What's Past_ The Future Begins (Book 2) - Michael Schuster [24]
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, more…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,