A/N: thank you very much for reading and reviewing! Your insights and ideas help me greatly with developing the characters and keeping their reactions believable. Kudos, criticism and commenting of any sort is again highly encouraged, as reviews are love.
Sorry about the 'phaser' blooper, but in my defense, it wasn't me, it was my Autocorrect, but I can't be mad at it; it's open source, really cool but much less of a nerd than me. My gratitude to the person who caught it! You rock! As always, criticism is never taken personally and very much welcome.
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The next couple of days were something out of the nine circles of hell, which was ironic, because Khan preferred Milton to Dante, if the Paradise Lost she had glimpsed on his PADD one morning in his bedroom were any indication, and she wasn't exactly keen on either. At first, she had hid in her quarters in the house, refusing to go to work or even venture outside reluctant to run into Khan and willing to make any kind of eye-contact with anyone else. Absurd as it was, she feared everyone meeting her would instantly know just how easily goaded she had been. She was also taking frequent showers, scrubbing herself so vigorously that her skin had become irritated. Still she couldn't erase the memory of his touch from her body. It felt as if he had crawled inside, branding her from within, like an invisible scarlet letter accusing her both of her weakness and the crimes of Starfleet.
She was angry, suffocating with it, angry at her father, at Starfleet, at the loss of her life-long ideals, at Khan and at herself for not seeing through his ruse. In fact, she thought she despised herself even more than him. After all, he had done nothing, hadn't laid one unwanted finger on her, hadn't even attempted to seduce her to speed his plan along. He had only set a vague trap and patiently waited for her to fall. And she had thoughtlessly thrown herself at him, latching onto the smallest scraps of tenderness he had deigned to grant her. She loathed them both for it, yet her fury came with a hefty dose of shame and self-recrimination.
If Khan had been violent or openly hostile, her mind would have been spared. She would have been vindicated in her hatred of him, tried to resist despite the uneven odds and held onto her pride at the end of the day. But this slow deconstruction he had orchestrated, culminating in his brutal unveiling of the darkness beneath Starfleet's gleaming facade, was not something she could fight or even dismiss. She realized almost as an afterthought that his most dangerous weapon, the one no one saw but all should fear, was not his gift for strategy or the strength coiled in his muscles, but his uncanny ability to read people and manipulate them accordingly.
Almost a week into her self-imposed isolation, she could no longer bear the feeling of the walls closing in on her and wrapping herself in a thermal cloak, she went to brave the windy day for a walk outside. She found one of the starbase shuttles hovering in front of the house and Khan, dressed in a long, black coat, standing by it. Though it was difficult to estimate what rules Section 31 could be subjected to, she was fairly certain they were not supposed to just lend out essential Starfleet property to the Augments like this. But herein lay another point her father had gotten about Khan and his people wrong.
In order to restrict the secret of its existence to as few as possible, the base functioned only with skeletal personnel that was never rotated, therefore, stranding said personnel on a harsh planet for well over a year next door to a colony of alluring superhumans. It came as no surprise that they had all gone a bit native. Those who still harbored prejudices against the Augments had serious reasons to think twice before putting this particular development into any official report, since Carol knew for a fact that Khan monitored subspace communication from Ceti Alpha V.
There was a challenge in Khan's expression, his frown deepening the lines of his face. Carol met his eyes unflinchingly and stepped closer to the shuttle. "Going on a trip?" she asked.
He tilted his head to the side, studying her carefully. "Yes," he responded. "I want to take a brief air survey of an area beyond the mountains."
Carol knew they were in the northern and warmer hemisphere of the planet, but the only extensive view she had had of it had been from the ship that had brought her here. Though she had never traveled farther than the starbase, she knew the Augments sometimes ventures into the mountains and past them to the vast woods covering the plains and plateaus sprawling on the other side of them. The Augments had also found more prairie landscape, greener than the dry one where the base had been built, and dominated by a species of large herbivores similar to the bisons back on Earth. Tests had revealed their meat to be edible and her superhuman neighbors were quite fond of it, hence multiplying their trips to the farther plains.
"Have fun then," she said dryly about to turn on a heel and walk away from him.
"I was about take Otto, but you can come instead if you want."
His tone was innocuous enough, but she recognized yet another challenge. He was testing whether she was afraid of him and just how much. Carol kept her eyes on his face, lifting her chin hauntingly. She didn't fear him and even if she had, she wasn't anymore at risk in the close quarters of the shuttle than at home in the colony filled with his people or at the base, where she trusted the loyalties of no one. Besides, with his strength, the best she could do in a fight with him was probably scratch him, which she fully intended to do, should it come down to it.
"Alright," she said cautiously, stalking closer to the shuttle, before inspiration struck and she smiled sweetly at him."I would love to."
The tension between them was palpable as she boarded the craft, but she was resolved not to given in an inch. Her world might be crumbling and she might have doubts about anyone, including herself, but she would not let him manipulate and bully her further, not matter how much he had already managed to chip at her dignity.
"Then you will keep the travel log, as Otto was wont to do," he told her as he got in and gestured towards the seat behind the console controlling the flight and navigational settings, which he occupied himself.
Carol scowled at the coordinates marking their destination. "Ocean of Dust?" she asked not without sarcasm.
"You'll see," he said simply before the shuttle door sealed itself and a second later they started to float upwards.
She returned her attention to her screen, made a few notes about the time and place of their departure and arranged the log into a more ergonomic format purely out of habit. She had noticed before that the Augments leaned towards more flowery expressions than the exclusively pragmatical ones the Federation bureaucracy preferred. Once she was done with that, she looked outside the narrow shuttle window only to be greeted by a breath-taking view of the mountains. They were both desolate and majestic in their imposing bareness.
She saw nothing but empty, fawn rock profiled against gray skies for almost an hour until they swooped past and down to the green of the forest-covered plains. Though they reminded her somewhat of the woods of the temperate climate ones on Earth, they still looked alien enough not to allow room for the imagination to travel back home. It was all so wild and untamed that she could not help but think that this planet fitted the Augments in a way. She made more observations in her log, using the navigational compass to determine their exact location on the surface and asking Khan a few technical questions when needed.
Her job was rote enough for her mind to wander along darker thoughts. She questioned whether Starfleet Command knew the potential unleashed on this barely class M planet and was aware of the giant about to grow in the Federation's shadow. She wasn't sure what prospect worried her more. That the Augments and their descendants might build the empire denied to them on Earth starting from this small outpost or that high-ranking officers like her father might want to nip the possibility in the bud. Even two months ago she would have dismissed the latter as lunacy. Nobody in Starfleet would stoop to cold-blooded murder. Now she was less certain.
She thought of the few months old baby in the Augment community. Last she had heard McPherson's wife was also pregnant. The ghost of Mai's laughter resounded in her ears from that afternoon Carol had seen her with her human lover. Carol didn't want to consider it, but that didn't make less likely. It could be argued that the Ceti Alpha system was outside Federation borders and the base here was manned exclusively by Section 31, which meant it didn't officially exist. If it were to disappear one day, say when the war with the Klingons ended, nobody would make inquiries about it. Even if the awakening of the Augments was now public knowledge and people like the commanding staff of Enterprise were not kept busy enough to check on them, geological disasters happened all the time on distant, perilous planets. Why should one as little known as this one be an exception?
An icy shudder slithered up her spine. She craned her neck to steal a look at Khan's profile, but the concentration coloring his smooth features gave little away. Feeling a course correction in the movements of the shuttle, she focused again on her screen but seeing she had nothing to write down yet, her attention was riveted back to the windows. There was another mountain chain on the horizon but they didn't flow towards it. The ocean filled the view instantly, as the coast line was barely a narrow sliver bordering the thick woods.
She understood the name of the Ocean of Dust immediately. The water was of the same color as the dunes on the Sahara, giant foam-tinged tan waves battering against the shores. She scrambled to enter the necessary data into the log, before returning to the view. From the air it looked like living quick sand spinning together and stretching far past the line of the horizon.
"Do you know how large it is?" she asked as he landed the shuttle.
"Approximately the size of the Pacific Ocean on Earth," he said and opened the shuttle door.
The beach was covered in pebbles littered with white, spiraled shells. She picked one up but found no trace of the animal once living within on it. The air didn't smell salty. "The water is sweet, isn't it?"
"Yes, but it's too saturated with minerals to be potable."
She nodded, her thoughts returning to her dark musings from the shuttle, as she turned the dry shell over in her hands. He was standing only a foot or so from the water, staring into the distance as if he wanted to intimidate the ocean into submission, which for a few hysterical moments she suspected him of being capable of, his posture as perfectly straight and as statuesque as ever. He seemed tall as the mountains as they had just bypassed like this and somehow more powerful.
"You're in danger," she said out loud, tearing her eyes away the incarnation of a force of nature at her side and forcing herself to gaze at the more natural of the two wonders she was caught between.
"I know," he replied, voice low and dismissive.
Carol chose to ignore the tone. "I can help you protect your people."
"In exchange for?" he asked without missing a beat.
Apparently none of his jabs ever missed. The reply she yearned for was on the tip of her tongue, but putting a price, any price, on somebody's life repelled her to such an extent, that it almost made her physically ill. "In exchange for nothing," she snapped and looked back to him, a move she regretted upon seeing the small, knowing grin curving his lips.
"Carol," he chided, his voice, smooth as a caress, elongating the vowels into satiny sounds underscoring the fine line of contempt slipped into his words. "You were so close to giving the right answer. If only your principles hadn't held you back."
Carol swallowed past her anger but still glared at him. "I know you think everybody in Starfleet is a hypocrite for whom the Charter and the oath we take are just pretty words on paper. But they mean something to me."
"So you are willing to betray the Federation in order to prove to yourself that your allegiance to its principles is genuine," he said, his expression one of pure condescension.
Carol was glad she didn't have a phaser. If she had, she would have cheerfully shot him right now. Instead she just gave him a sour look. "They exiled you for being annoying, didn't they?"
He chuckled and schooled his face back into impassivity, as he turned back to the ocean.
"Listen," she started again, her speech picking speed as she talked, her resolve solidifying with each word making it past her lips. "You might have the mind of a perfect warrior, but you come from a time when battles were two-dimensional. Space conflicts are three-dimensional. I have a Starfleet officer's training and I know how my former superiors think better than anyone you can wrap around your finger at the star-base, because I used to work within the system and all Section 31 knows is how to skirt it. This is my offer. It won't cost you anything and I won't reconsider it later. Take it or leave it."
She found herself the target of one of his intense gazes. There was an equal measure of disbelief and calculation in his eyes. She held his gaze proudly, until he gave an almost imperceptible nod of agreement.
TBC