Assassination Game

by Alan Gratz

  Starfleet Security had wanted to know everything he heard and saw before, during, and after the explosion, and Kirk had told them everything he could remember. What did Lartal do at the overlook when they visited yesterday? Mostly sniff around and mark park benches. Had he done anything suspicious in San Francisco? Just howl on street corners. Had Lartal acted suspicious the morning before the explosion? No more than usual. Did Kirk hear any sound at all from Lartal’s “sniffer” before the explosion? No. Did Lartal detonate the bomb?

  That was the million-credit question, wasn’t it? They wanted Kirk to be able to answer the question definitively, but he couldn’t. Yes, there was circumstantial evidence, and yes, they’d shown him the images of Lartal jumping out of the way before the explosion happened, but Kirk had neither seen nor heard anything that made him think Lartal had set off the explosion himself. And, he had to confess, Lartal’s leap had caught up Kirk and dragged him out of the way of the blast. Had Lartal tried to save him from the explosion, or had he just bumped him by accident? And what about Kirk’s growing suspicion—and Starfleet’s too, now—that Lartal wasn’t a doctor at all?

  Kirk was so lost in his own thoughts, he nearly ran into the cadet who appeared in his way on the sidewalk. Metal flashed as the cadet’s hand swiped at him. Kirk’s instincts kicked in, and he leaped back out of the way just in time.

  Finnegan.

  “I looked up corbomite, Kirk.” The big cadet advanced on him. Kirk glanced around for someone who could see them and keep Finnegan from being able to tag him with his spork, but they were alone.

  “Oh, yeah?” Kirk said, stalling for time as he calculated his next move. “Who taught you how to use a computer?”

  Finnegan lunged at him, and Kirk danced out of the way.

  “There’s no such thing as corbomite,” Finnegan said.

  “No kidding,” Kirk said. “Then I am definitely going to have a talk with my exochemistry teacher. I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Keep joking, Jimmy boy,” Finnegan told him. “I’m just gonna pound you harder.”

  “All right. You want to do this now?” Kirk said. He crouched in a karate ready position. “Let’s do this.”

  Finnegan grinned and took a step closer.

  Kirk turned and ran.

  “Come back here, you coward!” Finnegan called, giving chase.

  “It’s called a tactical retreat!” Kirk yelled back at him. All he had to do was find someone, anyone, to latch on to and Finnegan couldn’t knock him out of the Assassination Game. Finnegan was big and heavy, but he was all muscle, and he kept up with Kirk well enough for Kirk to keep running. But where the hell was everyone? There were thousands of cadets on campus, and hundreds more instructors, not to mention all the doctors here for the conference. They couldn’t all be at dinner!

  “When I catch you, Kirk, I’m gonna stick this spork where the sun don’t shine!” Finnegan bellowed.

  Kirk ducked into the student center. There were always people there studying, eating, playing dom-jot. He slid to a stop among the dozen or so tables in the lobby. The empty lobby.

  “The assassination attempt!” Kirk said, finally realizing what was going on. “The whole campus must be on lock-down!”

  Finnegan burst in through the front doors, and Kirk dashed out the side exit. There was a bar just off campus, the Warp Core, where cadets went when they wanted to spend a little downtime out of uniform. There had to be someone there—the bartender, Bom, if no one else. Finnegan came at his flank, doubling back on him, and Kirk barely ducked his spork in time. He sprinted with what energy he had left down past Hawking Hall and into the little street where a flickering neon sign announced, THE WARP CORE: HOME OF THE WARP CORE BREACH. Kirk threw himself against the door and came to an ungraceful stop against an empty table.

  “Well. I knew Academy life is rough, but I’ve never seen anybody need a drink that bad,” said the Bolian bartender.

  “Blue man! I have never been so glad to see you in all my life,” Kirk said. There were a few other patrons there, at tables and up at the bar, and Kirk gave a deep sigh of relief. He’d been beginning to wonder if the assassination attempt had the whole city on high alert.

  Finnegan came pounding down the sidewalk and through the front doorway of the Warp Core, breathing heavily.

  “You really ought to cut down on the potatoes there, Finnegan. How are you ever going to get a girlfriend if you can’t run her down?”

  Finnegan squeezed his spork so tight, Kirk thought he might snap it in half.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Kirk said. He nodded toward the bar. “We’ve got company. I’m safe.”

  Finnegan smiled. “That’s right, Jimmy boy. For now. But I’m gonna sit right here,” he said, pulling out a chair at the table by the door. “And if you try to leave, out the front or the back, I’ll be on you like fleas on a Varkolak. Garçon! Beer me!”

  Kirk hadn’t thought about that. Like a kid hugging home in a game of tag in the backyard, he was safe as long as he didn’t leave, but he couldn’t stay here forever. He looked around the pub, trying to think of an answer, and saw an attractive blonde one sitting at the bar. He put on his most charming smile and pulled up a stool next to her.

  “Know what you want?” Bom asked as he came back from delivering Finnegan’s beer.

  “Yeah. Whaddya got that’s already made? I’m starving.”

  “We’ve got chili on the stove. You want yellow alert or red alert?”

  “Red alert. And two beers—one for me and one for this beautiful lady.”

  The girl next to him rolled her eyes at him.

  “Name’s Jim. Jim Kirk,” he told her.

  “Valerie,” she said. Even though she had scoffed at his come on, she accepted the beer with a nod of thanks.

  Bom put a steaming bowl of chili and a plate of crackers in front of Kirk. “Hang on, I’ll get you a spoon.”

  Kirk pulled his spork out of his pocket and held it up. “No need. I’ve got my own.”

  Valerie laughed. “You carry a spoon around with you all the time?”

  “Actually, it’s a spork,” Kirk said. He scooped a bite of chili into his mouth, then gasped and hyperventilated, trying to cool off his tongue. “Red alert,” he squeaked, and he chased the chili with a sip of beer.

  “So, you carry a spork around with you all the time?” Valerie asked.

  “Only lately,” Kirk said. Between tentative bites of his red-alert chili, Kirk told the girl all about the Assassination Game and Finnegan, pointing him out over by the door. Finnegan raised his own glass of beer and grinned at Kirk.

  “All I need now, see, is for you to leave the bar with me and take me back to your place, and I’ll be safe,” Kirk finished.

  “I gotta tell you, I’ve heard a lot of them in my time, but that is the lamest pick-up line I have ever heard,” the girl told him. “Still, you’re kind of cute.”

  Kirk smiled, tossed some credits on the bar, offered Valerie his arm, and strolled out the front door, waving good-bye to Finnegan as he left.

  Later that evening, Spock stood in the Academy observation tower, watching Sol set over the Pacific Ocean. The vista was not dissimilar to watching 40 Eridani A set over the Voroth Sea on Vulcan, but for the oddly discordant blue sky of Earth and not the more aesthetically pleasing orange sky of his home planet. Spock had lived on Earth for years now, was half-human himself, and still there was much about this world that remained foreign and mysterious to him.

  The turbolift opened behind him. Nyota Uhura, punctual as always, unlike so many other humans. Another thing Spock did not understand. How was it so difficult for humans to arrive where they were supposed to be at a prescribed time?

  “Nyota,” Spock said. “I was concerned to hear that you were on the dais when the president’s shuttle exploded earlier today.”

  “Were you?” she asked.

  Spock frowned. “Of course. Why should I not be?”

  Uhura shrugg
ed. “I don’t know. I didn’t figure you’d be too upset about it.”

  “I did not say that I was upset; only that I was concerned.”

  “Right.”

  Spock was the first to admit, his understanding of human emotional responses was limited, but he nonetheless felt as though he had done or said something to hurt Cadet Uhura’s feelings. It was also his experience that admitting he did not understand how he had been in the wrong often compounded the problem, so he pushed on.

  “I am relieved you were relatively unharmed.”

  “Thanks. Can we get on with it?”

  “By all means,” Spock told her. Uhura’s no-nonsense approach was something else he admired in her—and found lacking in so many other humans.

  “I was contacted by the Graviton Society,” Uhura told him “I’m in, and they already have a job for me. They want me to steal a Varkolak sniffer.”

  “Sniffer?”

  “One of their scanning devices.”

  Spock processed this information. The society had no doubt chosen her for this task as she had access to the Varkolak that few other cadets had, and possession of one of the highly advanced sensor units would certainly be a valuable piece of intelligence. It was also significant for another reason.

  “This is the first time since my association with the Graviton Society that they have advocated something illegal,” he said.

  “Not just illegal, Spock, but dangerous. If I’m caught …”

  “Yes. The interstellar ramifications would be significant.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Uhura said.

  It was Spock’s experience that most humans tended to overstate matters, but he felt this was not the time to press the point. “I think we must take this request as both evidence of potentially larger, more nefarious activities on the part of the society,” he instead told her, “and a measure of your loyalty to the organization.”

  “You mean, like some sort of initiation test?” Uhura asked.

  “Possibly, though this task would seem to be above and beyond the usually frivolous requisites for admittance to less political fraternal organizations. There is also the possibility they are testing your relationship to me.”

  “Which is what?” Uhura asked.

  Spock blinked. “Covert agent to fellow covert agent.”

  Uhura nodded. “Just checking.”

  Again, Spock felt as though he had given the wrong answer, even though it had been the most accurate one.

  “Will it be possible for you to accede to their request?” he asked her.

  “You mean you want me to do it?”

  “I acknowledge that the activity is illegal, and potentially dangerous. I only ask if it is possible.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m supposed to go back with the linguistics team for more face time with the Varkolak, but they protect those sniffer things like they were state secrets.”

  “As well they should. If you can at least make an attempt, that may satisfy your handler within the society. Should you prove successful, it would solidify your position of trust within the group and potentially open up larger, more important avenues of investigation for us. If nothing else, the ultimate destination of the sniffer, as you call it, could tell us just how high into Starfleet’s ranks this organization really goes.”

  If Spock was any judge of human facial expressions at all, Uhura was still unsure.

  “If you were caught in the attempt, Starfleet would of course be made aware of your role in my investigation, and you would be cleared of wrongdoing,” he assured her.

  “Yeah. But that’s not going to go a long way with the Varkolak,” Uhura said. “Look, Commander, there’s something else. Something I overheard as Dr. Lartal, one of the Varkolak, left the interrogation room today. One of his men asked him, ‘Now, how will you kill her?’ Or maybe, ‘Now, how will you catch her?’ It’s hard to say. But the reference was definitely from the Varkolak terminology for a hunt, so ‘catch’ and ‘kill’ in that sense seem to mean the same thing. Lartal attacked the other man, telling him to be quiet, but he saw me. Spock, he knows I understood every word.”

  “Then you must abandon the Graviton Society and their request immediately, and recuse yourself from further linguistic studies with the Varkolak.”

  Uhura looked shocked and, if Spock was “reading” her correctly, almost … pleased by his words?

  “You—you want me to want me to just walk away?” Uhura asked.

  “This information drastically changes the situation. Your safety in this endeavor is now a grave concern,” he told her.

  Uhura stepped closer, and Spock fought back the human, emotional part of him that yearned for her, and the physical part of both halves of him that desired her. “Spock … I didn’t think you cared.”

  “I do care,” he assured her. “The mission has become untenable.”

  “The mission,” Uhura said. She stepped away. “Don’t worry, Commander. I can take care of myself.”

  Uhura went to the turbolift and left without saying good-bye, which Spock knew was odd behavior for a human. Again, he assumed he had done or said something to offend her, but he had no idea what.

  Spock looked back out the window at the now pink and orange yet incongruously sunless sky and wondered again at this world that remained so foreign and mysterious.

  CH.10.30

  House Calls

  Leonard McCoy staggered back to his dorm room like a man coming home from a three-day bender. After ten straight hours of triage, he could barely hold himself up. The exploding shuttle had knocked him unconscious and blown him ten meters off the dais, but after he’d come to his senses, he’d dived in to start treating the wounded. It had been chaos there and in the Academy hospital, where everyone had been taken for treatment. There were dozens of people with lacerations, broken limbs, and burns, not to mention every visiting doctor from thirty-four sectors and two quadrants crowding the ER to lend a hand. But there were no fatalities, thank goodness. Even the president of the Federation had mostly escaped harm, though she’d been whisked away to some other more protected medical facility. At least that meant they hadn’t been tripping over presidential security guards too.

  He could barely utter his name clearly enough for his door to recognize him, but finally he got into his room. Kirk wasn’t there, which probably meant he was spending the night somewhere else again. McCoy was grateful for the quiet. He collapsed facedown onto his bed, still fully-clothed. Tomorrow, bright and early, he and the rest of the medical cadets would be back in the lab, sifting through the thousands of shuttle fragments for DNA evidence. But for now, McCoy could at last enjoy a peaceful, blissful night’s sleep….

  There were dozens of them. Hundreds. More patients than he could possibly hope to take care of. They had gashes on their arms and legs, burns on their chests, broken bones, internal bleeding, head trauma. McCoy rushed from biobed to biobed, doing what he could, calling for help, but he was the only person there. No nurses, no other doctors, no one but an endless stream of patients—Humans, Bolians, Andorians, Vulcans, Ktarians, Denobulans, Trill, Mizarians, Rigelians. They kept coming and coming and coming, all of them in pain, all of them crying out for him to help them. But he just … couldn’t … get to them all in time.

  The door chime sounded, and McCoy called for whomever it was to come in. Heaven knew he could use the help.

  The door chime rang again. And again. And again.

  “Come in! Come in, damn it! I can’t come to the door!” McCoy cried, rushing to the next patient.

  The door chimed again, and McCoy jerked awake. Where was he? What time was it? He was on his bed, in his uniform, and it was pitch-black in the room. He dragged his alarm clock over to him, knocking an empty glass to the floor with a thud. 0226. His alarm wasn’t set to go off for another two and half hours. He’d been having an awful dream, about an ER with a neverending stream of patients—

  The door chime rang yet again. For real this time.
McCoy dragged himself out of bed and lurched to the door. He pushed the admit button, and the door slid open onto a brightly lit hallway that made him wince. But no one was there. He leaned out the door to squint up and down the hall. Still nobody.

  The door chime went off again. No, wait. Not the door chime. His half-asleep brain was starting to work again, and he realized it wasn’t the door chime at all. It was the sound of his communicator. He closed the door against the awful light and fumbled around for his satchel. Found his communicator and pulled it out. Someone had been trying to call him for fifteen minutes. Who the devil called at two thirty in the morning? He glanced at Jim’s empty bed. If this was Kirk and he wasn’t missing an arm or a leg, he soon would be. McCoy flipped his communicator open.

  “Who the hell calls at two thirty in the—”

  “Priority One call from Nadja Luther,” said a recorded voice.

  “Leonard? Leonard, it’s Nadja.”

  Weariness drained from McCoy and he stood up straighter. “Nadja? What’s wrong? Why are you calling—”

  “Leonard, I need you to meet me at Cavallo Point, right away,” Nadja said.

  “What? Now? Why?”

  “Please, hurry,” Nadja said.

  “Nadja? What’s wrong? Nadja?” McCoy said.

  “Priority One call ended,” the computer voice said again, and his communicator went silent. McCoy immediately tried calling her back, but there was no answer. He replayed the conversation again; the whole thing automatically recorded as a Priority One call. There was such urgency in her voice. Such panic.

  McCoy grabbed his satchel and charged out into the bright hallway. He tried Nadja again, and when he got no answer again, he picked up his pace. Cavallo Point was a public area out past the marina on San Francisco Bay. Ordinarily he would have taken a ground shuttle, but they weren’t running this late at night. The only people around as he hurried from Yi Sun-Sin Hall were the Academy’s few nocturnal students, going to and from class. One of them gave him a second look as he hurried past. McCoy realized he must have looked like death warmed over.