A/N: some lines of dialogue in this chapter are taken with modifications from the Star Trek Into Darkness movie. No copyright infringement is intended!
A line in this chapter is taken from Moby Dick. Can you tell which one, my dear and most devoted readers? :) Thank you all for your wonderful feedback; I'm pleased you're enjoying this so much!
# # #
Though the environmental controls were functioning normally, the atmosphere in the sickbay was highly charged and bordering on the unbreathable. For once, it was crowded, the place crawling with armed security officers. The nurses were visibly intimidated, but the people with phasers had nothing to do with it. The responsibility rested squarely on Khan's imposing shoulders. The Augment sat on one of the beds, back impossibly straight, still as a living statue, his eyes glued to the nearby cryotube with Carol Marcus in it. For all intents and purposes, he was keeping vigil.
A mere flimsy wall away M'Benga tended to Admiral Marcus, who had one too many broken bones in his body and who had been raving about their impending court-marshaling all the while Spock had placed him under arrest and under his own armed escort. McCoy didn't have the slightest doubt that the man holding Jim hostage for responsible for the injuries sustained by the soon-to-be former head of Starfleet. The whole situation grated on the doctor's nerves. This was not what he had signed up for. He should have known better and stayed away from Jim Kirk's ship.
Under any other circumstances, the doctor would have found it unseemly not to have the father close to his daughter in such moments, but he was loathe to risk putting Khan and Marcus in the same room together again. And something told him trying to separate Khan from the Carol's cryotube would not end well. Besides, he needed the Augment to be on his best and most cooperative behavior in order to save her.
Rather than leave the task to one of his nurses, McCoy approached Khan with the blood extractor himself. The Augment didn't even look at him but briskly rolled up his sleeve and extended his arm towards the doctor. McCoy pressed the extractor into a vein with more force than he would have used on a mere human, but then he knew from experience that Khan's skin was not exactly easy to pierce. Anyway, the superhuman showed no sign of discomfort.
He filled a vial and removed the extractor, but Khan didn't withdraw his arm. "You might want to take a reserve," he said in a low monotone.
McCoy had never before been in the position to cure someone, much less someone who was clinically dead, by using the blood of another living person and he had never intended to take more of that than strictly necessary from anyone, not even from Khan. But he figured it would not hurt to take a closer look at the extraordinary properties of the Augment's vital fluid, so, since Khan didn't complain, he ended up extracting three vials in the end. Throughout it all, the man kept watching the cryotube, his expression unreadable.
Once he had the blood, McCoy moved to his work station and started on the serum. Going by his revived tribble case study, he was confident in being able to get results very soon, which was just as well, since Khan's presence in the med bay was making even the computers nervous.
"We can't just let you walk out of here with her, you know?" McCoy said while adjusting the development of the synthesis process.
"Walk, Doctor?" Khan asked in a mildly ironic tone of voice.
McCoy glanced over his shoulder. As predicted, Khan had not budge and he continued to stare in the same enervating manner. "Whatever deal you stroke with Marcus about her, I guarantee you it's illegal. And we're not gonna let you keep her prisoner."
A hint of a smile floated briefly on Khan's lips, though none of his facial muscles moved. "Oh, I assure you, Doctor, it's all very legal."
McCoy's stomach trembled with unease. He wanted to ask more questions, but the computer called for his attention. "Platelets adjustment process complete," the artificial voice announced. McCoy had no choice but to turn to his work.
# # #
The clouds at the top of Ceti Alpha V's atmosphere looked like thick waves of spun silver. Above them, in the blackness of space separating the fifth and sixth planets of system, the massive, dark hull of the Vengeance towered over the sinewy lines of the Enterprise. On their respective bridges two men were locked in a stand-down for a second time.
Spock stared at the man covering the front screen, as Khan took the few steps to the command chair of his ship in a deliberate and imperious manner that was obviously aimed at both stalling and intimidating. A show of power. But Spock was not easily influenced and none of his facial muscles twitched in reaction.
"I have fulfilled all of your terms," the Vulcan told Khan calmly. "Now fulfill mine," he added, his tone close to an order.
Khan seated himself in the captain's chair, his eyes finding Captain Kirk who was huddled in a corner of the bridge, one of Augments keeping a phaser trained on him. When he spoke, he did not address Spock. "Well, Kirk, seems I am to return you to your ship. But I could not let you leave without a parting gift. After all, you did come to my people's aid without any ulterior motive of your own." His fingers skimmed over the controls installed in the left arm of his chair. "I would be careful, though. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its jagged edges."
Golden strips of light blossomed in various locations on the bridge. Only then Khan looked at Spock again, the glint of a challenge in his eyes.
"What will do with the starbase personnel still on Ceti Alpha V?"
"I will drop those who want to leave on the edge of Federation space, but whoever wants to stay with us will also be under our protection."
"You are still assuming we will allow you ownership of the Vengeance."
Khan leaned back in his chair, seeming almost bored by now. "You are free to fight me for it, Mister Spock, but I have a colony to rebuild and I would rather not waste time watching you fire one useless torpedo after another into our shields. But in case your captain makes the right decision, I would like you with your fondness for the rules to pass a message onto your superiors: I think it's time we dispense with the pretense of the protectorate and start avoiding each other altogether. If they keep out of my system, neither your or they will ever see the Vengeance or any of us anywhere near Federation space. If they, however, feel like repeating Admiral Marcus' latest mistake, darkness will be coming to your world. In every way imaginable." He cocked his head to the side, eyes narrowing and voice dropping slightly lower, the threat uttered in a cold, self-contained tone. "Do not provoke my wrath!"
# # #
"Captain, I must object," Spock said firmly once Kirk set one foot out of the brig, where Khan had seen fit to beam him and the Vengeance crew. The captain spared a brief string of mental expletives to contradictory dictators from the past and their wry sense of humor.
"I guess I must be home," he said out loud with a smile, looking over his first officer's shoulder to Uhura who stifled a grin of her own but regarded him with luminous eyes.
"Where the hell is he?" came Bones' indignant voice from down the corridor. "I told you to get him right down to sickbay the second he's back on board," the doctor continued in the vague direction of Spock, lifting his hand-held scanner to the side of Kirk's face, as he talked.
"Bones, I'm fine," Kirk said through gritted teeth.
"The hell you are," the CMO diagnosed.
Kirk glared at him curtly before starting towards the bridge, Spock and Uhura falling in step behind him, just as Bones at his side continued to scan him, as they walked. Kirk sighed, stifling a fresh bout of aggravation. "Khan said something about a gift. Any idea what it is?" he asked his first officer.
It was Uhura who answered him. "He beamed a relay to my station. It's the Vengeance's captain and communication log."
"I have a feeling we're not gonna like what's in it," he muttered. "Bones, get that thing off my face," he snapped at his friends, who was trying to press a small, rounded medical instrument to the his right cheek. Bones drew back with a scowl and a curse word that sent Spock's left eyebrow into the stratosphere.
Kirk stopped in the middle of hallway and eyed his second-in-command warily. "Alright, Spock, out with it. Which one of my thoughts don't you like this time?"
Spock frowned, obviously confused. Kirk sighed again and looked at Uhura. "You were supposed to teach him about sass and sarcasm!"
Uhura's lips twisted in annoyance. "From what I've heard, he's pretty good at it when it comes to
giving Admiral Pike attitude."
"Children," Bones complained. "God help me! I'm stuck on a ship run by children." And with that he sharply spun on a heel and headed towards med bay.
"I am expressing several attitudes simultaneously, when addressing another person. To which are you referring?" Spock asked Uhura.
"Sometimes I wanna rip... the bangs off your head, Spock," Jim rumbled, unable to help himself. He held up a hand, as both the Vulcan and Uhura stared at him, the first in disbelief and the second in a mixture of amusement and sympathy. "I know that was inappropriate. Lieutenant, report to the bridge and see what's on that relay Khan wanted us to have. Nobody but you touches it. If you need any help, speak to Scotty. No one else."
Uhura nodded. "Yes, Sir."
"Alright, Spock, second guess me."
Spock still regarded him with a dubious scowl but spoke anyway, his voice as measured as ever. "Captain, it is my belief that you plan to let Khan keep the Vengeance."
"The way I see it: he made it, he can choke on it."
"Khan's control of the Vengeance possesses a considerable potential threat to Federation security. Furthermore, I estimate this situation to constitute an early inception of the events my counterpart from the alternate reality described as leading to his untimely death."
A third sigh left Kirk's lips unbidden. He blinked a few times, trying to divine the best way to explain Spock what was on his mind. "He's not the same man, Spock." He took a step closer to his first officer. "We are not the same people your counterpart and his Captain Kirk were. What I'm about to do is not logical, it is a gut feeling. But I'm telling you, Spock: all he wants is to protect his family. Besides, you've seen that ship. There's no way he can withstand an attack from her. And yet he won't fire on us... which is, by the way, more of a courtesy that Admiral Marcus was willing to extend us."
Spock seemed to consider this for a few seconds. "There might be another reason why he doesn't fire on the Enterprise."
Kirk nodded grimly. He had deliberately been avoiding any thought of what he had witnessed on the Vengeance and of the tender words overheard while still in that cave on Ceti Alpha V. The mere possibility they entailed was too unsettling to contemplate. But if he were to make an informed command decision, he had no other choice.
"Yes," Kirk said. "And she is in our sickbay, not on the Vengeance. This tells us something."
"And what would that be, Captain?"
"The even he is only human."
TBC