Disclaimer: You know the song - me no own and you no sue.

Veiled

A few days turned into weeks. Weeks grew into a month. And then two. Khan began assembling torpedoes under Jacobs' careful supervision during the long work day, and then at night he crept back to his crew under Tyrrin's guidance, measuring and examining the pods, checking that his plan was flawless. He was never really alone, and Tyrrin kept her cyber-self carefully distanced from the Augment. She wasn't much into bear baiting. And, besides, he didn't need any distractions as he began the laborious process of executing his plan.

Honestly, it was the best plan Tyrrin had ever heard. He would take his frozen crew, pods and all, and stick them in the weapons Marcus was using that very same crew to blackmail Khan into building. It went beyond clever. It was poetic. Khan took the problem and turned it into the solution. His particular brand of genius must grow from a truly dazzling intellect, Tyrrin mused. What a shame he was trapped in his world of violence and brutality. He could build so much with a mind like that.

But he wouldn't. Or at least not before he did an awful lot of breaking. Bones. People. Buildings. Empires. Tyrrin knew her history. Khan was many great things, but he took pleasure in war, and he wouldn't hesitate to spill an ocean of blood on his way to 'peace.'

Which reminded her – it was time to come up with an exit strategy. An exit for Khan and his people, of course. Her exit would involve smuggling herself into the dirt via steel box. If she'd planned this out like she should have before initiating Khan's mobility, she would already have Khan's exit set and ready to go. But she hadn't, and she didn't, and now she fought the overwhelming urge to nibble her fingernails to ribbons. She began this because she felt a moral obligation to Khan and his people. There was more to it than that, but she liked to believe that was her primary drive. Things would be easy if she didn't also owe a moral obligation to all the innocent people Khan would undoubtedly steamroll on his epic quest for glory.

Khan and his people deserved a free life without Marcus, Section Thirty-One, or Starfleet peering over their shoulders. Everyone else deserved to keep breathing.

It was a tricky balance.

Tyrrin could see only one scenario where everyone lived, and that was where the Augments were separated from their 'lesser' human nemeses. And so, while Khan measured and built and crept, she studied star charts and dug deep into every scrap of information available in regards to uninhabited planets capable of supporting life.

But that was the thing about life: if you gave it a shot, it would likely succeed, in one form or another. That pretty much meant every habitable planet was… inhabited.

But he needed to go. Khan and his people must be given a fresh start somewhere else. Of that she had no doubt.

Do you have enough time for all that?

She didn't know. The sand was pouring through the hourglass, and, blindfolded to the future, she was caught in the anxious trap of waiting. It was like the old game where players had to guess how much candy corn was in the jar. Or how many buttons. She had to guess minutes. At best, the timing would be tight. At worst, she'd fall short, and Khan would be let loose with nothing between his searing vengeance and the utterly unprepared planet. But why limit his revenge to one planet? Starfleet governed dozens of systems, patrolled light-years of space. His hate could burn long and hot against such a massive enemy, and the stars would drip red. And green. And every other color of blood.

She leaned forward on her elbows and rubbed her eyes.

She just couldn't die yet. That was all.

Her office door breathed open and she looked back to find an ensign she didn't recognize. Odd. She made a point of knowing her worshipers. Rising in her chair, she gave the young man her best glower.

"Who are you?"

"E-ensign Brookes, ma'am." His voice shook with the certainty of a ginkgo leaf in a strong breeze. It fluttered, clinging tenuously to stability. Tyrrin didn't like it. "Reporting for duty?"

As she pondered this new and unexplained problem, she tilted back her head so she could peer down her nose at the stranger. "Funny. I've never heard someone turn that phrase into a question before."

"Ma'am?"

"Do I look like a ma'am to you?"

"Y-ye-n-n-no, Ma'-…" The ensign tangled himself to so well in his words that Tyrrin was forced to launch a rescue effort.

"First breathe," she said.

Happy to receive a command of any kind, the little soldier instantly obeyed. His breath quaked as he drew it, but he managed to inhale and exhale without hurting himself, so Tyrrin thanked the stars for small mercies.

"Now consider what you want to ask."

This task seemed more challenging, and the ensign devoted several moments to intense contemplation before his features eased back into their natural state of tremulous query. For an instant, Tyrrin could've sworn she saw a glint of confidence in his eye. But it must've been a trick of the light, because it vanished an instant later.

"Last but not least – ask me your question."

"What should I call you, Ma'am?"

Military types. There was nothing quite like them. Thank the stars.

"You may call me Miss Regent, I guess. I'd let you call me by my first name like everyone else, but I don't think I like you." Tyrrin had a great big soft spot for rookies, but this guy just got under her skin. And she didn't like that he'd shown up at the door to her lab without an invitation, engraved or otherwise. It was rather forward.

The ensign gulped. "V-very good, Ma' – Miss Regent."

"Excellent. Now you know what to call me. Get out of my space."

"Um, I think there's been a misunderstanding."

"Oh?"

"Yes. You see, um, I'm your new assistant?"

"My what?" She snatched away the PADD he clutched so desperately and scrutinized his orders. Sure enough, there was his name. There was hers. There was the title "Assistant". It was almost too horrifying to believe.

"You're right," she said. "There's definitely been a misunderstanding."

Without waiting for another stammered query, she shoved the PADD back in his hands and stormed out. It took her less than a minute to reach the admiral's office. She knocked, but she pushed past the secretary and marched through the door without giving anyone time to grant or forbid her admittance. Marcus, who was sitting behind his desk when she made her grand entrance, surged to his feet. Khan sat across from him. Her arrival hardly warranted a slow glance. Marcus opened his mouth to give her a piece of his mind, but Tyrrin filled the silence first.

"What the hell? An assistant? Are you kidding? Seriously, Marcus. I'm not stupid."

"Miss Regent, you do not have permission to…"

"Interrupt?" She waved at Khan. "I don't care. Have your little pow-wow later. Answer my questions."

Marcus fumed. His face flushed blood red, and his knuckles went white as he squeezed the edge of his desk. "You have no right!" he snapped. Spittle flew with his words. "This is my base, and my personnel. You may not be Starfleet, but you damn well better follow my orders, or I swear I'll…"

"You'll what?" Tyrrin realized, on some level, that she was jeopardizing her own agenda. But she also knew what a shiny new assistant who couldn't stand straight if someone shoved a ruler up his butt meant. Marcus was trying to replace her. The boy would learn her codes and her tech and then run Section Thirty One when she was six feet under. Thing was, once he knew what he needed, Marcus would deep six her before the neurotoxin finished its work. Why wait to get rid of a problem? She couldn't allow him to remove her from the game. At least not yet. Her job wasn't finished. If she didn't make her stand here, she probably wouldn't get to make it at all. "Are you going to court martial me?" She pressed a hand to her chest and fluttered her eyelashes, feigning the role of the damsel in distress. "Oh, wait. I'm not Starfleet. So… what? Are you going to put out a hit on me, Admiral? I wouldn't recommend that. You see, just because you've strapped a monkey on my back doesn't mean he can do my tricks. And, honestly, do you think he could take me? He'll learn what I want him to when I want him to." She adopted the face of an earnest employee. "Don't look for an early retirement, sir."

She couldn't look at Khan as she left. Would he revel in her impending demise? Would he appreciate her spark? Would he care at all? She didn't trust herself to maintain her stoicism, so she didn't test it.

A headache rose to test it for her. Almost before she finished speaking, a rush of searing pain spiked up her back, drilling up through her brain stem. One moment, everything was fine; the next, she was on fire. It was all she could do to leave the office with a stiff upper lip and a sure step.

But she barely managed to slip around the corner before her knees gave out. She hit the floor hard, and pain jolted up her wrists as she caught herself. Vicious twists of pain lanced along her spine, rolling out in tingling waves to burn her extremities. Her breaths came short and sharp. The ground swam before her gaze, and her stomach seized. She closed her eyes and battled down the urge to vomit. She'd never felt such all-consuming pain. Breathing was almost impossible. The agony was beyond any previous attack, and she struggled to cling to consciousness. But eventually, as all things must, the wave passed. When she opened her eyes again, a pair of shoes were waiting.

"Are you well, Miss Regent?"

Khan asked it as he might ask her opinion of the weather. Her answer hardly mattered, but he'd probably prefer to hear it was raining.

"Peachy." She was all too aware that she was still on her hands and knees, and the Augment prince hadn't lowered himself to her level. In this position, she was almost bowing to him. It was an uncomfortably obvious degradation. So, as much as it hurt, she made herself rise to her knees, and then she gradually climbed to her feet. Khan stood there all the while, watching like her pain was the sweetest ambrosia. His nostrils flared, and his lips turned up in what was almost a smile.

Tyrrin struggled in that moment to remember that he was not her enemy. She knew what she was doing when she arranged access to his crew. He would never know who she was. She would die, and his crew would survive. It gave her death purpose. That was her reward. She had no right to look for friendship when there was none to be given. It wasn't in Khan's nature to extend mercy, even to his allies. And, in his mind, she was far from that.

"What a nice little chat," she simpered. "If you'll excuse me, I have an assistant to train."

He squinted at her, and she spun on her heel. The pain had been intense, but fleeting. The only mark it left was a distinct ache in the small of her back where she'd likely strained something as she tensed. But it was nothing remarkable, and she could play 'normal' almost well enough to convince herself. But she could feel Khan's eyes on her back as walked away, calculating. She hoped, whatever conclusion he arrived at, it wouldn't be the truth. Honesty was a luxury neither of them could afford.

She didn't like this. It felt too much like running away.

.O.O.O.

With no face to put to the name, Khan found himself plagued by dreams of Marla, the woman who beat Tyrrin Regent and granted him access to his people. The woman who redeemed his freedom. He had tried to thank her, just once, after he returned from seeing his people and assuring himself of their safety. It was strange to experience such genuine gratitude, to be given something he could not easily win for himself.

It was alluring as it was enraging. Khan struggled to accept his present weakness, and he regarded his unknown comrade with stark envy. She had the power that should be his – the power to decide and govern. He told himself that someday he would claim this woman he had already won, and that the power would return to him them.

When he slept, he saw her wrapped in veils, bare feet hung with bells – and the sultry jingle was the only noise she ever made. He followed her from room to room, watched her from afar, chased her until he could nearly rip the veil from her face. But he never caught her, and his lack of progress on that front, both in the dream and reality, wore on him more than he wished to admit. He wasn't accustomed to mysteries, especially where women were concerned. He'd known and bedded many during his years as conqueror and prince. Seducing a woman was the easiest game he knew. But he didn't understand this woman – this one particular woman on whom so much hinged, a woman he'd apparently seduced without ever having tried.

If she were to be caught, Khan had no doubt he and his people would suffer the consequences. He had no doubt that she would suffer as well. Marcus would extinguish her hidden fire with a whispered order, and she would die as faceless as she'd lived. Why take such a risk? Could one ever gamble their lives for the sake of a stranger? Khan did not believe it. Did he already know her, then? Was Marla one of the many coifed and curled secretaries? A scientist in a teasingly short blue dress? A security officer? He had checked the records many times. No one named Marla worked, or had ever served, in Section Thirty One. Perhaps they had never met face to face. In this time, much was decided through computers. It was possible she'd hacked into the system – a vigilante of sorts – and chose to take up his cause as a matter of conscience.

Khan didn't know which scenario he preferred. He wasn't sure he preferred any of them at all.

The woman in the veils seemed too clever for such obvious explanations.

.O.O.O.

She dedicated nearly every daylight hour for the next two weeks to beating the fear of Tyrrin into her new assistant. Doors opened when he was halfway across the room and closed as he approached. Lifts magically stalled when he entered them, and every time he went to the bathroom, the fire alarm malfunctioned. The replicator gave him nothing but fruitcake. Doors locked. PADDs froze. Whenever a superior officer entered the room, his computer speakers sprang to life with dirty, dirty bedroom talk.

Soon she had the boy quaking in his boots. He was still afraid of Admiral Marcus, but he had the good sense to know who held the reins in their relationship. Even if the Admiral took Tyrrin down, she could scar his lackey badly enough that the boy would never approach a computer ever again. Marcus's spy was housebroken, and Tyrrin hoped it would be enough to deter any immediate plans to remove her.

Her life was a tricky balance of secrets and distractions. She had to help Khan. She had to hide her role. She had to break Marcus's new pet. She couldn't let Marcus know why. This made her behavior erratic, and even her beloved ensigns began to question if she'd become unhinged. On bad days, she wondered that, too. One minute she shuddered in the grip of the neurotoxin, and the next she laughed at her helpless assistant as he tried to escape the lift. Marcus could always use her apparent instability to his advantage. It worried her that he didn't press the issue. Rather than pointing out her sudden bipolar disorder, he just sat back quietly and let things unfold.

If she'd learned anything from all her years around Starfleet, it was that no news was not good news. Section Thirty One was the perfect example. No one heard about it, but it was there, and it was arming the Federation for a war the population hadn't even assented to fight. Khan was alive. A good scifi writer might dream such a thing, but if anyone suggested Starfleet was hiding the re-awakened leader of the Augments and using his three-hundred-year-old crew as hostages – well – there were padded rooms for that. So the fact that Marcus wasn't pressing for her dismissal signaled a problem of epic proportions, because the quieter a thing was, the faster it could kill you.

But one thing in her life was not quiet, and Tyrrin really wished it would shut-up and leave her alone. The thing was Jacobs. Ever since her widely rumored showdown with the Admiral over her sudden assistant, he'd been visiting her office twice as often as before, and interesting feat alone, seeing as how he already visited her three times more often than anyone else in Section Thirty One. Tyrrin had never met someone so bad with technology. Annoying as he was, though, he might've been more tolerable if Khan wasn't chained to his shadow. The Augment's presence just exacerbated all her anxiety, turning her stomach into an angsty pressure cooker. Sooner or later, she would just explode.

She had the sneaking suspicion Jacobs would be the one who finally pushed the button.

As she worked on tweaking some updates for the recent alarm upgrades Marcus had ordered installed, Jacobs came to hover at her elbow, shoulders low, frown weighing down the corners of his mouth, eyes wide enough to rival a puppy's.

"Have a problem?" Tyrrin asked. "I've tried weathering your clinginess, but I'm getting kinda tired of it."

"It's just…" He lowered his eyes, and Tyrrin almost mustered the sentiment to feel bad for him. Almost. "There are rumors you're going to quit."

"There are rumors that you have more porn on your drive than the rest of the base combined. Should I attach something interesting in your next email to the Admiral?"

"No!" The reaction was instantaneous and obviously instinctive. Jacobs' eyes bulged as he rushed to cover his slip. "No, thanks. I mean, I've got some embarrassing family shots and all, and I just don't want…"

"Oh, calm down." Tyrrin tried to give him a subtle hint and zeroed in on her task. Her fingers flew across the screen as she spoke. "I wasn't serious. But don't test me."

All her work only won her a few brief instants of peace. And then, almost whimpering, Jacobs asked, "Well – are you?"

"Am I what?" she snapped. Her patience was officially at its end.

"Are you going to leave?"

Yes. Probably in a long wooden box. "I don't know. I don't have any immediate plans, if that's what you're asking, but this situation was never permanent, and I'm bound to finally piss of Marcus enough to fire me one of these days."

Jacobs pulled back, obviously not happy with the answer, but uncertain how to demand more definite answers. "Oh."

Khan didn't say anything at all. If she didn't know him better, Tyrrin would assume he wasn't listening at all. His eyes drilled into the middle distance, picking apart some problem well above Tyrrin's paygrade. At least, for once, he wasn't trying to dissect her with his mind. He'd become even more hostile since she began her interactions as Marla. Now that she'd given him an ally, he was prioritizing the various threat levels of his enemies. Obviously, Marcus was at the top of his hit list. No one doubted that. Ever. But Tyrrin's dominion over all things tech put her name pretty close to the top, too. She was a Problem. A threat in a very immediate sense. She wondered if Khan would try to kill her before Marcus worked up the nerve.

Just as she prepared to play eenie-meenie between executioners, her private comm. buzzed. The signal was Zaerti's. Tyrrin didn't hesitate to answer.

"Hey. Is something wrong?"

There was a pause, and Tyrrin listened to the speaker on the other side draw a shaky breath. "Tyrrin?"

"Emily?" She pushed away from the computer. Something told her she needed to be moving, acting on an immediate threat, but she didn't know what. "Why are you calling on Zaerti's line? Did something happen? What's wrong?"

For several seconds, Emily had to fight off a wave of teary sniffles and hiccups, and Tyrrin glanced around the room, looking for any kind of support. Something ugly was coming. She could feel it, and she didn't want to be alone when it hit. But only Jacobs and Khan were in the room, one an enemy who thought she was a friend, one an ally who thought she was the enemy. They both met her eyes, but neither offered the support she was flailing for. "Emily…"

"Zaerti's dead. She's dead, Tyrrin. She was taking a run and someone hit her on the edge of town. I have to – I have to give her a closed casket funeral." She dissolved into tears again, and Tyrrin felt her body cool and harden into perfect stone. "I'm so sorry. She's dead."

A/N: Yeah, I think Khan's in for a bit of a shock. What do you think? Sorry for my extended absence. To give you an idea of my recent adventures, I drove over three hundred miles round trip yesterday after work so I could watch the fiftieth anniversary episode of Doctor Who with my family. And I', still trying to figure out how best to unpack the mountain of crap in the middle of my room... yeah... Those are my excuses. We're getting into the GOOD stuff now, though, and I can't stop thinking about this fic, so I think you'll be seeing much faster updates in the near future, especially once Turkey Day has passed.

THANK YOU TO MY AWESOME REVIEWERS! You make stumbling out of bed at five in the morning worthwhile.

Replies to Anons:

Kat: Thank you, thank you! She's definitely between a rock and a hard place. I'm having fun chucking things at her as she walks the tightrope. And, yes, Marcus needs to go down. There are special words for men like him. Special, special words... Thanks again for the review!

Em: Thank you very much! Your wish is my command. Ta da!