Assassination Game (4 page)

“Oh no, sir.”

Admiral Barnett blanched. “No?”

“No, sir. The chief, he told us not to make trouble, and I didn’t see that it was worth fighting about. After all, we’re big enough to take a few insults, aren’t we?”

Admiral Barnett cleared his throat. “And what exactly was it they said that started the fight, then?”

“Lartal made some indecent remarks to Cadet Uhura.”

“Cadet … Uhura,” the admiral said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You started a fight with the Federation’s most notorious enemies because they insulted Cadet Uhura, not because they—”

“I couldn’t just let them insult a woman like that, Admiral!”

The admiral sighed. “No. Of course not.” Barnett went behind his desk to sit down, and Kirk waited for the other shoe to drop.
Whatever comes, comes
, he thought.
I can always get a job as a freighter captain. Or a bouncer
.

“That little stunt of yours has had repercussions, Mr. Kirk. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t think you do. For the duration of the Varkolak’s stay, Mr. Kirk, you are hereby assigned to be the personal liaison for Dr. Lartal when you’re not in class or otherwise engaged in required Academy activities.”

“I—
What?
” Kirk stammered, hastily adding a “sir.”

“It seems you’ve won an admirer,” Admiral Barnett told him. “Dr. Lartal came to me and asked for you specifically. He also asked that you not be disciplined for your behavior. He told me two weeks in space is too long for a Varkolak to go without a good fight, and you were … just what the doctor ordered.”

Kirk couldn’t believe his good luck, and he smiled.

“Don’t get the wrong idea here, Cadet,” the admiral told
him. “This is a highly charged situation. Do I need to remind you of the lives the Federation lost to the Varkolak at the battle of Vega V? The slightest misstep while these Varkolak are here could touch off a war between the Varkolak Assembly and the Federation, and no one wants that. Which means I had better not find out there’s been a fight number
ten
, Mr. Kirk. Dismissed.”

Uhura read the strange message on her PADD again:
CADET NYOTA UHURA, PLEASE COME ALONE TO ROOM 1033, SHRAN HALL, TONIGHT AT 2300 HOURS.
The invitation was signed only with a tiny logo of an atom. She checked the time and the number on the door again and then stepped inside. It was dark in the classroom, and the lights didn’t come on automatically as they were supposed to when she walked in. Uhura stayed close to the door, so it would remain open while she found the manual light switch on the wall, but a voice in the darkness made her jump.

“It’s all right, Cadet Uhura. We prefer the lights stay off.” In the darkness, first one, then another, and then a host of flashlights clicked on, illuminating an empty area in the middle of the room. Uhura stepped toward the light, and the door slid shut behind her.

“Who are you? What is this?” Uhura asked.

“We are the Graviton Society,” the same male voice
told her. He swept his flashlight beam up at his face, but everything above his mouth was shrouded by the cowl of a dark cloak. The others did the same, and Uhura saw she was in a room full of cloaked people.

The Graviton Society. Uhura had heard whispers about it since she was a first-year cadet. Everybody talked about it, but no one knew exactly what it was—or if it really existed.

“What is this, some kind of secret club?” she asked.

“We certainly do wish to remain … out of sensor range,” the voice said. The pitch, the tone, the modulation—she could almost place whose voice it was….

“You’re trying to figure out who I am from the sound of my voice,” the speaker said. “And no, I’m not a telepath. We were told you would do that. I’m using a voice modulator to disguise who I am.”

“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.

“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.