by Greg Cox
Khan threw down his sword and gun.
“The chakrams, too,” Ericsson ordered. “And tell your musclebound stooge to let go of Austin.”
But Joaquin made his own decision. Forced to choose between Khan and the mother of his son, the huge bodyguard chose the leader to whom he had devoted his life. Bellowing like an enraged bull, Joaquin flung Paul Austin aside and charged at Ericsson. His big hands grabbed for the rifle strapped to his shoulder.
What happened next took only heartbeats:
“Milde Makter!” Ericsson exclaimed in surprise. His gun fired, taking off the top of Suzette Ling’s skull. The security chief’s body crumpled to the ground like cannon fodder even as Ericsson rapidly turned the gun on Joaquin as well. Multiple shots slammed into the bodyguard’s chest, but Joaquin kept on coming, driven by momentum and pure animal determination.
Khan took advantage of the distraction to draw another chakram from his arm. The gleaming bronze ring flew from his hand, heading straight for Ericsson, who let out a horrified wail as the spinning chakram sliced off his gun hand at the wrist.
A flicker of movement to his right alerted Khan that Austin was scrambling for the discarded Colt. Annoyed at having to deal with an underling while the greater foe awaited, Khan reached out and administered a vicious nerve pinch to a pressure point at the base of the American’s neck, which just happened to be adorned with the tattooed image of a black widow spider.
Austin dropped unconscious to the floor of the canyon.
Khan immediately turned his attention back to Ericsson. For a second, it looked as though Joaquin was going to reach the traitorous Norseman first, but not even the mighty Israeli could ignore Ericsson’s bullets for long. His strength gave out less than a meter away from his target, and he collapsed to earth, landing in a heap not far from the body of his murdered wife.
Joachim had just become an orphan.
Khan felt a pang of grief for both loyal followers, but now was not the time for mourning. Vengeance comes first, Khan thought, as he advanced on Ericsson. Vengeance long delayed.
Clutching the spurting stump where his left hand had once been, the rebel leader backed into the rocky barricade behind him. Fear showed through a shaggy beard that was now more gray than gold. Khan was surprised at how much older the man looked.
“Well,” Ericsson said with a toothy grin. “Here we are at last.” He grimaced in pain, his sunbaked features growing whiter by the second. His voice, although grown hoarser with age, was just as insolent as it had been when he challenged Khan long ago, on the day they first set foot on Ceti Alpha V. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in pleading for mercy?”
Khan did not deign to answer so ridiculous a query. Ericsson’s severed hand, still gripping the stolen revolver, lay upon the gravel between Khan and his quarry. He kicked it out of his path as he drew nearer to Ericsson. The spray from the nearby hot spring stung his face.
A cruel smile came to Khan’s lips. He took hold of Ericsson with both hands and lifted him physically off the ground. Weak from blood loss, the Exile leader had no strength to resist.
“Marla once taught me an old Klingon saying—that revenge is a dish that is best served cold.” Khan’s smile faded as the memory of his wife’s tragic end returned with full force. “In your case, however, I am inclined to make an exception!”
Before Ericsson could say another word, Khan hurled Marla’s killer into the seething hot spring. The Norseman’s screams echoed off the walls of the canyon as the boiling water scalded the flesh from his bones.
Khan savored every moment of Ericsson’s demise.
25
The battle itself died shortly thereafter. With their leader gone, the remaining Exiles—mostly striplings no older than Joachim—surrendered to Khan and his forces. Weapons were confiscated, the wounded given varying degrees of treatment, and the dead laid out for disposal.
As the sun rose over Azar Gorge, casting a sickly yellow radiance over the blood-soaked canyon, Khan was left to contemplate the awful price of victory. The gorge had been reclaimed, yes, and his enemies routed, but at what cost?
Joaquin, Ling, Zuleika, and many others, all lost to death. In the end, his own forces had suffered a half-dozen fatalities, while the overwhelmed Exiles had lost seven adults and almost an equal number of youngsters. There is not even a doctor to attend to the injured, Khan realized morosely, not since Gideon Hawkins met his end in the eel pit.
Ceti Alpha V was now without a physician.
Khan wandered numbly through the battle-scarred gorge. The stink of death and gunpowder assailed his nostrils. Even the canyon itself, he saw, had become a casualty of war. The rampant flames and explosion had destroyed whatever vegetation had once thrived in the gorge, the hardy cacti and other succulents. It would be many years before anything grew here again, if anything ever did.
A terrible weariness descended upon Khan. With Ericsson dead at last, he felt as though he had lost his reason to live. What remained to him now, except to preside over the slow extinction of the planet?
“Your Excellency!” A loyalist, whose name Khan vaguely remembered was Yolanda Aponte, hurried to catch up with him. Once a minor lieutenant, Aponte had received a battlefield promotion when Khan placed her in charge of the clean-up operation. “The prisoners await your justice.”
The news brought no joy. He raised his gaze to consider the surviving Exiles, who had been chained together upon the floor of the ravine. Khan spotted Paul Austin among them, along with Amy Katzel, who was currently having her bandaged skull inspected by her brother Daniel. Armed warriors from Fatalis stood watch over the dispirited captives, despite their own assorted injuries.
“That is all of them?” he asked.
“All that are accounted for, Your Excellency.” A frown appeared on Aponte’s soot-stained face. “Ericsson’s wife and daughter are missing, I’m afraid. There are reports that they, along with a handful of others, escaped the canyon during the fighting.”
Khan’s spirits plunged ever deeper. After all this bloodshed, he lamented, it seems the seeds of future conflict remain. Although broken and leaderless, might not the Exiles someday rise to oppose him once more?
“We shall hear from them again,” he prophesied. His voice held a bitter edge.
Aponte tried to lift his mood. “A few stray fugitives, Lord Khan. Nothing to be concerned about.” She gestured toward the assembled prisoners. “In the meantime, there’s those vermin to deal with. What is your command?”
What was to be done with the rebels? Deep in his heart, Khan had already decided their fates. The adults would be put to death, with the possible exception of Amy Katzel, whom he might pardon in payment for her brother’s loyal service. Life at Fatalis was too precarious to risk to risk adding a hostile underclass to the equation. The children, however, would be spared, to protect the genetic diversity of the entire colony.
They will have to be watched carefully, he cautioned himself, perhaps for years to come. But they are still young enough to learn better of their parents’ ways.
“Leave me,” he dismissed Aponte. He knew what had to be done, but found he had no stomach for the task at present. “I shall deal with the prisoners in my own time.”
“As you say, Your Excellency,” the woman replied, a slightly puzzled look upon her face. Respecting his desire for privacy, she left him to his thoughts, which grew steadily darker as he looked beyond today’s “victory” to the long years ahead. Why go on? he asked himself. My wife and closest friend are dead, and my youthful dreams of empire have come down to this: ruling over a paucity of ragged castaways on a moribund planet.
His hand fell to the pistol on his hip, reclaimed after he sent Ericsson to his eternal damnation. It would be easy, he realized, to end his torturous journey here in this desolate gorge, with a single bullet through his skull.
“I have lived long enough: my way of life
“Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
; “And that which should accompany old age,
“As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
“I must not look to have….”
Khan lifted the gun. In his mind’s eye, he saw Marla once more, as fair and enchanting as ever. She is waiting for me, he thought longingly. Perhaps it is time to join her.
But another face intruded upon his consciousness, staying his hand with a memory of flaxen hair and intense blue eyes.
The boy. Joachim.
Who will care for him once I am gone?
Khan’s hand came away from the gun. “No,” he whispered reluctantly. He must keep on living, if only for the sake of his people, who looked to him to keep them alive on a world infinitely harsher than the Earth they abandoned centuries ago. I led them here, so I cannot abandon them now, even if it means ruling in Hell itself for many decades to come.
He imagined Joaquin’s spirit hovering nearby, standing guard over Khan in death just as he always had in life. “Do not fear for your son, old friend,” Khan promised him. “I swear upon my life, I shall raise Joachim as though he were my very own.”
The solemn oath reminded Khan of another vow he had once made years ago, and another, equally compelling, reason to stay alive. His hand went to his chest, feeling, beneath his blood-stained robes, the imprint of a silver medallion.
The face of James T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise, appeared behind Khan’s brooding eyes.
Kirk’s hated visage stoked the embers of the all-consuming hatred burning in Khan’s heart. How could I have forgotten? he chastised himself, ashamed to have even contemplated suicide while the true architect of his people’s suffering traveled the cosmos with impunity.
I cannot die, he recalled, until, someday, James T. Kirk has felt my wrath….
26
FIVE PLANETARY YEARS LATER
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven….
Khan’s mood was dark as he led a procession of shrouded figures across the endless sands toward home. Today’s expedition had been a discouraging one; the solar stills west of Fatalis had yielded less than seventy percent of the water supplies they had anticipated. There would be many thirsty days ahead.
The familiar wasteland stretched before him. The wind howled in his ears. Khan trudged wearily, feeling the weight of fifteen years of exile resting heavily on his aged shoulders. Swirling dust devils dogged his steps.
Just behind him, Joachim marched at his right hand, just as Joaquin had before him. In truth, if Khan was completely honest with himself, he sometimes forgot that the son was not the father, and that the present was not merely the doleful past prolonged unto eternity.
Most of those who followed him now were second-generation superhumans, their parents having long since succumbed to disease, accident, or the unceasing depredations of the eels. Of his original comrades from the twentieth century, only a handful remained. Khan suspected that only the simmering hatred in his own heart had kept him alive so long.
A gnarled stone outcropping loomed out of the murk before him, signifying that they were drawing near to the battered steel cargo bays that guarded the entrance to Fatalis. Khan’s mind leaped ahead to the evening to come, as he pondered how he would spend the empty hours once the caravan returned to the caves.
Write in his journal? Play chess with Joachim? Neither sounded particularly inviting in his present mood. Perhaps he would simply seek out Marla’s tomb and spend the time in quiet seclusion with his wife.
A bizarre flicker of light caught his eye, stopping him in his tracks. I don’t believe it! Can it be? he thought in astonishment as his exceptional vision recognized the unearthly sparkle of a transporter beam. Peering through his visor, he watched transfixed as two space-suited figures materialized in the desert, only a short hike away from the refurbished cargo carriers.
Finally! he exulted, realizing that his superhuman patience had finally been rewarded. A smile lifted his lips for the first time in many years. He had no idea who had chanced upon their desolate abode, nor did he care. All that mattered was that the strangers must have beamed down from an orbiting starship, and where there was a starship, there was the possibility of escape.
Here at last, after so many years, is my chance for freedom…
And revenge!
PART FOUR
A.D. 2287
27
“The Pit” proved to be just that, a gigantic sinkhole whose smooth flowstone walls stretched at least three meters above Kirk’s head. Human bones littered the bottom of the Pit, suggesting that he and Spock were not the first prisoners to be confined here. Squatting on the floor, his back against the cold calcite wall, Kirk hoped they weren’t in for quite so long a stay.
Armed Exiles, young and feral in appearance, patrolled the top of the Pit, discouraging any attempt at rock climbing. Not much danger of that, Kirk thought. Even if we managed to get out of here and past the guards, how far could we get without our environmental suits?
Lacking any better option, at least for the time being, Kirk and Spock had compared notes on what they had read in, respectively, Khan’s journal and Marla’s data disks. The latter account seemed to jibe with Khan’s versions of events, at least up to the point where Marla sacrificed herself to save Khan’s life. Just like Clark Terrell phasered himself to save me, Kirk realized, back on Regula. He had been proud to read that, in the end, Marla had possessed the tenacity to overcome the coercive influence of the eel in her brain. Was that a testament to her Starfleet training, he wondered, or to the extent of her unconditional love for Khan?
“An intriguing, if tragic, narrative,” Spock concluded. He maintained a meditative pose upon the floor of the Pit, conserving his mental and physical faculties as much as possible. “It is a pity that our investigation has encountered such an unexpected interruption. I would have prefered to have perused Lieutenant McGivers’ data disks at greater length.”
This trip is certainly proving more eventful than expected, Kirk conceded wryly. Wonder how long Sulu will wait for us to check in before contacting Starfleet? In any event, it would be some time before a search party could arrive to rescue them. We’re on our own, just like Khan was.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps approaching the Pit from above. Spock arched an eyebrow and exchanged a silent look with Kirk. The two men rose quickly to their feet, the better to face whatever transpired next. So much for discussing history, Kirk thought. At the moment, to paraphrase Spock, the needs of the present outweigh the demands of the past.
Seconds later, he heard McCoy’s familiar drawl echo through the caverns overhead. “All right, all right, I’m coming,” the doctor groused. “There’s no need to poke me with those damn pig-stickers.”
A rope ladder, woven from flaxen human hair, tumbled down from the top of the pit. Prodded by the unfriendly guards, McCoy slowly clambered down the ladder to join his friends at the bottom of the pit. Kirk couldn’t help thinking of the story of Rapunzel, even though the irascible physician made an unlikely Prince Charming.
“Good of you to drop in, Bones,” Kirk said, glad to see that McCoy appeared unharmed. “What’s the status of your patient?”
“The mother or the baby?” McCoy replied. He wiped bloody hands on his black bodysuit; apparently the Exiles couldn’t spare water for washing up. “Both should be fine, although I’ve certainly performed deliveries in more sterile settings.” He shook his head, obviously disturbed by the primitive conditions he’d witnessed. “It says something about these kids’ enhanced immune systems that they don’t lose more tribe members to infection. Good God, Jim, the mother herself was no more than fifteen, though she looked a bit older.”
Kirk recalled that Khan had mentioned the children’s accelerated maturation. He found it hard to accept that this whole new tribe of Exiles had grown up since he stranded
Khan and the others here years ago.
“That’s enough, Doctor,” an icy voice interrupted from above. Kirk looked up to see Astrid Ericsson standing at the edge of the pit. The sabertooth tusk around her neck gleamed in the torchlight. “You can converse with your associates later, if you’re still able.”
Kirk didn’t like the sound of that. I have to convince her that we mean her people no harm.
Eschewing the ladder, the youthful superwoman leaped into the Pit on her own, effortlessly landing on the uneven stone floor. Three more Exiles joined her, just in case the captives were tempted to try overpowering Astrid. Blades drawn, they glared at the unarmed Starfleet officers while a fifth young superhuman descended the ladder, a transparent aluminum container tucked under his arm.
A layer of rocky soil covered the bottom of the tank, which Kirk assumed to be Khan’s missing terrarium. He had no doubt what lurked beneath the rust-colored dirt and gravel.
The Ceti eels.
Astrid smiled coldly, acknowledging the arrival of the terrarium. She fixed a menacing gaze on Kirk. “I trust you’ve had time to reconsider your situation.” She gestured pointedly toward the eel tank, now resting in the arms of her subordinate. “Are you ready to reveal Khan’s whereabouts, or shall I be forced to resort to more drastic measures?”
“I’ve already told you the truth,” Kirk insisted. “Khan is dead.” He threw up his hands. “Why would we lie to you? Khan was as much our enemy as yours.”
“Then why not leave him to rot on Ceti Alpha V?” Astrid challenged him. Anger flared in her piercing blue eyes. “How else could Khan escape this world without the aid of your starship?” She laughed scornfully. “You expect me to believe the word of the Abandoner?”
“There are many starships,” Spock pointed out calmly, as though he was conducting a seminar at Starfleet Academy. “Your enmity toward Khan is clouding your logic.”
