To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (7 page)

Marla wondered what other predators roamed this alien wilderness.
Enterprise
had not had time to conduct a full
biological survey.
At least we don’t have to worry about hostile natives,
she reflected. Captain Kirk had taken care to ensure that Ceti Alpha V had no sentient inhabitants.

The night seemed almost supernaturally dark by the time Khan finally completed his rounds and joined Marla by the fire. He dropped cross-legged onto the ground beside her. The flickering orange light of the flames caught the sharp angles of his majestic countenance, which were familiar to Marla from centuries-old historical photos as well as her own firsthand observations. His burnished bronze skin seemed to glow from within, as though lit by some unquenchable inner flame. A ceremonial silver dagger, or kirpan, was tucked into his belt along with the phaser. Despite the exertions of the day, he looked as strong and vibrant as ever.

The first time Marla had seen Khan, in that coffinlike hibernation niche aboard the
Botany Bay
, he had taken her breath away.

He still did.

“My apologies for making you dine alone,” he said graciously. “Sometimes the responsibilities of command take precedence over more personal concerns.”

“That’s all right,” she replied. “I understand.” She glanced up to see Joaquin standing only a few meters away, watching over Khan like a Baneriam hawk. He eyed Marla suspiciously, as though expecting her to knife Khan at the first opportunity.
Doesn’t he realize,
she thought, unsettled by the bodyguard’s relentless scrutiny,
that I would rather die than hurt Khan, despite what happened on the
Enterprise
?

Her discomfort did not escape Khan’s keen powers of observation. “That will be all, Joaquin,” he instructed the attentive bodyguard. “You may leave us now.”

“But Your Excellency…!” Joaquin protested, alarmed at the prospect of leaving Khan alone with Marla.

Khan smiled indulgently at his servant’s distress. “Do not trouble yourself, my old friend.” A deep, resonant chuckle escaped his chest. “I think I can defend myself against a lone woman.” He shared an amused look with Marla. “Not that I expect I will have to.”

Reluctantly, Joaquin exited the scene, but not before casting one last glare at Marla, who breathed a sigh of relief as the bodyguard’s hulking figure receded into the distance.

“You must forgive Joaquin for his diligence,” Khan said. “Back on Earth, I had many enemies, and Joaquin was my last line of defense against traitors and assassins.” Khan’s voice and face grew more somber as his memory stretched back across the centuries. “He owes me his life, and will do anything to protect me.”

“I see,” Marla said.
At least we have that much in common,
she thought, although she still couldn’t shake the image of Joaquin striking Uhura.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forget that
.

A momentary hush fell over the campfire. Now that she finally had Khan to herself, Marla found herself strangely tongue-tied. It dawned on her that this was the first time they had been alone together since Khan’s defeat aboard the
Enterprise
; afterward, Khan had been placed under maximum security in the ship’s brig, while Marla herself had been confined to her quarters until the ship arrived at Ceti Alpha V. Although they had seen each other briefly at their judicial hearing, when Marla agreed to join Khan in exile, they had largely been kept apart—until now.

Where to begin?
Marla thought. “Thank you,” she murmured, “for saving me … before.”

Khan dismissed the incident with a wave of his hand, as though Zuleika’s attack on Marla was of little consequence. “In time, my people will come to accept you,” he promised.

Marla had her doubts, but chose not to contradict him. There was something else on her mind. “Khan,” she began, “we’ve never talked about what happened on the
Enterprise
, when I helped Captain Kirk retake the ship.”

Khan nodded gravely. Marla held her breath, waiting for his response. She was terrified of what he might say, but, for better or for worse, she had to know whether he blamed her for stranding them all on this remote and uncivilized planet. Deep down inside, did he distrust her as much as his people did?
Please, no,
she prayed desperately.
I couldn’t bear it if he hates me, too
.

“I was angry at first,” Khan confessed. He spoke slowly, as though considering every word. “But I had time to think in that lonely cell aboard the
Enterprise
, and I soon realized that I had placed you in an impossible situation; I should not have forced you to choose between your loyalty to me and your duty to your captain.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It was a miscalculation on my part. I take full responsibility.”

Thank the gods!
Marla thought, feeling a dreadful weight lift from her. Her heart pounded in her chest and she found she could breathe once more. “I was afraid you’d never forgive me,” she admitted, her voice hoarse with emotion.

Khan smiled and took her hand. “What’s done is done,” he told her. “You proved yourself to me when you chose willingly to accompany me into the wilderness.” He looked forward into the future, putting the past behind them. “We need not speak of this again.”

A piece of burning tinder snapped apart in the fire, the
sharp report sounding like an old-fashioned gunshot. Outside the camp, a nameless animal howled for its mate. Khan rose from the fire. Nearby a pair of navy-blue Starfleet blankets were stretched out upon the ground, atop a layer of strewn, freshly cut grass. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed Marla had ever seen, but at least the grassy mattress provided a degree of padding.

“Come,” Khan said, helping Marla to her feet. “The night grows late, and we have many long days ahead of us.” He guided her toward the waiting blankets. “Let us retire for the evening.”

Marla thought she was going to die of happiness.

Later, after they’d made love as much as their limited privacy allowed, they lay in each other’s arms besides the fire. Marla rested her head upon Khan’s shoulder, while draping an arm across his bare chest. Ceti Alpha VI shone down upon them.
Not quite as romantic as a genuine moon,
Marla thought,
but close enough for me
.

“Tell me about yourself,” Khan urged her. He stroked her unbound red hair. “You know everything there is to know of my illustrious history, yet I know so little about your past.”

“There’s not much to tell,” she said. “I’ve led a pretty boring life, up until recently.”

Khan gave her a skeptical look. “No false modesty,” he chided her. “You are a Starfleet officer, a space explorer. Do not expect me to believe that you have not known remarkable experiences.”

“But it’s true,” she insisted, “more or less.” She snuggled closer to Khan, encouraged by his interest, despite her protestations. “My parents were killed in a transporter
accident when I was very young, so I was raised by an older aunt and her husband. They were decent people, but somewhat aloof and set in their ways. I always felt like an intrusion into their well-ordered lives, which revolved around advanced subspace theory.” She smiled ruefully. “Not exactly the most exciting environment for a young and energetic child!”

Khan nodded. “I can sympathize. I was reared by distant relations myself, after my mother perished in the Great Thar Desert. A civil engineer and his wife. Admirable individuals in many ways, but hardly my intellectual equals. I spent much time reading, in search of stimulation.”

“So did I!” Marla enthused. She was pleased to discover they had this much in common, even coming from two entirely different eras. “History, mostly. The past always seemed more colorful and interesting than modern-day Earth.”

“I, too, was drawn to accounts of the heroic past,” Khan revealed. “Alexander the Great, Ashoka, Napoleon—these were my inspirations as a youth.”

I can believe it,
Marla thought. Who else would Khan Noonien Singh seek to emulate than the legendary conquerors of the past? She readily placed him among their ranks, and knew that his greatest triumphs were yet to come.
Our descendants will remember Khan as the first great ruler of Ceti Alpha V
.

“So how did you come to join Starfleet?” he asked.

Marla turned her thoughts back to her own early years. “Well, no surprise, I studied history at first, but academia turned out to be too much like my guardians’ cloistered scientific milieu, so I applied to Starfleet Academy instead. I guess I figured that if Earth had become too placid and
predictible, I could always find the excitement I was looking for out on the final frontier.”

“And did you?” he pressed her.

She shrugged within his embrace. “I suppose. To be honest, I don’t think Captain Kirk had much use for me. I almost never accompanied him on away missions, not even when we went back in time to 1969.” A sigh of regret escaped her. “All I got to do that time around was pick out the landing party’s wardrobe so that they could blend in with the people of your time.”

It gave her a start to realize that, at the same time that the
Enterprise
was orbiting Earth in 1969, thanks to the slingshot effect of a dangerous black star, Khan and his fellow superhumans were being conceived in a top-secret laboratory in Rajasthan.
Who would have guessed we’d both end up on Ceti Alpha V three hundred years later?

“If Kirk did not take full advantage of your talents,” Khan said, scowling, “that was his mistake.” His expression darkened slightly as he spoke of Captain Kirk. “I saw at once that you were a woman of exceptional qualities.”

As much as she appreciated the compliment, Khan’s enmity toward Kirk made Marla uncomfortable, so she hurriedly changed the subject. “In retrospect, life on the
Enterprise
did have its heart-pounding moments. We rode out some fierce ion storms, not to mention pitched battles against the Klingons, the Romulans, the Gorns, and other hostile races. I caught an alien virus once, along with the rest of the crew, and spent several hours proclaiming myself the Crown Princess of the Universe. I even got to meet Richard the Lion-Hearted, sort of”—she blushed at the memory—”on this bizarre shore-leave planet.”

Khan listened attentively to her words. A sense of
profound intimacy came over Marla, compelling her to open up her heart completely. “Even still,” she admitted, “I never felt entirely at home aboard the
Enterprise
. There were adventures, yes, but they weren’t
my
adventures; I was just along for the ride. I wanted something extraordinary to happen to
me
—something like you.”

“And you shall not be disappointed,” Khan promised. He lifted himself above her, his head and shoulders blotting out the sky before his lips descended to claim hers. His ardent kiss was more thrilling than any ion storm.

This feels right,
Marla thought deliriously, meeting his passion with her own.
More than the Academy, more than the
Enterprise,
this is what I’ve been searching for all these years
.

Whatever came next.

Strident shouts and cries awoke Khan in the middle of the night. Instantly alert, he sprang to his feet, phaser in hand. His eyes scanned the enclosure, discovering a scene of utter tumult and chaos. The sleeping camp was now a jumble of confused and agitated people, all speaking and shouting at once. Shots were fired by one or more of the
Botany Bay
’s precious twentieth-century rifles, but what exactly was being shot at Khan could not immediately determine.

“Khan, what is it?” Marla asked from their primitive bed, where only moments before she had lain nestled within Khan’s arms. He heard alarm, but not panic, in her voice. “What’s happening?”

“I do not know,” he said grimly. He handed her a knife that he had providentially set beside their blankets. “Stay here.”

The commotion appeared to be centered around a fading fire at the other end of the camp. Khan rushed barefoot across the enclosure, shouldering his way through the frantic crowd. “Make way!” he commanded, brusquely shoving
aside any man or woman who blocked his path. “Let me through!”

Within seconds, he arrived at the campfire in question, where he found the unmistakable evidence of some ghastly tragedy. Fresh blood spattered the tangled blankets surrounding the fire, while the faces of the nearest colonists bore the ashen imprints of shock and grief. Dr. Gideon Hawkins, the camp’s resident physician, was already on the scene, but the distinguished African-American had no patient to treat, only a smear of blood upon the sheets.

“Dmitri!” one man cried out hysterically. “It took Dmitri!”

Khan recognized the name of Dmitri Blasko, a chemist who had worked on Khan’s biological-weapons program back on Earth. Blasko had survived the destruction of Khan’s laboratories during the War, only to meet, so it seemed, an equally violent end on Ceti Alpha V.

“Who took him?” Khan asked urgently, his commanding tone cutting through the hubbub. “How? When?”

“A beast, Lord Khan!” a pale-faced guard exclaimed. She kept the muzzle of her American-made M-16 rifle aimed at the darkness beyond the thornscrub piled around the camp, as if expecting something to lunge from the shadows at any moment. “It struck without warning, leaping over the wall. It grabbed Dmitri and hauled him back over the thorns before anyone even knew what was happening!”

“Good God!” Hawkins exclaimed, clutching his useless medkit. Frustration showed on the angular features of the doctor, who had once been one of Earth’s premier surgeons before being forced to abandon his practice in the wake of the Eugenics Wars. “The poor soul!”

Khan silently cursed the fates. Their first night on the
planet … and he had lost one man already. He had hoped that, combined, the fires and brambles would keep the native wildlife at bay, but clearly he had underestimated their ferocity. “What kind of animal?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, Your Excellency,” the distraught guard answered. Khan identified her as Parvati Rao, from his palace guard. “It was dark and it all happened so bloody quickly….” She searched her memory, while keeping hereyes and rifle aimed at the encroaching blackness. “Something like a lion, I think, or a tiger … but bigger and heavier!”