Free To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox Page B

indeed the very beast Khan had blasted with the phaser.
    “Is it dead?” Joaquin asked. Machete in hand, he placed himself between Khan and the inert sabertooth, but Khanstepped out from behind his bodyguard in order to inspect the animal more closely.
    It certainly looked lifeless enough. The still and silent smilodon lay flat against the earth, its eyes closed. The megacondors, disturbed by the human’s arrival, had flapped away from the carcass, taking roost in the upper branches of some nearby palms, but Khan saw no evidence that the scavengers had begun feeding on it.
    What were they waiting for?
    Rao, who had borne the awful duty of carrying Lutjen’s mutilated remains in a canvas bag, was less patient. “God-damned monster!” she cursed at the man-eater, charging forward to jab the carcass with the muzzle of her rifle. “You should be extinct, not Lutjen and Blasko and Gorinsky…!”
    “Stop!” Khan called out in warning, but, hungry for revenge, the crazed soldier paid him no heed. An electronic hum filled the air and Khan turned to see Marla scanning the sabertooth with her tricorder.
    “Watch out!” she cried. “It’s still alive!”
    As if on cue, the “dead” smilodon suddenly roared to life. Amber eyes flashed with savage fury, and its lips peeled back, exposing razor-sharp tusks and teeth. A ferocious snarl drowned out Marla’s voice. A great feline claw swiped out, tearing through Rao’s left thigh. Crying out in anguish, she collapsed onto the ground, even as the sabertooth lunged forward….
    A crimson beam struck the beast between the eyes. It reared backward in shock, clawing at the air, then fell like a rock back onto the grassy sward. Switching off his phaser, Khan glanced quickly at Marla.
    “That did it,” she reported, keeping her tricorder aimed at the smilodon. “It’s dead.”
    Not soon enough,
Khan thought bitterly. Lowering his phaser, he hurried to Rao’s side. Hot blood gushed from angry gashes in the Indian guardswoman’s thigh, while Rao clenched her teeth and tried to keep from whimpering. Khan instantly regretted not including Dr. Hawkins in the search party, just because he had been reluctant to risk the camp’s only physician. “The medkit!” Khan shouted.
    Marla quickly furnished him with one of the many Starfleet medkits Captain Kirk had provided the colonists with. The futuristic drugs and equipment were foreign to him, and he swiftly moved aside to let Marla take charge. He prayed that her Starfleet training had included basic first aid and field medicine.
    “Save her,” Khan said tersely. “I will not lose another loyal soldier.”
    Marla gulped. “I’m a historian, not a doctor, but I’ll do what I can,” she promised, examining Rao’s injuries with a small handheld scanner. “Broken bones, torn arteries … this looks bad.” She drew a silver metallic instrument from the medkit and pressed it against Rao’s shoulder. Khan heard a hiss of pressurized air. “That should help with the pain,” Marla stated, and Khan noted a look of immediate relief on Rao’s face, even as Marla reached for some manner of surgical laser. “Now I just need to stop the bleeding.”
    With admirable speed, Marla cauterized and bound Rao’s wounds, then encased her upper leg in some sort of fast-setting plaster. “That should hold for now,” Marla told Khan, “but we have to get her back to the camp and Dr. Hawkins. She needs rest to recover from the shock and blood loss.”
    “Of course,” Khan agreed. At his command, Joaquin and Ericsson constructed a simple travois from the foliage at handand placed Rao carefully atop a layer of matted grass and leaves. Despite the severity of the situation, Khan derived a degree of pleasure from assigning Ericsson the onerous task of dragging the travois and Rao all the way back to the camp.
    “Go,” he commanded the Norseman. “Watch over your patient,” he added to Marla. He looked over the bloodstained thicket with a