STAR TREK - TOS (35 page)

Don’t be ridiculous,Roberta thought. She tried to grin feistily, but ended up grimacing instead.
Seven and
I shut down the Illuminati years ago.

Morrison held up her captured servo to the glow from the lamp. Its silver casing shimmered in the light.

“Impressive ordnance,” he remarked, rolling the slender instrument between his meaty fingers, while his jaws masticated an unseen wad of gum. Stubble peppered his jowls, making him a good deal more disheveled than usual. “My security cameras caught you using it before.”

[314]He tapped the keyboard of his computer, rousing it from powersave mode. The monitor lit up, and he rotated it around so that Roberta could glimpse the screen, where she saw a videotaped image of herself utilizing the servo to slice through the bunker door like an acetylene torch. Roberta thought she looked faintly ridiculous in her nylon jacket and khaki pajamas.

“At one time I would have loved to know who your supplier is,” Morrison said, winking at her with his nictitating membranes. “But that was before you spoiled everything, casting this nation’s last hope for freedom into the abyss.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess,” Roberta said, spitting out the words between razor-sharp pulses of pain. She was hurting too much to try to talk sense to this lunatic. “A crazy, what-planet-are-you-on kind of way.”

Morrison glowered at her, unhappy at having his delusions punctured. “Crazy?” he asked fiercely, an edge of genuine madness in his voice. Standing up suddenly behind his desk, knocking his chair onto its back, he reached for the Glock holstered at his hip and, with preternatural speed, drew his weapon faster than any legendary gunfighter who ever rode the West. “I’ll show you crazy!”

He aimed the gun at Roberta and pulled the trigger repeatedly. Nothing happened, of course, Seven’s transporter having emptied all of Morrison’s firearms of gunpowder, too. “You see!” the general exclaimed, hurling the useless Glock away in disgust. “Who else but the Beast could have devised such a diabolical means to strip free men of the constitutional right to bear arms?

[315]His irate query put Roberta at something of a loss; explaining the extraterrestrial origins of the transporter was not likely to calm Morrison down.
Best just to keep my mouth shut,
she reasoned,
especially since I’m in no shape for a debate.

Turned out it was a rhetorical question anyway. “I’ll tell you what kind of planet I’m on, Ms. Landers.

It’s a planet that, thanks to you, will soon fall under the absolute dominion of a soulless, all-powerful, world government controlled by the likes of Khan Noonien Singh.” Avian eyes the size of silver dollars regarded Roberta mercilessly. “I don’t know about you, little lady, but that’s not something that I’m looking forward to.”

For once, Roberta was forced to agree.

Morrison fiddled with the servo, finding the adjustable collar ring. “So how do you fire this gizmo?” he asked, applying his augmented intellect to the task of mastering the alien instrument’s controls. He fired experimentally at the screen of his computer, switching settings randomly until an invisible beam burned right through the monitor, causing a gout of white-hot sparks to gush from the screen. “Whoa there!” the general laughed joylessly. “Now I’m getting the hang of it.”

I
always knew that thing was too darn user-friendly,
Roberta thought, cradling her splintered arm. She figured Morrison would be using her for target practice next.

He looked like he was thinking about it, but then he looked upward with a start. “Wait!” he exclaimed, his hawk’s eyes searching the stuccoed ceiling. “Do you hear that?”

[316]Roberta didn’t hear anything, not even the howl of a coyote. “Hear what?” she asked.

“Don’t lie to me! There it is again!” He craned his head back, staring at the ceiling fearfully. His jaw dropped open, revealing a mass of green chewing gum stuck to the inside of his cheek. “It’s the copters!”

he declared with paranoid certainty. “The black helicopters! They’re coming for me at last!”

“There are no helicopters,” Roberta whispered, chilled to the bone by the sight of pure, naked insanity.

A teardrop welled at the corner of her eye, and it struck her, with heartbreaking force, that twenty years ago little Randy Morrison had been one of the precocious superkids she’d rescued from Chrysalis.

“There’s nothing there.”

Morrison was beyond hearing her. “Hear that? They’re getting closer.” His head rotated back and forth, from right to left to right again, like an agitated bird. “But I won’t be captured, not by them! There’ll be no show trial, no kangaroo court, no goddamn propaganda victory for the New World Order!”

He turned the tip of the servo toward his own head.

“No!” Roberta blurted. “Wait! Don’t do it!”

Hawklike eyes stared past her, gazing into limbo. “Tell the world I never surrendered.”

The servo hummed, and one more ghost joined the phantoms haunting the deserted mining camp.

Roberta looked away, feeling sick to her stomach.
He was such a bright kid, I’ll bet,
she thought forlornly, remembering an underground day-care center full of budding supergeniuses.

How in the world did we end up here?

CHANDIGARH

MARCH 17, 1995

KHAN STOOD UPON THE RAMPARTS OF HIS FORTRESS, looking out on the city below. He did not like what he saw.

Designed by a Swiss architect merely forty years ago, Chandigarh enjoyed a deserved reputation as India’s most modern and well-organized city. Wide, leafy boulevards met at tidy right angles, according to a sensible grid pattern that neatly divided the city into discrete zones and sectors. Open lawns and parks provided welcome oases of green amidst steel-and-concrete buildings of modernist design. In contrast to, say, the sprawling disorder of Old Delhi, Chandigarh conveyed an impression of cleanliness and control, which was one of the reasons Khan had chosen the city as his capital.

Now, however, parts of Chandigarh, namely the[318]sector dominated by Khan’s fortress, were beginning to resemble an armed camp. Roadblocks and checkpoints, manned by Khan’s own soldiers, obstructed the spacious avenues leading to the palace. As a precaution against car bombs, the nearest streets had been closed to unauthorized auto traffic. Snipers prowled the parapets atop the fortress’ high sandstone walls, alert to the possibility of attack. Thirty meters below, in the once-public plaza outside the main gate, a team of army engineers were digging a trench along the base of the fortress, then rigging the moat with mines and motion detectors.

This is not the brave new world I envisioned,Khan brooded morosely. The ugly fortifications threw a melancholy pall over his soul, darkening his spirit despite the crisp blue sky overhead. He had hoped to create an orderly utopia in which even the lowliest of his subjects could walk the streets in safety at any hour of the day or night; instead, he found himself barricaded inside his own palace grounds, increasingly cut off from the humanity he had desired to rule.

“Your Excellency,” Joaquin entreated, uncomfortable in such an exposed setting, “you should come down from here. It is not safe.”

Khan leaned out over the battlements, resting his palms against the sculpted ocher crenellations. Summer was still a month away, and the stonework felt cool beneath his touch. In the distance, he saw a handful of families touring the city’s famed Rock Gardens; he envied their simple, carefree lives. “Is that what it has come to, my old friend? I am no longer safe upon the walls of my own citadel?”

[319]The stalwart bodyguard could not lie to him. “There have been death threats, Your Excellency.

And plots against your life, both from here and abroad.” He divided his uneasy surveillance between the city streets and the skies, as if anticipating an assassin’s bullet or an aerial assault, respectively.

The worst part was, Khan knew Joaquin’s fears were not unfounded. The more Khan attempted to ensure the security of his domain, by showing zero tolerance for any subversive elements at work, be they religious fanatics, malcontented students, or disgruntled academics, the more bitter the opposition to his reign seemed to become.
Fools!
he railed against them in the sacrosanct privacy of his mind.

Ungrateful troglodytes!
Did his unappreciative subjects not realize that their seditious rumblings, their irksome demonstrations and work stoppages, but played into the hands of his enemies? He did not relish playing the heavy-handed tyrant, but in these perilous times he could ill afford to show any sign of weakness.

“Please, Your Excellency,” Joaquin pleaded, stepping hopefully toward the watchtower wherein the nearest convenient stairwell was located. Fully recovered from the injuries he had sustained at Ajorra, the bodyguard no longer showed any evidence of a limp. “Let us return to the safety of your private apartments. Or one of the enclosed gardens, if you prefer.”

Khan shook his head. He was not yet ready to abandon the relative freedom of the open ramparts. He spent too much of his life locked away these days, strategizing against his enemies, obsessively devising ruthless moves and countermoves to protect his embattled regime from a world that seemed[320]

increasingly arrayed against him. Hunyadi was dead, along with Morrison and Amin, but he still had Gary Seven to contend with, not to mention the increasingly restive attentions of the planet’s so-called

“legitimate” superpowers.
There is too much stubborn opposition in the world,
he lamented sourly,
crossing me at every turn.

“Lord Khan!” an unhappy voice accosted him. Khan turned away from his view of the city to behold, to his surprise and dismay, the Lady Ament striding toward him across the rampart. A glossy sable cloak, drawn shut against the chill March air, concealed her exquisite figure, but nothing hid the marked displeasure upon her refined and elegant features. “I must speak with you at once.”

Keen to the hostile tone in her voice, Joaquin instinctively stepped between Khan and the approaching female. Khan appreciated the impulse, but he was not a man to shy away from a confrontation, no matter with whom. Whatever had incurred the superwoman’s ire, he was inclined to deal with the matter without delay.

“Good afternoon, Lady Ament,” he said evenly, stepping out from behind the looming bodyguard. He smoothed down the silver sash across his chest, which he had donned in solidarity with his loyal Exon warriors. “What brings you up onto these lofty fortifications?”

“Not the view,” she said dryly. Her amber eyes were alight and full of purpose. The wind blew a strand of her lustrous black hair across her face, which she deftly batted away. “I was reviewing our yearly expenditures when I happened upon a rather distressing[321]purchase, hidden away in a fund designated for medical research and development.” Glancing about to make certain that none of the patrolling snipers and guardsmen were within earshot, she lowered her voice so that only Khan and his ever-present shadow could hear. “Perhaps you can explain, my lord, why Dr. Dhasal has seen fit to acquire over two hundred working bio-warheads from the former Soviet Union?”

Khan’s face hardened. “That is a security matter,” he said coldly.

“Which you chose to keep from me,” Ament deduced, her icy tone conveying exactly what she thought of being so excluded. “Yes, I understand that much.” Moving beyond her own bruised feelings, she grilled Khan in the manner of a prosecuting attorney. “What I do not comprehend is why you are transforming Chrysalis Island from a genetic research facility into an incubator and launch pad for full-scale biological warfare?”

“We have many enemies,” Khan stated vaguely. He had always known that someday he and Ament would have this debate, but, now that the time for unvarnished truth had arrived, he found he had little taste for the discussion.

“Two hundred warheads, my lord?” she pressed. “What possible use could there be for such an arsenal? And for a mutated strain of flesh-eating bacteria?”

Her last riposte caught Khan by surprise. “How do you know of that?” he asked in a low voice, his dark brows descending like lightning bolts hurled down from Olympus.

[322]Ament raised her own brows archly. “I am not without my own resources,” she said without apology. She threw back the right half of her cloak, revealing a collection of folded newspapers tucked beneath the crook of her arm. Her amber eyes locked on Khan, she handed the papers over to him; he accepted them warily. “These were among my first clues,” she explained.

He unfolded the documents, which proved to be the front pages of various London tabloids, dated June of 1994, many months ago. “Eaten Alive!” screamed the large block letters upon the first paper, while a second tabloid bore the even more lurid headline: “Killer bug ate my face!” Khan quickly flipped through the rest of the clippings, all of which concerned a sudden outbreak of necrotizing fasciitis in the British Isles. He recalled that Dr. Dhasal had indeed conducted some field tests with the reconstructed bacteria around that time, simply to ensure that the original recipe lived up to the late Dr. Williams’s grisly promises. His understanding was that the pathogen had been much improved upon since then.

“Tabloid sensationalism,” he said dismissively, thrusting the yellowing scandal sheets back at Ament.

“What has this to do with me?”

Ament smiled at him sadly. “Do not dissemble, Lord Khan. It is unworthy of you.” She neatly folded the damning papers and replaced them beneath her arm. “These were but the tip of the iceberg. More evidence is there if one cares to look for it. I know all about this new form of streptococcus, and of Dr.

Dhasal’s mandate, at your own instruction, to cultivate the bacteria in mass quantities. But why, my[323]

lord?” She shook her head in reproachful disbelief. “Is not Morning Star deterrent enough? What need is there for a second doomsday weapon?”

“You miss a key strategic difference, Lady Ament.” Khan adopted a patronizing tone, the better to remind his once-trusted counselor of her place. “Morning Star is indeed a weapon of last resort. Used to its fullest capacity, my Light-Bringer would destroy the ozone layer upon which all life depends, making the world unfit for man and superman alike. This ingeniously constructed bacteria, however, would merely prune the Earth of its teeming masses of ignorant, inferior humanity, leaving the environment intact for such as we, just as my brilliant mother originally intended.”