there had been an atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty as automated systems working behind the scenes of this normally tranquil city and others like it across the planet had suddenly found themselves operating without the guidance of the master computer. Power, water, sanitary systems, food distribution, all of these processes were controlled by some means of mechanization, their systems overseen by the all-encompassing presence of Landru as it had been for more than six thousand years.

  Without that influence, Betan citizens found themselves in the position of having to quickly learn how to issue instructions and
see to the management of these processes on their own. Al-Khaled and his engineers had been tasked with assisting in that transition, teaching the Betan people to be self-sufficient while at the same time working to reconfigure and reactivate the master control system, this time without the vast network of software that had comprised Landru's "personality."

  Finishing his review of one final report, an update from his Lovell shipmates O'Halloran and Anderson on their installation of a new computer monitoring station, al-Khaled put the paperwork aside and leaned back in his chair. He was not used to jockeying a desk, but coordination of the considerable effort under way here had made it necessary for him to assume a more managerial role than was typical for him on other missions.

  This is starting to feel too much like a real Starfleet outfit, he mused, with no small amount of disappointment. It would be good to finish this assignment and get back to the Lovell and to being just a regular engineer for a while.

  At the sound of a tentative set of footfalls behind him, he smiled. He had no need to check the chronometer on his desk to know what time it was or who was approaching. Sitting up in his chair, al-Khaled turned to see Bilar, a young Betan male who had volunteered to assist him with various duties around the command center. He was dressed in a formal gray suit, complete with tie and bowler hat, and carrying a tray of food.

  Yes, al-Khaled thought, right on time.

  "Needing a break, Mahmud, ayeh?" Bilar said in the almost lyrical dialect that many Betans used. "I am sure this will be to your liking."

  Al-Khaled surveyed the tray's contents: typical Starfleet cuisine of a tuna salad sandwich, a mix of raw vegetables, and hot tea. Ration Pack #47, and one of the better offerings, truth be told. Nodding his thanks to Bilar, al-Khaled scooped a wedge of sandwich from the tray and ate.