Assassination Game (23 page)

Kirk stayed right where he was. Gaila smiled.

“Right now,” Kirk said.

Gaila backed into her room, inviting him to follow her. Kirk put his hands on the door frame, trying to hold his feet back from taking him inside. It took every ounce of will-power he had, but he broke away and ran off down the hall.

“Good night, Gaila!” he yelled.

“Come back later, Jim,” she called after him. “I’ll be waiting.”

Kirk slumped to the floor of the turbolift, breathing heavily and wishing he could take a
very
high-pitched sonic shower right now. But that too would have to wait.

“Bones, I hope you know what kind of sacrifices I’m making for you, buddy.”

Desperate to find something,
anything
that would help clear his best friend, Kirk took a long walk in the dark to Cavallo Point. Cadets had seen him leave his dorm, so maybe someone had seen where he went. It was a long shot, Kirk knew, but it was all he had. That, and the cool night air helped clear his head from his run in with Gaila.

But Cavallo Point was as quiet and empty that night as it had been when Bones had come here, at least according to what Bones had said. Kirk took awhile to wander the park, listening to the low undertone of the ocean waves from far down the cliff. Who had called Bones out here, pretending to be Nadja? Who wanted him to take the
fall for contaminating the shuttle debris with kemocite to implicate the Varkolak? And what was that rustling in the bushes?

Kirk stopped, and the rustling stopped.

“Who’s there?” he called.

Nobody answered.

Kirk went into the bushes where he’d heard the sound and then pulled out his communicator, using it to illuminate the ground at his feet.

Four big round eyes blinked back up at him. It was two Tarsian men in Starfleet uniforms. Or, at least,
mostly
in Starfleet uniforms. They hastily zipped their tunics back up as they shielded their large eyes from the light.

“Whoa. Hey,” Kirk said.

“You mind killing the light?” one of them asked.

“Oh. Sure. Sorry,” Kirk said. Tarsians were nocturnal, and had enormous black eyes that were the size of grapefruits. Their big eyes were disconcerting, but Kirk figured his comparatively little eyes must be weird for them.

“What are you guys doing out here?” Kirk asked.

“Um … stargazing,” one of the cadets said.

Right
, Kirk thought.
Stupid question
. “Come here often?” he asked.

“Look, pal, this is a
monogamous
relationship. If you’re looking to hook up with someone, I suggest you try the Warp Core. Or maybe the Delta Quadrant.”

“No, I mean—” Kirk sighed. This wasn’t going right. “No, I mean, seriously, do you come here often? Like, were you here three nights ago? It’s important. I’m trying to help a friend.” He explained everything to the two cadets, who had their clothes back on and were sitting up now.

“The grumpy cadet? Yeah, sure. I remember him. He kept calling out a girl’s name,” one of them said.

“But there wasn’t anyone else here. Except us. And we just laid low until he was gone.”

“He took off after a while, still grouching.”

“That’s him! Yes!” Kirk said. “Can you guys come back with me right now and tell that to Admiral Barnett?”

“Admiral Barnett? Now?” one of the Tarsians said. “Why? Does it matter?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Kirk. “It matters.”

It was morning by the time the Tarsians stumbled sleepily back to their dorms to go to bed, but their testimony was enough to spring Bones. There was still the not-so-insignificant matter of the kemocite found in their room, but until Starfleet could prove where and when Bones had acquired it, or that it was used to make the explosive that took out the president’s shuttle, McCoy was a free man.

“It’s not like I ever had a motive for any of this, anyway,”
Bones groused, making sure the security officers working the brig heard him. Kirk hurried him away.

“Probation,”
Bones muttered as they walked. “As though I did any of this.”

“Don’t worry, Bones. We’ll get you cleared.” He told Bones all about how he and Nadja followed Daagen into Chinatown, even though neither of them, it turned out, had been able to catch Daagen red-handed.

Bones clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Jim. I owe you one.”

“You owe me
two
,” he said, meaning Gaila, but he didn’t elaborate. “Coming back to the dorm?”

Bones shook his head. “Somebody I want to see first.”

Kirk smiled. He meant Nadja, of course. A brand-new relationship, with all the fun and perks that come with it, and he’d spent one of his first nights in the brig. “Right,” said Kirk. “Say hello to her for me. She’s been a big help, by the way. She’s the one who spotted Daagen headed off campus in the first place. I think she really likes you, Bones.”

Bones grinned, then thanked him again, and they parted ways.

Kirk thought about heading back to his room for that overdue sonic shower, but it was breakfast time already and he was starved. He’d eat first, then shower, then sack out in bed. Without any classes to get to—

Somebody sucker punched Kirk in the kidneys, and he stumbled and then fell.

“Hey, Jimmy boy.”

“Finnegan,”
Kirk spat. The big cadet had him all alone, and Kirk sighed. As much as he loved the idea of the Assassination Game, the admiral was right. This just wasn’t the time or place for it. Kirk dragged himself to his feet and held his hands out in submission.

“All right, Finnegan. You win. Spork me. I’m out.”

Finnegan snarled. “I’d love to, Jimmy boy, but I can’t.”

“What? Why not?”

“
I’m
out,” Finnegan told him. “I got bumped off walking back to the dorm from Barnett’s office. Now somebody else has a spork with your name on it.”

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me who it is.”

Finnegan laughed. “Not a chance.” He took a step closer, his hands clenched into fists.

“Whoa! I thought you said you were out,” Kirk said.

“Just because I’m out of the Assassination Game doesn’t mean I’m not gonna kill you, Jimmy boy.”

Kirk had finally had enough. Without the game to worry about, without a spork to dodge, he attacked without fear. In thirty seconds, Finnegan was laying in the grass with one hand clutching his bloody nose and the other grabbing his busted knee.

“Barnett’s right, Finnegan. You’re nothing but a bully.”

Finnegan spat blood at him, but missed. Kirk grabbed Finnegan by the collar and raised a fist, threatening to punch him again.

“Tell me something, Finnegan. How did you know to be waiting on me in Chinatown?”

Finnegan laughed, despite his pain. “Your girlfriend told me you were going to be there.”

Kirk frowned. “My girlfriend?” He wasn’t dating anybody right then. Not for more than a night or two, at least.

“That girl you were with. The leggy one who runs the game. She sold you out, Kirk. She was the one who told me you were going to be there.”

Kirk shoved Finnegan away and left him wallowing on the ground. He’d just gotten one answer to this mess, and now he had more questions. Why would Nadja go to such lengths to eliminate Kirk from the Assassination Game? With everything else that was going on?

But the better question was, how did Nadja know they were going to end up in that warehouse in Chinatown?

Kirk was right: McCoy’s first stop wasn’t his dorm room. It was Nadja’s dorm room. A night in the brig was hardly the best way to follow up on what had been a promising start to a relationship. A very promising start.

In fact, it was the most promising start he could remember since his ex-wife.

McCoy tried to put the implications of that away as he checked in with the guard at the entrance to Nadja’s dorm and then took the turbolift up to her floor. He would have called first, but Kirk still had his communicator, checking into whoever had left him that message in the middle of the night. When they figured that out, McCoy figured, he’d be free and clear for good—and they would have some idea about who was really behind all this. For his money, it was Daagen, and by all rights, the Tellarite should have been the first person McCoy had gone to confront. But there was that incredible night under the stars on the Argos
telescope with Nadja that he couldn’t forget, and he had a good chance for a repeat performance if he played his “you’re the first person I wanted to see when I got out of jail” card right.

Nadja’s roommate, a Brazilian cadet named Beatriz, was the only one in their room when McCoy got there, though.

“She swapped duty with somebody on the telescope,” Beatriz told him.

“Really? They’re still running telescope duty when classes are canceled?”

Beatriz shrugged. “Now more than ever.”

This was good, McCoy thought as he left. No, better than good. This was perfect! What better way to reprise the other night than with an encore performance?

A quick sonic shower and a change of clothes later, McCoy caught a shuttle up to McKinley Station and hitched a ride with a Starfleet transport shuttle to the Argos telescope. They warned him they weren’t due back for a pickup run for the cadet on duty for another four hours, and McCoy tried to keep a straight face as he told them he would survive.

McCoy went through the umbilical hatch and into the station bearing a picnic basket and a bottle of wine, but Nadja wasn’t in the control room.

“Hello?” McCoy called.

No answer. He left the picnic basket and the wine in the control room and went into the labyrinth of corridors that wound in and around the giant space telescope’s machinery. He finally found Nadja’s back end sticking out of a Jefferies tube on level four.

“Nice view,” he said.

Nadja jumped as much as the crawl space allowed her and fell out of the Jefferies tube, pointing a laser welder at him.

“Whoa,” McCoy said. He put up his hands in mock surrender. “Sorry to surprise you. Who were you expecting, the Varkolak?”

Nadja relaxed and put down the laser welder. “No. I—Sorry. You startled me. I thought I was alone. What are you doing here?”

“Got out of jail, and you were the first person I wanted to see.”

“Oh. Right. I’m glad you’re out.”

McCoy had hoped for a bit warmer reception than that, but she was probably still recovering from the release of epinephrine from her adrenal glands, which his shock had given her.

“Come on. I’ve got a bottle of wine and a picnic basket waiting back in the control room,” McCoy told her.

“Let me just get my things,” she said. She pulled a tool bag from the Jefferies tube and sealed it back up.

“What were you working on?”

“Nothing important. A faulty ODN relay. Thought I’d save the SCE a trip to install a few feet of new conduit. You know, they charge you by the hour,” she joked. She slipped an arm through McCoy’s. “Come on. Let’s go celebrate your release from captivity.”

Secrets within secrets within secrets. Kirk was so tired of chasing shadows. But how could he get a straight answer out of anyone when he couldn’t find them? He’d tried Uhura’s communicator all day, but she was clearly avoiding him—and there was no way he was going to chance going back to her dorm room to look for her. Resisting Gaila’s charms
twice
in one week would be impossible, even for a Vulcan.