Assassination Game (7 page)

Lartal gestured to the table. “Would you like some breakfast?”

Kirk saw the plates of raw meat, and his stomach turned. “No, thanks. I just ate,” he lied.

The other two Varkolak laughed, like hyenas, but they quieted when Lartal shot them a look.

“Your chief. His comment about hovercars and the leather strap he gave you. It is a reference of some kind to the domesticated canines of your world?”

Quick decision
, thought Kirk.
Lie or tell the truth?

“Yes,” Kirk said. He took the collar out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table. “It’s a dog collar. On Earth, dogs are notorious for chasing anything that moves. Especially cars.”

The other two Varkolak sneered and growled, but Lartal silenced them. He nodded. “Good. Let there be no lies between us, Kirk. You dislike us, and we dislike you. I asked for you because you do not hide behind words, like your chief. And unlike all the other humans, you do not reek of fear.”

“What can I say? They were all out when I went into the perfume store.”

Dr. Lartal picked up something that looked like a tricorder from a table at the back of the room, hooking it onto his belt. Kirk wondered if it was one of the incredibly accurate sensing devices the Varkolak were famous
for. The only thing the Federation knew about how they worked was that they used kemocite for a power source. The rest was a mystery—one Federation scientists salivated over.

“I am ready to leave,” Lartal said.

Kirk wasn’t looking forward to this—not because he would be escorting a Varkolak around all day, but because it was going to be
boring
. The medical conference didn’t start until tomorrow, thankfully, but Starfleet had arranged for tours of the Academy’s medical research facilities today for all the attendees. Kirk was in for a day of medical discussions and biobed demonstrations. Why couldn’t Bones have been the one Lartal wanted?

“All right,” Kirk said. “The first tour of the morning is the obstetrics facility. After that, we’ve got the psychiatric facility, then the—”

“No,” Lartal said. “I would like a tour of the campus.”

“You … don’t want to go on the medical tours?”

Lartal frowned. At least, Kirk took his expression to be a frown. “No. Come.”

The two other Varkolak stood to go with them, but Lartal told them to remain behind. They whimpered objections, but he barked something in Varkolak, and they sat back down at the table.

All right, then
, Kirk thought as Lartal marched past him out of the room.
Maybe I’m going to need that leash after all
.

Hikaru Sulu’s helm console lit up like Shibuya at night. Red-alert klaxons wailed and the bridge shook as the inertial dampeners tried to compensate for the phaser blasts raining down on the
Yorktown
.

“Heading one-one-three, mark eight!” Viktor Tikhonov shouted from the captain’s chair. “Evasive maneuvers! Pattern gamma four!”

“Heading one-one-three, mark eight, evasive maneuvers, pattern gamma four, aye!” Sulu confirmed, putting the coordinates into the helm.

“Four more Varkolak ships approaching from starboard, bearing zero-nine-three, mark ten!” Pavel Chekov announced from his position at ops, just to the right of Sulu. Chekov pronounced his
V
s like
W
s—“Warkolak” instead of “Varkolak”—something Sulu had long since gotten used to after dozens of missions at the Russian’s side.

“They’re surrounding us!” Tikhonov cried.

Of course they’re surrounding us, you idiot
, Sulu thought.
That’s what the Varkolak do
. The Constitution-class
Yorktown
was bigger and stronger than any single Varkolak ship, but the way the Varkolak brought down bigger prey was to circle it and harry it until it went down under the fire of a dozen smaller ships.

“Shields at seventy percent,” Chekov said.

“Return fire! Target the lead ship!” Tikhonov ordered.

“But which one is the lead ship?” Chekov asked.

That’s it, isn’t it?
Sulu thought as he twisted the
Yorktown
out of the path of a photon torpedo. The Varkolak most certainly had an alpha. Everything they’d been taught about them said they were a pack-dominated society. One of those ships was the alpha, and the others were just betas, following the leader. That’s what made the Varkolak such difficult enemies—they were always perfectly in sync with one another and never broke ranks. But what if the betas were betas for a reason?

Sulu broke off his heading and swung the
Yorktown
around at the nearest Varkolak ship. The
Yorktown
rocked as the pursuing Varkolak ships bore down on them, firing phasers in close quarters.

“No, no!” Tikhonov yelled. “Evasive maneuvers! Pattern … pattern …”

Sulu didn’t bother to wait for Tikhonov to make up his mind. He plowed into the cluster of Varkolak ships, breaking their line. Two of them peeled away. Emboldened, Sulu turned the prow of the
Yorktown
into the rest of the pack, scattering more ships. Soon the Varkolak would regroup and come at the
Yorktown
again, but hopefully, in the meantime—

“Got him!” Chekov said. Only one dog hadn’t been sent scurrying away by the charge of the great moose that
was the
Yorktown
. A single ship that was identical to all the others in every respect save one—its captain was the alpha leader. He alone kept his ship in the fight against overwhelming odds, because that’s what made him an alpha leader.

It was so obvious even Tikhonov could see it. “There! Target that ship!” he ordered, but he needn’t have bothered. Chekov had already sent two photon torpedoes screaming toward the Varkolak cruiser. They hit the little Varkolak ship dead-on, knocking out its shields and destroying one of its warp nacelles. It listed in space, critically wounded and venting plasma.

“The other Varkolak ships are breaking off their attack and going to warp,” Chekov announced. “We have won!”

Sulu’s helm console went blank, the red-alert klaxons died, and the bridge crew breathed a collective sigh of relief as the lights came up and the simulation came to an end. One or two even clapped.

The door to the observation room opened, and their Academy instructors came into the room, led by Commander Spock.

“Congratulations,” Spock said. “The Varkolak are a difficult and implacable enemy. Your approach to the battle was both novel and effective.”

Chekov shot Sulu a congratulatory smile.

“Thank you,” Tikhonov told Commander Spock. “I
knew if we could just isolate the lead ship from the others, we could rout them.”

Chekov frowned. “But you would never have known which ship was the leader if Sulu hadn’t—” he began, but Sulu shook his head to silence him.

“Your bridge crew is to be commended,” Spock said. “Dismissed.”

Chekov hung back with Sulu and watched Tikhonov leave, regaling one of the female cadets from their simulation crew with tales of his amazing prowess at command.

“You should not let that Cossack take credit for your work,” Chekov told Sulu. “You are the reason we won today, not him.”

Sulu nodded his thanks. “I’ll let my grades and my record do the talking for me.”

Chekov shook his head, but relented. Chekov was the closest thing Sulu had to a friend at the Academy, but Sulu had resisted the young Russian’s attempts to get him out of his study carrel in the astrometric building. After a while, Chekov had gotten the hint and stopped asking.

Together they went into the next room, where the other cadets were collecting their things. Sulu watched as they paired off to leave, eying each other suspiciously, and then he remembered the game some of them were playing. The Assassination Game, they called it. He’d seen the signs in the student center and had been interested, but
he’d never really seriously considered joining. He wasn’t at the Academy to make friends or to play games. He was here to work hard, study hard, and graduate with a top posting. There wasn’t time for anything else.

“Cadet Sulu, if I might have a word with you?” Commander Spock said.

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

Sulu and Chekov nodded their good-byes, and Spock waited until he and Sulu were alone.

“Your superior piloting skills today did not go unnoticed,” Commander Spock remarked.

Sulu straightened. “Thank you, sir.”

“I understand you will also be piloting the shuttle that brings the president of the United Federation of Planets to tomorrow’s opening ceremonies for the Interspecies Medical Summit. A well-deserved honor. With your skills at helm and your excellent grades in astrophysics, you should have your pick of positions upon graduation.”

Sulu almost didn’t know what to say. He’d never received this much praise from an instructor—particularly from a Vulcan. “Thank you, sir.”

Commander Spock glanced around, as if to make sure no one else was with them.

“Cadet, you are about to receive an invitation. An exceedingly
odd
invitation,” Spock told him.

“Sir? What kind of invitation?”

“That, I cannot say. It may be an offer you are interested in. If it is not, I would appreciate you speaking to me before you say no.”

“I—All right,” Sulu said, absolutely mystified.

“Thank you, Cadet,” said Commander Spock, and he left Sulu alone to gather his things.

What in the world had that all been about? Sulu cycled up his PADD as he walked across campus to his carrel in the astrometric building, but a strange message in his inbox stopped him in his tracks:

CADET HIKARU SULU, PLEASE COME ALONE TO ROOM 219, VANDERBILT HALL, TONIGHT AT 2300 HOURS
. The request had no sender, and was signed only with what Sulu recognized as a two-dimensional rendering of a graviton particle.

An exceedingly odd invitation indeed.

Dr. Lartal’s tour of the Academy grounds had quickly turned into an off-campus excursion into the nearby Golden Gate Park. Kirk wasn’t sure what was guiding the Varkolak’s wanderings, but he suspected it had something to do with the Varkolak’s nose. He seemed far more interested in sniffing the air than he did in seeing any of the sights Kirk pointed out.

“And there’s the … Golden Gate Bridge,” Kirk said, petering out when it was clear Lartal had absolutely no
interest in one of Earth’s most well-known landmarks. Kirk shrugged and shared a bewildered look with the two Starfleet Security officers who accompanied them. All around them, the throngs of tourists out on what was a gorgeously sunny summer day in San Francisco gave them a wide berth. More than one set of parents hustled their young children away from the Varkolak.

Lartal sniffed at a park bench, utterly unfazed by either the view or the nervous people around him. “Your face,” he said to Kirk without looking up. “It is injured. And you walk today with a limp you did not have yesterday.”

Thanks for noticing
, Kirk thought. “Yeah. My ribs aren’t in such great shape either,” Kirk told him. “The chief said I need to see a doctor. Maybe you want to take a look.”

“Not particularly, no,” Lartal said. He moved from the bench to one of the telescopes along the rail at the edge of the Marin Headlands, the sea of tourists parting for him like subspace around a warp field.

Now that was odd, Kirk thought. According to Bones, every doctor from here to Romulus wanted to get a proper body scan of a Varkolak, and Kirk had to assume the reverse was true of every Varkolak doctor—as well as just about every doctor from every member race of the Federation. He’d just offered Dr. Lartal a chance to give him a full body
scan, and the Varkolak had turned it down.

If Lartal really
was
a doctor. Kirk was beginning to doubt that more and more.

Lartal pulled the sensor device off his belt and held it up like he was scanning the area.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Kirk said, hurrying over. Letting a member of a race with whom the Federation currently shared an uneasy détente sweep the area near Starfleet Command with a scanner seemed like a very,
very
bad idea. “I don’t, uh, I don’t think you should be …” Kirk said, suddenly realizing how little authority he had over the Varkolak. Before he could enlist the help of the security officers, Lartal was pointing across the bay to San Francisco.