—Chapter Three—
2261.265
Anthea didn't sleep well that night. Between being uncomfortable due to her pregnancy in general, the baby kicking constantly, and her nightmares, she woke feeling out of sorts and irritable. It didn't help her mood that Khan was already up when she woke. They wouldn't have many more opportunities to spend some early morning time alone and she resented the loss of this one.
She dragged herself out of bed and pulled on her stretchy maternity bra, then one of her sweater dresses. The weather was cooler than the day before and she drew on a deep red cardigan over the marled grey material. The dress was a favourite, with a loose turtleneck and long sleeves, that reached just below her knees. It was incredibly stretchy and she'd worn it before, between, and during her pregnancies. There wasn't a point to styling her hair so she left it in the braid she'd worn to bed and pulled on a pair of black leggings to protect her overly sensitive skin from the chill. She felt tired and bloated and unattractive, and thanked any deity that might be out there that she didn't have a mirror to agonise over. Hell, she barely had an indoor toilet these days.
It was a far cry from her lovely townhouse in London, and she found herself missing her hot water shower and everything else she'd given up for Khan.
There hadn't really been a choice, but still.
When Khan wasn't out and about, doing leaderly things, Anthea could usually find him in the room of their sprawling house designated as his office. It was really more of a lab than just an office, and it took most of the power from the solar panels on their roof to operate.
After she got Nolan up and dressed, and let Martha take him for a while, Anthea went in search of her husband. As expected, he was at his computer, working on… something.
"I'll be glad when we get the research facility completed," he said without looking up when she walked in. "Once we can start actually doing real work, we should be able to fix many of the problems your father pointed out yesterday."
"Like what?"
"Sewage, plumbing, other infrastructure. The self-contained recycling toilets are an amazing thing but we also need better running water. Better water and food storage."
She ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, noting that he was wearing a silvery-blue turtleneck sweater that she'd been particularly fond of before … everything. She hadn't seen him wear it since she'd woken him from his cryosleep. He needed a haircut again, too, though she was growing fond of the slightly shaggy look.
"I got my hands on what supplies I could," she reminded him. "And what would fit in the ship. It was much easier to steal standard colony gear than to try to figure out the logistics of pipes and whatnot. Dad is the civil engineer, I'm the personal assistant with a psychology degree."
He reached up to catch her hand. "I'm not faulting anything. You did what you could and that was incredible. Don't sell yourself short, dearest. Remember, you did all of this while keeping it secret from Starfleet and raising a child alone."
Anthea kissed the top of his head. "Wasn't easy, let me tell you. But good Lord, did I get good at lying."
He made a small, amused sound. "We've almost run through the supplies we got on our last trip. We'll need to go out again. But I'm reluctant to do so when you're so close to your delivery."
They'd made four supply runs to various nearby planets, two of them to Elora, where they'd run into a strange and dangerous race of cybernetically enhanced humanoids that called themselves "Borg". She and Khan had taken out the four they'd encountered, and Khan had been forced to kill one of his men that had been captured and altered by them. Going back there afterwards hadn't been pleasant, but necessary.
"I'm not fond of the idea, myself, but maybe, after the baby is born, we can go. Do we have enough to last til then? What is it we're running low on?"
While they discussed their supplies, there was a knock at the door, and both her father and Khan's second in command, Otto, entered, trailed by Chin, Otto's husband, and another of the men, Joaquin. Anthea wasn't that familiar with him, but with nearly eighty people in their colony, it was taking time to get to know everyone. And some of them still weren't fond of her for having been a regular human, no matter her current status.
"I'm going down to the medbay," she told Khan. "I want to get as much work done as I can before I'm forced to stop."
"You know, hundreds of women would take the opportunity to use the position of my wife as an excuse to do nothing," he murmured.
"Yes, well, I'm not them, am I?"
"Which is why I married you and not them."
Laughing, Anthea left. As she had the day before, she made her way to the ship. Kati and Pandu were there, and Anthea happily greeted her sister-in-law and adopted nephew. Pandu was roughly ten months old, a humanoid child of a race called Brinthi. He had pale, nearly white skin, webbed hands and feet, lavender eyes, and white hair. And sharp teeth, as both women could testify, having helped him through his initial teething.
Anthea would have thought the Brinthi amphibious, given their appearance, but they had no gills, breathed air, and according to both Khan and Starfleet records, they were land dwelling. She wondered not for the first time how and why they'd evolved in such a way. Not that it mattered. Pandu was theirs, despite some distrust by some of the Augments.
"Hello, sweetheart!" Anthea scooped Pandu out of Kati's arms when the baby squealed and waved his hands at her. He immediately grabbed the front of her cardigan and babbled in incomprehensible noises at her.
Kati laughed fondly and ran a gentle hand over her son's lustrous, ghostly hair. The Indian woman was taller than Anthea and slender, with a fall of black-brown hair in a hip-length braid. She didn't bear much of a surface resemblance to her brother, with a deeper skin tone and dark eyes, but it was there in the cheekbones, the line of her brow, and the full lips. Since Khan had fixed whatever issue it had been that had given her seizures, her eyes had shifted slightly green, instead of straight brown, around the pupil. Anthea wondered constantly about it, but had never dared bring it up.
She'd been using the mirror in the private bathroom in the captain's cabin on the ship to check her own eyes, but hadn't noticed any change since her augmentation.
"He's been very excitable this morning. I was hoping it would be warm enough today to take him down to the water and let him play, but it's cooler than yesterday."
Anthea let Pandu grab her finger, but not put said finger in his mouth. His teeth were new and needle-like. "Maybe it'll be warmer tomorrow. I'm sure once it's warm enough to actually swim, he'll take to it amazingly."
"Some have already been in the water," Kati said. "It's much too cold for me but Sunni, Navi, and Ronja were in the water this morning."
She had no idea who "Sunni" was but wasn't about to admit it. At the mention of Ronja, Anthea glanced at Yves. Kati might have been the only Augment not trained as a fighter, but she was still as smart and observant as the rest, and she caught the look immediately.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Are you familiar with Ronja?" Anthea asked, instead of answering directly.
"Some. Why?"
"Tell me about her."
Kati's dark eyes narrowed, but she said, "She's Swedish. She joined us after we left India, when the humans were hunting us."
Anthea knew that by humans, Kati meant the regular, non-enhanced humans. The only non-human on Sitara was Pandu. "That's what Khan said. But what's she like?"
"She was a trained medic for her faction. She doesn't spend much time with most of the women. Thinks we've been letting ourselves go soft. I think she's afraid, though. From what I've heard, the Northern Europeans were very hard on their women. She hasn't been with us long enough to know Khan is not like that."
She already knew that Ronja was tall, almost six feet, and muscled. She would have been the perfect woman for Hitler's Master Race, the whole nonsense that started the eugenics mess in the first place.
Anthea understood the woman's attitude, though. Making women work harder simply because they're women was something she was painfully familiar with, even in such a supposedly egalitarian time as this. But if Admiral Marcus hadn't had that edge of sexism to him, he wouldn't have dismissed her so readily, leaving John Harrison in her charge. And look where that had gotten the asshole.
"Feminism is letting women have the right to choose," Anthea said mildly, "whether that's to be a fighter or to raise children or anything in between."
"Right on," Kati said. "But why do you ask about her?"
Anthea turned to Yves and saw she didn't need to ask; he'd anticipated her and already pulled up the match from yesterday. Wordlessly, she gestured to the display.
It took Kati only seconds. "So she and Khan share a father."
"It looks that way."
"Khan knows?"
She nodded. "But Ronja doesn't. I'm looking to find the best way to tell her, anticipate her reaction. Is she the type to be happy about it? Hate it? Try to use the connection to her advantage? Does this pose a threat to us in any way?"
Kati arched a brow. "You think that she could be a threat?"
"I was an agent in a top secret organisation with no governmental oversight, trained to kill people, working on advanced weaponry intended to win a war my boss was trying to start with the Klingons, and I had to break my husband out of a storage facility after he was imprisoned in a cryotube without due process. Yeah, I think everything is a threat, Kati."
Yves turned his chair and it squealed a bit. "I have an idea."
They both looked to him curiously.
"Your delivery is close. And your, ah, injury last summer, oui? It made me realise that I really do need more assistance around here. We have been fortunate that no one else has been hurt."
"Except Khan," Anthea reminded him, referring to an incident six or so weeks before when her husband had been on the roof, repairing a leak, and he'd slipped on some icy and snow, fallen, and broken his leg rather badly.
"... Yes, except for Khan. I was trying not to remember that."
Because Augments metabolised things much more quickly, Khan had been faced with complete sedation or going through the surgery to set his leg bones with only mild relief. Her stubborn, crazy bastard of a husband had opted for the latter. Anthea knew it was because the last time he'd been sedated, he'd spent nearly two years in a cryotube.
Kati had assisted in that surgery because of the immediate need and her proximity, but it hadn't been ideal. Even with the medical robot helping, the situation had been nerve wracking.
"How that didn't kill him from shock…" Thea murmured aloud.
"My brother is insane," Kati said mildly, and the two women shared knowing looks.
"My point is," Yves continued, "I will definitely need assistance with your delivery. Khan will surely be helping you, but I will need a nurse. Perhaps you could approach her and ask if she would like to join me here in the medbay? Then I will have time to teach her modern medicine and also get to know her. After all, we are to be family."
He held his hand out to Kati, and she took it with a smile.
"That is an excellent idea," Anthea said. "I'll get right on that. She might say no, though."
"I'll help," Kati said. "If she says no. I'm interested in learning, anyway."
Anthea handed Pandu back to his mother. "I'm going to go track her down now. Any ideas on where she might be at this time of day?"
"Shooting range," Kati said immediately. "She's a … sharpshooter?"
"Ah, excellent. We can bond over that."
"I'm coming with you," Kati said immediately. "I need to see this."
Wordlessly, Yves took Pandu from Kati and settled the baby on his lap. He was already an excellent father to the boy. That pleased Anthea immensely. Yves wouldn't let any of the more hostile colony members touch a hair on Pandu's head.
The two women left the ship and made their way to the somewhat rudimentary shooting range, which was basically a large clearing with targets made of boulders at various distances. Sometimes, they set their phasers to stun and used each other as target practise, since stunning an Augment didn't really work that well. She knew from reading various classified reports that Khan could take at least six stuns and stay upright. While on a moving platform. With a gut wound.
Their quarry was indeed at the shooting range. Ronja stood at the railing some of the men had erected, a phaser rifle resting against her shoulder. Her blonde hair was shoulder length, pulled back in a tight ponytail to keep it out of her blue eyes. Anthea stood watching her, hands resting on her stomach, as Ronja picked off various objects someone had stacked on boulders: used food canisters, a seed pod not dissimilar to a pine cone, an animal skull.
Ronja was good, she could admit. Really good. The advanced sights on the rifles didn't hurt matters, but she clearly had skill, anyway.
Without looking at her audience, the Swedish woman set down the rifle she'd been using and switched to a phaser pistol, as she asked, "What do you want?"
Anthea stepped up to the rail and picked up the rifle. "May I?"
Ronja smirked. "Knock yourself out."
Flipping the setting from stun to kill, Anthea narrowed the beam scatter, raised the rifle to her shoulder, and disabled the auto-sight. Focusing on the animal skull on the furthest boulder, she inhaled, exhaled, squeezed the trigger.
The skull exploded into bone fragments, starting at the hole dead centre in the forehead.
"I'm told," she said, as the feeling of calm she used to get at the range at the archive settled over her, "that you're a medic."
Ronja looked from the boulder where the skull had been to Anthea. "I am. And you are not like Marla."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Naive," the blonde woman said after a moment. "Soft."
"She's been sheltered. I had my naivety stripped away quite thoroughly when I was twenty-three. I spent eight weeks in an intensive boot camp in the wilder parts of California, then another four in England, being trained in how to kill people with any weapon I could get my hands on. Then they tied me to a chair for three days, under a light, with no food and barely any water, and cut into me until I nearly bled to death, just to see if I'd break." She met Ronja's gaze squarely. "My best friend didn't go through any of that. She was an administrative assistant. She didn't have clearance for anything more sensitive than the coffee machine. Khan and I designed this rifle. The adjustable scatter kill beam was my idea."
She handed the rifle back. "Yves needs medical staff. I'm having a baby sometime in the next days or weeks. You have steady hands. Interested in putting them to use with some really cool futuristic technology?"
Ronja stared at her in silence for several moments. Seeing Khan's eyes in this stranger's face was almost unnerving. The eyes, the cheekbones, the mouth, all of it a bit softer, more feminine.
Then the blonde grinned. "I like you. No wonder Khan was taken with you enough to marry you. I don't know him all that well, we are not close, but we all know what kind of man he is. If you won him over, that means something. And you are good with a rifle. I appreciate that."
"I need work with my knife skills," Anthea admitted. "My initiation gave me nerve damage that Khan only recently fixed, so I'm not as good with my hands as I'd like to be."
"Navi is the one to talk to," Ronja said. "She can train you to use knives."
"Something to keep in mind for after the baby."
Ronja glanced down at Anthea's stomach. "Yves needs a nurse?"
"Or two. And we've got a big lab we don't have any scientists for. I mean, I'm sure we've got some here, we've just been more concerned with getting everyone housed and fed than in getting anyone started on research projects. I ran a lab in San Francisco. I know what lab geeks are like."
Ronja smiled at that. She nodded. "I will talk to Yves. I admit that I would like something to do besides … this … all day."
Anthea sighed. "I'd like to get things to a point where we can turn our focus from just survival to actually building a good life here. But it takes time."
"You've given us better than we had before we left Earth," Kati said. "We were sleeping on blankets on the ground for a bit, before we made it to Sydney."
Ronja nodded. "And we were scattered there. Hiding through the city. It took a year and a half to build the ship. It took all the money Khan had left to build it."
"From everything I've heard, I'm amazed that it was built and you weren't stopped by the authorities."
Kati laughed, but not with humour. "We were constantly terrified that they would. To this day, I do not know how Khan managed to design the ship, build it, and get us off Earth. And the cryogenic tubes? His idea. His work."
"Khan's brain is something else, I'll tell you that." Anthea pressed a hand to the small of her back, trying to relieve the constant ache there. "If you're interested, you should go talk to Yves. He's on the ship, in the medbay. In through the port side access, straight down the hallway to the middle intersection, take a right, and it's the second door on your left. Crew quarters are on the right. I need to go sit down."
Kati took her arm. "Let's get you home."
Together, they left Ronja to her shooting and made their way back up to the house on the "hill". Anthea was thoroughly winded by the time they got to the steps, and she paused there, looking up the incline at the house. The logs that formed the walls still had their bark on the outside, but were sanded smooth on the inside. The windows finally had glass in them, the walls and roof were sealed against the elements. It was somehow both rustic and elegant. Khan was planning on adding stone to the outside of the house, but hadn't yet.
"I like her," she told Kati. "I was expecting not to."
Kati nodded. "You've had a hard time with the others accepting you. I think telling her about your… training made her realise that you have much in common with us."
Anthea grimaced. "Yeah. I loathe talking about it but it sure is an ice breaker."
"Did all of that really happen?"
She nodded. "It did. I was going to track down the man who tortured me, but Khan found him first and killed him."
"That's so sweet."
Laughing, Anthea said, "How fucked up are we that we think that?"
"Probably more than a little." Kati's hand hovered at her elbow. "Are you ready to keep going or do you need another minute?"
"A minute. My hips are twinging."
"Alright."
A cloud moved across the sun, taking the warmth with it, and they both made faces as the light dimmed.
"I have a question, actually," Anthea said after a moment. "About names. First of all, who the hell is 'Sunni'?"
Kati laughed. "Oh. Sorry. Sundaram Talwar. She's been with us from the start. She's the one with the nose rings and the mendhi tattoos on her hands."
"Oh. Right. And the shaved head. One of Khan's council."
"Yes. She used to have long hair, like mine, but… She won't talk about it, but she was … attacked by some men from another faction. She said they grabbed her hair. So she shaved it so no one would use it against her again."
Wincing, Anthea shook her head. "I hope they died horribly."
Kati's smile wasn't pleasant. "Khan put their heads on stakes outside the palace."
"I love my husband. Okay, second question. Khan's surname is Singh. But yours is Kaur, and so was your mother's?"
Kati gestured to the path, and Anthea nodded. "Oh. Sort of. Kaur is… It means 'daughter'? My name is actually Khatri Abhaya Singh Kaur. My mother was Sarina Singh Kaur. So Khan is Khan Singh. I could use Singh, but I don't."
It was a lot slower going that she was happy with. Her balance was off, she was out of breath due to compressed lungs—even if you were an enhanced human, squishing lungs reduced their efficiency—and her lower body just wouldn't stop hurting.
"So Pandu is…"
"Pandu Aadi Singh."
Anthea nodded. "Okay, I get it. If I were to use the Scottish Gaelic version of my maiden name, it would actually be Nic an Tòisich, while my dad would be Mac an Tòisich."
"Do you speak that language?"
She snorted. "Only a word here and there. My last name might be Scottish, and my dad is thoroughly Scots, but I was raised in London."
They finally reached the porch after what seemed like an eternity. "So when Sarina is born, does she have to be Kaur?"
"No. It's a choice I made." Kati opened the door for them, holding it so Thea could pass her. "What name do you use for Nolan, again?"
Anthea lowered her tired body onto the sofa, which she'd probably regret when it was time to get up to use the bathroom in about ten minutes. She was so very glad they'd bought the toilets. She had no idea how they worked but it meant she didn't have to use the outhouse anymore, or hoof it to the ship when she needed to pee.
"Harrison, officially. I had to put something down, and I couldn't put Khan Noonien Singh as the father on his birth certificate. It was risky putting John Harrison but everyone thought I was a victim of his manipulation against Starfleet."
Technically that was both the truth and a lie. She knew Khan had instigated a relationship for ulterior motives but they'd fallen in love anyway. And she had willingly hidden him from Starfleet in the days before their separation. Not to mention everything she'd done to rescue the Augments out from under Starfleet's hold.
"I played up the 'he used me, I'm such a victim' thing as much as I could. Certainly worked on Jim Kirk."
Martha, who had been watching Nolan, excused herself to go see about things at the Mackintosh cabin, leaving the two younger women with Nolan. The toddler and his Tribble, Spot, were happy to play with his cars on the living room rug. Well, Nolan was. It was a bit difficult to tell anything with Spot, being a faceless, eyeless ball of fur with a mouth, ear holes, and a multipurpose exit hole 'round the other end.
"You said you had an… involvement with that man once?"
Anthea hesitated. Khan knew all about it, but all Kati had been told was that there'd been a thing between them some time back. "I had a one night stand with him."
"When was this? Before you met my brother, I'm guessing, but when?"
"... After, actually." Anthea couldn't look her sister-in-law in the eye suddenly. She rushed ahead to explain. "It's a bit of a long story. Nolan was three months old. I thought John, or Khan, was dead. I knew Starfleet had captured him after the Vengeance crashed into San Francisco. I went to the memorial for that. Thousands died. Twelve thousand some odd people, at least the ones known. They had John Harrison up on the memorial wall."
She paused, looked to see her sister-in-law frowning. "I… talked to Kirk, knowing he'd spent the last two days of my husband's life with him in some capacity, at least as far as I knew. I wanted to hear what he had to say, what he knew. Trying to find closure, or… something. We got to drinking some fancy whisky, and then I found myself going to bed with him. Knowing now that they saved Kirk with Khan's blood, part of me wonders if that had anything to do with it." Actually, she hadn't had any of the whisky, but she'd been saying it so long, it had almost become the truth in her head.
Kati stared at her with huge eyes. "So you and Kirk…? While Khan was imprisoned?"
Grimacing, Anthea said, "I don't feel great about it. But Kirk let slip while we were getting dressed that Khan had been put back into his cryotube and was with the rest of you. So I spent the next nine or ten months trying to find where you all were stored, and stealing things we could use here. Because I knew that we had to leave Earth, and do it better than you had with the SS Botany Bay. Found the storage facility on my second wedding anniversary, mostly on the way to drunk out of self pity."
That time, she actually had been drinking. It had been a hard day, and then she'd stumbled over the listing of 73 cryotubes, and she'd abruptly been stone sober.
They were both silent for several moments as Kati absorbed all of this. Then she asked, "Does Khan know?"
Anthea waved a hand. "Oh, he knows everything. I mean, not intimate details. Given I was tipsy, I don't recall all of those myself. But he knows I shagged Kirk and all of that. I told him almost immediately when I woke him up."
"Almost?" Kati repeated indignantly.
Thea cleared her throat. "Well. Once he was fully conscious and we had it out with the whole 'you're literally not the person I married, what the hell' bit, then I told him. He got … territorial." She grinned.
Kati flushed a little. "Oh."
"It wasn't one of my finer moments, but without it, I'd have had no idea Khan was alive or that all of you were, or that I needed to start looking. I thought that you'd all been killed, that Khan had probably been executed."
"So that is why my brother tried to concave Kirk's face." Kati paused and snorted. "Khan-cave."
"... That was terrible and I hate you."
They both burst out laughing. Nolan climbed up to the sofa and tried to plop himself in his mother's lap.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but you can't sit in Mummy's lap right now. Soon, I promise."
Nolan frowned thunderously at the bulk of her belly. "When, Mama?"
"After the baby comes. Which will be soon."
"When is soon?"
Good question. "I dunno, darling. She'll come when she's ready. And you're going to be a great big brother, aren't you?"
Nolan eyed her stomach suspiciously. "I can twy."
Smiling, she leaned to kiss the top of his head. He was speaking in full sentences now, rather than fragments, which astonished her because he was only a few weeks shy of two. But he still couldn't pronounce his Rs, and his motor skills were only marginally better than a typical child his age. It made Anthea feel a bit less weird about raising a super-intelligent child.
"You should nap, if you can," Kati said. "Let me help you there."
A nap suddenly felt like heaven. Anthea let Kati pull her to her feet. Her sister-in-law wasn't trained in much—yet—due to having had epilepsy, but she was still an Augment and strong.
As Kati helped her to the bedroom, the other woman asked, "So, this Jim Kirk. How was it?"
"How was what?"
"The sex!"
Anthea found herself blushing furiously. "It was… I mean, it wasn't like it is with Khan. But I've had a lot worse. For what it was, it was… decent. Bit quick, though."
"... How short?"
Kicking her shoes off, Thea sat on the edge of the bed. "Maybe fifteen minutes? I mean, that might be above average for some men, I've been with men where five was pushing it, but I'm used to hours with Khan-"
Kati clapped her hands over her ears. "La la la la!"
"I'm not giving you any details. I'm just saying it wasn't up to my standards. But for what it was…" She shrugged. "I was desperately lonely. I missed my husband. Kirk was… there and the opposite of Khan and I needed someone. I hope you never have to experience that."
"I hope you never have to again."
Her sister-in-law helped her get into bed. Nolan came dashing in and threw himself up on the bed, climbing the last bit with assistance from the iron bed frame. Anthea wasn't about to ask where Spot was. If the tribble made a mess, someone—not her—would clean it up.
"I'll tell Khan where you are," Kati said, as she left.
Nolan snuggled against Anthea, tucking his small head under her chin. "Mama."
"Keeping me company while I nap, huh, sweet boy?"
"Daddy says to pwotect you an' Sawina fwom the bad men!"
She smiled and pressed her lips to his dark hair. It should have scared her that he was only two and this advanced. What would he be like in another year? Five? Good Lord, how would they deal with him as a teenager? And Sarina? What would she be like?
She'd find out soon enough, she thought, as she closed her eyes and hugged her son close.