Assassination Game (28 page)

Kirk, Bones, and Uhura rematerialized on the familiar small transporter pad of the Argos telescope and stumbled off, trying to regain their senses.

“Hell’s bells, how many transporter pads
was
that?” Bones said. He began his usual routine of patting himself down and looking for misplaced pieces.

“I counted eleven,” Uhura said. She looked a little sick herself.

Kirk glanced at Bones. “I think that last one might have been the
Potemkin
. I recognized that transporter chief. I hope he didn’t recognize
us
.”

Uhura pulled out her PADD and tapped it. “The signal! It’s here!”

“Well, looks like we didn’t take the trip for nothing. Good call, Bones.”

“Yeah, I’m ecstatic,” he said.

“All right. She’s probably trying to set a bomb using the fake Varkolak phaser you gave her,” Kirk told Uhura. He took the PADD from her. “Bones and I will take care of Nadja and the bomb.”

“What? Why?” Uhura said. She yanked the PADD back from him.

“Because,” Kirk said, taking the PADD back again, “
you
need to get to the telescope’s communication array and tell
the fleets not to fight, and you’re the only person here who speaks Varkolak.”

Uhura frowned, but she knew he was right.

“Detach her shuttle so she can’t get away,” Kirk called as he and Bones set off at a run. “And don’t worry. We’ve got everything covered. Trust me!”

“Right,” Uhura muttered.

Back in the engineering building’s transporter room, Chekov pulled his hands away from the console and smiled.

“I did it,” he said out loud to the empty room. “I did it!”

To his surprise, one of the Academy’s instructors ran into the room. Commander Spock, from the simulation room. Chekov instinctively stood at attention.

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Cadet Chekov. Should you not be on a shuttle to McKinley Station right now?”

“I—” Chekov began, not sure how to explain his presence here.

“Never mind. I will deal with it when I return,” Spock told him. “Stand aside. I need to see if it is possible to transport myself to the Argos telescope.” Chekov held up a finger to stop him. “I can do that.”

Kirk had Uhura’s PADD and the tracking signal to help them find Nadja, but McCoy knew where she would be: in the Jefferies tube where he’d found her before. Replacing an ODN conduit, she’d told him. He’d been such a fool. Love did that to you, McCoy thought. Made you blind, made you deaf, made you stupid. Maybe those Vulcan bastards who denied themselves emotions had it right after all. But then McCoy wouldn’t have gotten to feel the righteous anger he was feeling right now, which felt pretty damn satisfying.

Nadja was just climbing out of the access tunnel when they caught up to her. She was as surprised as last time to see them, but this time she leveled a Federation-issue phaser at them.

Kirk and McCoy pulled up to a stop. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a phaser on you, do you Jim?”

“Yeah. Sure. I carry one around so I can stun people whenever I want to.”

Touché
, thought McCoy, and he and Kirk put their hands in the air.

“That’s right,” Nadja said, backing away. “You just stand right there.”

“Nadja, wait,” McCoy said. “Let’s talk. There’s nowhere to go, anyway. We set your shuttle adrift.”
Or we hope Uhura has
, he thought.

Nadja’s eyes darted between them, trying to figure out if they were lying.

“We know what you’re doing, Nadja,” Kirk told her. “You planted a bomb in there with the Varkolak phaser to make it look like the Varkolak did it. It’s not a real one, though. It’s a fake. People are on to you.”

Nadja shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. Once this telescope goes up, the Federation will blame the Varkolak, and before anybody knows any different, we’ll be at war.”

“How could you do this?” McCoy said. “How could you do this to
me
?”

Nadja shrugged again. “I knew they’d bring the fragments back to your lab for analysis. I needed someone’s codes to get in and contaminate the evidence with kemocite. And somebody I could lay it all off on if they figured it out.”

“You
used
me,” McCoy said. He could feel his right supraorbital vein bulging on his forehead. “Played me like
a cheap fiddle, right from the start. You were never interested in me at all. It was always about your little vendetta against the Varkolak.”

“The Varkolak are dogs!” Nadja said. There was a wild look in her eye, and her hand shook. Kirk took a half-step forward, but Nadja jerked the phaser back up at him. From where McCoy stood, he could see that the phaser was set to stun, but with a bomb about to go off, the stun setting might be as deadly as the kill setting.

“Starfleet has been too conciliatory. The Varkolak push, and we give. They push more, we give more. You know what happens when you let your dog win a game of tug-of-war with you? They start thinking they’re the alpha dog, and you’re some whelp. Then they’ll never listen to you. Never take another order. We need to show the Varkolak who their master is. One good stare down, one good lesson, and they’ll heel.”

“The Varkolak aren’t dogs, and they’re not animals,” Kirk told her. “I’ve gotten to know one. They’re people, just like us. Sure, they’re a lot hairier and they shed all over the furniture, but—”

Nadja fired the phaser, a blue bolt of stun energy erupting between them in the small corridor. Kirk pushed McCoy out of the way, but part of the blast still hit him in the arm. He spun and fell.

“Bones!” Kirk cried.

Nadja had already turned the corner and was running away. McCoy wasn’t unconscious. The stun blast had just glanced his left arm, but his nerves and his muscles were numb and useless. It felt like he
had
no left arm. He grimaced at the weird feeling.

“Bones, you gonna be all right?” Kirk asked.

“Yes, yes. Go. Get her,” he said.

Kirk stood and ran. “Defuse that bomb!” he called over his shoulder.

“And just how am I supposed to do that? I’m a doctor, damn it, not a—” he started to say, but Kirk was already long gone. “Oh, never mind.”

In the Argos command center, Uhura found where Nadja’s shuttle was docked and disengaged the station’s locking clamps, setting it adrift. They might want that shuttle at some point, she thought, but it was safer that none of them could reach it. Once they caught Nadja Luther, they could just wait for a starship to come and pick them all up.

If
they caught Nadja Luther.

And if all the starships weren’t already at war. Uhura had to trust Kirk could put his action where his mouth was and let it go. They had a job to do, and so did she. She retrained the telescope on the Varkolak Armada and gasped at the image that came up on the viewscreen.
More Varkolak ships than she could count hung in the black of space, facing off against an equally formidable line of Federation starships. They weren’t shooting yet, but when they did, the carnage would be incredible—on both sides.

Uhura heard someone running in behind her and turned. Spock! She stood and gave him a quick hug and a kiss.

“Where is Nadja Luther?” he asked.

“She’s being taken care of,” Uhura told him.
I hope
. “I was just about to try and contact the Varkolak. You contact the fleet.”

Spock nodded, and without another word, they both set to their tasks.

On the bridge of the USS
Excalibur
, all eyes were on the viewscreen, where the biggest starship armada the quadrant had ever seen arrayed itself in a wide semicircle. The Varkolak. Among the most feared warriors in all the galaxy. And soon the
Excalibur
would be flying straight into the wolves’ teeth.

Sulu tried to keep his mind on his job and to not stare at the screen. While the primary helm officer would be flying the ship in, Sulu would be his second pair of eyes, feeding him telemetry on the rest of the ships in their theater of the
battle. It wasn’t necessary work—one officer could pilot a starship without an assist from secondary helm—but when they had people to spare, every little bit helped. And this way, Sulu would be on the bridge to step in for Lieutenant Bunch if he, well, if he were no longer able to perform his duties.

Ever since he was a boy, it had been Sulu’s dream to be on the bridge of a Federation starship. Now here he was. On a Constitution class, no less. One of the lead ships of the Federation’s defense fleet. He had dreamed of being here, and he had worked his tail off for it. He had
earned
it, all by keeping his head down and sticking to The Plan. He wished it could be under better circumstances, but he would do his duty to the Federation, in peace or in war.

“Captain, Priority One signal coming in from … from the Argos telescope, sir,” Lieutenant Chang said.

That pulled everyone’s attention away from the viewscreen for a moment. Captain Prax turned in his chair.

“The Argos telescope?”

“Yes, sir. It’s from a commander Spock.”

Sulu perked up. Spock? Sending a Priority One signal? Had they caught Nadja Luther?

Chang put a hand to the communications bud in his ear and frowned. “He’s—he’s insisting that the Federation fleet stand down, sir.”

“
Stand down?
Does the man know we’ve got a dozen Varkolak target locks on us?”

“Sir!” cried Bunch at helm. “Varkolak Armada changing position.”

“They’re advancing, weapons hot!” said Larkin at tactical.

“Helm, take us in. Full power to forward shields. Ready phasers,” Captain Prax ordered.

Sulu spun back to his station, hands poised above his console to begin feeding Bunch the extra information he would need, but he paused.

Keep your head down, Sulu. Stay on course. That’s what got you here
.

But that might not be what would get him out again. Him and the thousand other people on the
Excalibur
, and the thousands of other people in ships on both sides. He took a deep breath and turned.

“Captain, you need to listen to Commander Spock’s message,” he said.

The senior officers on the bridge turned to look at the field-promoted cadet, like he had suddenly sprouted white fur and grown a rhinoceros horn out the top of his head. All around them, lights were flashing and alarms were sounding, but for the moment, they only had eyes for him.