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The door did not chime, but rather Kati came directly in. His people knew that if he was in the ready room rather than his quarters, he was unquestionably available. He did not turn from his observation of the spectrum of the warp tunnel through the chamber’s narrow and tall window. Kati asked the replicator for a glass of water. He then heard her move about, taking a seat at his desk.
“What do you think happened?” she inquired after a few moments of easy, companionable silence. “The Earth we knew was divided, disorganized, torn by wars and unfairness, but it was never quite like this… not everywhere, anyway. By all accounts, it should be better. They can summon food, water and clothing from thin air and can travel to space, which is infinite, so there is no need to fight for land and resources. What could have gone so wrong?”
“You have read their historical accounts the same way I did,” he remarked mildly, not fully tearing himself from his musings.
The glass clinked, as she set him on the metal table. “We both recognize propaganda on sight, Khan.”
“Power and the technology of one errand alien ship who unwittingly ignited the ambition of a confused group of humans after a devastating nuclear war. One wrong decision followed another and then another… . We all remember those, Kati, or how dreams of a better world grow poisonous and misguided.”
He turned to look at her. His old friend’s eyes were ablaze. Regret mixed with uncertainty in those familiar hazel depths.
“It wasn’t the same,” she said grimly. “We were attacked first.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter now. It was a long time ago. We are here, we survived.” He paused, letting the moment pass. Their history weighted heavily on all of their shoulders and in that room its presence was so poignant, that it was as though it were a third party to their conversation. “How is your neighbor?”
“Quiet,” she replied promptly. “She keeps staring at me, when she thinks I’m not paying attention, as though I’m about to tear her open with my bare hands and eat her. Renhold says she’s not keeping her appointments.”
He nodded imperceptibly. Kati was concerned, but she would not question him, now that his decision had been made. Khan acknowledged her doubts and even shared them. They could trust no one but each other, they had no one but each other, stranded three hundred years out of their time, flung into the vast bareness of space, tiptoeing around a tyrannical empire lead by blood-thirsty psychopaths, who would kill them all the second they outlived their usefulness. He needed all the resources he could get, if he were to escape with his people. But someone with Carol Marcus’ qualifications would never willingly work with them or even if they did, they would betray them given half a chance. Carol was a slave with nothing to lose and nowhere else to go, nowhere to run. And he knew from experience that despair drove people to do just about anything, regardless of the reason they had to hate the person lending them a hand. Taking on Marcus’ daughter had been a calculated risk, but it was one he had to take.
Khan walked to the door. “You should rest, Kati. Your shift ended an hour ago,” he told her kindly on his way out.
# # #
Khan knocked on Carol Marcus’ door. She let him in quickly, though it was obvious he had roused her from sleep. There was a pink pillow imprint on the left side of her face. Her golden hair cascaded messily past her shoulder in tousled strands. Her mismatched eyes were swollen and restless, her gaze darting uneasily around her room, going anywhere but in his direction. The scrap of material barely covered her still too thin body. Bones stuck out of her tiny shoulders, which trembled slightly. Her heart beat like that of a scared rabbit. Her spirit had been broken through brutality, any inner strength she might have had trampled upon and ripped straight out of her. All she knew now was blind survival and stark terror.
Pity surged within him, but he snuffed it. His first duty was to his kin and family and they were on borrowed time. He needed to plan ahead in order to protect the people he held most dear. Obedience had been instilled into Carol Marcus and that was something he could use to his advantage. To a degree, to hers as well.
“You will go to see the doctor,” he said in a tone of voice that made even augments stand to attention, training a commanding gaze upon her. “Later. Now get dressed. I want to show you something.”
He turned around to give her privacy. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but you are safe on this ship. Nobody will lay an unwanted hand on you. Not me and not anyone else.”
The rustle of clothing behind him stopped. “I’m ready,” she said timidly.
He whirled around only to discover that her definition of dressed consisted of a low-cut, purple bustier and a matching sash so short it verged on indecent. He almost felt uncomfortable looking at her while she was wearing that. How the Terran Empire had managed to win any battles with soldiers dressed practically in underwear was beyond him.
She was still shaking, her gaze now fixed on the floor. His assurances had rung hollow to her ear, but he didn’t blame her. Khan had survived a childhood in a medical facility as a lab-rat, being hunted by mercenaries and every government on the planet that had known about his kin’s existence and several wars. He recognized a trauma than ran deeper than the marrow in the bone. No matter how much time it would pass, Carol Marcus would never forget and could never be put together again. Despite himself, something deep within him wept for her, awakening the same ancient instinct that had always made him act more like a father within his family than a brother, the unfathomable urge to shelter and protect. It was a powerful one, just like his anger against those who had the misfortune of scorning him.
He took one step in her direction and then another and another. He raised a hand and used it to cover her right cheek, lifting her chin with his thumb. Her lower lip was trembling and her eyes were full of fear. His free arm wrapped itself around her waist and he drew her against his body. He held her close, her cheek pressed to his chest. Her tears seeped into the material of his shirt, the wetness reaching the skin underneath. She didn’t sniffle, just cried quietly in his arms, as they cradled her.
# # #
Carol looked upon the largest weapons bay she had ever seen: filled with drones, torpedoes and armored shuttles.
“Why do you need me, when you can build all these yourself, despite the three hundred gap in knowledge of technology?” she asked.
“Even I can’t be in two places at once. I need someone to design ground defenses and see them raised from scratch. And I need an expert in applied physics to see to civilian installations.”
She looked at him standing on the edge of the alcove above the weapons bay with narrowed eyes. “The Empire would give you a planet of your own?”
He turned his head towards her. His eyes changed color with the light and were now a brilliant steel blue, darker on the edges and speckled with gold around the pupils. There was viciousness in them, viciousness and contempt. She found it easier to stare him in the face now. She had expected the worst, when he had reached for her in her quarters, but instead he had hugged and comforted her. Even now she still felt the solid warmth of his body anchoring hers.
“Christopher Pike sent us to patrol the Klingon border hoping that his enemies will take care of the problem, before he has to,” he told her. “Or better yet, before I take over Starfleet myself or overthrow the Emperor.”
Carol felt nothing at his calm pronouncement. The Emperor was a cruel, capricious dictator. History remembered Khan just the same. Despite his apparent kindness to her, she didn’t see the difference but appreciated his caution in surrounding himself with weapon specialists.
“He need not worry,” he went on and peeled himself off the railing he was currently leaning against. “They can keep their empire. It’s a giant with feet of clay that will not last through the century. All I want is a home for my family, a planet that will accept your rule or an empty one. Either will do.”
She gawked at him as if he were mad. Perhaps he was. “The Empire has endured for hundreds for years.”
“Through terror and terror lasts only until people stop being afraid.”
She opened her mouth and then quickly shut it, reminding herself she was no longer a free woman and that she was better off holding her tongue before her master.
“You can speak freely with me,” he said.
“I… .” The words were burning in her throat, but her lips would not move. Everyone in the Empire was wise enough not to speak freely, if they wished to live. So much as painting freely had killed her mother.
He took a step in her direction. “Say what you wanted to!” He voiced it like a command.
Tears prickled at her eyes. “You built your empire through force,” she whispered.
A slight smile grazed his lips. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
She nodded her head energetically.
“All empires are built through force, but they are maintained through order and rule of law… and long-lasting peace, not by overextending the front lines through mindless contest.”
He stopped right in front of her, his presence overpowering, and produced an agonizer from his pocket.
Carol froze in place, her heart stuttering in her chest, fresh fear singing in her blood, but she did not flinch away. To do so would only double the time she would be in pain.
He held the instrument at the level of her eyes. “Renhold and we discovered that a creative use of this erases a slave’s serial number.”
The number he spoke of had been burnt high on the left side of her chest. It was supposed to be impossible to remove.
“What you are suggesting is a capital crime,” she said weakly, barely able to believe the words coming from her mouth.
“So is slavery,” he snapped, his voice raising slightly. “I had a serial number, too, once. It was on a tracker put in my head. I crushed the skull of the man you did that, when I was fifteen years old.” He lowered the agonizer to her chest. “This will hurt, but there are no sedatives that can by-pass the effect of the instrument.”
She shook her head. “Erasing the number won’t make me free, just an escaped slave.”
“Not on my ship,” he groused.
“So you’ll let me go?” she inquired before she could stop herself.
He smiled again. “You have nowhere to go. In the Empire you’ll always be a slave. The same is true with the Orions, the Cardassians and the Gorn. The Klingons execute any human on sight; the Romulans torture them first. And the Tholians will cut you open to see what’s inside.” He pressed the agonizer into her skin, without turning it on. The metal was cold.
She raised a trembling hand to rest on his wrist to stall him. “Did you kill my father?”
He did not move the agonizer. “I did. He held my family hostage and threatened to bleed them dry while I watched, if I didn’t build him the weapons and warships he wanted from me. There is nothing I would not do for the people I hold most dear.”
He looked at her with eyes that were now golden-green and filled with grief and determination. “Hold onto me,” he ordered and Carol grabbed onto his shoulders, her fingers digging into muscle through the material of his shirt.
The pain was instantaneous and sharp, slicing through her, as though the device had ripped her chest open, grabbed onto her heart and twisted it viciously. A cry was torn from her and it felt as if it had been pried from the depths of her soul. She couldn’t remembered it hurting it so terribly before. His lips moved, but the words fell too far away from her ears. She was trapped in a vertigo of suffering that split her nerves. Then it was over, the agonizer removed from her body. Her knees buckled, but his arm around her waist supported her. She had not realized when he had touched her. Her cheeks were wet and she was shaking harder than before.
“It’s over,” he assured in a low voice.
Carol looked down at her body. The serial number was gone, leaving her skin red and irritated in its wake. An unreasonable joy bubbled in her chest and smiled through her tears. Her hands were still on his shoulders.
