Khan's Things
By William Bundy
(Based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry, Gene L. Coon, and Carey Wilbert)
Khan Noonien Sing stared at the viewscreen of the U.S.S. Reliant. It had been many days since his crew had taken over the ship, and he was impatient. Admiral Kirk lay somewhere out there in that vacuum called space. Waiting...waiting for death, he hoped, as Khan's sleepless state deprived him of many pleasures to be found when dreaming. Nevertheless, he had dreamt often while on Seti Alpha V. His wife came to him, pleading with him for some semblance of mercy but he felt compelled to exact revenge on his longed-for adversary.
He remembered their time on Seti Alpha V all too well. Long, featureless days and nights as he and his crew regaled themselves with nothing but wiled away hours of pity, endless stories, and relentless honing. Honing their abilities - sometimes they fought one another, but only to stave away the boredom that ate them like leeches during those long, cold nights. Books were essential; the sandstorms that blasted across that barren sand heap of a world would be enough to drive anyone mad, but he grew used to them after a while. Sometimes he thought he could hear his wife calling to him but dismissed it as the petty, wanton cravings of a man desiring what could not be returned to him.
He stayed instead with her in his dreams, trying to forget her agonizing death and pretending he was on Earth, pretending he was still a prince and her his princess as they reigned from a palace of gold under the vast brightness of a star without end: his own creation and the future that lay before him. Now cut short by...Admiral Kirk. He couldn't wait to strip that title away from him. To strip everything away from him as he had done when he left him there. He had thought of this for a long time and desired to make his vengeance swift, beautiful, and all the more extravagant through its meaning to him and him alone.
No one could know the wounds that had festered due to that man's duty, and he intended to make him and the rest of humanity pay for it, inch by inch, if necessary. Khan knew an entire universe lay waiting: the Klingons, the Romulans, who knew what else lay out there in the vastness of eternity? But they could wait. They all could wait, and with genesis soon to be under his command, he would be free to do as he pleased, the lord of his own creation, and he intended to start a new empire when all was said and done - an empire of people just like him, a new and even more improved race that would spread from their genesis home to wipe the galaxy clean and return it to order.
His order, not the chaotic disorder that constituted the current state of affairs judging by his encounters with Starfleet and their delegation of ignoramuses. How weak they were, how irrelevant. How could mankind have stooped to such a level? He had pondered this often, laying in his bed on Seti Alpha V as the wind outside blew hard, and the dust ate at his skin. Watched the eels of that dead planet burrowing away in the prison he had created for them. Just as he was, enslaved to life on eternity's edge waiting for vengeance and petty tomfoolery to be the downfall of his arch-enemy, Kirk.
How he hated that man...the very name uttered thoughts he could barely contain; the urge to pound his fist grew as he thought of him. How any man could dare to contain him, the mightiest of rulers, was abhorrent to him. That he had taken his wife...no storm could capture that malice, and Khan had taken the time to enact every scenario on that dead planet, dreaming of destroying his one true Kirk, his great, white whale. He cursed the one who would feel the blood spill from his veins soon enough. Khan remembered his wife's screams...the desperation as the life ebbed from her eyes and the madness took hold. He could not bear it and had since done his best to wipe those memories from his mind.
Khan had instead devoted attention to his plan to populate the galaxy with his seed. Time was a luxury on Seti Alpha V. A strange notion, time. It seemed like sand in an hourglass, but it luxuriated and festered like a bitter wine on Seti Alpha V. Biding its time like quicksand, hardening like a rock until nothing more could be gleaned other than its worn edges and smooth surface as days merged into days, and the sun became one with itself.
His sun, feeling he could pick it from the sky like a light and relight his own soul, which burned for vengeance. "Moby Dick," his old friend among others, had entertained him on those nights when vengeance called to him like a moth to a flame, a flame to a wick, sirens to the sailors of old. He read and re-read that book, savoring the language and the obsession of its doomed captain. He thought Ahab a fool but knew he knew that feeling. The need to strike into the heart of darkness and be done with it, letting its blood become one with one's own and consuming its ancient fire with a passion undying in the blackest night.
He craved that feeling, seeing his opponent on the horizon as he imagined throwing that spear and bringing Kirk to the ground...BRINGING HIM DOWN, tearing at his soul like a viper, defrauding it of its fifth until its vile impurity could be consumed and destroyed with its life-force dry, alien, and utterly worthless. This he would do and much more as he pondered the stars beyond. They were dim, he knew, echoes of their former selves as they embraced the dark to shine a light through it.
He had no need to shine a light in the darkness. He was the darkness and intended to consume the galaxy for his own and create a new light to shine for those chosen ones who would join him on his journey through eternity. He yearned for it and cast his mind back to those many nights on Seti Alpha V, pondering life, death, and everything in-between as his bitterness stirred like a poison, building with a flame until, like whale oil, it blazed and cast a shadow over his soul as explosions of passionate fury tore up the palace of filth around him.
His eyes cast fire to everything that touched them, blazing a new hole in the void as he clutched that book for dear life, murmuring Kirk's name repeatedly in his sleep as the rest of the crew watched on with fascination. He was not done with Kirk, far from it, and would make him pay when the time came. He knew it was now coming as he saw a shape far ahead in the distance: he could almost tell what it was as his eyes widened.
"Sir, Enterprise is approaching," his loyal Lieutenant, Joaquim, spoke those words with glee, the potency in his voice evident as Khan's eyes gleamed and the furnace within sparked to life. So this was it, and there was no going back. "Excellent," he declared and prepared himself for the task at hand as he gathered his harpoon and waited for that great, white whale to appear.
Vengeance was his.
Time to die.
