A/N We do not own any of the franchises represented herein. We are just fans.

Chapter 23

On board the Ori flagship, there had been general confusion when Adria disappeared. She had been gone for over a year, and no one knew, even now, where she had gone. The Doci was furious with her, but her being gone did accelerate his plans. There were still three Ori alive, but he could deal with them when he needed the time suited him.

Now, the Doci was stalking to the bridge of his flagship. He had been in command without Adria for over a year. He was wise enough to know that he needed to tell the crew something about Adria, and to that end, he had said she was off on a quest. What the quest was, was not for him to know or for any followers of Origin to know. They accepted his words because they feared him.

He had received a message from three scout vessels that had been trying to find the location to which the Iconians had disappeared. He knew that they were still around. He knew that The Commander wouldn't give up on his son, but where were they?

The message had said that the scout vessels had dropped out of hyperspace and that the people on board were all dying. He could think of no natural reason for this, so he considered it a place to start.

He ordered his ship to change course. "Where are you, Kirk?" he thought to himself. "You are hiding. Afraid to face your better. Come out and see your destiny!" He thought of the first time he had seen Kirk, staring out a window at him. The Doci wasn't a follower of Origin then. He was trying to save his people, those who had pledged to live and die at his command two hundred years before Kirk was born. Of course, strictly speaking, he wasn't a follower of Origin even now. He believed that the Ori had power, and they supplied him with supernatural abilities, but he did not believe they were gods. If their power allowed him to have his revenge on The Commander, so be it.

As the mammoth Ori vessel was heading at an incredible velocity to where its three sister ships had been destroyed, an alarm sounded. He saw it, and almost forgot to breathe. He had stopped hoping that this would be found. It was a ribbon of energy in space, a doorway to somewhere. In his own time, he had tried to find out more about this ribbon, but he had been unable to approach it because of Kirk's forces. He had been deliberately kept away from it. He ordered all stop, and went to his quarters. He turned off the stasis field in the room adjoining his and went in.

"What is so special about the energy ribbon," he asked Kirk's son, David Marcus.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Marcus answered.

The Doci reached through the cage and grabbed the other man by the throat. He drew him close and hissed at him, "Don't play games with me. I could crush your neck right now in my bare hand. Don't try my patience, David!" He almost spat the name.

"I'm not playing games. I don't know about any energy ribbon." Marcus was calm. He was displaying absolutely no fear.

The Doci squeezed a bit harder, and David's face started to turn red, but there was still no fear. Finally, he threw him against the far wall of the cage, and David lay still on the floor, gasping. His tormentor strode from the room and back to his bridge. For the next several hours, his people scanned the ribbon and sent probes into it. Each time a probe would enter it would break up in the turbulence.

The Doci knew that this was not the reason Kirk had kept him away from it. There was much more. He had been genetically engineered to be a leader by scientists trying to improve humanity through selective breeding. They had tried to engineer strength and intelligence into the race, but what they actually accomplished was to create superhumans who had as much ambition and ruthlessness as they did the other, more desirable traits. The Doci had been the most successful of the augmented humans. His name was Khan Noonien Singh, and at the pinnacle of his life, he had ruled a quarter of Earth. He had not been benevolent, but his rule was marked by the absence of the massacres and internal wars of some of his contemporaries.

Khan watched the readings on the sensors from his command chair. He wanted action, but he forced himself to be patient. After a few hours, one of his scientists pointed out that the ribbon was intersecting the orbit of a planet, and that they might be able to find out more from the ground. Whatever was so special about this thing, Khan did not want anyone else to find it. He ordered his personal shuttle readied.

Thankfully, the planet he landed on would support life, although marginally. He waited in his shuttle staring out at a sandstorm on this desert planet's surface. He would wait until the last moment to exit the shuttle. Everything he had seen from the ship said that the shuttle would need to be powered down when the ribbon hit. He saw the light begin to change outside, then he stepped through the manual hatch.

Outside, the sand and wind tore at his robes. He had to shield his eyes from grit. Then, the ribbon hit. Suddenly, he was no longer on this dead world. He was in Botany Bay, looking at his friend, Juaquin, in his support pod. As he watched, the gauges started to raise. He looked around and saw that all of his people were waking up. He was thrilled! He glanced at another monitor and saw that the ship was approaching a planet. He walked through the door onto the bridge and stepped out onto a balcony. He was now looking down on a crowd of people. There were thousands, chanting his name and looking to him for leadership.

He turned around and saw a woman with red hair spilling over her shoulders, smiling at him. 'Marla', the name came unbidden to his mind, yet he knew it was her. Knew it was his wife. He loved her with all his heart, more than his own life.

Something in his mind was nagging at him, saying this wasn't the way things had turned out. Marla was dead, yet he had never met her and she was his wife. His mind was confused, a state he had almost never experienced. She reached out for him and drew him close, kissing him. He started to pull back, but then went with it, his mind even more confused. He loved her, but didn't know her. What was going on?

Then, everything was gone and he was standing in white. There were no features anywhere around him. No walls, no ceiling, not even any floor. Just a featureless white. He wasn't sure how long he stood there. Finally, he saw a man approaching him.

Even as he thought, "Who is this?" his mind said, "Soran."

He started to form another question, "What are you doing here?" but the thought, "I exist here in this unreality," flooded his mind as he thought it.

"Do you answer all my questions as I think of them?" was thought concurrently with "It certainly appears that way, doesn't it?"

He was angered by the insolent tone of the thought, but the laughing tone came back, "Deal with it."

He was furious, and his hand reached out to grab the laughing man, but he grasped only air. The man was now ten feet behind him, laughing even more.

"You foolish man. You think you can hurt me?" The laughter was becoming intolerable for Khan. He swung around and charged the laughing Soran. Just as before, Soran was now behind the enraged Khan. Soran stopped laughing and turned coldly serious. "You can never hurt me, Khan. You could imagine snapping my neck like a twig, but you could never hurt the real me. You can even imagine killing Kirk over and over again. But you'll never do it. Because he's not here. He's out there in reality. What you would find here is unreal. It's not worth anything!" The last was shouted, as if someone was tearing Soran's heart out of his body. "You can dream anything here. You can't have any of it. Nothing you can ever do here matters!"

"Did Kirk enter here?" Khan asked quietly.

"Of course he entered here. How do you think he's so powerful?"

"Then it is possible to exit."

"Of course it is."

"Then I can kill Kirk in reality."

Soran looked at Khan as if he were a small child, which infuriated the superman. "You think you can kill Kirk in reality? You are so foolish."

"Why wouldn't I be able to kill him?"

Soran didn't answer. Instead he turned and started walking away.

"Why can't I kill him?" This was a yell, but Soran started laughing.

"WHY!?"

Finally, something other than laughter, but just as maddening. "Because!"

Khan reappeared sitting in the shuttle. He reached over and turned on the generator. It was shielded and as a result, was not hurt when it was powered down. It started, and he looked at the screen. It showed a sandstorm, still. He remembered something which wasn't part of his own memory, but it was. "Ceti Alpha V" the thought came. What? Ceti Eel? What were these memories? He was even more confused now. He touched the thruster control and the shuttle lifted off the surface. It shuttered as the winds caught it, and he applied more power.

Very quickly, he was out of the atmosphere, and back in empty space. The Ori mothership was in front of him, and he sailed into the hanger.

As he stalked back to his quarters, he was furious. At Soran, and Kirk, and the Ori, and the universe in general. The door to his quarters slid open, and he saw the red light even before it registered what it was. There were only three Ori besides Adria that had survived the Sangraal. Two of them were now in his quarters. They manifested as flames with a human head attached. He stopped as the door slid closed, and stared at them.

"What do you want?"

"Why have you stopped here? We gave you no authorization to stop." The sound echoed throughout the room. It hit his ears with the pressure of a thousand feet of ocean, and he felt like his head would be ripped from his body. He showed no fear to them, but he was afraid.

"I had business on this planet."

"A barely breathable atmosphere and you have business there? Do you take us for fools?"

Khan shrank back for an instant, but quickly recovered. He actually stepped forward and before he could think better of it, he hissed, "Never bother me on my ship again! In fact, never bother me again at all!"

The Ori broke into a thousand rapidly shrinking pieces, and fell to the floor as a disintegrating ash. In a moment, they were gone, dead.

Khan's eyes grew wide. He had known that the Ori were not omnipotent, but how had he destroyed them? Was it his lack of reverence? Had it so weakened them that they were powerless against him? That was ridiculous. He knew that couldn't be the case because someone following Origin would have destroyed an Ori that way long before he did. It simply stood to reason.

Somehow, he had powers now that could destroy an Ori. So much the better. Kirk would die as well. He smiled to himself as he contemplated it.

He had just one more thing to do before going after Kirk. He searched with his mind for the one remaining Ori, and when he found him, he killed him, slowly and methodically.

At the Sphere…

On the bridge of Avalon, The Commander, James T. Kirk, sat brooding. He knew that Khan was on his way. He knew that Khan was now Q, and that he had destroyed the last three Ori. He was worried, however. Worried about David.

Having his son the prisoner of a deranged superman was one thing. A deranged Q, however, was something altogether more frightening. He reached out with his mind and touched his son. David was there, still alive, but in pain. Khan had injured him in some way. Kirk relocated himself to the younger man's side. David saw him and smiled. "Hi. Sorry I'm not exactly presentable, Dad." His voice was raspy and it was difficult for him to talk.

Kirk shielded them both from Khan, and saw to it that the superman wouldn't think of entering the room. "That's ok, David." He sat down on the floor beside his son. He touched the younger man's neck and the bruising disappeared.

"Thanks," David said, "that feels much better."

"You're welcome." Kirk sighed. "I wish I could take you out of here, son."

"I understand," he said, then laughed. "You're spending time with me anyway. That's appreciated."

Whenever David had been let out of stasis to feel his confinement, Kirk had appeared and shielded him from Khan. They had talked for hours, about anything they felt like. David's mother, Carol, was one of their main topics. Kirk also filled him in on the rest of the family: Picard and his children and their families. It amused David that his grandchild was such a dignified Frenchman. What was even more amusing was that he was Merlin, the Wizard of mythology. Growing up, David had read the Arthurian legend in school, and to find that he was an ancestor of a mythological figure was incredible. Of course, with a Q as his father, and other Q as family members, anything was possible. He laughed out loud.

"What's so funny?" Kirk asked.

"I'm just thinking about how strange my family is. My father is The Commander of Starfleet, and a Q, and my grandson is a French guy who happens to be Merlin, wizard to the English King Arthur. It's a strange universe."

Kirk chuckled, "Yes, it is." He frowned. "David, has Khan said anything of his plans?"

"No. All he's done is tried to intimidate and scare me. I haven't let him see any fear."

Kirk nodded. "Yeah. You're making him reckless. He's mad, and he's showing it."

"Good."

They talked a bit more, then Kirk said he needed to leave. "I've got to prepare for Khan. I'll see you soon, son. This is about over."

David hugged his father, then watched as he flashed out of sight. He sat down, and cried. He knew that his father would not let Khan think about him until he was ready to face the superman again. He was grateful.

At the Sphere…

The Ori fleet dropped out of hyperspace before it entered the system. It scanned the mines throughout the system, and Khan willed them away. They obediently disappeared, as did the satellites. Now, nothing stood between the Ori fleet and the sphere, except the Iconian fleet.

The Ori vessels slid into orbit of the sphere and opened fire on it. The massive doors of the hanger decks on the sphere started opening, and wave after wave of fighters engaged the Ori. From another opening in the sphere, the Wraith Hives and the technological hives of the Iconians emerged. They started hammering away at the Ori vessels.

Khan smiled as he stood. He had willed the mines and satellites away. He would simply will these insignificant Iconian ships into oblivion as well. He spread his arms wide. "My followers. Watch." He threw back his head in a grand gesture, and disappeared.

It was not what he had intended to do, and it had the effect of leaving his people leaderless. He looked around and found himself standing on the surface of what had once been Jupiter.

Surface, however, was a misnomer. Below his feet was a writhing, seething mass of plasma. It was not a surface, really, because one could fall through the endless miles of superheated gases with ease. Beside him, David Marcus was standing, and not more than 20 feet from him was Kirk.

"Kirk? What are you doing? I didn't wish to be here!"

"No, Khan. I really didn't think you did. But I wished you to be, so here you are," Kirk said easily.

Khan's eyes grew wide as he tried to flash away and couldn't. He waved his arms, and still nothing happened. Still more frantic waves yielded nothing.

"You can't leave, Khan. Once again, we've tried it your way, but now it's time for a rematch," Kirk taunted. All around him, Q were appearing, the flashes of their arrival somehow making the glare from the sun they were standing on seem like a single candle. "You seem to think you're powerful, because you killed three Ori. With a single thought, any of the Q here could have accomplished the same thing. You're nothing special, Khan. Even now." Khan looked at the group of Q surrounding him. The First, Kirk, Picard, Jack and Samantha O'Neill, Jack Carter, Eric Marten, Teal'c, Daniel Jackson, and Janus.

"I wiped out your defensive net with a single thought!" Khan said, determined to impress them.

"Yeah," Jack O'Neill said. "I just put it back."

Khan's eyes bulged as he checked and saw that, indeed, the mines and satellites were back in place.

Jack Carter stepped forward and placed himself directly in front of Khan. "You see, Khan, the sad fact is, you think you're powerful, but you have just become Q. The newest Q here… Jade is it?" He looked at O'Neill who nodded in the affirmative. "The newest Q in our force, Jade, has spent over eighty years in training to learn how to control her power. You acquired your power less than two days ago. You really think you are superior?" He laughed. "You're crazy!"

Carter stepped back beside his sister and Eric Marten stepped forward. "You were genetically designed to be a superior human. With the Nox virus, all humans are superior now. Very few have five times the strength of an unaugmented human as you do, but those who train physically, do. You are no longer special, Khan. Except that in you, superior strength has bred superior ego. You will continue to kill in your vendetta against James Kirk, and I cannot allow you to do that. You are like a rabid dog that must be put down to stop its killing."

Kirk held up his hand. "You others, stand back. I'll deal with him myself." The two of them squared off, with Kirk continuing to taunt Khan. "You're so predictable, Khan. I was able to arrange this entire war to get you to the here and now." He laughed. "So predictable." Khan charged at Kirk, only to disappear right before he contacted, and reappear on the other side of Kirk. It was like the space where Kirk was standing didn't exist. Khan threw a punch at him, and his fist disappeared only to reappear in the space on the other side of Kirk's jaw. Kirk laughed. "You'll never learn, Khan." He threw a punch, and his fist found its mark. Khan's body flew through the 'air' and landed what must have been a mile away, raising a solar flare in the process. He stood and lunged at Kirk, covering the mile in a second, and flying through where Kirk stood still laughing. Khan stood, humiliated. He started another charge then stopped, his intelligence taking hold.

"Why bother?" he asked. "You will just allow me to pass through again, and I'll end up looking the fool. There is little to be gained by such a fight." He waved his hand nonchalantly as he spoke, seeming, for all the world, to have gained some semblance of sanity again.

The reality, however, was that he knew he was going to die, but he was determined to do it in his way. There was only one way for him to die, and still win. He looked closely at Kirk, saw how he looked old and young at the same time. He marvelled at the fact that Kirk wielded so much power. "Congratulations, Kirk," he said sarcastically, "you have become me." He suddenly turned and grabbed David Marcus. "While I have become DEATH!" He hoped that his intentions were not being read by Kirk in this, and indeed, they were not. Khan held Marcus close to his body, enveloping him with his arms, and imploded, taking David with him.

Outside the sphere, things began to happen. Khan was a Q, and he had died in two places in history. That was not even supposed to be possible! But what was supposedly impossible, was happening, albeit with cataclysmic results. The Iconian fleet disappeared completely from the battle. They were not destroyed, but simply disappeared. At least, that was what happened from the point of view of the Ori fleet. In reality, Jupiter was somehow relocated to it's original place around Sol. It remained a star, but it became the secondary star in a binary grouping.

Next, five Earths converged on the place of the Earth of that solar system. They were each native to a different reality, but the line between realities was breaking down, as if something with Khan's death was not right. Somehow, the planets passed through each other as they solidified, without damage, but once they were solid, damage was done. The earth native to this reality passed close to the sphere as it left the solar system. It crashed through the Ori fleet, crushing them against it's surface. It raced out of the system at an incredible velocity until it was caught by another star, and pulled into orbit there.

On the other Earths, time had slowed to a crawl, and the populations were unaware of what was happening except for a change in star patterns. On one of them, a war was waging between the Communists and the Capitalists. The battle had left the landmasses unrecognizable and rather barren. On another, a battle was being fought between the Eastern Coalition and the United States. On still another, scientists in the United States were trying to increase the lifespan of man but succeeded only partially. The result from their experiments was that children aged incredibly slowly, but when they passed puberty, they started aging rapidly and died insane. The last of the planets was from a reality where the Romans had remained a major power into the twentieth century.

Elsewhere, the same five realities were converging in other ways on the reality of the Iconians. Other planets were appearing and in some cases, disappearing. Not only were realities converging, but time was bending as well. Time had slowed on the other Earths, but it completely distorted for the Iconian fleet. They had been in the present, but then time fractured. Some of the ships were sent into the future. Destiny was flung into the far past, as it was on it's way to pick up the stasis chambers on the other side of the universe. While the majority of the ships ended up at relatively the same time, some weren't so lucky.

On the surface of Jupiter, Kirk was still staring at where his son had disappeared with Khan. He was shaking violently, and tears were flowing down his face. He had intended for his taunts to cause Khan to make himself look ridiculous. Instead, they had driven him to do what Kirk had thought impossible. Khan had seen no way out, and had ended things himself. Dying at this point in time was a necessity, even though it was not logically possible. All of the continuum had known what would happen with realities converging, but they knew that it must be this way. Kirk's earth was not native to this reality. Nor, for that matter, was The First's home, Vulcan. Yet, all must converge into one. That was a necessity as that was the reality that they came from.

But Kirk had miscalculated, and it had cost him his son. He allowed himself to be caught up with his ego, just as he had known Khan would. He could have allowed Khan some hope, and it might have saved David.

Since David's death had been so intimately entwined in the death of a Q, there was no way to save him. His life ended there, and that was, simply that. Going back to visit him in the past would not be possible either, as the time surrounding Khan's death was now fractured. This would be an event no one, not even a Q, would be able to approach in time. Living through it was the best they could hope for, and even that was problematic. Kirk's and Picard's training as commanders took hold at the same moment.

"Let's get out of here!" Kirk shouted.

"Agreed!" Picard said as he and The First wrapped their minds around the rest. They were the most disciplined and oldest of the group, thus their power was the greatest. But even for them, pulling the rest from the twisting reality centered where Khan had stood was difficult. They could not simply flash out, as that required a destination in reality, and with reality changing, it was impossible to focus on one point.

"Anywhere!" The First shouted to Picard, and rather than a destination, they simply focused on being gone from their present location. It was exhausting, and the effort left them feeling as if they had run a marathon without training, but they eventually succeeded. All were safe.

From a safe distance, they watched as the Dyson Sphere exploded into a supernova, which immediately de-aged into a gas giant, and back into a star, this time with the added mass from the sphere and the primary star. Carter was sick to think that SARAH had been destroyed, but he quickly realized that a section of seventy-one connected cells had survived, relatively unscathed. Each cell contained a complete computer core, so that any cell could be used to rebuild the entire structure. He nudged the section back into place in orbit of the star, and watched as SARAH took stock of her situation. The mites began their work in rebuilding the sphere, and in a few years, it would be complete.

The majority of the population of Iconia had been flung approximately three hundred millennia into the future as reality broke apart and reformed itself. The Q could see them, but their powers to move through time were hindered this close to the center of destruction. Reaching the continuum was impossible at present as well. They could draw power from it, but the route that the power took to them was untraversable.

There were ten of them, and they settled into the Dyson Sphere to wait until time was healed enough to allow them to move through in an accelerated fashion.

"Well," Jack O'Neill said as they all watched the universe convulse around them, "what now?"

Author's Note:

The Authors would like to thank all of our readers for taking the time out of their lives to read what the voices in our heads have told us to write. It has been a lot of fun and hope you have enjoyed the story. The next exciting installment of the Iconia Continuum will be posted after a short break, and will be posted in the Stargate SG1 / Star Trek 2009 section under the title, "The Rise of Iconia". Any questions that can be answered without leading to spoilers will be on the forum topic/140222/100500455/1/An-answer-to-reviews-on-The-Birth-of-Iconia