Assassination Game (25 page)

“I’m almost there. Wait—Yes. I have her now.”

“Do you recognize her?”

“Negative. She’s a cadet, that much is clear, but I don’t know her name. I’m sending you a picture.”

Within seconds, the picture appeared on Spock’s PADD.

“She is a senior cadet by the name of Nadja Luther,” Spock told them. He saw almost every cadet at some time or another in the simulations, and of course he remembered them all.

“Is she the one?” Sulu asked. “Or is she just delivering it to someone else?”

Before Spock could answer, klaxons blared in the hallways
and classrooms, accompanied by flashing red lights. A campus-wide emergency. The screen of his PADD immediately filled with an official emergency broadcast signal, heralded briefly by the light blue–and-white logo of the United Federation of Planets. The logo blinked away and was replaced by the head and shoulders of Admiral Barnett.

“Cadets and faculty, may I have your attention. I have just received word that the Varkolak Armada has entered Sector zero-zero-one. All Starfleet ships in the area are rendezvousing to intercept. Starfleet reserve officers are hereby recalled to active duty, and cadets are ordered to report to shuttle hangers and transport stations for assignment at once. The Federation is mobilizing for war.”

The Academy faculty spilled out of the classroom where they were meeting, and the hallway erupted into chaos. As they ran past, talking and shouting, Spock finally answered Sulu’s question.

“I do not know, Cadet. But we may have run out of time.”

Bones was digging through the pile of clothes in his closet when Kirk came running into their dorm room.

“Bones! Bones, it’s war. We have to report to the transporters.”

“I know! Why do you think I’m rooting around in here for my damn blue tunic? I’m not going to show up looking like a first-year plebe in an Academy uniform. Aha!”

Bones came up with a blue shirt that would identify him as a doctor, and sniffed at it. He recoiled at the smell, but still stripped out of his Academy reds and pulled it on.

“Here,” Kirk said. He tossed Bones back his communicator.

“You’re done with it? Did you figure anything about about my mystery caller?”

“Yeah,” Kirk said. How in the world was he going to tell Bones about Nadja Luther? He had to. He knew that. But that didn’t mean it was going to be any fun. Instead, he yanked out his gold command-division tunic and pulled it on over his black undershirt.

“It was Daagen, wasn’t it?” Bones said. “The little devil.”

“No,” Kirk said. “It wasn’t Daagen.”

Bones waited for Kirk to go on, but Kirk pretended to be looking for something.

“Well?” Bones said. “Don’t leave me in suspense, man! Who was it?”

Kirk sighed. No sense putting it off any longer.

“It was Nadja.”

“What?”

“Look, Bones, I’m sorry, but it’s not Daagen or anybody
else who’s been messing with you all this time. It’s Nadja.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, Bones. I know you don’t want to know this, but just listen, all right? The message on your phone? The call you got that night you went out to Cavallo Point? It’s Nadja’s voice, scrambled, then modulated to sound like her voice again.”

“But why on earth would—”

Kirk held up a hand. “That first night you went on a date, that night you went for a walk with her dog in the park. You told me she showed up at the research lab and told you you were late, even though you could swear you weren’t.”

“So?”

“So, when you left, was she with you when you said your access code to the computer?”

Bones sat down on his bed, his eyes seeing another time and another place.

“Bones, Nadja planted that kemocite on the shuttle. She was there, on the dais, remember? She set it up not to hurt anybody, but she caused the explosion. She’s an engineer. She knows better than anybody what kemocite and plasma do when they come together. But she also knew all the kemocite would be consumed in the chain reaction, so she used a recording of your access code to sneak back into the lab and contaminate the shuttle debris.
She probably had a recorder in her purse when you said your access code. She
wanted
Starfleet to point the finger at the Varkolak. But just in case her sabotage was discovered, she set you up to take the fall for it by sending you on that wild goose chase to Cavallo Point. She thought no one would see you. You’d be seen leaving the dorm late at night, but nobody would see where you went. You’d have no alibi in the investigation. She contaminated the shuttle debris with kemocite while you were gone, then left her communicator on Daagen’s desk and claimed she’d lost it. It was misdirection. Daagen didn’t have anything to do with it at all.”

“You’re guessing,” Bones said. “It’s all conjecture. That message from Nadja—someone’s done something clever with it to mix us up. And what about the kemocite planted in my closet?”

“Nadja spent the night with you here one night, didn’t she? That night I was gone?”

Bones turned pale.

“Did she stop by her room first?” Kirk asked quietly, trying to soften the blow. “Did she bring anything with her?”

“She said—she said she just needed to get her toothbrush,” Bones said.

“But she brought an overnight bag with her or something, didn’t she?” Kirk said.

Bones nodded.

“The kemocite had to be in it. I’m sorry, Bones, but the whole time, she was setting you up in case she got found out. And … there’s more.”

“More?”

“When you were in the brig, Nadja and I followed Daagen to Chinatown. She’s the one who saw him go.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No. But, Bones, Jake Finnegan was there. He attacked me. Kept me from seeing whoever it was Daagen was there to meet. I couldn’t figure out how Finnegan knew to be waiting for me in Chinatown when
I
had no idea where we were going.
She
told him. Nadja. Finnegan says she told him to be at that warehouse in Chinatown to attack me. But how did
she
know where we were going? The only answer is that she was the one there to meet Daagen.”

“You’re saying she’s a member of this secret society.”

“I think so. But I don’t think even Daagen knows what she’s up to. Not by the way he reacted when I told him some of this stuff.”

“But why?” Bones asked. The pain was clearly written on his face now. “Why blow things up, why hurt people,
kill
people, and make it look like the Varkolak did it?”

“Before the red alert sounded, I was in the library,” Kirk told him. “I looked up Nadja’s public record. Her parents were killed on Vega V when the Varkolak attacked.”

Bones closed his eyes. “Of course. Damn it, why didn’t
I see that? She told me she grew up on Vega colony and that she came back to Earth when her parents died. But I never made the connection with the Battle of Vega V.”

“It has to be a revenge thing, Bones. That’s what all this is about. It’s why the entire Federation is about to go to war with the Varkolak. Because of her.”

Bones was silent for a time, and Kirk felt the insistent urging of the flashing red-alert message on their room console. They had to get going.

“Bones?”

“It … it all fits, I have to admit,” he said at last. “I just … I need to talk to her, Jim.”

Kirk offered a hand to help up his friend. “That is definitely step one.”

McCoy and Kirk arrived on the Constitution-class USS
Potemkin
’s transporter pad in a tornado of swirling subatomic particles. When the transport was complete, McCoy patted himself down to make sure all his limbs were intact and where they were supposed to be.

“Don’t worry, Bones. You’re all there. Physically, at least,” Kirk told him.

“Laugh now, Jim, but one day you’re gonna come through that thing with an extra arm sticking out of your chest and then who’s going to be laughing?”

“Jake Finnegan, I’d expect,” said Kirk.

The other Academy cadets who’d transferred with them filed off the transporter pad to check in with a Denobulan yeoman who stood by the door handing out assignments.

“I’m Yeoman Phozic. Welcome to the USS
Potemkin
, Cadets. Names?” he said when Kirk and Bones reached him.

“Kirk, James Tiberius, and McCoy, Leonard Horatio,” Kirk told him. “But what I really need to know is where a cadet named Nadja Luther is posted.”

Phozic tapped his PADD. “Weapons room … and sickbay.”

“You mean she’s in one of those places? Here?” Kirk asked.

“No. James T. Kirk, field rank lieutenant, you’re to report to the weapons room. Leonard H. McCoy, field rank lieutenant commander, you’re to report to sickbay. You’re the last group to report in. Hurry to your stations.”

“No, we need—Wait a minute, you outrank me?” Kirk said to McCoy.

“That’s ‘You outrank me,
sir
,’” McCoy corrected.

Kirk turned back to Phozic. “Look, we need to know where Cadet Nadja Luther ended up. It’s important.
Please
.”

“Cadet, this is no time to be worrying about where your girlfriend ended up.”

“She’s not his girlfriend, she’s mine. And finding her may be the only way we can stop this war from happening. Now look her up, Yeoman. That’s an order,” said McCoy.

Yeoman Phozic seemed to understand all at once that McCoy did, in fact, outrank him, despite the differences in their ages.

Kirk gave McCoy an impressed look as Yeoman Phozic hurriedly tapped at his PADD.

“Luther, Nadja. She was assigned to the
Farragut
, but … it says here she didn’t report for duty. She’s listed as AWOL. The
Farragut
warped out without her.”

Kirk leaned over the transporter console and clicked the intercom button. The transporter chief started to object, but Kirk cut him off.

“Captain Mitchell, this is Cadet Kirk. I’ve got some information that could stop this war with the Varkolak before it even begins. There’s another cadet, her name is Nadja Luther, and she’s a part of a secret society at school. She blew up the president’s shuttle, and she set off that bomb at the medical conference and made it look like the Varkolak did it, all because her parents died in the Varkolak attack on Vega V. She’s still on Earth, and she’s getting away.”

There was a pause, and the four men in the transporter room held their breaths. Finally, the captain’s slightly putout voice came back to them through the comm.

“This is all very fascinating Cadet … Kirk, is it? But this isn’t the time. In case you hadn’t heard, there is an alien armada headed for Earth, and the
Potemkin
is a ship of the line, and belongs with the defense fleet. Now close this channel and report to your station!”

McCoy saw that Kirk was about to talk back and hauled him out into the corridor.

“But, Bones!” Kirk protested.

“Let it go, Jim. He’s not interested. You heard him. The armada’s on the way. The talking is over. Everybody’s ready for war. How did you know who the captain was, anyway?”

“I know all the captains in the fleet. Who’s this ship’s chief medical officer?”

“Dr. Thomas Arnet.”

“See? You know your business, I know mine.”

Kirk steered them down a side corridor of the ship.

“Wait a minute? Where are we going? The turbolift’s that way.”

“You’re not going to sickbay, Bones, and I’m not going to the weapons room. We’re going back down to Earth.”

McCoy pulled Kirk to a stop. “
Are you out of your confounded mind?
They’re never going to let us transport down.”

“I know. We’re going to steal a shuttle,” Kirk said, moving off again.

“Oh. Good. I thought we were going to do something stupid.”

“Nadja’s behind all this, Bones. If we warp out of here with the fleet, there’ll be a war. She’ll have gotten exactly what she wanted, and she’ll have gotten away with it too. If we catch her in time, maybe we can put everything right before the shooting starts.”

“Jim, the deck officer isn’t going to let us—” McCoy lowered his voice as they passed a
Potemkin
crewman in the hall. “He isn’t going to let us just waltz into a shuttlebay and borrow one for a joyride.”