Chapter Text
“I may have miscalculated slightly,” Khan said.
“Slightly?” Jim asked. “If you call that a ‘slight’ miscalculation, I’d love to see what you’d call an enormous cock-up.”
To be fair, Khan’s explosions had definitely taken out the Ferengi’s commandeered barracks. The only problem was that they’d also flattened every building in a two-block radius. The fires were still burning away merrily. Some of the Risans who weren’t busy rounding up the last remaining Ferengi or treating the surprisingly few wounded were doing a sort of conga line thing around the ruined barracks.
“According to one of the Ferengi they had crates full of old-fashioned gunpowder in the barracks,” Spock said, appearing out of the flickering shadows. “Similar to that used on pre-space Earth, I would speculate. The gunpowder would have enhanced the power of our explosives by several orders of magnitude.”
“Is that so?” Khan asked.
“So you didn’t fuck up after all?” Jim asked. “That’s nice to know.”
“We did not, as you say, ‘fuck up.’ And Khan is an impressive practical chemist, although his theoretical knowledge leaves something to be desired.”
“So hard to find time for night courses when you’re ruling the world,” Khan said drily.
“Indeed.”
“Also I would imagine that being totally terrifying would be off-putting to many teachers,” Jim said.
“Indeed.”
They stood in silence for a few moments, watching the clean-up operations start. It seemed to be combined with the victory celebration.
“I suppose it’s time we made ourselves scarce,” Jim said, reaching for his communicator. “Saved the day, got the girl – well, Khan got the girl. Khan got all the girls, as I recall, the jammy bastard. Now, I think it’s time we got back to the Enterprise. I’m sure Uhura has a lot of yelling to do.”
“Is it my fault that the Risans clearly have an eye for superior specimens?” Khan asked with an air of wounded dignity. “And nobody could say I took advantage.”
“Bet it’s just because your foot hurt too much. I’ll have Bones look at it when we get back up there, okay? And then we can come back and have a proper holiday.”
“I think perhaps it is time for us to be about our mission,” Spock said. “Strange new worlds and so on.”
If Jim strained his ears, he could just about hear Khan speaking over the whine of the transporter.
“Have you ever heard of Betazed?”