To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (29 page)

She found Khan seated at his desk, updating his journal. The desk was actually an inoperative antigrav lift propped up by matching stalagmites. Khan’s back was turned to the door, presenting an all-too-ready target. His gunbelt was draped carelessly over the back of the chair. Marla’s hand drifted inexorably toward the knife at her own belt. She drew the blade and stepped toward her husband.

Khan must die.

He turned at her approach, however, and she hastily hid the knife behind her back.

“Ah, there you are!” he said warmly. His dark eyes lit up at her return, seeing only his wife, not the assassin who had taken possession of her body. “I feared you had been detained indefinitely.”

Even with the eel nesting in her brain, Marla could not help noting, as she always did, how these long years of exile had taken their toll on him. His once-black hair was now liberally streaked with gray, while the constant strain of leadership had etched deep lines into his regal countenance. Like Ceti Alpha V, he was growing old before his time.

But even diminished, he still had five times the strength and determination of any normal man.
He can’t die,
Marla agonized,
not like this! He’s too magnificent, too larger than life
. An ocean of tears hid behind her clear brown eyes.
I love him too much
.

“It was nothing,” she lied, hating herself but hating Ericsson more. “A conference with a parent.” She prayed for Khan to notice the knife hidden suspiciously behind her
back, but knew that she enjoyed his absolute trust. With her alone, he did not feel a need to be on guard, just as Ericsson and his fellow conspirators had counted on.

“I am pleased to hear it,” Khan said. He sighed wearily, massaging his brow with his free hand. “This year’s rice crop, alas, appears to be failing. I fear I shall have to cut rations once more.” A scowl deepened the lines on his face. “The people will not be pleased.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, although the rice crop was the last thing on her mind. Her fevered brain fought a losing battle against the command consuming her being.

Khan must die
.

“But I should not burden you with my own troubles,” Khan said expansively, making an obvious effort to lighten the mood. He slammed his journal shut and placed his bone pen back in its inkwell. “Entertain me,” he exhorted Marla, leaning back against his chair. “Tell me again about that singular production of
Hamlet
you attended upon the
Enterprise
. I find this Kodos individual intriguing….”

“Certainly,” Marla agreed, appalled at how easy Khan was making her mission of murder. She walked over to the chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Close your eyes.”

Don’t!
she begged him in vain.
Stop me, please, before I hurt you!

“As you command,” he said indulgently. Shutting his eyes, he tilted his head backward, leaving his throat fatally exposed. “You have my full attention.”

Marla sobbed inside as she drew forth her knife. Khan’s jugular called out to the blade. She could already imagine its sharpened edge slicing through her husband’s flesh as cleanly as a phaser beam….

Khan must die
.

She kneaded Khan’s shoulder with one hand while raising the knife with the other.
This is it,
she realized abjectly.
I’m really going to do this. I’m going to kill the man I love
.

“NO!”

To her surprise, the word exploded from her lips. Marla yanked her arm away from Khan and staggered backward across the floor. Her entire body trembled.

Her outburst jolted Khan, who leaped from his chair. “Marla?” He stared at her, confusion written on his face. His dark eyes widened at the sight of the bared knife. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He stepped toward her.

“Stay back!” she warned him, slicing wildly at the empty air between them. It was taking all her strength not to lunge at him with the knife. “K-Keep away from me!”

Khan must die!

Marla knew she couldn’t resist the ceaseless command much longer. She could feel herself weakening, despite her last-minute burst of defiance. The pressure at the back of her skull increased, as though the insidious larva was tightening its grip on her cerebral cortex. Asingle tear dripped from the corner of her eye.
My life doesn’t matter,
she thought.
I’m dead already
.

“Marla!” Khan called to her, his face contorted with anxiety. “Please, beloved, let me help you!”

She knew what she had to do. It was the only way to save the man she had devoted her life to.

Good-bye, Khan. I love you.

Marla plunged the blade into her own heart.

Khan watched in shock and disbelief as Marla stabbed herself before his eyes. Blood gushed from her chest as she crumpled to the floor of the grotto.

“Marla! My wife!”

He sprang to her side, kneeling beside her as her life’s blood spread beneath them, soaking the grass carpet. Gently he removed the knife from her heart and swiftly exerted pressure on the wound, desperate to save her.

Attracted by the commotion, Joaquin barged into the grotto, only to be struck dumb by the stunning tableau before him. Khan ignored the bodyguard’s arrival, intent only on Marla’s bleeding form.
The doctor,
he thought.
I must summon the doctor!

But he knew it was already too late. He had seen too much of death and violence not to recognize a mortal wound when he saw one, especially on a planet lacking adequate medical facilities.

Marla was dying before his eyes.

Marla.

“Why?” he moaned in agony. He lifted her partly from the floor, cradling her body in his arms. She felt surprisingly light, as though the better part of her was already missing. “What madness possessed you?”

Her eyes flickered open, and a trickle of bright arterial blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. “Ericsson…” she whispered. “He … an eel…”

Joaquin growled nearby.

Her trembling hand found his. Large brown eyes gazed up at him for the last time. “No regrets,” she murmured, trying to smile.

Gentle fingers went limp within his grasp.

Empty eyes stared blankly into oblivion.

She was gone.

Howling in torment, Khan clutched Marla’s lifeless body to his chest. Blood pooled beneath him as he rocked back
and forth upon the floor of their home. A sudden insanity tore at what remained of his reason as he realized that he had lost his wife—his Eve—forever.

“O’ fairest of creation!” he ranted furiously, feeling the grief of Adam after the Fall. “How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost … Defaced, deflowered, and now to Death devote?” He bent to kiss Marla’s tender lips, tasting her spilled blood before lifting his own lips at last from hers. “O’ a kiss … Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!”

A burning desire for retribution reminded him of Joaquin’s presence. He glared up at the other man. “You heard her,” he snarled. “Find Ericsson and his lackeys, everyone who has ever associated with him, and bring them to me now.” Something moved beneath Marla’s hair, and Khan watched, aghast, as a blood-slick eel larva escaped his wife’s body. He lashed out angrily and crushed the creature beneath his fist, wishing it were Ericsson’s skull he was smashing instead. “I will make them pay dearly for this atrocity! They will all pay, every last one of them!”

“Yes, Your Excellency!” Joaquin affirmed. He sounded grateful to have a duty to perform, especially one that took him away from this dreadful scene. “They will not escape!”

Harulf Ericsson paced around the edge of the compost pit, impatient to hear word of Khan’s death. His kaffiyeh was tied over the bottom half of his face, while his visor was tilted upward so that it rested upon his forehead, above his eyes. The fetid chamber was far too dimly lit to make the visor’s tinted lenses usable in this environment.

“How much longer must we stay here?” his wife asked him, clutching little Astrid to her waist. Like Ericsson himself,
Karyn and their daughter were clad in full desert attire, as were the other rebels hiding out in the pit chamber. Ericsson counted fully fifteen adult colonists, along with assorted small children and infants. All of them knew that their very futures depended on the success of tonight’s operation.

“Until Savine returns with confirmation of Khan’s death,” he answered, speaking loudly enough to address the entire assemblage. Handmade spears and axes waited in the sweaty palms of every adult. A “borrowed” resequencer rested in a canvas bag at Ericsson’s feet. “Then we’ll move against Joaquin and Ling and whatever pathetic resistance they manage to muster.” He snorted derisively through his beard. “With Khan safely dead, there will be few willing to fight in his memory.”

Khan was more feared than loved,
Ericsson told himself confidently. He doubted if more than a handful of the old guard would oppose tonight’s coup. And who were the loyalists supposed to rally around anyway?
Khan’s widow? The woman had an eel in her brain!

“This place stinks!” Astrid protested, wrinkling her nose. Impatience flashed in her striking blue eyes. “I want to go home!”

Ericsson knelt to console his daughter. Someday, when he was long gone, he fully expected Astrid to rule over Fatalis. Lord knew, she was certainly strong-willed enough!

“I know,
datter
,” he told her. “Just a little while more. Then, maybe, we can move into a larger cavern where you might be able to have a room of your own. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” the child conceded grudgingly. “This place still stinks, though.”

She’s not wrong there,
Ericsson thought, rising to his feet.
If anything the pit smelled even more revolting than it had when he and Panjabi had met there earlier.
Just wait until we add Khan’s body to the heap,
he anticipated,
not to mention Joaquin, Marla, and the rest…
.

His eyes scanned the faces of his fellow conspirators: Austin, Panjabi, and Amy Katzel, among others. It had taken him years to build this clandestine alliance, but his hour had finally come round at last. Soon Khan would be no more and the people would turn to the leader they should have chosen long ago, the very day they first set foot on the Ceti Alpha V.

“Be patient, my friends,” he told his loyal allies. “Our long wait is almost over.” He raised a gloved fist in triumph. “The tyrant’s reign is done.”

Racing footsteps sounded in the lonely corridor outside. A moment later, Juliette Savine dashed into the chamber. Ericsson had posted the widowed Frenchwoman, whose husband had been lost to the larva of a Ceti eel, in the hallway outside Khan’s quarters, to keep an eye on what transpired there. Her ashen face immediately sent a chill through Ericsson’s heart, even before she said a word.

“It’s all gone wrong!” she gasped, breathless from sprinting all the way here. “Khan is still alive; they say his wife killed herself before his eyes.” She leaned against a glazed flowstone wall, catching her breath. Horrified cries and curses arose from the other conspirators. “Joaquin is hunting for us now! They could be here any minute!”

Ericsson could not believe what he was hearing. Marla had committed suicide? How was that even possible?
This is insane!
he thought virulently.
She was under my control!

Austin and the adults stared at each other, panic-stricken. The children, picking up on their parents’ distress,
began to cry loudly. Ericsson winced at the bawling, afraid that the noise would attract Joaquin and his storm troopers.
We have to get out of here,
he realized.

“Now what are we going to do?” Amy Katzel wailed. She had broken with her brother to support Ericsson’s rebellion. Now she clearly looked like she was regretting that decision.

“We flee Fatalis,” Ericsson said plainly. He had planned for this eventuality, even though he had never expected it to happen; that’s why they were all hiding out in their desert gear. “There’s no other choice. Khan will kill us all if he catches us.”

Unable to dispute their leader’s prediction, Austin and the rest gathered up their children and belongings. Ericsson himself lifted the bag containing the stolen resequencer, along with with provisions carefully hoarded over the last six months. Karyn, her face pale, took Astrid by the hand and removed a torch from a crack in the wall. “Follow me,” he ordered.

He knew their escape route already: an uncharted tunnel that one of his followers had stumbled onto a year ago. The circuitous passage led eventually to the surface, many kilometers away from the heart of Fatalis. There a desolate future awaited them, assuming they managed to elude Khan’s minions. Surviving on the surface would not be easy, but Ericsson knew that their odds of staying alive in Fatalis were even slimmer. After what they had attempted, they could expect no mercy.

Hurriedly, the conspirators disappeared into the shadowy depths beyond the compost pit. Acid churned in Ericsson’s stomach as the gross injustice of it all galled his soul. Tonight was supposed to have been his moment of glory;
instead he found himself scurrying away like a frightened rat. He felt as though he had gone from king to exile in one fell swoop.

Ericsson glanced backward, at the subterranean sanctuary he was now forced to abandon.
This isn’t over, Khan,
he vowed.
Our war is just beginning. Someday I’ll return in triumph to Fatalis—and it will be you who begs for your life!

Joaquin’s departure left Khan alone with Marla’s body. Rising slowly, he lifted her from the blood-soaked carpet and laid her gently on the humble bed they had shared for more than half a decade. Her auburn hair spread out over her pillow.

Khan realized he could not consign such beauty to the compost pit, despite the colony’s need for fresh fertilizer. For Marla, he would make an exception.
I shall carve you a tomb,
he swore,
worthy of an empress
.

A glint of silver caught the lamplight, drawing Khan’s gaze to the Starfleet medallion hanging around Marla’s neck. On an impulse, he took hold of the sculpted emblem and yanked it toward him, the slender chain snapping easily. He raised it toward his face, staring grimly at the medallion as it rested in his palm. The polished keepsake was free of tarnish even after all these years; Marla had seen to that. Its graceful design mimicked the golden insignia that had once adorned Marla’s uniform—and Kirk’s.