Free Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic by David A McIntee Page A

memories. The master situation monitor screen on the forward wall was mostly the same as the
Enterprise
’s had been, and the warp core toward the aft section, though smaller than the one on a
Sovereign
-class, throbbed with just as much power.
    The flat, table-like master systems display console was absent. In its place, a sunken tank in the deck, and similar indentation in the ceiling above, confined a dazzling array of holographic displays and data in the air between them. La Forge couldn’t resist passing a hand through them, but quickly pulled back when they flashed. He didn’t want to start his first day on Montgomery Scott’s ship by setting off a cartload of alarms, or changing any vital settings.
    “Hand
you?” another voice replied. It sounded coarseand tough, yet somehow artificial. “Are you just trying to be offensive?”
    “I can do that or not, lad, but I’d never just try.” If any of the ten or so people working in engineering thought there was anything odd about the exchange, they certainly didn’t show it, and neither voice sounded spiteful. La Forge got the impression that this was the banter of two old friends, and made a mental note to be careful not to over-react. He followed the voices, and the sounds of a working plasma inducer, around to where the chief engineer’s office ought to be. Instead of a partitioned-off office there was a circle of free-standing consoles like some kind of high-tech Stonehenge. Most of them were partially dismantled, and circuits and optronic cabling were piled up in a way that managed to be disorganized without being completely random either.
    Standing in the midst of the technological jumble was a stout figure with neatly parted white hair, and rather sad eyes over a still fairly dark mustache. He was wearing a pocket-covered engineer’s vest over a white roll-neck, rather than a standard uniform-tunic: Starfleet’s oldest and longest-serving officer—that La Forge knew of—and certainly its oldest and longest-serving engineer.
    Montgomery Scott.
    A grin spread under Scotty’s mustache, and he hurried over, stuffing the plasma inducer in a pocket so that his hands were free to shake Geordi’s. “Commander La Forge! Welcome aboard, laddie.”
    “It’s good to be aboard, Scotty.”
    Scotty’s eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head. “Ah, but ye miss the
Enterprise
already.”
    “Does it show?”
    “It doesn’t have to. I’ve been chief engineer on two
Enterprise
s, and nothing else is quite the same. Ye’d be a heartless man if you were no’ just a little disappointed to be somewhere else.” He gave La Forge a look of mock-seriousness, and said, “Now, be honest with me, lad, leaving the
Enterprise
was like havin’ teeth pulled?”
    “Definitely,” Geordi agreed, “but seeing some familiar faces makes it a lot easier. And you know what they say, a change is as good as a rest.”
    “And they’re right about that. If retirement means a rest, then I have to say, retiring from Starfleet was the biggest mistake I ever made, except maybe for that time I bleached my hair blond, and I’m glad to have rectified it.”
    “Sounds like a pretty big mistake. But since you spent most of that retirement stuck in a transporter buffer, I guess you didn’t get too bored.” La Forge pointed upward. “I guess the hair liked its change better as well.”
    Scotty laughed. “Maybe I did give it some ideas.”
    “Could be worse, mate,” the other voice said from somewhere above La Forge’s head. “You could have done a Sisko with it.”
    Geordi looked up, and was startled to see a pallid leathery creature dropping toward him from the upper catwalk around the warp core. It had thrown a thick tentacle over the rail, and now the surly red central mass of it was descending on another couple of tentacles which remained secured to the upper catwalk. Octopedal, it was a mixture of arachnid and crab, and could have scuttled from almost anyone’s nightmares. La