Scotty only nodded.
“The Krung Thep office, which you tried to contact without success, is closed because I took my staff with me. They’re hard workers, and they deserve to have some fun now and then.”
“But—”
“But me no buts, Scotty. I’m an admiral; I can damned well do as I please.”
Admiral. The rank that Jim Kirk had never wanted to have—because it brought power with it, both political and military, and, as everybody knew, power corrupted. Even McCoy wasn’t immune to its effects.
“So, hurry up, old-timer. What is it that you want from me?”
Scotty pretended not to have heard the bit about the “old-timer.” “I just wanted to have a nice, quiet conversation with an old friend of mine, but I realize this is a bad moment…”
“That’s right. I’ve only got a few more minutes before they drag me onto the stage. I really have no time to talk now. Later, maybe, but not now.”
“I understand, Len. Have a nice day.”
“I’ll make sure that I do. Good-bye, Scotty, and behave yourself. That’s an order.”
“Aye, Admiral.” As the line was cut, Scotty leaned back in his chair and sighed. McCoy was much too busy for his own good. A man his age—and McCoy had aged the old-fashioned way, without tricking Time—should slow down a bit. Relax. Enjoy life. Not necessarily sit on his bum all day long, but at the same time not ask more of himself than his body was willing to give.
It hurt Scotty to look at his fragile friend, his extremities supported by a duritanium and plasteel framework, not dissimilar to those worn by members of species native to low-grav planets. The seventy-five years that had been taken from the engineer had not been overly kind to McCoy, even though the doctor had made use of any and all medical innovations and advantages that had become available to him.
McCoy was probably the best friend Scotty had left—certainly the one he’d spent the most time with since he’d been revived on the Jenolen. Sure, some of his other old shipmates were still around, but most of them kept busy. Uhura still had her Intelligence job, but that meant that she had a lot on her plate, with little time for old shipmates. She was working with others at shaping the fate of the known galaxy, although she herself would most likely never have put it quite so dramatically. Some years ago, he’d even got a call from Chekov, who’d wanted to say hello. Now a desk-jockey admiral, the former security officer had an enormous amount of work, but he’d made some time.
Scotty would contact any of them if he was sure enough that they’d be able to spare an hour for him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. Not at all.
Grumbling, he switched off the computer terminal and stood up. The truth was, McCoy’s lack of time for him, regardless of his reasons for it, hurt the former engineer. He’d awaited—expected—a jovial talk about the past, some friendly advice, maybe even the promise of an inquiry into the legality of the Kropasar mission. Yet he had received none of this.
So perhaps it’s time I bloody well took matters into my own hands. Why rely on the possiblity of McCoy looking into things—or asking Uhura or Chekov to—when he could do it his own self? He needed to know what he’d done, what he’d caused to come to be, and there was no reason why he couldn’t have a look into the Federation’s xenosociological and xenohistorical databases himself.
Standing there, staring at the display, he was clueless as to why it had taken him over half a year to do this. He should have done so immediately after the Kropasar mission. He should have performed weekly checks to find out what had happened to the planet after he had left. The truth was that he had been afraid of what he might discover.
Blast it. It was no use thinking about what he should have done; only people afraid to actually try to undo the damage they caused did that, often while downing one drink after another.
And I’m no alcoholic, so I won’t do that.
With newfound enthusiasm, Scotty searched the databases for any bits of information about Kropasar. It took several hours to compile it all, but after a time, he had collected enough data to form a picture in his mind.
It was not a pleasant picture.
Apparently the government had lost credibility with the public following the rejection of the planet’s bid for Federation membership—a rejection that almost immediately followed the Breen cruiser’s being purloined. After all, there was no need to be nice to the aliens if the Federation had what it wanted out of them. The Consensus Party had lost its majority in the Witenagemot; High Cyning Forecic lost her position as its head.
But Thane Iamor and his Agreement Party had been unable to rise into the gap. According to the public record, a dispute over some action of Iamor’s—Scotty had a good idea what action that was—had split the party asunder, meaning no one was able to achieve the majority in the Witenagemot necessary to create a functioning government. Unfortunately, one of the planet’s many provincial cynings had taken advantage of the lull in authority to revive a longstanding grudge with another cyning, weapons had been fired, and any chance of a unified Kropasar reemerging had died in the ensuing chaos.
He couldn’t have imagined it if he had tried. He had known betraying the Kropaslin by stealing their cruiser and rejecting their bid for Federation membership would have had to have some effect on them, but this? According to reports, the multitronic computer so important to the continued functioning of several government services had been one of the first fatalities of the provincial cynings’ squabbling. With that computer gone, vital government secrets relating to the production of bioneural circuitry had been lost, and without that vital export, the entire planet’s economy was plunged into ruin.
Things only got worse from there.
This was bad. This was really bad. And it was partially his own fault—though not his alone. Fleet Admiral Alynna Nechayev shared the responsibility for these developments.
Which was why the next thing he did was contact her.
“Admiral Nechayev is currently not in her office.”
Blast and double-blast! Was nobody willing to go to work today? First McCoy, now Nechayev. He’d thought that a call by a living Starfleet “legend” like himself would cause Starfleet Command to immediately establish a connection. Instead, he was given the usual evasive gibberish about Nechayev being incredibly busy and thus unavailable.
“Well. That’s too bad,” Scotty said, restraining himself from telling the admiral’s Andorian secretary what he really felt. “Can I leave her a message? It’s rather urgent, I’m afraid, and I’d like to hear her take on it.”
“Of course you can leave her a message, Mr. Scott. I’ll make sure that she sees it,” the secretary said, her antennae probing the air as she spoke.
“Thank you. I’d like to record and encrypt it, so if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to you in a few moments.”
“Of course, Mr. Scott. The admiral will contact you later. Have a nice day.”
With that, the connection was cut, and Scotty found himself staring at an empty computer screen, barely containing his anger. Was Nechayev really not in her office? He knew from experience that she was not above lying when it suited her needs. After all, she’d claimed to be sick once already, at a time when it would have been uncomfortable for her to suddenly have him calling her, complaining about the orders she’d given him. Instead, she’d claimed to be ill, a ruse that should have been as transparent to him then as it was now.
Silly him. He’d really expected her to be honest with him, when her day’s work consisted of making up stuff as she went along? Nechayev belonged to the upper echelons of Starfleet Intelligence, which was just like any other secret security agency. There certainly wasn’t much of a difference from the Tal Shiar or Imperial Intelligence.
He was certain that you had to give up your soul when you got recruited by any of them. Even Uhura, whom he still thought of as a friend, had changed in the decades since he’d last seen her in the twenty-third century. She’d become more serious, more distant, m
ore…secretive, than the woman he’d once fancied.
He quickly recorded a short message to Nechayev, ambiguous enough to confuse any listener not familiar with what really had transpired on Kropasar last year, but at the same time detailed enough to let the admiral know what he wanted. Then he encrypted it, using a particularly clever technique; Scotty had found out years ago that many Starfleet codes were based on engineering protocols and warp-field physics. Using this knowledge, he chose a particularly difficult code to give Nechayev’s grunts an interesting time—after all, he was certain that she wouldn’t attempt to decrypt the message herself. She knew how to delegate.
Oh yes, she did.
He sent the message without establishing a direct comlink to Nechayev’s office on Starbase 395, because he didn’t want to talk to Zha Obnoxious again. Even though he wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody, he felt a certain smugness when he hit the SEND button.
Having accomplished what he’d set out to do, he went on to clean up his office. There were unrecycled glasses everywhere, a painful reminder of last week’s drinking excesses, even more so because he’d told himself that he had stopped drinking alone. Stretching his arms, he grabbed as many of the replicated crystal tumblers as he could, all the while telling himself that he wasn’t an alcoholic. After all, he’d know if he was one, right?
The glasses weren’t the only thing he had to clear off his desk. There were a number of padds lying there as well: detailed analyses of the computer system the El Dorado used, some technical manuals, a number of data files he’d found lacking and started to amend to fit his own needs.
He was barely done with it when the computer beeped.
“You are receiving a real-time communication.”
“Well, on the soddin’ screen with it! What are you waitin’ for?”
A face appeared on the display screen. However, it was not the stern, angular face of Fleet Admiral Alynna Nechayev. Instead, it was that of Theodore Quincy, who—for reasons unknown—asked the people he considered his friends to call him “Thomas.”
“Good evening, Mr. Quincy.”
“Scotty, I don’t know how often I’ve asked you to—”
“—call you Thomas. I don’t know, either.”
“Ah, so you do remember. But what about this morning? Have you forgotten about that?” asked Quincy, clearly agitated about something.
“What? When—” he interrupted himself. “Computer, what’s the time?”
“Eight hours, twenty-six minutes and eleven seconds.”
“Thank you. You were sayin’, Mr. Qui…Thomas?”
“This is exactly why I’m calling. It’s already past eight o’clock! Today’s a Varasday, in case you aren’t aware.”
“Oh.” Bloody sodding hell. Varasday was Risa’s equivalent of a Sunday, the last day of the weekend, and thus something special. It had been Quincy’s—Thomas’s—idea to have the Engineering Room open on a Varasday morning and serve breakfast as usual, but with a twist.
The twist consisted of a simulated warp core breach, which was achieved by flashing lights within the M/ARA and colorful smoke being released from the ceiling. To top it all off, Scotty was supposed to pretend to do his best to stop the core breach. However, he was not supposed to be entirely successful. The breach was the special weekly event that drew in an additional two hundred or so visitors that put the money into Quincy’s pockets, or so the manager had told Scotty at the beginning of their relationship.
“Don’t worry, Thomas,” he said, “that only means the breach’ll happen a wee bit later than usual. It’s not as if those usually happen at a specific time, anyway.”
“This is the financial future of the El Dorado we’re talking about! If there’s no core breach today, our customers will immediately flock to some other hotel on the other side of the harbor. This is important, Scotty! I do hope you’ll be here in a matter of minutes, otherwise I don’t know what we should do!”
“Have you considered doin’ it yourself? Really, all I do is run around and play prevent-the-core-breach. You could do the same, I’m sure.”
“I have better things to do than pretending to be a headless chicken!” Quincy shouted . “I’m the manager of this establishment. I hired you to attract more customers, in case you forgot. At the moment, I can’t say you’re doing your job.”
“Okay, okay, don’t get your knickers in a twist just yet. I’ll be there before you can say ‘asymmetrical peristaltic field manipulation.’”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Quincy said and ended their conversation.
Bugger. Was it really past eight already? He hadn’t noticed the time slipping away like this.
Scotty found that he didn’t really care either way. While angering Quincy was something he didn’t mind all that much, he also could do without it. It made working for him much easier.
So it happened that, roughly ten minutes later, he was on the paved road again, walking through the carefully kept jungle toward the gold-covered walls of the El Dorado Hotel and Vacation Resort, mentally preparing himself once more for the unspeakable terror that was the Varasday morning warp core breach.
At ten o’clock, the smoke had long since cleared, most of the patrons had left the ER, and Scotty was on his way back to the bungalow. Quincy’s mood had immediately improved the second he’d seen Scotty in his ancient uniform. From then on, everything had progressed as it always did. He’d pretended to be not quite the miracle worker people told him he was, running around like a headless chicken indeed, and he’d even shocked quite a number of patrons by having some of the “warp plasma” blown in his face.
When he unlocked the door, he was greeted by the computer’s voice that told him he was receiving a real-time communication.
Hurrying toward the office, he shouted, “Well, put it on, you glaikit heap of isolinear rods!”
Just as Scotty reached the room at the far end of the corridor, the computer obligingly activated the screen on the wall near his office desk, displaying the Starfleet emblem for a short moment before changing to the countenance of the one member of the Fleet he most seriously wished never to have met.
Admiral Alynna Nechayev stared at him with the same serious look on her face that he had expected to see. Not even once in all the time he’d had the dubious pleasure of working for her had he seen her crack a genuine smile.
Which was probably for the best. For all he knew, her face would split apart, and the top of her head would fall off.
“Mr. Scott,” she said in lieu of a greeting, “I hope I didn’t contact you at an inopportune moment.”
“Oh, you most certainly did not, Admiral. Ever since leavin’ the Fleet I’ve had more time on my hands than is good for me.”
“I see. I do have to admit that I am surprised to see you wearing this .”
“What? Oh,” he said, realizing that he was still wearing his old engineer’s radiation suit, a replicated one whose design dated back to the same era as his standard duty uniform that he usually wore when playing the greeter at the ER’s entrance. “What can I say? Those were better times. You can’t fault an old man for doin’ a little reminiscin’, can you, lass?”
“Mr. Scott, I remember telling you on numerous occasions that I resent being called a ‘lass.’ Surely your memory is still as remarkable as it was?”
“Ach, would that it were. There’s things that I can’t seem to remember even if my life depended on it, and yet there’s things that I will quite possibly never ever forget,” Scotty said, deliberately choosing an ominous way of phrasing his reply. Why shouldn’t he remind Nechayev of what he knew? Maybe one day he’d tell everybody how she’d maneuvered him into betraying his oath and everything he believed in. The Federation newsnets would eat it up like Kaferian apple pie. After all, they liked stories about Starfleet scandals. He remembered the fuss the media had made about Jim Kirk’s death on the Enterprise-B. Poor John Harriman had had to bear the devastating reports that put all the blame on him, and
not on an unpredictable ribbon of flashing energy, not to mention a headstrong, stubborn guest of honor.
“Splendid. Now, in your message to me—whose encryption, I have to admit, was quite a puzzle to my specialists, at least at the beginning—you mentioned something about Kropasar? I believe you even said you were concerned about its people.”
“Indeed I am, Admiral,” he replied, using her rank like an insult. “You see, I spent some time last night gatherin’ information about Kropasar. You are aware of the situation on the planet, I trust?” Not giving her any time to reply, he continued, “Never mind. I’ll tell you. Kropasar’s fallen to pieces. The government’s collapsed, the economy’s on the way out, disasters are ragin’ unchecked. And all of that happened because you and your pals decided to flout the basic principles not only of the Federation, but also of decency itself.”
Nechayev’s face was made of stone, her lips a thin line. Then, finally, she opened them to answer. “So you’ve done your homework, Mr. Scott. Bravo. But let me show you that I’ve done mine as well. Going over your file, I didn’t notice any filed complaints of yours when your revered Captain Kirk and Commander Spock went over to that Romulan battle cruiser and acquired its cloaking device. Neither did you protest in the least when the Enterprise fired on that colony of Axanar insurgents. You did not have any objections to Kirk’s rather unconventional solution to the Pelosians’ extinction problem that violated the spirit, if not exactly the letter, of three of Starfleet’s General Orders. What’s more, you even participated in that Starstalker project whose goal was to create the ultimate fighting cruiser.
“Are you going to tell me that these instances are in no way comparable to what happened on Kropasar? Because I get the feeling that Kirk never did anything wrong, or you would have said something .”
The Future Begins Page 6