Assassination Game

by Alan Gratz

  “Why do you need disguises?” Uhura asked.

  “Because we do things we wish to remain secret and prefer our existence not to be known outside our circle. Very few of us even know who all our members are.”

  “Bad things?”

  “Quite the contrary. Everything we do is for the benefit of the Federation.”

  “Like what? You hold bake sales?”

  “Like the coup that splintered the Breen Confederacy before they attacked the Grazer home world. Or the cure for the Hruffa Bison plague that ended the forced Varkolak expansion and bought the Federation the current stalemate it enjoys. How do you think we’ve been able to avoid allout war when humans and Varkolak can’t be in the same room together for ten minutes without fighting?”

  He had to mean what had happened in the conference room. But Uhura had come straight here from Admiral Barnett’s office. How did they already know?

  “You’re telling me a bunch of cadets with flashlights brought down the Breen Confederacy?” Uhura said.

  The mouth under the cowl smiled. “Not us, no. But once you’re a Graviton, you’re always a Graviton. As we graduate, we join the ranks of Starfleet, but our allegiance to the Graviton Society remains. After many years now, there are Gravitons in almost every branch of Starfleet.”

  Uhura’s skin prickled. There was a certain cache that would come from being part of a fraternity with its roots deep in Starfleet, even if she couldn’t talk about it. The possibility of inside information, preferential promotions, and a voice in guiding the direction of the organization, no matter what her rank or position. But the idea was a little frightening, too.

  “Why?” Uhura asked. “Why does Starfleet need any special help? Why can’t you work for Starfleet through official channels?”

  “We do, and we will. But we believe Starfleet has become too complacent, Cadet Uhura, and so we are dedicated to doing the things it cannot do—or will not do—to protect it and guarantee its survival against extreme threats.”

  “And are we under extreme threat?” Uhura asked.

  “Always, Cadet. I refer you, specifically, to the periorbital hematoma around your left eye.”

  Her black eye from the fight with the Varkolak. Uhura gingerly put a hand to it, and winced.

  “Cadet Uhura, you have been identified as an outstanding student and a future leader within Starfleet. Will you join us?”

  Flattery will get you everywhere, Uhura thought, and she found herself actually considering it. It was quite an invitation. But join a supersecret society that operated inside Starfleet yet outside its rules? A clandestine group who had as much as admitted to her that anything goes, as long as the ends justified the means?

  “What if I refuse?” Uhura asked.

  “We don’t think you will. But if you choose not to join us, you will never hear from us—or about us—again.”

  “I—I need to think about it.”

  “Of course. But know, Cadet, that only the best of the best are asked to join the Graviton Society. Membership is by invitation only, and you come highly recommended.”

  “Oh, yes?” Uhura said. “Who recommended me?”

  One of the hooded figures in the crowd stepped forward and flipped back his hood to reveal a familiar face.

  A very familiar face.

  “I did,” said Spock.

  CH.04.30

  A Walk in the Park

  “I know you’re hiding in there, you little bastard. Now come out where I can see you.”

  Dr. Leonard McCoy adjusted a dial on the experimental analyzer he was using and checked the readings again. He was trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack—a single molecule of boridium in a bowl of minestrone soup. He knew it was in there, because he’d put it in himself.

  “No, no, no, no. Boridium, you bucket of bolts. Not beta-carotene. Come on.”

  It was late in the afternoon, and classes were long since over, but for Starfleet Academy cadets, the end of classes hardly meant the end of the school day. A number of McCoy’s fellow medical students sat at workstations around the lab, like him, doing homework or working on independent research projects.

  McCoy made a note of the previous attempt’s settings on his PADD and recalibrated the machine. “Let’s try this again, shall we?” McCoy told the analyzer.

  “Do you always talk to your equipment?” a woman’s voice asked.

  McCoy looked up, a smart retort loaded into his hypospray for whomever couldn’t mind their own business, and found himself staring at the very stare-worthy legs of Nadja Luther.

  “I suppose the better question is, does it ever talk back?” she said.

  “I—Nadja? How did you get in here?” McCoy asked. “I mean, hello.”

  Nadja smiled. “When you didn’t hear me tapping on the glass, one of the others took pity on me and let me in.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought we were meeting at the bar.”

  “So did I. I’ve been waiting there for almost an hour. I have to say, Leonard, if you’re playing hard to get, you’re doing a good job.”

  McCoy blinked. “An hour?” He checked the clock on his PADD—it was still twenty minutes until 2100 hours. “We said 2100 hours.”

  Nadja shook her head. “You said 2000 hours.”

  McCoy could swear he’d said 2100 hours, not 2000 hours, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the girl of his dreams (at least his recent ones) had sat waiting for him in a bar for forty minutes and had to come looking for him when he didn’t show. He hastily shut down his equipment and cycled down his PADD.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Let me make it up to you. There’s still plenty of night left—”

  Nadja put up a hand. “I’ve got to get back to my room and let Mrs. Penelope go to the bathroom.”

  “I’m guessing Mrs. Penelope isn’t your roommate. At least I hope she isn’t.”

  “Not my cadet roommate, no. I went right to the Warp Core from soccer practice, and I need to take my dog for a walk.”

  McCoy stood and offered Nadja his hand. “How about an escort, then?”

  “Oh. How gallant. I accept.”

  McCoy led Nadja to the door of the lab. “McCoy, Leonard, Dr.,” he told the voice-recognition program at the door. “Alpha seven, seven two delta epsilon.” A light on the console blinked green, and the glass door slid open. The medical research lab wasn’t exactly the Klingon prison planet of Rura Penthe when it came to security, but the voice-recognition passwords were enough to keep good people honest, as McCoy’s grandfather used to say.

  Nadja fished around for something in her purse and found it. She checked her lipstick in the reflection of her communicator and put it back.

  “We good to go?” McCoy asked.

  Nadja smiled. “Absolutely.”

  James Kirk rubbed his eyes and leaned back on his lab stool. It was past 2100 hours. Right now, I could be laying out under the stars with Cadet Areia, Kirk thought. Cadet Areia, the Deltan. And a Deltan who hadn’t yet taken the oath, for heaven’s sake! They said a night with a Deltan was so mind-blowing, it could actually, literally, drive you insane.

  Kirk was willing to risk it.

  But this assignment to babysit the Varkolak was already putting a serious crimp in his social life, and it hadn’t even officially started yet. Unless Kirk wanted to fail exochemistry, he had to get his lab work done before tomorrow’s class, and to get his lab work done, he had to do it tonight, rather than the two-hour block he used to have free before class tomorrow. Which meant he’d had to call Areia and break off their date. Worse, she didn’t believe him; she thought the only way he’d cancel on her was because he’d gotten a better offer, and she’d hung up in a huff.

  “A Deltan,” he lamented with a moan.

  “Daydreaming again, Jimmy?”

  Kirk snapped up straight. He knew that voice. He knew that voice all too well. Before him stood Jake Finnegan, an upperclassman who’d tormented him from the day Kirk had set foot on
campus. He was bulky and silver-haired, with ruddy cheeks and a mean smile. Future redshirt material. He’d never known what he had done to draw his attention, although Kirk suspected he’d just happened to be the first plebe Finnegan had seen on that first day of school. From that point on, Kirk had been Jake Finnegan’s personal project.

  “Finnegan. What happened? You eat your handlers?”

  Finnegan pulled a spork from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers. “Yeah,” he said. “And now I’m ready for dessert.”

  A spork. The Assassination Game, Kirk realized with horror. Finnegan had pulled his badge from the black velvet bag? How unlucky was that?

  Kirk scanned the room. It was empty! There had been at least three other cadets in here working when he’d come in, but he’d been so focused on his own work, he hadn’t even noticed them leave.

  Finnegan smiled and took a step closer.

  Kirk stood quickly, knocking over the test tubes he’d been mixing chemicals in. Finnegan was around the lab bench in a heartbeat, bearing down on Kirk with the spork.

  “Hold it, Finnegan! Seriously! Stop!” Kirk cried, his eyes on the spilled chemicals.

  Finnegan paused, looking back and forth between Kirk and the lab bench. “What?”

  “Don’t … move,” Kirk said. He held himself rigid and stared wide-eyed at the lab bench. “Finnegan, do you have any idea what corbomite is?

  “No.”

  That didn’t surprise Kirk, as he’d just made it up.

  “It’s highly reactive,” Kirk explained. “Just the slightest bump, the smallest vibration, can set it off. It takes the energy of whatever hits it and returns it a thousandfold. A millionfold. And I just … accidentally … made some.”

  Finnegan looked like he didn’t want to believe Kirk, but he didn’t know enough to be sure. Kirk kept his eyes on the grayish blob, even though Finnegan was close enough now he could have reached out and touched Kirk with the spork if he’d wanted to. The fact that Kirk was ignoring him completely and focusing on the “corbomite” helped sell it.

  “Just this much could destroy everything within ten kilometers and leave a dead zone for four years,” Kirk told him.

  “What the hell are you doing making a bomb for?” Finnegan asked.

  “I told you. It was an accident. You come barging in here while I’m working with chemicals and—”

  The chemicals began to bubble and hiss.

  “Get out! Get out!” Kirk cried. He dropped to the floor, his hands over his head, and watched from under the table as Finnegan bolted from the room.

  Kirk stood quickly, swept the harmless mixture into the sink, snatched up his PADD and his backpack, and ran for the door. He had to put as much distance as he could between him and Finnegan before the lunkhead realized there hadn’t been a boom.

  “A Deltan,” Kirk muttered as he ran. “I could have been getting my mind blown by a Deltan….”

  “It’s a phoretic analyzer,” McCoy explained to Nadja as they walked along a trail in the Marin Headlands. A bright, glowing panorama of San Francisco at night was framed across the bay by the Golden Gate Bridge. “Dr. Huer developed it, and a few other cadets and I were invited to be a part of the laboratory trials. The idea is that it can take a complex mix of substances and identify individual molecules within it.”

  “A superscanner,” Nadja said.

  Nadja’s dog, a little cairn terrier, stopped to sniff a bush.

  “You could call it that. With a very specific medical use. Nothing like those scanners the Varkolak are supposed to have, of course. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on one of those.”

  The conversation lulled, and McCoy realized he’d been doing all the talking—a cardinal first-date sin.

  “So. Enough about my boring research project,” he said. “Tell me everything about yourself, beginning with your parents and your parents’ parents and leading up to, oh, this afternoon.”

  Nadja laughed. “Well, my grandfather was German, and my grandmother was Russian. I’m named after her. After my parents met in college, they got the crazy idea to move to the Vega colony. I was born on the way.”

  “A space boomer, eh? That explains a lot.”

  “Does it?”

  “Sure. Why else would anyone want to join up with an organization that ships you off into space on five-year missions, trapped inside a glorified tin can with a warp engine strapped to it?”

  “That doesn’t explain why you joined up, Leonard McCoy.”

  “Oh no. We’re talking about you, remember? I think you left off around the time you were born, which means you’ve got another couple of decades to cover.”

  The path they were walking on came out into a large open area where tourists from around the quadrant were taking holo-pics of the San Francisco skyline. Mrs. Penelope barked at a squirrel and gave chase, and McCoy and Nadja sat on a bench.

  “There’s not much else to tell. I spent the early part of my life in the Vega colony, then my parents died, and I was shipped back to Earth to be raised by my grandparents in Frankfurt. I spent a couple of years in college, then applied for Starfleet Academy and got in. And here I am.”

  “Seems like there’s an awful lot in there to tell,” McCoy said. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

  Nadja shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  She left it at that, and so did McCoy.

  Mrs. Penelope emerged from a copse a few meters away and ran toward a small group of people farther down the overlook, barking her head off.

  “Uh-oh,” Nadja said. “Looks like we have a distress call.”

  McCoy nodded. “Starfleet regulations mandate we check it out.”

  As they got closer, McCoy saw Mrs. Penelope harrying a group of protesters with signs. They chanted, “Varkolak, go home,” over the little terrier’s barking and held signs that read IF YOU’RE NOT WITH US, YOU’RE AGAINST US, and FEDERATION FIRST. The tourists were doing their best to avoid them, but the group had claimed one of the best photo-op spots on the headlands.

  “What is this nonsense?” McCoy asked. Nadja picked up her dog and quieted her, but the protesters kept chanting without answering him. McCoy had little patience for close-minded, xenophobic attitudes like this, though he knew they still existed on Earth. Not all the protesters were human, though, including, he was angry to realize, a Tellarite medical cadet he knew from the Academy. He got in the cadet’s face.

  “You. Your name’s Daagen, isn’t it? You’re a Starfleet cadet, man! You joined an organization dedicated to openness. Peaceful exploration. Diplomacy. ‘Varkolak, go home’? ‘Federation First’? You can’t have it both ways.”

  The short, bearded, snout-faced Tellarite smiled. “You forget, Dr. McCoy—it is McCoy, isn’t it? You forget, Dr., that the Federation began as a defensive alliance. A shield raised against our common enemies. So I can have it both ways. I can at once be dedicated to the organization I chose to serve and insist that its enemies—who do not share its lofty ideals, I might note—not be allowed to wander the grounds of its headquarters.”

  “Damn it, man, we’re not going to bring peace to the galaxy by alienating everyone who doesn’t agree with us. We’ve got to find common ground, and that starts by talking. Getting rid of some of the mystery. The misconceptions and misunderstandings. We show ’em enough of who we are, and maybe one day the Varkolak will join us.”

  “Next you would have me believe we will one day be allies with the Klingons,” Daagen said.

  Behind Daagen, the protesters continued to chant, “Varkolak, go home.” McCoy felt his fists clench involuntarily, and the doctor part of his brain unconsciously diagnosed his agitated condition as his hypothalamus releasing oxytocin and vasopressin, and his pituitary gland producing large amounts of adrenocorticotropic hormones. In layman’s terms, he was plain mad as hell.

  McCoy pointed a finger in Daagen’s face. “If we’d had your attitude a hundred years ago, your race wouldn’t even be in the Federation.”<
br />
  “A specious argument, Dr. McCoy. Tellar Prime was a founding member of the Federation. We could hardly have been denied access if there was no Federation to join.”

  McCoy fumed. “Damn stubborn Tellarites and your nitpicky arguments! You know what I mean.”

  “There is a clear and accepted application process for joining the Federation, Dr. McCoy, and any race who sees the wisdom in joining the Federation will be welcome.”

  “And any who don’t?”

  The Tellarite put his IF YOU’RE NOT WITH US, YOU’RE AGAINST US sign in McCoy’s face. McCoy moved to rip it from Daagen’s hands, but Nadja was there to stop him.

  “Don’t. Come on. You’re not going to win an argument with a Tellarite,” she told him.

  “Listen to your lady friend, Dr.,” Daagen told him. He nodded at Mrs. Penelope. “Are you going to eat all of that dog?”

  “I’ll give you something to eat,” Bones said. He wagged his fist at the Tellarite.

  Nadja pulled McCoy away. “Down, boy. Are you always so easily excitable?”

  “Only when I run into damn fool idiots!” he said, making sure the last part was loud enough to carry back to the protesters.

  McCoy calmed down some on the short walk back to Nadja’s dorm, but he was still worked up over Daagen. Such backward thinking, and from a Starfleet cadet, no less!

  Nadja stopped outside the lobby to her dormitory and let Mrs. Penelope down to sniff the marigolds planted beside the sidewalk. Nadja put her hands behind her back and bounced ever so slightly on the balls of her feet.

  “So. Here we are,” she said.

  Here they were. At the door to her dormitory. Good god, it’s the end of the date, McCoy realized. The end of a date was as important as the auto-suture at the end of a surgery—and had to be planned just as carefully. There was the small talk to plan, the next date to line up, and, if the operation had been a success, the good-night kiss. Or perhaps even more. How on Earth had they gotten to this point without him seeing it coming?

  “Right,” he said, realizing he’d been quiet for too long. “Here we are.”

  “My roommate’s pulling an all-nighter in the astrometric lab tonight, in case you’d like to come upstairs for … a nightcap.”