To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (34 page)

Kirk heard McCoy choke. Astrid seemed to be buying the story, though, which had the virtue of playing to all of her preconceptions about the importance of Khan and the helpless inferiority of ordinary humans.

When in doubt,
he thought,
bluff
.

“We rescued Khan and his people a year ago, offering him a full pardon in exchange for his help against the Corbomites. An enemy warship chased us away from here, before we could complete the evacuation, however. Khan was forced to leave several personal effects behind, including the remains of his late wife.” Kirk let a note of genuine remorse enter his voice. “Now that the Corbomites have been driven out of this sector of space, thanks to Khan, he has returned to transport his wife’s body back to Earth.” Kirk feigned annoyance. “Sadistic bastard that he is, he insisted that I personally handle the task of retrieving Lieutenant McGivers’ remains, just to rub the fact of her death in my face.”

McCoy snorted indignantly. “Isn’t that just like the arrogant son of a gun!”

“Indeed,” Spock confirmed, playing along. “Khan is nothing if not unforgiving, especially where the captain is concerned.”

True enough,
Kirk thought,
aside from the present tense
.

Astrid nodded, a look of satisfaction upon her face. “Of course,” she crowed. “I knew Khan was behind this all.” She dropped the larva back into the tank, which was sealed up and taken away at her command. “Where is Khan now?” she demanded of Kirk.

“Up there,” he said, glancing at the rocky ceiling many
meters above. “In orbit around the planet.” Pushing his luck, he gave her a conspiratorial wink. “But I know just how to lure him down to the surface.”

The punishing environment outside the refurbished cargo bays had not improved during their stint underground. Driving winds kicked up a furious duststorm that reduced visibility to near zero. “This would be easier,” Kirk shouted at Astrid, straining to be heard over the howling wind, “if you’d just allow us to use our communicators.”

The Exile leader had not permitted Kirk and his associates to put their environmental suits back on for this return trip to the planet’s surface. Only primitive robes, head-cloths, and visors protected the three men’s faces from the never-ending sandstorm.

“No,” Astrid shouted back, her striking features hidden behind her own desert garb. Although three of her lieutenants had donned the captured environmental suits for the occasion, she had preferred to stick to her accustomed attire. Kirk’s phaser rested in her hand, while the other two phasers now resided in the grip of her bodyguards. “We will employ the emergency signal only, as planned.”

“All right,” Kirk agreed.
So much for giving Sulu a chance to beam us right up,
he thought.
Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way
.

“Switch your phasers to full power,” he instructed Astrid and the two bodyguards, “and point them toward the sky. You want the beams to converge, say, six meters above our heads.”

He had convinced the Exiles that firing the phasers into the air constituted a universal Starfleet distress signal, one that would immediately draw Khan down to investigate.
Kirk could only hope that Sulu would detect the fireworks from orbit and know what to do.

Astrid hesitated. “How do you know that Khan himself will respond to the signal?” she asked, doubt in her voice. Aside from herself and the three wolves in Starfleet clothing, the rest of the Exiles were hidden behind the granite bluffs surrounding Khan’s former domicile, waiting to ambush the hated tyrant the minute he showed his face on Ceti Alpha V.

“Trust me,” Kirk said, “I know the man much better than you do.” He gave his best impression of utter confidence and certainty. “He’ll be here.”

Offered a once-in-lifetime opportunity to lure Khan into her clutches, Astrid took the bait. “Let’s do it,” she ordered her guards as she raised her stolen phaser toward the oppressive yellow sky. “Now!”

Beams of crimson energy cut through the gritty haze from three separate locations, intersecting high above the party’s heads. Kirk squinted behind his crude visor at the incandescent display, which flared above the desolate terrain like a reactor overload.

Come on, Sulu!
he urged the absent helmsman.
Don’t let me down!

Hikaru Sulu stared at the sensor display with increasing anxiety. It had been hours since Captain Kirk and the landing party had last checked in; he had to assume that something had gone very wrong on the planet below.

But what?

“
Yakima
to landing party,” he tried once more. “
Yakima
to landing party. Please respond.”

Silence greeted his hails. He glanced in frustration at the transporter controls. Without a communicator signal, there was no way he could lock onto any of the missing men.

Sulu wished that he were at the helm of the
Enterprise
. On a full-fledged starship, it would be possible to send search parties down to look for Kirk and the others. A state-of-the-art sensor array could scan the entire planet for even the faintest signs of life. Stuck on the
Yakima
, however, Sulu’s options were much more limited.

Now what do I do?
he worried. The nearest starbase was days away at warp speed. By the time he got back with reinforcements, the captain, Spock, and McCoy could easily
die of exposure on the hostile planet.
If they’re not already dead,
he thought grimly.

An electronic beep from the sensors caused his pulse to race. His eager eyes scanned the display panel, which alerted him to a sustained energy discharge on the planet’s surface, not far from the coordinates of Khan’s primitive shelter. Sulu hurriedly recalibrated the sensors, determining that the mysterious energy surge appeared to be phaser fire.

That’s good enough for me,
he decided. Manning the helm, he took the
Yakima
out of orbit and headed the cruiser straight into the planet’s turbulent atmosphere. He had no idea what the landing party was firing at down below, but at least he had an idea where they were now.

“Hang on, Captain. I’m on my way.”

The ride through Ceti Alpha V’s stormy skies was a bumpy one, testing Sulu’s piloting skills to the extreme. Cyclonic winds buffeted the compact spacecraft. Dense particulate matter obscured the viewscreen, forcing Sulu to navigate by instrumentation alone. Thunder boomed all around him, while titanic bolts of lightning crackled against the ship’s deflectors like disruptor fire. Sulu couldn’t help remembering the
Galileo Seven
’s crash landing on Tarsus II. He hoped that history wasn’t about to repeat itself.

The atmosphere thinned marginally as the cruiser neared the planet’s surface. Sulu scanned the area around the phaser blasts with the onboard sensors and was surprised to detect the presence of multiple humanoid life-forms.
Looks like the captain ran into company,
he thought, both puzzled and concerned.
I thought this planet was supposed to be uninhabited
.

Unfortunately, there was no way to distinguish the landing party from the other humanoids, not under these conditions. The fierce sandstorms interfered severely with the sensors, making more precise readings impossible. Sulu realized that there was only one way to recover Kirk and the others safely.

“Sorry about this, Captain,” he muttered as he set the phaser controls for maximum dispersal. He brought the
Yakima
in toward the center of the clump of individuals, aiming the phasers directly ahead.

A crimson flash lighted up the viewscreen as Sulu unleashed a low-level phaser barrage capable of knocking out every man, woman, and child in the immediate vicinity.

Then he looked for a good place to land.

Kirk’s head was still ringing from the phaser blast when he confronted Astrid Ericsson in the
Yakima
’s pressurized passenger compartment. The clean air and comfortable temperature came as a welcome relief after his stay on Ceti Alpha V.

Astrid had been brought aboard the
Yakima
at phaser-point, while her followers had been left on the planet below, sans their stolen phasers and environmental suits. Unarmed and outnumbered, the Exile leader found herself in orbit with Kirk and the others.

“Why should I believe you now?” she accused him, seated upon one of the cabin’s padded seats. Kirk had to imagine that she found the cruiser’s sleek interior disorienting compared with what she was used to. “After so much trickery?”

“Because,” Kirk pointed out patiently, “I no longer have any reason to deceive you.” He tilted his head toward
Spock and McCoy who were standing nearby with their phasers ready. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m holding all the cards now.”

Astrid seethed visibly, but was unable to refute his reasoning. “So what do you want with me?”

“To convince you that a better life is waiting for your people once you accept that Khan really is gone for good.” Kirk felt an overpowering desire to get through to the young woman, before more lives were wasted on the hellish planet she called home. “Listen to me. Use your enhanced intelligence to overcome your obsession with Khan and look at the larger picture, for your people’s sake. You must realize that Ceti Alpha V is dying. There’s no future for you there, regardless of whether Khan is alive or not. What’s more important to you: revenge or survival?”

For several long minutes, Astrid said nothing in reply. Kirk chose to take this as an encouraging sign.
Khan threw away his life and the lives of his followers in pursuit of vengeance,
he thought.
I can’t let Astrid make the same mistake
.

“What precisely are you offering?” she asked finally.

Yes!
Kirk thought, feeling a surge of hope. “You’re all descended from refugees who fled Earth three hundred years ago. That makes you our responsibility. I’m sure I can convince Starfleet to relocate you to a more hospitable planet, where you can make a fresh start.”

“What sort of planet?” Astrid asked. Her suspicious tone indicated that she was not yet convinced.

Kirk knew just the place. “There’s a planet called Sycorax, which is already home to a colony of genetically engineered superhumans.” Kirk has first visited Sycorax, and the so-called Paragon Colony, roughly fifteen years ago, only four years after his first encounter with Khan. “Sycorax has a
thriving superhuman community, which I’m certain would be happy to add your enhanced DNA to their gene pool.”

He didn’t mention that Sycorax remained quarantined from the rest of the Federation, due to the UFP’s age-old ban on human genetic engineering. The point was that the Exiles would be unwelcome anywhere else.
Plus,
he thought,
it can’t hurt to keep Khan’s descendants under quarantine as well
.

The ironic part, of course, was that his proposition was not entirely different from the one he had offered to Khan nineteen years ago: a new planet on which to begin again.
But this time,
Kirk vowed,
I’m putting them in the care of an established, successful colony. And I’m personally going to make sure that the Paragon Colony—and Starfleet—gives Astrid and the others all the assistance and supervision they require
.

The Exiles were not going to be forgotten again.

“You and your people deserve a better, a more superior life,” he continued, “than fighting a battle that should have ended centuries ago. The Eugenics Wars are over, finally. It’s time to put the tragedies of the past behind us and move on to the future.”

And, perhaps, in this way, I can lay my own ghosts to rest as well,
Kirk realized.
Part of me will always regret what happened on Ceta Alpha V, but, by helping the Exiles start over again on a new world, I can do what I can to put things right
.

The light of a bold new dream dawned in Astrid Ericsson’s pale blue eyes. “Perhaps,” she said. “You are no longer the Abandoner.”

Kirk closed Khan’s journal, having reached the final entry. He knew too well what happened next.
Khan must have sealed up Marla’s crypt right before he used Terrell and Chekov to capture the
Reliant, he realized.
In fact, he probably used the two men’s phasers to remelt the eighteen-year-old thermoconcrete
.

It occurred to Kirk that he was surely the last person Khan ever expected to find the entombed journal and data disks.
Chances are, Khan went to his end convinced that he had killed me in that final explosion….

He glanced out the starboard porthole at the very site of Khan’s apocalyptic demise.

The Genesis Planet was no more, as was the nebula that birthed it. Kirk saw only the gaseous remains of the planet where his son had died—and Spock had been reborn. Khan and his followers had died in this same haunted sector of space as well, reduced to atoms by the primordial forces unleashed by the Genesis Device.

This is hallowed ground,
he thought. Not literally, of
course, but in every way that mattered.
Which makes it the perfect place for this last solemn duty.

Technically, this region of space remained off-limits to civilian vessels, owing to the controversial nature of the Genesis Project, but Kirk had seen classified reports indicating that any residual contamination from the Genesis Device had long since dispersed. According to the experts, there was no danger in approaching this space.
And besides,
he acknowledged wryly,
it’s hardly the first time I’ve skirted regulations for the sake of a former crew member.

McCoy emerged from a compartment at the rear of the
Yakima
. The doctor’s face bore a serious expression. “Jim, we’re ready,” he informed his friend.

Kirk rose from his seat. He placed Khan’s journal on the seat beside his, next to Marla’s data disks. The historian’s electronic files awaited his further inspection. At the moment, however, another task demanded his presence.

He joined Spock and McCoy in the
Yakima
’s small transporter chamber. Like him, the two men had donned their best Starfleet uniforms for the occasion. Experience had taught the three officers to take their uniforms with them wherever they went, in the not-unlikely event that they were abruptly called into service or asked to attend some diplomatic function. It struck Kirk as highly appropriate to be wearing a captain’s insignia again, since it was his decisions as a captain, nineteen years ago, that had led him to this moment.