-Chapter Five-
Anthea gave him directions to find Marla's cabin, and he left. She then tried to pick up the bin. It wasn't too heavy, not with her new strength, but it was just bulky enough that it and her stomach didn't mesh well.
"I will carry that for you," Spock offered.
She was vaguely suspicious, but relented. Khan watched wordlessly, one brow raised, but she waved a hand to let him know it was fine.
The Vulcan followed her into the hallway and to the captain's cabin.
"I'd take these things to our house," she said idly, "but I suspect they need laundering and I don't fancy hauling them all the way back here to what limited facilities we have."
"I am surprised at the relative sophistication of the colony," the Vulcan commented.
"For a bunch of twentieth-century savages, you mean?"
He regarded her with an even expression. "For having limited resources and operating in secrecy."
"It's amazing what you can do through grand larceny."
Spock set the tub on the bed.
"Thank you."
"You are welcome," he replied stiffly.
He stepped back into the hallway, and she followed.
"A moment, if you will, Commander Spock, before you go?"
Spock paused, tipped his head slightly as he regarded Anthea with dark, narrowed eyes. "Certainly, Commander Harrison."
"You needn't call me that. I haven't been with Starfleet for nearly a year."
"Yet, it was your rank, was it not?"
She smiled thinly. "For a time."
"What did you wish to speak of? I presume you desire privacy, given that you waited until the captain left and your husband is in another part of the ship."
Anthea glanced down the corridor, saw everyone was, indeed, absent. Moving faster than Spock had expected, she grabbed him round the throat and slammed him into the wall. He had several inches on her, and was stronger than an ordinary human, but didn't struggle. For one, he was too surprised, and secondly, she was pregnant.
"You keep referring to me as a Starfleet officer," she said. "But I'm not one of you. Not anymore. I am Khan's rani. And I know you tried to talk Kirk out of coming here with what belongs to us, and you tried to talk him out of saving me and my children from the Klingons."
Spock stared at her. "You are an Augment. When did they do this to you?"
"Do this to me?" she repeated, and her hand tightened on his throat. "This was an unintended but admittedly useful side effect of my husband saving my life, when the hematoma in my head that your chief medical officer couldn't fix burst in my head and nearly killed me."
Anthea pushed Spock two inches up the wall, his feet leaving the floor. "I'm tempted to crush your windpipe. I know all about how you made Khan think our people were dead, how you chased him down when he was trying to return to me and our baby, how you beat him within an inch of his life, and then stole his blood and locked him in a cryotube with a broken arm and internal bleeding. Without even telling him his family was still alive. Without letting ME know my husband was still alive. And now you come here and cast judgement on us as if you're somehow better than us. Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you."
"I needed to save Jim," the Vulcan said, as if using his familiar name would calm her. He knew, after all, the connection she had with the captain.
Her smile was cold. "Wrong answer. I don't give a damn about James Kirk."
From down the corridor, Khan said, in a vastly amused voice, "Let him go, darling. If I'm not allowed to kill Kirk, you're not allowed to kill Spock."
She snorted and stepped back, releasing the Vulcan. "Fine. But listen to me, Spock. You do anything to my family again and not even Khan will be able to save you from me."
The Vulcan put his own hand to his throat, where livid green bruises blossomed. "I will endeavour to remember that," he said tightly.
He pushed past the couple and disappeared down the hall. Khan caught Anthea around the waist and tugged her close. "Hormones making you volatile today, I see."
"Maybe a little. He just makes me so angry!"
"I know the feeling well, love." He kissed her temple. "My Thea. I was tempted to let you do it. The look on his face when he realised what you are was priceless."
He smoothed his hand over her belly. "I do love that you're so fiercely protective of me, my darling."
"You're mine," she said, almost in a growl. "And I will kill anyone that threatens you or our family."
Khan bent his head to kiss her. "My sentiments exactly."
Yves stuck his head out of the medbay, some distance down the hall. "Khan, Anthea, might you return for a few minutes?"
Hand in hand, they went back to the medbay. McCoy was still there.
"I know I'm not your doctor," the man said to Anthea, "but I'm curious how you're doing since I saw you last in my medbay. You mind if I examine you?"
"Not at all."
Khan helped her up onto the table. McCoy gave him a gimlet eye but kept any snide remarks he might have made to himself. Using a medical tricorder, he scanned her. "Vitals are excellent. So are the baby's. How's your head been?"
"Oh, I'm feeling fine. I haven't had a headache since I healed up, though it was pretty bad for a bit."
She glanced at Khan, managing not to smile. "Yves gave me some of Khan's blood and it took care of the problem. I haven't been sick or anything since."
The doctor nodded. "Good. That's good. How's the pregnancy going?"
"Well, it's getting close, I actually passed the point where I had Nolan, that was last week, so I'm tired and sore. My hips feel like they're going to fall off. But Yves assured me everything is exactly as it should be."
McCoy reached for her stomach. "May I? I'm not doubting my colleague here, I just want to see for myself how a pregnancy of an Augment child is."
Since Spock already knew, and would probably be telling Kirk at the earliest opportunity, Anthea asked, "What about a pregnant Augment?"
McCoy's brown eyes lifted from her belly to her face. "Are any of the colony members pregnant?"
"Just me, that we know of."
When what she was telling him sank in, the doctor's face went slack for a moment. "How…? I thought you people were born this way." That was aimed at Khan.
"Despite your best efforts," Yves told him, "Anthea's head injury worsened. We had to improvise treatment. It… had unintended side effects."
"You used the serum for Kati," McCoy guessed. "And it rewrote her DNA."
"Fixed all my flaws," she said. "Some of my scars went away. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to my stretch marks after I have the baby."
McCoy made an amused sound. "You guys aren't planning on… using the serum on anybody else, are you?"
"Not at present," Khan said, speaking for the first time since the exam had started. "The only people we would offer it to are Anthea's parents and Marla, but they've shown no interest in it as yet."
Not that any of them knew it was an option, Anthea mused to herself.
"You're not gonna force it, or…?"
"Hardly, Doctor. I'm not a monster."
"Well, I'm sorry I couldn't help more," McCoy said, "but it looks like things worked out. How are things working out besides that?"
Anthea heaved a sigh. "Well, we discovered that pain medications, at least the ones we have, aren't adequate for our needs. Khan broke his leg and had to have fairly unsedated surgery on it, and the pain blockers we have didn't do much of anything. He shattered his femur. It was gruesome."
The Starfleet doctor's face twisted in a grimace. "And you're still alive? Good God, man."
"It wasn't my happiest experience," Khan replied dryly. "I could have been completely sedated but I was reluctant, given what occurred the last time."
McCoy at least had the grace to look awkward. "I did patch up your wounds first. Didn't want that on my conscience."
Given half of Anthea's rage over Khan's imprisonment had been about her and Khan's assumptions that he had been put back into cryo with his injuries and somehow healed them over time—which didn't make a whole lot of sense, now that she thought about it—that lifted a weight off of her.
"Do you have anything that might work for me when I give birth?" she asked McCoy. "I don't relish the idea of giving birth unmedicated."
McCoy thought for a moment. He turned to Yves. "What do you have in your supplies?"
The two doctors went over to look. Anthea leaned into Khan.
"I would kill for some korma right now," she told him.
He chuckled and kissed her forehead. "So would I, actually. I know many places have Earth food. Maybe, when we go on our supply run, we'll see if we can find the ingredients. I know we could replicate it but we're reserving the replicator for important things."
She nodded. "Sounds excellent. Spock brought your things from when you were arrested on Qo'noS," she said, changing the subject abruptly. "You should go check the condition of them. Run any clothing through the sonic wash."
"What don't you want me here for while you talk to the doctors?" he asked with amusement.
She laughed and patted his cheek. "Nothing important."
He clearly didn't believe her, but decided to trust her and left.
The two doctors finished their inventory and came back.
"Yves says the strongest stuff you've got doesn't work very well," McCoy said, "so I'll need to take a look at what we've got on the ship. I might be able to synthesise something stronger but we aren't supposed to be here long."
"I understand." She sighed and rubbed a hand against the small of her back. "There was something else I wanted to discuss. We don't have much in the way of birth control here. Just, ah, condoms we picked up a few months back. I'm honestly not sure how many of our people are in sexual relationships. I'm not about to ask, either. My question is, do you have anything for long-term birth control? Like an implant of some sort? I'm thinking either under the skin or intrauterine. I'm not looking to have another child for a while, and we don't have the storage for the monthly injections for nearly forty women. The yearly ones, maybe…"
McCoy nodded, hand to his chin. "Starfleet overstocked us on that, to be honest. Five years in space? Accidents are gonna happen. And I can't say I like the idea of you folks runnin' around with just one doctor, havin' babies willy-nilly. I could send some down when I get up to the ship. We're due for refuelling and restocking next month, anyway, so I can replace it all then, no questions asked."
"Why are you willing to help us?" she asked. "My husband tried to kill all of you."
The doctor sighed. "Yeah, he did. But he also stopped a war we couldn't afford, and I hear he saved a little girl from a horrific death back on Earth." He jerked his head towards Yves, with whom Anthea had discussed Lucille Harewood extensively. "And I'm a doctor. I swore an oath to save lives. I don't like Khan. But you all helped us save the Brinthi from the Klingons. And I'm fond of your kid. And Yves and Kati."
The door opened and Ronja strode in. She paused on seeing McCoy. "... I can come back."
"No need," Anthea said. "Ronja, this is Doctor Leonard McCoy. He's the chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise and he helped Yves develop the serum that fixed Kati and saved me. Doctor McCoy, this is Ronja Jonsdöttir, our nurse."
To her great amusement, McCoy looked dumbstruck by the statuesque blonde.
"Oh, that reminds me. Ronja, you're probably more familiar with Augment biology," Anthea continued, trying to hide her smile at McCoy's expression. "Do you think hormonal birth control would work on us?"
"Likely not," the tall woman said. "Our metabolisms are too high for it. Some of us tried the pills back on Earth. I only know of one of us who got pregnant, but it happened on the birth control."
"What happened?" McCoy asked, finally getting hold of himself.
"She died in an attack by regular humans," Ronja said flatly. "They cut the baby from her and killed it."
They all sat in silence for a long moment.
"Well," McCoy said eventually. "They're a bit primitive by current standards, but maybe a non-hormonal intrauterine device would work. They're made outta duritanium these days, instead of copper. Indestructible, or damned close to it. Reusable, meaning you can remove it, sterilise it, have another baby when you're ready, pop it back in."
Ronja looked to Yves. "You know us best."
"I think those might work." Yves nodded.
"Also," Anthea said, "I know our people haven't been exposed to many diseases other than what was running around Earth in the 1990s. Khan was injured by a Romulan knife a few years ago and had a bit of an infection. I'm sure that the Andorian flu and the like aren't things our people have any immunity to, genetic engineering or not. Khan and I are both vaccinated for everything Starfleet has vaccines for, and Nolan is up to date on everything up to thirteen months, but no one else is."
The Starfleet doctor nodded. He glanced at Ronja. "So we need vaccines, IUDs… Any chance you could synthesize a master vaccine from Khan's immunity?" The last was directed at Yves.
"Perhaps, but it would be good to have other formulas to work with, just in case."
"Yeah. Sure. I'll beam down a vial of everything we got and you can probably duplicate 'em here. You've got some equipment in your lab I've never seen before."
"Likely Khan's inventions," Anthea said. "He likes to tinker."
—-
He found the bin where Anthea had said it would be, on the bed in their shipboard cabin. Khan stood for a moment just staring at it, recalling the events that had occurred the last time he had seen the contents. Then he pried the lid off.
His possessions had clearly gone straight into the bin after they'd been stripped from him, judging from the musty, slightly sour smell of the leather. On top of the pile was his old coat, the brown leather stiff. Under it, his sweater, leather pants, fingerless gloves, and his boots, all the things he had been wearing that day, including the hood he'd worn. A clear, unmarked bag held the contents of his pockets that day: his old communicator and the large, teardrop shaped ruby pendant he'd bought Anthea in India, at a market in New Delhi, while he'd been biding his time.
He held the silver-wrapped jewel in his hand, rubbing a thumb over the imperfect facets of the opaque, slightly shimmery stone. It wasn't as high a quality as the stone in the ring he'd given his wife, but when he'd seen it at the market stall in the courtyard of what had, centuries ago, been his palace, Khan had known he had to get it for Anthea.
He'd thought it lost until now, just like the embryos that had been returned.
Khan picked up the communicator. He didn't imagine, over two years later, that it held any charge, and was unsurprised when it didn't turn on. Going to the desk, he set it to charge.
Funnily enough, the last time he'd done exactly that with this precise communicator, it had been on the trip out to Jupiter to tour the Vengeance, when he and Anthea had … christened the ship, so to speak, and he'd had his way with her in the captain's chair. He liked to think Nolan had been conceived there, but it could very well have been here in this cabin, or any of a number of places at their home in London.
The device chimed to let him know it had enough of a charge to turn on, so he did. It was sluggish in doing so, since the battery was so low. Watching it boot up, he wondered why Anthea had been so insistent that he leave the medbay.
He saw, when it finally turned on, a multitude of messages from Anthea. These had never come through while the communicator had been in his possession. When and how had they made it through whatever interference had kept him from contact with his wife?
Thea: Where are you? Why aren't you picking up?
Thea: John? They're saying you did this. That can't be true.
Thea: Tell me it isn't true.
Thea: Did you do this?
Thea: I'm scared. Where are you?
Thea: Please pick up. I need to talk to you.
Thea: John, please. I have something to tell you.
Thea: They're saying you attacked Daystrom and killed Admiral Pike. What the fuck is going on?
Thea: Answer me!
Thea: Please, John.
There was an hours-long break in the stream of messages. He'd missed call after call, and Anthea had left him nearly a dozen voice messages, the fear and desperation, and then anger, increasing with each one.
Finally, he had to stop listening and put the communicator down. He knew now, these nearly three years later, what she'd needed to tell him but couldn't say. She'd just discovered that she was pregnant, and her world was falling apart around her. John Harrison had vanished amidst a wave of violence and destruction, and she'd been left alone.
Closing his fist around the ruby, Khan left everything where it was and went back to the medbay, where he found Anthea still sitting on the bed, with McCoy, Yves, and to his surprise, Ronja around her.
McCoy was showing the other two some tricks with some of the medical equipment. It seemed that Ronja had taken them up on becoming a nurse. With her medic background, and the intelligence they all had, it would be no time before she was caught up to this century's standards.
Anthea glanced over, saw him watching her, and reached out a hand. Not caring who saw, Khan closed the space between them, took her hand, and pressed a kiss to her palm.
He had so much to make up for, still. He'd known she'd been scared and worried, but to hear it in her voice had felt like a knife to the heart. The knowledge that he'd hurt her that way, even unintentionally…
They would discuss it later, he decided, when they had some time alone. And he would give her the necklace.
Note: Before anyone asks, McCoy doesn't learn about Anthea and Spock's "discussion" until much later.