To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh Read Free Page B

which Khan had kept his deadly Ceti eels. Tohis surprise, the transparent container was nowhere to be seen, although a circular impression atop a dusty tabletop hinted at where the terrarium had once rested.
    That’s peculiar,
he thought. Had Khan brought his vile “pets” with him when he escaped the planet? If so, the creatures must have died when
Reliant
exploded.
    “Looks like they left in a hurry,” McCoy said, toying with a ceramic cup he found next to a pile of dirty plates and utensils. “They left everything behind.”
    Kirk nodded. He had noticed the same thing. “After eighteen Earth-years, I imagine they were sick of looking at them,” he guessed.
Plus, Khan was doubtless in a rush to claim his revenge
. A shelf of antique books caught his eye, and he scanned the titles on the spines of the volumes.
King Lear. Moby-Dick. Paradise Lost
.
    Kirk was surprised that Khan had abandoned his precious library, but only for a moment.
After all those years, his superior brain must have memorized every word
.
    “Look at this,” McCoy said. He had stumbled across an old Starfleet-issue medkit. Blowing the dust off its lid, he opened the kit, which turned out to be almost completely depleted of first-aid supplies. Only a few skinny rolls of bloodstained gauze remained, along with a broken hypospray and a handful of empty medication cartridges. “Dear Lord,” the doctor whispered.
    Kirk remembered how appalled McCoy had been, during their trip to twentieth-century San Francisco, at the barbaric medical technology of the time. He could well imagine the doctor’s dismay at finding even worse conditions in their own era.
    McCoy glanced around the forlorn shelter. “Genetically engineered or not, how on earth did Khan and his peoplesurvive being cooped up in these broken-down cargo bays for eighteen years?”
    “As a matter of fact, that was not what occurred,” Spock said.
    “What?” McCoy reacted. He turned toward their Vulcan companion, who surveyed the habitat’s interior with a cool, analytical gaze. “What do you mean by that?”
    “Surely, Doctor, you did not believe that these refurbished cargo carriers comprised the entirety of the survivors’ dwellings.” Spock gestured toward the shelter’s sparse decor. “Use your logic. Do you see the resources to sustain a working colony, no matter how rudimentary? Where are the foodstuffs produced?”
    Good questions,
Kirk thought, even though he suspected he already knew the answers.
    “So what’s the story?” McCoy asked. Despite his skeptical tone, Kirk thought he caught a trace of hope in the doctor’s voice, as though he was relieved to hear that the castaways’ lives might not have been as bleak as they first appeared. “Don’t tell me Khan built a Shangri-La just over the next ridge. This entire planet is one big wasteland.”
    “Precisely,” Spock agreed. “The surface of Ceti Alpha V is nearly incapable of supporting life, which is why, logically, we must look beneath the surface.”
    “That’s right,” Kirk confirmed. “Kyle and the rest of the
Reliant
survivors reported finding some sort of underground caverns after Khan stranded them on the planet. Unfortunately, they were in no shape to explore them at the time.”
    Kirk felt a renewed surge of anger at Khan as he recalled the madman’s brutal treatment of
Reliant
’s crew. Keeping only the engine-room company, whom he forced into service via themind-warping Ceti eels, Khan had banished the rest of the crew—some three hundred men and women—to the planet’s surface, but not before venting eighteen years of pent-up fury on the innocent Starfleet personel. Throats had been cut, and bones broken, in a vicious prelude to the massacre at Regula I. At least ten victims had not survived their injuries, and the rest had been too hungry and hurting to do much more than survive.
    Khan’s idea of poetic justice, no doubt,
Kirk thought resentfully.
Never mind that not one of those people