-Chapter Five-

A happy Khan was a very pleasant Khan. As the heart of the community, even though only the two of them and Yves knew about their baby, Khan's good attitude quickly spread to everyone. Everyone save Rodriguez.

This time, it was apparent enough that Khan finally picked up on the man's animosity.

"What is his problem?" he asked Anthea, as they prepared for bed.

"He doesn't like me," she told him. "I wasn't going to say anything, but he doesn't."

"Why would he not?"

She shook her head and sighed. "Khan, not everyone sees me the way you do. I haven't brought it up because I don't want to cause trouble, but he's not the only one who doesn't care for me. He's just the most obvious about it. I talked about it with Kati. They think I'm . . . not good enough, or something."

Her husband frowned. "That is completely ridiculous."

"Actually, I can kind of see where they're coming from. I'm not an Augment. I'm a normal, flawed, weak human woman in their eyes. And Rodriguez especially is angry that he apparently feels he . . . owes me. I don't see it that way, but some of them apparently resent that I rescued you lot all on my own."

Khan snorted in disgust. "It is not only that. Silly as I think that reasoning is-you are not weak in the slightest-there may be another cause."

She arched a dark brow. "And what would that be?"

He actually looked uncomfortable. "Back during the wars . . . Rodriguez is not originally one of my people. Most are, for varying reasons, but Rodriguez was late to the party, so to speak. I had a brief . . . interlude with his sister, and she was killed in the war. I think he believes that I would have married Telema, and he would have been elevated in status by it."

His wife was skeptical. "So he resents me because not only did you not marry his sister, who then died, but you settled for an ordinary woman?"

He nodded.

"How long was this . . . relationship?"

"Six months. The longest I had before you."

Anthea made a derisive sound. "Oh, please. If you were required to marry anyone you shagged for at least six months, I would have married Elworth Kennedy straight out of secondary school. And that would have been a disaster."

"And who is Elworth Kennedy?" There was a thread of jealousy in Khan's voice; she doubted any but she would have noticed.

Anthea smirked. She wasn't jealous of his past, especially given they were all long dead. But he, who had no reason to worry, was jealous. It was kind of cute. "Idiot I dated in school. I was sixteen, and he was my first."

Khan caught her around the waist. "And if you met this Kennedy now . . .?"

"There is no one but you, my love," she breathed, pulse racing as he pulled her against him. "I wasn't even that invested then. I only shagged him because I was curious and he had a fast car. Have I mentioned I was a little shallow at sixteen?"

Her husband laughed and pressed his lips to the side of her neck. "Telema was pretty, but that was her only appeal to me," he told her. "She never held my affections. I was . . . different before you, Anthea. I never loved the way I love you."

She reached up, caught her fingers in his hair, and twisted to kiss him. Khan's big hands were hot through the thin silk of her nightdress, flattened against her back to hold her against him.

"Khan," she breathed against his lips.

"Mama!" Nolan yelped from his playpen. "Ma ma ma ma ma!"

"Dammit," Khan muttered. "That's it. Starting now, he's getting his own room."

She laughed. "I was just thinking that myself. Tell you what. I'm going to take myself off to the loo for a moment. Why don't you move his crib into the next cabin over?"

"Good idea."

When Anthea emerged from the bathroom, she padded on bare feet next door, where she found Khan tucking Nolan into bed. She loved these moments, when her war machine husband showed his softer side.

"There we go, Noisy Cricket," he murmured to the baby. "Off to sleep, now."

Anthea came up behind him and looped her arms around his waist. "'Noisy Cricket'?"

"Oh. It's a . . ." Khan gave a small laugh and looked sheepish. "A film that came out in the 1990s, about a government agency that deals with aliens attempting to invade Earth, called 'Men In Black'. I only had the chance to see it once, but one of the main characters, Agent J, has this ridiculously small gun that packs an enormous wallop. It's called a Noisy Cricket."

She looked down at their sleepy son. "I see the resemblance."

Khan took her hand. "Let's star-gaze. It's a clear sky tonight."

"Khan, I'm in my nightdress."

"No one will notice," he assured her. "And if they do, they'll look away."

She hesitated, then grabbed a blanket and one of the "baby monitor" communicators Khan had rigged up. "Fine."

Outside, near their mostly-built cabin, Khan spread the blanket out and they lay back to look up at the stars. Since there was no light polution, the sky was brilliant with glowing pricks of white light, and a multicoloured swath of gases from a nearby nebula.

"I remember," he told her softly, "the rooftop patio in London, where we tried to stargaze. But London was too bright."

"Mm. Our first night together, as I recall."

"It was, yes. Back . . . home, in the twentieth century, I loved to stargaze. I had all of the constellations memorised. These stars . . . I couldn't begin to tell you what they are."

"Pretty is what they are," she said. "Beyond that, who cares? Oh!"

She pointed excitedly as a shooting star went by. Logically, she knew it was just some sort of space debris, burning up in the atmosphere or skimming along its surface, but she didn't care.

"I haven't seen one of those in so long."

Khan wasn't quite as impressed, but then, he knew what it was like to be in something crashing through the atmosphere, with no shields, only a thick layer of metal between you and a very hot death, so it had lost some of its charm. "I want the others to be as happy as we are, but short of ordering them to 'pair off and make babies', I'm at a loss as to how."

Anthea laughed at his phrasing. "I think Yves and Kati might be interested in each other."

Khan folded his hands behind his head, looking up at the sky. "They have been for some time, but neither has the guts to say anything."

"I do know she's worried about her condition, about passing it on. Have you made any progress on that?"

"Some, I think, but it could very well be that she was designed to reject my DNA." He rolled to his side and ran a finger down his wife's arm. "We were created to be the start of a superior race, but . . . What tends to happen when bloodlines are regarded as 'pure' and not to be sullied by the inferior?"

Anthea wrinkled her nose. "Oh. Ew."

"I am still not certain my mother really regarded us as children more than experiments. Given how she created us, and who she worked with, the thought would definitely have crossed her mind. If she worked in a failsafe to prevent inbreeding, it would explain why that transfusion of my blood nearly killed her."

"That's . . . both devious and evil, and brilliant."

Khan pressed his forehead to hers and sighed. "However, it leaves me with figuring out which part of my DNA repairs errors, and which of hers rejects it, and figure out a way to remove that and splice mine in. And doing so with the limited equipment we have . . ."

"I got what I could. I'm sorry it isn't more."

"I know you did, my dear. And Nolan's blood does show less of a reaction, so I am hoping that eventually . . ."

Anthea combed her fingers through his hair. "Did you look into her theory about the other thing?"

Khan made a frustrated noise. "I did, and she is correct. Our mother used my DNA, blended with her own. My thought is that is the cause of her defect and the source by which Mother built in the failsafe. Humans do not reproduce asexually or through selfing."

"You realise I have very little actual idea what you're saying? I just love listening to you talk."

Khan huffed a laugh. "You're much smarter than you give yourself credit for, Thea."

He ran his hand over her stomach, laying it gently against her belly. "I have so much to thank you for, my love. You saved my people, and have given me a true family. I know I can be . . . distant at times, but you know that I adore you, yes?"

"Of course I do." She stroked her fingers over the back of his hand. "There was a time when I wasn't sure, but now, I have no doubt."

"I am sorry I gave you that doubt." Khan kissed her forehead, then her mouth. "If I could do it over, differently, I would."

"What's done is done," Anthea told him. "There's no point in worrying about it now."

"Mm. No. But I have seen enough that . . . even if I can, in this moment, think that nothing can touch us, I still worry."

"Don't," she pleaded softly. "Don't waste time on worry. Let's just enjoy this time, however long it ends up being."

Khan rolled to cover her, cupping her face in his hands. "Whether it is a day, or a century," he promised.

Then he kissed her, and both missed the meteor shower that lit the sky above them.