A LEAP TO THE STARS
Part XXI - Deep in December
In the hands of a madman...
Two-Star Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci, "Al" to his closest friends, hung by his neck more then a foot above the alabaster floor of Project Quantum Leap's Control Room, feet kicking the air uselessly, fingers desperately clawing at the single unrelenting hand that encircled his throat in a grip like titanium.
Slowly, every-so slowly, Al ran out of oxygen, and the hooked thumb pressing down on his windpipe showed no signs of lessening, which meant he would be dead in less then a minute. And in the ever-so-close air around him, barely discernible to both human and Augment eye, the amber sparks of K-particles whirled and danced, revealing to the corpses scattered about the Stallions Gate nexus the most feared being in the latter-half of Earth's Twentieth Century.
Khan Noonien Singh's ruddy profile panned back-and-forth like the tracking gun emplacement of a naval destroyer, his dark eyes hooded, his expression one of the rarest ever seen splashed across the face of a genetically-engineered superman: confusion.
Not fear of course, there was little chance of that, no matter what bizarre hurdles Khan's unprecedented life-experience had thrown into his path. The scientists that had created him and his ilk had made sure to breed out any emotion that might hamper his ability to complete a task, no matter how difficult it might be. But on a rare occasion it was still possible that he could be caught off-guard, if the timing was just right. And his unexpected displacement to this unique location had managed to achieve what very few Military men had ever succeeded in doing:
Khan Noonien Singh was...concerned.
But not very.
At last his accessing gaze returned to that of his sputtering captive. He is not long for this existence, I can sense the beating of his heart and it is slowing. I give him thirty seconds before he falls into unconsciousness, Khan's brilliant mind concluded, and then another twenty before his frail anatomy completely fails...
The former ruler of all territory from Asia through to the Middle East sniffed in distaste at the apparently-elderly creature just-now ceasing to struggle before him. Khan sighed and going against his own better judgment released the pressure on the swarthy human's esophagus, though only just a tad. Instantly the dark-haired man dragged in a ragged breath and the purple in his rounded cheeks reduced somewhat, his eyes ceased to bug-out so.
Not an improvement, Singh decided.
"This place..." the eloquent North Indian accent gripped Khan's words luxuriously, "...what is it?"
"Guhhhh..." was all Al could manage, his eyes rolling in their sockets. Wha...what's hap...happening......S-Sam? Wha...
Khan studied the polychromatic-cast walls of the buried chamber with disdain, then glowered up at the aquamarine incandescence of the compu-sphere hung amidst the impressive array of technology clinging to the rectangular room's stark ceiling. Then he looked back to his prisoner.
"I was brought here against my will by a method not known to me. How was this accomplished?"
"I...who..."
"Answer me!" he shook his prisoner hard and the man flopped in his grip like a sickly kitten. "I was on an island in the Mediterranean called...called..." Khan's impressive brow furrowed, "Why can I not recall it's name? My memory...it is incomplete." His gaze sharpened with fury and he prepared to crush the man's neck, "You! You have done this to me! WHY! Answer me, or death shall be your punishment!"
"Y-You... You're Khan..."
"Yes. I am Khan. And you are?"
"Go...go to...go to hell!" the Admiral spat, and managed a weak glower.
But instead of increasing Khan's rage, instead Al's boldness quenched it, at least somewhat. Singh smiled the slow, sure grin of a cat who knows the mouse it has cornered in the pantry cannot possibly escape it's grim destiny, then lowered the Admiral back to the floor, released him.
Al staggered back, hands cupping his throbbing neck, and dragged in his first un-hindered breath in more then three minutes. PQL's normally stale oxygen had never tasted sweeter, despite how it burned down the Rear Admiral's battered windpipe. He moved back a step and hitched up against the blocky control console, cast a quick glance up at the compu-sphere, which flickered a quick greeting back down at him.
At least...at least I'm not alone in this, Al's mind whirled, as he felt the backs of his ankles press up against the deathly-still arm of the prone Captain Archer. He tried to stretch his ears to their utmost, to try and detect any sign of life from the fallen Enterprise commander, but no sound rose up from the floor to quiet his greatest fear; that the Starfleet Officer was dead, making it impossible for Sam Beckett to escape from the 22nd Century.
Wait, that's not my greatest fear. Sure, it's right up there, bucking heads with vampires and ghoulie things that go bump in the night, but Sam possibly being stranded a century and half in the future doesn't even COMPARE to...to this guy. He eyed the statuesque form of Khan Noonien Singh as the dictator stepped round the back of the control console and stared down at it's tecnhicolor surface like a biologist studies the frog he's dissecting.
Oh crap, I have GOT to get him away from there! No telling WHAT he might do if he figures out any of our technology. With just the normal weapons of war Khan managed to conquer a quarter of the globe without most of the world's population even knowing he existed. Give him the advantages of this complex and...and...
And the Rear Admiral's mind refused to give into the terror of such an idea, because it was just too frightening, even for a battle-forged mind such as his. No, there was no time for letting his imagination run away from him, he needed to concentrate on the situation at hand, no matter how dire it was, and to utilize all the advantages he had over history's greatest genetic Augment. As varied and plentiful as those advantages weren't.
"Heh, hey, what do you think you're, uh, doing?" Al cleared his burning throat and shifted his bearing into what he hoped gave him a devil-may-care facade.
"Doing?" Khan looked up from the console, "I am doing whatever I please, as destiny has generously bequeathed one of my position and accomplishment. You still haven't answered my question, Mister...Mister..."
"Actually, it's Admiral."
"Admiral? Admiral..." for some reason the title seemed to bother Khan, but the feeling fled a moment later.
"Yeah. Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci, to be precise. But you go ahead and call me Al."
"I will not. Now, what is this place, and how and why have I been brought here? Answer quickly, Admiral, for you will find that painful reprisals are something I have no hesitation whatsoever in dealing upon those who attempt to hinder me."
"Perish the thought, heh. No, I didn't bring you here to hinder you, Khan, I-"
"You did not bring me here."
Al blinked, then remembered that attempting to tell a bold-face lie to an Augment could be a fatal mistake; their grasp of body language was unparalleled, not to mention the fact that their genetically advanced senses could easily detect the changes in heart-rate and eye-movement indicative of attempting to deceive.
"Right, yeah, sorry, that's true. Sure, I played an, um, indirect part in you getting here, but yeah, it wasn't me who made the decision to do so, it was this woman who broke in here."
Gotta play this straight, Al swallowed hard, gotta tell only the truth to this guy and practice the art of withholding important details without giving any indications that more is going on here then this genetically-upgraded psycho needs to know about. Talk about a challenge, every room in this place is packed to the brim with information files speaking blatantly about what Project Quantum Leap is all about, not to mention the cafeteria full of easily-interrogated people just a few floors above. Oh man, we are so screwed here. Where the heck is Sam?! He said he was the Observer this Leap, so come on, buddy, start Observing! I need your council pal, and HOW...
"Woman?" demanded Khan, "What woman?"
"She said her name was, um, let's see...Amri? Right, Amri Carr. Think she was some kind of secretary, or girl-Friday, or whatever."
"You speak in riddles. Clarify."
"Um, okay. This woman broke-in here and forced us to swap her for you. So she went where you were, and you were brought here."
Khan's eyes narrowed, "Swap? By what method? Was I drugged? Because I have no memory of any passage of time since I was suddenly taken from the island."
"What island?"
"I told you, Admiral, I cannot re--ENOUGH!" and he backhanded Al hard across the face, sending him flying across the Control Room! He landed on his elbows and slid across the slick floor on his stomach nearly all the way to the Accelerator door!
Uhhh...guy's got a kick like a mare in...in heat...have to remember that I'm like an...an ant to him. He's got like the strength of five men, all of them...really and...truly......pissed...?
Al trailed off and his mouth went dry at the sight of the small object sitting on the floor right before his face. He'd been so lost in the pain and helpless strategizing that he hadn't even seen what was, well, right before his nose. Literally, in fact.
An idea occurred to him, one that filled him with both gut-wrenching fear and desperate hope at the same time. It was so far-fetched, it was so crazy that...that...THAT...
That it just might work...
And gripping his find Al stood and slowly turned about, stuffing the object deep into the pocket of his crimson sport coat before his nemesis could catch sight of it. Khan was in the midst of stalking toward him, murder in his eyes and fists raised to dash his skull in, but Al cocked his head up at the Olympian Sikh and spread his lips into his most devilish grin, the one that could melt even the coldest of feminine hearts and bring hesitancy to the seemingly-unchippable facade of even the most egotistical of men.
Khan jerked to a halt, his dark eyes narrowing in confusion for the second time this day, a record-breaking achievement. He suddenly felt self-conscious, like somehow this little toad of a man had gotten one up on him, that he had achieved an advantage where none should have possibly existed. Khan knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he needed to kill this Admiral Calavicci, that the man was too clever by half, and that his best chance of getting on top of this strange situation lay in first tearing the man named Al's head from his shoulders right now, but
But...
But...
But he couldn't resist asking "...What? What is it?"
"Do you smoke?" Al inquired, and he produced an expensive-looking cigar from the inside of pocket of his sports jacket.
"No. I do not. It is a foul, loathsome habit, a weakness of your pathetic bloodline that was easily deleted along with the rest of the frailties and errors in your genetic code when I was created."
"Yeah, I know."
"You do? And what, exactly, do you think you know, Admiral?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. Like how you were defeated. How you ALL were defeated. 'Cause I was one of the guys who helped do it."
"Were you..."
"You're from 1996, aren't you? Yeah, don't try to lie about it, I can tell. I can see it in your eyes, in how you carry yourself; the beaten tyrant about to make one last desperate grasp at victory, most likely through some hair-brained last-ditch plan that only a madman would resort to. And, heh, the machinations of a madman, they're right up your alley, ain't they, Khan."
"Why do you talk to me like this, Admiral, when you know I will kill you for it?"
"Because I've got something you want--no, scratch that, I've got something you need. Have you guessed what?"
Khan looked about him at the strange chamber, at the futuristic technology it contained, "This...this is a weapon?"
"Sure. Every new technology that just one man possesses, while others do not, can be perverted into a weapon. And this place, pal, this can easily be turned into a weapon of MASS destruction. And do you know how?"
His very lethal opponent stared him down and waited for the answer.
"Easy! Because this, buddy, this...is a time machine!"
And with those words absolute silence filled the Control Room of Project Quantum Leap...
To be continued...