Assassination Game (16 page)

Kirk thought Uhura would read him the riot act, but she was staring instead into the open luggage crate. She
glanced back at Kirk, reached in, and pulled out a Varkolak scanner. It must have been one of the things in the bottom of the crate poking him in the back.

Uhura slipped the scanner into her satchel and snapped it shut.

Kirk was incredulous. “Wait a minute, Uhura,” he whispered. “You can’t just—”

The door to the conference room opened again, and one of the linguistics officers stood in the doorway.

“Cadet Uhura, we’re ready to begin. Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

Kirk opened his mouth to say something, but Uhura cut him off with a pleading look. When the linguistics officer turned away, Kirk grabbed Uhura’s arm and held her back. “Uhura, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Later, Kirk,” she whispered back. “I promise I’ll explain everything.
Please
.”

Kirk let her go and said nothing more about it, but this one was going to need some serious explaining. And soon.

Kirk hurried around the side of the building to catch Uhura before she slipped away. He was doing a lot of running and chasing lately, he realized, only this time it was deadly serious.

He caught her jogging the back way toward the dorms and ran her down, grabbing her arm again to stop her.

“Hold up, Uhura. We have to talk.”

“I said
later
, Kirk!” she whispered.

“It
is
later. Look, I didn’t say a word back there the whole time you and everybody else were with Lartal, because I
know
you, Uhura. At least I thought I did. But I can’t just let this go.”

Uhura glanced around to see if anyone was watching them. There was a Starfleet Security officer heading across the quad toward the communications building, but she hadn’t seen Uhura and Kirk yet. Uhura huffed and pulled Kirk behind a statue of Yuri Gagarin, where
they wouldn’t be seen. Kirk put a hand to her satchel to unlatch it, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Don’t.”

“This is not cool, Uhura. What you did … It’s not right. No matter why you did it. Do you really think stealing one of those things is going to make that much difference for Starfleet?”

“I didn’t steal it to turn over to Starfleet. Not directly.”

Kirk raised his palms as if to say, “Why, then?”

“I can’t tell you. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“I’m going to need a little more than that, Uhura. Starfleet doesn’t just go around stealing from our guests, no matter how guilty we think they are. There’s a high moral ground here, and the Federation owns a house with a view on it. You know what happens if it gets out you stole that thing? We’re talking interplanetary
war
here!”

“I know! Don’t you think I know that?” Uhura said. She sat down at the base of Yuri’s statue, putting her head in her hands.

“Is someone—is someone making you do this?” Kirk asked.

“No.” Uhura moaned. She looked up at Kirk, as if sizing him up, though he couldn’t imagine what she was looking for in his face that she hadn’t already seen there a hundred times before. She seemed to come to some sort of new decision about him.

“I’m working to help bring down a secret society at school.”

“What?”
Kirk sat down beside her.

Uhura told him all about it: a secret group called the Graviton Society, dedicated to protecting the Federation at all costs. How she was working at the request of someone higher up in Starfleet—she wouldn’t say who—and how she was trying to gain more access to the organization by carrying out the first of their orders: steal a Varkolak “sniffer.”

“Get you closer to who?” Kirk asked. “Who’s behind it all?”

Uhura gave him one of her patented eye rolls. “If I knew that, it wouldn’t be much of a secret society now, would it?”

It was all a bit much to believe, but then again, it was too crazy to be made up. And Kirk trusted Uhura. He might still be after her for her first name after all this time, but he counted her among his friends at the Academy. He
had
to believe her.

And then there was Bones and his Federation First medical cadet. Bones had just told him he suspected this Tellarite was up to no good, and now Uhura was telling him there was a whole group, a whole
society
of people, up to no good at the Academy. He felt his optimistic, naive view of Starfleet come crashing down, like a starship in the
atmosphere. But if this medical cadet was involved, what would he want with a Varkolak sniffer?

“Do you know if this cadet, Daagen, is one of the Gravitons? He’s a Tellarite.”

Uhura shook her head. “I’ve never seen any of them without cloaks on. I just don’t know.”

Kirk stood. “I want to help. Get me an invite. I’ll go undercover with you.”

Uhura laughed. “Ah, no.”

“What? Why?”

“You? Kirk, they’d see you coming a mile away. Subtlety is not your strong suit.”

“No?” Kirk smirked. “So what
is
my strong suit?”

“Your overweening arrogance.”

Kirk pointed a finger at her. “That’s
something
you like. That’s one thing.”

Uhura stood. “Please, Kirk. Just … don’t rat me out. I promise it’s for the right reasons.”

“All right,” Kirk told her. “But I hate this cloak-and-dagger nonsense.”

Uhura sighed. “Me too.”

Leonard McCoy hated all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense.

He’d kept an eye on Daagen all afternoon in the lab, trying to catch him doing something suspicious, and when
he’d failed to do that, he’d followed him—surreptitiously, he hoped—across campus to his dorm. Now he sat on a bench across the courtyard, pretending to read something on his PADD while really watching the door for Daagen to reemerge.

Maybe Jim was right, after all. Maybe it was crazy to think anyone who would willingly enroll in Starfleet would ever do something illicit, even if they thought it was for the greater good. Starfleet was about
ideals
, damn it. It was about seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one had gone before. Not to conquer the galaxy, but to explore it. To learn from it.

“Oh, this is just ridiculous,” he told two pigeons strutting nearby.

McCoy cycled down his PADD and stuffed it back into his satchel. He was ready to go get something to eat in the cafeteria and forget all this stupidity when Daagen emerged from his dorm carrying a knapsack. The Tellarite looked around furtively, then headed off at a quick pace. Away from the main campus.

McCoy cursed himself inwardly, but he followed, anyway.

“Leonard!” someone called. It was Nadja. She was waving to him from across the quad. If she called out again, Daagen might hear her and turn around. McCoy hurried to intercept her, signaling to her to be quiet, and
pulled her along behind a statue of Yuri Gagarin.

“Whoa, reduce to impulse engines, Leonard,” she said with a laugh.

McCoy peeked out from behind the statue. Daagen was just turning the corner of the barracks where the Varkolak were stationed.
The Varkolak!

“Come on,” McCoy told Nadja. “But be quiet.”

“Are we hunting wabbits?” she asked as they skulked along.

“No. Spies. Maybe. I don’t know. You know Daagen, that fellow I was telling you about? The one who gave me back your communicator? I’ve been watching him. He just left his dorm with a knapsack.”

“Oh no. Do you think … do you think he plans on doing some
knapping
? Or”—she gasped exaggeratedly—“dare I say it, some
sacking
?”

“Laugh all you want, but he’s up to something. I know it.”

But whatever he was up to, it didn’t have anything to do with the Varkolak. Daagen left campus, and soon after, ducked into a public restroom. Nadja and McCoy hid in a shop across the street, watching through the front display window.

“You wait here,” Nadja whispered. “I’ll go in and see if he’s executing secret plan number one or secret plan number two.”

“Cut it out,” McCoy said.

“Look, he couldn’t have anything too incriminating in that knapsack. He had to get past the security guards in the dorm just to leave with it.”

“If you want to go back, go back,” McCoy told her.

A cloaked figure emerged from the bathrooms, looked around, and continued down the road, away from campus. On campus, something like that would have stood out among all the redshirted cadets and their blue-uniformed instructors. On the streets around San Francisco, an intergalactic port of call, no one would bat an eye.

“Okay,
that’s
suspicious,” Nadja said.

“Do you think that was him?” McCoy asked.

“He was the same height,” she said. “And he was carrying the same knapsack.”

“Well? What did I tell you?” McCoy asked.

“Lead on, secret agent man. Lead on.”

Hikaru Sulu tugged at the oversized sleeves of his robe, feeling stupid. Why had he agreed to do this again? He sighed. He hated all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense, but at least the hood kept the others from knowing who he was. Then again, he didn’t know who they were, either. He looked around at the other nine hooded and
robed people waiting with him in the dingy back room of a Sausalito dive bar. Who were these people? Did he know any of them? Were they in his classes with him? Did one of them sit next to him in exobotany? The only Graviton he knew was his contact, Daagen, a medical cadet, which was exactly how the Graviton Society wanted it.

“We’re all here,” one of the hooded figures said. “Let’s do this. Report.”

“Our plan to explose the mole failed,” one of them said. From his voice, Sulu recognized him as Daagen.

“Was the information given to the suspect?”

Everyone was quiet, and Sulu realized they were expecting him to speak. It had been his job, after all. “Oh. Um, yes. I did. I told her. Everything, just as we discussed. She bit—hook, line, and sinker.”

“I can verify that contact was made,” said another voice; a woman. “I was in the gym that morning. I saw him engage her.”

Sulu blanched underneath his hood. Someone had been there? Watching him? Making sure he did his job? He shook it off. He should have known better. Should have realized they would do that. He was a newbie, after all. He had to prove they could trust him.

“Perhaps we were wrong. Perhaps she’s not connected to the mole.”

“Perhaps he’s not a mole, after all,” said another.

“I still say he can’t be trusted. He’s Vulcan.”

“Vulcans can be devilish creatures,” said another cool voice. “Let us not forget the P’Jem incident.”

“That was a hundred years ago! Let it go, already!”

“I’m just saying,” said the cool voice that Sulu now figured was Andorian. “They have been known to be devious.”

“It’s not that he’s a Vulcan that worries me,” said another woman. “It’s that he is the ultimate company man. He has to be a plant.”

“He’s certainly as stiff as one,” someone joked.

“Enough,” said the voice that had begun the proceedings. “We will have to approach the target directly. The floor is open to—”