"After all, no ship should go down without her captain." Khan smirked, then teleported Kirk back to the Enterprise before aiming and firing the weapons systems at the craft. "Pity," Khan thought to himself, "It truly is a great piece of machinery."
A loud explosion shook the ship, knocking Khan out of The Chair and sending him sliding across the floor. The cargo hold near the weaponry was exploding. The torpedoes! Khan cried out in a furious rage, his crew dying with each explosion. Jumping to his feet, he raced through the ship to the damage. He whizzed past the bodies of the previous crew, not paying any heed when he stepped on and broke a few bones here and there. All that mattered was getting to where his crew had been.
The room was now charred and black, and several windows had been busted open, all the oxygen gone, and ash and charr was adrift in the air. Torpedo fragments confirmed his fear: no survivors. A lump formed in his chest. He hadn't felt pain in years, and he was losing the battle quickly. Something small and metal bumped into his cheek. Stepping back, Khan recognized it immediately. Emily's ring. The ring he'd worked so hard to create, and conceal perfectly in her pod, in the hopes that it would be the first thing she saw when she awoke again. He closed a hand around it, the hot steel burning it's shape into his palm, and an anger and pain boiling in his toes. The unfamiliar emotions exploded out of him in another guttural yell. He sent a fist into the steal support beam next to him, the metal crumbling like paper mâché. The fragile ceiling gave way, and another beam crashed into the back of Khan's head, catching him off guard and sending him into the blackness of unconsciousness.
******
"Khan, what are you doing?" Emily stuck her head into the lab, her orange ringlets tumbling down her shoulders like a waterfall of fire.
"Just finishing up the work for Dr. Kale. Trying to perfect these cryotubes to hold a human being for more than just a few years." He continued to peer through the magnifying glass at the wirings of the machine. Emily walked around the table and wrapped her slender arms around his waist, laying her head against his back. "What are you doing?"
"Reminding you that we were supposed to spend tonight together. We do ship out for our first mission tomorrow, Captain Singh, and I would like one last day with you as my lover, rather than my commanding officer." She poked him in the side.
"I'm always your commanding officer." He poked her back, but the comment earned him a punch in the arm. "Right. Not good. Well, just let me finish up here, and we'll go get some food."
Emily huffed, blowing a ringlet out of her face. "Fine." She perched on a stool in the corner and watching him work in silence for a while. Finally she said, "Do you think, after our directive is complete, we'll be able to be together in peace? Without the doctors breathing down our necks, without the training and drills? Where I can cook and garden and we can be alone?"
Khan looked up. "Emily, our directive is just that. Purge the evil, then repopulate and live in peace." He walked over and picked up her hand, tracing the lines on her palm. He placed a gentle kiss there, and whispered, "After all, we were engineered for each other."
******
Khan awoke from the memory to find his ship falling to earth quickly. He felt the ring still clutched in his hand, stood, and let his anger consume him. He knew exactly who pay for her murder, and it didn't matter how many people had to perish before he got to him. Commander Spock would die just as she had.