Ceti Alpha V contradicted the earthen cliché of a cold north and warm south, as its lower hemisphere was mostly covered in snow, while the higher one did not even have an ice-cap. The nights in the Northern Wastelands were warmer than anywhere else on the planet, but they were also thirty-hours long. The sky was dark violet and illuminated by the local version of aurora borealis, wide, shimmering ribbons of pink and gold streaking the horizon. Khan liked to reference Milton and claimed that it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, but the north at night looked like the farthest thing from hell. But like everywhere else on Menkar, this wild beauty was poisonous.
The splendor of the skies and the balmy climate came in stark contrast with what was the ground: hard stone covered by sand interrupted from place to place by acid lakes. It was there that Khan had spirited the derelict, asteroid-nicked Botany Bay, sheltered from the elements in a rock cave. Carol didn't know if he had put it there as a sign of leaving Earth and their past there behind or out of a practical concern, since the north had no torrent storms, a unique occurrence on this planet. Now that the stringent needs of the colony were covered and the new ground defense system was operational, she was considering starting a museum of the augments' history by placing their antiquated ship in a structure with the technology to preserve it intact for their descendants.
Along with the cryotubes, the Botany Bay had also housed their archive, their entire story since the inception of the human genetic engineering project to their final defeat in the Eugenics War. The information had been transferred onto 23rd century devices, but the original artifacts were still on the ship. Carol had thought about requesting a trained historian from Federation territory to organize these things and use them to write a fairer account of Khan and his people than the current monographs, which were all based on what those who had defeated them in battle had left behind.
Powered down, the dead ship seemed hollow somehow, her footsteps against the floor of 20th century alloys thunderingly loud. She made her way to the control center, where the original documents were kept, safe in their panels. The only thing Khan had taken with him had been a stack of books, he had later lost in the destruction of their first settlement, but up in the uninhabited north, the Botany Bay had been spared. The medical files on the augments from the facility where they had been made had no names, only serial numbers, though the photos spoke for them. Khan had indifferently told her once that she could have his, if he wanted. Carol knew him well enough to be aware it was at least partly an act. He was not fond of the memory of him being a victim.
His pictures went from depictions of a baby's sweet smile, looking at the camera with dole eyes, to those of a young boy with ramrod straight posture and a cold, shielded gaze. The scar marring the skin on the left side of his mouth, just bellow his lower lip appeared around the age of nine. Carol knew how he had gotten it, had stumbled into the knowledge really after innocently asking one day, operating under the assumption it was a remnant of the war. It wasn't. It was the result of a test into what would permanently injure an augment, an experiment devised and supervised by the woman who had birthed him. Dr. Sarina Kaur was not his genetic mother, as Khan's had been created in a petri dish through a mix of cloning technology and early DNA-resequencing, but she had carried him to term.
Despite the irrationality of hating someone who had been dead for the past three hundred years and her being no worse and no better than anyone else who had ever sought to create and exploit a slave race, Carol loathed Kaur. She loathed her for the precise and technical way she sounded in her journals, testament of the woman's brilliance and her being a scientist much like Carol herself. She loathed her, because she could not tell with absolute certainty that she would have acted differently, had she lived in Kaur's time. And she loathed her, because a child to whom it had not even begun to occur that superior ability bred superior ambition had figured it out that Kaur had given birth to him and wanted to see her as his mother. But most of all, she loathed her, because deep down in a dark corner of his soul Khan probably rarely visited, he still loved her.
# # #
Carol had spent so much of her journey to her home-planet in the medbay, that she might as well have moved in there. Not that McCoy would ever tell her that. Even he had more tact than that. She had walked in supported by Uhura after getting yet another dizzy spell. Another person who had an abundance of tact was Uhura, who scuttled away with a warm, encouraging smile in Carol's direction, as soon as McCoy hinted he wanted to be alone with his patient. So far it appeared to be nothing more than a bout of dizziness, but he took an additional scan just to make sure. Carol did not look healthy and it was more than a little jarring to have a patient deteriorate so much under his care.
Her skin was sallow and her eyes were sunken in her head, surrounded by dark patches. She also looked like she could use a glass – or more – from his secret supply of Saurian brandy. Or a few from Scotty's secret supply of scotch. And several more from Uhura's secret supply of Romulan ale. But under circumstances, that would not do for the obvious reasons.
"Relax," McCoy said, when the tricorder assured him once more that both she and her baby were doing fine. "If it looks like a dizzy spell and it reads like a dizzy spell, it is a dizzy spell. You're lucky you're not Bolian and don't have their version of dizziness and morning sickness."
"Or the Andorian version of cramps and breast changes."
He arched an eyebrow at her in surprise.
He didn't have to ask how she knew about that, because she rushed to add. "My room-mate at the Academy was Andorian and we used to try and gross each other out with disgusting trivia about our species. That and eat Andorian junk food and fish and chips at odd hours of the night." Her smile was wan and distant.
"Sounds like you had better luck with your Academy room-mate than I did," he grumbled hoping to distract her from her gloom.
"Why? What race was your room-mate?"
McCoy grimaced. "Jim Kirk," he mumbled.
Carol chuckled, wriggling to make herself more comfortable on the biobed. The doctor loaded a hypo with vitamins and injected it into her neck with great care. Her skin seemed almost translucent and her veins were painfully visible.
"You know, just because you're having a baby, it doesn't mean you can't move back to Federation space, whenever you feel like it," he said quietly, as he retracted the hypospray.
Her head lolled towards him, a frown spreading over her face, and her gaze grew hardened. McCoy held up a hand to appease her, before it devolved into his being suspected of being prejudiced against her choice of a husband. It wasn't that he wouldn't normally assume that anyone who resigned from Starfleet to run off with Khan Noonien Singh was insane, because he did. But he knew her and that despite everything she had been through, she was still every bit a rational person fully capable of making her own decisions.
"Look, all I'm trying to say here is that sometimes marriages just don't work out and it's nobody's fault."
Her frown actually deepened and she slowly sat up on the biobed, prompting him to grasp at her shoulder to stop her. He winced when he felt bones through her medical gown. She obviously couldn't keep down enough food, which given the unprecedented character of her pregnancy the tricorder would be unable to measure exactly, so he would have to estimate just how much to amp her vitamins routine by going out on a limb rather than by following precise data.
"Whoa, easy there! I haven't cleared you for standing just yet."
"What you said before about marriages breaking down... that sounded a lot like speaking from personal experience," she noted in subdued tones, but obediently lying back down.
McCoy stomped onto the sharp jab of pain at the thought of everything his divorce that had cost him, but he fancied himself as a bit of a psychologist aboard the Enterprise and though Carol was no longer a fellow officer, he still felt as though it was his duty both as her attending physician and as a friend to try and help out, even if the subject was one he was least qualified for.
"I get sea sick and suffer from fear of flying and yet I'm on a ship... in space." He grimaced. "That's what divorce would sometimes do to you... not that I'm tryin' to push you back into the arms of Starfleet or something!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."
He shrugged. "You didn't pry. I just plan on keeping you under observation for another hour and couldn't come up with a better way to depress you. You know, since you didn't already have enough on your plate." He busied himself with filling another hypo. "By the way, you're also a bit low on fluids."
"I don't have marital problems," she murmured as though to herself but loud enough for him to hear her in the deserted infirmary. The ship was on a routine mission for once so with the exception of Carol and her unique pregnancy, nobody else needed his services at present. The duty nurse was out back, in the office, handling the requisition requests to compliment their unexpected visit to the Sol system.
"If anything, our problem seems to be that we don't have one, if that makes any sense. Some days I feel like our relationship has been forged at war and now we don't know how to deal with peace... or at least, I don't. He's just fine, better than fine, in fact: he's ecstatic."
"And you feel guilty for not being happy?" he chanced, as he turned back to her with his now fully-prepared hypo.
"I am happy... and I love him, but I don't trust him. I don't trust him not to break every bone and then rip out the still beating heart of anyone who breathes at me the wrong way."
McCoy winced. He and his ex-wife had had their fair share of problems and over time he had listened to his patients, human and aliens alike, relate to him a great number of relationship issues, but hers was a new one. But it was one of the worst kind: one that was entirely realistic and not at all subjected to any emotional distortion on her part. Putting the second hypo he had injected her with away, he folded his arms across his chest. "He doesn't know you're pregnant, does he?" he guessed.
She looked instantly guilty. "No, she doesn't," she admitted in a voice so low, he had to strain to hear her.
"You think he'll come get you, if he did, and risk the deal he has with Federation?" he went farther with his deductions.
Her eyes became wet and uncertain. "I don't know... I thought I did, but I really don't. He's my blind spot as much as I am his."
McCoy battled down another wince, feeling truly sorry for her. She was in a most unfortunate position. From a strictly rational point of view, he thought she was in right to keep her condition a secret from Khan, but he couldn't be certain that would have been the advice he would have provided, had she been in a relationship with anyone else but the augment leader. The bottom line was that no matter how hard he pushed in the opposite direction, when chips were down, he couldn't really discount who and what her husband was. It was a realization that bordered too much on bigotry for comfort and heralded back to the fact that he belonged to a medical culture strongly opposed to everything Khan represented. He would have to examine both notions in private later.
"I think," he began cautiously. "At the end of the day, you're the only one who can decide and you should do so regardless of what anyone, including your doctor with an unofficial second degree in marital problems and mistakes, says." He trained a stern look on her, frowning slightly. "But, as your doctor, I recommend you at least try and calm down about the whole thing. Your stress levels are way high and it's not doing the little one any favors."
She nodded, appearing thoughtful. "Thank you... Bones."
He grinned wryly. "Don't mention it. Now do you want another hypo or a glass of water?"
She smiled a bit. "Water, please."
"Did you talk to that Caitian doctor I told you about?" he asked to change the subject, as he got her water from the replicator.
"Dr. Niwara?" She paused to take a sip of her water. "Yes, I did. She's more than interested in taking my case so I arranged for a meeting while I'm on Earth to discuss details."
"Good. You can always refer me, if she has any additional questions."
# # #
Returning to Earth was more like visiting an alien planet rather than going home and it had nothing to do with the changes of the past three centuries. Earth had never truly belonged to them, not in the way Menkar was beginning to. After a tensed journey that had seemed interminably long, during which Carol had been so displeased with Kati's attempts to amuse herself by unsettling Enterprise's crew, that she had had to stop. Now looking at the blue celestial body through the tiny window of her quarters, all Kati felt was an unsettling frisson up her spine. Which was why she welcomed the interruption of her communicator, thinking it was Christopher with well-meaning wishes about her arrival.
Chris and she had been seeing each whenever possible for the entire past year, skirting the fine line between friendship and something else, and each time she returned from spending time with him, she told herself it was the last one and that she would not allow her feelings for him to escalate beyond control. But that was not the issue: she had the will power to snuff out the increment of love growing within her soul, but she did not want to anymore. She had had a taste of home, safety and a peaceful life next her friends, and she found herself not wishing to deprive herself of the addition of such a compelling man.
However, the subspace frequency did not indicate an earthly origin for the call. Instead, it was from their colony – one of Khan's personal ones. Khan, whom she had been avoiding ever since she had found out his wife was pregnant, because he could normally tell when a rock he had just met was lying to him. It was a lot easier when it came to dealing with Kati, whom he had known his whole life. Kati took a moment to clear his throat in hopes of making her voice steadier before flipping her communicator open.
TBC