To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (23 page)

Sadly, Khan had seen such symptoms many times before. As the bison had vanished into extinction, the eels had swiftly sought out new hosts for their young—namely the hard-pressed colonists. Somewhere deep inside Dumas’s brain, Khan knew, a growing eel was coiled around the man’s cerebral cortex, exerting an ever-increasing pressure. “I take it, Doctor, your treatments have proven unsuccessful once again.”

Hawkins wiped his forehead with the back of his hand while he insert a protective rubber tile between Dumas’s teeth. “I’ve tried herbs, spinal massage, even acupuncture,” he lamented, “but nothing has expelled the parasite or alleviated the symptoms. If I was back on Earth, I could attempt radiation or brain surgery, but under these conditions?” He threw up his hands. “Nothing awaits Dumas but a slow and agonizing death.”

“I understand,” Khan said. Without further discussion, he reached down and placed the palm of his gloved hand over Dumas’s mouth and nostrils. He clamped down firmly, cutting off the flow of air to the man’s lungs. Dumas’s bound body jerked briefly, then fell still.

Khan removed his hand. He rose from the dead man’s side, then waited patiently for Dumas’s killer to flee his cooling corpse. Within minutes, a slime-covered eel
emerged from the victim’s ear canal and wriggled onto the floor of the cavern. Khan allowed himself a thin smile as he crushed the vile mollusk beneath the heel of his boot.

There was no need to preserve the creature. Hawkins already had plenty of specimens to study. Counting Huang, the first victim, Khan had lost seven followers to the eels since the disaster a year ago. Another three colonists had succumbed to disease and skin cancer, leaving behind only fifty remaining adults, plus a handful of underfed infants. Khan wondered morbidly where the eels would plant their insidious offspring should the rest of the colony join the bison in oblivion.

The castaways had taken to sleeping with wads of material stuffed in their ears, but still the eels managed to claim a new victim every few months. Dissection of captured eels revealed that they appeared to be subsisting on minute traces of organic matter left behind by the mass extinction, as well as raw nitrates and other substances. Khan suspected that the widespread ash and dirt still contained a few microscopic extremophiles, such as Earth’s near-indestructible tardigrades, that perhaps served as food for the deadly eels, while the colonists themselves provided hosts for the next generation of parasites.

Khan gazed down at the latest fatality. It was Dumas, he recalled, who had drafted the official denials whenever Khan’s political enemies accused him of plotting to conquer mankind. That these denials were utter fabrications did not diminish his service to Khan’s cause.

“Remove his brain for your research,” Khan instructed Hawkins coldly. “Have the rest of him taken to the fertilizer pits.”

Alas, he couldn’t even offer Dumas a decent burial or
cremation. Like the rest of their dead, his remains would be composted to provide nutrients for Fatalis’s struggling underground gardens. “I will extend my condolences to his widow.”

As always,
his mind added darkly. Paying his respects to grieving spouses was another duty he had become far too familiar with. His memory summoned a picture of Dumas’s wife: a military strategist named Savine.
I shall visit her shortly,
he vowed,
but not right away
.

First, he would find Marla. He needed to see his own wife again, if only as a relief from the never-ending death and decay. “If that will be all, Doctor,” he informed Hawkins, “I will take my leave.”

Knowing there was nothing more he could do here, Khan left the doctor with his lifeless patient. Joaquin followed him dutifully as he traversed the winding tunnels, which were lit by flickering torches and the occasional patch of phosphorescent mold. Although a few generators and power cell rechargers had survived within the impervious cargo bays, electricity was too precious to waste on mere illumination, except here and there.

As they traveled, Khan heard stone axes and picks chipping away at the surrounding limestone, as a team of workers sweated to expand and improve upon their underground habitat. The smell of unwashed bodies permeated the closely packed catacombs. At times the corridors were so narrow that only a single individual could pass through them at a time. Deferential colonists stepped aside, or backed up entirely, to allow Khan and his bodyguard to proceed unhindered. Joaquin ducked his head to avoid scraping his skull on a low-hanging ceiling.

They passed the armory, where the colony’s dwindling
supply of guns and ammunition was kept under twenty-four-hour guard. Although though most of the their ammo had been destroyed when New Chandigarh burned to the ground, roughly half a dozen guns and rifles had survived. Khan hoped someday to manufacture fresh ammunition for the weapons, but, for the time being, food and water took priority over munitions.

A pang of hunger struck Khan, and he searched his pockets for what remained of his day’s rations. He found only a gnawed-upon piece of dry sabertooth jerky and a small ball of rice. His stomach groaned as he considered his meager fare. Saving the rice for later, he chewed on the jerky to dull his hunger.

It didn’t work.

A year after the destruction of their crops, the colony was barely getting by. The cyclonic winds and UV radiation made farming on the surface impossible, even if all the arable soil hadn’t already dried up and blown away. Furthermore, in a fiendish irony, the most successful survivors of the disaster—the Ceti eels—were too indigestible to eat. The castaways’ only hope for sustenance came from growing limited quantities of hand-pollinated Terran crops underground, using Starfleet-provided “plasma lights” in lieu of sunlight. A battered portable generator provided just enough electricity to keep the subterranean gardens viable, while the colony’s few surviving protein resequencers allowed them to satisfy their most basic nutritional requirements.

Thank the Fates,
he thought,
that we managed to find enough seeds beneath the burned-out fields to keep going
. He and many others had dug beneath the charred crops and volcanic ash with their bare hands in search of scorched kernels of corn
and seedlings of rice, while every available man and woman had carted armloads of dead wildlife and flora back to the caves for composting.
It is a miracle that we have managed to cultivate any fresh food at all,
Khan reflected. He doubted that mere ordinary humans could have done the same.

Except for Marla, of course.

He found her, as he expected, at Fatalis’s nursery, in a relatively cozy grotto whose vaulted ceiling had been meticulously pruned of any threatening stalactites. Empty storage bins had been converted into cradles for roughly a dozen precocious infants, who were already developing at an accelerated rate. Wire mesh, recycled from the fence that had once surrounded New Chandigarh, was stretched over the tops of the cradles in hopes of protecting the babies from lurking eels, although Khan placed rather more faith in the constant vigilance of Marla and her staff. He marveled that so many children had managed to survive so far.
Only their superior genetics,
he theorized,
have allowed them to endure such harsh conditions
.

Marla looked up as he and Joaquin entered the grotto. A drowsy infant was nestled in her arms, while the tattered remains of Khan’s golden Nehru jacket was draped over her shoulders. Her eyes lighted up at the sight of her husband. “Khan! You’re back.”

“Indeed,” he assured her. “Know that I will always return to you.”

Marla strolled past a row of improvised cradles to join them. “Good afternoon, Joaquin.” She handed the baby in her arms over to the towering bodyguard. “Say hello to your son.”

“Hello, Joachim,” Joaquin said gruffly. A rare smile
appeared upon his stolid features as the baby gripped his thumb with a tiny fist. “You feel strong today. Good.”

The blond, blue-eyed infant bore little resemblance to either Joaquin or Suzette Ling. Curiously, as an unforeseen side effect of the genetic tinkering that had performed on their parents, all of the colony’s children had been born blond and Caucasian, regardless of their parents’ ancestry. “Shades of
The Midwich Cuckoos
,” Daniel Katzel had commented upon the birth of the first batch of babies, referring to one of his favorite science fiction novels. Khan could not help wondering what his own mother, the Sikh scientist responsible for the Chrysalis Project, would have had to say about this peculiar development; no doubt she never intended the second generation of superhumans to resemble the results of a Nazi breeding program….

“Shirin delivered a fresh supply of water earlier,” Marla informed Khan. Her Starfleet medallion dangled on a chain around her neck. “I’m glad the expedition to the river went well. We needed the water badly, for the nursing mothers as well as the babies.”

The nursery was Marla’s domain, where she and a small, rotating staff watched over the Grandchildren of Chrysalis while their overworked parents strained to eke out a living beneath the ground. Marla ran the nursery with energy and enthusiasm, even though (or perhaps because) she had not yet borne a child of her own, nor even succeeded in becoming pregnant.

Reluctantly, Khan had begun to suspect that Marla’s unrefined DNA was incompatible with his own.
A pity,
he thought, although his regret was tinged with relief. In a colony with better prospects, Marla’s inability to produce an heir would have posed a significant problem; under the
circumstances, however, Khan thought it almost better not to bring another innocent child into the abysmal purgatory Ceti Alpha V had become.

His gaze drifted to rows and rows of populated cradles. Here was the future of his people, if any such thing existed. A high-pitched wail rose from a steel bin and a tired-looking colonist hurried to check on the cradle’s small occupant.

What sort of world would these children inherit? Khan somberly looked ahead, searching for a way to provide the next generation with a less precarious existence.

It was clear that Kaur River Valley held little promise for his people; desertification was proceeding apace and he could all too easily foresee a day when the former grasslands would become as dry and inhospitable as the Sahara.
We must seek out greener pastures,
he realized,
but where?

He smiled sadly at Marla, knowing he would soon have to leave her again. Her flowing hair and chestnut eyes called out to him, as did the gentleness of her touch. He was not eager to tear himself away from her, for who knew how long, but his mind was made up.

There can be no more delay,
he vowed.
I must leave this place—and learn what has become of the rest of the world
.

For better or for worse.

“Sandstorm!”

The small expedition, which consisted of Khan, Joaquin, Ericsson, Keith Talbot, and an experienced cartographer named Debra VonLinden, had been following the dwindling Kaur toward the sea, where Khan hoped to find a safe harbor for his people, in more ways than one. So far, however, all they had discovered was kilometer after kilometer of dried-up grasslands, whose once-loamy soil was now barely held in place by the dying foliage. The savanna was evolving into a desert, with all its attendant dangers….

Ericsson’s cry jolted the party, which had already been battling wind and sand for days now; Khan found it difficult to envision what constituted a storm in this hellish environment. Were they not already trapped in a tempest without end?

Still, his visored eyes saw what Ericsson saw: an opaque black cloud rolling across the floor of the desert at an incredible speed. Heat lightning flashed in its wake.

“Link arms!” he called out, with only moments to spare
before the storm was upon them. Throwing his wooden staff to the ground, he hastily hooked his elbows around those of Joaquin and Talbot, while Ericsson and VonLinden formed a chain connected to Joaquin. “Hold on! Do not let yourself be separated from the group!”

The sandstorm struck with the force of a monsoon, almost knocking Khan off his feet. In an instant, visibility was reduced to less than a meter. Despite his protective burnoose and headcloth, the abrasive wind and sand pummeled him mercilessly. Every minute tear or aperture in his desert garb was invaded by jets of flying grit that scoured his skin raw. More sand made it past his visor, forcing him to squeeze his eyes tightly shut. Ducking his head as much as he could, he breathed shallowly through his nose while keeping his jaws clenched together to keeping from choking to death.

The roar of the storm was deafening, making speech impossible even if he dared to open his mouth. Khan fought to maintain his footing, and to hold on to the rest of the expedition, who were, quite literally, being sandblasted where they stood.

We must make for higher ground,
he decided. The individual sand grains propelled themselves by bouncing off the desert floor; perhaps it was possible to get above the densest portion of the storm.
Even the slightest degree of relief might make the difference between life and death!

He remembered seeing a steep rise in the riverbank perhaps five meters to the left. Trusting his memory, he tugged on his companions and began marching in what he prayed was the right direction. The wind and sand hit them cross-ways, making progress difficult and navigation all but impossible. Khan believed he was trudging toward the
eastern bank of the riverbed, but could not be certain that the relentless pressure of the storm had not already driven them off course.

To his relief, the parched ground beneath his feet began to slope upward … an encouraging sign. Half-guiding, half-dragging his companions, Khan made it a couple of steps up the sharply angled grade before disaster struck.

Talbot slipped, nearly pulling Khan down with him. Khan tried to yank the other man back onto his feet, only to feel Talbot’s arm begin to slip away from him. Khan almost lost hold of him entirely, but, at the last minute, the stumbling man grabbed on to Khan’s wrist.
Hold on!
Khan commanded silently; he had no desire to inform Zuleika Walker that he had lost her husband.
Hold on for your life!