Assassination Game (30 page)

Pack-Howler Woolart was surprised.

The communications officer on the
Txakarra-Hartz
,
the flagship of the Varkolak Armada, couldn’t believe his eyes and his ears. But there it was, as plain as the snout on his face. He turned and interrupted the barked orders and replies in the ship-den.

“Alpha-Captain GarrRka! We are receiving a transmission from the Federation telescope at the edge of the sector.”

“Ignore it,” GarrRka told him. “They only mean to distract us.”

“Yes. But, sir—it is in Varkolak.”

That seemed to get the alpha-captain’s attention. The rest of the bridge’s attention too.

“Is it Captain Lartal?” GarrRka asked. “One of the others?”

“No, sir. It is a Tail-less. A Terran, I think.”

GarrRka’s tail twitched with curiosity. “On screen,” he said.

The forward viewscreen in the
Txakarra-Hartz
’s ship-den switched from the line of Starfleet ships ahead of them to a hairless, tail-less Terran female trying to speak Varkolak.

“Varkolak Armada,” the ugly animal said. “I am U-hu-ra, of the Federation. A cur meddles the Federation. A cur meddles the Ones Who Remain Wilderness….”

“She’s mauling our language!” the helmsman said.

“Yes,” GarrRka said, leaning forward on his bed. “But at least she’s trying. And what she’s
saying
is far more important….”

Jim Kirk was too late.

The station’s safety programs shut down the plasma coolant leak, but not in time for Kirk to catch Nadja before she reached the escape pods. Nadja was already inside one, prepping it for launch as Kirk careened into the small emergency shuttlebay. He hit the door controls to her pod, but they didn’t respond. Nadja had locked him out. She saw him through the small window in the door and gave him an unhappy smile and a wave good-bye.

Kirk wasn’t ready to say good-bye yet. “Come on, come on,” he said, looking around the room for something to use to get inside that escape pod, but there was nothing.

A phaser would have come in
really
handy right now
, Kirk told himself. He patted himself down in desperation, to see if he had anything useful on him, and his hand found something hard and metal in his pocket.

A titanium spork!

Kirk pulled it out and twirled it in his fingers triumphantly. “My kingdom for a spork!” he said. Inside the capsule, Nadja couldn’t hear him. Or didn’t care. She was tapping at the pod’s navigation computer. Any second now she would jettison away from the station and be gone.

Kirk attacked the panel housing the door controls with the spork and pried it away. Inside was a mass of conduits
and coils. He yanked some out from the wall, separated two wires from the rest, and used the sharp edge of the spork to cut through their plastic casings. Flipping the spork sideways, he touched it to the two exposed wires.

Crack!

Kirk jumped back as he got a jolt, but it worked: The hot-wired door hissed open. Nadja turned, surprised, and went for her phaser. Kirk dove in after her and slammed her back into the console. The phaser skittered away. Kirk grabbed Nadja’s wrists, and they wrestled in the small space, unable to do much more than elbow and knee each other.

“Give up!” Kirk told her. “There’s still time to make this right!”

“I’d … rather … die!” Nadja told him. She worked a hand free and mashed at the emergency launch override controls behind her.

Red lights flashed. “Warning,” the computer said. “Rear escape-pod hatch is ajar.”

Kirk looked down at Nadja, wide-eyed. “Don’t,” he told her.

“Computer, override safeties,” Nadja said. “Launch escape pod!”

Kirk had just enough time to throw himself at the station before the escape pod exploded away underneath them. With one hand he grabbed a handrail just inside the
door. With the other, he held on tight to Nadja, keeping her from being sucked out into space with the pod as all the air in the room rushed out.

Kirk’s Starfleet space survival training kicked in. He had about fifteen seconds if he did everything right. He breathed out the air in his lungs so the quick depressurization wouldn’t expand and force air into his blood, but that meant he had even less time before he blacked out. He would take the trade. Kirk could already feel the saliva in his mouth heating up as the superquick reduction in air pressure lowered the boiling point of his bodily fluids below his body temperature, but the depressurization had one benefit, at least. Now that all the air was replaced with vacuum, it made hauling himself and Nadja back inside easier. He dragged the already unconscious Nadja back over the sill, then pulled himself up over the handrail, and touched the spork to the exposed leads in the door panel.

With a silent spark and a jolt Kirk could barely feel, the door slammed shut. He slumped to the floor, and the emergency systems repressurized the room, flooding it with breathable air again. Sweet, glorious air.

Kirk wasn’t sure how long his communicator had been chirping at him when he finally realized it and worked it out of his pocket. His fingers were swollen and bruised from the blood vessels that had burst just under his skin, and as feeling returned to him, he knew he must be black and blue all over.

He flipped his communicator open and listened, too tired to even say hello.

“Jim! Jim, it’s me,” said Bones. “I did it! I defused the bomb! Did you get Nadja?”

Kirk nodded, then realized Bones couldn’t hear that. “Yeah,” he whispered.

“Jim? Are you all right?”

“No,” he said. “Escape pods. Vacuum.”

“I’ll be right there,” Bones said.

Kirk let his arm drop.
You do that
, he thought. He turned to look at the bruised and unconscious Nadja Luther and realized he still had the spork in his other hand. He flopped an arm over onto Nadja and touched her with it.

“Tag,” he told her. “I win.”

“Sit down,” Admiral Barnett told them, and Spock and Uhura sat down.

“Admiral, before you begin, I’d just like to apologize for my part in giving the Varkolak sniffer to Nadja Luther,” Uhura said. “I take full responsibility, and I’m prepared to tender my resignation from the Academy.”

Admiral Barnett waved her confession away. “You were acting as an agent of the Federation, Cadet. Besides, you had no way of knowing the Varkolak device would be used for anything like that.”

“As I have told you,” Spock said to her. “In addition to the fact that you almost single-handedly averted an interplanetary war.”

“Yes,” Barnett said. “There’s that too. Damn good work, Cadet. Both of you. You’ve made the Academy look very good today. Very good, indeed. You’ll both be receiving commendations on your records.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Spock.

“What about Nadja Luther?” Uhura asked.

Barnett frowned. “Not such a good day for the Academy. But rest assured that she’ll go to prison for a long time for her crimes.”

“And what of the Graviton Society?” Spock asked.

Barnett restacked the PADDs on his desk. “It’s being looked into.”

Uhura and Spock exchanged doubtful glances.

“With all due respect, sir,” Uhura said, “but it’s been ‘looked into.’ That’s what Spock and I were
doing
.”

“There is a clear and present danger, Admiral,” said Spock. “Left unchecked, the Graviton Society might grow into something far more dangerous. Nadja Luther is a disturbing case in point.”

“Nadja Luther was a rogue agent. You’ve said so yourself in your report,” Barnett said.

“Admiral—” Uhura began.

Barnett held up a hand. “You are hereby under orders not to mention the Graviton Society or to pursue this matter any further. Either of you. Is that understood?”

Uhura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She looked to Spock. One of his eyebrows was raised higher than she ever thought it possible for an eyebrow to rise.

“I was asked to investigate the Graviton Society at Captain Pike’s request,” Spock told Barnett.

“And I’m an admiral, and I’m telling you to drop it,” Barnett replied. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Damn it. Do you two realize how many current Starfleet officers were members of the Graviton Society when they were cadets? Still
are
members?”

“Were
you
a member, Admiral?” Uhura asked.

“You’re out of line, Cadet.” He leaned back in his chair. “You have your orders. Both of you. Dismissed.”

Uhura began to stand, but Spock stayed in his seat.

“I am afraid I am unable to comply, Admiral,” Spock said.

Uhura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Apparently neither could the admiral. He blinked in confusion, like Spock had just confessed to being an undercover Romulan.

“Are you—are you disobeying a direct order, Commander?” he asked finally.

“No, sir. Or rather, I disobeyed it before it was given. I cannot go back in time and alter history; thus, I am unable now to comply.”

Barnett frowned, trying to understand what Spock was telling him. “You mean … you’ve already done something? About the society?”

“Yes, sir. I communicated the group’s existence and complicity in this matter to the Federation News Service. Along with the names of everyone we discovered were members of the Graviton Society. I believe the news is
already circulating on the feeds.”

Barnett was apoplectic. “No one gave you an order to release that information, Commander!”

“And no one gave me an order not to. Until now. My apologies.”

Uhura almost laughed at Spock’s half-hearted apology, but she knew it would only make things worse.

“Out,” Barnett told them. “Just … get out.”

This time they both left as quickly as they could. When they were finally outside in the bright sunshine of the California afternoon, Uhura took Spock’s arm in hers.

“That was pretty devious, Spock.”

“I suspected our discoveries might be covered up at some point, so I took prohibitive action. The only thing that can erase a shadow is light.”

Uhura laughed. “Remind me never to get on your bad side, Spock.”

“Nyota, never get on my bad side.”

Uhura brought them to a stop. “Spock, was that a joke?”

“A small one. Yes.”

Uhura smiled. Maybe there was hope for them yet.

Proximity alerts went off and red lights flashed as Sulu steered the USS
Yorktown
between two shuttle-sized
asteroids. He winced as one of them glanced off the underside of the ship, jolting them, but he quickly forgot about it as phaser blasts from the pursuing Romulan scout ships rocked them harder.

“Shields down to fifty-one percent!” Chekov cried from the seat beside Sulu at the conn.

“Return fire!” Tikhonov yelled from the captain’s chair. “Full power to aft shields!”

“Aye, aye, aye,” Chekov muttered. “If the phasers don’t get us, the asteroids will.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Sulu told him, swinging the
Yorktown
out of the way of a space station–sized asteroid.

“Stay away from the big ones!” Tikhonov cried.

“Yeah, thanks for the advice,” Sulu whispered.