STAR TREK - TOS (18 page)

[154]“I do not dismiss your fears lightly, my friend,” he assured Joaquin, placing his hand upon the bodyguard’s brawny shoulder, “but I cannot let apprehension alone dictate my actions. Great victories sometimes require great risks, and I believe the prize we seek tonight fully warrants whatever hazards we tempt by coming here.”

Joaquin seemed to realize he could not dissuade Khan. “As you wish, Your Excellency.” He turned toward the Exon soldier nearest the temple, who was scanning the imposing structure with a handheld mechanism of Khan’s own design. “Well?” Joaquin demanded of the trooper. “What do you read?”

The soldier kept his eyes on the scanning device. “I am detecting only a single individual within the temple.” He double-checked the readings, just to be safe. “The granite is very thick in places, I’m afraid, so the results are not one hundred percent certain.”

“An acceptable risk,” Khan declared quickly, before Joaquin could raise any further objections. “Post your guards outside every exit. Make sure no one leaves or enters while you and I are inside.” His dark eyes narrowed as he stared at the forbidding stone walls of the deserted temple. “We shall enter alone, as arranged.”

The anxious bodyguard would undoubtedly have preferred Khan to be accompanied by a full security detail, but Joaquin held his tongue, maintaining a stony silence as he and Khan walked beneath the temple gate, leaving the armed troopers behind. An autumn wind whistled through the upper towers of the sculpted sanctuary like the mournful notes of the shehnai, a Hindustani instrument not unlike an oboe.

Thunder sounded somewhere in the distance.

[155]Khan did not look back.

The gateway led to an open courtyard, whose basalt tiles had been worn smooth by the passage, over the centuries, of myriad pilgrims. A central worship hall provided access to the three-story shrine beyond, whose pyramidal design was meant to mimic Mount Meru, the Himalayan home of the gods. Smaller shrines flanked the granite pyramid, known as the shikara, beneath which the top-secret rendezvous was scheduled to take place.
Let us hope,
Khan thought,
that this trip is worth my while.

A flicker of trepidation passed through Khan as they stepped into the cavernous entrance of the worship hall, but he dismissed it as unworthy of his exalted station. Nonetheless, he remained alert for any hint of ambush, keeping one hand on the grip of his pistol as he followed the beam of his flashlight deeper into man-made caverns hollowed out of the living rock twelve centuries before. The incandescent beam fell upon striking tempera murals, painted, many generations ago, on the dry surface of plastered cow dung.

Although the murals’ once-brilliant colors, including cinnabar-red and lapis lazuli-blue, had necessarily faded over the centuries, the frequently erotic artwork retained much of its original power. Khan admired the cavorting gods, demons, and lovers painted on the tunnel walls, even as he remained on guard against treachery.

Finally, they came to the location described in the coded communications leading up to this meeting: a somber shrine, or chaitya, deep in the heart of the immense pyramid. Parallel rows of ornate stone columns supported a high, rib-vaulted ceiling, with a dancing[156]stone Shiva presiding over the chamber from an altar at the rear of the sanctum. Elaborate bas-reliefs, depicting various episodes from the life of Shiva, ran around the cornice bridging the thick granite columns.

Much decoration, in other words, but no glimpse of the emissary Khan had arranged to meet here. He briefly turned the beam of the flash upon his own wristwatch. It was exactly 3:50 A.M. He was a few minutes early.

“Show yourself!” he demanded, unwilling to wait upon the other man’s convenience. His impatient voice echoed within the artificial cavern. “My time is valuable. Do not waste it.”

“Very well, Khan Singh,” a raspy voice whispered from the shadows. Khan turned his flashlight toward the voice and saw a skeletal figure step out from behind one of the timeworn columns. “Far be it from me to try the patience of such as yourself.”

The speaker, whose voice held a Russian accent, looked more dead than alive. His gaunt face was pale, bloodless, and emaciated, like that of a concentration camp victim. Rheumy, bloodshot eyes examined Khan from the depths of sunken, discolored sockets. He trembled in the coolness of the cave, despite his double-breasted, steel-gray greatcoat, of the sort formerly favored by the KGB. Khan heard the Russian’s lungs wheeze painfully with every breath, and guessed that the man was dying. Used to the physical perfection of his closest associates, he found the stranger’s decrepit state disturbing.

How long had the Russian been standing there in pitch blackness?“Where is your own light?” Khan asked, puzzled by the man’s behavior.

[157]“Here,” the haggard Russian answered, removing a compact flashlight from a coat pocket and flicking it on, so that the light shone in Khan’s face, forcing him to blink and look away. “I was merely accustoming myself to the dark. Not a bad idea, you must admit, given that it is in unending darkness that we must all ultimately spend eternity.”

Khan had little interest in the man’s morbid musings. “Do you have what you promised?” he asked impatiently, stepping forward to push the other man’s flashlight away from his face. “Show me what you have.”

He had come to Ajorra in search of knowledge; specifically, technical know-how relating to advanced genetic engineering. Despite the assiduous efforts of Phoolan Dhasal, her team at Chrysalis Island had not yet been able to duplicate Sarina Kaur’s success at cloning multiple copies of a single fertilized human egg, a key step in the application of genetic engineering on a large scale. Conventional wisdom had it that such an egg could only be cloned twice before expiring, yet somehow his mother had developed a technique for producing dozens of identical copies of a single egg, thus increasing the odds of successful hybridization later on. Alas, that secret appeared to have died with her, consumed by the cataclysm that had destroyed the original Chrysalis Project nearly two decades ago.

Until a few weeks ago, that is, when Khan had been contacted by the man before him, who claimed to have classified scientific information from a top-secret genetic research project conducted by the Russian military some years before the collapse of the[158]Soviet Union. The Russian, whom Khan knew only by the code name “Strigoi,” had offered him the information in exchange for political asylum and a generous pension, boons Khan was perfectly willing to bestow upon the expatriate Russian, provided that the data was all that it had been professed to be.

Now that he had met Strigoi face to skull-like face, and seen the sorry state of the Russian’s health, he could not help wondering why the infirm man was even bothering to make provisions for a future that could not possibly amount to very much time at all. His code name, a Russian synonym for “vampire,”

seemed bleakly appropriate, given how much the man resembled a walking corpse.

I suppose,Khan observed philosophically,
even the dying and the diseased cling to whatever meager
prospects they might possess.
He liked to think that, when his own time finally came, ninety or a hundred years from now, Khan Noonien Singh would not go gently into that good night. I
will fight on,
pitting my strength and intelligence against the universe, until my dying breath
. ...

How then could he blame this wretched specimen for trying to make the best of whatever time remained to him? “Well?” he demanded again, aware that Joaquin was anxious for Khan to conclude this meeting and return to the protection of the guards waiting outside. “What is the matter? Give me the data.”

Instead of handing over any sort of folder or disk, the Russian casually looked around the lavishly ornamented shrine. “A fascinating place, don’t you think?” His flashlight beam, which wavered in the man’s trembling grip, rose to find an exquisite bas-relief[159]depicting Shiva at war against an army of demons. The god was sculpted with four arms, bearing a fire, a horn, a drum, and a trident, respectively.

A garland of skulls was strung about the deity’s neck. “They say that over 200,000 tons of rock were cut away from the hillside to shape this temple and its surrounding walls. Can you imagine the dedication, the commitment, required to undertake such a feat?”

Khan got the distinct impression that Strigoi was stalling. Eyeing the man suspiciously, keeping him caught in the glare of his flashlight, Khan noticed that the Russian seemed to be fumbling with something in the left pocket of his heavy greatcoat.
A weapon?
he speculated.
Or perhaps a computer disk
bearing the data I seek?

He did not wait for the overly discursive Russian to get around to the business at hand. Moving with the speed and ferocity of a Bengal tiger, Khan shoved Strigoi against the nearest column, then held the man in place with a single hand around his throat while handing over his flashlight to Joaquin so that his other hand was freed to search the man’s pocket. The Russian’s neck felt so dry and brittle that Khan had to make an effort not to crush it by squeezing too hard. “Enough delays,” he snarled at his prisoner. His fingers closed on a small plastic object in the pocket of the coat. “Let us see what you have here.”

To his surprise, the confiscated item turned out to be a miniaturized walkie-talkie of some sort. Had the Russian been transmitting their meeting to parties unknown? Khan held the incriminating device up to his mouth and pressed the Speak button. “This is Khan Noonien Singh,” he said angrily. “Who is this?”

[160]“Good evening, Khan, or should I say good morning?” He recognized the heavily accented voice of Vasily Hunyadi. “I am gratified to hear that you are indeed there in person, just as I hoped.” Khan could easily visualize the sardonic amusement in the Balkan dictator’s sole remaining eye. “I am so sorry to hear about the tragic earthquake in your country.”

Earthquake?
“What do you mean?” Khan barked into the transmitter, while continuing to pin Strigoi to the wall with his left hand. Adrenaline flooded his system as he sensed the jaws of a trap closing on him.

“Explain yourself!”

“
Interj
, Khan,” Hunyadi said, bidding him farewell in Romanian. The transmission broke off at the other end, so that only static came from the plastic communicator. Khan crushed the useless device within his fist, intending to do the same to the captive Russian if he was not immediately forthcoming with answers.

Then the first tremor struck.

A deafening roar arose from the earth beneath his feet. The floor of the ancient temple shuddered violently, almost throwing Khan off-balance. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling, followed by heavier chunks, of solid granite. Releasing his grip on the Russian’s throat, Khan watched in alarm as the massive columns tottered unsteadily, threatening to topple entirely—and bring the entire shrine down upon their heads.

His usually stolid face alight with panic, Joaquin tried to call out a warning, but his words were lost in the clamor of the quake. The jarring vibrations shook the flashlight loose from his grip. The dislodged[161]

electric torch hit the ground hard, then rolled across the quaking floor, causing the light to race erratically across the chamber, adding to the nightmarish chaos. “What have you done?” Khan shouted over the din, more furious than frightened by Hunyadi’s apparent perfidy. “What is this?”

Crouching on the floor, unable to stand atop the shaking ground, the Russian laughed hoarsely. “The darkness I spoke of, Khan Singh.” Stirred-up dust aggravated his already failing lungs, forcing him to cough convulsively between every other syllable. “It has been decided that you should join me there, rather sooner than you may have expected!”

There is no classified Soviet data,Khan realized with dreadful certainty. Struggling to stay upright, he clasped a hand over his mouth and nostrils, trying to keep out the dust and powdered stone.
This entire
exercise has been a suicide mission, aimed directly at my life. Small wonder Hunyadi chose a
terminal man as his stalking-horse!
But how had Hunyadi managed to trigger an earthquake at will?

Time enough to discover that later,
he counseled himself pragmatically,
should I survive.

Despite the peril to his own safety, Khan was tempted to slay the deceitful Russian with his bare hands.

At least let me take my assassin with me,
he thought, but a falling fragment took that option out of his hands, striking Strigoi in the head, flattening his skull. Khan saw that, ironically, the man was killed by a sculpted frieze bearing the image of Shiva, the destroyer, crushing the demon Ravana beneath his toe.

Khan feared that he and Joaquin, too, would soon[162]go the way of Ravana. Shards of broken granite bounced off his back and shoulders, bruising him to the bone. Khan turned toward his faithful servitor only to see an outcropping of solid rock rear up from the floor beneath Joaquin’s feet, knocking the ponderous bodyguard to the ground. The breath knocked out of him, unable to shield himself from the falling rubble, Joaquin was struck by heavy lumps of shattered stone. He flailed uselessly against the bombardment for a heartbeat, then fell alarmingly still.

“My friend!” Khan cried out. Keeping his head low, he stumbled across the swaying floor to Joaquin’s side. Throwing aside the jagged rocks that threatened to bury the unconscious bodyguard, he grabbed hold of Joaquin beneath his arms in hopes of dragging him to safety.

But where? Khan looked about desperately for shelter, his eyes straining to penetrate the dust and murk.

Perhaps between two of the sturdy columns? He staggered across the rubble-strewn floor toward the nearest pillars, only to hear a tremendous cracking noise directly in front of him. To his horror, he saw one of the teetering columns break free from its moorings and topple toward him. Hundreds of kilos of solid stone came crashing at his head.

Only his superhuman reflexes saved both him and Joaquin from instant death. Dropping the insensate bodyguard back onto the ground, Khan threw up his arms with lightning speed and caught the falling pillar before it smashed his skull. A grunt escaped his lips as he absorbed the impact of the gigantic column. The awesome weight pressed down upon his arms, back, and knees, but, bracing his boots against the[163]rocky floor, he managed to keep the pillar aloft, at roughly a forty-five-degree angle to the floor, its killing weight suspended only centimeters above his head.