by Greg Cox
Khan appreciated their directness. He also desired to cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Over two decades ago, the Chrysalis Project brought forth into the world a new and superior breed of humanity, genetically engineered for the express purpose of leading mankind into a brighter and more glorious future. We are the culmination of that magnificent venture,” he informed them, gesturing expansively toward the highly varied personages gathered around the table. “You have all seen the documentation I sent you, establishing irrefutably our unique kinship. Moreover, you must feel in your very bones and blood, as I do, the innate superiority that drives you to make your mark upon the world. You must know, deep down inside, in the biological coding of your chromosomes, that we share a very special destiny, and a duty to see that destiny realized.”
He spoke in English, certain that his supremely gifted peers were as fluently multilingual as he. “I am proud to call you my brothers and sisters. Individually, we have each accomplished much. Imagine now what we can do together.” His spirit soared upon the exultant wings of his own rhetoric; he saw the future, shining as brightly as the summer sun, radiate outward from this humble bunker to transform the entire planet. “It is within our grasp to reshape history and grant to the world a new golden age, a second renaissance. An era of progress and discovery, of stability and order, unparalleled in human history!”
If he expected applause or affirmation, he was quickly disappointed. “Under whose rule?” asked a stocky African man whose military uniform was adorned with a veritable panoply of gleaming medals and ribbons. Elijah Jugurtha Amin was one of the most powerful warlords battling for control of the famine-stricken nation of Somalia. He eyed Khan with open distrust, his thick arms crossed atop the stout barrel of his chest. “Yours?”
“Sounds suspiciously like a New World Order to me,” General Randall “Hawkeye” Morrison drawled dubiously. The only American at the table, the militia leader was clad in khaki-colored military fatigues. Large mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes from the other leaders at the summit. He chewed habitually on a piece of gum as he tipped back in his chair. “Like you might be planning to bulldoze Lady Liberty beneath a load of utopian hogwash.”
Standing at Khan’s right hand, Joaquin reached for his ursine belt buckle, but Khan discreetly raised a hand to forestall any immediate attempts to punish the American for his defiance. These were not, after all, inferior politicians and government functionaries of the sort who could be easily cowed by an unexpected act of violence; these were his peers, superior beings like himself, who had to be dealt with on an entirely higher level. (Besides, the presence of so many armed bodyguards made any abrupt executions problematic to say the least; Khan had no wish to spark a senseless shoot-out in the bunker of his own palace!)
He remained standing at the head of the table. “In the Iliad, the great poet Homer states wisely, ‘A multitude of rulers is not a good thing. Let there be one ruler, one king.’ ” Khan bowed his head with as much humility as he could muster as he presented himself as that ruler. “Naturally, as the prime mover who has brought us all together, I see myself as the head of our alliance, but rest assured,” he offered generously, “that each of you will have a voice in the greater Khanate to come. As chief executive and sovereign, I would consider it my responsibility and obligation to advance, to the best of my considerable abilities, our common agenda.”
Angry mutterings arose from his assembled guests, but Khan pressed on, raising his voice to be heard above the protests. “Look at the chaotic state of the world today,” he exhorted his prospective allies. “War and misery in the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Terrorist bombings in New York, England, Italy. Thousands made homeless by flooding in India, Nepal, and the American Midwest. Entire nations breaking apart into anarchy. . . .” Khan shook his head, profoundly offended by the world’s disarray. “Can you not see that a single, unified authority is needed to bring order to this tragic state of affairs?”
Hunyadi sneered derisively. “I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but there will be no more conflict in Eastern Europe once we have purified our population, and driven the genetically unfit from our land.” His single eye gleamed with cruel anticipation. “Leave that to me.”
“Yes,” Amin seconded Hunyadi. “There will be peace in Somaliland, too, but only after I defeat my enemies, including the heinous American occupying forces.” Khan recalled that the American president had recently dispatched additional U.S. troops to assist in the United Nations’ largely ineffective peacekeeping efforts in Somalia. “Victory is the only peace I crave.”
Caustic laughter came from the attractive Chinese woman sitting across the table from Amin. Exiled from her own country after Tiananmen Square, Chen Tiejun had founded a separatist matriarchal colony on a remote island off the coast of New Zealand, attracting like-minded women from all over the world. Her glossy black hair was cut short, rather in the manner of Joan of Arc, and she wore a suit of molded resin body armor with pleated rubber joints. “Just like a man,” she ridiculed the Somalian warlord. “Your answer to everything is conquest and oppression. Trademark patriarchal thinking.”
“Patience, my brethren,” urged a serene, ascetic-looking figure clad in flowing chartreuse robes. The constellation of Orion was tattooed upon his high, pale forehead. “There is no need for strife. All living things will be as one when our transcendent starfathers return to usher in the new millennium.”
Gomez snickered and rolled his eyes. “Who invited this lunatic to the meeting. Let me guess, our ‘starfathers’ come from outer space, yes?”
Brother Arcturus, founder and sole prophet of the Panspermic Church of First Contact, replied with the weary resignation of one who was accustomed to being mocked by an unbelieving world. “As all truly enlightened souls are aware, the evolution of the human race is an eons-old experiment being conducted by higher intelligences originating in the Orion system, who long ago seeded the Earth with their own cosmic DNA.” He nodded knowingly in Khan’s direction. “I would not be surprised if the so-called Chrysalis Project was all part of the grand design, perhaps initiated by aliens in human guise.”
I doubt my mother was from outer space, Khan thought, although he sometimes wondered about Gary Seven. Where did all that fantastic technology come from? It was a measure of Khan’s rightful self-confidence that he was not intimidated by the prospect of extraterrestrial life; he liked to think that, should he ever meet an alien face-to-face, he would prove its equal or more.
“Utter rot!” Gomez labeled Arcturus’s beliefs. “Mindless imbecility of the worst sort, in that it promises salvation from the stars rather than through tireless revolutionary struggle.” Gomez had once been a university professor in Lima; his pedantic tone betrayed his academic roots. “Science fiction, it seems, is the new opiate of the masses.”
Hawkeye Morrison came to the defense of the genre. “Sure beats all that left-wing Marxist claptrap you trade in,” he snapped at Gomez. “Now that’s fantasy, all right. Haven’t you heard, Señor Professor? Communism is as dead as Elvis.”
“Never!” Gomez’s voice rang with revolutionary fervor. “The betrayal of the great Bolshevik experiment hardly negates the overriding principles of dialectical materialism. The class struggle is a force as inescapable as gravity, leading inevitably to the rise of a true workers’ state.” He glared balefully at Morrison, all but spitting out his words. “Your pathetic Yankee posturings are nothing more than the last feeble bleatings of a morally and socially bankrupt society. We will build the People’s Regime atop your own bloated corpse!”
Morrison rose angrily from his seat. “You goddamn commie weasel!” Gomez’s bodyguard, an unsmiling mestizo gunman, reacted instantly, drawing a Walther P5 automatic pistol from beneath his woolen alpaca vest.
The militia leader’s own bodyguard, a broad-shouldered American bruiser with a crew cut and icy blue eyes, countered by drawing his own gun. All around the table, armed escorts tensed for action, but Mo
rrison did not back down. “Call off your mangy attack dog!” he challenged Gomez, leaning forward with both hands splayed upon the table. “How about you and me take this outside?”
“Typical,” Chen Tiejun scoffed in disgust. Her own bodyguard was an amazonian redhead whom Khan suspected was also a product of Chrysalis. “Chest-beating and pissing contests. Classic masculine behavior, reeking of testosterone and gender tyranny.” She looked down her classically perfect nose at the quarreling supermen. “Why don’t you just compare the caliber of your firearms and get it over with?”
Khan thought he heard Ament snicker quietly behind him.
“Enough of this petty bickering,” he declared, determined to restore order to the summit. Pulling out his chair, he made a point of sitting down at the table in a civilized manner. “We should be above politics and personality conflicts; it is manifestly obvious that we are stronger together than divided.” He spoke from the heart, hoping to win over the others through the strength and passion of his convictions. “Let us not waste this historic opportunity by pitting our remarkable talents and intellects against each other.”
Amin remained unmoved. “Ideology is for fools and weaklings,” he stated bluntly. “Only power matters.” A glass of ice water sat before him on the table. He handed the glass to his bodyguard, who tested it by taking a sip before giving it back to Amin. “What can you offer me?”
Although the warlord’s self-centered attitude irked him, Khan welcomed the opportunity to extol the resources at his command. “Besides a secure power base, and a network of loyal operatives throughout Asia and beyond, I have access to military technology, both offensive and defensive, that exceeds anything else on Earth, including the U.S. Pentagon’s newest and most closely guarded toys.”
For now, Khan chose only to hint at the formidable arsenal at his command. “Space-based weaponry. Protective force fields. An elite force of genetically engineered warriors and assassins. All this and more I promise you, if you will but swear fealty to me and the noble crusade that I embody.”
“Whoa there, Kublai Khan!” Morrison objected, with flagrant disrespect. Glowering at Gomez, the American dropped back into his seat and peered at Khan over the top of his sunglasses. “Not so fast. I’m not above a good, old-fashioned horse trade, exchanging tech for intel and vice versa, but I’m sure as hell not going to be part of any internationalist conspiracy to compromise the God-given sovereignty of the United States, not to mention free men and patriots everywhere.” He shook a tobacco-stained finger at Khan. “I haven’t raised a militia to fight the federal Beast in D.C. just to hand America over to a foreign prince.”
“Free men, you say?” Chen Tiejun drew herself up indignantly. “And what of free women, who are forever oppressed regardless of politics and philosophies?” She symbolically wiped her hands of the whole discussion. “I want no part of any alliance that simply perpetuates the male-centered power structures of the past.”
“Then stay on your island, witch,” Amin jeered, “and leave the rest of the planet to us.” Draining the last of his water, he loudly deposited the glass back onto the table. “I will swear loyalty to no one, Khan Noonien Singh, no matter what technological bribes you offer. I must be dealt with as an equal, or not at all!”
“Ditto!” Morrison exclaimed. He tipped back in his chair and surveyed the ornamented walls of the bunker with an obnoxiously unimpressed air. “Since when does one backward corner of India call the shots in world affairs?” He snorted in derision. “If I won’t be bullied by Janet Reno and her storm troopers, let alone the goddamn United Nations, I’m sure as heck not going to take my marching orders from some puffed-up maharajah!”
It required all Khan’s superhuman self-control not to smite the insolent American on the spot. Instead he watched and listened in dismay as the meeting degenerated into a babel of bellicose voices shouting to be heard over each other. Old accusations and insults echoed within the bunker as those whom he hoped would be the vanguard of his brave new world instead refought the outworn battles of the past century.
Finally, he could endure it no more. “Silence! Hold your tongues, all of you!” His fist slammed down upon the teak tabletop with such force that it cracked the sturdy wood, the sharp report momentarily quelling the rancorous hubbub. “Are you all blind?” he raged at the squabbling leaders. “Have you lost your superior vision and mentalities?” He felt like throttling the lot of them with his bare hands. “Is it not obvious that we must speak with one voice, one mind?”
“Not if that voice is yours, Khan,” Hunyadi said coldly. He rose from his seat, then headed for the exit. “I have wasted enough time here. Eastern Europe will chart its own course, unswayed by outside interference.”
“As will Africa,” Amin proclaimed, shoving away from the table. “Stay off my continent, Sikh, and I may let you keep your paltry kingdom in turn.”
“This tiny spinning globe scarcely matters in the cosmic scheme,” Arcturus said airily. His chartreuse robes rustled softly as he made his way toward the door. “I must prepare my flock for their new life among the stars.”
And so it went. One by one, accompanied by their watchful bodyguards, the preeminent progeny of the Chrysalis Project exited the bunker, barely deigning to acknowledge each other as they departed, leaving Khan and his retinue alone in the spacious underground chamber. “Leave me,” he instructed Joaquin and Ament, desiring solitude in which to contemplate the wreckage of his vision of unity.
Bitterness ate away at his hopes and ideals. The summit could not have gone worse, he concluded with mordant, mirthless humor, if Gary Seven had dictated the agenda. What now am I to do? he pondered, his heroic spirit struggling against despair.
The golden scimitar on the table mocked him with its own illustrious history. Saladin the Great had united the Arab world and led them to victory over the Crusaders. Yet he, Khan, could not even bring together his own kind, designed and conceived in the very same laboratories. It is as the Old Testament said, he thought: “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city; and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.”
Khan felt those metaphorical bars closing in on his dreams. He snatched up the scimitar and hurled it across the bunker, the centuries-old blade striking the farthest wall so hard that it sank deeply into the hardened granite and remained hanging there, embedded like Excalibur in its stone. How dare his supposed peers turn their backs on his long-ordained destiny? How dare they deny the world the balm of his superior leadership?
“Very well,” he resolved, clenching his fist before him. He would not permit the base and venal failings of his treacherous kinsmen to subvert the monumental task to which he had been born. The Great Khanate would extend its blessings over all the peoples of the world, even if it meant doing battle against legions of his own kind.
“Let there be war.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Captain’s log, stardate 7004.2. First Officer Spock reporting. While Captain Kirk and the landing party remain on the planet’s surface, dealing with the crisis at the Paragon Colony, we are continuing to monitor the Klingon battle cruiser now orbiting Sycorax. Given the potential threat posed by the Klingon vessel, the Enterprise remains on Yellow Alert. . . .
“MR. SPOCK!” ENSIGN CHEKOV EXCLAIMED FROM SPOCK’S OWN SCIENCE station. The scanner cast a blue light onto the young Russian’s startled features. “The Klingon ship is targeting the colony!” Seated in the captain’s chair, Spock swiftly processed the ensign’s report and reacted accordingly. “Mr. Sulu,” he ordered the ship’s helmsman. “An intercept course, with all deliberate speed.”
“Yes, sir!” Sulu responded immediately. The image on the viewscreen—the Klingon ship viewed from a prudent distance—tilted as the Enterprise zoomed to place itself between the Klingon vessel and the endangered colony.
Spock activated the intercom on the starboard arm of the command chair. “All decks, Condition Red,” he stated matter-of-factly. His stoic Vulcan feat
ures betrayed no trace of anxiety. “Battle stations.”
Alert indicators flashed crimson at key locations around the bridge as they closed on the Klingon vessel, which grew steadily larger on the viewscreen. The D-7 battle cruiser resembled a cross between an old-fashioned submarine and a Romulan bird-of-prey, with its bulbous prow connected to its rear engineering section by a long, tapering neck. A pair of massive wings spread outward from the engineering hull, supporting matching warp nacelles and disruptor cannons.
Spock rapidly considered the situation. The Klingons’ hostile actions were not entirely unanticipated; in Spock’s experience, Klingons seldom retreated without a fight. The only question was how far Captain Koloth was willing to go in his efforts to strike out at the Paragon Colony. In the past, Koloth had struck Spock as unusually cool-headed for a Klingon, albeit characteristically unscrupulous. Spock hoped that the Klingon commander would choose to forgo a full military confrontation with the Enterprise, but acknowledged that the probability of such an outcome was somewhat less than 6.463 percent.
“Lt. Uhura,” he addressed the ship’s able communications officer. “Hail the Klingon vessel.”
The bridge of the Imperial Klingon Ship Gr’oth was musky with the scent of impending battle. Koloth leaned forward in his command seat as he contemplated the ugly yellow planet on the main viewer. Crimson lights cast bloody shadows upon the bridge, whose recessed forward area belonged to the captain alone; the bulk of his bridge crew performed their duties on a raised platform behind the command seat. Tactical displays and monitors surrounded the hexagonal viewscreen.
