Star Trek: Some Assembly Required

By Scott Ciencin and Dan Jolley

STARFLEET CORPS OF ENGINEERS
Keorga is a haven for artists and musicians, a place of contemplation and artistic appreciation. When their request for a planet-running computer is denied by Starfleet, they go elsewhere; unfortunately, the instruction manual is in a language they cannot understand.
A team from the U.S.S. da Vinci is brought in to help them, but soon they realize there's more to this than a simple translation problem. The computer seems to be running a test -- one that the Keorgans are failing! If the S.C.E. team can't get the information they need out of the recalcitrant Keorgans and figure out how to stop the rampaging computer, Keorga may well lie in ruins!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
• Release date: Jan 15, 2002
• ISBN: 9780743428798

Scott Ciencin

Scott Ciencin (1962–2014) was the bestselling author of adult and children’s fiction, with more than sixty novels. He also wrote tie-in books for Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many more.

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

Korl Harland kept his eyes fixed on the central monitor, taking in Drei Silveris’s voice while he ignored the erratically shimmering photon array over his head, and the steadily growing tremors beneath his feet. His hands flashed across the control array.

Professor, Silveris said, steadying himself in the lab’s doorway, his own eyes glued to a hand-held seismic readout, it’s reached theta pattern! Shockwave impact in less than two minutes!

I am aware of our time constraints, Harland said calmly. The photon array, its normally soothing patterns of light swimming and transforming in the air above him, flickered and dimmed.

Silveris stepped hesitantly into the lab and found that, on top of his dread and horror at the approaching catastrophe, his mind still found room for awe and a trace of fear of the immense, mysterious alien machine housed there.

The professor leaned closer to the controls and spoke, voice barely above a whisper. I believe you can hear me, he said. I believe I can talk to you.

Another tremor came, this one more violent; a stack of padds toppled from a nearby workbench and one of the lab’s windows shattered. Harland’s eight-fingered hands flew across the machine’s control console, searching, practically begging the system to respond.

Professor Korl Harland, the Keorgan who had made possible his planet’s petition to join the United Federation of Planets by inventing the Keorgan warp drive, had assembled—to the best of his abilities—the huge alien computing system in his own workshop, which occupied space in a building on the outskirts of Yirgopolis, Keorga’s capital. Yirgopolis itself, with a population of just under three million citizens, was a coastal city, nestled into a bay on the eastern seaboard of Keorga’s most populous continent. Part of a chain of cities and towns stretching both north and south along the coastline, Yirgopolis gleamed as the heart of Keorga, the brightly focused center of Keorgan art—art that had already attracted interplanetary attention . . . art that, along with the rest of Keorgan culture, currently faced a threat of cataclysmic proportions.

Harland worked as fast as he could, tried every control combination he could think of as perspiration beaded on his brow and ran down between his vividly colored eyebrows. He knew it could work. He knew it could be done. He’d seen it.

Just after he and several assistants had assembled the machine seven days ago, the big central monitor had flared briefly to life, a brilliant violet energy matrix playing across the screen for precious seconds before fading to black. Since then the screen had come to life on three other occasions, but for no more than a few seconds at a time, and in response to what seemed to be random manipulations of its control console.

Now, with tremors rumbling through Yirgopolis and shockwaves approaching that could easily level the city, Harland wanted nothing more than to see the computer flare to life once again.

So when the first shockwave struck and brilliant violet light flooded the lab, Harland’s eyes filled with tears of joy.

* * *

Elsewhere in Yirgopolis—roughly one kilometer from Harland’s lab—two small children huddled together in the basement of their home. They had been playing a game, but when the earth began to quake and rumble they grew frightened and hid together in a corner.

Rand, the boy, held his younger sister Ria close to him, despite her struggles. I have to see if Munna’s all right! Ria cried, referring to their pet, which lived in an aviary behind the house.

Munna’s fine, Rand said. She’ll just fly away if anything bad happens. But Ria slipped free of her brother’s grasp and dashed across the basement floor.

She never made it to the stairs. In a single movement the earth convulsed and split apart beneath them, a chasm suddenly yawning between brother and sister. Wooden beams and chunks of metal and glass rained down around them as their house ripped nearly in half. None of the destruction registered on Rand, though. All he could see was his younger sister as she teetered on the edge of the gaping chasm, then toppled backward into it.

Nor was he aware of a quick violet flicker in one corner of the basement near the ceiling . . . or of the small, glittering sphere that abruptly materialized there, hovering, light winking from its surface.

The only thing in Rand’s mind, as he dove forward and lunged to grab a scrap of Ria’s clothing, was the fervent, soul-deep wish that the tremors would stop, that the ground would close, that everything would go back to the way it was before the earthquakes started.

* * *

The glittering silver sphere

Reviews for Star Trek

[daniexj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Riddled Past - There's a distress call from a dilithium planet's outpost and the DaVinci gets assigned to go and check out the situation. They find nearly all the outpost (except for the power station) destroyed and only two survivors. They set about trying to figure out why it was destroyed. I was happy that the linguist on board, Bart F. had a bigger role, hopefully every few books the authors/editors remember that Carol A. and Bart F. exist in the book too. A good story.Here There Be Monsters - I really like most of what Keith R.A. DeCandido writes and this story wasn't any different. This takes place after the Star Trek novel series Gateways. I haven't read the series yet, but the story didn't give away any big unexpected twists from the novel series so I'm still on track to go back and read the original novel series still. Add to that the fact that ASL was mentioned in the story and this was a very fun story.Ambush - This was a fast paced story. Lots of action and interesting ways to think outside the box for the crew members of the DaVinci ship. A fast read and a great read.Some Assembly Required - That was different. There's a computer that a prospective Federation planet has acquired. But that's the usual part of the story. The interesting part is the race that bought the computer. The authors didn't just change what color blood or how many fingers, but went deep into a totally different mindset for these aliens. It was awesome!