by Greg Cox
We made it! Khan exulted. He felt the way Lewis and Clark must have felt when they first viewed the Pacific Ocean. Or perhaps Moses, gazing upon the Promised Land to which he would lead his suffering people.
Behind him, Joaquin, Ericsson, and VonLinden came racing out of the gorge, only to come to a sudden halt at the sight of the ever-rolling waves. “I can’t believe it!” VonLinden exclaimed tearfully. “Look at all that water! It goes on forever!”
“Milde Makter!” Ericsson exclaimed. For once, his words seemed to hold no subversive undercurrent. “I thought I’d never see waves again.”
Joaquin joined Khan upon the beach. “Your will has triumphed once more,” the giant bodyguard said. He dipped his head in respect. “I never doubted you.”
Would that I always possessed such confidence, Khan thought. Even now, having reached the end of their long journey, Khan knew that he would not be completely at ease until he had verified that the emerald sea held enough life to sustain his famished people.
His gaze scoured the marine landscape, looking for signs of a thriving, or at least recovering, ecosystem. It concerned him that no avian life-forms populated the dusty sky above the harbor. Where were the gulls or albatrosses diving for fish among the waves? The lack of winged predators did not necessarily mean that the sea was devoid of ready food, but it gave him pause. Is it possible, he worried, that we have come all this way for nothing?
His worries mounted as he stepped nearer to where the tide beat against the shore. To his dismay, the spray-soaked rocks were free of clinging algae or barnacles. Indeed, the slick, black breakers looked as though they had been assiduously cleansed of every last trace of life. Khan’s expression darkened beneath his wrappings. I do not like the looks of this.
The sound of racing footsteps seized his attention. He looked up to see Debra VonLinden running recklessly toward the sea. Her eager fingers tore the visor from her face, then tugged at the folds of her dust-covered kaffiyeh and burnoose as she headed straight for the beckoning waves—and the soothing relief they seemed to promise.
An overwhelming sense of alarm came over Khan. “Wait!” he called out urgently, but the heat-crazed colonist was apparently beyond heeding his strident warning. “Stop! Halt at once, I command you!”
VonLinden didn’t even slow down. Leaving a trail of ragged fabric behind her, until all she wore was a grimy cotton shift, she dived headlong into the bright green waters, immersing herself completely. Khan held his breath in horrified anticipation. Perhaps my caution is unfounded, he thought anxiously. Perhaps there is nothing to fear?
A moment later, VonLinden rose like Aphrodite from the surf … only screaming in agony.
Khan and the others watched in horror as the woman’s flesh began to bubble and dissolve before their eyes. Smoky fumes rose her reddened skin. Her brunette hair came away from her skull in clumps. She clutched at her eyes with clawlike fingers and started to stagger toward the shore, away from the caustic waves that were eating her alive.
Instinctively, Khan rushed forward to assist her, but Joaquin held him back. “No, Your Excellency!” he insisted, determined to keep Khan from sharing VonLinden’s fate. “It is too late for her!”
He spoke the truth. Khan abandoned his effort to break free of the bodyguard’s grip. He knew he could do nothing but watch another loyal follower die.
VonLinden managed only a step or two before collapsing facefirst into the water, which roiled feverishly around her prone form. Emerald water frothed crimson as the mapmaker’s body twitched convulsively, then fell still. Burnt flesh continued to bubble and melt upon her frame, until gleaming shards of bone began to show through.
Khan heard Ericsson vomit onto the beach behind him. As much as he disliked the man, he allowed Ericsson this moment of weakness. Even for one accustomed to violent death, as Khan most assuredly was, he had to concede that VonLinden’s final moments had been hideous beyond belief.
Even Joaquin sounded shaken by what he had just witnessed. “I don’t understand,” he confessed. His usual gruff monotone contained an almost imperceptible tremor. “What happened to her? What is wrong with the sea?”
Khan had already identified VonLinden’s killer. “Acid,” he intoned. Underwater eruptions, no doubt triggered by the cataclysm, had obviously released enormous quantities of volcanic gases into the ocean, rendering it highly acidic. “The very sea has turned to acid.”
He dropped to his knees as the full implications of this revelation sunk in. Debra VonLinden’s death, ghastly as it was, was almost inconsequential compared with the true horror of what they had discovered.
This lethal shore held no future for him or his people. The nameless sea was a dead one, murdered by the disaster as surely as the Kaur River Valley had been. There is no escape, Khan realized numbly, from the infernal wasteland Ceti Alpha V is becoming.
We are trapped in Hell.
“That’s it,” a sour voice pronounced. Khan turned his head to see Ericsson rising from rocky beach. A puddle of his own vomit congealed at his feet. “We’ve reached the end of our rope. We’re done for.”
“No!” Khan roared. He lunged to his feet and grabbed the collar of the Ericsson’s burnoose. “This is not the end!” he railed passionately, as much to himself as to the faithless Norseman. “Khan Noonien Singh will never surrender, not to this accursed planet and not to the treacherous vagaries of fate.” Not to mention the shameful neglect of James T. Kirk.
“Hear me now, Ericsson, you doubting turncoat. I shall show you that the superior man never bends before the cruelties of fate, no matter how hopeless the odds. Let this entire planet die a slow and miserable death. Let Kirk and Starfleet forget us entirely. I will keep you and the rest of my people alive—this I swear upon my sacred honor.”
He shook his fist at the dust-shrouded sky.
“Do you hear me, Kirk? I will survive!”
19
FOUR PLANETARY YEARS LATER
The enormous salt pan stretched for kilometers in every direction, its crystalline crust crackling beneath Khan’s boots as he climbed out of the glittering white depression. A procession of salt-bearers marched behind him, each heavily laden with weighty blocks of salt. Muddy brown sunlight filtered through the perpetual clouds of dust. Fierce winds whipped the ends of the travelers’ robes.
Khan reached the southern lip of the pan and shook his head at the dispiriting view that greeted him. A fitting verse resounded in his brain:
“And yonder before us lie,
“Deserts of vast eternity….”
Five years had passed since the cataclysm, as years passed on Ceti Alpha V. The once-lush surface of the planet now resembled Earth’s Sahara Desert. The River Kaur had dried up completely, leaving behind an arid landscape constantly scoured by gusts of windblown sand and gravel. Swirling dust devils prowled the sandscape, lurking in ambush behind evolving granite formations sculpted by time and erosion. Heat waves shimmered above the barren ground, while shifting dunes were driven hither and yon by the unceasing wind. Far to the north, snowless black peaks jutted above the badlands.
Khan pined for the relative comfort of Fatalis, still three days away by foot. Not for the first time, he longed for camels or horses to ease the difficulty of expeditions such as this one. Alas, as far as he knew, the deadly eels were the only indigenous animals still alive on Ceti Alpha V, aside from whatever microscopic organisms the eels themselves might be feeding upon. Of all creatures to survive the cataclysm, he thought ruefully, why those vile parasites?
Despite the best efforts of the entire colony, they had lost four children, and at least one adult, to the eels over the last few years. Factoring in additional deaths by disease and accident, Fatalis’s total population had been reduced to no more than forty-six adults and perhaps half as many infants and toddlers.
Beneath his kaffiyeh, Khan’s scowl deepened. The empire he had hoped to build was shrinking with each passing year.
Just as Kirk had always
intended?
His grip tightened around his axebreaker walking stick, as he imagined the Starfleet captain’s throat within his grasp. By now, Khan had abandoned all hope of the Enterprise returning to rescue them. Kirk had clearly forgotten the benighted colony, either deliberately or otherwise. At times, Kirk haunted his thoughts; in his bleakest hours, Khan could almost hear Kirk whispering at the back of his mind, mocking him….
A heavy thud interrupted Khan’s dour ruminations. He turned to see one of the marchers crouching upon the desert floor. Canvas bags, heavy with life-giving salt, rested upon the rock and sand beside him. “Please,” a voice gasped from beneath the wrappings of his headcloth. “I can’t go on. I need to take a break, just for a minute or two.”
Khan recognized the voice, and distinctive trappings, of Paul Austin. Ericsson’s crony, he thought disdainfully. I might have known. It seemed that the Norseman and his allies were constantly undercutting his authority, one way or another. I will have no more of it.
Angrily, Khan stalked back to where Austin knelt. He resented every step he was forced to backtrack. “Get up!” he commanded the American. A working pistol was hidden beneath the folds of Khan’s burnoose, but he had no intention of exposing it to the blowing sand just to threaten one insignificant shirker. “On your feet at once!”
Austin shook his head. “Please, Your Excellency! Just let me rest for a second.” His breath came in pants, punctuating his sniveling pleas. “I’m wiped out!”
Khan had no patience for such whining. Every moment’s delay kept him away from Fatalis and Marla, and put the caravan at greater risk of being caught in a sandstorm. Austin could not be allowed to get away with his malingering, especially not in front of the other colonists, who were gathering in a circle around Khan and Austin, waiting to see what happened next. Some of them, Khan noted, were already shifting the salt bags from their shoulders, in preparation for sitting down as well.
A few more minutes, and he might have a full-scale mutiny on his hands….
“Get up, I command you!” Khan repeated warningly. Joaquin positioned himself at Khan’s right side, adding his own considerable presence to his leader’s. “Do not disgrace yourself by behaving as pitifully as a mere human!”
Austin made a pretense of trying to rise, only to drop back onto the ground. “I’m sorry … I can’t!” He pointed a gloved finger at the canteen dangling from Khan’s waist. “Perhaps if I could just have a few drops of water?”
“What? You dare!” Khan could not believe the man’s audacity. The caravan’s water rations had been carefully calculated to get them to a hot spring several kilometers away, which would provide their next and only chance to refill their canteens before setting off on the final leg of their journey home. “You will drink when I tell you and not before!”
He lashed out with his staff, striking Austin sharply across his back. The indolent American yelped in pain and toppled forward, throwing out his hands to break his fall. Showing no mercy, Khan jabbed the wooden pole into the man’s side, just below his ribs. The flame-hardened staff met only slight resistance from Austin’s desert robes.
Khan smiled cruelly as Austin cried out again. Usually, he regretted having to resort to such draconian measures, as was required more and more frequently these days, but right now it felt good to expend his anger and frustration on a deserving target. Khan only regretted that he was not beating Kirk or Ericsson instead.
Gasps, and muttered protests, rose from the rest of the caravan. A few of the braver souls stepped forward as if to intervene, but Joaquin silenced the dissidents by drawing a handmade basalt dagger from his belt. Back on Earth, the bodyguard had always preferred blades to guns, and had dispatched many an enemy with nothing more than a well-aimed throwing knife, as his fellow colonists clearly remembered.
“Stop … no more!” In an impressive burst of energy, Austin clambered to his feet before Khan could administer another blow. He grabbed frantically for his discarded salt bags and slung them over his shoulders, wincing as he did so. The heavy bundles flopped against his bruised flesh. “I will carry on, as you command!”
“So,” Khan said sarcastically, “it seems some strength remains in you after all. At least when you are properly motivated.” He swept his gaze over the other bearers as he rested the foot of his staff against the ground. His scrutiny lingered on Ericsson, whom he spotted lurking at the rear of the crowd. He imagined he could see the Norseman’s spiteful blue eyes through the tinted visors shielding the other man’s face. Send your jackals against me as many times as you dare, Khan thought defiantly. This dismal world is mine to rule, such as it is.
“We have wasted enough time here,” he said sternly. “I will tolerate no further delays—from any of you!” He turned his back on Austin and returned to the front of the procession, trusting Joaquin to watch his back. “Onward,” he declared, striding forward across the sands. “And heaven help the next grumbler who incurs my wrath!”
Deserts of vast eternity swallowed the sound of his marching footsteps.
Azar Gorge had been named after Shirin Azar, the Persian geologist who had discovered it while foraging for coal many months ago. Unlike the gullies dug out over centuries by the now-extinct Kaur, this deep ravine dated back no further than the cataclysm, when the very land itself had been torn apart by violent seismic forces. A gaping wound in the planet’s hide, the gorge was over thirty meters deep and ten meters across.
The entire caravan seemed to breath a collective sigh of relief as Khan and the other thirsty colonists entered the northern end of the gorge. Gravity, along with impatience, quickened the travelers’ weary stride as they descended a well-worn path toward the canyon floor, which was pock-marked by bubbling geysers and hot springs. Steam moistened the air, while the towering walls of the ravine provided protection from the abrasive winds blowing across the desert above. Thick black lines streaked the canyon walls, marking exposed layers of bituminous coal. Alien cacti and other succulents sprouted from the flinty soil.
Khan magnanimously stepped aside to permit his followers access to the springs ahead. “Rest and refresh yourselves,” he instructed the exhausted bearers, and this time no one disputed his commands. Bags of salt hit the ground in a hurry as the colonists hastened to refill their canteens and water gourds at one of the seething hot springs. As a bonus, the boiling water was already purified, which meant that the impatient bearers could drink their fill as soon the water cooled.
Although too geologically unstable to settle upon, the Azar Gorge had become one of the colony’s primary water sources, supplemented by a network of solar stills installed in the desert above Fatalis. What a shame, Khan reflected, that the gorge is located over a day away from the colony itself. Life would be slightly less challenging were the precious springs closer at hand.
Content to let his people drink before him, Khan sat down upon a flat-topped boulder safely clear of the nearest geyser. His tired legs were grateful for the break, yet Khan resisted the temptation to sigh audibly, lest it be taken for a sign of weakness. As the canyon walls provided shelter from the fierce winds and UV rays, he loosened the folds of his kaffiyeh and breathed deeply of the comparatively dust-free air. He saw that many of his followers were shedding the outer layers of their desert garb as well.
Joaquin stepped forward and extended an open hand. “Your canteen, Your Excellency. Let me refill it for you.”
“Thank you, my old friend,” Khan replied, handing Joaquin the canteen as requested. At least he could always count on Joaquin’s loyalty, despite the discontent brewing in other quarters. “Your thoughtfulness is much appreciated.” He was surprised at how hoarse his voice was. “My mouth feels as dry as the Kalahari.”
Joaquin nodded gravely. “I shall return shortly.”
The bodyguard’s heavy tread receded as Khan closed his eyes, permitting himself a rare moment of repose. The steamy, humid atmosphere reminded him of the imperial sauna back at his old palace in Chandigarh.
It saddened him to recall that the magnificent fortress no longer existed, having been bombed out of existence centuries ago, in the closing days of the Eugenics Wars. According to Marla, a thermoconcrete landing pad now occupied the site; no plaque or monument commemorated his reign.
“I don’t know if you’re going to like living in our time,” she had cautioned him years ago, in his temporary quarters aboard the Enterprise. How tragically prophetic those words had proven!
He turned his thoughts toward Marla in an effort to rescue his spirits from the melancholy overtaking them. Her steadfast love had been the only bright spot over all these long years of exile and suffering. Without her, even for all his superior will and intellect, he might well have gone mad. She was Eve to his Adam, exiled from Paradise together:
“I feel the link of nature draw me: flesh of my flesh,
“Bone of my bone, thou art, and from thy state
“Mine shall never be parted, bliss or woe…”
Joaquin’s returning footsteps disturbed his reverie. Khan kept his eyes closed, prolonging for a few more moments his escape from this hellish world, only to hear Joaquin freeze in his tracks. The bodyguard gasped out loud.
What the devil? Khan’s eyes snapped open in irritation. “Lord Khan!” Joaquin exclaimed, over a sudden rumbling noise overhead. Sand and gravel rained down on Khan’s head and shoulders. The rumbling grew louder, all but drowning out Joaquin’s frantic shout: “Beware!”
Avalanche! Khan realized at once. He leaped to his feet, but Joaquin was faster still. The bodyguard charged forward, knocking Khan to one side, then throwing his massive frame over Khan to shield him from danger. Khan’s face smacked against the floor of the canyon. He tasted blood and dirt upon his lips.
Boulders crashed to earth less than a meter away. The deafening roar of the landslide filled Khan’s ears and the ground beneath him shook as though the cataclysm itself had returned. Sprawled upon the rocky floor, beneath Joaquin’s protective weight, Khan braced himself for the crushing impact of some colossal fragment of stone. It seemed he was destined to be buried alive, no matter how many times he narrowly escaped that particular doom….
