STAR TREK

"THE RIDDLE OF KHAN"

A Star Trek one-shot by SuperMudz

Admiral Marcus pursed his lips, thinking, as he walked away from the Ambassador Spock. A crease appeared on his forehead, as instantly a thought was formed behind there that troubled him.

He made it back to his office, and ordered a coffee for the replicator. It took three seconds for the atoms to combine and produce his order, but he waited patiently. Then sat back in his chair in front of his terminal. He would need to do something.

Suddenly, there was an interruption – a call on his personal office line. He frowned. It must be one of his scouts reporting back, the caller was his personal lieutenant and the Admiral had only allowed the line to be used for that reason.

"Admiral Marcus? Sir?" came the familiar voice after he had cleared the transmission.

"Yes, what is it, lieutenant?"

"We uh, found something in the asteroid field. We think you should take a look at this."

(*)

Three months later, with the recovered man known as "Khan", Marcus was walking around in Federation deep research. He knew who the man was of course – the name would have to be changed. But he might be the very thing humanity needed right now. God knows there were few other places to look.

The Vulcans were a scientifically superior race, but it was matched only by their pacifism – useless. And the difficulty of bringing them in on a secret project created problems of its own. No, Khan was perfect. No name, no record – no memory of him that wasn't history. He trusted his own men, and other than that he could rely on any rumours to bleed out harmlessly. He was used to this kind of secrecy – as the Head of Starfleet he had to be.

He looked to the stars. Something was coming. He knew it, ever since talking with the Vulcan from an alternate future. And they had to be ready for it. This universe had already been displaced – they needed to make sure it made it, or there would be no future like they talked about.

They had woken him up from cryo – he had floated in his spaceship for three centuries while the galaxy had passed him by. Him and seventy-two other genetically modified superhumans from Earth's past, that nonetheless held the key to the Federation's future. Marcus had brought him beneath what to the public was known as the "Archives" but also acted as a public shield for the less public and unknown facilities connected beneath it. As the archives were the centre of Federation information, it was the most appropriate place for his new… hm… ally wasn't the right word. Tool, perhaps. A useful one, so long as it was used effectively.

Khan had made promises, and Marcus wanted to see him perform them. They needed such miracles at a time like this. He had brought his best team on this – Khan would have everything he needed. Marcus didn't trust him, but he would use him. Khan already understood that things had changed in the last 300 years since he had been awake, a part of Earth's savage history, but Marcus would catch him up quickly. The facility had been made ready for use, and he wasted no time.

"Get this man all our files on modern ballistics, thermo-engineering, warp theory, and starship design. We've got several hundred years for him to catch up on, and we don't have that long."

(*)

Night after night, Khan studied it, applied it. Beginning small then large. It opened his eyes to a vast and myriad array of new possibilities that flooded his imagination. He invented a number of small useful devices while preparing for the larger tasks, devices that seemed to serve little other function, but he knew he could make them serve him for something… else…

With the threat of his crew hanging over him, Khan worked… and planned…

He had been responsible for designing weapons of great potency and power in the war, so long ago to history, but so easily recalled to his mind. He found that ideas he had begun there, found their fruition now. And he was amused to see how much of his own research and work, and the technology he was so familiar with, had filtered down through the centuries. Some basic principles were the same, of course, but others were so radically different and completely redefined their fields. Khan studied not only the technical manuals but the history associated with them, his mind reaching back to pluck places and events from his memory, and transport them to now with all this voluminous information. The archives at his finger-tips, there was nothing barred to him, in the secret heart of the Federation, where its true plans beat. And that was where he belonged – as a prisoner, but no prison was sufficient for one who could master the prison. And he was a master wherever he was. The fallacy of Marcus' logic was simply that he believed he could name something, and that made it true. But it was will and action that made things true. Marcus' could believe what he wanted, but several years from now, what he believed and what happened would separate themselves out, make themselves their own truth, and then he would see. He would see what happened to those who challenged Khan and believed him subdued.

This strange new future was his to take possession of, to make into what mankind always should have been. So much progress had been made, but also some things lost, and there was yet more progress to be made. His own people had been lost to time, but now was when they would see the light again, and Khan would not be alone in his mission.

For he was not a man out of time, for he was a man of no time. Neither in his own century had he belonged as one of the masses, but as a leader – that was the nature of power.

"Admiral" Marcus made a mistake giving him access to this technology and information. Because Khan was learning…

(*)

He was discovered! The worst possible timing – sometimes you had to play to your chances, but occasionally those chances fell upon the worst end of it. That was the time to be creative. And prepared.

Making his way through, he picked up a blaster. He had been formulating a plan to construct one of these in secret, he had studied them so well, but now it was unnecessary. He could secret it away somewhere. Blame the deaths on a radiation accident. Admiral Marcus was not a gullible man, and would always be suspicious of him, but whatever the consequences were, it would not be death or imprisonment, the man needed him too much. And so Khan would be able to continue… Let the man think he had just had a homicidal urge, let him overlook the true danger that was building under his nose…

"What are you?" Came the question – he had heard it once before, and the convergence amused him. He observed the frightened man, as if evaluating the courage of humans in this time.

"It is what I was made to be," he told him from the end of the blaster. He had studied it well, he knew it inside and out, and that it would vaporise every particle of his body. It could vaporise half a mountain. He smiled. If he had only had this weapon three hundred years ago.

No-one ever found the body, for there was none to find. And the real work was yet to begin…

THE END FOR NOW