BABYLON 5: THE VIRTUAL SIXTH SEASON
"THE PRICE OF FREEDOM"
Episode 10
SHADOWS OF THE PAST
"Computer, activate personal log," the Captain ordered. "Append to previous log, same heading."
"Standing by," the computer replied.
The Captain took a deep breath, then, and began to speak.
"...I first attained this rank in the months before President Clark rose to power, and since that terrible day, I have done many things I am proud of...and many things that still give me nightmares. I remember the firefight between the destroyer groups loyal to Lochley and Tikopai in the skies above Orion 7...I remember the colours of death.
"I was there of course, you see. I remember the fleet commanded by Sheridan sweeping past our disabled commands above Mars, and I remember being able to do nothing at the time...which was probably for the best, of course. Shortly thereafter, the regime of President Clark self destructed from the top down...and things began to return to normal. Though how one defines 'normal' is a very good question in this day and age.
"What hasn't changed, though, is this: we started off on the low end of the totem pole, technologically, and even after all the strides we've made since the Centauri gave us jump technology, we're still learning. The generals and the engineers, they're so proud of our technology, of our Omega Class destroyers. 'Wonderful', they call them. You have to remember, though, that the Alliance White Stars ran circles around us at the Battle of Mars...what I'm leading towards, of course, is obvious. Back during Clark's reign, the techies reverse engineered a lot of stuff they shouldn't have... case in point, the whole situation with those newfangled Warlock ships -- near as I can recall, that still hasn't been sorted out properly yet. Doesn't seem to matter how many slaps on the wrist we get, though; as soon as they think the ISA isn't watching, out we go again.
"Out to where the stars are dimmer, farther apart. Out to worlds hidden and ancient.
"To places where Shadows used to walk..."
Captain Victor Thomas Cardinal paused then, and shook his head somberly. "Computer, pause log." The stocky, native American man, whose hair was only lightly touched with gray, turned away from the computer at that point, his eyes showing his exhaustion and worry. Here, alone in his cabin, he could afford that.
For over three months now, his command, the Omega-class destroyer Thebes, along with the two lighter exploration vessels he had been assigned to guard, had been cautiously moving among the sectors of space once controlled by an ancient force which President John Sheridan had banished more than two years ago -- a force that commanded a vast order of spidery black warships, able to deal out death in an instant...and worse, if the rumours were true. A force the Minbari had named the Shadows.
Three more months they were supposed to be out here, and then, he and his crew could finally return home...
At which point his link chimed. Cardinal smiled as he checked the chronometer on his desk...she was right on time, as usual. "This is Cardinal. Go ahead."
"And good morning to you too, Captain!" began his exec, Commander Rachel DeWolfe, before she immediately turned her attention to what was almost always the next item of business -- the current status of the expedition. "Just thought I'd let you know, sir, we're presently making our final approach to system GC 8717. Mr. Menzies and the crew of the Hephaestus are wondering if we could open a jump point for them and take them out into normal space; there doesn't seem to be any gate in the vicinity, and their own jump engines are still down."
Cardinal frowned. "No gates, huh? That's fairly unusual for a Shadow system, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir." Commander DeWolfe emphatically replied. "Very. All of the systems the IPX boys have taken us into so far have had tri-tine gates...it's because this one doesn't that Menzies is interested."
"All right, then." Cardinal fastened the clasp on his uniform tunic and headed towards the door. "I suppose we can humour them this time around."
"Standard procedure, sir?"
"Absolutely. Soon as we come out of the point I want both Thunderbolt squadrons in space, Commander. Even though the Shadows may be long gone, from what I understand some of their allies are still around. If there's any of 'em in this system, I want plenty of warning -- because if things get hairy, we may have to get out of here in a hurry."
"Confirmed, sir. Making jump transition...now."
****************
STAR SYSTEM GC 8717
07:02 EST
It had been a very long time since they had been this far into the Great Deep. For as long as the Elders could remember, the long sleep of Stone had meant everything to them, the endless slumber they had enjoyed while basking in the heat coming from below. But then, the small-creatures had come again...the disturbances had begun anew. Finally it had been as they had feared -- one of their younglings had grown frustrated, and had chosen to turn aside from the safety of the Places Below to move upwards toward the cold at the surface. The communications they had engaged in as the youngling had emerged had told the story in full: the ancient place had been crawling with small-creatures, poking amongst the ruins of the places built by the Masters when they had all been young...desecrating what once had been.
The youngling had attacked, and in turn, the metal-flyers of memory had shrieked down upon it from above. And then, one of them had died.
A ripple of anger had passed through their ranks at this event, a ripple that quickly grew into an unstoppable need for revenge. The youngling had only tried to protect the memory of the Ancient Masters and defend their place, and that defence had been mocked. In time, they had moved up closer to the surface, and there had the revelation occurred.
A contact had been established with another set of small-creatures in the Above, but even through their rage they remembered these creatures before they had grown to become what they now were. These named themselves Drakh, and in short order the Drakh had proven their loyalties to the memories of the Ancient Masters...and had in turn suggested that the Swarm should enter into a compact with them. Explanations were demanded, and in time, understanding was achieved, and then it was that their anger grew.
The Drakh had proceeded to lay out before them the nature of what was, and the nature of their plans. They could scarcely believe that it was so...but the truth could not be ignored. The Ancient Masters and the Great Enemy had both been banished by creatures that had moved into space since they had begun the long sleep! These creatures, named Humans, had been the ones to disturb their rest...and with their allies, had been the ones to murder their youngling. Now the Elders gave cry to their anger, now those who had done this deed had been identified.
You wish revenge upon those who have done you harm, the Drakh suggested. These creatures who are also our enemies.
They had agreed, and then they had asked: what can be done?
Long it has been since we encountered your kind, the Drakh had replied. We had in truth believed that no more of you still lived, that the only descendants still living followed the Great Masters into the darkness beyond the stars. We are pleased, however, to find that this is not the case.
Long we have slept, they replied, but now we have learned the nature of things, perhaps it is time for us to arise once more. We are few, but from what you tell us, our descendants caused these creatures you name "enemy" to fear for their lives...if they are capable of this task, then so still are we.
We are the original form, but our cry is the same; we have not forgotten how to build our weapons. We will help you in your plans, if you will help us in ours.
Explain to us your intent, the Drakh had asked.
They had.
And now, outliers of their Swarm hung motionless in the rays of a star far from their former home, and these watched the void flare and twist open into a Traveler's-passage. A sign of the Great Enemy, this was...They did not need to use such means of travel, of course. Their method, a method the Masters had adapted for use in their descendants, was far more subtle.
But since the enemy did use the Traveler's-passages, this was a weakness that they could certainly exploit. And as the crude metal craft came out of the passage, they began to make their plans.
And those plans made, they then began to move.
****************
BABYLON 5, BLUE SECTOR
07:03 EST
The trill of the BabCom alarm kicked Colin out of an uneasy dream involving a faceless woman in an unidentifiable uniform, something that seemed to partake of Earthforce, MetaPol and Anla'shok garb equally, who stared down at him and touched his face with a strangely insubstantial hand. So strong was the image that he jolted upright and looked around for her reflexively before he became conscious of being conscious.
He slumped, feeling dislocated and annoyed he'd dozed off on his couch last night, rather than adjourning to the bed, and his uniform felt rumpled and sweaty. But the BabCom continued to trill, with the peculiar note of a StellarCom call, and Colin rather suspected he knew who it would be. He didn't bother to find his hairbrush before answering. If it was who he thought, then the caller could damn well cope with him looking disheveled, and if it wasn't... well, anyone who called at this ungodly hour couldn't expect perfection.
"Mr. Bester."
"Mr. Ferris!" The cheery greeting set Colin's teeth on edge. Bester beamed out at him from the screen as if he'd never been so glad to see anyone in his life. "Still looking a little ragged, I see. Hasn't Captain Lochley let you get any sleep this week?"
From another person, that innuendo would have been sexual; from Bester it meant something entirely different. {{Are you still jumping and skipping at the beck of the mundanes? My, my, Mr. Ferris, you'll have them all thinking we're trained puppies before long!}}
Colin clenched his teeth. "Actually, sir, it's been very quiet. I've...I've been having bad dreams, is all."
"What? You don't sleep the sound sleep of the just every night? I'm shocked, Mr. Ferris. Quite shocked."
Colin resisted the urge to put his fist through the screen. It was startlingly difficult. He wondered at the strength of his anger.
He had never liked the older Psi Cop much the differing philosophies of their factions within the Corps had ensured that, although Colin disliked thinking in terms of "factions" to begin with but he had always respected Bester as a consummate professional. On the rare occasions they'd met on Earth, Colin had found him mildly irritating but far from unbearable. After all, Bester could be excused most of the time for acting like a know-it-all; when it came to the Corps and to rogue-hunting, the man practically did know it all.
Recently, though and in brutal honesty, "recently" meant pretty much as soon as Colin had been assigned to Babylon 5 the man's smug superiority towards the rest of the universe had become more and more infuriating. It had started with Frost, worsened with Lucy Thoreson, and crystallized during the brouhaha with Owen Strainger and the Byronites - when Colin had had an epiphany of his own with a young woman named Sheynell Keynes.
Colin had enjoyed teaching the arrogant young Psi Cop trainee her lesson more than he should have, he had to admit. But it hadn't really been Keynes he was attacking. So far as he could tell her only real flaw was picking the wrong hero to obsessively remold herself into. It had been the man she was trying to become...the man she had served as effigy for, that day in the Sanctuary when he had turned Sheynell's fury and overeagerness against her with an ease and pleasure that, even now, still sickened him when he thought about it.
Of course, it sickened him even more to think of the way she'd walked into Elizabeth's mind without so much as a by-your-leave, as if it was her right to invade the soul of whoever she wanted.
And perhaps that was it. Colin had always believed that invading the souls of others without their permission was wrong. But here on Babylon 5, alone with a vast crowd of concentrated thought, virtually the only telepath within light-years - and most certainly the only P12 - that temptation had become stronger than he'd believed possible. That he had resisted it was one of his great, secret prides. And that Bester not only did not resist it, but took every excuse to do it...much as Colin hated to admit it, it wasn't just the righteous indignation of seeing the helpless violated. It was the sickening, secret envy of someone who could do it at will.
He kept most of it off his face, and the little that slipped through he knew he could justify as the irritation of the barely-awake. Not even a P12 could scan across light-years with nothing but a vidscreen image to work with. "I should think you'd be pleased to hear my rest is uneasy, Mr. Bester. After all, wouldn't that mean I was as worried about your agent's impending visit as you seem to think I should be?"
"Are you worried?"
"Should I be?"
"Only you can answer that, Mr. Ferris."
"If this visit was only what it seemed, I would."
The elder Psi Cop raised an eyebrow. Colin sighed. "I don't presume to be your match in experience or ability, Mr. Bester - "
"Oh, nonsense, Colin, you underrate yourself."
" - but I know you never do anything for only one reason," Colin plowed on. "And I can't help but think that your agent, acting on those other reasons, is only going to create yet another situation that will bite me, pardon my French, right on my ass."
The corner of Bester's mouth twitched, and for a change it looked like genuine amusement rather than his usual sneering sardonicism. "Really." He glanced down at his console, pressing keys. "Then I should probably introduce you to said agent. Who has, I must inform you, been listening."
Before Colin could process this the screen split. Beside Bester's face appeared the image of a young woman, with a long mane of dark reddish hair and deep-set, shadowed brown eyes; her wide mouth looked like it was naturally prone to smiling but was now held in a flat blank line. The ID codes all around her image set her time and location: a ship in hyperspace, on the jumpgate lines between Earth and B5, less than a day's transit away. That several of those codes were blanked out with security shields didn't surprise Colin in the slightest. Of course a protιgι of Bester's would use a Corps mothership.
"Mr. Colin Ferris, Ms. Brianna Tolmanes," said Bester with a flourish in his voice. "Well, Ms. Tolmanes, what's your opinion? Do you think it'll be necessary to bite Mr. Ferris on his ass?"
Tolmanes closed her eyes, flushing brick-red. Colin was startled to realize there was quite a bit of heat in his own face, and he used his embarrassment to fuel his anger. "I don't take kindly to being monitored without my knowledge, Mr. Bester!"
"She was going to start within the day anyway," said Bester, feigning bewilderment. "And you can be sure she will not inform you every time she is monitoring you. That would rather defeat the purpose, don't you think?"
Colin took refuge from his anger in the only place he could: a wisecrack. He raised an eyebrow of his own at Brianna. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, anyway?"
Brianna's mouth worked. "Fulfilling my obligations," she muttered at last in a surprisingly throaty contralto.
"A superficial answer which is in reality cryptic and uninformative." Colin lifted his hands, palm up, and looked at Bester. "She's really got the Psi Cop act down, hasn't she?"
"I am not a Psi Cop!" snapped Brianna before Bester could answer.
"I'm - " She flushed again. "I'm a temporary attache to Mr. Bester under...confidential arrangements."
"And that is as much as you need to know, Mr. Ferris," said Bester flatly, all humour gone from his voice. "Just be aware that Ms. Tolmanes has the ability to monitor you wherever, whenever she needs to...and she will be doing so. Don't think you can deceive her or elude her. Even trying will reflect very badly on your record. Am I clear?"
"As crystal, Mr. Bester," Colin replied through locked teeth. "As...crystal."
He punched the TERMINATE button with his fist, sat breathing with his eyes shut for a few moments, and let his suddenly aching head subside to the console. His mind whirled. An observer. A stranger, secrets, and lies. Everything that the Psi Corps had somehow become more and more infected with in his time here.
{{Or,}} his relentlessly honest mind added, {{everything that was there all along, and that you're only just now beginning to see?}}
Well, perhaps Tolmanes might be able to break his shields, but he was damned if he'd give her an excuse to try -
-- and if she could break his shields, which only a P12 could do, what was she doing out of a MetaPol uniform in the first place?
{{I never thought I'd say this,}} Colin admitted to himself, {{but I think I'm really, really beginning to hate the way the Corps operates.}}
Later, he would blame the thought on fatigue and ill-temper, and recant it.
Consciously, at least.
****************
PSI CORPS HEADQUARTERS
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
07:11 EST
Bester regarded the blank space where Colin's circuit had terminated, then turned his black gaze on Brianna. The young woman met his look without flinching...but deep down in her eyes was the flicker of awareness, that helpless compulsion that came out of blackmail and honour. Tolmanes wasn't going anywhere. He knew it, she knew it, and each knew the other knew it. And much as Bester prized his dispassion, there was a peculiar satisfaction that came from that knowledge.
"You see why observation has become necessary," he explained.
"What is it about that place?" Tolmanes wondered aloud, shaking her head. "It changes everyone. They should put up a sign. 'Babylon 5 - Come As One Person and Leave As Another'."
Bester chuckled. "Somewhat exaggerated, Ms. Tolmanes - I've been many times, and I remain who I am. Who I choose to be."
"Yes, I'm sure you do."
Bester's smile twisted as Tolmanes flashed the first smile of her own. It was a smile of perfect understanding, and malice-laden as it was on both sides, there was a peculiar pleasure in that, too. "Then you realize that it is vital you report anything you find. Anything, Ms. Tolmanes. If you have to tear the man's life apart to get your answers - if you have to break his shields and go in by force then do it. I will accept nothing less than utter and complete discovery."
"Do you hate this man so much?"
Bester paused. The question had genuinely surprised him, and he gave it some thought before answering. "Hatred is...irrelevant, Ms. Tolmanes. What I dislike is uncertainty, and Colin Ferris is no longer a known quantity. He is the down card in a poker hand, if you will, and I must know what he is before I start the next round of betting." He shrugged. "I don't care if he's joker, ace, wild card or black queen - I merely want to know."
"Is there anything you don't want to know?"
"You, my dear Brianna, do not want to know the consequences of failure." And Bester hit a button.
LINK TERMINATED
****************
EAS THEBES
07:13 EST
"Commander," Cardinal began as he finally arrived on the bridge, "an update on our progress, if you wouldn't mind?"
"Yes, sir. Alpha Squadron and the Hephaestus are moving in-system - long range scans seem to indicate the fourth planet of this system possesses a significant network of artificial...constructs. Mr. Menzies and his people are of the opinion that these might actually be Shadow cities."
Cardinal snorted at that as he sank into the captain's chair. "He's making a big assumption there, isn't he? We still don't know for certain if they built cities."
"I think we can safely assume that they did, sir. After all, there's that story about their homeworld, Z'ha'dum, going around...supposedly Sheridan himself went there during the war and blew up one of their cities himself."
"The same man who came back from the dead?" Cardinal shook his head. "I grant you we were on the wrong side of the line Earth drew in that war - the inside - but even so, that sounds to me like something the winning side made up about one of their greatest heroes."
DeWolfe sounded dubious. "Sheridan is a hero, sir, and we've got no way of knowing exactly what happened during the Shadow War..."
"Then why hasn't he made more political capital out of it for the Interstellar Alliance?" Cardinal raised his eyebrows. "And how did he survive personally blowing up a city at ground zero? For that matter, why haven't any of the real high-ups - people like Sheridan or General Ryan or their direct subordinates - talked about it to ISN? Maybe there's a good answer for those questions, maybe not...but it's certain that we'll never find out the truth."
"Guess you're probably right about that, sir..." All of a sudden, DeWolfe's voice trailed off as the sensor readings coming to her board suddenly...changed. "Captain, I think you'd better take a look at this."
Cardinal recognized that tone -- and in the instant he realized all the humour and banter was gone from his exec's voice, the captain of the Thebes became all business. "You've seen something you don't like." Statement of fact, not a question.
"Yes, sir -- there's some kind of distortion field forming between the Hephaestus and the rest of us!"
"Damn it, I knew this was too good to be true. All right, Commander, bring us to battle stations, warm up the jump engines and put Gamma Squadron on point around the Fitzgerald. Menzies, this is the Thebes, if you are able to respond."
"This is Hephaestus, go ahead," the dry, almost bored voice of Gordon Menzies came back to him, as the warning sounds of battle readiness echoed throughout the bridge of Cardinal's command. "Captain, this had better be important."
"Our sensors have picked up spatial disturbances near your position, Captain. Suggest that you pull back to rejoin the rest of the squadron at once."
"I'm sorry, Captain, I don't think I can do that. Not this time, not now we're so close!"
Cardinal gritted his teeth -- so that was the way it was going to be, was it? It was always the same with the IPX people -- the money and the artifacts always came first, and the safety of their crews a distant second. "Damnit, Menzies, pull back at once! That's an order!"
"In case you've forgotten, Captain, we're IPX and JESUS CHRI -- " Only at the last minute did Menzies realize what was happening, as all around his command, inky black ships suddenly shimmered into existence, the snaky tendrils of their forms a liquid black beneath the light of the system's primary. And by that point it was too late to escape from what came next, as almost simultaneously, that handful of black vessels opened fire on the Hephaestus, the violet fire of their energy beams come back to haunt those who thought that nightmare banished forever.
Scant seconds later, all that was left of the IPX vessel and the Thunderbolt squadron that had accompanied them was a burning field of wreckage, slowly tumbling in orbit around a world of dark memories...a place where the past had decided to come calling.
For a moment, there was nothing but deathly silence on the bridge of the Thebes. But only for a moment. "Commander!" Cardinal bellowed. "Bring those jump engines online, now! And get me the captain of the Fitzgerald!"
"Done and done!" DeWolfe shakily replied. Her hands moved; a moment later, the vacuum behind the Thebes crackled and tore open into the maw of a jump point. The destroyer swung about on guidance thrusters, bringing its prow to bear on the point.
"Thebes to Fitzgerald." Cardinal's words came fast as bullets as he watched the sensor board. The small group of enemy warships whirl in space, darting towards his command. "Calthrawn, get into hyperspace, we'll cover you as best we can!"
"Those are...those can't...this is impossible!" the flabbergasted IPX captain replied. "They're supposed to be gone, for God's sake! No one said we'd have to face Shadow warships -- !"
The line fell silent. DeWolfe nodded at her Captain's unasked question. "The Fitzgerald is jumping, sir. Enemy warships will be in range in six minutes at their present rate of closure. Orders?"
"Take us into the point, Commander," Cardinal commanded, his expression bleak. "We have to get out of here. Earthgov has to know what's happened here, this day."
"You know, of course -- " DeWolfe's voice was as bleak as her CO's expression "that the Shadow vessels were supposed to be faster than anybody." The Thebes raced into the jump point and out into hyperspace, surrounded by its fighters. "That once they started chasing you, they would never, ever give up. That not even the Minbari could easily defeat one of their warships. If they choose to pursue, sir..."
Cardinal nodded -- it didn't have to be said. If the things they had encountered at GC 8717 took up the hunt, none of the people under his command would likely stand a chance -- and the THEBES herself would probably be carved up like a lamb come to the slaughter. If they decided to pursue.
If.
Ten minutes passed. Then thirty...an hour. An hour of silence, an hour in which the terrified aft fusion battery crews scanned the red-and-black glare of hyperspace looking for black nightmares. An hour in which tense engineers tended fusion reactors pushed almost to the redline, as the Thebes raced through hyperspace at the highest speed it could manage and still hold its formation with the IPX vessel Fitzgerald. But that hour passed, and then two more.
Finally, as focus began to give way to exhaustion, Cardinal decided to turn command over to his Watch officer, and together with DeWolfe, he left the bridge. In silence, the two officers made their way to his office, and shut the door tightly behind them. And only then, where there was no one to hear them, did Cardinal say what he wanted to almost from the moment they had jumped. "Why?"
"Why didn't they follow us? Why didn't they kill us, the way they killed Menzies and his crew, the way they obliterated Lt. Meisha and her squadron?" DeWolfe replied, her voice raw with exhaustion and tension. "Captain, why ask why? They let us go this time, and I, for one, do not want to go back and ask them why they chose to spare our lives! Let's take this as a warning -- and if even a few of them have come back from exile..."
"If they're back, Commander," Cardinal finished for her, "Then our troubles are only just beginning."
****************** Act One *****************
INTERSTELLAR ALLIANCE HEADQUARTERS
TUZANOR, MINBAR
08:02 EST, 05/20/2263
"Hello, old friend."
Ranger High Councillor William Westcastle, the man who had stood second-in-command of the Anla'shok for more than half a year now, turned aside from his contemplation of the peaceful towers of the City Of Sorrows and smiled wryly at the figure of Anla'shok Sha'vei Tashann in the doorway -- the Minbari who was one of his firmest friends in this life -- the warrior he had served with for over four years now the Ranger who now commanded the White Star Fleet in the name of their President and their Entil'zha.
"Five of your months it has been since I have seen you last...since the morning we stood as one to watch young Tikopai make her vows before Sech Turval, as a matter of fact." Tashann bowed to him, and Westcastle returned it with all the formality due the Sha'vei, old friend though he was. "You are well, I trust -- and also, your partner and children?"
"Well enough, yes," the Rimstalker agreed, as they strode out of the outlook together. "Even though our 'precious little ones', as our Entil'zha has been known to call them from time to time, do manage to keep us awake all the way through the night on occasion."
"I did warn you that two at once would be a 'handful', did I not?" remarked the Minbari. "My own, as you well understand by now from the tales my Shelani relayed to your 'mistress' of the Blade during her term, were well separated in their birthing-times for a very good reason." At that, however, Tashann's face grew more serious. "But enough of this for the time being, William -- I would now hear of this rumour that runs before us like a dark wind upon the crystal-lined canyons of my home province -- this rumour that the Shadows have returned."
"For now," William thoughtfully replied, as they arrived at the transport tube and gave the command for the car to transport them to the Council chambers far below, "I'm afraid that I can't tell you as much as I would like to...most of this the President has asked me to hold off on until we reach the Council chambers. What I can tell you may be summarized as follows -- within the past 24 standard hours, the commander of White Star 44 happened to intercept a transmission from an incoming Earthforce destroyer on the Rim named the Thebes -- a lucky break on our part, given that the transmission seemed to be headed direct for Earthdome in Geneva."
"Or, perhaps," Tashann mused, "the Earthforce captain may have wished other powers than his government to know of this event. But as you were saying?"
"According to the report forwarded by the Thebes' captain, he and his crew were protecting an IPX explorer division just inside the border of the former Shadow territories when they encountered a handful of vessels bearing a striking resemblance to the Shadow vessels we fought against during the War."
"A resemblance, you say -- but not identical?"
"Exactly. If their sensor readings were accurate, which I find suspect given what we both know about Shadow stealth-tech, the ships that attacked them were both more narrowly built and a Hell of a lot smaller than our old nemeses -- not much bigger than a White Star, as a matter of fact."
"Curious, this is," Tashann mused. "The only Shadow vessel-class anywhere near that size were their scout-vessels and fighters...and the scouts, at least, as we know from the engagement that Captain Ivanova conducted just prior to the Battle of Sector 83, were not overly powerful in force of arms. These IPX vessels you mentioned -- were any of them destroyed during this encounter?"
"Apparently. According to the report, the explorer division lost a ship named the Hephaestus, as well as a squadron of Thunderbolts sent down with the IPX people as a protective measure...in about a minute or so, or even less."
"A new class of Shadow vessel, then -- in which case we must ask several critical questions at this juncture," Tashann quietly replied, as they arrived at the main portal of the ISA Council Chamber. "Questions that the President surely wishes to discuss with us and the rest of his staff." And with that William and Tashann strode into the portal, the doors of which obligingly slid aside to reveal the large chamber that lay within.
In structure, the Interstellar Alliance council chamber was similar to its predecessor on Babylon 5 -- but the Workers who had built this place had woven their own threads into the matrix, and the result, William noted yet again, could certainly be appreciated.
Pillars of stone combined with crystal imported from the high plateaus of Minbar's northern hemisphere rose towards the partially skylit ceiling on all sides, between which walls built from great slabs of grey cha'ka stone banded with silver and painted (in restraint) with the colours drawn from the Seal of Alliance filled in the rest of the chamber perimeter - while lights strategically installed behind the pillars cast an aura of majesty throughout. By far the biggest change the Worker Caste architects had made, however, after consultation with the various Alliance governments and ambassadors, was this: Instead of the 'Great Powers' table and audience setup that had existed on Babylon 5, the various ambassadors to the Interstellar Alliance sat around a table that was, for all intents and purposes, a ring. A ring broken, however, by the slightly larger table which, while still part of the ring-arc, stood separate and slightly higher than the rest. The table at which, during most sessions, President Sheridan, himself and the Ambassadors from the Narn Regime and Earth Alliance could be found...and Delenn as well, of course, now that her son David had finally been born.
King Arthur, William suspected, if the man had ever truly existed, would have been proud of the new arrangement.
On this day, however, the table-of-assembly was mostly empty. Those few who sat beneath the great Seal of Alliance installed behind the President's chair wore very grim expressions indeed -- and who could blame them? Carefully keeping their silence, William and Tashann took their seats at table...and after a moment, the man who stood as President for the Interstellar Alliance rose to his feet and began to speak.
"Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning on such short notice, especially you, Tashann. Councillor Westcastle, may I assume that you've brought your fleet commander up to speed on the situation?"
"Yes, Mr. President," William replied, "I have. Although, if I may be honest with everyone present, I do get the impression that you've decided to hold back on a few of the details until everyone involved could get here. And I think I know why."
Sheridan nodded. "While the evidence before us seems solid, Councillor, we absolutely cannot let the cat out of the bag on this one until we have more conclusive proof, one way or the other, that any of the elements involved in Captain Cardinal's report to Earthdome are accurate."
"If the Alliance members learn of this matter before we are ready to discuss it with them," Delenn emphasized at that point, "the relative peace we have established since the end of the conflict with the Centauri may be shattered anew. This cannot be allowed to happen." William, of course, found his heart glad to see that his Entil'zha had re-involved herself in Alliance affairs so quickly...and mentally sent a thank-you in the direction of his wife Jennifer for volunteering to look after young David Sheridan, this morning of all mornings.
"As all no doubt surmise," Shival replied, his expression contemplative, "while the questions set before us this day are critical ones -- as the President and our Entil'zha have suggested - a thorough analysis must be performed before any conclusion can be made. Since the end of the Shadow War at the Battle of Corianna VI, we have, all of us, proceeded on the assumption that the decision made at that battle would be a lasting one -- that Lorien, the being we name 'First One' departed with the Shadows and Vorlons beyond the Galactic Rim, with the entirety of their fleets. For two of your years, Mr. President, this assumption has seemed merited.
"This day, however, a report reaches us of an attack in territories that the humans of the Earth Alliance should know better than to enter -- a report that suggests the ships of this explorer division were attacked by Shadow vessels. A report I find...suspect."
"There is a very real chance that we may be facing Shadow allies, like the Drakh for instance, using the technology of their former Masters against us," William noted, following up on Shival's line of thought. "We already have suspicions that the allies of the Shadows, or at least someone dealing in Shadow technology, were involved in the series of events that led up to the orbital bombardment of Centauri Prime last fall. If the Drakh and their allies have gained access to Shadow warship technology of any kind, we have to know about it -- we have to find out where they're getting it from, who's orchestrating the use of the ships...and if possible, we have to deny them the use of this resource -- before the rest of the Alliance learns what's going on."
"A difficult prospect." Delenn replied, her eyes flinty. "May I assume, High Councillor, that you have a...suggestion for how we may bring this about?"
William, Tashann and Shival exchanged a glance, and after a long moment, the White Star Fleet commander tersely nodded at William's unspoken thought. "I do, Entil'zha -- at this time, I would like to turn the 'chair', so to speak, over to my commander in the field, Sha'vei Tashann."
"Mr. President, Entil'zha," Tashann began, coming right to the point. "At this time, even though our resources are spread thinner than I would like, I believe it should be possible for us to commit several triads of White Stars to this operation. The combined firepower of such a force should be sufficient for a limited engagement with the vessels described in this report -- please note, if you will, that these hypothetical 'Shadow' vessels chose to engage and destroy a nearly unarmed civilian exploration vessel -- but not the human destroyer-class vessel accompanying them. From this fact, may we not deduce that these vessels are not as battle-capable as their larger cousins? And that they may, in fact, be much easier to destroy than the vessels we encountered during the War against the Darkness?"
"You're going a little farther out on a limb than I like with that line of thought, Tashann," Sheridan replied darkly. "Hell, make that a lot. And while I agree with most of your analysis, for now we don't know how many of these things are out there -- and until we do..."
"In any case, we must know more about the situation in general before any decisions can be made," Shival finalized. "We must, as the High Councillor has suggested, send Rangers and White Stars to investigate this matter fully -- and we must choose a commander for this mission that we know will analyze the matter thoroughly before reporting back to us." By this point, all three of the Rangers at the table had identical, faint smiles on their faces.
"May I assume," Sheridan inquired, while Delenn sat quietly beside him and did her not-altogether-successful best to fight off a similar smile, "from the expressions on your faces, gentlemen, that you might have someone in mind for this job?"
"We do indeed, Mr. President," William replied. "Her name is...
"Lanniel."
****************
BABYLON 5, BOARDING LOUNGE 3
08:27 EST
A docking corridor was a docking corridor. Brianna Tolmanes had seen dozens of them since taking up her reluctant place under Alfred Bester's command, and the shields she seldom let drop remained tight as ever - which, nowadays, made them a damn impressive block. Though she was seldom comfortable thinking about her Vorlon-crafted augmentations - augmentations which, if they did not equal the scope of Lyta Alexander's transformation, nonetheless had made her far stronger than she'd ever expected to be - there were times she was grateful for their power. She wanted nothing leaking into or out of her, now. Not here.
Which was why she remained utterly unaffected until the moment she stepped into the boarding lounge, sucked in a breath of the unique Babylon 5 scent, and abruptly found herself shaking and trying not to cry. Her stomach knotted and her eyes burned; she squeezed them shut, knuckles going white on her carryall, sensing but not seeing the curious looks the other debarking passengers gave her as they moved around and past her into the lounge.
"Miss Tolmanes?"
She recognized that polite, precise tenor, and her hatred of the black Psi Cop uniform she could dimly see before her gave her the strength to master herself. "Officer Ferris." She blinked the nascent tears away and scowled at him, a little disconcerted to find he wasn't as tall as he'd seemed on the screen - very close to her own height, in fact. "Thank you for meeting me."
Ferris nodded. "This may be necessary, but I see no reason we can't be courteous about it," he said, as if trying to convince himself as much as her.
"You will. Just wait."
Before he could respond to the flat voice she strode past him towards the wall map. "So, where have you put me?" She stopped in front of the map and surveyed it, swallowing the lump in her throat. God, but it was all so familiar...it was as if she'd left yesterday, rather than nearly a year ago.
"Blue Sector. Level 10." Colin's voice, as he joined her, was toneless.
"One level up from yourself." He looked sidelong at her, and she met his blue-eyed gaze without apology. "I had to do my homework, Mr. Ferris."
"I'm sure. It was fortunate I did mine, as well - " Deliberately, he looked over her shoulder. Out of sheer stubbornness, Brianna fought not to look for a moment. But then, even through her shields, she felt a touch she'd never expected to feel again: the feel of a familiar mind. She whirled.
Jamie gave her a small smile. "Hi, Bree."
Only shock kept Brianna's defenses from crumbling. Automatically she stepped forward and hugged the smaller woman, mind whirling, and by the time they separated she'd fought herself back under a thin layer of control. "Jamie," she gulped. "My God, Jamie, what are you doing here?"
"On-station command," Jamie smiled. In her dark eyes, Brianna recognized the thousand questions burning, and sensed the terrific willpower Jamie was exerting to keep herself from bursting out with them all at once. "I got posted here the beginning of the year, a few months after Will and Jen left for Minbar. They had their kids, did you hear?"
Brianna nodded jerkily. "Yes. Yes, I did." This was hurting more than she'd ever believed possible, and if she didn't find a way to end this soon she'd break down completely, blocks and all. Which wouldn't be fun for anybody within about fifty metres, given her new telepathic strength. "Jamie, I - I can't stay long, I'm...here on business." She swallowed and made herself look Jamie in the eye; risk of breakdown or not, Jamie and she had fought together in the Battle of Liberation over Earth, and the other woman deserved this much. "Corps business."
"Yeah, so I hear." Jamie's fist clenched, although her voice remained carefully neutral. "This is something you, ah, have to do, isn't it?"
"Yes. I...I have to."
"You, ah, wouldn't be interested in telling us why, at all?"
Brianna closed her eyes. "I can't, Jamie. Not...not now, I can't. Someday if I can, I will - that's a promise, Jamie," she added in a low, fierce whisper. "But for now I -" Her voice locked without warning.
"Hey." Jamie touched her arm. "You and I stood on the bridge together. Nobody passed us. I trusted you with my life, I can trust you with a secret for a while." She leaned forward and took Brianna into her embrace again, stretching up to rest her chin on the taller woman's shoulder where she could whisper something. "You're Anla'shok, Bree. You don't give that up just because you have to wear a different uniform for a while. When you can come back, there's a place for you. There will always be a place for you."
Brianna clung to her control by the slimmest of margins, and not enough remained to keep the tears from leaking out. She hugged Jamie fiercely; the smaller woman returned the embrace just as tightly. Finally they eased apart. Jamie took the opportunity to dab at Brianna's damp cheeks with the corner of her tunic sleeve. "Geez, kiddo, you should never cry in public," she murmured. "Don't you know redheads can't do that without looking like hell?"
"Well, then don't surprise me out of nowhere like that," Brianna retorted, managing a smile.
Colin cleared his throat: a tiny, almost diffident sound, but unmistakeable. Jamie sighed, and Brianna scowled as she turned to face him. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
"Yes. The Captain's office. With you."
Well, that settled that. He might not be Bester -- nobody could be Bester - but this man knew very well how to pitch his voice in that same flat command.
That it was exactly the same tone of command she'd heard from the Rimstalker on more than one occasion, she chose to ignore.
****************
CAPTAIN'S OFFICE
08:45 EST
Lochley examined the woman standing before her with a narrow, suspicious look she made no effort to hide. Tolmanes stood stolidly, meeting the Captain's look with neither retreat nor defiance. To one side, Colin stood, hands behind his back, looking as uncomfortable as Lochley had ever seen him.
"Observer," Lochley finally repeated.
Tolmanes nodded once.
"Ms. Tolmanes' operational parameters have been clearly outlined," said Colin, stepping forward to lay a datacrystal on Lochley's desk. "She is to monitor my activities only as a member of Psi Corps and report back to Mr. Bester. Her position is that of attache - she is not actually a member of MetaPol and has no discretionary powers of scanning or civic arrest. Any violation of the parameters set out in that crystal will give you authority to deport her, Captain - and the protocols and forms for such deportation," Colin added grimly with a direct glare at Brianna, "have already been filled out; they only need your ID and the specifics of a time and place to take effect."
Lochley scowled at the crystal as if it was a dead bird brought in by a cat she hadn't yet decided if she liked. "Colin, stop trying to kiss ass. It doesn't become you."
Colin's jaw fell. Before he could find an answer Lochley held up her hand. "Never mind, never mind. I'm sorry, Colin, that wasn't fair of me - I just don't like people trying to sugarcoat problems, or trying to keep them from me." She gave him a level look. "Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am," Colin muttered.
Intriguingly, it was the "ma'am" that produced the first readable reaction from Tolmanes; she whipped her head sideways to blink at him, her eyebrows rising. Which wasn't all that surprising, really; if Bester was the calibre of MetaPol she was used to working with, Colin's attitude was going to be a distinct shock to her. Lochley found herself fighting back a grin.
And after all, much as everything she'd said to Colin was the truth - she really didn't appreciate people trying to make problems seem less than they were in an attempt to spare her worry - it would still, all the same, be awfully convenient to have the deportation paperwork handy if Tolmanes did cross the line.
She leant forward, folding her hands, and modified her expression to its best politically neutral - a mask she'd had a lot of practice at since arriving here last year. "All right, Ms. Tolmanes, as long as you do your job and nothing else, we should get along fine." Amusement bubbled inside her, though she kept it out of her face; she wondered who this would surprise more, Colin or Tolmanes. "But I can assure you that Officer Ferris has the complete confidence and support of myself and of every officer on this station - " well, she could exaggerate a little in Zack's case - "and that I cannot praise his performance of his duties highly enough."
The effect was all she could have asked for, and maybe a little more; Colin's startled look melted into a hastily muted gratitude that was, for half a second, a little too intense. But whatever discomfort came from that was more than made up for by Tolmanes. She opened her mouth, flicked a glance at Colin as if to confirm he hadn't changed into someone else, turned back to Lochley, worked her mouth a couple of times and then shut it. She looked like nothing so much as someone who, while picking daisies, had unexpectedly caught a Starfury in the small of the back.
Which was interesting in another way, as well.
Even the most scrupulous telepath, Colin had told her, always got a dim emotional vibe off whoever they were talking to - they could no more mute that sense than a mundane could the nerves in their skin. It wasn't acute enough to be called a proper scan, but it did mean it was next to impossible to lie to a telepath unless you could do so with both a straight face and a perfectly calm mind. And it meant that if you weren't lying, if you wholeheartedly believed what you said, the telepath would know that too beyond possibility of mistake.
So Brianna hadn't been scanning even Lochley's surface thoughts, which would have given her some warning; but she did know Lochley was telling the truth and had been completely floored by it. Which meant she was not only unusually ethical herself, but had no expectation of similar ethics in any MetaPol officer.
{{So, you aren't Sheynell Keynes. What you are...we'll have to wait and see.}} "Officer Ferris will see you to your quarters," Lochley said aloud. "If you have any questions concerning the station or protocols here, don't hesitate to com me, and I or one of my staff will help you."
For the first time Tolmanes smiled, a bitter, angry, painful expression which set Lochley back on her heels. "Believe me, Captain...I know this station. I won't be needing your help." She turned and left without waiting for Colin. Colin gave Lochley a look mixed of apology and irritation and hurried after her.
Lochley picked up the crystal, considered it, then tucked it in her breast pocket.
{{Just in case,}} she thought.
Colin caught up with Brianna halfway down the corridor, grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. "What the hell did you think you were doing talking to the Captain like that?!"
"Get your hand off me." Brianna struck his hand away with an angry slap. "Don't you dare preach to me about this station, Ferris. And just because you've fooled her, don't think you fool me. I know that badge, I know that uniform; I know what you have to do to earn it. So don't play the innocent with me."
"I won't play the innocent if you won't play the catspaw." Colin glared back at her. "Are you happy doing Bester's dirty work? Are you glad to see him tear me up?"
"Why shouldn't I be? One shark turns on another, it doesn't matter which one lives - there's one less shark."
"That's how you think of me? A conscienceless, ruthless killing machine?" Colin's anger dissolved into something halfway between disbelief and pain. "You don't even know me."
"I know what you are. I know this." She tapped his Psi Corps badge as if she wanted to punch her finger through his chest. "And that's all I need to know." She spun and began marching away again.
"You spent years here," Colin called after her. "If this place did anything for you, didn't it teach you not to judge by appearances?"
Brianna slowed and stopped, almost around the corner. Trembling, she turned to face him; her rage shimmered down the hall towards him like a wave of heat. "Don't you ever talk about what Babylon 5 did to me again," she breathed. "You haven't earned the right."
She vanished.
Colin bent his head and put his face in his hands.
****************
TUZANOR, MINBAR
08:57 EST
One foot in front of the other, that was what it took. David Endawi, he who was lucky enough (or perhaps not so lucky, some days) to be Earth's Ambassador to the Interstellar Alliance, drew in another deep breath and began ascending the crystal-lined steps that lead to the spot he had stood upon several hours before -- the highest ledge of Sha'ree nafei, the stone and water 'garden' that filled the grounds between the great blue and gray trilateral pyramid of ISA Headquarters and the towers to its east -- and he did this thing with a smile on his face.
Some of his staff, Horvath for instance, weren't shy about telling him they didn't understand why he found the need to walk about so much. He had told them, with a straight face of course, that this was the only way he was going to get any exercise...and damn it all, man, here we are in the middle of a city full of Minbari -- I need no guards!
The truth of the matter, of course, was a little more subtle than that. Ever since he had arrived here almost a year ago, Endawi had made up his mind that he wanted to see as much of Tuzanor as he could while he was here...and always at this time of day or earlier, when the air was still cool...with the daily business of Tuzanor's people just begun. Today, for instance, he had watched the sky and mountains come alight with orange fire from this very spot before the brilliant orb of Minbar's sun had risen out of the low mists that often filled the Valley of Sorrows at dawn. He had stood, yet again, in the in-between time -- that moment between night and day, when one could clearly see the shadows.
The Shadows. When President Luchenko had assigned him to this position, he had, of course, gone so far as to acquire a full copy of the information that had been denied to him while President Clark had ruled the Earth Alliance. There were details in that document that had shocked him to the core...and others that had also saddened him greatly.
President Clark, Endawi recalled, had been afraid of many things... even that force that had, perhaps, helped bring him to power. The line Clark had drawn around the home system had hidden away what had gone on beyond -- what John Sheridan, the man his government had sent him here to deal with, had done with his allies, his crew and all those others he had drawn to his side when he had been commander of Babylon 5...the dark losses and bright victories that had occurred during the long struggle with the Shadows and their almost as ancient opponents, the Vorlons.
And now this morning of all mornings, with the fog still thick about the redstone embassy building the Minbari had ordered built for him and his staff, a rumour had reached his ears that he would rather see disproved. Something that, if it was true, meant a great deal of trouble and renewed pain for many of the esteemed gentles with whom he dealt in this place, on a regular basis.
"Ambassador Endawi," a brisk, sharply accented voice intruded, "I had hoped to find you here this morning."
Endawi turned and inclined his head in welcome, as Ambassador N'Rothak of the Narn Regime ascended the steps Endawi had walked upon himself moments before to stand beside him. "It is a fine morning for a walk, yes?" the Narn exclaimed jovially.
Endawi sighed. "Let us cut to the chase, Ambassador -- we both know that you have not hunted me down this morning to discuss my exercise habits."
The Narn gravely nodded, his smile falling away. "Indeed not -- my assistant G'Val roused me this morning with news of ill portent -- I would discuss this with you... discreetly, of course."
Ah. "This 'matter' you refer to, would it involve an assault upon a group of explorers in a dangerous place?"
"You have it, Ambassador -- while your discretion in this matter is appreciated."
Endawi sighed. Exactly how many Alliance operatives had intercepted Captain Cardinal's transmission from the Rim was a detail he very much wanted to deduce before this 'situation' began to spiral out of control. "And now that we have established what we do and do not know, what now should we do about this matter?"
"As you no doubt recall," N'Rothak carefully replied, "the things I learned at the side of the greatest spymaster my people have ever possessed become very useful when I am faced with 'rumours' such as this one. He taught me many things -- including how to touch upon the currents of truth and falsehood.
"G'Kael once said the following to me -- 'it is often easy to deduce whether the thing you are afraid of is true or not, N'Rothak -- fear by itself may mean nothing -- but when fear and proof of that you fear walk together...then must your blade be close at hand.'
"If what we discuss is true, there will be trouble," N'Rothak allowed, his voice a dark whisper amidst the silence of the stone ledges. "But until we know one way or the other, we must give Sheridan time to send his forces in search of that which I never wish to see again in this lifetime. Only once Delenn's Rangers have investigated the situation, and reported back to the President and his Advisory Council, may we safely move on this matter."
"Unless, of course," Endawi fatalistically replied, "what happened to the explorers...happens again."
"In which case," N'Rothak finished with a shrug, "this is all liable to 'blow up in our faces' as you humans have been known to say from time to time -- but enough of this for the time being, Ambassador." The Narn donned a genial smile. "Would you care to join me at my embassy for the midday meal? Unlike our previous engagement, on this occasion Feihrusavar G'Zaain wished me to assure you that the 'finest Human coffees' are, indeed, available for your consumption."
Endawi smiled himself. This was a game that he and N'Rothak had almost simultaneously decided to play with one another from the very start - and a number of fascinating dinner parties had arisen out of the dance between them to date. "In that case, Ambassador, I accept your kind offer."
****************
BABYLON 5, THE ZOCALO
11:17 EST
Despite the pressure it placed on his blocks, Colin had actually come to enjoy "walking his beat" through the Zocalo. There was very little of the desperation that tainted DownBelow, and much more merriment in the interplay of bargaining, transaction and browsing. Even the unmissable presence of Brianna Tolmanes, who'd reappeared to follow him without word or acknowledgement, couldn't spoil the delightful froth and fizz of the psychic ether here.
Of course, it helped that Colin's particular duties were almost never invoked here, either. Since his posting, whatever rogues passed through the station, or might still be hiding here beyond his finding, had learned enough not to exercise their skills illegally in this area. And as this was where most of the major commercial interests concentrated their efforts (the grey-market operations of DownBelow notwithstanding), not to mention where the majority of the interstellar tourist traffic passed, the decrease in rogue crimes here had raised the profile of Psi Corps considerably.
That probably wouldn't last, of course. Public memory had a short half-life. Which wasn't all bad - most of the station had forgotten the strikes of Paul Frost as surely as they would forget the successes of Captain Lochley's crackdown - but for the nonce he could cling to that success, and to the momentary acceptance it had brought him here. Lord knew that Psi Corps would certainly be playing that for all it was worth in its public relations, especially nowadays when increasing rogue activity was generating more and more prejudice against all telepaths.
Then again, the Corps had a much longer memory than the rest of the public. And it also had a regrettable habit of taking credit itself while assigning blame to individual members. In itself, that hadn't bothered Colin; no human organization in history, from the Catholic Church to Earthforce, was free of that flaw. But the degree to which the Corps had been taking that line in the past few years...
Something brushed against his blocks. He whirled, every sense and reflex coming on-line instantly. Telepathic energies, neither his own nor Brianna's; that mind had been male, and not nearly as strong as Tolmanes. Where was it - where -
There.
It was a gemner's shop. Bent over the counter, the gemner, a short woman with greying hair and diamond-hard eyes set deep in an African face, was wearing a look of almost foolish awe. The man in front of her, a tall, scruffy-looking fellow dressed in the leathers of an out-border trader, swept his hand back and forth above the stones he'd poured onto the counter, expostulating with all the smooth and charming patter his ilk normally possessed.
Except Colin knew this gemner was far too experienced to fall for such things normally. As he moved closer, he caught a look at the stones himself, and his scowl deepened. The stones seemed to be diamonds, but Colin was abruptly sure they were nowhere near as valuable as the trader was implying. He narrowed his eyes, dropped a few layers of blocking and stretched out his psi-senses, and sure enough, there it was. A fog of illusion around the stones, enhancing their appearance, spun from the trader's mind - about P4 level, he guessed; too weak to do anything other than subtly alter perceptions for a limited time. But it had to have been enough for this trader to conclude a number of less-than-fair deals.
He'd made his last mistake, though. The trader had probably been out travelling the borders for a few months, and possibly hadn't heard that the Corps had established a MetaPol post here; or perhaps had discounted what rumours he'd heard. Babylon 5 let a Psi Cop on board permanently? B5 hated the Corps! They'd never do that!
But they had. And now it was time for this Psi Cop to do his job. Steeling himself, Colin moved to close the final distance, summoning his concentration for a quick stab of power to break the illusion, a second blast to stun the rogue -
{{STOP!}}
The telepathic blast caught him with a strength like nothing he'd faced since his battle with Sheynell Keynes. Worse, in a way; it didn't have quite the raw power Sheynell had, but he hadn't sustained his full level of shielding, and it sent him reeling like a padded club to the side of his head. The rogue teep staggered as well, falling against the counter. The gemner started upright, blinking her eyes furiously as if cold water had been dashed in her face. The rogue thrust himself upright and stumbled away into the crowd.
He might not have been strong, but he was clever and knew how to use a crowd for maximum cover, both psychic and physical. By the time Colin got his feet under him and regained his focus, the rogue had vanished. Resignedly, Colin swept the crowd with one quick searching pulse and - as he'd expected - found nothing.
Nothing except one grim, unreadable mind, blazing with psi power and blocks at full strength, approaching him. Out of the crowd Brianna materialized, arms folded beneath her breasts like a wall. "I apologize," she said in a flat voice. "I saw you moving to capture and tried to help bring him down. My control must be off. I certainly didn't mean to hit you as well as him."
"And that's just how it'll read on the court transcript, won't it?"
"This'll never make it to any kind of court and you know it, Ferris."
Colin glared at her, so angry he could feel it crackling around his blocks like white lightning, just begging to be released. "You warned him. You deliberately blasted us both so that he could get away."
Brianna raised an eyebrow. "Prove it."
"A moment's deep scan - "
" - is illegal without my consent or without proven telepathic abuse. The Psi Corps doesn't legally permit the scanning of intent to determine criminal liability." Brianna smiled bitterly. "Now if you were Bester, that wouldn't stop you for a second. So prove you aren't Bester, Mr. Ferris. Take me at my word. Go on." Incredibly, Colin sensed her blocks falling away, deliberately dropping until her mind pulsed before him, bright crimson with anger and challenge, daring him, taunting him to come in. "Scan me and prove I did this."
Colin stared. Then his lips pressed tightly together. "No," he said quietly.
"Scared?"
"Not at all. I'm just not going to play your game."
That set her back; he could see the brightness of her anger fade. "Game?"
"You really think this is a win-win situation," said Colin. "Don't you? If I don't scan you, even after you've given consent, I set up a pattern that'll only make me look worse if and when I do have to scan you. And if I do scan you, maybe I can get suckered into going farther than my authority and you can put that on your report and ruin me. And even if I find your intent to warn that rogue away, that just means I have to arrest you and treat you as a rogue - which gets you out from under Bester's thumb through no fault of your own, frees you of any obligation to him, and gives you carte blanche to use all your powers to escape."
Her blocks had snapped up moments into the speech, cutting off his sense of her emotions, but the shock in her face was unmasked. "How did you -- did you scan me?"
"No, Ms. Tolmanes, I deduced it. My mind has a great many more strengths than its telepathy. I am more than my telepathy. I'm more than my badge and uniform." Colin levelled his best withering stare at her. "You might consider remembering that."
Her eyes were wide and, for a moment, almost wounded. Then rage boiled back into them. "More than our gifts?" she whispered. "You know where these powers came from. You know they were the engineering of an alien species. You didn't ask for your powers any more than that rogue asked for his, than I asked for mine. What gives you the right to compel anyone how to use them? You, me, all of us - we were created as living weapons, as things. Tools. If you have the right to judge the rest of us, why shouldn't I have the right to judge you?"
Colin's jaw tightened. "When have I ever judged you? Or any rogue?"
"Every time you put on that badge and that uniform." Brianna's eyes narrowed at him, burning with unshed tears and black fury. "Every time you ally yourself with the controllers, the corruptors, the evil, you judge us. You say, 'You can't be trusted to use your powers wisely, so I must control you.' You say, 'I am the strongest, so I must be the wisest as well, for only I can ensure that the proper thing is done.' Who are you to decide what that proper thing is? By strength? By evolutionary whim? By fluke?"
Colin took a deep breath. "Someone has to decide that, Brianna. Decide it and enforce it. And I'm the only one who can. So I must."
Brianna snorted. "Yeah. The Vorlons thought that way too. When they made us, when they drafted us into the Eternal War...when they and the Shadows began killing planets." She pointed at him, her finger rock-steady. "They started with judging individual people too."
Without waiting for his answer, she whirled and strode off.
Colin stood silent, letting the tides of the Zocalo ebb and flow around him. For the first time since he'd come here, there was no peace in that sensation.
****************
HYPERSPACE, NEAR SECTOR 45
WHITE STAR 6
11:49 EST
Her first command. At this thought did Anla'shok Alidarra smile, as the bridge crew of White Star 6 silently, competently piloted them away from their most recent jump into the now-deserted Markab system alongside the other two White Stars of Val'na Lanniel's triad...a 'check-in' flight that the High Council had ordered begun soon after the end of the Shadow War.
An honour it was, to serve upon this vessel...along with Sha'vei Tashann's White Star 4, Val'na Lanniel's command acted as one of the two 'command' White Stars in the Fleet, as the humans among the Rangers had been known to call them from time to time. Her commander, one of the many who had seen active duty during the Shadow War. At that thought, however, her smile faded -- she had missed the end of the War by only a ninth of a cycle, and while she had taken part in President Sheridan's run to Earth later that same human year...it had not been the same. Again and again her thoughts came to this -- what would it have been like to serve in the battle against Darkness, at the side of the famous among the Anla'shok, the now-dead Vikotal and their High Councillor, for instance?
"Pardon the intrusion, ma'am," interrupted Warren Holm, the young, untried Ranger presently serving as her operations and comm officer, "but there is an incoming message from Minbar." At that, Holm's eyes widened. "Anla'shok Alidarra, it's the High Councillor!"
"Curious -- it has been some time since he has called upon us personally. To our main screen, Anla'shok Holm -- let us now learn what the High Councillor wishes of us." And at that Alidarra rose to her feet as the severe, short-bearded face of the Rimstalker sprang into existence in front of her, the distinctive wide silver thread in his otherwise dark hair swept sharply back as always. "Sha'vei no'raden Westcastle -- how may we serve you this day?"
"For a start, Alidarra," the High Councillor gravely replied, "you may summon Val'na Lanniel back to active duty."
Alidarra grimaced slightly -- it was as she had feared, then. For her commander, it was apparently a struggle even to take a full period of rest.
****************
"When will they learn?" Lanniel sharply commented some minutes later, after the High Councillor had finished explaining the situation to her. "Is it not enough for the Earth government to realize that to go to the former places of Darkness will surely bring calamity down upon them?"
At that, Westcastle's smile turned bitter. "As a former Earthforce officer, Val'na, I perhaps have a better understanding of the way they think than you. You will recall that we entered galactic politics from a position of notable technological inferiority, and while we are an industrious lot, getting the pants beaten off of us by your people fifteen years ago gave them an excuse to think that our normal rate of advancement simply wasn't fast enough -- that it would be necessary to steal what we could not invent ourselves."
"It is imprudent of them to think this...but perhaps not entirely unsurprising. For the moment, however, may I assume that you wish us to determine whether or not the 'report' made by this Captain Cardinal is indeed an accurate one?"
"Precisely, Lanniel...if there is Darkness, we as Rangers must seek that darkness out. But you will not move alone in this matter -- the President and our Entil'zha have authorized the use of two full triads of White Stars for this operation. For if the rumours are true..."
"If this truth and not falsehood, High Councillor," Lanniel replied, "then may we need strength of arms in the battle against this new and perhaps familiar foe. Your orders are understood, and will be complied with - I will report back when we have learned more. White Star 6, out."
At that point, Lanniel turned her gaze toward her expectantly waiting first officer. "Alidarra, you are to contact Val'na Leshain -- we will shortly be requiring the services of his triad."
"And our course?"
"To Babylon 5, as you have no doubt surmised." Lanniel concluded as she settled into her chair-of-command. "There is...one other Anla'shok I would speak to at this time about this matter. A Ranger that may have already encountered the dark force we seek."
****************
BABYLON 5, ALIEN SECTOR
VORLON AMBASSADORIAL QUARTERS
12:33 EST
The mask felt strange and heavy on his face, but Colin accepted it without complaint. He gazed around at the empty room, following the swirls of gas and steam that writhed between the walls. Though no Vorlon would ever walk the halls of this station again, the atmosphere was maintained here. Inertia? Habit? Paranoia? Perhaps a little of all three.
He had never met a Vorlon himself. Rumours about the enigmatic species had swirled around the Earth Alliance for years. What little official knowledge there was about them was restricted to the highest levels of Earthgov and Psi Corps, and after Babylon 5 had broken away in mid-2260 even that trickle had dried up.
Colin had read the official records that B5 had released after the EA had joined the Interstellar Alliance. He knew that the Vorlon Ambassador, Kosh Naranek, had brought the captain and crew of Babylon 5 into the war against the Shadows. He knew that the Ambassador had been assassinated in this very room later that year, and that following Captain Sheridan's near-suicidal strike against the Shadow homeworld the Vorlons had declared a war of destruction - a war eventually ending in a final confrontation over Corianna VI, when the eldest races of the galaxy had left forever. And he knew that telepaths had been engineered by the Vorlons as a part of that war - supposedly to serve as weapons against the living Shadow battleships.
But the records didn't tell everything.
That there had been a strange, undescribed bond between Captain Sheridan and Kosh was something Colin had figured out for himself, reading between the lines. Some of Sheridan's logs were far too knowledgeable and others far too professionally uninformative. That Lyta Alexander, Kosh's aide, had shared a similar bond was also in the records; the nature of that bond was not. That Lyta had been banished from this station after her part in the Byronite rebellion, and her ever-growing powers, had made it impossible to live here, was in the record; what exactly the Vorlons had done to her, and the scope of her eventual power, was not.
And so, he had come here.
Psychometry was exactly what he had told Captain Lochley: an old wives' tale. A sapient mind did give off psychic energy, but most beings radiated far too little of it to leave any impression at all, and only the strongest or most violent emotions lingered for anything past a few minutes. If there was any use to psychometry at all, it was in using an object as a keystone to free the mind's subconsious intuitive faculties. Any human could do this. Some of the best police officers in the EA were mundanes who had mastered exactly that trick. Telepaths merely had an advantage in their training, which familiarized them with the workings of the human mind in a way very few others could know. There was almost never any actual psychic component to the technique. You held an object or stood in a place; you visualized, allowing the barest trace energies you sensed to resonate in your subconscious; you imagined and reasoned, half-deliberately and half-intuitively, to create a vision in your mind. A construct of memory, illusion, and insight. Sometimes it was correct. Other times it was wrong. But almost never was it a genuinely psionic feat.
Except -
A Vorlon had died here. One of the most powerful minds in existence, blasted away by forces equally if not more powerful. If there was anywhere in the universe such a thing as psychometry might work, it was here. Here, where Colin might at last gain some insight into what the Vorlons had wanted. Here, where he might speak (even if only in his imagination) to the being known as Kosh.
Here, where he might find out if there was any true purpose to these abilities. Where he might find out if what Brianna had said was the bitter truth - that his vocation and calling were nothing more than self-delusion and power-hunger - or if there was more to what he was doing, a greater purpose.
Where he might find out what it meant that he was what he was.
Colin closed his eyes. Carefully, he quieted his thoughts, dropping his blocks. The peculiar deadness of the room stole into him. He could p'hear nothing of the thoughts in the station beyond. Only silence, only stillness.
{{Kosh,}} he said.
Like a stone dropped into a black pond, ripples of energy spread out from the thought, surrounding him.
{{Kosh,}} he sent again.
The energies intensified. Colin let himself ride them, blocking nothing, feeling fire and power and pain sizzle faintly along his skin. No human could imagine what powers had been unleashed here. The memory of destruction and death rose about him in a dark fog. Colin stabilized himself, anchoring his ego in its own awareness. {{I am Colin Andrew Ferris, human P12 telepath, officer of the Metasensory Police Agency of the Psi Corps of the Earth Alliance. I call from the ether what remains of Kosh Naranek, Vorlon, First One, Ambassador, Mentor. I shall open my eyes and look upon this remnant, living through my power, and we shall speak.
{{I summon thee, Kosh Naranek.
{{Now.}}
He opened his eyes.
White fire engulfed his consciousness.
****************
13:04 EST
Whatever other telepaths there were on the station, Brianna was never to know their reaction to the event. All she knew was that out of nowhere, as she'd sat and simmered over a cup of coffee, not even bothering to wonder how B5 had finally gotten coffee out here on its list of approved products, something like a psychic supernova had blasted the entire station.
She'd felt it coming an instant before it hit, like seeing a tidal wave rear up over you but being horribly helpless to stop it, and then it had struck her to the floor exactly like that ravening wall of water might have done. Most people had only shivered, or shaken their heads, or jumped as if goosed without realizing what had happened; then they'd seen her writhing on the ground, and a local Security team had called Medlab. By the time she regained true awareness of her surroundings she was lying on a medcot, a dark-haired, East Indian woman in surgical scrubs bending over her and shining a light into her eyes.
She struck it away and sat up. The doctor - Lilian Hobbs, Brianna remembered now; she'd been Stephen Franklin's second - leapt back with an oath in something that might have been Hindu. Brianna didn't listen. "Where's the Captain?" she snapped.
"As it happens, I'm here," Lochley said, striding into Medlab. "The security team signaled me you'd gone into some sort of convulsion. I have to warn you, Ms. Tolmanes, if this is some kind of trick or gambit - "
Hobbs shook her head. "Unless she can traumatize her own brainwaves in the name of this deception, Captain, it's no trick."
Lochley frowned. "You're sure, Doctor?"
"Absolutely." Hobbs pointed to a screen showing a hideously distorted EEG reading. "Whatever that was, it only faintly affected us. But telepaths must feel it far more intensely."
Sudden worry flashed across Lochley's face. She tapped her link. "Lochley to Officer Ferris." No response came. "Lochley to Officer Ferris!"
Looking equally worried - about a Psi Cop? -- Hobbs spoke up. "Computer, state location of Officer Colin Ferris."
{{Officer Ferris' link is located in Green Sector, Level 12, Quarters 42.}}
Cold hit Brianna like a wall of ice. She knew those coordinates as well as she knew anything in her life. He couldn't have - she hadn't meant him to do this --
"The Alien Sector?" Hobbs blinked.
"Oh no."
Lochley's head snapped about to face her. "You know where that is?"
"Yes." Brianna nodded bleakly and slid off the medcot. "Those are the former quarters of the Vorlon Ambassador Kosh. Captain - if Colin's done what I think he's done - he could be in a great deal of trouble."
"And this would bother you, why?" Before she could answer the Captain waved away the question irritably. "Never mind. No time. Come on."
****************
13:22 EST
Lochley hated breather masks, but she'd gotten used to them through periodic visits to the Alien Sector; it was generally a good idea to make yourself visible to every part of a station, and to know it as much as possible. Tolmanes seemed equally reluctant to don hers, but she had after only a second of hesitation. They sprinted through the corridors from lock to lock, moving through atmospheres almost like Earth's and atmospheres that would kill them in two seconds. Finally they had reached the door that had once housed one of the most enigmatic and powerful beings ever to walk the corridors of Babylon 5.
It was open.
Lochley and Brianna exchanged an apprehensive glance. Finally Lochley pulled out her PPG and stepped across the threshold.
Mist rose thickly about her. For a moment, she could see nothing. "Colin?" she called through her mask; her voice sounded tinny and hollow. "Colin?"
"Officer Ferris?" called Brianna. She scowled. "Captain, could he have just left his link here? I can't sense anyone other than us, maybe he - "
"Colin!" Relief washed through Lochley as she finally made out a tall, black-clad form in the far corner of the room. She leapt forward and spun him around by the shoulder. "Colin, are you all - "
She staggered back, a shocked gasp escaping her, feeling like she'd been punched in the stomach. From the mist beside her, Brianna emerged, her mouth open as if to ask a question. Then her eyes fell on Colin and she screamed: a short, sharp yelp of shock and fright.
From behind the mask of his breather, Colin stared back at them, his mobile face impassive and still...and his eyes glowing with a searing white light.
He took a breath, and impossibly, all around her, Lochley heard a dim whirring noise made of flutelike noises, half-heard voices and echoing musical notes. When Colin spoke, his voice echoed impossibly in the room, reverberating with ancient power.
"I am Kosh," he intoned. His alien eyes swept over them both, then rose to gaze through the wall, as if surveying the entire station. "We are all...Kosh."
****************** Act Two *****************
BABYLON 5
MEDLAB ONE
14:19 EST, 05/20/2263
Astronomically, it was believed impossible for blue supergiants - the brightest, fiercest stars known - to possess Earthlike planets. The sheer mass and gravity of the star as it collapsed to begin nuclear fusion absorbed all but the greatest masses of matter that floated in any accretion disk; only gas giants like Jupiter might circle a blue supergiant. The raw power of the star itself prevented life as they knew it from arising.
But as she watched Lilian and the Medlab team circling cautiously around Colin, Lochley couldn't get precisely that image out of her mind: tiny motes of nervous, frazzled life, orbiting a furious and immobile blaze of power. The doctors directed instruments at him like telescopes, unwilling to approach any closer than a metre or so, as if contact might annihilate them. Colin himself did nothing; he did not even appear to notice them. He simply sat, staring into the air in what might have been a catatonic trance.
He had not responded to any of Lochley's faltering questions since his first statement, but when she and Brianna had gestured to the door, he had followed with surprising docility. Not that "followed" was the right word, really. He had walked with them for reasons of his own, seeming to move not as if obeying their gestures but as if he had decided to go in that direction himself just half a moment before they could indicate it. Yet he had not scanned either of them; Lochley had whispered a hasty question to Brianna and gotten a silent nod.
The doctors gathered to confer quietly. Lochley could restrain her patience no longer. She stepped forward to tap on the plexicrys wall of the isolab, Brianna at her shoulder, as she'd been from the moment they'd found the Psi Cop. Lilian nodded and emerged, pulling off her surgical cap, and let out a poleaxed sigh. Her eyes were wide.
"Well?"
"I don't know what to tell you, Captain." Helplessly Hobbs spread her hands. "This is like nothing I've ever seen before. What physical readings we can get say he's fine, but..."
"But?" Lochley pressed.
For a moment, Lilian looked almost afraid. Finally she let out a sigh. "Captain, what was your professional opinion of Stephen Franklin?"
Lochley blinked. Where had this come from? "I have nothing but the highest respect for him, as a doctor and a human being. And I do consider him a friend."
"But as a military officer?"
Lochley sighed. Damn. She'd been afraid this was where this was going. "I am well aware that Dr. Franklin's priorities on the protocols of military command and operations might, ah...let's say, differ from a career officer's like myself." Beside her, Brianna snorted. Lochley ignored her.
Lilian rubbed her forehead. "And if you were to find out that he'd, er, made classified information available to me?"
"How classified?"
"Information relating to the medical state of one of the only men to ever return from Z'ha'dum."
Lochley's jaw clenched. Dammit, dammit, dammit. In theory, she granted that security about the Vorlons and any remainders thereof had to be top-level; in practice, it was a pain in the ass, especially when this kind of regulations run-around occurred. "Don't tell me. He left you a personal key to all his medical files. Including the ones that got classified when B5 joined the ISA, like the ones on John Sheridan's involvement with Kosh, and that I'm supposed to arrest you for reading if I ever actually find out you did read them. Right?"
Lilian swallowed miserably. "Captain, I - "
"Forget it." Lochley waved the issue aside, too fraught with worry and tension to care as much as she might have. "If Stephen can authorize you to read those files as head of the Xenobiological Department, I can authorize you to read them in the name of station security."
"Are you sure?" The doctor looked dubious.
"No," Lochley admitted, "but we need to move on this now, and it's a hell of a lot easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission." She noted Brianna's surprised reaction out of the corner of her eye, but refrained from commenting. "Now what have you got?"
Lilian took a deep breath. "Physically, Officer Ferris is fine. But his entire system appears to have been infused with a type of energy I can't analyze. The only analogous situation I've ever seen in the records is the energy that Dr. Franklin found in Captain Sheridan's body after he returned from Z'ha'dum. We don't know what that was, either, or how it's keeping him alive. And that's not an exact parallel, either, for obvious reasons - "
The isolab door lifted back. Lilian, Lochley and Brianna spun to see Colin standing in the door, hands loose at his sides and the glowing white eyes fixed on them. "Enough," the telepath stated, flutelike chimes swirling around the words. "Tasks await."
****************
SANCTUARY CHAMBER
14:49 EST
Who are you?
This question has always been, for you, the final test of worth.
You have asked it of yourself many a time, one of the last of your people to do so; and even you failed upon occasion. You called yourself And you know now, as you gaze out the windows of the Sanctuary into
the starry depths of eternity, that you are still not complete. You are the barest remnants of existence: a memory given life, a ghost given substance by desire and power. From beyond the barriers of time, space, and death, you sense the essence of yourself, interwoven with the greater essence of the People of Truth - and how appropriate to recall that name, now. You use your borrowed body's mouth to smile. Even that name, in the end; even that chosen banner of identity; even the very symbol of Your multiple communion of consciousness is as far beyond the clumsy
telepathic consensus of the Drakh as their racial concord is beyond Younger Race telepathy. Telepathy as most species in the galaxy know it is only the barest trickle from unimaginable wellsprings of power - wellsprings the People of Truth opened and mastered aeons ago. Not all such sources - you remember well the terrifying battle with the Unliving Devourers, the beasts
more dangerous even than the Ancient Enemy but these powers, these you know well. Your borrowed body is strong, but in the depths of these genes lurks strength even greater. In the infinite complexities of energy patterns, shaped by genetics and neural nets, the so-called laws of the universe fold back like the skin of hyperspace.
By accident and hubris, one human had those wellsprings opened to
him in full. He survived, and became. Through desperate necessity, two other humans were given greater access, access that would grow with time, use and will. One such human wanders the stars, nursing her bitter cup of rage and vengeance. The other stands beside you now, sick with fear and hope. In time, if all goes well, they too will become.
But there is another question. And to this, you know the answer.
To this, you know your purpose, fleeting as it may be. There is a greater purpose to your return, you sense, but like all great purposes it is multidimensional and complex. You turn, having sated your desire to see the stars one last time, and focus upon the women beside you.
"Elizabeth Anne Lochley," you say; and then, from the part of you
that remembers mortality and affection, the part once known as The woman stiffens. You see the responses flash through her mind
like clouds across the sun: "I would speak alone with Brianna. Leave."
Elizabeth Anne Lochley is not used to orders. You know this as you
see it, and remember it from the part-that-was-Colin. But what response does she have? Force? Argument? Persuasion? Pleading? None of these will serve. And you can see that she is not a woman used to helplessness either. At last, she nods stiffly, spins and exits.
Brianna Regina Tolmanes moistens her lips. "Kosh..." she whispers.
And then, the closest human word to what you have been to your people, the word accompanied by the telepathic glyph only she, you, and one other human now living in this galaxy can comprehend: "{{Peacekeeper.}}"
"You chose to serve the {{Destroyer.}}"
Anger and pride flare around her, a crackling golden fire. "I was
chosen to serve the {{Destroyer}}! I was called, as Lyta was called to you from the moment she touched your soul! What choice was that? What choice have I ever had?" But the cold, acid mist of pain and grief has eclipsed her fire, and her voice cracks. Her head drops as if to hide the tears that shine around her, bright and sharp as broken diamonds.
"You do not speak to convince me. You speak to convince yourself."
Brianna shudders with repressed sobs.
"You have hated yourself from the moment that the {{Destroyer}}
revealed himself as what he was. He made you greater than you had been, for which you loved him; he made you a stranger to gifted and nongifted humans alike, for which you hated him. He opened your ears to the call of your destiny, for which you loved him. But he distorted and masked that destiny with his own purposes, for which you hated him. And for hating that which
you loved, you hated yourself."
Shaking now like a tower in a quake, she lifts her head, eyes burning, jaw tight. "Get out of my She struggles a moment, then sags against it, and you hold her
without effort, power augmenting the strength of the body. "Leave me "I cannot."
"You cannot?" Laughter splashes through her tears, high and agonized. "Something the all-powerful Kosh You release her. And more quietly than you have ever pronounced
anything, you say:
"Forgiveness."
****************
15:01 EST
The door to the Sanctuary hadn't even completed its opening cycle when Brianna ducked underneath it and went sprinting away, her face smeared with tears. From where she'd been standing with tightly-folded arms, Lochley sprang up. "Brianna, wait -- !"
But the telepath was gone.
Colin appeared from the Sanctuary, gazing in the direction she'd gone with those inhuman, glowing eyes. Lochley gulped. "What - what happened?"
For a moment it appeared Colin hadn't heard. Then he breathed out a great sigh. Ghostly music danced in the wake of his words. "She believes what I ask is impossible. And so, it is."
"Impossible?" Weirdly, Lochley felt an impulse to laugh. "You're here, and you're saying something's impossible? What the hell are you?"
The glowing gaze drifted sideways, settled on her. Lochley felt suddenly very cold. Without willing it she took a step back.
"Colin?" she tried. "Colin, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Elizabeth Anne Lochley. We hear." And a strange smile spread across Colin's face. "We have known you as memory. You are a fire in the soul of the One who Will Be. A fire in the soul of this one who serves. A fire in the souls of all who walk here. Fear not...Captain Lochley, Elizabeth Anne, Lizzie. Your destiny has not forgotten you. You too, one day, will walk the stars, a giant."
Lochley gaped, her jaw hanging limply.
Colin's gaze lifted, his head falling back, and he stared through the ceiling as if searching an endless sky. "As we walked for so long. Until we fell, and near-destroyed this galaxy with our fall." Slowly, his regard came back to her. "Would you walk with me, Elizabeth? Would you hear that which I have told to no Young One, save only in dreams to the Messenger and the One Who Will Be? Would you know who I am?"
The only thought that came to Lochley's stunned mind was, ((First Contact protocols be damned.}} Unable to speak, she nodded fervently.
Colin reached out and took her hand.
The station dissolved around her.
****************
BLUE SECTOR
EXECUTIVE QUARTERS, LT. DAVID CORWIN
19:45 EST
"Interesting," Lilian Hobbs observed, as David Corwin cautiously bent his head over the cooking surface and the bubbling pot of bourguignon slowly simmering there. "No smoke, no flames -- you've obviously been practicing, David!"
"The deal was a 'good meal', as I recall." Corwin replied. "And while I have spent several evenings scraping burnt offerings off the bottom of these little beasties, hopefully the end result has been worth it?"
Hobbs took a sniff, and smiled appreciatively. "Hmm. Onion, garlic...and red wine?"
Corwin nodded. "Not quite so expensive out here as it used to be - but yeah, it's a recipe that's been passed down through Mom's side of the family for as long as I can remember. And now it's almost finished, why don't you go sit down -- dinner will shortly be served..."
Which was, of course, when his link went off. "Ah, Hell!"
"You'd better answer it." Hobbs observed. "Special leave of absence or not, the Captain probably won't be amused if you completely ignore your duties to fulfill this bargain...."
Corwin gritted his teeth momentarily, before nodding in agreement, as the link chimed again. "Guess not," he muttered, raising his hand to his mouth. "This is Lieutenant Corwin, go ahead."
"This is Lieutenant Kreies in C&C -- think you should get up here and pronto, sir. The hyperspace probes have just detected six White Stars approaching from Rimwards. Needless to say, sir, this visit isn't a scheduled one."
Corwin frowned, briefly thought about telling her to handle the situation, and then changed his mind. Kreies was one of the more junior members of the station officer cadre who had broken away from Earth with the rest of them over three years before... and while she had become a Hell of a lot more competent since then, she still wasn't quite good enough to deal with surprise situations just yet. "Understood -- I'll be up there just as soon as I get into uniform -- which hopefully will be before those White Stars come out of the gate."
"Confirmed, sir!" a now relieved Kreies replied. "C&C, out."
"Duty calls, does it?" Hobbs inquired, a regretful smile on her face. Clearly she'd been looking forward to this meal as much as he had -- and given the day she'd had so far, even though she'd told him only bits and pieces, he couldn't blame her.
"Guess so. Looks like we're going to have to reschedule our dinner date, Doctor."
"Oh, I think I can fit that into my 'busy' schedule."
****************
COMMAND AND CONTROL
19:57 EST
"So," Corwin inquired as he strode into C&C, "has the commander of those White Stars called in yet, by any chance?"
Amanda Kreies turned away from the main board, straightening as she did to a near approximation of attention, and shook her head as a now frowning Corwin moved around the pit to assume command. "No, sir -- and I tried to get a hold of them twice using the gate relay while you were on your way up here." Kreies smiled, then, a trifle apologetically, as she moved to her regular station at the gate control board, sweeping her short black bangs away from her eyes as she did so. "No such luck."
"Damn." The next best thing to do, of course, was to check out the readings from the hyperspace probes -- well, whatever the Rangers were up to, looked like they would be entering Epsilon system any time now. "Looks like we're facing one of two possibilities here... either they don't want to talk to us, or they don't want someone else to know they're here -- which sounds like the more likely outcome, in my opinion." This was the sort of thing the Captain would say if she was here, Corwin mentally added...which present circumstances definitely weren't allowing, what with that Psi Corps redhead currently on board, in addition to the reports of Officer Ferris acting a little...strangely. Wasn't the first time he'd been placed in a situation like this, and it certainly wouldn't be the last...so for now, it paid to stay calm, and in control. "When are they coming out?"
"Now, sir."
"Okay, then," Corwin said, addressing the unseen Ranger commander as the distant ten kilometer-long diamond of the gate tore its portal between dimensions and spat out six familiar violet forms, "what's on your mind?"
"We have a ident on the lead ship, sir." Kreies reported. "It's White Star 6!"
What the Hell? Corwin frowned -- that was Lanniel's ship. The last time she'd been here was when the President and Delenn had come aboard for the birth of their son...and now, the Minbari who was second-in-command of the White Star Fleet had returned to Babylon 5. But why? While the question of why she'd maintained comm silence until jumpout was one he wanted answered as soon as possible. "This is Babylon Control to White Star 6 -- do you receive?"
"Affirmative, Babylon Control," Anla'shok Lanniel's reply came a moment later. "Quite clearly, as a matter of fact. I regret I could not respond to your second-in-command before this, Lieutenant Corwin -- but since Captain Lochley is apparently not available at this time, you will do in her place. Would it be possible for you to warn Anla'shok Pratchett that I have arrived? -- we have serious matters to discuss."
And that, coming from the mouth of one of the most senior Rangers in the field, was saying a great deal. "No problem -- I'll have her meet you in the arrivals lounge."
"Your assistance is appreciated, Lieutenant. White Star 6 out."
In the silent pause left by the flat statement, Kreies cleared her throat. "She sure sounds worried about something, sir," the younger lieutenant commented.
"Yes, she did, didn't she," Corwin muttered. The question was, what?
****************
THE RANGER COMPOUND
19:59 EST
Above the low buildings and green courtyards of the Anla'shok's base, the illumination tubes of the station were darkening towards twilight. Standing before Brianna, a tale of possession, resurrection and contrition ringing in her ears, Jamie tried desperately to think of something to say.
The best she could do was, "He wants what?"
Brianna shook her head slowly. "My... my forgiveness," she repeated. "Forgiveness for what?" she added, looking bewildered.
"For what not?" Jamie muttered. "He only lied to us, manipulated us, dragged our entire species into a war we didn't want -"
"- saved Captain Sheridan's life, helped to slay Ulkesh and sacrificed his own life to give us hope," Brianna retorted hotly. "Now if Ulkesh had possessed Colin, he's somebody who should be asking forgiveness -"
"Bree, you know that's not actually Kosh, right? It can't be! Kosh is dead!"
Brianna shook her head helplessly. "Who knows what death is to a Vorlon?"
Jamie's mouth tightened. Unlike some of the other Rangers, she'd resented from the beginning the Vorlons' mystical hold over the Minbari and the Anla'shok, and positively loathed the way that Ulkesh in particular had taken command of Bree back in early 2259. From the first moments of the Third Age she had loudly urged the Rangers to start forging their own destiny. That something out of the past like this could reappear to ruin all that the Younger Races were working to achieve...
"Bree." She moved to confront her friend, digging her fingers into the taller woman's shoulders. "What's walking around and calling himself Kosh is just Colin. Okay? Nothing more. Colin sucked in a few too many trace energies from Kosh's room and thinks he's Kosh. That's all."
Brianna's mouth worked. "But -"
"Brianna, Kosh is dead!"
The telepath's shoulders slumped. "They thought that in 2260 as well, Jamie."
"Oh, for -" Jamie's explosive exclamation cut off as her link breeped. She hit the response button and shouted "What?!" at it.
Corwin's curt response silenced them both. Jamie looked unhappily at her friend. "Bree -"
"I know, I know. Go."
Jamie spun and ran to the practice yard's exit, pausing for a moment on the threshold. "Look, Bree, whatever you do, don't screw around with this. No matter how much he sounds like Kosh, Ferris is now a clinically insane P12 telepath. Remember that."
"I'll remember, Jamie."
They shared one last look before the younger Ranger departed. Alone, Brianna gave a shuddering sigh and buried her face in her hands.
****************
20:05 EST
"Don't tell me, let me guess," Jamie began, as Lanniel fell in at her side a short time later down in Arrivals. "This isn't a courtesy call, right?"
"You guess correctly," the Minbari replied as the two Rangers quickly moved to the nearest transport tube and Jamie gave the order for the car to take them to the Ranger domain. "If I could afford to turn aside and not tell you of this matter, Jamie Pratchett, I would...but this cannot be."
"Okay, enough beating around the bush, Lanniel...let's get to the point, shall we?"
The Minbari curtly nodded. "As you wish. A little more than two of your days ago, a small group of human explorer and Earthforce vessels operating in the fringes of the former Shadow territories were investigating a system possessing certain anomalous characteristics when they found themselves suddenly set upon by a small and decidedly hostile force. The Earth warship was able to escape from this trap -- one of the explorer vessels, however...and their Earthforce fighter screen...were not."
Jamie whistled, as the doors of the tube opened and they proceeded out into the interior of the station Ranger compound. "Damn. So what are we talking about here, then? Drakh?"
"The evidence may suggest otherwise, I am afraid. And this evidence is something I now choose to discuss with you...in private."
Moments passed in which a mostly-curious and partly-anxious Jamie moved the discussion up and into her office -- at which point she listened first in amazement and then with slowly growing horror as Lanniel continued her tale. "The Earth Captain described the vessels he encountered fairly clearly -- black as night, they were, with many spiky long arms - vessels that moved like lightning in the skies of Home...and dealt out violet death. Warships that were not seen before the humans jumped into the system...craft that seemed to shimmer into existence after exploration had begun."
"You're not saying what I'm think you're saying, are you?" Jamie asked, her voice deathly quiet. "That...they're back?"
"That is one possibility we must consider -- but there is more to tell, now that I appear to have your attention. These craft, while Shadow-like in appearance, do not appear to be so large as those we are familiar with, or as fast. While the humans did not describe their screams as such..."
"Hold on, wait a minute!" Jamie suddenly exclaimed. "This is all starting to sound suspiciously like that thing I encountered back at the start of the year -- the weapon that Sheylaht, Alain and I ran into on Darok VII."
At that point, Lanniel finally allowed herself a small smile. "This is why I have come to this place, and why the High Councillor and his comrades allowed me to tell you of this situation. That you may have already encountered one of these vessels is an important factor -- that you and those who followed you managed to defeat that Shadow weapon almost equally so. If you are so inclined, I would have you accompany us to search for these things that resemble Shadow vessels -- for if there is a connection between this encounter and the surface sighting at Darok VII, you may be one of very few Anla'shok to fight a Shadow vessel since President Sheridan banished their masters at Corianna VI."
"Not so fast -- remember the thing we found came out of the ground to attack us...while this attack you just mentioned happened in space. What's the connection?"
"A difficult question to answer...but I sense that there is one, nevertheless. You will come?" Lanniel concluded bluntly.
Other questions went through Jamie's mind in that moment, and the answers, as well. Would you relive the terror of what was? a part of her asked. If necessary. Do you want to know the truth? Yes. Can you accept the possibility that the Shadows may have returned? Yes. Would you serve as you have to make sure this menace is ended, that the Younger Races should not, yet again, have to fear the Darkness?
Unequivocally, the answer was yes.
And a last question, one she had never expected: Can you stand to leave behind an old friend you have not seen in months...leave her behind with unanswered questions and unexplained mysteries, with every chance in the world you might not ever see her again?
Jamie smiled herself, then, the expression raw and painful - while this was a Hell of a test case...the answers were still the same as they had been four years ago, could not be anything else. "We walk in all the dark places no others will enter." she whispered. "We stand on the bridge, and no one shall pass."
"You remember, then," Lanniel stated, "why we do what we do -- why we cannot be afraid of dark rumour -- why we must still fight that darkness, even now, to keep all that is light unharmed."
"You know that I do."
"You will come."
"I will."
{{And the universe help you now, Bree,}} Jamie thought to herself in anger and pain, {{because she won't let me do it.}}
****************
CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS
21:17 EST
Through the eyes of a Vorlon, time became plastic, space an illusion, existence a flickering dance of light and phantasmetry.
On some level, Lochley had known all along, she and Colin had simply walked the station, hand in hand, a cloak of telepathic power hiding them from the sight of everyone who passed them. But on another level, it had been as if they were the station, moving through it like ghosts, and the hours fled by in a riffling stream of dreamlike images. Voices bubbled everywhere, the living sounds of a mighty river of souls, and Lochley knew for the first time what Colin experienced every day of his life.
This was the song, she came to understand. Life. All life, everywhere, was the song. Even the Shadows had been part of the song: the counterpoint, the necessary discord.
They had walked the corridors of DownBelow, the mazes of the Garden. They had ridden the core shuttle from end to end of the station. They had visited the fusion chamber, stood invisible among the scurrying technicians and engineers while silently revelling in the vibrations of sheer power from the fusion reactors. They had swum in the waters of the Zocalo, relishing the voices of greed, delight, bargain play and satisfaction. They had stood in Command and Control and watched Corwin perform his duties, and Lochley understood for the first time how Corwin's own strength had grown in the last year. And finally, they had returned to the Sanctuary, and Lochley had seen the ghost of Lord-General Marrago standing there, smiling at her as if to say, {{Now, now you understand}}, while the abyss of infinity embraced them both. And throughout it all, the song had taken her out of herself, lifted her above the station to see the kingdoms of the world spread out beneath her, like a god.
Reality slowly coalesced to solidity. She found herself lying on her couch. Colin sat nearby, on the armchair. His eyes still glowed. Lochley gazed at him a moment, then - with the last remains of the dreamlike lassitude slowing her limbs - forced herself upright.
"Why?" she husked.
It was a moment before Colin spoke. "A darkness is coming," he said at length. The music around his voice was quiet now, almost inaudible; as if, Lochley thought, whatever was in Colin's body was restraining itself, allowing as much of its host to show through as possible. "A great grief, a great despair, a great hatred. It will engulf all the worlds you know with war, and death, and things more terrible than either. Like the Hydra, it has many faces, and grows more for every head slain. You must be a hero to your people, Elizabeth. As must this one we inhabit, in his time.
"When that despair and grief threatens to engulf you..." Colin reached forward and took her hand in his. "...you will need a memory to fight for, a truth unsullied. I showed you the song to give you that memory. For all your life and after, you will know the song we fight for. You will know that no death, no silencing of any note, can ever end the song."
He leaned forward. Lochley closed her eyes a moment before his mouth met hers, a touch not of passion but of blessing, brief and almost holy. When she opened her eyes again he had risen to stand over her, and lifted his hand.
"Sleep now," he whispered. "And remember the song."
He brushed his hand across her forehead and she sank into dreaming.
****************
ELSEWHERE
23:59 EST
A swirl of darkness in hyperspace, a swirl that, if examined more closely, broke apart into tiny knots of black creatures moving with purpose through that medium. The Elders remembered, of course, the time in which they had moved through this place at the side of their former Masters -- a time in which the great Swarm of their descendants had first fought against the things of light that called themselves Vorlons. They remembered the Creation-point, when the Masters had woven together the first seed, and all those which had followed. And from their hallowed place at the heart of their own Swarm, a much smaller one than the one of memory, the Elders knew sorrow that so much time had passed, that the sleep had been as long as it had...and also anger. For not only did they hold emnity against the small-creatures, the Elders found themselves astonished to be angry at the Masters, as well.
Why, in the name of Zha'zsanal the Mighty, had they let them sleep as long as they had? Had they truly been forgotten, for these lesser creatures, these Drakh, to discover? The answers...could not be easily given for now, but the mission...the mission remained. Yes, until the small-creatures had truly paid for their crimes, until the perpetrators of the initial murder could be drawn close at hand (the creatures the Drakh named Anla'shok) this path they followed would continue.
And now...it was time. With a warbled shriek, the Elders called out their orders, and after a moment, several small groups of warriors moved away from the Swarm to fall in beside their Drakh allies...and after the Drakh had given their orders, the warriors moved from one phase to the next, their purpose clear.
****************
LUMATI PRINCIPATE
ZAREIF MINING COLONY
04:30 EST, 05/21/2263
Administrator Foguiunneisha looked down upon the smooth icy surface of the moon of Zareif, and could not help but smile. Yet again, his people had proven their superiority in relation to certain other galactic races - the magnitude of this find was, how could one put it...yes, definitely remarkable. Bigger than any Quantium-40 find since the end of the War with Darkness, this was certain. Perhaps bigger than any made before, but who could say?
In any case, quite valuable...and perhaps very soon, their Ambassador would choose to report this find -- and trade with those of the other races who had earned the privilege to