by Alan Gratz
He hurried across the old parade grounds and past the Academy administration buildings, where only the exterior illumination lights were on. He didn’t see a soul as he reached Sommerville Road and hurried down past the marina and up to Cavallo Point. He was so tired, he felt like he was running the Academy marathon, an event he had absolutely zero interest in participating in. He reached the point at last, stopping just long enough to put his hands on his knees and catch his breath.
“Nadja?” he called. “Nadja? It’s Leonard! Leonard McCoy!”
Of course it’s Leonard McCoy, he chided himself. How many other Leonards does she know? But he was tired and worried, so he cut himself some slack.
“Nadja? Nadja?” he tried again. No answer. He was starting to really worry. He tried her communicator again and got no answer again—nor did he hear it ringing anywhere nearby.
After a cursory search of the small area illuminated by street lights, McCoy decided it was no use. She wasn’t here—or if she was, he couldn’t locate her. It was time to bring in some help, he realized.
“Academy Security,” he told his communicator, and he cursed with frustration as he waited for them to pick up.
“Cadet Luther? Cadet Luther, are you there? Campus security. Please open up.”
McCoy stood behind the female security officer, twitching impatiently. “I’m telling you, this is a waste of time,” he told the officer. “She called me from Cavallo Point and told me—”
Nadja’s door slid open, and there she stood in a T-shirt that just covered her. Her hair was a rumpled mess, and she blinked sleepily in the light from the hallway. “Hello? Yes? Leonard? Is that you?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, miss,” the officer said. “But we had a report that you were missing.” She held up a tricorder to verify that this was, in fact, Cadet Luther, and seemed satisfied with the results.
“Missing? Who said I was missing?”
“I did!” McCoy told her. He stepped around the security officer and held up his communicator. “You called me. Told me to come out to Cavallo Point. When I got there, you weren’t there.”
“Cavallo Point?” She squinted in the light. “I wasn’t at Cavallo Point. I was here. Asleep.”
“Dr. McCoy,” the officer said, “The campus is on high alert after the bombing of the president’s shuttle. This is not the time to be using Academy Security as your personal dating service when a girl won’t answer your calls.”
“Now wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!” McCoy started. “You don’t think I—”
Nadja winced and put a hand up to stop the noisy argument. “My communicator’s missing. It’s been missing since this morning.”
“Did you report this, miss?” the officer asked.
Nadja nodded. “To the Cochrane Hall staff, yes. I think that’s where I lost it.”
“Your communicator’s missing?” McCoy asked. “But someone called me using your voice! How could they do that? And why would they do that?”
“All right. If everyone’s fine here, I’m going to check back in,” the security officer said. She shot McCoy a suspicious look and went away.
“Great. Now campus security thinks I’m using them to make booty calls. Which I’m not,” he added hastily.
Nadja smirked. “Well, since you’re here now, and we’re both up … Would you like to come in?”
“No,” McCoy said. “I mean, yes, but no. I’ve got to be in the lab first thing, and I need to get back to sleep. But I’d like to see you again soon. How about dinner, tomorrow night?”
“All right. It’s a date.” Nadja gave McCoy a kiss. “And thanks for coming to my rescue, even if I didn’t need rescuing.”
McCoy’s lack of sleep caught up with him again on the walk back to his dorm as the adrenaline rush of the night wore off. His head was still full of questions: Who had Nadja’s communicator? Why had they called him to Cavallo Point? How had they imitated her voice? What was this about?
All of that would have to wait. He mumbled his name to his dorm room door and stumbled inside again, feeling a profound sense of déjà vu. He dropped his satchel to the floor and fell face-first onto his bed. He was just slipping into a glorious, blissful sleep when his alarm went off.
It was time to get ready for class.
CH.11.30
Sparring Partners
Martial arts were part of The Plan.
Hikaru Sulu rose early every morning to go through his karate routine at the Academy Sports Complex before classes. Every cadet was required to take some form of self-defense class, but not everyone devoted time to the practice outside of class. Sulu had been doing karate since he was a boy, though, and he not only thought of his time in the gym as dedication to his studies, but also as time to arrange his thoughts and prepare for the coming day. Pavel Chekov, the cadet who kept trying to get him to do something together in their free time, had said the same thing once about his running, though Sulu wondered how Chekov ever reigned in that overactive brain of his.
Usually, Sulu would go through his daily schedule, ordering the work he still needed to do for each class by priority. But not today. His shoulder and wrist still ached from yesterday’s explosion, and he found himself slowing and pulling his punches, which took him out of the rhythm of his workout. But there was something else on his mind besides his classes.
Today he was supposed to carry out a mission for the Graviton Society.
Sulu struck the practice pole’s pads, working from head to toe in sequence as best as he could. Doing a job for the Graviton Society was definitely not part of The Plan. But for better or worse, he’d made his decision, and once a course correction was laid in, it became the new course. The old course was now nothing more than a navigation log entry. Something in the past. He had a new target, a new destination, and now that he was committed, he needed to stay focused on that course and no other.
Sulu rattled the karate pole with a kick and came set again, sparing a moment for a glance around the sports complex. She came here every morning to work out too, though not exclusively to work on her martial arts. She varied her regimen, he’d noted, sometimes running the track, sometimes working the rings, other times practicing Suus Mahna. Yesterday she’d put in a particularly long session practicing the Vulcan martial art, giving her rofarla dummy quite a beating.
There. Cadet Uhura was limbering up before her morning exercise. Sulu struck the pole and tried not to stare. His mission was to pass along information to Uhura—false information—with the expectation that if she were a mole, it would be passed along to Commander Spock. Then if Starfleet Security acted on the information, the Graviton Society would know Spock was passing along their secrets and that Cadet Uhura had been brought into the fold to give the Vulcan commander another pair of ears and eyes within the organization. If the information didn’t pass up the ranks to Starfleet … Well, at least Cadet Uhura would be in the clear.
Sulu glanced Uhura’s way again as she jogged out onto the indoor track. So it was to be laps this morning. That was disappointing. Now he’d have to hope that Suus Mahna practice would be a part of her later routine and that she didn’t compensate for yesterday’s zealousness by skipping it altogether.
He was just contemplating trying to run the track with her and engage Uhura there when the scattered conversations and clink of weight training around the complex died and the big gym became silent. Sulu turned to where everyone else was looking and stared with them: coming into the sports complex together were an Academy cadet, one of the Varkolak, and a virtual battalion of Starfleet Security officers. The cadet Sulu didn’t know, but he’d seen him around campus, wagging his tongue and batting his eyes at every female cadet from Andoria to Zakdorn. But what on earth was he doing here now, with a Varkolak?
The entourage disappeared into the men’s changing rooms, and conversations began around the gym. Angry conversations. Most people thought the Varkolak were behind yesterday’s shuttle explosion, and Sulu happened to ag
ree with them. There couldn’t have been any proof, though, or Starfleet wouldn’t be letting the Varkolak out of their compound. That would also explain why Sulu and every other cadet were being scanned and logged whenever they left their dorms and whenever they entered a building on campus. Everyone was a suspect.
The Casanova cadet and the Varkolak emerged from the changing room a little while later wearing Velocity uniforms and headed for the Velocity courts on the north side of the complex. Their security escorts still wore their Starfleet uniforms, of course. The animated chatter in the gymnasium died down again, and no one bothered to hide the fact that they were staring at the Varkolak as he and the cadet left the room. Sulu didn’t know what that was all about, but it didn’t matter. He had a job to do before class.
He glanced again at the track, but Uhura was gone. His eyes went to the gymnastics area, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the martial-arts training area, either. Damn. Had she already left? But she usually spent a good forty-five to fifty minutes in the sports complex each morning. She couldn’t be finished already….
No. There she was. She hadn’t left yet, but she was heading for the changing rooms. Sulu broke away from his practice dummy and jogged to catch up with her as nonchalantly as possible. Unless he ran, he wasn’t going to reach her before she made it to the women’s dressing rooms. But then, unexpectedly, she made a course correction and headed for the men’s changing rooms. She glanced back over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching her, and Sulu quickly averted his eyes and pretended to be very interested in two cadets who were wrestling. When he looked back, Uhura was slipping into the open entrance to the men’s dressing rooms. What was she up to?
Sulu’s natural inclination was to peel away, to let her do whatever it was she meant to do without confronting her or engaging her, but that was the old course.
This was a new heading.
“Cadet Uhura!” he called. She visibly jumped, spinning around to face him as he caught up to her. Her face was flushed and her eyes were wide. “Cadet Uhura,” Sulu said again. “I think you’ve got the wrong changing room.” He pointed helpfully to the sign that read MEN in ten different Federation languages and carried the interplanetary symbol for the male sex.
“Oh!” Uhura said. “I didn’t—I don’t know where my head was.” She quickly moved away from the entrance to the men’s changing room.
“Maybe you thought it was the neutral changing room?” Sulu said. “It’s just across the gym—”
“No. I just—I just wasn’t thinking, I guess. Autopilot, you know?”
It had to be unintentional, he knew, but Sulu grinned at the helm reference.
“Your name is … Sulu, isn’t it?” Uhura said, and now it was Sulu’s turn to blush. He didn’t think she knew he existed.
“Hikaru Sulu,” he said, giving her a slight bow.
“I’ve seen you practicing, what is it, karate?” she said. “You’re very good.”
“It’s nothing,” Sulu said. “Would you like to spar with me?”
Sulu tried not to close his eyes in embarrassment. He’d planned on making that invitation a little more smoothly. That one was more like trying to go to warp with the external inertial dampeners on.
“I—oh,” Uhura said. A passing instructor gave her a look as he went into the men’s changing rooms, and Uhura took Sulu’s arm and dragged him away. “Yes.”
Sulu was a bit stunned at his success, but tried not to show it. Whatever Uhura had needed or wanted in the changing rooms, she didn’t seem to care now. Together they found a place on the martial arts mats and took up their positions.
“Suus Mahna,” Sulu said, identifying her fighting style.
“I haven’t been practicing it for very long,” Uhura said.
“You’ll have to go easy on me.” They circled each other warily. “How long have you been taking karate?”
Sulu moved in for a strike. She blocked most of it, but not the sweeping leg that sent her to the mat.
“All my life,” he told her. He offered her a hand and pulled her back up. “Do you want to stop?”
“No, no,” she said. She had a harder look in her eyes now, one that said she wasn’t about to give up. Sulu had seen that look before. In the mirror.
“I’ve seen you practicing before,” Uhura said, “but you never spar with anyone.” She led with an elbow, and he blocked it instinctively, forgetting his injured wrist. He grimaced as it gave, and was too slow trying to stop her from twisting his arm. She flipped him to the mat and stood over him, smiling. “Do you want to stop?”
“No,” Sulu said, acknowledging the repeat of his own question with a smile. “It looks like I’ll have to keep my shields up.”
The words had the effect he’d anticipated. Uhura’s smile faltered.
“Right about now, you’re probably wondering if that was just a casual metaphor or something with a little more … gravity,” he told her as he stood.
“I’m assuming it’s the latter, then,” she said. He had her attention now for sure. “Were you one of them the other night? In the robes?”
Sulu hadn’t been at whatever meeting she was talking about, but if it was anything like the night he’d been invited … There was a room full of hooded and robed people he hadn’t been able to identify. If he told her he was there, she’d never know he wasn’t.
“Yes,” he lied. “Welcome to the society.”
They sparred again, this time neither of them going to the mat. Sulu protected his wrist, limiting his movement, but compensated for it with his feet. When they had fought to a standstill, they backed away for a breather. Sulu glanced at the clock on the sports complex wall. It was almost 0700 hours. He was going to miss his first class of the day. Sulu never missed class. His mother certainly hadn’t allowed it when he was a boy, no matter how sick he was or whatever else might be happening in their lives, and he’d never missed a university class or an Academy class once he’d been out on his own. He had stayed on course his entire life, only to change headings here, now, at the last moment.
Stay on target, he told himself.
“So, are you part of this Graviton plan to torture the Varkolak into leaving?” Sulu asked.
The question distracted her, and he scored a hit. To her credit, Uhura recovered nicely, using a Po grot ma defense. Sulu pulled back and didn’t press his attack, letting her regain her feet and consider her next plan of attack.
“Yes,” Uhura told him. “But I still don’t understand how Starfleet Security isn’t going to catch wind of it.”
Sulu smiled inwardly. Uhura had taken the bait, just as Daagen expected her to. Uhura couldn’t be a part of the Graviton plan to drive the Varkolak away because there was no plan to drive them off Earth. Not one Sulu knew about, anyway. But if Starfleet Security moved against this fictional one …
“The engineers say no one will be able to hear the high-frequency signal except the Varkolak. And any other dogs on campus, of course. Admiral Archer’s beagle will probably be howling for days, poor thing. They say they can mask the broadcast location, but who’s going to think the signal is being broadcast from the Academy’s own communication tower?”
“Right,” Uhura said, her mind on the plot, not the fight. Sulu feinted low, then attacked high, knocking Uhura off balance. Sulu threw her on her back, and she hit the mat with a thud.
Sulu offered Uhura his hand. “But at least we know they’re not going to hear it from us.”
“The game,” said Kirk, “is called Velocity.”
He activated the Velocity panel, and a spinning disk emerged from a slot in the wall and hovered in front of them.
Lartal sniffed at the thing with his long snout. “What does it do?”
“Well, it kind of just … spins there. Until you shoot it.”
Kirk and Lartal were the only two people in the small room. Their Starfleet Security escorts stood outside the only door to the Velocity court, which was closed so that it became a seamless p
art of the wall. Bones had suggested Kirk do something with Lartal that he liked to do, and Kirk immediately thought of Velocity. He had other reasons too.
Kirk pulled a phaser from a compartment in the wall and activated it. He’d never played Velocity until he came to the Academy—not too many gyms in Iowa had the facilities for a game that used live phasers—but he’d taken to it immediately. A game where you fired phasers at targets and ducked and rolled, avoiding obstacles? Starfleet Academy called it away team training. Kirk called it the best game ever invented.
Kirk shot the spinning disk with his phaser, and it changed color.
Lartal was unimpressed. “Is that all it does? Change color?”
“No. I’ve got the safeties on now.” Kirk shot the disk again. It changed color again, and spun faster. He shot it again, and again it changed color and spun even faster. “When the safeties are off, the disk flies around the room. Every time one of us shoots it, it goes after the person with the other phaser, faster and faster, until one of us isn’t quick enough and gets tagged.”
Kirk disengaged the safeties, and the Velocity disk came flying at him. He shot it, knocking it away, only to have it come back at him faster. He ducked, rolled, shot it again. It kicked away and returned, faster. He fired, hitting it, and rolled back to where he had begun. He hopped up and tapped the safety on the console, stopping the spinning disk mere inches from his head.
“That was single-player mode,” Kirk said. He pulled a second phaser from the wall compartment and put it in Lartal’s hand.
The Varkolak raised an eyebrow, and Kirk laughed inwardly. Some expressions transcended race and space.
“You are giving me a Federation type-2 phase pistol?” Lartal said. While the Varkolak had the most advanced sensing equipment by far of anyone the Federation had yet come into contact with, their phaser technology reportedly lagged behind Starfleet’s.
