Red 21
Sam was relieved when the first of the fighters streaked across the sky because it meant she didn't have to keep giving this speech and quite frankly she was out of songs that would convey her current mood. She would truly have rathered faced down Nero and his crew armed only with a spoon than to have to give another speech again. The audience didn't seem to mind that her portion of the talking had been very abrupt, instead their eyes were focused on the sky, as were Sam's eyes at the moment. Maybe that was why she didn't notice the man staring at her so openly, until the crowd had started to disburse after the show.
Swiftly leaving the dead man's side he blended into the crowd. He watched from the shadows as people came up to her and congratulated her while she downed several glasses of champagne. He saw her glance in his direction several times and prayed that she didn't recognize him which is why he decided he needed to do a better job of blending in. He quickly followed a man to the toilet area, who had been wearing an instructors uniform. He snapped the man's neck and stole his uniform and Identification.
He watched her for a few minutes more until the crowd started to disburse and he was forced to do so also when someone tried to wake the dead doctor and screamed, when they realized the man was dead. Khan quickly left and waited near her dorm. He watched her stumble up the stairs and into the building, just barely resisting the urge to help her as he followed her inside. Part of him disbelieved that he was even seeing Samantha and wanted to know for certain f this was indeed his Samantha.
Fortunately for her the security lock on the elevator prevented him from following her up to her floor,or it would have, had the new residential adviser for the building not stumbled blindly drunk into the car, he swiped the mans ID card,giving him the perfect opportunity to gain access to her floor.
He exited the elevator and used the card to disable the lock on her door. He walked into the room hoping he could talk to her alone preferably before she sounded the alarm.
What he found was a drunk and obviously passed out Samantha who hadn't even made it to her bed before she was out cold. He knelt beside her and brushed the hair from her face. It was her, somehow she had survived to end up here too. Fate had smiled on him and delivered back to him the only woman who had shown him any kind of compassion. He frowned when he realized that he wasn't being all that compassionate back by leaving her to lie on the dorm room floor. He slid his arms under her and gently lifted her up onto the bed.
He thought briefly about undressing her then dismissed the idea. She would feel violated if he did so and he didn't want to do that to her. If anything happened between them he wanted her awake, aware and preferably consenting. He sat on the bed and gently ran his fingers through her hair.
"So soft, so real.. I missed you so much…I'll not let you out of my sight this time my love" said Khan
He gently kissed her lips as she slept, he watched her for a few minutes more then left. He had plans to make and very little time to do so. Now that he found her he had no intention of leaving her here.
Just the way Marcus had beamed at her during the ceremony cinched it. The admiral had designs on his Samantha and he had no intention of letting the man get any closer to the girl than he had already. It took every ounce of self control he had not to just fling her over his shoulder and abduct her then and there.
The only thing stopping him was that he had no escape plan set up yet, which meant he would get caught rather quickly if he did so, especially with all the scrutiny Samantha was bound to attract for the next few weeks.
So he vowed that he would just wait it out. With there being so very few commissioned officers, they were bound to ship out that Kirk boy which would leave his Samantha completely unguarded and if they shipped her out, he could always insert himself within the ranks of her crew.
Until either happened, he would have to blend in and with so many instructors gone and quite a few new students coming in it would be easy to hack his way into the system and pretend to be an instructor for a while. The labs on the academy grounds would give him the perfect place to make something that would allow him to beam them on-board a ship while it was at warp and at the same time it would allow him to be in a position to protect his Samantha.
He left the dorm building and headed for admissions or more specifically the office located at the back of the building which was where the human resources department was located for the academy. It took him all of about five minutes to hack into the woman's system, seriously it was stupid to use her pet's name especially when said pet was in a monogrammed frame right on her desk. He inserted a name he made up on the spot into the files for incoming instructors, making sure to pad the file with useful information that he could actually teach if he had to, as well as applicable instructor licenses. Then he quickly logged out and shut down the system before heading towards one of the empty dorm buildings to catch a few hours of sleep.
Sam was so glad the ceremony part was over, the meet and greet was slightly annoying as was the admiral's attentiveness; in all honesty she just wished the old man would get tired and go home already. She snagged a champagne flute off a passing server's tray and tried to ignore the blond standing next to the admiral, who was either his girlfriend or family member, either way she was incredibly irritating and it didn't help that Kirk was flirting with her to boot.
Now irritated she looked around for an out and caught a glimpse of someone standing by a pillar with a hoody pulled down over their face before people passed between them obscuring her view. When they had passed the guy was gone and for some reason it made her uneasy. Sam spotted Pike trying to get her attention, made her excuses and made her way towards them. Several people were leaving already and the clean-up crew was starting to fold up all the chairs, when suddenly one of the workers screamed.
The group went silent and turned towards the scream. A woman dressed like a member of the cleaning crew was pointing at an old man slumped over in a chair. "he's dead" said the cleaning lady. Someone in the audience made a scoffing noise and someone in a medical uniform moved forward and ran a tri-corder over the man. The doctor frowned at the small screen before making his way back over to the admiral. Sam was still close enough to hear what the man told the admiral.
"she is correct the man is dead the cause seems to be a broken neck" said the doctor the medical man looked confused but the look on the admiral's face told her the man had an idea on who was responsible. Sam had her own sneaking suspicions as well. She downed what was left in her glass even though it now tasted like sand in her mouth. The blond next to admiral Marcus left to fetch security.
After they arrived they started questioning those who were sitting nearest to the dead man and then going through everyone else one at a time. Thankfully they didn't even bother talking to Sam because she had been on stage at the time,along with Kirk who was also dismissed as a suspect. The investigation made the event take another two hours longer than it had to, so by the time it was over and guests were told they could finally leave, Sam was exhausted.
By the time she stumbled through her door she was half passed out already and was pretty certain she never made it to the bed. Even though she woke there the next morning. The next day Kirk was assigned a routine mission to nibiru to save a species from going extinct due to a very active volcano chain, so Sam didn't even get to see him before he took off.
Pike was made an admiral and Sam was stuck dirt side for a few days. She spent most of them watching the campus fill back up with new recruits and instructors, until she received a summons from Admiral Marcus.
Sam nervously stood at attention while she awaited whatever it was the man had to say to her. "at ease Morningstar,please sit down" said the Admiral
Sam slowly lowered herself into a seat.
" I have put a lot of thought into how to best utilize your talents young lady and I have come up with the perfect solution" said Admiral Marcus. He tapped the screen on his pad and handed it to her. Sam looked at the screen and frowned. There was a ship on the small screen though it was no class or design she had ever seen before, it looked vaguely familiar. She raised an eyebrow in query
"that is the USS Vengeance, an experimental ship my department was authorized to design. It requires minimal crew of fourteen and the captain would be able to fly her from his chair" said Marcus
Sam gave him a shocked look most ships especially one of that size would require a complement of at least two hundred. She set the pad on his desk and he picked it up. "I must confess after seeing you fly I feel as though this ship was designed specifically for you, which is why I am recommending you for the position as its captain" said Marcus
Her mouth dropped open in shock. He was kidding, right? She opened her mouth to protest that she didn't feel ready to be a captain just yet, when the man's com rang. He frowned at the small screen then looked over at her.
"You are dismissed Lieutenant Commander Morningstar, we will discuss the details at a later time" said Marcus
stunned Sam stood and walked out of the room. she exited the turbo-lift for the building just as the news-feed came on the screen for the campus announcements. "A suspected terrorist attack on the Kelvin memorial library has left several dead and many wounded" said the news feed. Sam stopped to stare right alongside everyone else at the devastation caused by the blast. A sinking feeling of dread was filling her stomach because that looked just as bad as the devastation, he had wrought in Las Vegas. In fact, she couldn't shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible, nor that she was being watched.
The news feed went on to other news and the crowd that had stopped to watch slowly disbursed. Sam reluctantly tore her gaze from the screen and that is when she spotted him again. Only this time he wasn't wearing a hood that obscured his face and she recognized him.
Part of her mind instinctively denied what she was seeing, that had been two hundred years ago and she still felt he was a figment of her imagination,or at least she had until Kirk showed her what he had done to Las Vegas in an apparent effort to find her, it had terrified her and made her sick to think that she had on some level cared for this man. Who turned out to be a monster and that he had sought her out.
He smiled at her from across the courtyard and she had the urge to run. Someone passed between them and he was gone. Panic set in and she started backing away from the building he had been standing by,which had been the cafeteria. She usually headed towards it around 11:00 to eat lunch, which meant he knew her routine. She swallowed nervously, appetite completely gone now she made her way into the nearest building which turned out to be the library.
Khan followed her in without her even noticing he was there. He watched her make her way towards the directory and calmly followed her. The library was almost completely deserted and he could tell it made Samantha nervous for some reason. He moved closer to her and waited until the few people in the same section left before he approached her. She had her hand on a book about lucid dreaming so he used it as an opening conversation piece.
"Lucid dreaming an interesting choice of subject matter" said Khan Sam froze and slowly turned her gaze in his direction. She stared at him for a few seconds while wearing a look of shock on her face. "Khan?" said Sam Her voice barely above a whisper. he smiled at her because she sounded nervous.
"Yes Samantha tis I" said Khan He watched her swallow nervously and noted that she appeared to be afraid of him. Ordinarily this would not concern him but Samantha was the last person in the world he wanted to be afraid of him. She stepped back some into the stack but realized quickly that he had boxed her in.
