Assassination Game by Alan Gratz Read Free Book Online Page B

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, buthe’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 nointerest 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