Assassination Game (21 page)

“Chinatown,” Nadja said.

“Ever been?” Kirk asked.

Nadja shook her head.

“Come on. You’re going to love it.”

Souvenir shops and small cafés lined the streets just past the Dragon Gate, but soon Daagen turned off onto the side streets of the neighborhood, and the tourist traps gave way to markets with chickens hanging in the windows and restaurants with menus written in Chinese. The sidewalks were full of people, and it wasn’t too hard to stay hidden from Daagen, though he did still stop and look around every other street corner or so.

“What do you think he’s got in that satchel?” Kirk asked.

“Maybe he’s making a dumpling delivery,” Nadja suggested. “Or maybe it’s empty and he’s here to pick up some.”

Daagen eventually found where he was going: a warehouse on the outskirts of Chinatown. He punched in a code at the door, took one last look around, and slid inside. Kirk hurried forward to catch the door, but he just missed.

“We’ll have to find another way in,” Nadja whispered. “There’s an open window up there.”

“Wait,” Kirk said. He started putting in combinations on the door. The light over the keypad blinked red each time he failed. Red. Red. Red. Red.

“Give it up, Kirk. There are ten thousand possible combinations between zero-zero-zero-zero and nine-nine-nine-nine. If we climb up the fire escape and you boost me over, I can—”

The light over the keypad turned green and the door ka-chunked—unlocked.

“Not ten thousand,” Kirk told her. “Just twenty-four. The plastic over the keypad is indented over the numbers in the combination. Four numbers, twenty-four possible combinations.”

Nadja gave him an impressed look. He put a finger to his lips and opened the door far enough for them to slip inside.

A dragon stared back at them.

It was red and pink, and had a snarling, toothy mouth, like, well, like a Varkolak, Kirk was forced to admit. Stacked beside it were barrels of folded paper umbrellas and piles of red lanterns. Overhead hung yellow fish on
poles and a snaking golden dragon with a tail five meters long. The place was a storehouse for Chinese New Year costumes and props of all kinds.

“Happy new year,” Nadja whispered.

“Yeah. I think it’s the year of the rat,” Kirk said. “Let’s go catch him.”

“Split up,” Nadja suggested. She pointed Kirk one way and she went the other.

Kirk threaded his way through hundreds of colorful fans, hung with string from the ceiling, toward a giant tiger head so big, it had to ride on a float. Still no sign of Daagen. Maybe if he got up on top of the tiger head, he could see better—

“Hi-yah!”

A man in a creepy demon-dog mask jumped out from between two dragons, and Kirk jumped back. He was too big to be the Tellarite, which meant he was probably one of his secret-society cronies.

Kirk punched, kicked, jabbed. The big man took the shots well, and he gave Kirk a few in return. After just a few seconds, Kirk decided he could take him, but not without a lengthy fight. And every moment he spent fighting this goon, Daagen was off doing who knew what.

“Sorry,” Kirk said. “I’ve got a date.”

He knocked a box of costumes onto the dog-man and kicked him headlong into another pile of lanterns.
It wouldn’t keep him, Kirk knew, but it gave him enough time to slip past and take off through the stacks of parade props. Stealth was out now, so Kirk didn’t care how much noise he made as he ran. He careened into another dragon head, got his balance back, turned a corner, and ran full tilt into a woman in a Starfleet cadet uniform. They went down together with a collective “oof,” the girl landing underneath him.

“Kirk?” Uhura said.

“Uhura?” Kirk said.

“Hi-yah!” said a third person, and he flew into Kirk foot first, kicking him off Uhura. Kirk tumbled painfully into a stack of crates and then pulled himself up. It wasn’t the dog-man this time, but someone else, dressed all in black, with a black ninja mask on his head.

“What is
with
this place?” Kirk said aloud.

The man in black shot a look at Uhura on the ground, and Kirk suddenly worried it was Uhura he was after, not Kirk. He looked around wildly for something to use against the ninja and spotted a rope that held a giant panda head suspended right over them. Kirk grabbed the end of the rope and yanked. The knot gave, and the rope hissed up and over a pulley on the ceiling as the panda head came crashing down. Uhura squeaked and tucked into a ball, and the ninja jumped away as the head smashed into the ground, trapping Uhura inside.

“Don’t worry, Uhura! You’ll be safe inside there!” Kirk called, and he took up a defensive stance against the ninja.

“Hi-yah!” The dog-man crashed into Kirk from behind and knocked him to the ground again, where they fought and kicked among spilled masks. Above them, Kirk saw the ninja hop up onto a pile of crates and then disappear.

“That’s right, run away!” Kirk yelled. “I could have taken you bo—
oof
.” The dog-man punched him in the gut, and Kirk lost his breath, but he recovered in time to kick his assailant over his shoulder.

“Kirk! Kirk, let me out of here, you idiot!” came Uhura’s muffled yell from inside the panda head.

Kirk got back to his feet, but the dog-man was just as quick, lowering his shoulder and driving Kirk back into a door and out into the street beside the warehouse. People scattered as they knocked over a noodle cart. Kirk and the man in the dog mask grappled as someone cried out for the police, and Kirk saw the man pull a knife from his pocket.

“That’s dirty pool,” Kirk began to say, until he saw what kind of weapon it was the man held. “Wait—a
spork
?”

Kirk ripped the mask off the dog-man. It was Finnegan.

“What the hell?” Kirk said. He headbutted Finnegan
and rolled over on top of him, holding his arms down with his knees. Finnegan? Here? Now? Playing the Assassination Game when there were spies and ninjas everywhere?

Kirk raised a fist to deliver a knockout blow to Finnegan when someone caught his hand. He spun, ready to punch the ninja, but pulled up short.

It was a San Francisco police officer.

“Stand down, Cadet,” the officer said. “You’re both under arrest.”

“Ten, Kirk,” Admiral Barnett said. “That’s ten fights. And this one in a crowded street in Chinatown, of all places, when you’re not even supposed to be off campus!”

Kirk felt distinctly like he was sitting in the principal’s office back in grade school—a place he had sat many, many times.

Beside him, Jake Finnegan snickered at Kirk’s predicament.

“And
you
, Cadet Finnegan!” Barnett said, rounding on him. “I’ve got a complaint list a kilometer long on you from plebes you’ve made it your business to bully and terrorize. Believe me, when you graduate—
if
you graduate—I can bury you so deep in space, the only person you’ll have to pick on will be your transporter echo. I know a particular ice planet near Vulcan where you’re lucky if you see a supply ship once a year.”

Rule number one in the principal’s office: don’t smile. They hate when you smile. Kirk did his best not to smile at
Finnegan getting called to the mat, and then proceeded to initiate rule number two: earnestness and conciliation are your only chance out.

“It was all just a game,” Kirk told Barnett. “We weren’t
really
fighting.” He looked to Finnegan for backup here.

“Uh, no. I mean, he’s right. It was just … good-natured fun.”

Kirk had to swallow his tongue. It was anything but fun for the two of them, of course. However, rekindling their old conflict here in Barnett’s office wasn’t going to do them any favors.

“A game?” Barnett said. “What game?”

Kirk winced. He’d broken rule number five: don’t ever give them something new they can use against you. He shot Finnegan a look of warning, but it was too late.

“The Assassination Game,” Finnegan said. “We each got some other cadet’s name, see, and we have to track them down and try to kill them with a spork when nobody’s looking.”

Admiral Barnett raised his considerable bulk out of his chair and leaned forward upon his desk. “Are you telling me you’re playing a game like this here?
Now?
With all that’s happening with the Varkolak?”

Kirk closed his eyes and waited for it.

“
Have you lost all sense of judgment?
We are about to go to war with the Varkolak.
War
, gentlemen. Not some
game. We have had terrorist attacks on Academy grounds. People have
died
. We have Starfleet Security officers posted at every door and at every building, watching for anything suspicious, and you’re telling me
you’re running around pretending to kill one another with sporks
?”

“The game started before all that,” Finnegan said.

“And none of you geniuses ever thought that maybe you should put it on hold when things did get serious?”

Finnegan had no answer for that. None of them did. Kirk had been more focused on the bombings than on the Assassination Game, but he’d still gone after his targets when he had the chance. And he’d still fought to keep Finnegan from knocking him out of the game. Their goose was looking cooked.

Rule number three: When your back is against the wall, change the conversation.

“Admiral, Bones—Cadet McCoy—he’s being set up. That’s what I was doing in Chinatown in the first place, trying to clear him. There’s another cadet, Daagen, a medical student. He’s a part of some secret society here at the Academy. I think they had something to do with the bombing. I followed him to Chinatown, where he was making some kind of a drop, but Finnegan here jumped me before I could—”

“Enough! I don’t want to hear any more! From this moment on, the game is over. Do you understand? It
ends this instant. If I see a spork in either of your hands, anywhere outside the dining hall, so help me Cochrane, I’ll have you on a shuttle back to whatever cornfield you came from before you can say ‘converter coil.’ Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” they both said at once. That was rule number six: The principal is always right.

“Now get out of here,” Barnett said. He slumped back into his chair, closing his eyes and massaging the bridge of his nose. Kirk and Finnegan didn’t have to be told twice. They’d both been in enough principals’ offices to know to run when you could.

Out in the hall, Jake Finnegan punched Kirk on the shoulder, hard.

“See ya around, Jimmy boy,” Finnegan said, and as he walked away, Kirk knew that for Finnegan, the Assassination Game would not be over until Kirk was dead.

Uhura stood outside the door to Spock’s staff apartment, hesitating before she rang the chime. She’d never been to Spock’s room before. They had always met somewhere else: the observation tower, the faculty cafeteria, the racquetball court. When he’d told her to meet him here, at his apartment … Well, if he were human, she’d take that as something more than it was. But Spock wasn’t human,
she reminded herself. Meeting here was no different than meeting in the stellar cartography lab. She took a deep breath and rang the chime.

“Come in,” Spock said.

The door whisked open, and Uhura stepped into the most spartan living space she’d ever seen. There was little else in the room besides a table and two chairs, and the small kitchen along the far wall was so clean and tidy, it looked like he hadn’t even moved in yet. The only personal touches to the room were a small painting on the wall of some place on Vulcan, with its three suns on the horizon; a 3-D chess set on the table; and in the corner, on a pedestal all its own, a Vulcan lute. The last surprised Uhura; she had no idea Spock was musical.

Beyond where Spock was standing, hands behind his back, was the door to what she guessed was his bedroom. Not that she would ever see it.

“Cadet Uhura, welcome,” Spock said. “May I offer you some refreshment?”

“No,” Uhura told him. “I’d hate for you to have to take anything from its place.”

Spock raised an eyebrow, but said nothing more. Uhura went to the table to look at the chess set.