All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense, and as they please
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
(John Milton, Paradise Lost)

Carol stood on the balcony overlooking the still expanding city stretching at her feet, shivering slightly in the morning chill. Still she refused to go back inside just yet, nursing the awful replicator coffee in the cup in her left hand. She doubted real coffee could ever grow from the porous, inhospitable soil of Ceti Alpha V. This was her home now, this unpredictable planet with its harsh climate and sun that got too bright on most days. It was not exile, not quite, but it felt like it. On her darkest days she almost wished she had done something wrong to warrant her banishment.

The war with the Klingons had been all but lost, when Kirk's Enterprise had found the adrift ship with the cryogenic tubes, floating in the vastness of space like a deranged version of a time capsule. Dr. McCoy had revived one of the frozen men, before the crew even realized who and what he was. A remnant of a time long past. A genetically-engineered superhuman who had once ruled before being defeated and cast away. History remembered him mostly through the atrocities he had ordered after mercilessly crushing his opponents in the many battles he had thought and won. His name was Khan. True to form, he had begun his existence in 23rd century by trying to take over the Enterprise before the crew had stopped him and his newly-awakened fellow Augments.

Kirk and his First Officer had wanted to banish him and the rest of the Augments to an uninhabited planet on the the fringe of Federation space. But Starfleet Command had had other ideas. This savage who claimed both to be better at everything than mere humans and to have been smeared in history books by his enemies, had seemed like an unexpected, albeit dangerous gift. Overruling the objections of the Enterprise officers and using the fear of being decimated by the Klingons to silence Admiral Pike's veto, her own father had proposed they took this chance to get Khan to design new weapons of war. The destruction of Vulcan had weakened the Federation, breeding ever-spreading concern of another Nero looming on the horizons. Though New Vulcan itself had initially vehemently opposed the idea, the heavy losses of a disastrous war had made the decision instead. Everybody knew that even if the Federation survived this challenged, there were no guarantees that the Romulans wouldn't invade next, bolstered by the dwindling forces of what had once been a raising galactic power.

Times were desperate and so were the measures. However, getting Khan to help had been more difficult than Admiral Marcus had anticipated. The former warrior leader had been unfazed by the modifications in mores and technology and rapidly proved that when it came to politics, nothing ever changed. He had asked for the planet Kirk had promised, necessary equipment to make it habitable and numerous guarantees for the safety of himself and his crew. Carol had heard rumors she refused to believe then about her father threatening the Augment with the lives of his own people, to which Khan had countered with threats of going public with what he had learned about creation of an unprecedented and mostly illegal black ops division of Starfleet, which would have only further undermined the already plummeting public moral. He had also liked to remind everyone that it wasn't just Starfleet he could build weapons for.

With the Klingon incursions into Federation space getting bolder and bolder, in the end, Starfleet Command capitulated and the Ceti Alpha system had been granted special under a protectorate that nobody even pretended it wasn't formal. Carol suspected it also made for good plausible deniability, since the new weapons base had been established on Ceti Alpha V as well. It had been around that time that she had discovered two other things: Section 31 was real and herself she was one of the guarantees Khan had requested from her father. The Augment leader had claimed it was a tradition inherited from his reign to seal a new alliance with a marriage. In truth, it was quite clear from his choice of a bride that what he wanted was a highly valued hostage.

Her duty as a Starfleet officer would have compelled her to accept, even if her father hadn't done so without consulting her and then used his rank to just order her to do it. Still it had been hard. To be written off as no more than fine print on an onerous deal by both her father and an organization, to which she had devoted her entire adult life. It hadn't been like she had been seeing someone back then – her work took too much of her time for that – but she had still felt humiliated by her giving up her entire life and career in Starfleet brushed aside like a shameful act everyone wanted to be finished as quickly and as quietly as possible.

She couldn't even fault Khan for it. He had ruthlessly followed his own interests. He hadn't known her. He owned her nothing. He certainly acted like it. In the year that had gone by since their secret and overly formal wedding ceremony followed by an equally expedite move to the new Augment planet, their interactions were more those of colleagues than anything else. As a weapon specialist, she had been working with him on the new torpedoes and war-class ships he was developing for the Federation and she had to admit from a pragmatic point of view, his bargain with her father had been a brilliant move. He was not only incredibly intelligent but also possessed foresight and the kind of strategic thinking their ultra-polished society could never produce. He had a warrior's mind that stayed focused on the ultimate goal without concern for casualties and without any hesitation and it showed in the executive weaponry he had come up with. It was both terrifying and awe-worthy.

Their conversations were strictly business, despite the fact that she lived with him in this compound with odd-angles and eerily white walls. She had her own quarters. Khan had never expressed any interest in so much as touching her and she had been grateful for it in the beginning. In fact, aside from some mild condescension in using her Starfleet title of Lieutenant Wallace, Carol suspected he mostly forgot she existed, spending all the time left from work with his Augments who treated him with mix of affection and a respect she hadn't seen being deferred to even to the most seasoned Starfleet officers. She had an inkling these people were everything Khan loved in this world or any other. It was somewhat heart-warming to know there was something human left in this lethal, inscrutable man, who sometimes filled her with the darkest of forebodings.

That only served, however, to deepen her feeling of isolation. She felt cast away and forgotten by anyone and everything she had ever held dear or believed in. She missed Starfleet, her old life, her friends, even her emotionally-distant father. The Section 31 agents also stationed planet-side to aid with bringing the Augments up to speed with the 23rd century and assist with the weapon projects avoided her like the plague. Khan's people mostly socialized with each other. She was permitted to send communiques back into Federation territory provided that she didn't mention her location or the arrangement with Khan. Lying to her friends had become taxing quickly and safe for the occasional messaging with Christine Chapel, she had stopped bothering altogether.

The days had begun to blend one into the other after that, gray and hollow, while she drifted alone through corridors and weapons facilities, barely speaking to anyone. On some days she absurdly expected to disappear, on others she thought herself a ghost. She had no idea what she was supposed to do with herself in the many years to come. It had been made clear to her that there would be no leaving this place and she could foresee no utility for herself once the war was over. Khan's torpedoes and the first Dreadnought-class ship had recently been deployed for the first time, already putting a serious dent in the Klingon offensive. She supposed she should take joy and a measure of pride, since she had contributed to construction of the new weapons. Instead she felt nothing.

She had always been a woman of action. A direct foe she could confront but she didn't know what to do with this stagnation. Sometimes she tried to console herself by thinking of how the bargain she had helped strike had helped the Federation war effort. But on her worst days that comfort was too flimsy and then she felt guilty and selfish for her doubts. She supposed things could have gone worse. Starfleet Command and her own father had obviously written her off, so, she was at Khan's mercy. She had seen some of the hardest known metals crack in his large hands, but his power didn't come just from his physical strength or the promise of brutality hidden in his towering body, but also from the way he filled any room with his sheer presence. Everything about him exuded command and confidence. The latter was a trait she had always sought to improve in herself, but the level to which Khan displayed it was unlike anything she had ever witnessed before. She wasn't certain whether she was frightened by it or if she admired his self-assuredness.

Of one thing she had grown increasingly sure with the passing of time. There was nothing this man wasn't capable of. She fervently hoped her father or any other admiral would never attempt to double-cross him. If they did, it was the Federation that was at risk. But so far the tenuous status-quo held and the colony on Ceti Alpha V prospered. The wife of Khan's second-in-command, Joaquin, was expecting a baby and several other Augments pairs either already existed from before cryo-sleep or were in the process of forming. They also excited a great deal of fascination among the Starfleet operatives stationed here. Though initial contact had been strained on both sides, the superhumans seemed to accept Starfleet personnel a lot better than they did with her.

Carol wouldn't have been surprised to hear of requests for settlement, if the new society continued to be as successful. Captain Kirk's report on the Botany Bay incident had been read on its way up to Command by someone who had seen fit to leak the story to the media, so, albeit the arms deal itself was highly classified, the existence of the colony was a matter of public record. She knew of enough less fortunes corners of the Federation, like the stigmatized Tarsus IV, the inhabitants of which would welcome moving under a benevolent superhuman reign.

Finishing her now cold coffee with a wince, she trailed back into her bedroom to dress for the day. She had already taken more time than she should have. Theoretically, she had no fixed schedule and nobody policed her comings and goings, but used as she was to a timed routine ever since her Academy days, she had set herself her own rules and was adamant about them. In the weapons hanger she had discovered her PADD full of good news on the Starfleet advance. Her insides flipped uncomfortably, as nostalgia squeezed at her heart. She had worked hard for her former position in Starfleet, fighting the suspicion of favoritism left and right, and dearly missed her old job. But still she was glad the Federation was finally doing better on the war front. Compared to that, her own situation seemed but a detail. Fighting back tears of both regret and happiness, she made her way to her station.

By lunch-time her elation was mostly gone. She had no one to celebrate with. The Section 31 officers continued to keep their distance even in the mess, but she overheard chatter of victory, as she struggled to swallow food that tasted like ashes in her mouth. She hadn't seen Khan all day, either, as he was apparently busy with some Augment issue the specifics of which the humans didn't have. Carol was too proud to beg for company and so she disposed of her half-uneaten meal and getting herself some tea, she went back to work. The pang of Christine's and her other friends' absence had just gotten bitterer.

She only realized the passing of time, when her stiff muscles began to protest the unyielding position they were in. If she still were Starfleet, her shift would be ending by now. Most of the consoles in the work-area were empty as well. Stifling a sigh, she finished running the protocol she was verifying and left. The Starfleet base was purely functional with adjoining living facilities for its occupiers and it was located separately from the Augment city in the barren velds that made most of the planet's landscape. The mountains offered an even worse alternative of nothing but empty rocked haunted by extreme cold and violent winds at night. However, in between the peaks, lay narrow valleys crisscrossed by rivers and enjoying a sweeter climate that allowed for an abundance of local greenery. The colony was in the closest one of those.

Carol usually drove there in her flying car, since the distance was not much longer than going from Tottenham Green to Croydon in London, but she had always felt like traveling between two different worlds while making this road. When she thought better of it, she realized she was. At the colony, she parked her car outside the city and opted for walking home on foot. The trek was rather short and the day was nice, the sun more forgiving here in the valley. As a day here was 39-hours long, it was still light outside. The colony was beautiful, its architecture a mix of what the planet afforded, the minimalist style the Federation consultants had brought from home and the exotic touches dating back to the century its inhabitants had initially lived in. The open spaces between buildings allowed the luxurious local flora to thrive and tiny hydroponic gardens had begun to spawn from place to place. From her limited interactions with them, she had noticed that Augments despised replicator food and preferred to make their own whenever possible.

The unfamiliar sound of laughter floated to her ears and she turned to identify its source. The laughing woman was Mai, who looked like a goddess descended from a literati painting. The old art was lost in Carol's time, the standardizing ways of a unified social structure having long since swallowed up regional distinctions, but some of its poetry seemed to come to life anew in Mai's deceptively delicate features. Mai was walking with one of the best engineer on the Starfleet base. Carol quickly averted her eyes wanting to give them privacy. That was another reason why she predicted the colony would thrive. There was no unattached Augment without a host of suitors at the base, be they alien or human.

Her and Khan's house was located slightly outside the city on a small river terrace, nestled among dusty green and pearly plants. Ignoring the stab of exhaustion, she circled the structure to the river out back and found herself a place to sit in the shadow of a tree reminding her of a willow except that it had silvery petals instead of leaves. The planet had a meager animal life and so there was no sound around safe for the susurrus of the water. In this moment she could believe she was the only living being around. She thought back to the couple she had glimpsed on her way, to her utterly silent midday meal and her empty quarters in the building behind her. Burying her face in her hands, she allowed herself a to cry for the first time in a year.

TBC