“Good afternoon, Lady Ament,” he said evenly, stepping out from behind the looming bodyguard. He smoothed down the silver sash across his chest, which he had donned in solidarity with his loyal Exon warriors. “What brings you up onto these lofty fortifications?”
“Not the view,” she said dryly. Her amber eyes were alight and full of purpose. The wind blew a strand of her lustrous black hair across her face, which she deftly batted away. “I was reviewing our yearly expenditures when I happened upon a rather distressing purchase, hidden away in a fund designated for medical research and development.” Glancing about to make certain that none of the patrolling snipers and guardsmen were within earshot, she lowered her voice so that only Khan and his ever-present shadow could hear. “Perhaps you can explain, my lord, why Dr. Dhasal has seen fit to acquire over two hundred working bio-warheads from the former Soviet Union?”
Khan’s face hardened. “That is a security matter,” he said coldly.
“Which you chose to keep from me,” Ament deduced, her icy tone conveying exactly what she thought of being so excluded. “Yes, I understand that much.” Moving beyond her own bruised feelings, she grilled Khan in the manner of a prosecuting attorney. “What I do not comprehend is why you are transforming Chrysalis Island from a genetic research facility into an incubator and launch pad for full-scale biological warfare?”
“We have many enemies,” Khan stated vaguely. He had always known that someday he and Ament would have this debate, but, now that the time for unvarnished truth had arrived, he found he had little taste for the discussion.
“Two hundred warheads, my lord?” she pressed. “What possible use could there be for such an arsenal? And for a mutated strain of flesh-eating bacteria?”
Her last riposte caught Khan by surprise. “How do you know of that?” he asked in a low voice, his dark brows descending like lightning bolts hurled down from Olympus.
Ament raised her own brows archly. “I am not without my own resources,” she said without apology. She threw back the right half of her cloak, revealing a collection of folded newspapers tucked beneath the crook of her arm. Her amber eyes locked on Khan, she handed the papers over to him; he accepted them warily. “These were among my first clues,” she explained.
He unfolded the documents, which proved to be the front pages of various London tabloids, dated June of 1994, many months ago. “Eaten Alive!” screamed the large block letters upon the first paper, while a second tabloid bore the even more lurid headline: “Killer bug ate my face!” Khan quickly flipped through the rest of the clippings, all of which concerned a sudden outbreak of necrotizing fasciitis in the British Isles. He recalled that Dr. Dhasal had indeed conducted some field tests with the reconstructed bacteria around that time, simply to ensure that the original recipe lived up to the late Dr. Williams’s grisly promises. His understanding was that the pathogen had been much improved upon since then.
“Tabloid sensationalism,” he said dismissively, thrusting the yellowing scandal sheets back at Ament. “What has this to do with me?”
Ament smiled at him sadly. “Do not dissemble, Lord Khan. I t is unworthy of you.” She neatly folded the damning papers and replaced them beneath her arm. “These were but the tip of the iceberg. More evidence is there if one cares to look for it. I know all about this new form of streptococcus, and of Dr. Dhasal’s mandate, at your own instruction, to cultivate the bacteria in mass quantities. But why, my lord?” She shook her head in reproachful disbelief. “Is not Morning Star deterrent enough? What need is there for a second doomsday weapon?”
“You miss a key strategic difference, Lady Ament.” Khan adopted a patronizing tone, the better to remind his once-trusted counselor of her place. “Morning Star is indeed a weapon of last resort. Used to its fullest capacity, my Light-Bringer would destroy the ozone layer upon which all life depends, making the world unfit for man and superman alike. This ingeniously constructed bacteria, however, would merely prune the Earth of its teeming masses of ignorant, inferior humanity, leaving the environment intact for such as we, just as my brilliant mother originally intended.”
“Would or will?” Ament challenged him, a look of extreme concern upon her flawless visage. “Surely, Lord Khan, you do not actually intend to unleash a plague of such magnitude?”
“And why should I not?” he angrily retorted. His impatience with the Egyptian superwoman’s relentless carping merged with his larger frustration at the unyielding obstinacy of the world, bubbling over into an ungovernable rage that demanded expression. “Do you know that, according to our best projections, there will be six billion people living upon the Earth by the turn of the millennium? India alone, it is estimated, will hold over a billion souls.” He advanced upon Ament, until their faces were only centimeters apart. “Think of that, my lady! Six billion ordinary, unruly human beings, infesting the planet with their barbaric posturings, problems, and prejudices. How can even a khan hope to impose a lasting peace upon such a savage and prolific mob—especially when it is manifestly apparent that the brutish multitudes have no desire to be governed by their betters, indeed will resist my rule unto their dying breaths.”
He turned his back on the city below, preferring to contemplate the distant Himalayas. The snow-capped peaks looked blissfully pristine and devoid of humanity. “I offered mankind order and a better way of life,” he said bleakly. “If they chose to reject me, then they must suffer the consequences.”
Ament remained unconvinced. “And would you punish the weak and the powerless for the intransigence of their leaders? Do not blame the masses because their vainglorious rulers refuse to relinquish their power.”
Khan remembered the first time he and Ament fought this debate, after his fellow supermen rebelled against him. Then she had managed to persuade him not to turn Morning Star against his enemies, lest innocents perish. “That argument will no longer sway me,” he told her forthrightly. “I have seen too much of mere humanity’s folly and unreasoning malice, enough to know that the world’s benighted billions are no less aboriginal than their pathetic tribal chieftains. Kill one self-important president or premier, and hundreds more will fight tooth and claw to take his or her place.”
He ran his palm over the planes of his face, feeling the telltale furrows that years of command and conflict had etched into his features. He felt much older than his modest twenty-five years. “I am a superior being, Lady Ament, but I am not immortal. I have neither the time nor the inclination to subdue six billion quarreling savages.” His open palm slashed through the empty air, as if waving away forty thousand years of human pigheadedness and strife. “Better, perhaps, to wipe the stage clean, so that our sort can inherit a cleansed and vanquished Earth.”
“I see,” she said, pulling the wings of her cloak about her tightly. “And when is this vaunted cleansing to take place? Has the date already been ordained?”
A patrolling guardsman, his rifle at the ready, approached them, intent on completing his rounds. Khan waited until the sentry passed them before responding to Ament’s query. “Let us just say that I am keeping my options open,” he stated cautiously, seeing no reason to inform her that, according to the latest status report from Chrysalis Island, he would have the capacity to strike out at the entire world by early September. How appropriate, he thought, that the coming of fall will also herald the fall of mere mortal man.
“And what does the good Dr. Dhasal think of all this?” Ament asked, perhaps seeking an ally in her losing battle against Khan’s resolve. “At your command, the labs at Chrysalis have gone from creating life to breeding new and more terrible means of death. Did she not protest this appalling corruption of her work?”
Khan knew that the Egyptian woman was alone in her objections to his grand design. “Dr. Dhasal—Phoolan—does not question my decrees,” he said brusquely. “Unlike some.”
If his barbed words injured her, Ament showed no sign of it. “It is ironic,” she observed, a detached tone scarcely masking
her obvious disapproval. “Both you and the good doctor lived through the nightmare of Bhopal, yet now you and she are conspiring to create a biological catastrophe many times more deadly than the one you experienced in your youth.”
“Not at all,” Khan insisted. He lifted his chin proudly, refusing to be shamed by Ament’s manipulative invocation of a bygone tragedy. “The carnage at Bhopal was a pointless accident; it served no higher purpose. My carnivorous bacteria, should I choose to employ them, would bring about a new beginning for civilization, like an irresistible tidal wave clearing away the debris of the past to make room for the future.” Frowning, he turned away from her. “It saddens and disappoints me that you fail to see this crucial distinction.”
Not for the first time, he wondered whether it had been wise to take Ament as much into his confidence as he had, knowing her deeply felt aversion to the harsher realities of power. At one time, her tranquil disposition and attitudes had made her seem the ideal custodian for, say, Morning Star’s command codes. Over the course of the last year or so, however, with its never-ending wars and battles, he had found reason to question her commitment to his cause.
“And what of you, Lady Ament?” he confronted her, resolved to grapple with the issue directly. “Where do you stand? Do I still enjoy your absolute loyalty and allegiance, no matter what fearsome course I may chart for the future? Or must I pursue my inevitable destiny without you?”
To her credit, she met his probing eyes without evasion, neither blinking nor looking away. A heavy silence hung between them as he awaited her answer. Hidden behind amber orbs and a neutral expression, her actual thoughts and emotions remained distant and unknowable. There is no art, he reflected, after Macbeth, to find the mind’s construction in the face.
Finally, she spoke, choosing her words carefully. “I will never cease from speaking my conscience,” she informed him, “nor from hoping to dissuade you from this dreadful enterprise you seem intent upon embarking, but you need not question my allegiance.” Her words held both a promise and a warning. “I will be with you until the end.”
Very well, Khan thought, his doubts about her fidelity not entirely laid to rest. He turned once more to look upon the chaste, cosmopolitan promise of Chandigarh, sullied only by the base, imperfect beings infesting the city with their perversity and ingratitude. He tried to imagine the roomy boulevards and avenues swept clean of useless human flotsam. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
“Until the end,” he echoed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHRYSALIS ISLAND
SEPTEMBER 5, 1995
THE TUAMOTO ISLANDS HAVE LONG BEEN KNOWN AS “THE DANGEROUS Archipelago,” due to its sudden storms, shifting currents, and hidden reefs. Since Khan had taken possession of Muroroa, that particular atoll had become more deadly still, guarded day and night by a squadron of his finest Exon warriors. Radar and antiaircraft batteries searched the sky above the island, enforcing a strict no-fly zone, while armed speedboats, equipped with searchlights and heavy artillery, circled Muroroa ceaselessly, watching out for unauthorized vessels and chasing away any hapless pleasure crafts that happened to sail too close to the forbidden atoll. Only a single channel passed through the verdant ring of the island to the inner lagoon, and this crucial inlet was kept under constant watch, both above and below the waves. Once, three years ago, Roberta Lincoln had managed to invade the island by using scuba gear to swim unnoticed through the passage, but security had been tightened considerably since then; now underwater cameras observed every shark, squid, and jellyfish that made its way from the sea to the lagoon and back again. The stringent surveillance had yielded the desired results: since that previous incursion, on the occasion of Morning Star’s launch, no unwelcome stranger had set foot on Chrysalis Island.
Until tonight.
A large brown manta ray swam toward the lagoon, gliding over the floor of the channel like a giant aquatic bat. The ray attracted little attention from those watching the live feed from the submerged spy-eyes; the Polynesian waters were home to a diverse assortment of marine life, so the sight of a prowling devilfish was not uncommon.
Its winglike pectoral fins flapped gently as the manta cruised through the channel without incident, then made its way beneath the turquoise surface of the lagoon until, surprisingly, it rendezvoused with a black-tipped reef shark, two bottle-nosed dolphins, and another sizable ray. Upon the manta’s arrival, the eclectic coterie of sea creatures deliberately beached themselves upon the sandy shore, where a strange, undinal transformation took place.
The manta rose upon a pair of slender legs and handily shed its glistening wings and torso, which, upon careful inspection, could be seen to be a painted rubber facsimile of a real giant ray. A handsome Chinese woman emerged from the counterfeit devilfish, then watched in silence as four other women discarded their finned disguises, which they then slid back into the briny water lapping at the beach. Like the first woman, their faces had been painted with overlapping shades of black and green, the better to blend in with both their camouflaged commando gear and the shadowy jungle flora at the edge of the shallow beach.
Gifted with exceptional night vision, Chen Tiejun did not require night-vision goggles to take a quick head count. She was glad to see that all of Team Artemis was accounted for. Good, she thought solemnly. It was far too early in the mission to start losing amazons.
The exiled superwoman rapidly surveyed their situation and surroundings. As planned, it was a clear, moonless night, throwing a comforting blanket of darkness over this narrow strip of sand. The air was warm, maybe twenty-five degrees Celsius, and mercifully free of humidity. Typhoon season was months away, she recalled. Little did Khan’s minions know that another kind of storm was creeping up on Muroroa.
Despite the blackness of the night, the beach was still too exposed for her tastes. At her signal, the team slipped stealthily into the concealing jungle brush, leaving their aquatic disguises hidden beneath the opaque surface of the lagoon. A battery-powered blower erased their bootprints from the sand.
Chen crouched amidst rustling fronds and ferns, listening intently for the sound of Khan’s sentries on the move. A balmy tropical fragrance pervaded the atmosphere, tantalizing her senses. A shame she wasn’t here on vacation; it seemed like a beautiful night. The swaying palms and mangroves struck her as exotic compared to the rugged forests of her own island colony of Penthesilea, four thousand kilometers away.
While her team inspected and assembled their weapons, she took a minute to remove a compact communications device, about the size of the latest cellular phones, from the pocket of her trousers. She flipped open the lid of the device and keyed in a top-secret number. Now a word from our sponsor, she thought wryly, checking in with the enigmatic instigator of tonight’s covert action. “Artemis to Butler,” she whispered in English. “Repeat: Artemis to Butler.”
A blond-haired American woman in her mid-forties, whom Chen knew only as “Caroline Butler,” appeared on the communicator’s miniature viewscreen. “Copy that, Artemis,” the older woman answered. Her blue-green eyes held many worries, belying the forced cheer in her voice. “Where are you?”
According to the American, the communicator utilized a signal that could not be traced or detected by any earthly means. “We have successfully reached the inner shore of the lagoon,” Chen reported. She could spy the lights of the Centre d’Experimentation du Pacifique, roughly half a kilometer away, up a sloping hillside carpeted with dense vegetation. “What is your latest intel regarding the first and secondary targets?”
“All systems are go,” Butler assured her. “According to a very reliable source, Khan’s stockpile of carnivorous bacteria is being stored in an airtight isolation chamber in the main biological testing area, two levels down. You should have no problem finding it; just look for the stuff they’re being extra careful with.”
Chen shook her head, amazed that even Khan could have spawned such a lethal abomination, threatening the
lives of billions of innocent women and, somewhat less importantly, their men. She would not have believed it had not Butler presented her with irrefutable evidence of Khan’s genocidal intentions. “It will be ashes by dawn,” she promised. The contents of her backpack would guarantee that, if nothing else. “What of the secondary target?”
“That’s good, too,” Butler said. “By all reports, Dr. Dhasal is working late in her labs, as usual. With luck, you should be able to snatch her without too much trouble.”
Chen was tempted to laugh at the American woman’s unfounded optimism. She knew from experience that there was no such thing as a trouble-free military mission. Amazons would die here tonight, but her two-pronged mission, to destroy the malignant bacteria and deprive Khan of his foremost biological sorceress, more than justified any sacrifice.
“You may count on us,” she said confidently. “My misguided sister will no longer serve Khan after this night, even if I must destroy her myself.”
“Er, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Butler gulped. “Still, whatever happens, I want to thank you for taking on this assignment. It really is a matter of life and death—for the whole crazy planet. At this point, Khan is only weeks away from being able to launch his bio-warheads, filled with enough mutated strep-A to eat the flesh off just about everybody.” She shuddered at the thought. “I’m sorry I’m not there with you.”
Chen doubted the other woman would be much use in combat anyway, being both middle-aged and the product of routine, random genetics. “You need not apologize. As we both know, there is at least one very good reason why you cannot take part in this raid. And why, ultimately, this is a task that only I and my amazons can accomplish.”
“I know,” Butler admitted. “That’s why I came to you in the first place.” Chen glimpsed roughhewn stone walls behind the American’s head and shoulders. “Good luck!”
“Wish the world luck. If we fail, it will need it.” She saw that her commandos were armed and ready. “Artemis out.”