Chapter-12:

17:30.

It was thirty minutes until departure when Khan arrived at the hangar. As expected, Commander Lassiter was there, ready to play the chaperone again. He stood patiently outside of the ship, whose engines had yet to be fired up, his eyes on a PADD.

"Commander," Lassiter greeted simply. "The ship's engines are being looked at one last time before we go."

An additional inspection was suspect. Khan made no reply and instead walked onto the ship. He needed to be sure that his torpedoes were still there. He would know if they had been replaced or moved. He made a single, careful round of looking over each individual torpedo. All of them were in proper place and order. Once satisfied, he stepped out of the ship once more to join Lassiter, but the young commander was nowhere in sight.

18:00.

It was the perfect opportunity to leave while Lassiter was foolishly absent. It saved him the trouble of having to deal with the man en route. And yet, he paused, his eyes locking onto the entrance of the hangar. She said she would come. He counted on her to come.

Leave her. His own voice was commanding him fiercely, but his body wouldn't comply.

18:05.

Five minutes and she still hadn't come— neither had Lassiter. Something was amiss, and the intellect in him finally triumphed and forced him to board the ship. The moment he stepped onto the ramp, however, he heard marching thunder into the hangar.

"Commander Harrison," Lassiter's voice echoed out sternly as they approached.

Khan didn't need to turn to know they had phasers aimed at him, but he faced them regardless. There were only ten of them, each security officer consisting of the most burly and well-constituted men on the starbase. He only offered the lot of them a sweeping glance before landing his gaze on Lassiter, who walked fearlessly at the front.

"You know why we're here to arrest you," Lassiter said calmly, stopping the march only a matter of feet from Khan's position at the entrance of the ship.

It was refreshing for the commander to be direct. Lassiter was smart enough to appreciate Khan's intelligence, but he seemed to have forgotten one key thing: Khan was also a warrior. They now offered him one choice. He was going to give them what they deserved, and that was no warning.

In one fluid movement, he seized Lassiter's collared throat in one hand and yanked him forward, to gain enough momentum to throw him back again, bowling the commander's body into the tight group of security men. Many were flattened under the weight of the other man, some knocked to the side, others still dazed and distracted just long enough to take their eyes off of their target.

Khan had only to reach forward and grab the end of a phaser; the weapon easily wrenched out of the officer's hand and turned around. With the flick of a button, the end switched from its benign stun-blue to kill-red. The men had no time to aim their weapons when Khan opened fire on them all. His arm moved accurately from one man to the next, blasting them with one phaser shot each. It was all over in a matter of seconds. When all but Lassiter were sprawled on the ground with still-searing holes in their sternums, Khan approached the young commander, who did not even have a chance to stand after being thrown like a child.

Lassiter was scrambling for his communicator, bringing it shakily to his lips. "Red alert! Security needed at Hangar 13—" the communicator dropped. "No, wait!" Lassiter's voice rose to a terrified pitch. He scooted backward over the dead bodies around him, a hand lifting in useless defense. "You don't have to do this!"

"I don't," he agreed fiercely. That desperate hand was grabbed by the wrist, and once again he was lifting the commander with ease from the ground, until they were eye to eye. "But I will." The tip of the phaser was pressed to the flesh of Lassiter's chin, and the trigger was squeezed.

To complement the red spray that now trickled down in the air was the red glow of the alert as it sounded throughout the starbase. Lassiter's corpse was dropped. Khan turned to make for the ship, but a small unit of security men came out of nowhere through the doors and open fired. Unlike his first would-be captors, these men were better equipped with phaser rifles that blasted into the ramp where Khan intended to go, efficiently blocking his way. He was strong, but not invincible.

Pivoting to the side, he dove for cover behind a wall of crates. Every attempt he made to reach his ship was thwarted, and the security men were working their way to surround him. The time it would take to fire up the engines of the transport ship—the one which contained his family as well as his freedom—was far too long to make fleeing possible. But there were other vessels present, smaller, more easily accessible ships. If he was to escape, it would have to be in one of those. This was a choice that made him hesitate, his heart breaking and his blood boiling.

That hesitation from Khan offered just enough time for a courageous security officer to dash behind the crates where Khan crouched. Khan sprang to his feet, a flash of light filling his eyes and something hot pounding into his side. It only knocked him back half a step—he was all adrenaline and purpose now. The man's weapon was snatched and thrashed across his face, collapsing half of his skull. Now armed with a more formidable weapon, Khan collected himself and made the choice to fight his way out alone.

Charging into the open space of the hangar, he was met with a shower of phaser-fire from all directions. From each trajectory, he fired one back in response. In the flurry of a running firefight, he kept his destination in sight, which was a runabout ship at the far end of the hangar. The shooters around him became less and less with each shot that he returned, but the red alert was still wailing and more were coming.

Long strides carried him on board the runabout, the door closing immediately and serving as a barricade while the security men came bustling towards his vessel in an attempt to keep it grounded. But, its engines were ignited in seconds. This small ship wasn't chosen by accident. This particular vessel had one thing that a mere shuttlecraft didn't: Weapons.

The moment that the engines were vibrating, his fingers danced over the controls to charge the ship's phasers. He targeted the sealed hangar doors that separated the artificial environment of the starbase from the vacuum of space and fired.

Chaos ensued as crates flew, bodies fluttered like confetti, and the air roared around his ship as it was pulled through the gaping hole in the wall. A few more shots, and the runabout was put on full impulse power, flying him out into the openness and liberty that was space, but leaving being the 72 people he loved.

No… the 73.