"Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."
Milton, Paradise Lost
I have no excuse, so sorry this update took two months. D:
I thought I'd have time to update way sooner. (Onto good news though, the next chapter is almost ready!)
Stardate 2259.72
(March 13th 2259)
Trial
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It was not in Commodore José Mendez's nature to be cruel.
He'd joined Section 31 not out of a desire to do things with less accountability or to circumvent the legal restraints that most Starfleet officers were bound by, but simply because he believed that sometimes the rules got in the way of true justice, or of whatever needed to be done for the greater good. He wasn't alone in thinking that way, even if there was also quite a number of people in Section 31 with far less elevated ideals and intentions.
José's fury towards Khan was born of pain, anger, and a desire for revenge of enough magnitude to make even an otherwise just man want to see blood spilled to repay the loss of Pike.
Admiral Pike was a Federation hero. His death, and that of the other admirals who perished in the Daystrom conference room, were a fresh wound in the consciousness of many in Starfleet, even those who hadn't been quite as close to him.
Even without considering the hatred Section 31 felt towards Khan for the the destruction of their secret weapons facility in London and even more so for the loss of their leader -as well as various other setbacks such as the loss of the USS Vengeance- there were many in Starfleet as a whole, who would have already wished for retribution on the basis of that attack alone.
It wasn't any surprise then that this high-security room at Starfleet Headquarters, in which the trial was going to be held, was brimming with hatred and a desire for swift and brutal retribution.
There was a large amount of top Starfleet brass and Section 31 personnel in attendance, and as such, despite the secrecy around it all, the trial was being held in one of the larger rooms set up specifically for court-martials.
José stood against the railing in the lower row of the tiered gallery along the length of the wall. Most of the officers who'd been allowed to watch the trial were seated there, opposite the elevated area across the room from where the admirals ruling the court were settling down. This area was a higher gallery, single-file instead of set-up in rows, and with more comfortable seats and a long table before them.
At the center of the room, below both areas and oriented sideways so as to offer ideal visibility to both groups, was a smaller enclosed dais for the accused, reminiscent of a mix of defendant's table and the witness stands from Earth's old times' courtrooms, perhaps set-up that way for tradition's sake. There was no seat in it, however, only a waist-high metal rail surrounding it on all sides, replacing the artificial-wood rail that would normally have been there. Maybe they didn't want to risk leaving anything that might be used as a weapon. The metal was bolted to the ground. It was almost surprising it wasn't a full-sized cage.
The fury and hatred shared by all the officers present seemed to reach a paroxysm when the prisoner was brought in.
And yet, for all that José wanted to see the augment brought down and punished for his crimes, he had a bad feeling when he saw a detachment of soldiers bring him into the room, two of them half-carrying half-dragging the man between them. He was bloodied and barely conscious.
Like many other Starfleet officers, José had seen pics and footage of Khan before, anywhere from the surprisingly fragile-looking photo of him in the official file for John Harrison -which José later would come to realize, was taken shortly after Marcus first found Khan and his crew, captured him and pressed him into service- to the much more dangerous way he looked in the excerpts of security footage in San Francisco and later in his cell at the Section 31 facility. Seeing him fighting on video had reinforced José's assumptions about Khan, but moments when he looked vulnerable were always harder to process.
And like some of the higher-ranking Section 31 members, he'd also seen the rest of the top-secret file -classified even to most of Section 31 personnel- revealing the discovery of the SS Botany Bay and identifying the man as the same Khan Noonien Singh from the Eugenics Wars nearly three hundred years ago. (The name was taboo, and all the files about the trial would be marked as pertaining to the court-martial of Starfleet officer "John Harrison," even though those present blatantly knew how false that was.)
But nothing that he read or saw had prepared him for this.
Not only because finally seeing the murderer of Pike in person reawakened his anger and desire for revenge, but also because the way Khan looked elicited such a contrary reaction.
He was sure the augment would stroll into the room with disdain and condescendingly sneer down at them. A "superior human", made to be better than them all; most likely considering them all to be nothing but insects that he would squash without a qualm.
Everything about him must be cold and calculating, no warmth or vulnerability, just a killing machine.
Or so, José had expected.
Even covered in blood, the man that was dragged into the room was just so…human.
It was hard to imagine that this man could be the cold-blooded murderer that José had been expecting to see.
Even after all his warnings to Jim and his certainty that Khan was a cunning animal, a dangerous creature, José found himself horrified at the sight of the guards manhandling the gaunt prisoner into the small enclosed space at the center of the room, roughly cuffing his wrists to the rail surrounding it. The way the augment tried to look unfazed but stumbled in and strained to stay upright after the guards released his arms, leaning heavily onto the barrier and breathing with difficulty, sent a cold shiver up the commodore's spine.
What are we doing here? How can this be justice?!
José swept the gallery with a quick glance, searching the others assembled for a similar reaction, wondering if he was alone in this contradictory yearning for revenge hindered by sudden scruples.
But then Khan seemed to find his bearings, and the entire room's attention was immediately focused on him. The augment turned towards the assembled admirals. Green-blue eyes that until a moment ago were disoriented as he was dragged in, suddenly took on a hardness and a depth of hatred that José had never seen in anyone, nor had even thought possible.
The augment positively snarled at them, "Is this the lot who would dare judge me? Your starfleet calls me a monster, but you are the ones who are no better than the tyrants of the past that you so readily lump me with!"
Despite his current state, Khan's outraged voice still held its power and echoed across the room, his disgust for all present made obvious in everything about him.
José's gaze grew cold and hard. Where he would have normally seen a prisoner barely standing, he now saw again the rabid murderer he'd warned Jim against. The memory of the shame he'd felt when Jim had witnessed the behavior of the guards in the video-feed was now forgotten.
Khan's hands were still gripping the barrier tightly in order to keep standing, but José no longer saw it like that, an injured prisoner struggling to stay upright. Instead, he saw the fresh blood just summarily wiped, on the augment's fingers and arms, and realized Khan must have killed again at some point just before the trial. He seemed to be also openly bleeding from a number of wounds that his formerly-white -and now dirty and blood-stained- prisoner garb did nothing to conceal, but it was hard to imagine that all of the blood on him could be from that only.
You have the nerve to accuse us, to insult us, when you are still dripping with the blood of your latest victims.
Fury rose in the commodore's gut, made worse by the fact that up until Khan's outburst, José had almost felt something akin to pity for the augment. He clenched his teeth and cursed internally for having almost fallen for his act and played right into what the augment certainly must have been hoping for. It had to be. He was angry at himself for his foolishness, but so much more so at the augment and his wiles.
Around him, the gallery seemed to be afire with anger too; officers of all ranks and all backgrounds united in this collective fury barely restrained by the propriety that a tribunal demanded, but yearning to be unleashed on the murderer who dared to taint the name of their fleet after all he'd done to it.
You killed Pike. You killed so many more. And you dare stand here and act like you're not a monster.
You will burn, you bastard.
You will never kill again.
We will bury you.
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...
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There was only so much that a human being could take.
And even an augmented human was, after all, still only human.
Khan had been running on fumes for so long that he felt like a ragged bow with a frayed string, pulled taut too many times, a little closer to snapping with each new time he was made to fire. And he wasn't sure how much longer he had before he was too far gone to function effectively.
The broken bones in his body, the aches and internal bleeding, those he continued to refuse to acknowledge, much like the visible bleeding on the outside, the foreign metal embedded in his spine, the way his head still felt fuzzy from that induced seizure…
Even with all that, none of it would have been enough to weaken his willpower.
Nothing could possibly make him give up on fighting for his people.
But he wasn't going to fool himself about still being able to make a difference once his thought process or even his ability to speak unraveled at last. He was just too injured and had lost far too much blood to last indefinitely.
Now that escape was impossible as a result of Dr. Adam's device, his only chance was talking his way out into some alternative to the death penalty, and his prospects were looking rather dim.
What he found the very worst obstacle wasn't even the way his body was rapidly falling apart. It was by far the wall he seemed to be once more cornered at the foot of, a barrier that he couldn't overcome, even if he'd had all the time in the world. And he doubted he had more than a few hours left before his body shut down from too much damage.
The same old wall that always appeared in his path, blocking the way, destroying everything he'd worked for his whole life.
It wasn't a surprise.
It had always been all about walls, all through his life.
As a small child, he'd already been surrounded by them.
Tall fences with barbed wire and later thick concrete walls, which people at the lab told him were there to protect them from the angry protesters outside, who spent day and night yelling through the walls that they were an abomination that didn't deserve to live. Walls to "protect" them, until they were old enough to be able to fight, and, of course, to be sold off to the highest bidding countries all over the world. They were an expensive commodity.
Walls that had been there not to truly protect, but to hold precious merchandise in. Walls that he grew up staring at and yearning to climb over and never return. But not alone, there would be no point if he was alone in the world.
Later, there had been other walls, more subtle, in the shape of sale contracts, mercenary missions and obligations, threats as thick as the concrete of his early childhood had been. Walling him in the war, always reminding him that if he so much as dared to think of rebelling, failing a mission, escaping, or any form thereof, those he cared for would pay the price. A sword of Damocles hanging over their heads at all times, never all together, and always unable to attempt escape separately.
But he'd finally broken through, leading his people to freedom, away from those who thought they were property to sell and use at will.
And there were new walls, once he was in power, this time walls truly in place to protect them and the people who sided with them, from invasion. Metaphorical ones in the form of countless treaties, and real ones along some areas of their borders, or along various fortresses.
Fours years of mad hope and impossible dreams.
And of walls that had been breached over and over -be they made of paper and ink or bricks and mortar- and which they patched up endlessly, desperately, rather than go to war. Blindly trying to cling onto the possibility of peace. But it was all doomed from the start, and in the end, the few of them that were left had to hide between brand new metal walls to escape to space instead -the Botany Bay.
Khan sighed, despair churning inside him. Because all along, the greatest wall there ever had been was not made of stone or concrete.
It was the wall within people's minds. The wall that humanity had decided existed between them and augments. Branding Khan and his people as inhuman, unworthy of saving, mere cattle to use and dispose of at best, or vermin too dangerous to be left alive at worst.
And that was a wall he'd never succeeded at breaching completely. There were many people who had sided with them, but the rest of the planet - some out of simple prejudice and racism, others fueled by the fear of the augment rulers who really could be called tyrants- was against them.
And so it only lasted a brief few years before that dream shattered to pieces- so he'd given up altogether on Earth, thinking that only by fleeing into space would they finally be free. That they would find a future where the world was different, where humans would accept them as part of the same species. Or that they might find a new planet where the differences wouldn't matter, and where they might finally be welcome without anyone feeling the need to invade the place to eradicate them.
But the future had been the same as the past. Khan's bright hopes and optimistic assumptions were shattered the day Admiral Marcus had his men drag him out of his cryotube and immediately put him in a cage. The future had so many aliens that were stronger and smarter than humans and yet, humanity still refused to accept them, as if the mere genetic difference between them was enough to condemn them forever.
He supposed it was his fault, after all. With all that he'd gone through during his childhood and the wars, he thought he must truly be a fool to still have harbored any hopes that it might one day be any different. That mankind could evolve beyond such petty things and accept them.
He was anything but a blind optimist, and yet, even with his instinctive wariness and natural distrust, he'd still been surprised by how little improvement there had been in human evolution. All his dreams and hopes for the future were just that, foolish daydreams. He discovered a world full of technical advancements, but in which he felt that man himself had changed so little.
It was all for nothing. All I ever gave them was false hope.
If he'd known back then, he'd have done everything differently. They'd have stayed on Earth and fought to the death, to the very end together. It would have been a better end than this. At least dying in battle, they'd all have been sure none of his people would end up as lab rats again.
Now he found himself a caged animal once more, begging a gaggle of self-important fools, desperate for any chance to save his people no matter the cost.
But it was like talking to a wall, all over again. No matter what he did or said, in their eyes he wasn't human, none of his people were; they were either potentially useful lab subjects or a dangerous species to be eradicated. And so their judges felt no guilt.
From the expressions around him, not all were as bloodthirsty as some but they all seemed to be in agreement that augments were a menace to be disposed of, in whatever way they felt best benefited the Federation.
Some looked down on his staggering figure as some sort of embarrassment to their tribunal, like a nefarious parasite, bleeding on the floor of their courtroom and making a mockery of their institution by forcing them to hold this hearing for the sake of propriety. It was clear they would have much preferred to simply put him down like a rabid animal.
He saw it clearly in their eyes, that so many of them would have gladly had him executed without bothering with the trial at all if they could. Those who would normally have seen the horror of their actions were too blinded by anger and desire for retribution to see what they were doing.
Like a lynch mob thirsty for blood. No matter what I say falls on deaf ears. It's the end of the war all over again.
No. The war never ended. Our cryostasis just postponed the inevitable.
He clenched his fists against the banister, hands shaking in the cuffs, willing his knees to keep holding him upright.
He was surrounded by people who self-righteously believed themselves grand paragons of morality and science and exploration, who went wandering among the stars as if the whole universe was their playground, as if they had the right to barge their way into anyone's territory and force them into a relationship with their Federation, and who were perfectly willing to destroy what they viewed as an entire species on the simple basis that they might be a danger. 'Too dangerous to be left alive'... 'too much of a potential threat'... Not even at the heart of the war, when other augment rulers had been slaughtering people in droves, had Khan ever considered that those reasons might justify such actions. Never. He'd always been adamantly against any form of massacre.
And yet, these so-called civilized men, these enlightened people, so quick to pass judgement on him based on assumptions and wild fears, were ready to execute him and the entirety of his people. Actual genocide, of all that was left of them.
He craned his neck painfully, gazing at the admirals one by one, with such hatred that some looked fearful even though he was chained to the rail. Yes, he would kill them all if he could. He'd tried to, with the ship. But it might not have been so if things had gone differently. Now the well was poisoned, on both sides.
In his eyes, most of the people in this court were no better than buffoons. He was better, he should never have had to justify his actions in defense of his people, least of all to ones such as the pompous fools in this room.
But it was the only way he might have any hope of success, and so he would try and try, desperately so, with every ounce of strength and every breath of air he had left, no matter how much his body may hurt or how hard it was to stay conscious, no matter that it felt like his most futile effort to date.
The trial might be just a rigged hearing for the appearances of due-process, but it was still running its course as if it was real, and so they were all going through the motions.
And so Khan had explained his position over and over, how his actions, wrong as they may have been, were done out of a lack of any other recourse, and how, even if he was to be condemned for it, his people were innocent.
His message fell on deaf ears over and over, no matter how many times he reworded it, or added any mitigating details.
If anything, they seemed more furious as he explained that in a moment of madness on the ruins of the Vengeance, amidst the shattered glass and the blaring alarms, at the lowest point of his despair, he'd considered engaging the ship's self-destruction sequence, but had balked at the thought of what would happen to the city and all its inhabitants.
All of San Francisco and much of the area beyond it would have been razed to the ground in a nuclear catastrophe worthy of the worst of the Eugenics Wars.
All that it would have taken was for him to have confirmed the order.
Everyone in the room, everyone in the city, was alive only because of his mercy.
Because he'd looked through the torn-open viewscreen of the Vengeance and gazed upon the devastation he'd wrought, and snapped out of it. Even consumed by grief and wrath and having nothing left but revenge, he couldn't bring himself to do it, not when the price would have been the lives of the civilian population of the entire city.
And they were going to reward his mercy by executing him and giving the people he held most dear an end worse than death itself.
In the eyes of those present in the room, Khan and his people had been condemned as war criminals long ago and Starfleet was merely carrying out a much delayed execution. Just as Admiral Marcus had put it, before he tried to take out the Enterprise and the near 1200 people on board.
It hardly mattered to most that the courts that had convicted them in the 20th century had done so as mass convictions towards an entire race, completely unrelated to individual responsibility. Or that the Federation had technically abolished the death penalty long ago -there were countless jokes about the exceptions that existed to get around that abolition, aside from the most famous one concerning Talos IV. One more exception, especially one backed by precedent of an older condemnation, would hardly make a difference. Khan and his people were not Federation citizens. And because they had been engineered, some in Section 31 might even argue that they should be considered objects rather than sentient beings.
There was no way to describe the amount of loathing and despair Khan was feeling at the moment. The weight of it was crushing him so much more readily than all the physical damage ever could.
There was no justice to be had in that court. He knew better than expect it.
But if not justice, rather than let them have his family, perhaps he could sell the only thing he had left to offer.
It was something he'd already tried in prison, in the first panicked moments after he'd found out that his crew was still alive, still in captivity, still at the mercy of the enemy and whatever cruelty they might decide to unleash on the men and women helplessly asleep inside the seventy-two cryotubes. At that moment, it had been pure panic moving him, as no one present then had any true power to grant him what he was asking for, no matter what he offered.
Things were very different here. The men and women in this room were the very top of Starfleet's ranks, many among the most influential people in the Federation. They had both the power to make such decisions, and no doubt countless uses for him, especially if he were to offer full cooperation. If he could convince them, his people might finally have a chance.
With his voice cracking from all the wasted effort talking for so long, so different now from the perfectly cadenced diction he normally favored, he forced out, "Your starfleet...has done everything it pleased with me… It has tortured me, imprisoned me, enslaved me, vivisected me even… You've acted as if I was nothing but a piece of property, meat on a slab. The same way your forefathers had done back in the time I come from. Is it any wonder that I fought back? I had no other choice. Against them all or against Marcus and you all, how could I not fight? I have done so, and was going to keep doing so, until my last breath, as long as I had a choice. But it's different now. You've finally won. I won't fight anymore. You can have what you want. You can do whatever you want to me. I will cooperate with everything. Just please...let them live. I'll do anything you want, as long as my people are unharmed."
Trepidation roiled inside him as he made his offer, along with a terrified feeling that could only be described as hope against all that he instinctively knew would happen. But, just as he feared, the reaction of the tribunal was at first the same indifference and annoyance they'd given to his defense, and then as he plowed on, their expressions turned to disbelief and churlish amusement.
An admiral scoffed at him, "How could we possibly trust you? After all that happened?"
"You would...have have my word." He hated how useless that sounded.
"Your word?" The snickers a number of the officers made it clear what they thought of Khan's honor. "You've given your word to the late admiral Marcus too, no doubt. We all know how your honored that promise."
"Things were different then." It sounded poor even to Khan's ears, desperate and out of options as he was.
He was a man of honor, but he didn't consider he'd lost any in his lying to Marcus, not when the admiral had behaved with such dishonor that whatever promises Khan had been made to make were torn from him by force and menace. He'd have promised anything to save his crew, and he'd have betrayed anyone if it meant giving them a chance to escape alive. Unfortunately, by now Starfleet was probably quite aware of that.
"The way I see it, Harrison," the name sounded even more like an insult the way the admiral enunciated it, "you're not in a position to grant anything at all. We don't need your cooperation, nor do we need you any longer. We have seventy-two other specimens."
The anger within Khan was only matched by his despair and the terror that this would truly come to pass.
The worst possible outcome.
If he died leaving his people in captivity, there would be no one left to save them from this living nightmare. He had to try anything he could to shield them. He forced himself to stay focused and not give in to the urge to lash out, not even a little; it would be useless and only harm his cause.
We fought for so long to avoid exactly this. We swore we'd never surrender, never be slaves again.
That we'd die together rather than live on our knees one more day.
They had taken to the stars and soared towards an almost certain death -the odds of making it out of the solar system alive with a ship not made for long distance travel had been 10.000 to 1- rather than risk staying behind to die on Earth. All for that promise they all made.
But that's not a promise I can keep if the cost is your lives.
I'll gladly sell myself if it could save you all, or at least give you a chance.
He was completely desperate now, and would have gladly submitted to any torture of their choice if it would convince them of his sincerity. And to make matters worse, his body was running out of energy to keep standing. If he were to lose consciousness before the end, he had no doubt they'd continue with the sentencing nevertheless.
Partly as a result of that certainty and partly from giving up on whatever shreds were left of his pride, he let himself slide to the ground. His bloody fingers were still curled around the handrail his wrists were cuffed to, but his face was now at the same height as the rail.
On his knees on the cold hard floor, he craned his head even further to look up at the admirals, hoping the imploring position might help convince them. Once he'd made sure that he had their attention more completely than earlier, he bowed his head to them. He was too drained for a flush to even rise to his cheeks at the additional humiliation, but the slight shaking in his hands wasn't only exhaustion. I was a prince with power over millions... but none of that matters if I can't even save the very last of my people. Powerless anger and pride were useless; he would cast anything away if it might help give them a chance.
"Keep me as a slave or kill me if you will, but first let my people go. Please... If you spare them, I swear to you, I will belong to the Federation, in whatever way you see fit. This is more explicit than any promise of cooperation I've made to Admiral Marcus."
Slavery was what Marcus had forced him into, but it had been true in body while not being official, then. He had no pride to protect anymore and cared little if it was made official now.
His shallow breaths trembled feverishly against his hands and the rail. He looked up again and scanned their faces for a reaction, any sign that he might have finally mollified them. But he saw more contempt than pity, and if any did feel guilt, the matter was by now too convoluted; those who might were not willing to speak against his more vicious enemies.
For a moment he almost allowed himself a shred of hope when he saw a tortured look that Admiral Chandra briefly exchanged with Admiral Barnett, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared and neither of them said anything before one of the older officers -a close friend of the late Admiral Komack, killed in the Daystrom Attack- took upon himself to respond, with a viciousness that belied how personally he took this matter.
"But you already do belong to us... You're a prisoner about to be sentenced, what could you have to offer more than this? No matter who you talk to, no one will believe a word you say against that of a Federation Court. You have no proof of anything against Starfleet, no way to make anyone believe that whatever you say isn't simply the ramblings of a lunatic. No one will ever know what happened to you. You have nothing to offer that we don't already own, and you won't live much longer anyway."
Khan stared at them, unconsciously trying and failing to stop the involuntary trembling in his limbs. He was used to being treated callously or viewed as a tool, a weapon, a thing to use. But he wasn't used to being dismissed as having nothing to offer. His usefulness, the superiority of either his mind or his body had always been his last recourse. This was a far more terrifying situation. One that left him completely unable to protect his people. The cold sweat on his skin made him feel even more feverish, and he fought to try and stay focused despite how much his head was swimming.
His body was reaching its limits. He felt poised on the edge of a slippery precipice, and he was closer and closer to falling. Shaken and out of options, he tried whatever came to mind.
"You think no one will find out? It does not matter who listens to me, I'm the very proof of your lies. Of Marcus's lies, of all the laws he broke to make all of this possible. There was far too much at stake. Someone is bound to look into this, and a simple blood test would immediately reveal that I am neither 'John Harrison' nor a normal human! Someone-"
Dr. Adams interrupted him then, and the scientist's voice was chillingly close when he spoke, from the foot of the gallery, standing by the guards not far from the enclosure.
"It's a good thing no one will ever examine your body, then... Well, only a post-mortem after the execution, but I'll take care of that and that report will be classified as well. Whatever proof your body could be doesn't matter, no one will ever know. You'll die hidden away, and we'll close this case once and for all."
The augment's heartbeat was hammering in his ears as he felt increasingly dizzy, tugging uselessly on the restraints, no longer bothering to conceal his efforts, but finding anew that the rail was unyielding, at least to his currently extremely weakened body.
Through the fog of his exhaustion and growing panic, he heard one of the admirals declare that they would proceed to the sentencing now.
Dizzily, uselessly, he heard himself begging again, and to his horror, it was to no avail, the same as when he'd broken down and begged Marcus.
No...
Unable to unleash externally the wrath he felt, it deepened instead the self-loathing that had been growing within him through this whole ordeal.
You failed them, you failed them all. And your failure has condemned them.
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A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D
(Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D
Not too much happened, but I didn't want the chapter to become super long, so this one is mostly... just Khan's introspection about the past and Starfleet. The plot resumes with the next chapter. XD;
