What's Past_ The Future Begins (Book 2) - Michael Schuster [1]
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Dedicated to the memory of James
Montgomery Doohan.
Acknowledgments
Michael wants to thank his parents for their continuing support, even though they have no great love for science fiction. He’d also like to thank every one of his English teachers—most of all, however, his two favorite teachers, Ray Flanagan and Martina Friedrich. Finally, he wants to thank his very good friend Angelika Heininger, who has been there for him ever since they stumbled across each other on the original Psi Phi Star Trek Books Board.
Steve would like to thank his parents as well, without whom he would probably not exist. He would like to apologize to his mother, to whom this novel would have been dedicated if unfortunate circumstances had not intervened. He will make it up someday.
As this story would never have been written if there had not been contradictory accounts of what Scotty was doing in 2375/76, which we tried to reconcile, it seems only fair to thank the people responsible for these stories. They are: Peter David, for the Star Trek: New Frontier novels Renaissance and Restoration, and John J. Ordover and Keith R.A. DeCandido, for the creation of the eBook series Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers and the inclusion of Scotty as a recurring character in said series.
We would be remiss if we didn’t also thank the writers of other stories and reference works which were used in the writing of this eBook. They include Christopher L. Bennett, Diane Carey, Gene DeWeese, Kevin Dilmore, Diane Duane, Julia Ecklar, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Vonda N. McIntyre, Robert J. Mendenhall, Michael Okuda, Scott Pearson, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, William Rotsler, Kevin Ryan, Rick Sternbach, Dayton Ward, Howard Weinstein, and whoever wrote “A Page from Scotty’s Diary” in the collections of the old Gold Key comics, as well as the aforementioned Mssrs. David, DeCandido, and Ordover.
Aptly enough for a series about futuristic technology and engineers, we also owe thanks to the inventors and developers of the Arpanet, which evolved into the Internet that we know and love today. Without instant worldwide communication in the form of email, this story would not have been written.
But most of all, we want to thank James Doohan for giving us such a memorable character in his portrayal of a Scottish engineer. He will not be forgotten.
Prologue
Stardate 53509.4
May 2376, Old Earth Time
Geordi La Forge materialized right in front of the Tucker Memorial Building, the beam having been ably targeted by Enterprise’s Vulcan transporter chief. The Tucker Building, adjacent to Starfleet Medical Headquarters, housed the Earth-based facilities of the Corps of Engineers. Those consisted of several offices, of course, and numerous labs where Starfleet’s best engineers analyzed alien technologies, developed new ones of their own, and fixed anything that came their way.
Basically, it was a building full of very skilled tinkerers.
La Forge quickly stepped up the flight of stairs leading to the building’s front doors, which automatically swished open to admit him. The lobby of the building was dominated by a massive replica of Zefram Cochrane’s Phoenix, which La Forge had not only seen in real life, but actually sat in only a few years ago. Around the circumference of the room were holoframes depicting many other great engineers who had served in Starfleet over the centuries, from the one that gave the building its name to George William Jefferies to Mahmud al-Khaled.
One of the holoframes was switched off, presumably out of a sense of modesty, as its subject was alive and well and presently berating another engineer by the lobby’s main desk. “What do you mean, you don’t have the report on the time corridor generator! You told me you would have it ready in a week!”
The engineer, a Vissian woman by the look of it, attempted to mount a defense. “Sir, that generator was buried on Mars for over two centuries,