What's Past_ The Future Begins (Book 2) - Michael Schuster [8]
But before Scott could bring himself to actually do the deed, Admiral William Ross had come to him with the offer of heading the S.C.E. Scotty had leapt at the chance to do something useful but, not keen on becoming an administrator, insisted it only be on a temporary basis, until someone who actually wanted the job could be found. His first month had not endeared him to his new duties: it had been signing off on orders, approving requests, dictating reports, and more of the same. When a chance had come to get out of the office and do some work on a communications array at Tsugh Kaidnn, he had taken the opportunity without a thought. And the next opportunity to get out of the office, and the one after that.
The only thing that kept him in the job were the words Harriman had spoken to him a few years back, when Harriman had been contemplating retirement himself and offered his job to Scotty: They only gave it to me to keep an old admiral busy. But an engineer like yourself, you could really do something with it. But every time Scotty called Commander Lynch back at the office and learned how much more paperwork had built up, he doubted Harriman’s words more and more.
Returning to Earth after the inspection tour on the Hudson, he had thrown himself into helping with the reconstruction efforts repairing the damage caused by the Breen attack on San Francisco. But having wrapped up what he could at the moment, he had been dreading returning to his office. Fortunately, Ensign Dramar had happened along. At the time, he had thought that even a meeting with the notorious Admiral Nechayev would be better than confronting his paperwork.
He’d been wrong there.
“What was it like on the Sovereign?” asked Professor Andrews, diverting Scotty from his momentary bit of introspection.
Scotty, not letting his doubts about his choices show, said, “It was pretty tricky workin’ new technology like that, but I adapted quickly. When you’ve been an engineer as long as I have, you start to learn that some things never change.”
“How long have you been an engineer?” asked Vantimor, her interest obvious despite her alienness.
“Over one hundred fifty years if I cheat and count my time in the transporter,” said Scotty with a grin. “All my life, really. I think I’ve served on over a dozen starships. Three Enterprise s, of course, plus Sovereign, Excelsior, Starstalker, Kumari, Gagarin…” He continued to recite his impressive pedigree, enjoying himself for the first time in a long while.
That evening, Scotty returned to his quarters, quite pleased with himself. He had spent the rest of the day swapping stories with Vantimor, Andrews, and the other engineers, and he could think of few things more pleasing than that, except maybe reading technical journals.
Speaking of which, he was still behind in his reading of the Kropasar Journal for Applied Biotechnology, not to mention the several hundred papers published by Federation journals on the issue. Tomorrow, he was scheduled to tour a gel production plant with Dr. Vantimor and some of her colleagues; he needed to be well informed if he didn’t want to look like a relic from another time.
After cleaning himself up and changing into some Starfleet-issue pajamas, Scotty had the computer download his reading material onto two isolinear chips, loaded one of the chips into his padd, and settled down on his bed to read until he fell asleep. He hadn’t done anything like this since cramming for his last history final at the Academy. He was rather enjoying himself.
Just as he was getting to the exciting part of the second paper—a discussion of realigning the nanotech processors to more efficiently process the neural-based output of gel packs without a loss in data density—he was interrupted by a beeping from the computer terminal on the room’s desk.
Sighing, he heaved himself up out of bed, and crossed the room. “Scott here,” he said, pressing the appropriate button on the terminal.
Commander Esperanza Piñiero, the Gorkon’s first officer, appeared on-screen. “Captain Scott, Admiral Nechayev has taken ill.