To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox Read Free Book Online

let history repeat itself.
    He removed the phaser from his belt and openly handed it to Marla.
I need no weapon to squash this petty insurrection,
he thought scornfully.
Only the force of my own unyielding will
.
    “Every one of you swore allegiance to me more than three hundred years ago,” he reminded the assemblage. “But if anyone wishes to contest my rightful authority, let them step forward now … and wrest it from me with their bare hands!”
    He locked eyes with Ericsson, silently daring the rebellious Norseman to make his move. Long seconds passed, as the entire planet itself seemed to hold its breath. Flanked by Joaquin on one side and Marla on the other, Khan faced his challenger unarmed. Part of him hoped that Ericsson would take the bait, so that he might nip this incipient mutiny in the bud.
“Now ‘tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted,”
he thought, recalling Shakespeare’s immortal wisdom.
“Suffer them now and they’ll overgrow the garden.”
    But Ericsson was not so bold. He stayed where he stood, glaring at Khan in sullen silence, until the moment passed and it became clear that Khan had won the day.
    “So be it,” he said triumphantly, reclaiming the phaser from Marla.
Perhaps it is just as well,
he mused; his people’s numbers were not so great that he could afford to sacrifice an able-bodied man so readily.
Our colony will need a diverse genetic pool to prosper, and every man and woman here possesses a unique combination of superior chromosomes that must be preserved for the benefit of generations to come
.
    Choosing to be magnanimous in victory, Khan stretched out his arms to symbolically encompass the fertile valley surrounding them, even as his memory harkened back to his vanished capital in northern India. “Welcome, my people, to New Chandigarh, birthplace of the glorious Khanate of Ceti Alpha V!”
    Cheers rose from a majority of the gathered castaways, some, to be sure, more heartfelt and sincere than others. Ericsson and his treacherous coterie, foiled in their initial attempt at a coup d’état, dispersed back into the relative anonymity of the crowd, but Khan knew that he had almost certainly not heard the last of the bearded Norseman.
I shall have to keep a close watch on that one
.
    For now, however, securing the basic essentials of survival took precedence. “Ling,” he instructed the Asian super-woman, who had served on his personal security force back on Earth. “Take a dozen volunteers and begin collecting firewood. Patil, take a team down to the river to gather water. Remember, we shall have to boil the water before drinking it. MacPherson, let us discuss the matter of shelter….”
    There was much to do before nightfall.

4
    Sunset found a rudimentary campsite in place just beyond the banks of the river, which Khan had already christened the River Kaur, after his martyred mother, the architect of the Chrysalis Project. At Khan’s direction, a swatch of open ground had been hacked out from the chest-deep grass, creating a floor of reddish brown dirt about fifty meters in diameter. A wall of thornbush, uprooted by hand, surrounded the camp in hopes of deterring whatever hostile life-forms might prowl the veldt at night, while armed guards had been posted to watch out for any nocturnal predators. A dozen smoky campfires blazed within the enclosure, providing light and heat as well as an added degree of protection. Stars glittered like dilithium in the deep purple sky.
    “I feel as though I have traveled backward in time,” Marla dictated into her tricorder, completing her description of the settlement, “perhaps to the founding of the original Botany Bay colony in eighteenth-century Australia….”
    That settlement, she recalled, had been populated byconvicts deported from England, the women all convicted thieves and prostitutes.
As a disgraced Starfleet officer, I would have fit right in
.
    Guilt, fear, and an undeniable excitement warred within her soul.