What's Past_ The Future Begins (Book 2) - Michael Schuster [36]
Besides, this Morgan woman seemed rather…interested in him, so to speak. It was best to strike the iron while it was hot, as they said, so he couldn’t let this chance pass without trying to make use of it. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, waiting for him to lead the way to the bar, where he ordered her a screwdriver.
The young’un called Robin joined them, mumbling something incomprehensible that surely was of no importance to Scotty. He decided to enjoy this evening.
Perhaps there was even a reason to enjoy the night.
As it turned out, the relationship Morgan was interested in was of a friendly nature, but not as intimate as Scotty would have liked. Perhaps it was his own fault, talking mostly about machines and computers and not about things that interested her. In hindsight, he’d pretty much killed any chance of getting anywhere with Morgan Primus on their very first date—if “date” was the correct word for it.
However, the following days turned out to be the best since Belunis had decided to look elsewhere for the adventures that were absent in her life. Scotty and Morgan had fun getting to know each other more closely, talking about a broad variety of subjects that ranged from starship propulsion (as it turned out, Morgan had served on a Starfleet ship herself) to native Risian cuisine.
They had long since left the greeter-guest relationship behind for something better when a new player entered the game: some no-good shaan gadgie who reeked of money. His name was Rafe Viola, and he proclaimed himself an entrepreneur. When Scotty discovered that Viola was making advances toward Morgan, his alarms went up. The man was not good enough for Morgan in any case, and then there was the fact that Scotty had a bad feeling about him.
He said as much to Morgan, but she accused him of being jealous when all he wanted was to prevent her from being hurt.
Women. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” indeed.
In the end, when Viola turned out not only to be what he’d suspected but also a cold-blooded killer, Scotty had felt no satisfaction over having been right in the first place. A mere two weeks after his first meeting with Morgan Primus and her daughter Robin, Scotty’s life had been turned upside down, the quietness of the past few months gone as if it had never existed.
At least I’m still alive, he thought. Poor Mr. Quincy was not. Viola’s son Nik had killed him—although “son” wasn’t the correct word. “Clone,” however, was. Later, after everything had calmed down, Morgan had told Scotty everything he’d missed. He’d missed a lot, apparently.
But his temporary absence was understandable. After all, you don’t get thrown into a shaft inside a multiple-level computer core only to miraculously appear mere seconds later. He had to thank the Great Bird of the Galaxy that he’d had the common sense to put on antigrav boots before he went to inspect the core together with Mr. Quincy.
Mr. Quincy—Thomas—wasn’t the only victim of this madman’s killing spree. Part of the resort—mostly trees and other plants—had been destroyed by a computer virus that caused the wave generator at the beach to malfunction. Out of control, it threatened to flood the entire hotel complex and drown every adult and child in the vicinity. Working together with Morgan, he’d managed to undo the damage, and within one hour the water had begun to be pulled back into the lagoon, where it couldn’t hurt anybody any longer.
The resort’s owners had contacted Scotty soon afterward, offering him the post of manager of the El Dorado. Unlike so many other corporate creatures, they knew what a loss the death of a manager like Theodore Quincy was to them. They were genuinely sorry, which was a point in their favor. However, they also saw the need to go on, and in order to offer the visitors a perfect holiday, they needed to repair the damage to their computer system, their wave generator, and—most important—their public image. A Starfleet legend such as himself would be a brightly colored feather in their cap, they reasoned, and they even offered