Mistaken Identity
Spock walked through the stillness of the New Vulcan night. He took inventory of himself as he walked: his left hip creaked, and his right shoulder still had an ache left over from a strain he attributed to overzealous torch waving and glacier climbing on Delta Vega. That such a small injury could still be troubling him over one Vulcan year later reminded him of his age.
At his front door, he placed his palm on the lock, and the house admitted him. As soon as he entered, he knew something was wrong.
"Identify yourself immediately," Spock said into the darkness.
"Section 31," came the reply. "My badge is on the table to the left of the door."
"Lights," Spock said, and the house obliged.
Keeping his eye on the nondescript human male sitting on a chair at his dining table, Spock reached down to the table, and found the electronic identification.
There was no name on it, of course, but the display showed the top-secret access code that Starfleet used when they commed Spock, and the photo matched his visitor's face.
"Very well," Spock said. He sat at the table, across from the man in black, and slid the ID forwards. "What do you want?"
The man pushed a data padd across the table.
"The Federation has a problem," the agent said, taking Spock's lead and getting straight to the point. "You are the only living man who can possibly sort this out for us. Your thumbprint will open the document on the padd."
Spock took the padd, and swiped his thumb across the fingerprint reader. A document appeared.
Section 31 Secure Document
Item number: 2259.68.000024
Classification: Highest level
Circumstances of recovery: upon Section 31 seizure of cryogenically frozen subject from Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, Lt. Cmdr., Starfleet Medical.
Description of item: Handwritten letter, 997 words, ordinary white paper, ordinary pen.
Location found: Subject's left front pants pocket
Subject identification: Unknown. Alias: Khan Noonien Singh (proven false, see Section 31 Case File 2259.00043A-7). Alias: John Harrison (cover identity generated by Section 31). Possible first name: ██████ (redacted).
Subject status: cryogenically frozen. Stored at Section 31 secure facility, location ██████ (redacted).
Content of text (scanned, optically recognized):
My King,
I realize now that I never should have thought I could possibly do what you can do.
You are a king, superior even amongst our band of princes.
I know now that am but an inferior pretender, who dared believe I could achieve the greatness you were destined for. Who dared believe I, by myself, could bring our people to the power we deserve.
I was wrong, and now our people are once again—still—captives, but this time with little hope for revival except as laboratory specimens.
When Marcus woke me, and believed I was you, I let him remain ignorant. I usurped your place in this drama, just as I took your place in a cryotube all those years ago, consigning you to your centuries of slumber in a chamber labeled with the name of a lowly minion. My own intended place of rest.
You, though, could have saved us all.
You could have take over this Federation, through stealth and might, and become the ruler of not just our own planet Earth, but of countless other spheres inhabited by equally inferior beings. You could have enabled our family's ascent to our rightful position not just on Earth, but in the galaxy.
I? I did my best, but my best did not approach what I know you could have done.
I failed you—I failed all our people—the moment I put into action the seeds of my plan to usurp your rightful leadership, my Khan.
You should know the truth about me, and what I've done, in the unlikely event we are ever awakened again. You—not these Starfleet simians—are the only one fit to pass judgment on me for what I've done.
For all the things I've done.
The deeds I feel compelled to confess began well before we embarked on our voyage into the unknown. I won't insult you with the details, but I had become increasingly discontent with your leadership. Not all of us wanted to make the leap into space, but soon we found we had no choices other than submission or death.
As the builder of our ship—which, compared to what I have seen these past months, I am ashamed of—I was the last to enter cryostasis. With the help of a trusted comrade—and yes, there were several of us who thought as I did—I ensured that you were placed in my cryotube, leaving yours for me.
But even my trusted comrades were not a part of what came next. While you all slept, seventy-one silent brothers and sisters, I reprogrammed our ship's computer. I didn't change our destination—didn't sabotage our mission. I simply made sure the ship would lose some of its on-board power, sometime in the far, far future of our voyage.
Without sufficient power, seventy-two cryotubes could not be sustained indefinitely. Naturally, the correct way to decide who would live and who would die was based on our own abilities. You gave me the ordered list yourself, as I was programming the ship's computers. Your abilities, of course, were the highest, so your tube would be guaranteed to remain active longer than anyone's.
My intended tube, programmed with my identity, my information—was nearly at the bottom of the chain of priority. Whoever was in my tube would be one of the first to perish. With you dead, and me alive, my followers and I would have a far greater chance of gaining control of our clan once we arrived at our final destination.
But, thanks to the meddling of the Federation and their secret division, our mission was aborted before we ever arrived at our new home.
When I awoke, the lights were too bright, and the sounds were too loud. Someone called your name.
"Mr. Singh," he said, in his strange accent.
I laughed.
I opened my eyes to a world of unimaginable technology. A world where aliens, most of whom were just as dim as the Humans I encountered upon my awakening, roamed freely. A world where races had mingled over the centuries, and where names didn't always predict appearances nearly as well as they did in our twentieth century.
A world where they would believe that I, a pale-skinned, blue-eyed man, could be the great Khan Noonien Singh, of Earth's nearly-forgotten twentieth century.
For a while, I worried that photos of our clan would surface, but World War III had apparently taken care of that problem. I realized soon after my awakening that the people who woke me knew much about our group as a whole, but little about us as individuals. They continued to assume I was you, and I was content to allow them to believe my unintended deception. I had never intended to pass myself off as you to anyone other than the computer of the Botany Bay. But their misunderstanding served my selfish desires, so I allowed it to continue.
They gave me a name, and an identity, and a job. I was to serve them in the development of military technology.
My job allowed me—no, required me—to understand current science. Oh, my king, the wonders I saw!
Admiral Marcus made many, many errors in his dealings with me. From the start, he mistakenly assumed that my participation in Section 31's plans implied agreement with his plans. He did not understand that I knew he was using me—knew he would at some point show his duplicity.
But all the while, I bided my time, planning my coup. This time, my coup would not be just a change in leadership for our small clan, but would put our family at the top of the most powerful alliance in the galaxy.
You could have done it.
I could not, and did not. I failed, miserably and spectacularly.
I succeeded in one thing, and one thing only: I prevented the murders of our family. They became pawns; disposable pieces in a not-quite-mad-man's quest for the power that can only come during times of war.
Should you choose to show me mercy for that accomplishment, I would be most grateful. Should you choose otherwise, I will abide by your decision.
Whatever happens next, whatever our family's fate may be, I am, once again, your humble servant.
Yours, always,
██████ (redacted)
~!~!~!~
Spock Prime handed the padd back to the man in black.
"You see our quandary?" the man asked.
"Indeed I do," Spock said. "I am unsurprised by your sudden appearance, given the conflicting information trickling from Starfleet Command over the last weeks."
"Will you help us? Show us which of the frozen people is the real leader of this group?"
"I will not," Spock said simply. His gravelly voice carried the weight of an entire generation erased by a trip through time.
"You 'will not?' That's all you have to say?" the man asked, brows knitted together.
"Have I not made it clear that I have no intention of using any knowledge from my timeline to alter yours?"
"Yes, but—"
Spock interrupted, his voice uncharacteristically raised for a Vulcan. "The man who impersonated Khan destroyed half of San Francisco. Understand this: the real Khan Noonien Singh would do far, far worse. So I will do this one thing. I will give you one piece of advice, based on what I learned in my timeline."
The man in black sat on the edge of his seat, poised to hear one of Spock Prime's rare mentions of his past.
"Keep them frozen. All of them. There is nothing—no reason in all the stars, of all the galaxies—compelling enough to unleash this force on the universe again. I urge you: if you cannot or will not destroy the cryochambers, then bury them, as deeply as possible, somewhere where they will never, ever be discovered. Protect the site, such that any tampering results in immediate destruction of the chambers."
The man waited for more, but Spock said nothing else.
"That sounds personal, if you ask me," the man said, finally.
Spock raised an eyebrow, then lowered it again.
"The appropriate phrase is, I believe, 'take it or leave it.'"
The man stared at Spock for a few seconds, looking poised to say something angry, but instead, he burst out laughing.
"Kirk was right. You're like no other Vulcan I've ever met."
"That is an accurate statement," Spock said.
The man in black stood up, knowing he was beaten. He had met an unmovable object, and knew that he himself was far from an irresistible force.
Spock stood as well, to show his visitor to the door. At the door, he paused, hand on the doorknob.
"Was there something else, Ambassador?"
Spock raised an eyebrow at his old title, which he thought had died with his timeline.
"Actually, there is. A question, if you will," he said.
"Fire away," the Section 31 agent said. "You know I can't guarantee you an answer, but I'll see what I can do."
"James Kirk," Spock said. "Rumors have been … astonishingly vague and conflicting. He was reported dead. Then he was reported to be in critical condition, and once more reported to be dead. Further information has not yet reached New Vulcan. Is he alive? And if so, is he well?"
The agent tapped his toe on the floor as he pondered his response.
"He's alive," the man said, but didn't continue.
Spock gazed intently at him.
"Damn it. You should come work for our interrogation division. Okay, he's awake. He woke up a couple days ago. That's all I know."
"Thank you," Spock said.
"You're welcome. And you didn't hear it from me."
"Of course not. After all, we have never met, and you were not here tonight," Spock said.
He opened the door, and the man disappeared into the darkness of the New Vulcan night.
"There is only one logical course of action at this time," Spock said to himself.
Spock closed the door, and went to his bedroom. He pulled a suitcase from the closet, and began packing.
The End