by Greg Cox
“Can this be true?” he murmured. Had so fantastical a creature truly been working beside him, under his very nose, for all these years?
“For shame, Khan,” Seven chided him, stroking the head of the purring feline cradled in his arms. “The name, Ament, means ‘hidden goddess,’ and is just one of many alternative names for the Egyptian goddess, Isis.” He and the cat enjoyed a joke at Khan’s expense. “She’s been hiding in plain sight for quite some time.”
Khan’s mighty brain raced to keep pace with these startling revelations. “But—I had thought her one of my own kind, another child of Chrysalis?”
“That’s what you were meant to believe,” Seven explained. “After you surprised me in Moscow several years ago, I realized that you might someday attempt to round up the rest of your scattered, superhuman siblings. Consequently, I deliberately added the false identity of Ament to the Beta 5’s database on the Chrysalis Project, just in case you ever succeeded in appropriating that information, as indeed you did.” Reaching into his pocket, he offered the cat a special treat of some sort. “When you ‘recruited’ Ament shortly thereafter, you provided me with a valuable informant inside your inner circle.”
“I see,” Khan said venomously. As he gradually recovered from the mind-jarring shock of Ament’s miraculous transformation, other mysteries became clear at long last. He suddenly realized who had helped Roberta Lincoln escape from Chrysalis Island four years ago, who had alerted Seven to Khan’s plan to attack Dubrovnik by submarine, and even how Chen Tiejun had learned about his precious stockpile of flesh-eating bacteria. Yes, he thought, with growing resentment, many things make sense now.
“O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!” he hissed, glaring balefully at the treacherous feline. “But why play this card so late in the game?” he asked Seven. “Why wait until now to have your Trojan horse”—Isis squawked in protest at the equine allusion—“bring down my fortress walls?”
Seven held on to the cat protectively, lest Khan succumb to an entirely understandable desire to wring the duplicitous beast’s neck. “In matters of espionage,” he elaborated, “it is often necessary to sacrifice temporary advantages to preserve a long-term asset. ‘Ament’ was my ace in the hole, held in reserve all this time to provide me with constant intelligence on your activities. There was also the hope,” he added ruefully, “that she might be able to steer your unquestioned brilliance toward more constructive ends.”
He regarded Morning Star, blinking its way toward the Arctic Circle, with a look of resigned disappointment. “Now, though,” Seven allowed, “with the fate of billions at stake, the time had clearly come to use every resource at our disposal, in order to prevent you from making one of the most calamitous mistakes in the history of the human race.”
Khan found Seven’s hectoring tone galling in the extreme. “My apologies for not living up to your exalted standards,” Khan sneered, “but I fear your priceless words of wisdom come a trifle too late.” With his free hand, he addressed Seven’s attention to the encrimsoned map, its tainted coloring bearing testament to the dire fate awaiting all mankind. “I will have my vengeance, regardless of anything you can do or say.”
“Five minutes to Gomorrah,” the computer stated, seconding Khan’s sanguinary assessment of the situation. The phyloplankton will perish first, Khan surmised, wiping out the marine food chain at its base. Then would come the crop failures, and the cancers, until, finally, the unchecked ultraviolet rays began to break down proteins and DNA on a molecular level. . . .
Seven persisted in the face of Khan’s defiance. “What if I could offer you a better alternative?” he asked emphatically, too intent on reaching Khan to continue stroking his remarkable cat. “A more attractive destiny?”
“Such a s?” Khan asked dubiously.
Seven gestured toward the wall of video screens, where even now scenes of turmoil and violence predominated. Spetsnaz commandos, wielding Russian AK-47 assault rifles, fought their way through the fierce resistance of several dozen remaining Exon warriors, while beyond the sandstone walls of the fortress, rioting protesters clashed with Khan’s personal police force. Khan saw his once-proud flag, with its silver moon and golden sun, torn apart and set aflame by an angry mob. “With your permission?” Seven asked, tactfully refraining from commenting on the televised pandemonium.
“By all means,” Khan said, an edge in his voice contradicting the graciousness of his words. “But do not attempt anything clever or foolishly heroic.”
“Let’s hope that won’t be necessary,” Seven answered. With exaggerated caution, he lifted his servo from the countertop and aimed it at the stacked video screens. The slender device hummed briefly, and the disparate scenes of chaos and conflict were replaced by a single image, appearing on every one of the multitudinous monitors: a cylindrical space vessel drifting in orbit somewhere high above the Earth. The ship, which somewhat resembled a submarine, complete with a finlike conning tower, was unfamiliar to Khan, who had not known of any such spacecraft in the works.
“The DY-100,” Seven offered by way of introduction. “Until recently, a top-secret creation of the United States of America, but now available to you, under certain conditions.” He looked over at Khan to see if he had the other man’s attention. “Are you familiar with the concept of a sleeper ship?”
Khan nodded, his gaze glued to the astounding image on the monitors. “I know the theory, but do you mean to say that such a vessel actually exists?”
“You’re looking at it right now,” Seven assured him. He put down his servo again so as to allay Khan’s worries in that direction.
Nonetheless, Khan suspected trickery. “How do I know this vessel actually exists, and is not simply an illusion created by special effects.” He peered at Seven with great distrust. “You can hardly expect me to throw away my rightful vengeance for a few minutes of footage from some forgettable piece of science fiction.”
Seven indicated the radar and tracking station just outside. “You can certainly verify the ship’s presence overhead once I give your people the appropriate coordinates, but, for the sake of argument, consider this: what if I gave you the DY-100 in exchange for your promise to leave Earth’s ozone layer intact?”
“Three minutes to Gomorrah,” the computer alerted them, adding extra urgency to Seven’s last-minute negotiations.
“You have a choice, Khan,” he insisted. “You can go down in flames, taking the entire world with you, or you and your people can make a new life for yourselves somewhere beyond this solar system.” He placed Isis at his feet, the better to concentrate on convincing the skeptical younger man. “Think of it, Khan: the challenge of conquering an alien world, of forging a new civilization where no man or superman has gone before. You could be a new Columbus, found a new dynasty light-years from Earth.”
Khan did not know what to think. It all seemed so unbelievable and yet . . . He considered the secretive old man and his unnatural pet. Was what Seven offered any more implausible than a luminous blue fog that bent time and space, and a beautiful woman who could transform into a cat at will? “I do not know,” he conceded. “Your proposal is intriguing, but I am unsure.”
“One minute until Gomorrah.”
“Choose wisely, Khan.” Seven spelled out his options bluntly.“An ignominious death in a bunker, the useless slaughter of your most faithful followers, and eternal infamy as the man who inflicted generations of suffering upon the planet, or a chance to plant your seed on a fresh and untamed world of your own?”
“Thirty seconds to Gomorrah.” On the map, the flashing yellow blip turned the same pestilential shade of red as the rest of the world. After shielding Earth’s fragile creatures for over six hundred million years, the ozone layer faced oblivion.
Khan considered his alternatives. What, truly, did he have to lose, save for the malignant pleasures of revenge. He thought of Joaquin, and Suzette Ling, Vishwa Patil, Liam MacPherson, and all the rest of his loyal subjects, who
would surely battle to the death on his behalf. Perhaps he owed them, and the noble dream of Chrysalis, something better than a final bloody massacre?
“Morning Star, halt targeting sequence. Terminate Gomorrah scenario. Command authorization: Caesar-44BC.” He walked away from the satellite controls and pocketed Seven’s discarded servo. His wary eyes promised immediate retribution should Seven prove to be deceiving him.
“Tell me more about this ship,” he commanded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HIBERNATION DECK ALPHA
DY-100 PROTOTYPE SLEEPER SHIP
HIGH EARTH ORBIT
JANUARY 11, 1996
THE SHIP WAS ALL SEVEN HAD PROMISED: A MARVEL OF FUTURISTIC technology and design. As an engineer, Khan wanted to take the ship apart to see how it worked. As a sovereign-in-exile, he pronounced it satisfactory. “Excellent,” he declared, looking about him. The habitation decks of the sleeper ship were surprisingly roomy for a spacecraft, perhaps as a precaution against claustrophobia during boarding and disembarking. Blue steel bulkheads, constructed of a durable alloy that Khan did not immediately recognize, offered sturdy protection from the airless void outside, so that the dreams of the ship’s slumbering passengers would not be troubled by fears of structural collapse or minor meteorite collisions. The built-in hibernation niches were paired two by two, bunk bed style, which made Khan feel rather more like Noah than Columbus, although this ark was mercifully free of yowling livestock; according to Seven, all of the ship’s ample provisions, transported aboard in preparation for the coming voyage, were conveniently nonanimate.
“Quite spectacular,” Liam MacPherson confirmed, his eyes aglow with excitement. The red-haired astrophysicist could barely contain his enthusiasm for the DY-100. “The technology is generations ahead of every other spacecraft in development.”
With Khan’s consent, Seven had transported the cream of Khan’s followers, some eighty-three supermen and women, aboard the orbiting starship, its total capacity. Limited to only seven dozen niches, including his own, Khan had been forced to make some difficult choices; ultimately he had practiced a brutal form of triage, leaving the most seriously wounded of his Exon fighters behind, so that he could begin rebuilding with the fittest and least damaged of his loyalists. The sexual ratio, alas, was less than ideal, with 55 men to 31 women, promising a certain amount of strife down the road. Nothing I cannot deal with when the time comes, Khan decided confidently.
“So, the ship still needs a name,” Roberta Lincoln pointed out. Khan had been less than surprised to find the American woman already aboard the DY-100 when he and Seven had first teleported aboard. Ironically, she was clad in the same imitation NASA flight suit she’d been wearing on that Halloween night in 1984, when Khan first visited Seven’s original office in New York. “Any thoughts?” she asked Khan.
A name, Khan pondered. It should be something appropriate, conveying both the gravity of his exile from Earth as well as his grand aspirations for the future. The Phoenix? The Ark? No, those were too obvious. The Mayflower?
He wandered over to the primary computer station, a bulky transistorized console built into the bulkhead not far from the empty sepulcher Khan had chosen for himself. According to the navigational scanner, the unchristened ship was currently orbiting the Earth over one thousand kilometers above the continent of Australia. A landing monitor showed him the magnified contours of the Gold Coast and Botany Bay.
The latter, he recalled, was the site of Australia’s first European settlement: a British penal colony, peopled by transported convicts, that eventually led to the conquest of the entire continent. An omen of sorts? Khan wondered, impulsively arriving at a decision.
“The S.S. Botany Bay,” he informed Roberta, who promptly entered the name into the ship’s computer. Almost immediately, liquid-crystal display panels flaunted the DY-100’s new designation throughout the ship and upon its outer hull. “A fitting name,” Khan observed, pleased with his choice, “foretelling both struggle and triumph.”
“Indeed,” Seven agreed, as he escorted MacPherson over to his designated niche and prepared him for cold storage. The aged American was busily supervising the disposition of the ship’s passengers, saving Khan and (at the bodyguard’s insistence) Joaquin for last. The crowded hibernation deck gradually thinned out as his people took their places in the niches, so that the chamber soon resembled a space-age catacomb, packed with living corpses. Lighted indicators, positioned above the upper left-hand corner of each niche, revealed which cavities were now occupied. One by one, each light came on.
Khan found himself deeply moved by the faith in his leadership that these courageous men and women had so unequivocally demonstrated, accepting this outlandish new enterprise with nary a complaint or qualm. Their loyalty alone convinced him that he had made the correct decision in accepting Seven’s offer. Such superior beings should not be wasted in a Pyrrhic orgy of revenge, he resolved. I shall see to it that their faith is rewarded one-thousandfold in my empire to come.
After seeing to MacPherson, Gary Seven joined Khan by the computer station. “I have programmed the ship to carry you and your people to an uninhabited solar system roughly 100 light-years from Earth. At full impulse power, just below lightspeed, the journey should take a little over a century, while all of you remain in a state of suspended animation.”
Khan did not bother asking Seven how he knew this solar system to be uninhabited; what was one more mystery amidst the constellation of enigmas surrounding the shadowy older man and his secrets? He could not help being daunted, however, at the prospect of so protracted a voyage. “Over one hundred years,” he repeated in awe, “more than a lifetime, spent in frozen slumber!”
“I must warn you, Khan,” Seven added, his somber expression growing graver still, “that this trip is not without dangers. The DY-100—excuse me, the Botany Bay—is an experimental spacecraft after all, so I cannot guarantee that it will not malfunction in some way. In addition, space itself is full of hazards: asteroids, radiation, space–time anomalies, and so on. There is a very real chance that this journey could end in disaster.”
Khan waved away Seven’s warnings. “It has been said that to conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.” He shrugged nonchalantly; with his course now set, he saw little point in dwelling on worst-case scenarios. “I do not fear the unknown. I welcome it.”
“An attitude that may serve you well,” Seven granted, no doubt relieved that Khan took his warnings as philosophically as he did. “In any event, I have also programmed the computer to wake you first should there be any manner of emergency.”
“That is as it should be,” Khan approved. He inspected once more the intricate garment, constructed of fine golden mesh, that Seven had provided Khan and his fellow emigrants; according to Seven, the delicate fibers were designed to monitor the passengers’ vital functions as they slept. The gilded raiment clung tightly to his body, feeling cold and metallic against his skin.
“Now then,” Seven reminded Khan, “it is time to complete your side of the bargain.” He rested his fingers upon a keyboard attached to the communications terminal. Isis, apparently content to remain in feline form after her lengthy undercover assignment, curled atop a heat-conduction pipe running along a nearby bulkhead. “The self-destruct codes for Morning Star?”
Khan nodded in assent. “It is a two-step process,” he began, resolved to honor his pact with Seven. “First, I must deactivate the force field protecting the satellite, then I can transmit the self-destruct directive.” He gestured for Seven to step aside from the keyboard. “If you will permit me?”
Seven turned over the terminal to Khan. After contacting Morning Star via the correct frequency, Khan commenced to key in the encrypted command to shut down the force field, which, ironically, was based on technology he had pilfered from none other than Seven and Roberta. Strange are the twists of fate, Khan thought.
“No, Your Excellency!” Aghast, Joaquin cried out to Khan bef
ore he could input the final self-destruct code. “Do not cooperate with these saboteurs and traitors!” Clenching his fists, he glowered murderously at Seven. “We should seize control of this vessel and return to Earth!”
The bodyguard’s outburst did not surprise Khan. Joaquin had been in a sullen mood ever since he had recovered from Seven’s tranquilizer beam. That the older man had managed to surprise him back in the sub-basements of the palace understandably disturbed Joaquin, who was also openly suspicious of everything connected with the Botany Bay and its proposed voyage; unlike Khan and the rest of the passengers, he had not yet donned his own gold-mesh outfit, currently lying rejected and ignored within an empty hibernation niche. The ferocious bear’s head upon the bodyguard’s customized brass belt buckle seemed to match Joaquin’s belligerent attitude.
“Return?” Khan echoed, mere seconds away from ordering Morning Star to self-destruct. “To a planet that fervently wishes us dead and buried?” This, he knew, was no longer an option; news reports from the planet below, monitored from the Botany Bay, confirmed that his fortress in Chandigarh had already been reduced to rubble by the American bombers. Does the world already think me dead? he wondered. Doubtless, the world’s leaders will claim that their bombs ended my life, rather than admit that I escaped their wrath.
“Do not trouble yourself, my old friend,” he said gently, sparing a moment to reassure Joaquin. With the press of a button, he sent the coded transmission that ended the threat of Morning Star forever. “Accept my wisdom in this.”
“Yeah, Lenny,” Roberta Lincoln added mockingly. “Go find yourself some rabbits to play with.” She snatched up Joaquin’s discarded golden outfit and thrust the wad of glittering fabric at the bodyguard’s brawny chest. “Better yet, hurry up and get dressed for beddie-bye.”