Assassination Game

by Alan Gratz

  “Let’s just consider that a loan, shall we?” Kirk said. “And you’ll note the kill setting is disabled on all game weapons.”

  Lartal flicked the switch on the phaser that made the blue stun setting rotate to the red kill setting, pointed the pistol at Kirk, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened, and Kirk didn’t flinch.

  “Just checking,” Lartal said. He grinned his wolfy grin and flipped the phaser setting back to stun. “Every Varkolak captain in the armada would give his right paw for one of these.”

  “Trade you one for that tricorder of yours,” Kirk told him.

  Lartal howled with laughter. “An intriguing offer! But one that might get us both torn to pieces for treason.”

  “Well, we don’t tear one another to pieces, but it would be something just as bad, yeah,” Kirk said. “What do you say? You want to try it?”

  “By all means,” Lartal said.

  Kirk knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. Lartal was more Kirk than Bones. More command officer than medical officer. Kirk nodded and reset the Velocity disk.

  “Game on,” Kirk said.

  The disk hummed around the room. Kirk shot first, changing the disk from violet to indigo. The Velocity disk recoiled, then came at Lartal.

  “You intrigue me, Kirk,” Lartal said. He shot and missed the disk as he got a feel for the phaser. It came after him, still slow at this stage of the game, and Lartal adjusted his aim and fired again, striking it. “Your friends in the hall, all the cadets in the gym—they seem to have tried and convicted me for yesterday’s bombing.”

  The disk changed from indigo to blue and did a circle of the room, homing in on Kirk.

  “Well, I’m still not sure I buy the fact that your scanning device told you that shuttle was about to blow up,” Kirk said. He dodged the Velocity disk and shot it as it passed. “But was it my imagination, or did you knock me out of the way of that explosion?”

  The disk turned green and got faster. This was the level of the game that began to separate the pros from the amateurs. The command officers from the medical officers.

  “You humans are known for weak-minded fantasies. It was no doubt your imagination.”

  Lartal rolled and came up firing. A hit. The disk changed from green to yellow and sped at Kirk. His first shot missed as he threw himself out of the way, but he crossed his body with his next shot and tagged the disk. It changed to orange and circled the room almost too fast to keep up with. If Lartal shot it out of the air, it would fly at Kirk at its highest speed, catching him before he could get back to his feet.

  Lartal sprinted around the room, dodging, ducking, rolling, twisting out of the disk’s way, but for some reason he didn’t shoot at it. The Varkolak’s delay gave Kirk just enough time to get up. The moment he was on his feet, Lartal hit the disk square on. A direct hit, on the highest and hardest level of Velocity.

  Definitely not the marksmanship of a doctor.

  It was the last thing Kirk thought before the Velocity disk came screaming at his head.

  CH.12.30

  Circumstantial Evidence

  McCoy dragged himself into the medical lab with the rest of the medical cadets, wishing the security officers outside hadn’t made him pour out his coffee. No outside liquids were allowed into secure facilities now. Preposterous! A simple phoretic scan could have cleared his coffee and allowed him to self-medicate with caffeine, but the scanner hadn’t passed peer review yet. He went to his carrel and put his head down on the desk instead, hoping to catch just a few more seconds’ rest before the instructors put them to work sifting through the debris from the shuttle explosion.

  “I wondered how you could sleep knowing that foolish idealism like yours allowed the Federation’s worst enemies into our own backyard, and now I see that you can’t,” said a familiar voice.

  Lifting his head felt like waking from anesthesia, but McCoy looked up.

  “Cadet Daagen,” McCoy said. “Go jump in a lake.”

  The Tellarite frowned. “Does this expression have some metaphorical meaning on Earth besides its literal one?”

  McCoy put his head back down on the desk. “Yes. It means go the hell away.”

  Something clattered to the desk beside McCoy.

  “Here. You can give this back to your equally foolish girlfriend. I found it on my desk this morning.”

  McCoy’s eyelid fluttered open, and what he saw woke him up faster than a hypospray full of cortalin. It was a communicator. Nadja’s communicator.

  “Found this on your desk? That’s a load of hooey, and you know it!” McCoy said. He stood and glared down at the diminutive Tellarite. “What’s the big idea, Daagen, prank calling me at two thirty in the morning, pretending to be Nadja, sending me on some damned fool snipe hunt!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daagen said.

  “The hell you don’t!” McCoy punched up the call log on the communicator. “Look here. This is where somebody called my phone at two twenty-six in the morning. Maybe you can explain to me how somebody used this phone to call me when it was sitting on your desk all night.”

  “I can’t explain it, because I didn’t call you.”

  “Cadets, if I can have your attention,” a Starfleet Medical officer called from the front of the room. “We’re going to begin bringing in the debris samples in just a moment. If you could each return to your carrels, we’ll bring you a tray to analyze. Please run the usual tests: electron resonance scanner, molecular scanner, biocomputer. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers will run mass spectrometer readings and other tests to check for explosive particulates when we’re finished, but what we’re looking for is anything biological that will give us a clue to the perpetrator.”

  Daagen turned to leave, but McCoy caught him by the arm. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Daagen, but it’s not funny.”

  The Tellarite yanked his arm away and went to his seat. Prank calling someone you didn’t like was nothing new, but McCoy didn’t see what was so funny about this one.

  A security officer set a tray of metal fragments in front of him, and McCoy put the first of the pieces in the molecular scanner. The duranium was twisted and scarred from the blast, and it brought back, vividly, the horror of the moment when McCoy had been caught in the blast. If Daagen’s little stunt hadn’t woken him up, reliving the explosion certainly would have.

  McCoy put the piece through the rest of the standard medical scanners, but there was nothing unusual about it. He was about to set it aside and move on to the next piece when he had the idea to run the specimen through the experimental phoretic analyzer he’d been testing for Dr. Huer. It certainly wouldn’t hurt anything, and if it turned up something useful … Well, they’d have to confirm it with an independent analysis. But in a case like this, the sooner they could get a lead on something, the better.

  The phoretic analyzer scanned the debris, then flashed and hummed as it processed the individual molecules. Most of it would be duranium, with a little carbon thrown in from the scoring, and random particulates from wherever the piece had landed. What McCoy hadn’t expected to find made him call a medical officer over right away. A Starfleet Security officer joined him.

  “What is it, Cadet?” the officer asked. Cadets peeked over the tops of their carrels, curious to see what McCoy had found too.

  “Kemocite,” McCoy said.

  “Kemocite? That’s a radiolytic compound, isn’t it? What kind of medical scan turned up kemocite?”

  “The engineering teams would have turned it up with a mass spectrometer, but the phoretic analyzer found it when I was scanning for biological molecules.” McCoy explained the phoretic analyzer to the officers, and they reviewed his results.

  “I still don’t understand,” the medical officer said. “How does this help?”

  “Kemocite’s a power source,” the security officer told him.

  “Yeah,” said McCoy. “The same power source the Varkolak use in all their technology.”
>
  The medical lab buzzed with this new development, but the officers in charge quickly got everyone back to work. The kemocite discovery was damning, McCoy knew, but nowhere near conclusive. Kemocite could be had most anywhere. Hell, the Academy engineering lab probably had a kilo of the stuff in storage.

  McCoy’s communicator rang, and he stepped outside to take the call.

  “Bones! Bones, am I glad you picked up.” It was Jim Kirk, of course.

  “Yeah, look, I’m kind of in the middle of something here, Jim.”

  “Whatever it is, you’ve got to drop it and get over here right away. Academy Sports Complex.”

  “Jim, it took me thirty minutes to get through all this new security, just to get inside the damn medical building. I can’t just pop over for a game of Parrises Square.”

  “Bones, it’s an emergency. I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t important.”

  McCoy looked back through the glass wall at the cadets running scans on the shuttle fragments. He hated to bail on something that could help solve the mystery of the explosion, but it was really nothing more than putting debris under an electron resonance scanner and pushing a button. There were plenty of cadets to do the job. And this was Jim asking.

  “All right. I’ll be there.”

  Kirk waited just inside the doorway to the Academy Sports Complex, watching the sidewalk outside. The security officers at the entrance watched Kirk. He smiled lamely and waved. After the assassination attempt on the president, just standing around looked suspicious. One of the security officers had just started to approach him when Bones hurried in, a portable medical kit in his hand. Kirk went outside to meet him.

  “Where does it hurt? What’s happened?” Bones asked.

  The security officers stopped him to scan and log him in.

  “Damn it, people, I’ve got a medical emergency here,” Bones griped. They had barely finished scanning him when he pushed ahead, medical tricorder in hand and already on. “You’ve got a minor contusion on your forehead, Jim, but it’s nothing serious. You were right to call me, though. Head injuries are nothing to mess around with.”

  Kirk pulled Bones out of earshot of the security officers. “No, no. That’s not why I called,” he told his friend. He glanced back over his shoulder. “I need you to walk me back to the dorm. Finnegan could be lying in wait for me anywhere.”

  Kirk could practically see the blood rising in Bones’s face, like in some cartoon.

  “You called me away from scanning debris from the explosion so I could play chaperone for you in some stupid game? Jim, of all the absolutely ridiculous—”

  “You were scanning the debris?” Kirk asked, trying to change the subject. It was easy—and fun, too—to get Bones riled up, but it was just as easy to get him distracted. Anything about his work would do. “Did you find anything?”

  “Yes, damn it, I did,” Bones said. His anger ebbed away as he shifted gears to medical mode, just as Kirk had predicted. “Jim, listen. I found traces of kemocite on some of the debris.”

  Kirk waved Bones quiet as they made their way back through security, then picked up the conversation again on the way back to the dorm.

  “Kemocite? Vent plasma from a shuttle’s engines and add kemocite to it and …”

  “Boom,” Bones said. “Yeah. And you know who uses kemocite to power all their gadgets.”

  “The Varkolak,” Kirk said. “I know. I just don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Lartal, this Varkolak. Bones, I don’t think he’s a doctor … but I don’t think he’s behind all this, either. I know he dove away from the explosion milliseconds before it went off, but he took me with him. Bones, he knocked me to the ground. To protect me. I’m sure of it. Why would someone set a bomb and then make sure no one got hurt by it?”

  “Maybe he didn’t set it,” Bones said. “Maybe it was one of the other Varkolak.”

  Kirk shook his head. “No. Lartal’s not a doctor. He’s a command officer of some kind. I’m sure of it. Unless you know any doctors who can reach red level on Velocity. And win.”

  “Hell, I can’t get past indigo,” Bones said. “Is that where you got the bump on your noggin? You mean, he beat you? Jim, I thought you hadn’t lost a Velocity match since you got here.”

  “I lost this one. On purpose. I took a dive, Bones.” Kirk stopped. “I let the Velocity disk tag me and played dead. Or unconscious, anyway.”

  “What on Earth for?”

  “I wanted to see if Lartal would try to steal one of the phasers.”

  Bones scoffed. “You can’t take Velocity phasers out of the arena. The alarm would go off.”

  “Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but Lartal doesn’t know that. He could have hidden one inside his uniform and tried to walk out with it. But he didn’t, Bones. He didn’t even try to take the thing apart. He just sat there with me and waited for me to wake up.”

  “Maybe he knew you were faking it.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Bones, I’m telling you, I don’t think bombing a shuttle is these guys’ MO. When we were playing Velocity, I could swear Lartal gave me a chance to get to my feet before he sent the disk after me. It’s like they’ve got some code of honor or something.”

  “Well, they’re looking for DNA evidence right now to see if they can corroborate the kemocite traces. Which is what I should be doing, not playing nursemaid to—”

  “Bones, are you all right?” Kirk asked, trying to change the subject again. “You look like hell. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

  “No, damn it, I haven’t. That’s another thing. Last night, at two thirty in the morning, I got a call from Nadja.”

  Kirk raised the old eyebrows. “Hot and heavy house call?”

  “Hardly,” Bones groused. He explained everything that had happened last night as they walked. “And then, this morning, this medical cadet, Daagen—one of those ‘Federation First’ idiots—hands me her communicator and tells me he just ‘found’ it on his desk.”

  “He prank called you? But it’s not Dead Week.” Dead Week was the week of pranks and insanity that usually happened right around finals time, when cadets needed to blow off some steam.

  “No. And it’s not funny. He says he didn’t do it, but for cryin’ out loud, Jim. Who else would do it? And why?”

  “And why go to all that trouble?” Kirk asked.

  “Listen, Jim … I know this is going to sound crazy, but what if Daagen is up to something? Something more serious?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, like, what if he and his ‘Federation First’ buddies pulled that stunt at the opening ceremonies and are trying to pin the blame on the Varkolak?”

  Kirk couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “A cadet? Someone from Starfleet? I just can’t believe that. We take an oath, Bones—”

  “I know, I know. But some people may believe in that a little more than others.”

  “Still. There’s no way. I don’t know who was behind it, but I refuse to believe it was someone in Starfleet.”

  “You’re too trusting, Jim.”

  “I have to be, Bones. Otherwise, what’s the point? So, what’s next for you and Nadja? Got a hot date lined up?”

  “Jim, we’re talking about a terrorist bombing here, and you want to know how my love life’s going?”

  “I have to, Bones,” Kirk said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?” He grinned. “Come on. You’ve been thinking about it too. I know you have. Spill.”

  “All right. Yes. I do have something lined up. I’m taking your advice and we’re going out for dinner under the stars.”

  Kirk tapped Bones on the shoulder with his fist. “There we go! I knew you had it in you. So, where is it? Somewhere in the city?”

  “No, it’s a little farther out than that. I had this idea. I'm going to—”

  “Sounds great, Bones,” Kirk told him. He’d just spotted Cadet Rhinehart walking alone toward the cafeteria. He was Kirk�
�s next target in the Assassination Game. He took off at a run, trying to catch him before he got company. “Thanks for the escort. See you back in the dorm!”

  “Glad I could miss out on important lab work to be your babysitter!” he heard Bones call out from behind him. “You owe me, Jim!”

  CH.13.30

  Date Night

  The Academy Observation Tower was bright and sun-filled when Uhura stepped off the turbolift that day at lunch. Ordinarily, the added sight of Spock waiting there by the window would have made the picture more perfect, but now he stood like a dark cloud on her horizon. She would tell him her news as quickly as possible, she told herself, and maybe that way stay out of the rain.

  “Nyota,” Spock said.

  “Commander Spock.”

  Spock heard the formality in her voice, but did nothing more than raise an eyebrow, damn him. Whatever.

  “Have you had an opportunity to acquire one of the Varkolak sensing devices?” Spock asked her.

  “No. I mean, yes, I had an opportunity, but it didn’t work out.” She told Spock about the Varkolak who had visited the Academy Sports Complex that morning and her attempt to sneak into the men’s changing rooms to steal his scanner. That elicited another raised eyebrow from him, but nothing more.

  “I was interrupted by a cadet named Hikaru Sulu. Do you know him?”

  “I am acquainted with him, yes. From my work with the Academy simulators. He is an able pilot.”

  Uhura rubbed her sore neck. “He’s also good at karate too. And he’s a member of the Graviton Society.”

  “Is he?”

  “He approached me this morning. Asked me to spar with him. While we were fighting, he let it slip that the Gravitons are planning to get rid of the Varkolak.”

  “Indeed?”

  Uhura laid out the plot for him. “You’ll have to tell Starfleet Security. They can post extra guards on the communications tower.”

  “I will take care of it, thank you.”

  “So. Okay, then,” Uhura said. There was really nothing more to say. “I’m going to get some lunch before my next class.”