—Chapter One—

2261.264

Sitara
Beta Quadrant

The long winter had finally ended, and spring had arrived with a glorious burst of colour across the settlement. Though the seasons were opposite here to the planet they'd left behind—it would be autumn now, where most of them were from—they'd adjusted quickly to life here.

The woman standing at the top of the small rise, on the broad veranda across the front of her home, had gone by many names in the past few years. Mackintosh. Harrison. Singh. She wavered between the last two still, emotionally tied to one, legally to the other. Both to the same man, who at present was leading morning drills down the hill, in the village square.

Anthea smoothed her hand over the enormous swell of her pregnant stomach, feeling the baby she carried stretch against the tight confines. Technically, she wasn't due for another few weeks, but her son had been born just over five weeks early, so she privately considered herself due any day now. She wasn't looking forward to giving birth here, in this primitive colony, but she really had no other choice.

Her mother stepped out of the house behind her and joined her on the porch. "Good morning, dear," Martha Mackintosh said. "Have you been on your walk yet?"

"No. This is as far as I got," Anthea admitted. "I got distracted by the view."

Martha nodded, looking around at the trees and plants all around them, bursting with flowers. "Yes, it's lovely here."

Anthea had actually been referring to the sight of her shirtless husband a hundred yards away, but didn't correct Mum.

The man in question stood six feet tall, with black hair that fell around his sculpted face. He was a god carved from marble, as far as Thea was concerned, though he'd tanned up nicely the previous summer and hadn't lost it all over the winter. The Nordic genetics of his unknown father had given him the pale skin and aqua eyes, his Indian mother the raven hair. Genetic manipulation had given him the broad shoulders and hard muscles, and a host of other abilities.

His name was Khan Noonien Singh, and he had once ruled a quarter of the Earth. Now, he ruled an entire planet, even if the population of it still numbered less than eighty. It would equal eighty when their daughter Sarina was born in the coming weeks.

The block of soldiers broke up, off to the day's tasks. Anthea moved off the porch and picked her way down the slight hill, using the stone steps laid into the ground by one of the men to make it easier on her. Her belly leading the way, she joined Khan in the square.

"Bit cold still to be shirtless," she commented to her husband of three years. "Not that I'm complaining."

Khan arched a dark brow at her. "The cold doesn't bother me as much."

"Lucky bastard. That's one advantage I didn't get."

He grinned. Stooping down, he retrieved his kurta and pulled it on. His sister, Kati, had been making a plethora of traditional Indian clothing, and Khan had taken to wearing it all with relish. It was a sharp contrast to the clothing he'd worn as John Harrison, and Anthea still wasn't sure how she felt about it. She'd known his real name for two years now, but it was still strange to her sometimes.

He noticed her expression and asked, "Is something bothering you?"

"No," she sighed, with a glance at his loose trousers. "I just sometimes miss seeing you in those Starfleet uniform pants."

Her husband snorted a laugh. "You are insatiable."

Anthea gestured to her belly. "We haven't had sex in at least a week," she reminded him, "and after the baby is born, it'll be even longer."

Khan laid his hands at her presently-non-existent waist, his already deep voice dropping to a timbre that made her shiver. "Get your parents out of the house for a while and I'll be happy to fix that."

Her parents had been staying in their house since their arrival on Sitara in the fall, when she and Khan had arrived home from an ill-fated supply run to find the Mackintoshes had left Earth to come find their daughter, armed only with coordinates that Khan and Anthea strongly suspected had been given to them by Jim Kirk.

They had a complicated history with the Starfleet captain. He and Khan had tried to kill each other. They'd been reluctant partners several times. And there was the whole thing with the time Anthea had, thinking Khan was dead, slept with Kirk. They all did their best not to think about that.

"Why don't I suggest they go visit where their cabin is being built?" Anthea ran a finger down his chest. "Maybe send Otto with them to keep them focused on the new house."

The previous summer, the colony had built a number of cabins for the seventy-odd people in it. There had been some pairing up and shifting around along the way, but they were all taken, which was one reason the Mackintoshes still occupied the room that Khan had been intending to be Anthea's personal space. A larger cabin for them was under construction, as was one for his sister, Khatri, and her fiancé, Yves. Theirs was next door to the planned clinic, currently only a foundation hole beside the meeting hall Khan had planned.

"Good idea."

His fingers tugged at the turquoise fabric she wore. While kaftans weren't Indian in origin, this one had been made there and gifted to Anthea by her mother a few years before Khan and his people had been discovered adrift in space and all of the events that had transpired since. He wanted to see his wife in the styles of his home. So far, this was all she had, though Kati assured them both she was hard at work on a wardrobe appropriate for his queen.

Anthea, he knew, felt it impractical, but it didn't change his need to see her in a sari one of these days. Though she'd joked about making him wear a kilt in retaliation. At least he thought it was a joke. One of his men, McPherson, was Scottish, and he and Graham Mackintosh had struck up a fast friendship; they'd both taken to the idea of Khan forced to wear a kilt with unabashed glee despite the glowers he'd aimed their way.

Anthea went to talk to her mother, while Khan directed Otto Sokolov, his second in command, to keep his in-laws occupied for a while. And then he took a minute to drop his almost-two-year-old son, Nolan, off at Kati's cabin. His younger sibling sat with a pile of red fabric on her lap, as her adopted son, Pandu, lay on the floor with some toys.

"Is that Anthea's dress, or yours?" Khan asked her.

"Thea's," Kati told him. "This is far too fancy for me."

"You're the rāja-kan'ya," he reminded her in Hindi. They didn't speak the language much; most of their people weren't of their nationality. Not that Khan looked it, himself. Kati did, with her tawny skin and brown eyes. She took after what vague memories he had of their mother. He had Northern European genetics, which they'd only really been able to learn recently, with the technological advances of the present age.

Khan wondered sometimes who his father had been, whether he had been a scientist working with his geneticist mother, Sarina Kaur, or if he'd been someone else she'd met somewhere. He would have been someone his mother considered superior somehow. But as she had died when he was only four years old, he knew next to nothing about his parents.

Kati knew who her father was, at least from a genetic standpoint. Sarina had been so impressed with her superhuman toddler son that she'd blended his DNA with another dose of her own to attempt to make a female version of him. Kati had been the result. The technical inbreeding had given Kati epilepsy, which Khan had only recently cured.

"Don't worry, big brother, I'm working on my dress. But your bride needs a dress worthy of the rani of Khan Noonien Singh." The blood red fabric was scattered with gold and crystal beads, gold embroidery, and tiny mirrors. Khan couldn't see what it looked like, but he figured his sister was working on a lehenga.

"Watch Nolan for us?" He didn't really need to ask, he knew. Kati would watch her nephew whether requested to or ordered. Not that he would issue his sister any orders he didn't need to.

She nodded. "Of course." She gave him a knowing grin. "Go have your time with Thea."

"Are we that predictable?"

"Khan, if I have Nolan, it means Graham and Martha aren't in the house for a reason."

She had a point.

He met Anthea on the path up to their home, offering his arm to her without a word. She looped hers through it, and he thought back to the first time she'd done so, on a London street what seemed a lifetime away.

He had been John Harrison then, a prisoner and slave, and Anthea Mackintosh had been the one light in his dark world. Khan could have never imagined that she would have done what she did, rescuing him and their people from Starfleet's clutches, abandoning Earth and everything she'd known for him.

He didn't deserve her, and he knew it.

"Mum knows what we're doing," she told him as they entered the low but sprawling building.

"Everyone does, priya," he murmured. "We're not precisely discreet."

She snickered as she shifted to grab his hand, then said, "You've never called me that before. What does it mean? Is it Hindi? Or Punjabi?"

"Mm. I have, just not in this tongue. It means 'darling'." Khan drew her into their bedroom. "And yes, it's Hindi, though Hindi and Punjabi are very similar, but not quite identical."

His wife contemplated that. "I see. You know, I've never thought to ask, but, uh, why does Kati have an accent and you don't?"

Khan lifted the turquoise fabric and she obediently raised her arms so he could lift it off over her head, leaving her in a plain black top and maternity leggings. "Because I quite deliberately got rid of it while I was in school in London. Before the wars started."

"Oh." She bit her lip, hands going to his own clothing. He let her help him remove the kurta, and then her deft fingers pulled at the drawstring holding up his pants.

"I really," she said, "like the ease of these, but damn, I miss your arse in the uniform pants."

Laughing, he grabbed her and pulled her as close as he could, kissing her warmly. He'd never laughed like this before her, never felt as light. Before fleeing Earth the first time, he had ruled billions, wanted for nothing, had any woman at his beck and call. But he hadn't needed any of them, hadn't known what it was to want a specific woman until he'd walked into the Kelvin Memorial Archive and met a silver-eyed intelligence operative in the guise of a receptionist, and learned that even superhuman men could fall head over heels in love.

He let his hands slide down her back, to catch the hem of her black top and pull it upwards. Anthea sighed.

"Khan," she murmured.

His name, his real name, on her lips had been something he'd desperately desired during their early relationship, when she'd thought him John Harrison. He still wished he'd been able to tell her his identity himself, but there were a lot of things that hadn't gone the way he'd planned. Khan wasn't prone to regrets or second-guessing himself, but the time they'd spent apart, him frozen in cryosleep, her grieving his unexpected loss, was something he would probably rue until he died.

Khan took a moment to rest his hands on her rounded stomach, where their unborn child slept. He had loved her body before, and he loved it now, her pregnancy making no difference in how much he wanted her.

As if sensing his thoughts, she asked, "How is it you still find me attractive like this? I'm a ball with legs."

Ducking his head to kiss her again, he pressed his mouth to hers for a moment, then a second time, a bit longer. "It's my child you're carrying, my love. And I love your mind as much as your body. And you're my ball with legs."

—-

Khan left Anthea dozing in their bed. He would have loved to spend the day just lying beside her, but he had duties to fulfill. John Harrison might have managed it, but Khan Noonien Singh had a responsibility to his people, shifted priorities or not. Some of his people might think him weak for it, but he didn't care. Sometime between his waking up a prisoner of Admiral Alexander Marcus and now, close to four years later, Anthea and their children had become the most important things in the universe to him, over his sister, over his people. And he didn't care that things had changed. He had changed, and he wasn't going back to the man he had been in 1998.

He redonned the clothing he'd been wearing, pausing in tying the drawstring of his trousers. This wasn't the first time Thea had brought up missing things about the false identity he had gone by when they'd met, fallen in love, and married. A few months previously, he'd overheard her telling Kati that she missed John; she loved Khan, he knew that, but he also knew that part of his wife was still in love with the man he'd had to be then. It felt ridiculous to be jealous of himself, but there it was. He hated John Harrison for the suffering he'd endured then, and for the piece of Anthea's heart that still belonged to him.

He needed to find a way to reconcile the fact and the fiction, for both their sakes. And maybe he could start by wearing those damned pants she liked so much. They were still in his wardrobe, along with every item of clothing John Harrison had owned. Khan had chosen them, after all, had enjoyed them. Maybe he'd let his need to shed the disguise go too far in the other direction.

Khan was still contemplating this when he joined his men at the cabin they were building for his in-laws. Anthea's parents claimed they didn't need much space, but they all knew that was just necessary politeness. And he couldn't leave his wife's parents in a small house. It would reflect badly on him.

And, he admitted in the back of his mind, he might not care what most thought of him, but he secretly wanted Graham and Martha to think him worthy of their daughter. They had every reason to hate him, for all that it hadn't been his choice to abandon Anthea.

Martha, an older version of her daughter, eyed him knowingly as he joined them. Her eyes were blue, not the grey that Thea had inherited from her father, but in this ordinary human woman, he could see what his wife might look like when their own children were grown. "Is Thea napping?" she asked innocently. "She's been a bit peaky, with the baby due so soon."

Khan smirked as he said, "Yes, she's very worn out this morning."

His mother-in-law flushed. They'd been engaged in a somewhat petty battle since the couple's arrival, and Khan could admit that it fulfilled the part of him that wanted to burn the world to the ground. He knew antagonising her was counterproductive towards getting the Mackintoshes to like him but he couldn't help it.

Martha had been a history teacher on Earth and she knew some details of who he had once been. But more than that, she blamed him for the heartache Anthea had gone through during his imprisonment, and for the deaths of thousands of beings not only in London, but in San Francisco.

He'd had a hand in those things, directly and indirectly, but as far as Khan was concerned, the man truly at fault was the now-very-deceased Alexander Marcus. Khan had prevented Marcus from starting a war. He'd taken out a weapons research facility aimed at supplying that war. As for the crash of the USS Vengeance into the San Francisco Bay, well, Kirk had crippled his ship, hadn't he? Khan had tried to aim the crashing vessel at the lesser-populated Marin Headlands—true, where Starfleet Headquarters was—not San Francisco. He couldn't bloody well control a 2000 metre starship with dead engines being pulled in by Earth's gravity, now, could he? He was strong, but he wasn't that powerful. If the ship hadn't hit Alcatraz Island and veered south, the ship wouldn't have plowed into the Marina District.

None of that mattered to Martha, though. That his absence had hurt Anthea mattered most. His wife had forgiven him, but her mother probably never would.

Graham joined them, looking pleased. He gestured to the half-built walls. "Comin' along nicely," he said in his Highland burr. "Yer men are a marvel, lad."

"They're both skilled and motivated," Khan said. "Is the layout to your liking?"

"Aye. Plenty of room." Graham nodded his head. His hair was dark, liberally threaded with grey. Taller than Khan by about two inches, the man had probably twenty pounds on him, all of it of padding. But he was a genial sort, and smart; Graham had been a civil engineer, and had already offered many suggestions about improvements around the settlement. Given that the Mackintoshes had arrived as they were trying to remedy a fairly large food storage crisis, Khan appreciated the man's input.

"Room for us, room for the kiddies." Graham nudged Khan with an elbow, grinning. "Place for us t' take the wee ones of a night and give ye a break, aye?"

Unused to jocular familiarity from anyone except Otto, Khan just arched a brow.

"Construction should be finished by the end of next week," he told his in-laws. "I apologise that the accommodations aren't up to twenty-third century standards. Managing any sort of indoor plumbing has been enough of a challenge."

"Ach, it's fine. We don't need automated doors and the like. Though it's ingenious the way ye rigged the recycling systems for the toilets. Now we just need t' figure out that pesky running water issue."

Khan nodded. His home aside, there were five single-person cabins, each with two main rooms and a small, attached bathroom; ten two-person cabins, also with two main rooms but larger; and twelve three-room cabins that housed three or four persons. They'd purchased as many of the self-contained toilets as they could on two trips to Elora, a fairly close star system, and one to Quvolis, which was a bit farther away, two days at warp seven. Not that they had gone that slowly: the Reliance could, in short bursts, reach warp twelve. The toilets reduced waste to basic carbon, which they took to the ship and put into the processor for the replicator system.

While he and Graham discussed engineering in the wild, Martha wandered off to find her daughter. Khan watched her go, hoping she didn't give Thea any trouble, then tuned back into his father-in-law's words.

"So I'm thinkin' if we get some hydroelectric generators and sink 'em at the far end of the lake, where it feeds out t' the river south, we can supplement the solar generators," Graham said. "An' if we make a dam of it, we can put tanks and things in, get runnin' water going. Not sure about how we'll run sewage, but…"

"I've got some ideas about that, actually. Here's what I've been thinking."