Relics - Michael Jan Friedman [1]
I hope you have half as much fun with this story as I did.
Prologue
MONTIE SCOTT was flying free. The wind, cold and bracing, stretched the skin of his face over his young cheekbones, making him grin like a hyena. His hang glider bucked once and then again under the influence of an especially strong gust, reminding him of how weary his arms were.
But he was far from even thinking about a landing. Tired as they were, Scott’s arms had plenty of life left in them. And he wasn’t about to give up a single, blessed second of the breathtaking view hundreds of meters beneath him.
Great buttresses of gray rock. Long, green sweeps of hillside. Deep, dark cuts in the earth, breathing a scent of mystery that he could fairly smell all the way up here in the clouds.
Away off in the north, there was a steel-gray line of storm clouds bearing down on him. But they wouldn’t force him out of the sky either. Experience had taught him that weather from that quarter took a while to arrive.
Freedom. It was better than anything, better than a hundred-year-old scotch, better even than the mournful song of the pipes in the dusky highlands. When one came right down to it, it was freedom that made a man feel alive …
“Captain Scott?”
Suddenly, the craggy, green vistas below him seemed to melt away. Scott blinked once, twice, and saw the long, narrow face of Matt Franklin looming in front of him, his straw-yellow hair plastered tight to his skull in the fashion of the day.
“Huh?” said Scott. It took him a moment more to get his bearings-to realize that he was in a ship’s library, and that there was an active monitor in front of him. And that he’d dozed off.
Unfortunately, he was doing more and more of that these days. And it annoyed the hell out of him.
Ensign Franklin smiled. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to disturb your nap.”
“I was nae takin’ a nap,” Scott protested. And then “What brings ye down here, anyway? Is somethin’ wrong?”
Franklin shook his head reassuringly. “Nothing serious, sir. It’s just that there’s a little problem with the warp drive, and we’re going to have to drop down to impulse in a few minutes. The captain thought all the passengers should know-so you won’t be alarmed when you feel the deceleration.”
Scott looked at Franklin askance. “A little problem? Are ye certain o’ that?”
The ensign nodded, his smile broadening. “Nothing to worry about, sir. Just a slight overload in one of the plasma transfer conduits.”
The older man started to get up. “Well, I suppose I could take a look at it…”
Franklin laid a gentle hand on Scott’s shoulder. “No need, sir. Really. I know you used to be an engineer yourself, but Lieutenant Sachs has it under control.”
Scott’s enthusiasm subsided as he noted the firmness in the ensign’s eyes. “All right, then,” he sighed. “As long as he feels he can handle it.”
In an obvious attempt to change the subject, Franklin pointed to the monitor. “Anything interesting, sir?”
Scott shrugged. “Just an’ old text-very old, in fact. I came across it when I was at the Academy.”
The ensign bent closer to the screen to read the title of the thing. “The Laws of Physics,” he said out loud.
The older man nodded. “Aye. The Laws o’ Physics. Came out shortly after Einstein published his Theory of Relativity. A remarkable book-if only as a historical artifact. No mention of gravitons, subspace or antimatter.” He shook his head. “We’ve come a long way since the twentieth century, laddie.”
Franklin chuckled. “No question about that. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to it, sir.”
Scott grunted. Truth to tell, he wasn’t all that eager to return to the screen. Hell, he’d read the bloody thing about a dozen times already. He practically knew it by heart.
His daydream, on the other hand, had been exciting as all get-out. He’d forgotten how exhilarating it could be to soar over the shaggy hills of his homeland.
“Ensign,” he said abruptly, freezing Franklin just