The Future Begins Read online

  Scotty shrugged. “Earth, I suppose.” At the very least he would now need to clear his belongings out of his Starfleet-issued apartment in San Francisco.

  The ensign nodded and as he continued doing the checklist with one hand, began plotting the course with the other. “What are you going to do now that you’re retired?”

  “I don’t know, lad. This’ll be my second time, but I didn’t really know then, either.” The retirement colony on Norpin V was definitely out. The last thing he needed was to be with a bunch of old-timers all reminiscing over bygone days. He had enough history of his own to wallow in. “I’d return to wanderin’, if I could.”

  Unfortunately, when he had reenlisted with Starfleet, Scotty had donated his old shuttlecraft, the Romaine, to the Starfleet Museum as a form of recompense for stealing a starship from them. Brennad Odymo, the museum head, would surely never part with it now, since the former shuttlecraft Goddard was the only sizable intact remain of the wrecked Enterprise-D.

  “I didn’t particularly like wandering much, really.” Though there had been some interesting encounters on the way—renewing his friendship with Morgan, rescuing the Narisian refugees, tangling with Koloth one last time, rescuing Spock from Romulan captivity—most of the time he had just felt aimless. Much like he did now, much like he had since transferring to the Sovereign.

  But the engine room was no longer a home to him. Starfleet was no longer a home for him.

  Right now, aimless wandering is all I have.

  Interlude

  Stardate 53509.5

  May 2376, Old Earth Time

  Geordi La Forge set down his glass, his first drink still unfinished. “Well, that’s Nechayev for you,” he said. “The things I’ve heard about her, from the captain and elsewhere…”

  “Oh, I know that now, laddie,” said Scotty. He reached for his bottle, but evidently reconsidered yet another glass of Scotch, as he withdrew his hand only partway there. “If only I’d known earlier.”

  “So you resigned?” La Forge asked. “I thought I’d heard you went on inactive duty.”

  “I wanted to resign,” Scotty said, “and I certainly filed my resignation. But Command—specifically Admiral Ross—wouldn’t take it, and he managed to talk me into goin’ on ‘inactive duty.’ I was maintained in an ‘advisory capacity’ to the S.C.E. or some similar nonsense, and Commander Leland T. Lynch took over as temporary head until a suitable replacement could be found.”

  La Forge nodded. He knew Lynch, and had never been impressed by the man’s engineering prowess, but from what he heard, he made a capable administrator.

  Scotty stood up. “I don’t know about you, lad, but I fancy goin’ somewhere else than this office, as nice as it is.” He nodded at La Forge’s glass. “I suspect you would like to do the same, so you can have a drink more to your taste.”

  Geordi smiled. “That would be nice. I haven’t been to Worlds in a while.”

  “Laddie, I don’t think I’ve been there since I retired the first time, and I’d certainly like to see how the place has been doing in the past eighty-odd years.” La Forge stood and followed Scotty out of his office, back into Deg’s.

  “I’m goin’ to be takin’ the afternoon off, Deg lad,” said Scotty. “Anythin’ I need to hear before I leave?”

  “Admiral Koike would like to send the da Vinci to Maeglin to deal with a situation there once they’ve completed their mission to Tellar Prime,” replied the Blood.

  “Gateways related?” asked Geordi.

  Deg nodded. “There are few other types of crises these past few days.”

  “Those Petraw fearties are about to give me an ever-lastin’ headache, I’m tellin’ you! Thank goodness for your Captain Picard,” said Scotty. “Otherwise we would be facing even worse. Tell Koike he’s free to send the da Vinci wherever he wishes,” he said to Deg.

  “Yes, sir,” said Deg, beginning to tap into his computer once more. “That should be it for the day.”

  Scotty led the way out of the office, as Geordi followed. “It won’t be, of course. It never is.”

  Strange New Worlds, the full name of the bar commonly called “Worlds,” was an ancient Starfleet institution, supposedly older than the Academy itself. According to myth, it was here that Admiral Jonathan Archer had been offered the position of Chief of Staff of the fledgling Federation Starfleet.

  La Forge had never quite bought that one. The bar was old, but it wasn’t that old. Regardless, it had been popular with Starfleet personnel for over a century now, and that showed little sign of changing. La Forge had been coming here on and off since he was an Academy cadet, and had always liked it. The bar was filled with Starfleet memorabilia, from dedication plaques to model starships to used self-sealing stem bolts.

  Once they were settled in at a nice corner booth—Scotty with an Aldebaran whiskey, and La Forge with a nice Saurian brandy—the younger engineer prompted Scotty to continue his tale. “Did you return to wandering, or what?”

  “I suppose so, laddie,” said Scotty, “but wanderin’ of a more limited sort. I returned to Scotland, revisiting my old homeland for the first time since I left on the Jenolen back in ’94. But soon I found myself called away to a far more…pleasurable destination.”

  Damage Control

  Stardate 53194.6

  March 2376, Old Earth Time

  As he made his way to the lift of the observation tower, Montgomery Scott managed not to bump into a single tourist, which in itself was a small miracle. Usually, they didn’t care whether they were in his way, only to later complain quite loudly about his obvious inability to walk without distracting others from observing the scantily-clad natives.

  Even if the visitors were forgettable, Risa itself always was a lovely spot to spend your downtime, and it hadn’t changed a bit in the years he’d been…offstage, so to speak. There were still those large wooden horga’hn s everywhere, almost forcing you to get yourself some jamaharon while there was still some left.

  Scotty was glad that he had found this job. He just wasn’t the kind of man to sit around lazily all day long, reading books, and solving 3-D crossword puzzles. He wished he had figured that out just a few years earlier (relatively speaking, of course), because then he wouldn’t have been on the Jenolen, on course to that bloody retirement colony, which had resulted in him skipping seventy-five years cleverly ensconced in a transporter buffer.

  It had had its upsides, however—not only had he escaped a depressing number of wars and armed conflicts, but also some unnecessary revivals of outrageous fashion styles. Yet what had survival brought him? Nothing, except the knowledge that the galaxy hadn’t improved. People were still as stupid as they had been in the twenty-third century.

  Case in point—suddenly, someone big and heavy bumped into him, mumbled an excuse and continued down the corridor. Scotty looked at the quickly moving back of the person—who seemed to be a Megarite, judging from his drysuit—and thought about thanking him for his consideration, but somehow he got the impression that sarcasm was wasted on the peculiar aliens who used song to communicate their ideas and opinions.

  Finally, Scotty made it to the lift; it made the one hundred twelve-story journey in less than thirty seconds. He stepped out of the turbocar and onto the observation deck of the Tolari Tower, the tallest structure on this continent. Even from up here, the main building of the nearby El Dorado Resort resembled a fake Aztec pyramid consisting of real Risian basalt, and it looked authentic, from what Scotty could tell. But then again, he didn’t know all that much about ancient Aztec architecture.

  He went to the railing and took a deep breath. The view was outstanding as always. He had heard that Risa’s peculiar geological history was responsible for the abundance of beaches and lagoons, but he suspected that the Risian government had helped nature along. For more than two hundred years, the planet had been one of the Federation’s most popular holiday destinations, together with Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet, Casperia Prime, and Phlos
ton Paradise, but if the Risians hadn’t begun to interfere with their natural environment centuries ago, the planet would have rivaled Ferenginar in humidity.

  However, some people didn’t like the way the visitors to Risa behaved. They claimed that the Risian lifestyle was the cause of complacency, vanity, and extreme hedonism. In response, they had founded the New Essentialists Movement and tried to show people the error of their ways. Nobody would have complained if they had done it by holding rallies and handing out pamphlets, but no, they had had to switch off the entire weather control grid and the tectonic stress regulators. Who in their right mind believed that was more likely to convince people to change their lifestyle?

  Anyway, that was long past. The Risian Ministry for Planetary Affairs had realized that they needed a better weather grid, one that couldn’t easily be controlled by a small handheld device, so they had installed a new one and hoped it would solve all their problems.

  It had not. In fact, it had created more of them. Some satellites stopped working for hours or even days at a time, and their memory cores had to be completely wiped before they could be reactivated. Visitors to Risa had to cope with incredibly localized gales and thunderstorms—if they stayed. Most of them left when they discovered that the planet no longer was the paradise they’d been promised.

  As it so happened, a Starfleet admiral was spending his vacation in the Temtibi Lagoon Resort. He had contacted the local facilitator and told her that he knew just the person to solve all their tech-related problems. A number of calls later, Montgomery Scott was packing for his journey to the oldest pleasure planet in the Federation, ready to prove once more that he was the original miracle worker.

  Admiral William J. Ross had been right. He had known that Scotty would enjoy his time there, even after he’d repaired the weather grid. The government had even offered to make him honorary citizen of the Risian Hedony, but he’d declined politely, telling them—and himself—that he’d be content if they let him stay on the planet just a little bit longer.

  Luckily, a reason to stay had cropped up—there were other problems that needed his attention. The management of the El Dorado Holiday Resort contacted him about some computer trouble they had and asked him, since he was on Risa already, if he could help them out.

  He hadn’t said no. After all, the resort had a very nice bar.

  Another deep breath, another look across the lagoon, taking in all the sights that Hanotis Harbor offered. He made a point of coming up here every now and then; seeing fantastic sights like this was part of the reason he’d gone into space in the first place, and he wouldn’t let retirement stop him from doing it.

  Even from here, he could still see the big horga’hn s that symbolized the attitude toward sexuality held by the planet’s three billion Risians (not to mention more than a billion visitors that came every year). The majority of them had a rather…open approach to intimate pleasures. Not that he minded, of course. Not at all.

  Ah…Belunis. He was sorry that she’d left so soon after he met her. She was a lovely woman, and he wouldn’t have minded spending more time with her. Being a living Starfleet legend could get pretty lonely after a few years, not to mention boring. So it had come as a pleasant surprise that there was at least one woman who didn’t know who he was or what he’d done. She liked him nonetheless. He had believed that she even loved him, but he would never find out now, would he?

  A sigh escaped his lips before he could stop himself. Melancholy and self-pity wouldn’t help him. That Hermat he’d met on Argelius II had told him as much, and it was still true.

  Right. Abruptly, he turned around and headed back for the lift.

  Scotty’s shift began at eight in the evening and lasted four hours. Now it was past six, and he was feeling quite a bit peckish indeed. Once he left the Tolari Tower, he began heading back toward the grounds of the El Dorado, where his bungalow was situated.

  After a number of failed attempts, he’d tuned the replicator in his apartment the way he needed it to be to produce an acceptable Forfar Bridie. Now, however, he wanted something simple and sweet, like a piece of Dundee cake or a Caledonian cream.

  It was remarkable. The older he got, the more he longed for traditional dishes, the ones he’d grown up with. His mother, despite her Danish ancestry (or perhaps because of it), had been the best cook in Aberdeen—and indeed in Scotland.

  And then he joined the Fleet and discovered all the splendid cooking that was done on other planets. The unimaginable, the impossible happened: he liked it better!

  Perhaps it had something to do with changes of ingredients and different preparation methods. Perhaps it was the fascination of the unknown. Possible…but perhaps it was simply the joy of finally getting away from all the history and tradition and cultural background that threatened to crush him like a bug whenever he was in Aberdeen.

  At least, that was how he’d felt as a teenager, when he hadn’t known that there really was no place like home.

  Now, however, he was on Risa, on the paved road leading to his fake Aztec bungalow. When he arrived at the front door, he keyed in his security code, and the door swished open.

  He flicked on the lights, replicated himself a double-sized piece of Dundee cake, and sat down at his computer terminal. He was greeted by the blinking words: You have twenty-three new messages.

  A sigh was followed by acceptance of the unavoidable.

  He quickly scanned the message titles and their senders, and eliminated seventeen of them by way of being unknown and/or clearly identifiable as tribble-coms. That left six messages that got a second chance.

  A couple were business-related—one from Theodore Quincy, Scotty’s manager, about a meeting and another from the head waiter about a contingent of Withiki visiting tonight—and these he quickly read and digested. Three others he eliminated mere moments after opening them, realizing they were tribblecoms more cleverly disguised than most.

  The sixth message was the one he’d expected, but not in a positive sense. Still, he had to listen to what it said.

  The visage of Admiral Ross, formerly of Starbase 375, Kalandra Sector, now attached to Starfleet Headquarters, Earth, filled the terminal screen. He seemed calm and relaxed, and yet his messages always had a touch of desperation to them.

  “Good day, Captain Scott.” He still called him “Captain,” despite the fact that Scotty was supposedly out of the Fleet. Scott guessed it had something to do with respect, or maybe Ross just didn’t know better. He didn’t really care either way.

  “I know it’s quite likely you haven’t changed your mind in the last nine days, but nevertheless I want to ask you to reconsider. Starfleet needs you, now more than ever. The Corps needs you. I need you.

  “Commander Lynch has now officially submitted his resignation as Corps liaison; his position will be vacant a month from now. Last week, all I could tell you was speculation and rumors, but now it is official. We need a replacement, and I can’t think of anybody better suited for this task than you—considering that you worked closely with him until recently.”

  While it was surprising that Lynch had now actually resigned, the rest of the message wasn’t all that different from what Ross had said in last week’s message, or in the one from the week before, or the one before that. Are there no other engineers who could sit behind a desk at HQ instead of me? Starfleet must really be desperate if they can’t think of anybody else. Me, a retired, slightly overweight, gray-haired man with a bad case of nostalgia! What bloody times are we living in?

  Unaware of Scotty’s thoughts, the recorded Admiral Ross continued. “On behalf of Captains Xentalir and Gold, I have to thank you for your recommendations you sent last time. Apparently, the candidates you picked fit their needs perfectly.”

  Hrmph. Not much of an accomplishment. Even the thickest admiral would have seen that Lieutenant Borosh and Commander Gomez were the best of the best. It didn’t take a genius to realize that. Okay, so Borosh had a bit of a popularity handicap
there with his transparent skull, but he certainly made up for it with his engineering talent. And Sonya Gomez was simply brilliant. Her Academy paper about subspace accelerators had impressed Scotty very much—still did—which was the reason why he’d recommended her for the post of S.C.E. team leader on the…what was the ship’s name again? He only knew the former leader had been a Vulcan. Killed in the war, in a Cardassian attack.

  “There are four other senior posts to fill. I’ll send you the files of the people we think would be ideal for their respective jobs.”

  Remind me again why I let myself be talked into this? It still feels like I’m part of the Fleet, even though my brain tells me I am not. But there he was, helping Ross and the soon-to-be-replaced (though not by him) Lynch, choosing candidates for leading S.C.E. positions. This went far beyond gratitude to Ross for steering him to Risa—that debt was long since paid. How stupid am I? Didn’t I promise myself never to work for these people again?

  But some part of him had never really left Starfleet, not even after last year’s incident. Some part believed that the organization he’d been a member of for more than half a century was still the same, always looking for something to explore, not exploit. Back when his parents had convinced him to undergo command training even though he had always known he wanted to be an engineer, he’d thought that Starfleet was interested only in acquiring as much knowledge as possible, be it technological, social, medical, or something else. As it turned out, he’d been wrong.

  Oh, how wrong he had been.

  “I ask you to consider this latest offer. Maybe next time we can talk face-to-face without me having to leave a message for you. That way, you’d get to voice your concerns, and I can provide you with answers to any questions you might have. Good-bye, Captain Scott.”

  Next time, Ross had said. Yes, it did feel as if he were still serving in the Fleet. He’d originally thought that agreeing to help find some S.C.E. candidates would satisfy the top brass on Earth. Once again, he immediately got the proof that he knew better how to deal with machines than people.