Disclaimer: Star Trek and all of its characters are the property of Viacom/Paramount. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: “Lord Khan is dead.”
The Next Stage
By Rocky
The secretary entered in great haste. “Premier! I have news! Lord Khan is dead!”
Premier Raima glanced up from his desk. “Are you certain, Dutt?” he asked mildly. “It is not the first time his death has been reported.”
Dutt nodded eagerly. “Yes, Premier, it was an elaborate hoax the first time--”
“Not to mention the second.”
“But both of those were while Khan was still in power! By faking his own death, he hoped to elude the long arm of justice—“
“So you’re saying Khan had nothing to gain by faking his death now?” Raima waved his hand dismissively. “And what of his followers? Khan was defeated after a long struggle, deposed from his rule, but his followers are still out there. How do we know one of them is not behind this?”
“What would they have to gain now?” asked Dutt, his brows puckering in a frown.
“A return to power!” Raima said. Sometimes he wondered at the younger man’s naivete.
“No.” Dutt’s tone was almost too vehement. “The eugenics movement has been thoroughly discredited. No one alive today can ever forget the devastation wrought by Khan.”
“No one alive today,” Raima echoed sadly. He turned, almost against his will, to the map on the wall. It had been made within the last five years; its not-yet-faded tricolor map showed clearly the Indian Republic, the Nepalese Autarchy, and the Himlayan Confederacy, with secure and internationally recognized borders. A far cry from the blood red shape which spanned the entire Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia under Khan. “But twenty years from now? Thirty? Who is to say these lessons would not one day be erased from memory?”
“Even supermen grow old and die,” Dutt said. “When there are no longer any living relics, we will have nothing left to fear.”
“Which is why I have my doubts as to whether or not Khan is actually dead,” Raima said, turning his back on the map. He sought his paperwork once more.
Dutt flung a printout on to his table top. “See for yourself!”
Raima picked up the black and white photograph. It showed very little, other than a deep crater. “What is this?”
“You are looking at a satellite surveillance photograph , taken this morning at 10:18 am,” Dutt said. “The area covered is 25 square kilometers.” He took a deep breath. “Ground zero is, or rather was, Botany Bay in New South Wales.”
Raima exhaled sharply. “Ground zero…this was a nuclear blast?”
Dutt shook his head. “We don’t know for sure. There was a blast, of some sort—that is certain. The penal colony is gone. No survivors.”
“There is no possibility that this evidence is faked?” Raima floundered. At Dutt’s swift head-shake, he went on, “But who? Who would have done something like this?”
“The Australian authorities are investigating. They’re checking background radiation looking for clues…the level of ionic radiation is ten times what it should be…but no one knows for sure. No one has claimed responsibility. Intelligence is proceeding on the assumption that it’s an old enemy of Khan’s seeking revenge. And there is no lack of suspects who fit that category.”
“Someone who couldn’t bear the thought of him spending the rest of his days in the relative ease of prison while his millions of victims rot in unmarked graves.” Raima’s lips pursed. “I can’t imagine they’re looking very hard for the perpetrators.”
“There are many who would love to give them a medal instead of assigning blame,” Dutt agreed. “But as this may have been an ill-fated attempt at freeing Khan and his men—and at the very least, an attack on Australian soil--they will at least go through the motions of investigating.”
“One wonders why the Australians ever agreed to take the supermen in the first place, after Khan was deposed,” Raima mused. “Unless they planned for this.”
“That, too, is a possibility,” Dutt said, his tone leaving no doubt that he thought it a dubious one at best. “But the bottom line, Premier, is that Khan is at last dead.”
Raima began to allow himself to believe. “Dead…Fifteen of the bloodiest years anyone has ever known, fifteen years of that monster strutting across the face of history,” Raima said, his own face darkening. “And do you remember what he said, at his show trial? ‘We offered the world order!’ Order—by which he meant seizing the natural resources of two continents, sending millions to die so they wouldn’t enact a further drain on his new economy! If he is truly dead, and if there were any justice, Khan would now be reincarnated as a common garden slug, tilling the soil so that the humble can eat!”
Dutt took a concerned step toward him, but Raima waved him off, willing himself to calm down. Gradually, his breathing returned to normal.
“I was not aware you believed in the transmigration of souls, Premier,” Dutt said, in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“I am not a believer,” Raima replied, painfully aware of his still elevated heart rate. “Well, not entirely. But in the case of someone like Khan…I can well believe that his karma says we are not done with him yet.”
“He is dead,” Dutt repeated soothingly. “His atoms are scattered among the stars; his essence has returned to the gods. Let them deal with him now, as he has passed beyond our sphere to the next stage.”
“Yes, the blessed gods,” Raima said, with just a trace of sarcasm. “Well, I consign him to their mercy—if even they can forgive the horrors he unleashed upon us here on Earth.” He took one last look at the satellite photo before crumpling it and tossing it away. “Yes, let them deal with him. I do not envy them the experience.”
FINIS