What's Past_ The Future Begins (Book 2) - Michael Schuster [25]
“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