Assassination Game (26 page)

“Probably not. I don’t suppose you’ve got a hypospray on you, do you?”

“Oh, sure. I just walk around with a hypospray filled with anesthezine, in case I have to knock out somebody.”

“Do you?”

McCoy turned and gave Kirk a look that said a very exasperated “no.”

“Well, I hate to do it, then, but I’ll probably have to fight him. Just … be ready to run.”

“Fantastic.”

The door to the shuttlebay whisked open ahead of them, and McCoy took a deep breath. What they were about to do would either end up getting them a commendation or landing them in the brig. Or maybe both.

The deck officer had his back to them as he moved crates onto a hoversled. Kirk put a finger to his lips and snuck up behind him. He tapped the officer on the shoulder and raised a fist, ready to strike—then stopped suddenly when the officer turned.

“Leslie!”

“Kirk? What are you doing here?” Leslie asked. He frowned at the punch Kirk had been about to throw him.

“Bones, this is my friend Leslie. He and I fought the Varkolak. Before that, we were furniture together.”

McCoy had no idea what Kirk was talking about, but he let it go. They might get out of this without a fight yet.

“Leslie, we need a favor,” Kirk told him. “A big favor.”

Kirk laid it all out for him as quickly as he could. Nadja, the secret society, the explosions, the sabotage, the wrongful imprisonment of the Varkolak. “We’ve got to go after her, Leslie. And for that, we need a shuttle.”

Leslie looked queasy, then straightened. “You know, I just remembered,” Leslie said. “I … have to go to the bathroom.”

“Thanks, Leslie. You’re a pal,” Kirk told him.

“The
Indomitable
is prepped and ready to go,” Leslie said, walking away. “And I never saw you.”

Kirk and McCoy hurried over to the shuttlecraft
Indomitable
. “And you said no one was going to let us waltz out of here with a shuttlecraft,” Kirk said. He had the door closed and the shuttle lifting off in moments.

“We lead charmed lives, Jim. Charmed lives,” McCoy told him.

The
Indomitable
passed through the
Potemkin
’s shuttle-bay’s force field and into the black of space, and Kirk steered it toward Earth.

“Shuttlecraft
Indomitable
, this is Captain Mitchell of the USS
Potemkin
,” the intercom blared, making them
both jump. “This is an unauthorized departure. Return to the shuttlebay immediately.”

“I hereby retract my comment about us leading charmed lives,” Bones said.

Kirk clicked a button. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that, Captain. Nadja Luther’s still on Earth, and if we can catch her—”

“Cadet Kirk! If you do this, your career is over. Do you understand? You won’t just be kicked out of the Academy. You’ll be court-martialed for going AWOL during a state of war. I’m giving you one last chance. Turn that shuttle around
now
and get back to the Potemkin.”

Kirk clicked off the transmission and kept flying for Earth.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve studied all the captains in Starfleet. I know their MOs. Mitchell’s going to let us go. Just watch.”

The shuttle rocked as the
Potemkin
opened fire on them with its phasers.

“Or not!” cried Kirk.

The Academy grounds were chaos. Cadets ran to and from dorms, pulling on uniforms as they reported to transporter rooms and shuttlepads. Instructors ran with them, shouting orders and reporting for duty themselves. Shuttles lifted off over trees in the distance, heading up into space and across the bay to the Presidio, where Starfleet Command was located. Announcements and news reports blared from every console and public viewscreen.

Uhura and Sulu met Spock in the shadow of the statue of Admiral David Farragut in the middle of campus. All of them had their PADDs in hand, watching the movement of the tracer hidden in the replica Varkolak phaser Spock had constructed.

“It’s still moving,” Uhura said.

“Do we intercept?” Sulu asked.

“It would be better if we could first see what the cadet intends to do with the device,” Spock replied.

“Catch her red-handed,” Uhura said.

“If I understand the colloquialism, yes. That would be ideal,” Spock confirmed.

Right about now, Uhura began to appreciate Spock’s calm under pressure. She wouldn’t want to live without emotions all the time, but there were definitely moments she wished she could switch them off, like a chip in her head that could be deactivated.

Spock tapped at his PADD. “As an Academy commander, I have the authority to reassign you. Cadet Uhura, you have been assigned to the communication pool on the USS
Lexington
. Cadet Sulu”—he tapped again and raised an eyebrow at what he saw—“Cadet Sulu, you have been assigned as the relief helm officer aboard the USS
Excalibur
. A well-deserved posting, if I might add.”

Sulu looked stunned. Uhura was too. Relief helm officer was a big deal for a cadet right out of the Academy, let alone one still
in
the Academy.

“Relief helm? On the
Excalibur
? She’s a Constitution class,” Sulu said with wonder. He shook himself out of it. “But I’ll stay here, of course. This cadet has to be stopped.”

“Your dedication to duty is admirable, Cadet Sulu,” Spock said. “But your duty as a helm officer on a ship of the line takes precedence. I am releasing Cadet Uhura from
her assignment, but not you. There is a shuttle leaving for McKinley Station in thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds from shuttlepad six.”

“Are you sure?” Sulu asked, already backing away.

“Quite certain, Cadet,” Spock told him. “I sincerely hope events do not require you to replace the
Excalibur
’s helm officer, but if they do, pilot well.”

“I will, Commander. I will!” Sulu called, taking off for shuttlepad six at a run.

Uhura wheeled on Spock, her ponytail whipping behind her. “What am I, chopped liver?” she demanded.

Spock frowned.

“You release me from duty and not Sulu? I know he’s good at what he does, but so am I!”

Spock seemed to understand at last.

“Indeed,” said Spock. “You are the finest linguistics student at the Academy. But if we fail to apprehend Nadja Luther and convince Starfleet
and
the Varkolak of her complicity in these events, Cadet Sulu’s talents will, unfortunately, be in much greater demand. Stay with Luther. Follow the signal. That she is transporting the device in the midst of a crisis is telling.”

“Wait, you’re not coming with me?”

“While I have the authority to change your assignment, I do not have the authority to countermand my own. For that, I will first need to speak to my watch commander.”

“Forget your watch commander, Spock! Just come with me! This is more important!”

Spock raised an eyebrow, still cool as could be. “Go AWOL? In the middle of a crisis? No. Without obedience to the hierarchy of command, we would have chaos. I will go through the proper channels and, if successful, I will join you. If I am denied, I will take my assigned post on the USS
Intrepid
.”

Uhura wanted to growl. Spock was too damn rigid for his own good sometimes! This was one of those times when some human emotion and initiative would be better than his Vulcan logic.

“But, Spock, what if—”

“I assure you, Nyota, you are more than capable of doing this alone, if need be. I have absolute faith in your abilities—and in you.”

Uhura got butterflies in her chest. For someone who could occasionally say the absolute wrong thing, Spock had a strange knack for every now and then saying the absolute
right
thing. She stood on her toes and gave him a quick kiss.

“I won’t let you down,” she told him, and she ran off to follow the signal.

Smoke filled the shuttle’s small cabin. Sparks flew from the navigation console. Kirk did everything he could to keep the
pitch of the
Indomitable
’s nose up and not bring them down in the middle of San Francisco harbor—or worse, on top of the Golden Gate Bridge—but the shuttle was on its last legs after the pounding Captain Mitchell and the
Potemkin
had given it.

“You have a serious problem with authority figures, do you know that, Jim?” Bones told him.

“Physician, heal thyself.”

“I’m trying to, damn it!” Bones had been caught when one of the consoles exploded. He was trying to treat the burn with the shuttle’s med-kit, but he couldn’t aim straight. “Keep it steady, why don’t you!”

“Tell that to the port thrusters that went out five minutes ago!”

Kirk wrestled the thrusters under control and alerted shuttlepad four’s deck officer of their imminent emergency landing. One of the landing struts crumpled under them as they hit, and the shuttle skidded along the tarmac, but Kirk and Bones were able to hang on without being thrown. When the shuttle finally came to a stop, they sat where they were for a moment, waiting to see if anything else would explode.

“Well, any landing you can walk away from, eh, Bones?”

Bones looked ashen. “That’s it. I quit Starfleet. I don’t care if my ex-wife
is
somewhere on Earth. It’s a big place. A big place that doesn’t
move
.”

Kirk slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on, Bones. You don’t have to quit. They’re going to court-martial us out.”

“Speaking of,” Bones said. He nodded through the viewscreen, where a group of redshirted officers were hurrying their way. “Are they engineers or security?”

“They really need to have different colors for different jobs!” Kirk said.

They hurried to the shuttle’s door and pulled up when they found a redshirted officer already waiting for them.

“Wow,” he said. The outside of the shuttle was burned and scarred from where the
Potemkin
’s phasers had punched through their shields. “Have you already seen action with the Varkolak?”

“Not exactly,” Bones told him.

The other redshirts were drawing nearer. “You there! Hold on!” one of them called.

“Got to get a message to the admiral!” Kirk lied, and he and Bones took off at a run.

Their first stop was Nadja Luther’s dorm room, for lack of a better place to start. Bones figured if she was getting away, she’d want to take some of her things with her. If it was Kirk, he would have just legged it, but then he had never been too possessive of his stuff.

The dorm was empty. The lobby, the turbolifts, the hallways. Everyone else was on their starships, warping off
to meet the Varkolak. Kirk wanted to be with them out there. It was what he had trained for. Why he had joined Starfleet to begin with. But Starfleet was a “peacekeeping and humanitarian armada.” That’s what Captain Pike had told him that night back in Iowa when he’d talked Kirk into joining up. And what better way to keep the peace than to stop a war before it began?

Kirk was imagining the medal he would get for this when he turned the corner and walked straight into Uhura. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, the PADD she was holding skittering away on the floor.

“Kirk!”

“Uhura!”

“McCoy,” Bones said, waving hello.

“What are you
doing
here, Kirk?” Uhura demanded.

“What are
you
doing here?”

Uhura didn’t answer. Instead she tried to get up, but she and Kirk were still too tangled for either of them to get free.

“
Grr
. Kirk, why is it, wherever I go, you end up on top of me?” Uhura asked.

“Just lucky, I guess,” Kirk said with a smile.

The door beside them slid open, and a startled Nadja Luther stared back at them, a satchel slung over her shoulder.

“Nadja!” Bones said.

“Leonard?”

“Kirk!” yelled Uhura.

“Uhura—” said Kirk.

“Mrs. Penelope,
greif an
!”

Nadja’s little cairn terrier shot from the apartment and latched onto Bones’s pant leg, growling and tearing.

“Ow! Down, you little devil! Heel! Halt! Desist!”