BABYLON 5: THE VIRTUAL SIXTH SEASON
"THE PRICE OF FREEDOM"
Episode 11
IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES
They were all to remember, later, where exactly they were when the catastrophe began.
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COMMAND & CONTROL
17:16 EST
FIVE MINUTES TO FAILURE
David Corwin had been on duty for slightly less than an hour when an unexpected visitor had shown up: Vir Cotto, looking morose. Corwin had been in the middle of docking a chain of cargo shuttles from the Earth freighter outside, and hadn't been able to attend to him promptly; but Vir, displaying one of his unnerving bursts of empathy, had gotten well out of everyone's way and simply stood at a corner of the observation window, watching the stars and the shuttles move by. When the last of the shuttles was finally locked down, Corwin handed off control to Lieutenant Kreies and the on-site foreman of the Dockers' Guild. He hurried over to the Centauri Ambassador.
"Vir? Is something wrong?"
Vir started slightly and looked around. "Oh, Lieutenant, hello. Yes, yes actually, there is. Although I'm not sure how much help you can be..."
Corwin smiled to himself. Many people found Vir's habitual waffling annoying; he personally found it a refreshing change from the full-power-overload styles of people like Lochley, Ta'Lon or Tessa Halloran. "Well, why don't you tell me about it and I'll see what I can do."
Vir clasped his hands before him. "I've been trying to book a flight back to Centauri Prime for some weeks now, Lieutenant - ever since the beginning of May, in fact. Well, given the strains the crackdown put on travel, and those spurious rumours of Shadow attacks - " Vir manufactured a strained laugh, probably trying to show that he hadn't believed such rumours for an instant - "I can understand the delays. But things have been calm for the past week, yet every time I try to get a flight back to Centauri Prime I just keep getting messages like, 'Our flight is fully booked'. Now I know this would probably be a little below your purview, but, um..."
"...you want me to pull some strings and see if I can get you on a flight?" finished Corwin.
Vir blushed. "I'd appreciate it, Lieutenant."
Corwin went back to his station, beckoning Vir to follow him. "Well, I'm not sure when the next scheduled flight is..."
"Could we check for June 8? There might have been a cancellation."
"Let me see." Corwin punched in commands. He supposed he shouldn't really be doing this; Command and Control wasn't a travel agency, after all. There were firms in the Zocalo to handle this. Or, for that matter, Vir's own government. But given the impenetrability of the Centauri Republic's borders these days, Corwin didn't really blame Vir for wanting to speed things up. It never occurred to him that as little as three or four years ago, he would never have dared even think of being this flexible with the regs.
He finally found the flight record. "Yes, there we are - the Kalandros. A merchantman with limited passenger accommodation." He frowned at the schematic display, which showed the barest fraction of the travelling quarters filled. "That's strange. They must have had a lot of cancellations."
Vir blinked down at the screen. "But - they told me, just yesterday. They were full up." He looked at Corwin. "Were there cancellations?"
Corwin switched to another file. His frown deepened as he looked back up to Vir. "No."
Before either of them could say anything more a loud voice drifted in from the outside. "...got to see her! Right now! Let go of me, you - "
Corwin spun and strode out into the corridor, Vir on his heels, where the C&C security guards were holding back a furious-looking young woman. She looked vaguely familiar, but Corwin couldn't put a name to the face. Still, he rested a hand on his PPG, just to be certain. "Auvergne - let her go."
The guard looked back, then at his colleague; but the girl, seeing Corwin take command, had stopped struggling. Reluctantly the guards released her. The girl straightened her clothing and strode, scowling, up to Corwin. "Where's Captain Lochley?"
"The Captain goes off duty at sixteen hundred."
The girl grimaced. "Aw, crap."
"Miss Livingston?" said Vir.
The girl looked more startled than Corwin. "Ambassador. I'm sorry, I didn't see you there."
"You know each other?" Corwin raised an eyebrow.
"Trish Livingston, Lieutenant David Corwin." Vir gestured back and forth between them, and Corwin shook the girl's hand with some wariness. "Ms. Livingston's sister Selene is the young lady who runs IGOT."
"You got what?" Corwin blinked at Vir.
Trish shook her head. "No, no no, it's IGOT, Eye-Gee-Oh-Tee - I Got Coffee and - oh, forget it!" She folded her arms. "Look, can you tell me what's happening with the Dark Star or can't you?"
Corwin winced. Now he remembered where he'd heard about Livingston. The Dark Star was the one sore point left over from the crackdown last month. With most of its staff charged with prostitution and the solicitation thereof, the nightclub had been shut down and all its employees placed on suspension pay until the case was resolved. The nightclub's Earth owner, however, had come up with some unexpectedly clever and expensive legal aid, and the case had dragged out ever since. Trish was not the only employee to have lodged complaints, but she'd been by far the most vocal and angry. He hesitated, wondering what to tell her.
It was one question he would never have to answer.
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GREEN SECTOR
17:17 EST
FOUR MINUTES TO FAILURE
Looking around the quarters decorated by his beloved, Sherann of Rhell of the Worker Caste, Ambassador from Minbar to Babylon 5, Kyrell of Nae'jon had to admit that though he loved Sherann in heart and soul, he still wished her taste tended just a little less to the whimsical.
There were limits to what could be done with Human-built space quarters, of course; floor and walls and roof were the flat mottled grey of duralloy, bisected by the green location band. But for her furnishings Sherann had forsaken all Minbari tradition: her squarish, unadorned sofa and chairs were coloured in neither warrior black, nor worker brown, nor religious white, but in the bright primary colours of a child's building blocks. Red, blue, yellow and green competed fiercely to see which could brighten the room most.
The carpet, at least, was white. He morosely supposed that was something, though it did make the effect of the furniture's colour even worse.
The decor didn't offer much relief. One whole shelf had been given over to Centauri god-icons, and not even the more dignified ones like Ambrisone, the First Emperor, or Charaela, Lady of Starlight. Those Kyrell could have appreciated. But instead, there was Ilarus, and Li, and Mogath, and even the rather dubious Zoog, scattered amid other statues which Kyrell did not recognize and wasn't sure he wanted to. A Narn ceremonial mask growled from another wall, red and furious. Across from the mask, a framed portrait displayed five Humans entangled in what appeared to be an anatomically impossible free-for-all of limbs, doublejointedness and bemused or comically shocked looks.
Sherann, as she finished pouring the tea, caught him looking at the portrait and smiled happily. "Ah - that one is my latest acquisition. A rare preview poster, for the Human film 'Rebo and Zooty Meet The Three Stooges'."
"Ah." Kyrell nodded, feigning comprehension. "Was it amusing?"
"The film? Most amusing. And most instructive."
This threw Kyrell. "Instructive?"
"Yes, in showing one how to, the Human phrase is 'loosen up'."
Reflexively Kyrell checked his robes. The fastenings were tight, adjusted to exactly the proper degree for the ritual of reunion with the betrothed. The phrase made no sense, unless worry flashed through him. Had Sherann changed her mind about the wedding?
It was not inconceivable. She seemed to have changed in so many other ways, after all.
Kyrell hid his consternation in a sip of the tea. When he looked up again he had managed to place the gently joyous smile proper to the situation on his face. "I am glad we will be able to relax together, Sherann. The past cycle has no doubt been exhausting for us both."
Sherann laughed. "Exhausting? Let me see rogue telepath crime waves, a Shadow Warrior and a Centauri war criminal general, the Emperor's Day of Ascension party, an alien pilot with a Vorlon vessel, the birth of the first Human-Minbari hybrid infant, a crackdown in which I myself was nearly killed and rumours of Shadow attacks out Rimwards yes, exhausting is indeed one word for it."
Kyrell's face tightened. Minbari did not blush as humans did, but he could feel a surge of irritation in his pulse. Did she think his missionary work in the cities ruined by the Civil War was any less wearisome and dangerous? So it lacked the glamour and profile of an Ambassadorship to Babylon 5, the birthplace of the ISA; did that invalidate his work?
He bit down on the anger. Such things had no place in the ritual of reunion. "The words do not exist to express the gladness of my heart that you lived through such trials."
Sherann opened her mouth, closed it with a visible effort, and blew out a breath. Seeing it, Kyrell's irritation surged up again. The worker caste had always had fewer and simpler rituals than the religious caste, as a general rule, but they respected those rituals, and those of the other castes when necessary. Sherann was behaving more like some of the Humans he'd known than any proper Minbari.
The past cycle had changed her, and Kyrell was deeply afraid it was not in any way that would strengthen their engagement-bond.
For then, however, he would get no chance to say so.
****************
THE GARDEN, UNIT 3 RECREATION CENTER
PUBLIC GYMNASIUM A
17:18 EST
THREE MINUTES TO FAILURE
Denn'bok met katok in a rippling series of furious impacts, sparks striking from the clash of metal against metal. Jamie backflipped, vaulting over herself on the pike's support; Ta'Lon gave her no chance to follow but pursued her, swipe after swipe of his katok passing through the space she'd leapt away from. Two, three, four backflips; then, abruptly, Jamie landed and dropped into a squat, dove past Ta'Lon's stabbing thrust in a somersault and came up bringing her pike around just in time to block his backswing. The katok skidded downwards towards her glove. Jamie shoved it away so hard that Ta'Lon had to spin with the shove or let go of the sword; as the Narn spun, the Ranger reversed her pike, sweeping the bottom around into the backs of Ta'Lon's knees.
Ta'Lon fell, but as he did he swung out savagely with his free left arm. The unexpected blow caught Jamie across her shoulder and slammed her to the mat under the weight of two hundred and fifty pounds of falling Narn. Ta'Lon didn't hit passively; he was rolling even as he hit, coming up atop her and bringing the katok flashing down towards her neck.
It stopped, with perfect control, one centimetre away from her throat. Jamie froze. Ta'Lon nodded down at her with great dignity. "I believe that is point."
"I believe that is tie," countered Jamie. Ta'Lon blinked as the tip of her pike, swung up behind him in one hand, tapped him lightly on the back of his skull. It was a move possible only with the Minbari fighting pike; only the Minbari-forged metal was light enough to swing with one hand and arm, but tough and elastic enough to make the impact lethal. Had they both followed through with their blows, they would both be dead. Talon raised his eyeridge at Jamie, who grinned.
"What's that, the third tie in a row?" commented Lochley, from her seat in the first row of the nearby bleachers.
"Fourth," corrected Colin Ferris, sitting beside her with his long legs stretched out. "Damnedest thing. Never saw anything like it."
"Oh, and of course you spend so much time watching the sports matches," scoffed Jamie as Ta'Lon helped her up. "Somehow you don't strike me as the athletic sort, Colin."
"Is that a challenge?"
Jamie blinked, then grinned. "Sure, why not!" As Colin unwound himself and stretched, Jamie folded her pike and tucked it away. "I'm assuming bare hands, unless you've got a weapon of choice?"
"Shockbatons, normally, but they don't work well in sparring," said Colin dryly. "So yes, bare hands." He held up his black-gloved hands. "Figuratively speaking."
"Hang on a moment." Lochley sat up, wearing her dangerously amused smile. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Colin, but doesn't telepathy give you a major advantage in combat with normals?"
"If I use it, yes." Colin folded his arms. "But Anla'shok meditation techniques are pretty damn good blocks - and a lot of hand-to-hand is so reflexive there's no chance to read and react in time anyway."
"All the same, I think you should even the odds a bit." Lochley was already unbuttoning her jacket. "Two to one sounds fair to me. Eh, Jamie?"
Jamie's wide grin was her only answer.
Colin looked at Ta'Lon. "How did I wind up in this mess?"
"You opened your mouth," Ta'Lon explained.
"Ah, of course. The obvious mistake." Colin dropped into a fighting crouch as Jamie and Lochley, the latter now in her sleeveless undershirt, began circling him. His eyes flicked back and forth between them, hands up in blades. "I've known men who fantasized about this sort of thing, you know - "
To his right Lochley came powerhousing in, quick, powerful jabs slashing out at him; Jamie spun in from the left, legs coming up in a series of scissoring kicks. Colin twisted to the left, taking Lochley's punches across his back. With his left fist, he struck hard, straight back, while his right hand came up to slap Jamie's calf hard and push her spin into an unbalanced whirl. Lochley was too quick for the punch, jumping back to put herself out of range, but Jamie was caught off guard and tumbled to the floor. She rolled with the fall and came back up quickly, but in the seconds' delay the move had caused, Colin had whipped back to face Lochley and sent a flurry of karate chops at her shoulders and face.
The Captain blocked them all with equal speed, slapping and dodging; then she saw an opening and lunged in with a roundhouse. But Colin sidestepped so smoothly Ta'Lon knew he'd set Lochley up, deliberately leaving the hole in his defense. His hands flashed up, grabbed her fist and wrist, and he twisted and threw, sending Lochley flying. She catapulted into Jamie just as the Ranger leapt forward to join the attack; both women went down in a tangle of limbs.
Breathing hard, Colin regarded them and raised an eyebrow. "I've known some men who fantasized about that, too."
You have a filthy mind, Colin," declared Jamie, pushing herself upright. "I like that."
Colin blinked.
Lochley pulled herself to her feet. The glint in her eyes was truly dangerous now, and Ta'Lon grinned as Colin visibly gulped.
The rematch, however, would have to wait.
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THE ZOCALO
17:19 EST
TWO MINUTES TO FAILURE
"You sure that's him?" said Zack Allan. Leaning in to keep his voice quiet, he couldn't help but notice that the Director of Covert Intelligence for the Interstellar Alliance was wearing some remarkably distracting perfume or other. With an effort he banished the thoughts, and kept his eyes focused on the innocuous-seeming, brown-haired man sitting alone at a table across the Zocalo.
"That's him. That's Philip Hume." Tessa Halloran's voice was low and dangerous. "He's had some surgery to his face, but the computer gives us an eighty-five percent skull structure match... and I know the way he walks. He can change what he likes, he can't hide that."
"What'd this guy do, anyway?" asked Glenn Satamba over the cup of coffee he was using to hide the movement of his lips.
"He's an ESI agent who was stationed on Mars in 2260 and '61," Tessa said. "Responsible for a lot of the less humane initiatives in controlling the Mars independence movement. We think he served as one of the go-betweens when Edgars Industries was working with Clark on developing the anti-telepath virus. And three months ago they caught him making an unauthorized tachyon transmission to an unidentified ship somewhere in inhabited space."
"That's a capital crime?" said Zack.
"It is when it contains vital details of the Earthforce fleet allocation plans for the rest of 2263. Not to mention other choice tidbits I can't even tell you two about."
"Oho." Satamba raised his eyebrows. "And who's he sending that little cookie to?"
"We don't know. Earthgov wasn't able to lock down the source before he tumbled to the scan and ran. I've instituted a systematic search, but the tachyon web of inhabited space is huge. It could be days before we can isolate the coordinates." Her eyes narrowed at the man now calmly finishing his cup of tea. "There's an easier way to find out anyway."
"You do remember we can't use torture any more," said Zack, only half-joking; he'd heard the intensity in Tessa's voice and was genuinely unnerved. "We're supposed to be the good guys."
"Trust me, Zack, I won't break a thing. Permanently." She paused a beat, then turned and gave him a dazzling smile. "Relax, Zack. Don't you trust me?"
Thankfully, Zack didn't have to answer the question before Satamba interrupted. He had dialed his link volume down and was holding it to his ear, then looked at both of them. "I have Torrance and Lapuis in position, we can move in and take him on your signal."
Tessa shook her head. "Get four more men."
"Four more?" said Zack.
"This guy will not go quietly, Zack."
Satamba frowned at Zack, but the Security Chief sighed and nodded. Tessa knew her job, after all; if she said they needed six, they needed six. Satamba lifted his link again and began to issue instructions.
He would never finish those instructions.
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BROWN SECTOR, SECTION 52
17:20 EST
ONE MINUTES TO FAILURE
Unlike her predecessor, Lilian Hobbs was less inclined to go cannoning off all over the place to serve her duties. She was as dedicated to helping the unfortunate of Babylon 5 as Stephen Franklin had ever been, but unlike him, she was not so suspicious of official procedures and authorities that she was willing to sacrifice Medlab's advanced facilities. As a result, rather than try to set up underground clinics, she generally tried to encourage the lurkers of DownBelow to come to Medlab themselves or bring their patients; while none of them could really afford to be treated there, Lilian had been developing a remarkable skill at burying unauthorized expenses in the Babylon 5 accounting system. She was also working with the trauma teams to increase their response speed and skill level, ensuring that when somebody had to leave Medlab they were as quick and highly trained as possible.
There were occasions, however, when cannoning off really seemed to be the only working alternative. And when Lilian found herself utterly alone in Medlab and a panicking G'Stral had charged in, grabbed her arm and tried to drag her out the door between the gasped words of his explanation, she had rapidly seen that the simplest solution here was just to go with the flow. She held him back long enough to grab the instruments and drugs she might need, then sprinted out after him.
Now, kneeling over the Narn woman G'Stral had brought her to see, she wasn't sure whether to scream or laugh. "G'Stral, she isn't injured or dying."
"She isn't?" G'Stral frowned.
"No. She's drunk out of her mind - " Lilian leaned over the woman's belly to sniff at the fumes drifting from the Narn's mouth, and grimaced - "probably on tal'quethdir... and she's in labour."
G'Stral's jaw fell open. Lilian had to smile, though she felt anything but amused. "Don't tell me, you just thought she was gaining weight." At G'Stral's uncomprehending look - the joke wasn't really relevant to Narn physiology - she sighed. "Never mind."
She ran a finger along the Narn's pouchslit, a T-shaped aperture above the reproductive organs, and cursed to herself. From the spasms the woman was undergoing, the pouch should have opened on its own to a minimum of five centimetres, but the lips had barely parted, and the inner membrane which kept the pouch sealed on non-nursing females had yet to separate. She stroked a gloved and sterile fingertip along what little of the membrane she could touch, and cursed again. This membrane should have been on the verge of natural rupture, thin and weak; instead it was tough and rubbery. This was either premature labour or the Narn's biosystem was so damaged by her environment that she couldn't count on healthy reactions any more.
Either way, it boiled down to getting her to Medlab. Lilian stood and turned to G'Stral, trying to remember how to program the lab's incubator for Narn infants. "Okay. Get some others and come back; we're going to have to carry her to - "
The sentence was interrupted.
****************
GREY SECTOR, MAIN ENGINEERING
17:21 EST
FAILURE
The accident had begun months before, in a chain of trivia that brought together three minuscule flukes of circumstance in a world-shattering disaster.
The first circumstance had arisen two months ago, when a helium-isotope fuel production facility on Earth had suffered from a momentary confusion on shift change that left one mistakenly ID-coded fuel pod uncorrected. When the pod was found and its coding read, it was assumed to have been misplaced, rather than miscoded, and was redirected to the "correct" storage area rather than emptied and refilled. As a result, the pod, which was later delivered to Babylon 5 as part of a regular shipment, contained not the He3 isotope that was the key to safe fusion, but several tonnes of pure He2 - a far more dangerous and powerful reactant used only to trigger fusion reactions, not to sustain them. One of dozens, the pod had remained in storage for months after its arrival, and no one had any reason to suspect anything was in error.
During that time, the second fluke of circumstance slowly came about. The magnetic injectors that propelled deuterium and He3 into the fusion chambers of Babylon 5 were controlled by molecular circuits designed to shut down the injection flow in the event of a power surge. With no moving parts, the circuits had a working lifespan of years. But entropy wore down everything, eventually. The circuits would come due for refit in three weeks, but had not been subject to a diagnostic for several days - and in those days, they had degraded to an unexpected extent.
The first and second circumstances combined when the He2 pod believed to contain He3 was linked to the fuel injection tank and opened up. For a few seconds there was no observable difference. But then the lack of the extra neutron in the He2 nucleus - the mass which gave the He3 atoms their extra weight and made them useful in inhibiting the fusion chain reaction to levels where it could be controlled - manifested in a sudden surge in power. At 17:20:46 EST exactly, the tiny artificial sun of Babylon 5's fusion reactor, created and frozen by immensely powerful magnetic fields, flared.
Emergency messages were instantly sent to the fuel injectors. But in the space of a nanosecond, the extra radiation given off by that power flare had penetrated the shielding on the injectors, scrambling the delicate balance of molecular circuitry already degraded. The control circuits fused. The fuel injectors pulsed on, channelling more deuterium and He2 into the fusion point, and the electrical output of the plant surged wildly skyward as the fusion chain reaction increased.
At this point, the third circumstance took effect. A week before, Lee Chang, the technician on duty at the safety monitoring post, had been soundly chewed out by his superior - a petty officer who had been suffering from extremely bad heartburn that day for overreacting to a minor alert and disrupting Engineering's entire schedule for what had turned out to be a false alarm. Further errors in this area, it had been implied to Lee Chang, would put his standing in Earthforce itself in jeopardy.
Thus, when the alarms began to blare at his station, Lee Chang made an understandable but catastrophic mistake. Already afraid of overreacting, it simply never entered his head to assume that an entire fuel pod had been miscoded. Far more likely was that the He3 had been contaminated with a tiny amount of He2 atoms - it periodically happened, after all; the fuel-production plants weren't absolutely perfect; this surge would burn itself out in only a few seconds. And so, for several critical moments, he deliberately held off from triggering the emergency jettison routine which would have blown the entire reactor clear of the station.
Before Lee Chang could even begin to realize his mistake it was already too late.
The power output took another quantum leap upwards, multiplying exponentially. Electricity surged along circuits throughout the entire station. Only in the hyper-hardened circuits of the reactor itself did functioning continue, magnetic containment fields strengthening to control the reaction: everywhere else, under that blast of power, circuitry, computers and lighting spurted sparks and died. Babylon 5 shuddered. Lee Chang, in the very action of entering the commands and verification for jettison, jerked and spasmed as the electricity arced back into him. His body crashed to the deck in the darkness. Screams ripped the air around him.
He would be only the first to die.
****************
COMMAND AND CONTROL
17:22 EST
59 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
The techs shrieked and leapt back as one by one, their stations exploded in a shower of sparks and crackling arcs of electricity. Garber was caught, frozen to his console by the current, jerking and flopping. Acting on instinct, Parsons roundhouse kicked him in the small of the back, smashing him away from the console and breaking the connection; Garber dropped, shaking, but his wheezing gasps were signal enough that Parsons had reacted in time. Kreies jumped to his side and began to rip off his uniform jacket.
Corwin bolted back in and dove for the one station that still showed signs of life, the command terminal. As he grabbed it and began calling up status screens, the red emergency lights kicked on, bathing everyone in bloody light. Behind him, Vir and Trish stood in the door, gaping; then Trish saw Garber on the floor, grimaced, and hurried down into the pit to help. Vir came to Corwin's side. "What's happening?"
Analyses unfurled before Corwin's eyes; he scanned them rapidly, feeling fear freeze his entire midsection from groin to chest. "Fusion reactor accident."
Vir paled, but his voice remained steady, if slightly faint. "Shouldn't we all be dead, then?"
"We may all be dead, Vir. Very soon." He raised his voice. "Computer!"
A pause.
"Computer!"
The voice as it juddered back into life was shaky and unstable. "99% of computer network nonfunctional," it finally said. "Sole remaining terminals active as follows." A schematic of Babylon 5 came up on the screen; as Corwin and Vir watched, one blip flicked on in C&C - a moment later, another flicked on in Engineering.
Nothing else came up.
Corwin wanted to swear but didn't dare waste time. "Computer - status of fusion reactor."
"Fusion reaction has entered runaway status owing to presence of He2 in fusion injectors," said the computer.
"Initiate shutdown procedure."
"Fusion injectors fused. Unable to initiate shutdown. Fusion reaction cannot be terminated."
"Then jettison the reactor!"
"Jettison system inoperative. Reaction will breach magnetic containment fields in 58 minutes."
Vir's face was papery white now. "Does that mean what I think it does?" he whispered.
Strangely, Corwin felt too numb for fright. "Yes," he rasped. "If we can't find a way to shut down the reaction or jettison the reactor in the next 58 minutes...Babylon 5 will be completely destroyed."
****************** Act One *****************
THE ZOCALO
17:23 EST
58 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
The years Tessa Halloran had spent in the Mars underground fighting for freedom had not, after all, been so very long a part of her life. But they had left the deepest mark. When the station shuddered and the Zocalo went dark in a crackling fury of blown and dying lights, the screams of panic that erupted went straight to her primitive reptile brain. Orders and backup and political priorities were forgotten in the single, ruthless imperative: {{Get your prey.}}
She lunged from her seat, overturning her table with one hand and drawing her PPG with the other. Blinking furiously to help her eyes adjust to the gloom, she charged forward through the crowd, shoving panicked shoppers aside as she forged grimly towards Hume. The traitor from Earthforce Special Intelligence had instincts of his own: he was up and looking around for his pursuers in the dimness, an illegal PPG somehow materialized in his hand. But she had him in her sights and he was still looking; that made all the difference. Coldly, Tessa thumbed her PPG to a middle setting enough to take him down without killing and braced her gun across her forearm to fire.
Her finger was in the middle of squeezing the contact when one of the bystanders slammed into her, driven by a surge in the mob. She staggered to one side. The PPG blast went wild, red-gold light flaring across the crowd as the plasma bolt struck the far end of the Zocalo's ceiling. Hume spun and loosed a barrage of his own in her direction, not trying for accuracy, only seeking to force her down by saturating the air with fire. The screams ratcheted up to an almost unbearable intensity as the bolts found targets in the mob. Tessa dove for cover behind an overturned table, cringing from the sound.
Searing beams of white light splashed out across the room and began to play across the crowd, wielded by Zack's Security troops. They swirled aimlessly, then focused on the catwalk, pinning Zack and Satamba in an eye-drawing glare. Zack raised something to his mouth - it looked like a lopsided, giant red cone and shouted through it. "ATTENTION EVERYONE! GET TO YOUR NEAREST EVACUATION EXIT NOW! EVAC SAFETY PROCEDURES!" He had to scream the last part over another burst of PPG fire. Infuriated, Tessa leaned round the table and shot back, carefully directing her fire over the heads of the mob.
The lights that had focused on Zack - Tessa could see now that they were portable spotlamps, taken by the Security guards from the safety lockers built in every part of the station - split apart, two of them focusing on each exit. The surging of the crowd began to take shape, spilling towards each exit like a water tank punctured simultaneously in five places. Tessa squinted up at Zack and saw him drop the conelike object; it unrolled as he did into a sheet of what looked like bristol board. She had to smile. Whatever else you could say, Zack wasn't short of ingenuity; denied the PA system and the use of his link, he'd improvised a classic-style megaphone.
She risked a look up over the edge of the table, and cursed. Hume had vanished into the crowd. She considered waiting for Zack for half a second, then abandoned the idea. Whatever disaster had struck the station, Zack and Satamba would have their hands full dealing with the panicked populace. And the longer she waited the more time Hume had to disappear. No, this hunt was hers, and hers alone.
Tessa vaulted over the table and joined the crowd flooding towards the exit.
****************
COMMAND AND CONTROL
17:24 EST
57 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Corwin looked up as Kreies joined him at his station. Behind him, Vir and Trish stared worriedly at the screens. Vir didn't understand half of the readings, but none of it was giving him any hope. "How's Garber?" Corwin asked.
"Stable, but he needs to get to Medlab as soon as possible," said Kreies, her accent making the flat words sound even grimmer. "What's our status?"
"Bad." Corwin's teeth were gritted. "Everything's down - that power surge blew out 99% of the control circuits for everything. I'm not even sure I can establish links to the command staff. Last recorded position for the Captain was in a gymnasium near the Garden; I'm reprogramming the C&C station to do a straight radio broadcast instead of a relay..." His hands finished their flurry of commands; one tiny display amid all the red lights turned green. "There we go. Let's see if this works." He hit his link. "Corwin to Lochley! Repeat, Corwin to Lochley!"
For a moment, only static answered him. Then, through the crackling: "...Lochley to Corwin! Come in, Corwin! What happened!" Her voice was incredibly faint.
Trish frowned. "Is her link broken?"
"We're on direct broadcast; her link doesn't have the power this station does," Kreies explained.
Corwin glared them to silence. "Reactor malfunction, Captain. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Officer Ferris, Ambassador Ta'Lon and Val'na Pratchett are with me, we're all okay. How bad is the malfunction?"
Corwin let out a breath. "It's bad, Captain. Runaway fusion point. We have about fifty-six minutes until containment breach, and the feedback surge blew out all our control circuits. Unless we can bring one of the backups on line we can't trigger the jettison sequence."
"Okay. Our first priority is getting that control line back up and running. Second, we need to get the Alien Sector stabilized and safe; they've got the most complicated life support requirements, and we need to have manual support in there ASAP. Third, I want all civilians evacuated to the Garden." Listening, Vir felt an unalloyed surge of admiration; even in the face of this utter catastrophe, Lochley sounded as calm as if they were dealing with an unexpected catering problem. "Finally, we need to get a call for help out now. Find the closest tachyon transmitter you can and get it working."
"Understood. Is Officer Ferris listening?"
"I'm here, Lieutenant," came the answer, similarly faint.
"Can you establish telepathic communication with Chief Allan without line of sight?"
Ferris' voice, even faint as it was, sounded dubious. "I can try, Lieutenant, but what do you want me to say?"
"I suggest you pass on the Captain's orders to secure civilians in the Garden to him. The Captain and the Ambassador should take responsibility for the Alien Sector many of the species there will respond better to the Captain's personal presence. I'll take my people here and get our last systems running meantime."
"Confirmed," Lochley ordered. "Colin, do it. Lieutenant Corwin, take a portable broadcast unit with you and signal us when you get to the comm nexus at Grey Forward. We'll re-establish contact every five minutes. Understood?"
"Understood. Corwin out." Corwin disconnected the link, then stood. "All right. Lieutenant Kreies, I want you to hold the fort here." As he gave his orders he hurried across the room, popped an emergency locker and dug out a small but heavy-looking black box, extending its broadcast aerial. "I'm taking a repair kit and going up to Grey Forward."
"Suggest you take backup, sir," said Kreies. "There'll be panicking crowds out there."
"Such as?" Corwin scowled at her. "I want you here so we can have a command presence, we don't have enough people to spare from the stations if we need them - "
"How about us?"
Corwin spun. Vir blinked at Trish, who folded her arms defiantly and nodded. "Yeah, us," she repeated. "I know how to use a PPG, you know, and there's no way I'm stayin' here."
Vir looked to Corwin, gulping, and was dismayed to see the young man looking as if he was actually considering the notion. Much as he disliked the idea of sitting in C&C waiting helplessly for the station to blow up, Vir liked even less getting hauled along on a rescue mission when he hadn't the faintest idea of the first thing to do. But he couldn't think of any way to protest which wouldn't make him look like an utter coward. There weren't many people whose opinion he cared about, but Corwin was one.
"All right," the lieutenant said abruptly. "Auvergne, give Livingston your gun; you go find your way to Red Sector and start giving Chief Allan a hand."
Auvergne looked unhappy. "Lieutenant - "
"Did I stutter? Obey my orders, Mr. Auvergne." There was no hesitation. Grumpily, the guard removed his gun and gave it to Trish, making a point of showing her where the safety was. Trish scowled. Vir was startled when Corwin hastened past him, grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along into the outside corridor.
"Vir, I need your help." Corwin's voice was a quiet murmur, almost disembodied in the near-total blackness.
"Lieutenant, I don't know the first thing about control circuits -"
"Not with the circuits. With her. Livingston."
"Come again?"
"She's a criminal on legal probation, Vir. I'm not leaving her in C&C unsupervised, but I can't spare the people to shepherd her to the Garden and I can't turn her loose to wander around on her own, either. The safest thing to do with her is keep her under watch at all times. I want you to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get any ideas."
"If she does get ideas, don't you think giving her a gun isn't the safest of plans?" Vir hissed incredulously.
"That's why the energy caps I'm giving her will be empty. This one - " Corwin handed Vir his own PPG - "isn't."
Hefting the weight of the weapon in his palm, Vir swallowed.
****************
PUBLIC GYMNASIUM A
17:27 EST
54 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
"This isn't working, is it," muttered Jamie to Lochley. In the centre of the gym floor, Colin lay on his back, hands folded behind his head. He looked for all the world as if he'd just stretched out for a nap, but there was too much subtle tension in his face for sleep. Jamie kept an ear tuned to the outside; the recreation centre had been almost empty, but there was still the possibility it might be ransacked by the mob if enough panicked people came this way without Security to watch them.
Ta'Lon shrugged. "I know little of mindwalking, but do you not have to see your target before you can scan or send?"
"Some very skilled teeps can get around that with people they know very well," said Lochley, but she looked dubious. Jamie understood. While Colin and Zack weren't as antipathic now as they had been five months ago, only someone impossibly naοve or idealistic would have called them friends. Still, they had gotten to know one another with the familiarity that only cooperation under fire could produce; maybe that would be enough.
Maybe.
Abruptly Colin stiffened. He lifted a hand, beckoning Lochley forward. The Captain moved to his side and knelt down. "Colin?"
"I have him," whispered Colin, but sweat had broken on his forehead. "Be quick."
"Tell him he's ordered to detach all Security forces to clearing the station and getting as many inhabitants as he can to the Garden. Everything else is downgraded. Get people to the Garden, now."
A pause; Colin frowned. "He says Tessa's gone chasing a rogue ESI agent. He wants to send some men to assist her."
Lochley muttered something savage, then raised her voice. "Tell him no. Out of the question. I don't care if this ESI agent escapes, I want people secured. Tell him that's an order, Colin."
Colin's mouth tightened with strain. "Anything else?"
"Not now. Let it go if you have to," she added, putting a hand on his shoulder, and the Psi Cop seemed only too glad to oblige as he relaxed with an outrush of breath. Lochley helped him up and then turned to Ta'Lon and Jamie. "Okay, we've got to get to the Alien Sector, and we're going to be facing panicked crowds en route. If I can't calm them down, I'm going to need you to clear me a road."
"Indeed. In that case - " Ta'Lon drew one finger along the katok's point; a drop of blood welled up and dripped down the blade, dark red against the bright steel. "- we will need something a little less lethal." He wiped the blade with a pocketcloth, sheathed it, and hurried to the practice weapons closet in the corner of the salle. Selecting a long wooden pole, he whirled it around himself a few times and nodded in satisfaction. "This should do."
"Good," said Lochley. "Let's go."
****************
BROWN SECTOR, SECTION 52
17:29 EST
52 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
The emergency lights in Brown Sector were sparser than in Red, Blue or Green, having been meant to lead small, well-trained teams through largely uninhabited or storage sections. In the chaos of DownBelow they were worse than useless - they gave people just enough light to think they could find their way out, and the shadows cast by that light became huge, blinding and chaotic. Within seconds after the initial explosions and falling of darkness, a horde of terrified lurkers had flooded the corridors; G'Stral had had to drag both Lilian and the Narn woman back into an unused pod and seal the door almost shut to avoid being run down by the mob. Minutes passed before the shrieks and thunder died away.
Carefully, G'Stral cracked the storage pod's door and peered out. Though he was no Brakiri, with nocturnal-lifecycle vision, his eyes were better used to dimness and low light than almost anyone else's on the station. This gloom, however, defeated even him: the barest dark gray lines within the black were all that showed the seams of floor, walls and ceiling. Far in the distance something that might be an emergency light glimmered. G'Stral gulped.
He had always hated the dark. Which might be why he operated in it so well. He was never so acute and accurate as when sharpened by hate.
"G'Stral?" said Lilian tentatively. Without moving, he sensed her coming up behind him; her weight pressed against his back as she peered over his shoulder. "Is it clear?"
"As clear as I can tell." He twisted out from beneath her to move back to the Narn woman's side, kneeling down to feel her forehead. The leathery hide was tight and hot. "We'd better try to get her to Medlab."
"Let me call them - " She tapped her link. "Hobbs to Medlab 1, acknowledge." A faint crackle of static filled the silence. When the doctor spoke again her voice was sharper. "Hobbs to Security, acknowledge!" Static. "Hobbs to anyone!"
"Forget it, Doc," G'Stral snapped. "We're on our own."
"How are we going to get her to Medlab?" Hobbs hurried back to him and dropped to her knees, trying to lift the Narn woman up to a sitting position. "Carry her all the way ourselves?"
"I take it back, Doc, I think we can forget Medlab. If the links are out the power loss is probably stationwide."
"What could do that?"
"Nothing I wanna think about, I'll tell you that much." Grimly G'Stral got his shoulder under the Narn woman's arm and wrestled her upright. Lilian twisted in to take some of the weight across her own shoulders, and finally they had the semi-conscious woman standing. "My suggestion is we make for the Garden. At least it'll be open air."
"All right." Together, they rolled back the pod door and stepped into the corridor, listening intently. The darkness betrayed nothing, but far in the distance G'Stral could hear the screaming and shouting still going on. He jerked his head in the opposite direction and began walking.
"G'Stral? Why aren't we following the sound? We should try to help those people, maybe take them to the Garden - "
"Doc, they're a mob. Mobs are too dangerous to frag with. If they didn't kill us just by running us down in panic they'd tear us apart just to kill something."
Lilian sounded appalled. "They're just people, G'Stral! They're not murderers!"
"They're terrified, Doc, and terror turns people into murderers."
"I can't believe that."
"Then live down here for a few months and tell me what you can believe!" G'Stral was getting genuinely angry now, though his pace didn't slow. "You want me to save you or them, Doc? 'Cause I can't do both!" He paused for breath and added, suddenly unable to sustain his anger, "I'm not sure I can even do one."
"G'Stral - "
Another scream cut them off, a higher-pitched voice, and much much closer. G'Stral stiffened, then closed his eyes and muttered a curse. No. G'Lan, please, no, no, no...
"That was a child!" Lilian gasped, outraged.
"That was Selene," G'Stral moaned, and ducked out from under the Narn woman's arm. Lilian staggered under the sudden deadweight, but G'Stral didn't stop to look back. He followed the sound of the screams, choosing turns half at random, and suddenly he was coming up on a tall ragged figure backing two smaller ones into a cul-de-sac alcove. The gleam of the figure's knife was the only light in the gloom.
G'Stral gave no warning shout as he hurled himself onto the figure's back. The man shouted and went down hard. Kicking and punching, G'Stral beat him savagely. The man struggled around, bringing the knife up in a slash. G'Stral grabbed for the knife and lost his balance; they went over, the man coming up on top of him, though G'Stral's hands were now clamped around the man's wrist. The blade came quivering downwards, inch by inch.
Then a narrow, elegant hand darted in and slapped a hypospray against the man's neck. He stiffened with a gurgle, clawed at his throat, and collapsed. G'Stral let his head fall back. "Thanks, Doc."
"I'm owed a great deal more than thanks," said Lilian acidly, "but we can talk about that later." As G'Stral got up she turned to the smaller figures, who had moved forward into the dim light of the junction. The faint illumination revealed them to be a pair of young girls, one human, the other Centauri. "One of you is Selene, I take it?"
The human girl raised her hand. "Uh, yeah. Me. I'm Selene. This is Jaida."
"Jaida Tefano, daughter of Ari," said the Centauri girl coolly, although the slight quaver to her voice betrayed her own fear. "You took your time, G'Stral."
"What, not even a thank you?"
"Oh, thank you, thank you, believe me, thank you." Selene hugged G'Stral. The Narn pushed her away uncomfortably.
"What are you two doing down here anyway?" said Lilian. From her voice she might have been repressing a smile, but G'Stral couldn't read her face in the dark. He bristled anyway. "Don't you have someplace safer to be?"
"We were safe," muttered Selene. "We were talking to one of the refreshment booth sellers about him buying coffee from IGOT. Right under one of the securicams. Next thing you know the power's out and everybody starts screaming."
"We were able to get clear of the mob," added Jaida, "but without the lights we couldn't find our way back to the Garden or to our living quarters. When that - that pakatril attacked us," her voice turned venomous, "we were completely lost. We thought - " She swallowed. "Never mind."
"Well, you're safe now," soothed Lilian. "Just stay close to us."
"And get your arms stretched out," G'Stral put in. Lilian looked blank. G'Stral shrugged. "We can use their help carrying the woman."
"What woman?" Jaida frowned.
"Long story," G'Stral grumbled. "Let's just say we ain't all out of the woods yet."
****************
GREEN SECTOR, LEVEL 12
17:31 EST
50 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
The candles already lit for the ritual dinner had saved them from stumbling in the dark, but the shock of the electrical blowout hadn't been dulled. Working with Kyrell to get the door to her quarters open without benefit of power, Sherann found herself weirdly focused on the cup she'd dropped when the power had blown. The ancient Minbari porcelain had burst like a bubble, almost pulverized, and Sherann couldn't forget the way it had flown apart. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to cry or huddle shaking in a corner. Maybe both, she admitted.
When the door finally yielded to their efforts they came out into a crowd of milling, frightened people of a dozen different races, and had had to fight their way to one of the larger junction points. Upon arrival Sherann yanked her arm from Kyrell's grasp and stepped up onto a support joist. Raising her voice, she cut across the crowd's babble of fear with a single sharp cry. "ATTENTION!"
The babble dulled; frightened eyes turned her way, like gleaming, tear-slicked gemstones in the dimness of the emergency lighting. Sherann shouted once again. "Attention, all of you! This system failure is temporary. Follow me. I will lead you to the Garden."
"How do you know?" screamed someone, Sherann couldn't see who.
"I have been informed by private Ambassadorial channel," she called loudly. "I have been given directions. Now come. Follow me." As if there was nothing whatsoever to fear, she stepped down and marched through the crowd in the direction of a staircase. The crowd parted before her, dazed and wondering.
To reveal, standing massively in the crowd like an exposed pillar of stone, the imposing figure of Lady Brettaria Plado, widow to Lord Zonn Plado, and aunt to the Centauri Ambassadorial Attache Volga Jaddo. She folded her arms across her bosom - no easy task - and glowered at the Minbari woman. "Well, young Sherann?"
"Lady?"
"Exactly why are we going to the Garden?"
"Because," said Sherann without hesitation, "that is the innermost part of the station and the area that will preserve its life support longest, if this problem is not quickly solved. The Core Shuttle will also provide the quickest emergency transport to the docking bays and the evacuation points."
Brettaria considered this, then inclined her head. "Excellently reasoned. It's good to see the younger generation can keep its wits about it on occasion. Well, young lady?" She stood aside, gesturing with one graceful hand. "If you will?"
Sherann bowed in return and swept past her, Brettaria falling into smooth and dignified step at her side. For a moment nobody else moved; then, with a flurry of rapid footsteps, Kyrell caught up to them. As if that had been a signal, the crowd stirred sluggishly, then began to follow, muttering and chattering nervously amongst itself in voices still thick with fear. But that mindless note of panic was gone.
"Private Ambassadorial channel?" muttered Kyrell.
"A convenient fiction," she murmured back. "They just want to know that somebody knows what to do and has some support for their authority. And after all, the system failure most likely is temporary."
"And if it isn't?"
"Then we are most likely doomed beyond anything we can do to prevent it," said Brettaria in a low voice, before Sherann could answer. "So I see no point in needless panic."
Kyrell was silent a moment; then, amazingly, he managed a chuckle. "I find that the proper phlegmatism is a great deal harder to summon now than in Temple."
"Isn't that always the way," Sherann observed.
****************
RED SECTOR
17:32 EST
49 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Red Sector being primarily economic offices and business centres, Tessa was not surprised to find that most of its occupants had gone to ground in their own places of security. Some few of the doors she passed even hummed with the subliminal thrum of power: private generators for the offices, UPSs designed to keep vital economic concerns going. Tessa muttered a curse to herself. Odds were Earthgov hadn't seen fit to pay for the same backups in C&C, if its administrative record for B5 was anything like what it had been for Mars.
She was alone in the dark corridor now, moving on cat-silent feet with her PPG raised and held high, sustaining the firing charge. It was making the weapon uncomfortably hot in her hands, but she ignored that; better a little discomfort now than the loss of a vital second if she came upon Hume unexpectedly. The ESI agent, from his record, was just good enough to take advantage of that.
He'd fled from the Zocalo and not gone the way of the rest of the crowd. Had he been fleeing to Grey Sector he might have been attempting to use an emergency outer airlock or one of the limited supply of lifepods. But he'd instead gone up and inwards, towards the high levels of Red Sector and the premium business offices. Was he looking for something specific here? What could he want?
Hume had been involved with the megacorps, back during Clark's day. Perhaps he'd made connections or enemies there. Either could drive him to burgle an office. FutureCorp, Transtellar, Edgars Industries, all operated here. Correction: it was Edgars-Garibaldi Industries now, wasn't it. {{Maybe he should have changed the name to Edgars Garibaldi Operations,}} Tessa thought. {{At least that way the acronym would fit.}}
A smell caught her nose: the sharp, stinging scent of scorched metal. She froze, sniffing like a wolf. It seemed to be coming from...
...that door.
The one, she could see as she neared it, with the black scorch marks of PPG fire on its locking mechanism, and the faint line of dim light around its rim where it had not properly closed. From within the room it probably seemed imperceptible. Outside, though, in the blackness of the passage, it was as good as a beacon. She slid soundlessly up to it and paused, listening.
Low voices were just barely audible. One was a nondescript baritone, sounding faintly irritated, as if at nothing more than a minor inconvenience. "...expect to scare me into making a mistake by invoking the spectre of Security, don't bother. I can tell a major accident from a simulation or a power fluctuation. They have bigger things to worry about than me."
Then the next voice spoke, and Tessa's heart froze in her chest. Because, though the voice was tight now with unfamiliar anger and fear, she recognized that faint Midwestern twang very clearly. "Then you don't need us. You sure as hell don't need her. Let her go."
A third voice, low, husky and feminine. "David, I'm not going anywhere without -"
"Dorothy, please!"
"Oh shut up, both of you," snapped the first voice, obviously Hume. "I haven't got time for sentiment. I need both of you because I don't bluff; if they push me, I can kill one of you and still have a hostage. Obviously neither of you wants that to happen."
Silence. A satisfied snort. "Well then."
And that was about as far as she felt inclined to push her luck. Tessa backed away and took up a position just behind a bend in the corridor, angled so as to watch the door. Hume would come out, probably in a few minutes, and when he did...
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
What would happen to the Earth Alliance Ambassador to Babylon 5 if she missed, she decided she didn't want to think about.
The door began to creak open, cranked up by elbow grease and the emergency manual undogging mechanism. Tessa's body clenched, poised and ready.
****************
GREY SECTOR, CARGO BAY 1
17:33 EST
48 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Leaving the C&C module, Corwin, Vir and Trish had climbed up a seemingly endless ladder towards B5's centrifugal axis Trish had felt her weight shrinking as they climbed, and swallowed several times; this was why she hated taking the Core shuttle. Zero-gee had never agreed with her.
Then again, wandering through DownBelow in the dark agreed with her even less. She prayed to the God she wasn't sure about that Selene and Jaida had had the sense to stay where they were, wherever that was. Hopefully home. Not that Selene had ever listened much to her - and in some ways, making a success of her coffee business had only made that worse. Now she disobeyed with a feeling of justification, and that made her and her partner even more intractable.
God, she hoped they were okay.
They arrived at a sliding panel; Corwin undogged a series of manual locks and, bracing himself against the ladder's rungs, shoved it back. He pulled himself up through the gap carefully, the ease and exaggerated care of the movement showing the low gravity. Vir climbed through a little less gracefully, and managed to knock a button off; the ivory disc drifted downwards towards Trish. It was as simple as picking it up from the ground to reach out, grab it from the air, and pocket it. She slid up the ladder into the gap.
Beyond, Corwin and Vir clung to rings spaced evenly along the floor. The chamber was long and hexagonal in shape. Trish frowned at the walls. "Funny-looking corridor."
"We're near the centre of the rotating section," explained Corwin. "Very high-stress area. They've built almost all the bracing struts in a hexagonal pattern - it's still the best stress-distribution pattern in nature."
"How exactly do we get to this Grey Forward?" said Vir, looking pale. He burped unhappily. "I'd as soon get this over with."
"We pull ourselves along -" Corwin demonstrated, using hands and feet in the floor-rungs - "until we reach the far end. From there, we let ourselves down through that trapdoor, wait until the rotation brings us opposite to the zero-g entrance lock, and jump."
"Did you say jump?" Trish gaped at him.
"Well, it's more of a microgravity drift, but essentially that's it."
Trish shook her head. "And they call this place the ultimate in human space technology? You're a lot gutsier than you look, Corwin."
"Well, er...thank you. I think." Corwin shook his head. "Come on." With a graceless but efficient crablike gait, he pulled himself along the corridor. Vir and Trish followed somewhat more slowly. By the time they'd caught up to him Corwin had already half-undogged the far exit door. He gave a warning glance back at them as they gathered around. "This is going to be cold."
"It's survivable, yes?" said Vir. "I mean, you don't actually need spacesuits."
"At full power, no. But this is the non-rotating section, the cargo handler bays and the support struts for the cylinder habitat. It'll have been the first place to start losing heat. We should be okay, but you see why I want to get this done now?"
"Then why are you wasting time explaing to us?" Trish snapped. "Go!"
Corwin shook his head and opened the lock. Cold air billowed up at them, and their breaths instantly materialized in white plumes. Corwin shivered once. Vir yelped and grabbed himself around the middle, shuddering. Trish shook herself, biting her lip to keep from making a sharp noise of discomfort. God, but that was freezing!
Before she could think further about it Corwin swung over and dangled himself into the gap, easily supporting his body weight on two palms. His legs kicked. Beneath them, Trish could see a smooth, slowly revolving surface, painted in stripes of steely silver-grey and the darker mottling of duralloy. It looked to be perhaps four or five metres down - enough of a drop that she wouldn't have done it in normal circumstances.
Which these weren't.
Corwin's eyes narrowed. "Here it comes. Vir - three seconds after me, Trish, three seconds after that. Okay - " He lifted up and dropped through, pushing with his hands to give himself some extra speed; his body slipped swiftly down and struck the rotating surface with a gentle thump. He let the rotation carry his feet out from under him, falling forward to grab for another set of handhold rungs and relaxing into the rotation. Before Trish had quite realized it Vir had followed, falling through and touching down deftly. She didn't give herself any time to think about it; she only swung her legs over and flung herself through.
It was more a controlled float downwards than a drop, but her stomach still heaved unpleasantly at the feeling of free fall. Then she was down and grabbing for the holding rungs, breathing in the icy air with great gasps. Corwin hadn't been exaggerating; this section of the station had begun losing its heat instantly, and would probably be uninhabitable before another half hour had passed. "Where...is it?" she gasped out.
"The lock's over here." Corwin crawled across the surface to a large square portal, never letting go of the rungs for more than an instant; they were in true zero-gravity now, on the inner surface of the non-rotating ring that held the cylinder of B5. He reached up to a control panel, ran through the manual undogging sequence one more time, and ratcheted back the doors of the lock. "Come on - " He arched over and into the lock head-first, like some strange insect disappearing below ground.
Vir and Trish exchanged a glance. "He's...b-b-being entirely too efficient about th-th-this," stuttered Vir, the words seeming to hang in the thick white cloud of his breath.
"You n-noticed."
An emphatic throat-clearing noise drifted up down? - from the open lock. Taking the hint, they followed him through. Corwin was already halfway up - or down - the ladder that ran straight into the distance, up to the very top of the station; though Trish's stomach was insisting that every direction was an equal plunge straight down. Swallowing hard, she pulled herself up the ladder, not quite able to muster the aplomb that let Corwin hold on only with his arms and simply haul himself upward, feet trailing free.
By the time they reached the top - or bottom? - she was shivering too hard to notice her stomach any more. Even Corwin was shuddering. But there, at the junction of passageway and ladder-shaft, was a panel of computer controls and screens...a working panel. Corwin had already set to work, rerouting connections and establishing links. He touched his own link. "Corwin to C&C!"
"Kreies here," came the staticky, blurred response.
"I'm getting the communications nexus on line. We should have links to the Captain in...there!" He finished the command and hit his link again. "Corwin to Lochley!"
"This is Lochley, go!" Already the voice was stronger, and Trish felt absurdly relieved. Things were getting fixed. "Status, Lieutenant?"
"I'm at the Grey Forward comm nexus, which is up and running. I'm checking for working tachyon transmitters, we should have an automatic signal for help in a few seconds, and I'm setting up the cross-link to C&C for the reactor jettison sequence."
"Good work, Lieutenant. Signal me when you're ready to trigger it."
"Will do."
Trish shivered helplessly. Seeming almost a reflex action, Vir put his arm around her and pulled her closer; there was no passion in the contact, just a desperate hunger for heat. Which was about the only reason Trish didn't fire her PPG into his side.
****************
COMMAND & CONTROL
17:34 EST
47 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Amanda Kreies looked anxiously to where Parsons waited by Garber's side. The electrocuted tech still hadn't come around, although his breathing had stabilized a little; his burns shone slightly in the starlight that came in through the windows. Kreies gulped and looked away.
How had she gotten into this? How had this happened? Five years of almost perfect mechanical performance, all forgotten in an instant. Her gaze wandered to the blackness outside, the merciless, unforgiving blackness. That was what waited for them all. They had been so quick to forget that this tiny, artificial world was a fragile bubble of metal and air, a feeble substitute for the warmth and verdancy of a real planet. Humans had no business in space. None at all.
Her link crackled again. "Corwin to C&C and Lochley. We're ready up here."
"Acknowledged," said Lochley. "Lieutenant Kreies, make sure I'm patched into the computer there. Computer, acknowledge voiceprint."
Acknowledge Lochley, Captain Elizabeth A. It was flat and mechanical, with no hint of its usual dulcet softness. Power conservation must be getting critical.
"Initiate reactor jettison sequence, authority CO, Babylon 5, serial number JMJ520-3824."
Initiating.
Kreies let out her breath in a long gasp. That solved one problem, at least. Even now, the explosive bolts around the reactor section were arming in preparation for detonation. Though they still had to deal with the lack of power and the slow loss of heat and air, at the very least, she would no longer have to worry about dying in a runaway fusion explosion -
The computer blew apart in a shower of sparks. Kreies screamed and flung herself back and away. Fire writhed up from the guts of the console and then died. Darkness came down on the room. Across from her, Parsons gaped at Kreies with terror in her wide eyes.
Kreies hit her link. "Captain Lochley! Lieutenant Corwin! Anyone! COME IN!"
Only static.
Kreies huddled into the wall, shuddering.
"Lieutenant?" whispered Parsons, her voice a hiss in the blackness. "What - ?"
"The arming sequence failed," Kreies gasped. "The sequence must have been too much for the circuits. We've nothing. No power at all.
"We're doomed."
****************** Act Two *****************
RED SECTOR
17:35 EST
46 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Certain instincts, David Sheridan thought - with a bleakness that tried for wry mirth and couldn't quite accomplish it - always managed to express themselves. Like the instinct of an otherwise quiet midwestern farmer type to get himself stuck right in the middle of trouble.
Granted, his diplomatic career hadn't been nearly as violent as his son's had already been, and he'd been at it quite a few years more than John. But he'd had his share of troubles. The Dilgar War at the beginning of his career, before he'd met Dorothy. Patching up the broken, bleeding mess of Earth-Minbar relations after the E-M War, with the resultant strain on his family - he had known for twelve years the reason the Minbari had surrendered, long before John had been told by the Minbari embassy aide, and keeping silent about something so important to his son's life had not been easy. The conflict with President Clark a few years ago. The chaos of the last few months on Babylon 5. He supposed the only thing he should have been surprised about was how long it took him to wind up in something like this again.
But there was a profound difference now. Even during the height of their pursuit by Clark's forces, Dorothy had never been in direct personal danger - when David had been captured by the goons from Edgars Industries and turned over to the government, he'd been taken by himself, and Dorothy had been ignored. Throughout the dangers of his life he had always managed to reassure himself with the knowledge that whatever happened to him, Dorothy was safe.
He couldn't do that any more.
The room was small, lit almost too brightly, and furnished in professionally bland corporate waiting-room sofa-armchair sets. On the sofa, he and Dorothy sat together, as still as they could. The representatives from Edgars-Garibaldi Industries lay dead on the floor where their captor's first PPG blasts had felled them. It looked nothing like the cell he'd occupied during those last days of 2261, as the Earth Alliance convulsed and almost splintered around him. But the brown-haired, blunt-featured man standing guard at the door, PPG high, radiated danger and callous brutality in exactly the same way as the men who'd captured him then. It was an aura David wanted nowhere near his wife, and the professional coolness he had learned in those situations threatened to desert him every time he felt his wife's subliminal shudder beside him. Repeatedly he had to beat down the urge to hurl himself at the stranger, reminding himself that it wouldn't actually help her to get himself killed.
David supposed it was one of those little ironies life seemed so full of. Yet again, when trouble struck, it had happened because of Edgars Industries - he'd been here to sign off on his official consultation to some new trading agreements between Earth and the Mars Free State, and had brought Dorothy along to wait while he took care of business before they could go on a shopping trip to the Zocalo. If it had occurred to him to expect trouble at all he would have shrugged it off, reasoning that lightning never struck in the same place - or within the same megacorp - twice. Which, like most common-sense truisms, always proved wrong at exactly the most disastrous instants.
When the disaster - whatever it was - had struck, the door had sealed automatically; after a few seconds the office's backup UPS generator had kicked in, and David and Dorothy had spent a few minutes calming down the Edgars reps, reassuring them that rescue would be prompt. The slow winding back of the door had seemed to verify their promises... until the intruder had shot both EI reps and taken them hostage. David didn't like to think why, although he suspected it was to take advantage of his political status. The Earth Alliance Ambassador to the ISA wasn't just any disposable hostage, after all.
His wife might be, but that was another story entirely.
Nor was this kidnapper just any kidnapper. He had spent a few minutes scanning frequencies on his link, cursing to himself just loudly enough that Sheridan had figured out what he was doing. The knowledge was chilling. That link was several leagues above the standard issue Security device: it contained deciphering capacities and security overrides that were forbidden to all but the highest-level ESI and I.I. agents. And the kidnapper was using it too easily to have stolen it.
{{Either he's gone rogue from damn near the top, or there's an agenda here I don't know about.}}
"David?" Dorothy leaned in to whisper, just audibly, into his ear. "We have to do something, don't we?"
"No, love, we don't." Sheridan cursed the necessity to whisper; he wanted to shout at her. "He has a gun and the willingness to use it. Nobody here's armed. We wait until Security shows up."
Dorothy was silent for a moment. "Damn you, David," she finally breathed. Though her voice was more despairing than angry he nonetheless felt a lurch in his gut. "Why did we have to come here?"
"Dorothy, how could I have known - "
"Not here in this office, David." Dorothy closed her eyes. "Here to Babylon 5. You know what John went through here and we still came?"
"Dorothy, John went through what he did because he had a job to do. So do I."
"You did your job," Dorothy husked. "For decades you spent your life on being a diplomat, a peacemaker, and what did the Earth Alliance do? Imprisoned you! Threatened your life, used you as a lever to threaten John - "
"That was Clark, not the Alliance!"
" - and just as things are finally settling down they ask you to do just one more post, just for a little while." Her head sagged, her voice dropped to near-inaudibility. "I knew you wouldn't be able to say no, so what good would arguing do?"
Sheridan sat, thunderstruck. He had known Dorothy had had reservations about his returning to his job. They had been married too long for him not to sense that. But he'd had no idea she'd been this upset about it, this hurt. He struggled for something to say, bitter irony tasting black under his tongue: him, silver-tongued diplomat to a dozen species, unable to even find the words for this most important of moments.
"Sweetheart - " he finally managed. "Security - "
"Is nowhere near, so don't even try to think about it," said the kidnapper, sounding more irritated by the fact than relieved. "I can't figure out exactly what's happened, but they've definitely got other things on their mind."
"You can't be sure of that," returned Dorothy acidly.
"If you expect to scare me into making a mistake by invoking the spectre of Security, don't bother." The kidnapper switched off his link. "I can tell a major accident from a simulation or a power fluctuation. They have bigger things to worry about than me."
"Then you don't need us." David pounced on the fact. "You sure as hell don't need her. Let her go."
"David, I'm not going anywhere without - "
"Dorothy, please!" He knew his terror sounded like anger, but couldn't help himself. Dorothy jerked a little, as if he'd slapped her.
"Oh shut up, both of you," snapped the kidnapper. "I haven't got time for sentiment. I need both of you because I don't bluff; if they push me, I can kill one of you and still have a hostage. Obviously neither of you wants that to happen."
Sheridan couldn't answer, and Dorothy, wisely, said nothing. The kidnapper gave a satisfied snort. "Well then." He checked his link again.
It was the snort that decided him. Fear and anger, for the first time in a long while, overwhelmed common sense. David tensed his muscles to leap. But before he could move a hand fell on his legs, Dorothy's eyes wide and pleading. David hesitated.
The kidnapper finished his last sweep of the frequencies and nodded. "They're all heading for the Garden. Good. I can avoid that." He moved to the door and started winding back the manual undogging controls: the hatch began swinging slowly upwards. It was an act that took considerable strength, Sheridan knew; but the kidnapper did it one-handed, while the PPG he held on them with his other hand never wavered. "Now, once this door's open, I want the two of you to walk through, side by side. I'm going to move around and keep clear of you, so don't get any ideas about jumping me and getting the gun away from - "
PPG bolts ripped through the air between them and exploded against the office's far wall. Already tensed to move, David seized Dorothy and dove to the floor, throwing himself over her with an impact that drove a cry out of both of them. The kidnapper swung and fired back. The air crackled and heated with ionization. From outside, a scream; the incoming fire stopped. The kidnapper didn't pause: the moment his field was clear, he lunged through the door and ran, not slowing or bothering to fire back. His footsteps died away into the distance.
"David?!" Dorothy managed shakily.
"Ssshh." Sheridan touched her mouth with his fingertips, not moving, ears cocked. Over the crackling of the tiny fires left by PPG impacts, he could hear something: a faint rasping sound, a sliding, dragging movement...
...and Tessa Halloran, clutching at the black, oozing patch on her side, fell heavily into the office.
David sprang to his feet, pulling Dorothy up. Together they dropped down to either side of the wounded woman; Dorothy, with the never-forgotten practice of the nurse she'd once been, started easing the torn and ruptured fabric away from the burn. "David, your jacket?"
Wordlessly Sheridan shrugged it off and handed it to her. Dorothy folded it into a rough pad, leaving the sleeves loose, and looked down at Tessa. "I'm sorry, dear, but this is going to hurt quite badly."
"Big change," Tessa gritted. "Ambassador, are you okay? Both of you?"
"We're fine, Ms. Halloran." Sheridan patted her shoulder - a useless gesture, he knew, but one he couldn't not make. He moved to grab her hand as Dorothy pressed the jacket down tightly, then tied the sleeves around her waist to cinch the makeshift bandage tight. Tessa's grip went white-knuckled around Sheridan's hand; he repressed a gulp of pain. Then, finally, it was over, and the grasp eased a little. Tessa blinked, eyes shining with something David would never have called "tears" to her face.
"Not the best thing to do with burns," admitted Dorothy, studying her work, "but that one's bleeding from a major muscle group, and you're going to have to move, dear. We can't stay here."
"I know." With a fierce effort, Tessa actually managed to sit up, though her white face and sharp gasp showed the cost. "I can walk."
"You can stagger with us holding you up," corrected Dorothy, the old I-can't-believe-how-stupid-patients-are snap back in her voice. Tessa blinked at her, and David had to repress a smile. "Come on, up you come - " Together they pulled Tessa to her feet as gently as possible and led her, at a shambling stumble, out the door.
****************
GREY SECTOR
17:37 EST
44 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Corwin finished the last reconnection and slapped the panel closed. "All right, that should do it."
"Do what?" Trish whined, her breath whooshing out in a great cloud. "What the frag was all that for?"
Corwin considered being irritated, then decided he had neither the time nor the energy to bother. Trish had enough excuse for looking miserable, after all; she and Vir had been huddled together for the last few minutes, conserving their body heat in the ever worsening cold. Now that the intense focus of his hasty reprogramming was over, Corwin realized just how bitterly frigid it had actually become, and swallowed. {{God, I've got to get us out of here soon, or we'll all be suffering from multiple-extremity frostbite.}}
"I've rewired this comm nexus so that it can draw power from the emergency batteries," he said. "We'll have to run lines to the nearest tachyon transmitter station - " He tapped the reel of silk-fine molycable at his feet; its near end ran into the guts of the comm nexus. "- but once we do, we can draw enough power to send a tachyon distress pulse."
"Ttttachyon phphphyics was - was never my sssstrong point-t-t," Vir stuttered, teeth chattering, "but won't that tttake a l-l-luh, a luh, a lot of power?"
Corwin had to clench his jaw to keep his own teeth from beginning to chatter. "Vir, if we can't get someone to help us, wasted battery power is going to be the least of our problems. We have - " he checked his link - "forty-four minutes before this entire station goes boom, and if a tachyon pulse can get us help, then I'll gladly waste the goddam power!" He realized he was shouting only when Vir and Trish had begun to back away, and got control of himself with a shudder.
"Thththat...that wasn't what I meant." Vir was a master at incorporating apology into every other conceivable kind of expression, and it was mixed now with genuine worry. "I meant, w-w-would the battttt, the batttt - the reserves have enough power...normally? Tachyon ppppulses take huh-huh-huge amounts of energ-g-gy..."
Corwin slumped. "We should have enough for t-t-t - " Infuriated, he clamped his jaw shut with one hand. "For two...brief...pulses. But we have to get moving now." He hunched up, grabbed his toolkit and the molycable reel, thrust his feet against the floor, and shoved off. His breath plumed behind him like the exhaust of a locomotive as he flew down the passageway, molycable unreeling behind him like fishing line on a rod. After a moment, he heard the grunts of effort that indicated Trish and Vir were following; he didn't look back.
In zero gravity, an object set in motion remained in motion forever. In any zero-g movement within an atmosphere-controlled environment, "forever" was downgraded to "until the friction of the atmosphere itself slows you to a stop." Most starship and station chambers were too small for that; the far wall stopped you before the atmospheric drag could. But this corridor - the central access tube for the zero-g cargo bays of Grey Sector - ran the entire length of the station's spine, a full five miles. Here, you actually did find yourself drifting to a stop every mile or so, even if you used the rungs along the walls to boost your speed to a respectable sprinting pace. Corwin had only done this once before in his time on the station, but he'd noted the way you slowed down as you neared the station's midpoint, and had to boost again.
He was so fixed on waiting for that deceleration that it took him a moment to realize that what was happening was the reverse. Instinctively he threw out a hand, grabbed a sidewall rung and stopped. "What the frag?"
"What's wrong?" Trish hooked an arm around one rung, reluctant to touch the cold plastic with bare hands. "We miss it?"
"No, I - "
"What's that?" Vir's head perked up. Corwin fell silent, as did Trish. Yes, he could hear it now too - a faint creaking noise, vaguely metallic...as if -
Terror sliced through him like a sword of ice. "Oh no!" He spun about in midair and tried to kick back across the corridor. "Both of you, back to the next exit passage! Back to - "
"Lieutenant - "
"I'm not moving 'til I know - "
Both cries, the confused and the angry, died as the creaking suddenly tore upwards along the scales of pitch and volume into a deafening scream. The air of the central corridor, so still and cold, exploded into a howling maelstrom. Trish shrieked, her voice lost beneath the wind, as Vir hurtled by her; she reached out desperately to grab with one hand and caught the edge of his shirt, holding just for a second before her hold on the rungs tore free. Together they spun, feet over head over feet, down the corridor. Corwin was only metres behind them, his hands clutching futilely at the sidewall rungs which had been within his grasp only a moment before.
He knew what had happened. Under the stress of the temperature loss and the strain placed by the slowly decelerating rotating hull, now distributing its dissipating kinetic energy through the rest of the station, one of the aging outer panels must have given way - probably right near a support structure, which had probably twisted to free it. Result: a gaping hull breach right into the central corridor which was now venting air at a horrific rate - and would soon be venting them - into the freezing black vacuum of space.
Corwin decided to scream and was startled to find he'd been doing it already.
****************
GREEN SECTOR
17:40 EST
41 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
For the past twelve minutes - Colin had counted every one with a terrified precision he hadn't been able to shake - he, Lochley, Jamie and Ta'Lon had worked their way methodically out from the rec centre into Green Sector, sending every group of stragglers they encountered back towards the Garden. He had paused several times to try scanning for Zack again (the links were proving useless), but the connection was too tenuous: he had needed quiet and supreme concentration to establish it before, and they had no time to find those commodities again.
He was also running out of energy. Most of the bulkhead doors had slammed shut in reaction to the power loss, and manually undogging each and every door was taking its toll. They had paused for a rest, all of them leaning against the corridor wall, and Colin felt vaguely reassured to note that only the Narn seemed unbowed by the effort they were expending. He could deal with the notion of being outlasted by an alien from a higher-grav world; getting beaten by two fellow humans was somehow a little more ignominious.
It was a remarkably petty thing to worry about, he admitted, but it kept him from worrying about other things. Mostly.
"It's a temporary solution," said Jamie without warning. Her voice sounded hollow in the nearly pitch-black corridor. "We know that. Something must have blown when we lost the connection to Corwin - the jettison circuitry may be down too. This is all just...marking time."
"Should we stop?" said Ta'Lon, with venomous politeness.
Jamie flushed. "Yeah, maybe we should."
"You don't mean that, Jamie." Had Lochley sounded angry a fight might have erupted - Colin could sense that the Ranger's mercurial spirit was juddering painfully between terror and helpless fury, and her temper was only a ventilation of that trapped panic. But the Captain's cool authority gave Jamie nothing to react against. "There's always a chance, and we have to keep going."
"Yeah, I know, I know..." Jamie took a deep breath. "Sometimes that bridge gets pretty freaking busy, you know?"
Lochley looked thoughtful. "This is the bridge you stand on, and nobody passes."
"Dat's de one."
"You know - " Colin could hear the smile in Lochley's voice - "you really aren't like any Ranger I've ever met."
"Oh, you're trying to butter me up now?" Jamie grinned.
The Psi Cop shook his head. As quickly as that, a fight defused, transformed into humour and new hope. Colin knew qualified psychiatric telepaths who couldn't have pulled off that shift as quickly. {{And we go around bragging we're the next step in evolution. Gah.}}
Lochley pushed herself upright and stumbled a little, then frowned and jumped up and down a few times. Ta'Lon watched her. "Is this a new game?"
"Rotation's slowing. We're losing gravity." Lochley straightened her jacket and marched forward past him. "Move carefully, people."
"Always," murmured Colin.
They turned the corridor and found the middle-aged Minbari standing there, as clearly visible as if the space where he stood had been illuminated by some invisible sun. Lochley froze. The spike of shock and fear that came off her ({{fear?}}) was impossible to miss. "Draal!"
"Captain." Draal bowed. "I find you in dire straits, as the saying goes."
"What are you doing here?"
"What can I do?"
And the reaction to that was as strange as the fear had been: a surge of sudden hope, punctured by confusion and dread. Almost as if pushed by the psychic jolt, Colin's mind leapt suddenly to the realization of what they faced - that odd illumination should have given it away instantly, but he'd had other things to think about. "You're a hologram," he blurted.
Draal's forehead wrinkled as if at the raising of a nonexistent eyebrow. "Officer Ferris. Captain Lochley has had several good things to say of you. And a few complaints," he added, as if to mitigate the embarrassed blush Colin could feel coming off the Captain. "You're apparently far too sardonic for anyone's good."
"Um - Draal - " Jamie slipped past Colin and folded her arms, a bright and plastic smile barely masking deep apprehension. "You should maybe not be here, right now, um...company?" She nodded her head towards Colin.
"Wait a moment." Lochley stepped forward and spun Jamie about to face her. "You knew? All along you knew he was here?"
"Knew who was here?" Ta'Lon frowned.
"I wasn't here all along," Draal said plaintively.
Jamie scuffed the floor with one boot. "Sinclair sorta, well, left some letters for a few of us before he left. Just the old-timers...Shival, me, Will and Jen, Lanniel..."
Lochley threw up her hands. "Great. It's good to know once you're out of Earthforce you can blab everything you've learned to an alien military order."
"Not all alien!" Jamie protested.
Ta'Lon looked at Colin. "Do you understand any of this?"
"I could," said Colin pointedly. "If someone would care to explain, a question I should remind everyone I don't actually have to ask and do so as a courtesy?"
Lochley massaged her forehead. "Colin, I'd tell you if I could, but I can't. It's...classified. Let's just say it involves...alien technology."
"And mysteries for which most of your species is not yet ready," added Draal, his voice somber enough to make the statement dead serious. "For which I came to offer... an apology." He sighed, and his broad chest deflated. "Elizabeth, I could do much to save you. I could even save all your people, with some work. But..."
"But what?"
Draal said nothing.
"But you won't?"
"Elizabeth - "
"WHY NOT?!" Only a terrifying control kept the cry from becoming a scream.
"Security, I will guess." It was Ta'Lon who answered; startled, they looked at him. "I too have heard some tales from G'Kar about what exists beneath Epsilon 3. He never knew as much as some others, but word has a way of getting around. And you - " he looked at Draal impassively - "are not yet interested in revealing to anyone that the Great Machine is still active."
Colin blinked, totally lost. Great Machine? For the first time in ages he had to fight down the urge to simply reach into Lochley's head and tear it all free. She would never know, after all...and it was right there, so easily...
"...anything I do to save Babylon 5 will be a revelation of my presence to the galaxy. I cannot hide my actions, or myself. And once the Great Machine is known to exist, it will once again be a battleground for power-hungry species."
"Especially Earthforce generals and Senators who don't trust a Minbari controlling all that power," added Jamie pointedly.
Lochley glared at her. "And you'd die for that secret, Jamie?"
"In a heartbeat." The Ranger never hesitated.
The Captain turned an even angrier glare on Draal. "You'd sacrifice all two hundred and fifty thousand people here to keep your peace from being disturbed?!" she shouted.
Draal seemed to shrink. His unhappy voice, however, did not yield. "To prevent a war, Elizabeth," he said softly. "A war that would kill far more than that. And there would be war. Can you imagine there would not be?"
Lochley slumped against the wall. "I can imagine," she muttered, but there was no conviction left in her voice. Carefully, Colin placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed; after a moment, her hand came up to cover his, squeezing back. His mind whirled.
A Minbari. Controlling a Great Machine. Beneath Epsilon 3. Something with enough power to save Babylon 5... and enough power to drive the galaxy into war over who would possess it.
{{The Corps has got to know about this!}}
"You know that I would help you if I could, Elizabeth." The Minbari had neared, and Colin realized what else betrayed him; he was the one figure in this corridor who gave off no psychic emanations at all. But his face shone with the ache of his helpless pain. "In different circumstances..."
"But the circumstances aren't different, are they?" Lochley sighed, then actually laughed; Colin could feel her pulling herself together, almost literally under his fingers, and he tactfully released her. "The circumstances are never any different."
"No," agreed Draal quietly. "They are not."
"Well, then, get the hell out of my way and let me do my job." Without warning Lochley strode furiously forward and straight through the Minbari. Draal blinked, looking unsettled, then turned to watch her go. Jamie chuckled softly.
Ta'Lon raised an eyeridge. "How rude."
"That, I suspect," said Draal, "was the point."
Jamie unfolded her arms. "Come on, people." She marched forward, more tactfully around Draal, and onwards. Ta'Lon followed with only one backwards glance. Colin shared an indecipherable look with the Minbari before almost running up the corridor after them.
He had to report this. He had to let Psi Corps know about this. As soon as possible. It was his duty to the Corps.
Wasn't it?
****************
GREY SECTOR
17:42 EST
39 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Accelerating all the way and thundering with the screaming roar of depressurization, the freezing gale bore Vir, Corwin, and Trish down the central corridor, tumbling and thumping against the walls, ceiling and floor. Vir's breath had given out from impact and decompression a few seconds ago, silencing his own inaudible screams, and as he spun over and over, dizziness, shock and terror swamped his mind into a black, mindless panic like nothing he'd ever experienced in his life. All of him that was Vir was gone; there was only an animal, a helpless organism caught in the throes of its ultimate fear-survival response, scrabbling for something, anything to cling to in the face of onrushing annihilation. Thought was discarded. Planning was discarded. Dignity was discarded.
Vir tore open his jacket and shirt, yanked up the undervest beneath, and flipped over, moving with a speed and grace he didn't even notice and wouldn't have believed if told of it. Unwinding from his body like organic bullwhips, his telasara lashed out. Two of them managed to whiplash around the siderungs of the wall and hold. Vir jerked to a stop with a jolt that almost tore the telasara from his body, and he screamed in pain.
"VIR!" Trish shrieked.
Instinct, not decision, drove the movement. The remaining telasara, two to each of his companions, struck out to coil around their limbs and clamp tight. Corwin, who'd managed to reach out to grip the tentacles as they came flashing in, swung around and stopped, feet dangling out in front of him as the decompressing wind continued howling down the passageway. Trish was less lucky; Vir's telasara had caught her by the ankle and calf, and she was left suspended in mid-air, unable to bend and pull herself back. Vir could see the leak now, a long, narrow fracture in the hull plating between ceiling and wall, already coated with ice where moisture had condensed and frozen. Air flashed to steam as it poured through the gap, pluming into space like a dragon's jet of fire.
He tried desperately to pull himself towards the rungs, stretching back with his hands for a grip. But with Corwin's and Trish's weight added to his, it was too much. His telasara just weren't strong enough, not against this kind of pressure. Maybe in some palaeolithic era, his tree-swinging ancestors might have managed it - but not him. Not now. He was barely strong enough to hold on against the terrifying suction.
Trish, staring at the fracture, suddenly began to laugh, howling wildly over the noise. "That? None of us could even fit through that!"
"If we freeze or asphyxiate in here, that won't matter!" Corwin shouted. He twisted to look back at Vir. "Vir! Give me your jacket and shirt!"
It was an order, not a request. Vir responded instinctively, too frazzled to care about the skin he was exposing, and yanked the garments off. He leaned down, extending them to Corwin; the lieutenant grabbed them and twisted again, holding them up to flutter in the wind like flags. Carefully, he rolled them into long, narrow lengths of fabric, held them up between his fingers, then cursed. "We need to get closer!"
"CcccLOSER?" Vir yelped.
"Closer?" Trish screamed. "Are you fragging NUTS?"
"It's the only way!" Corwin looked back at Vir, desperation and certainty making bleak lines in his young face. "Vir, take us towards it, a few rungs at a time! Slowly! Now!"
Vir swallowed. His ears popped furiously; the pressure was getting to dangerously low levels. He uncoiled one telasar - a whimper escaped through gritted teeth as the organ left scraps of its delicate skin behind on the freezing metal - reached down, took a firm grip, then let go with the other. The wind smashed them forward perhaps four metres, and they fetched up with another agonizing yank. Vir groaned, but repeated the process. Another icy blast of skin-tearing pain, another burst forward, another muscle-ripping arrest. Again. Again. Vir was reaching down for a fifth time when Corwin raised his voice. "That's enough! There!"
The leak was barely metres away by now. Vir's vision swam. The fracture, blurred and powdery with ice and steamy air, seemed to pulse in and own, slobbering for him. He could feel the grip of his telasara beginning to go. Inch by inch, they slid towards the gap.
Corwin raised the jacket and the shirt, whipping them in the wind to spread them out as far as they would go. And released them.
The garments flew towards the leak, like sails torn free from a ship. They hit the wall, spreading over the gap for a fraction of a second, then slithered inside, sucked through by the horrendous force. The fabric wadded up, crumpling into itself, sweat traces sparkling as the garments froze...and jammed to a stop right in the core of the fracture.
The wind dropped to the barest whisper of sound, the pull on Vir's telasara easing miraculously to the faintest of tugs. Even before it had settled Corwin had somersaulted in mid-air, thrust himself against Vir's grip to break it, and landed on the wall, firmly grasping a side-rung.
"Come on!" he roared. "Let's go!"
Trish broke free, sobbing and gasping, and flailed her way to the rungs beside Corwin. Vir reached down to take hold of the rungs with his hands, letting his abused telasara retract gracefully into his torso with a groan of relief. Corwin had already crabbed along the floor to the nearest main station lock - still, unbelieveably, trailing the reel of molycable - and was undogging the release wheel with the strength of panic, glancing fearfully at the fracture as the fabric began to slip through. The wind was rising again already; Vir could feel it tugging at him once more, a steadily increasing weight. They had seconds at best.
The lock came free. When Corwin opened it, the blast of air that shot up at them was so much warmer than the remaining air of the corridor it almost scalded.
Vir followed the Humans' dive into the passageway as if it was a rabbit hole to Wonderland.
****************
GREEN SECTOR
17:44 EST
37 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Only the sharp senses of the Minbari saved them: Kyrell heard the sudden click and hiss that would have gone unheard by almost everyone else in the group under the deep, massive creaking of the slowing station. But the sound struck shivers along the back edge of his crest, and a moment later, as the faint scent of rotten eggs began to curl into the air, he realized what was happening. "Back!" he shouted. "Everyone who can't breathe a methane atmosphere, back!" He sucked in a breath and held it, already feeling the tickle of an acidic burn in the back of his throat.
Sherann had picked up on the cry instantly, whirling and beginning to shepherd people back along the corridor towards the last bulkhead. Kyrell backed away, eyes flickering back and forth; then, in a flare of sparks, he saw it. Greyish mist foaming from the ventilators of an envirocontrol panel, pouring towards the floor like thick liquid: the byproducts and compounds, including the rotten-egg stench of hydrogen sulfide, typical to methane atmospheres...and toxic to those who, like the Minbari, Centauri and many others, breathed an oxygen atmosphere. It would take time to distribute itself throughout the passageway, but the crowd they had gathered now was too thick to move easily. Under Brettaria's and Sherann's shouted directions, the wanderers backed sluggishly up the corridor as the grey mist boiled towards them. Kyrell felt panic tearing at his throat. The desire to breathe was a knot of pain in his chest.
"Kyrell!" Sherann shouted.
Kyrell saw it at the same moment; they had finally passed beyond reach of a bulkhead. Instantly he dove at it. Sherann's hands landed on the control wheel beside his. Together, with deceptive Minbari strength, they whirled the control to the right. The bulkhead door swung down and slammed shut with a crang.
Kyrell released his breath in a gasp, sucking in cool, clear air, and sagged against the door. Beside him, Sherann reached out to grip his hand. He returned her desperate grasp for a moment, but then made himself let go: moments of intense emotion were all well and good, but there was decorum to think of. If she was reluctant to release his hand - if the darkness in her eyes was something more than shadow and fear - he could not be certain that it meant...
...what?
"How did this happen?" The voice had the sibilance and guttural depth of a reptiloid, and even in the dark it did not take much work to recognize a Drazi silhouette. The draz forced his way to the front of the group and glared at Sherann. Breath rasped around sharp teeth that shone in the blackness. "What was that?"
"I believe, Ktah Vizhak," said Brettaria with a dignity as massive as the rest of her, "that it was a malfunctioning envirocontrol panel. Have we any Gaim here? Or Tancira? They should have no difficulties in proceeding through to correct the situation."
[You are in error,] buzzed the recognizable voice of the Gaim Ambassador's translator, though the Gaim itself did not move to emerge from the crowd. The effect was disconcerting, as though the very shadows about them spoke. [Though this one could reach the panel easily, this one lacks technical training to repair the malfunction.]
At Kyrell's side, Sherann made a soft sound that he was shocked to realize, after a moment, was laughter. "Dammit, Jim," she murmured in a throaty growl that had to be deliberate - it was nothing like her natural voice. "I'm an ambassador, not a technician!"
"What?!" Kyrell kept his voice down but was unable to keep the strangled sound out of it.
"I apologize. A private joke."
"I hardly think this is the time for - "
"Ambassador Sherann!" Vizhak's roar overpowered Kyrell's choked whisper. "How, now, do you propose to take us to the Garden? This is the main exit! We cannot reach another exit point without proceeding halfway around the station - and what guarantees do you have that that exit will not be blocked?"
Sherann hissed under her breath. "I have no guarantees, Vizhak!" she finally flung back at him. "I have done as seemed best at the moment! I could not anticipate this, and if we have to reach the Garden by another route we shall!"
"Shall we?" The Drazi's voice lilted with mockery and scorn. Kyrell stared at him. "You know no more than the rest of us. You are a worker, Sherann! You have no training to command in a crisis!"
"And you do?" Kyrell snapped impulsively.
Vizhak drew himself upright, crest rising, and Kyrell didn't need Sherann's sudden, painful grip on his wrist to tell him he'd made a mistake.
"I," said the Drazi, "am a former hachtarnoth in the Ashvalkhir, the Defenders of the Freehold." Vizhak struck his breast. "I have led ships to war, priestling. I have led the Hunt in the Dro'hannan. What have you led, either of you?"
Kyrell struggled for words. None came.
Vizhak stared him down, then snarled, a hissing sound of deep disgust. He spun. "Follow me," he declared. "I will lead us out of here." He stopped, facing Brettaria, who regarded him with folded arms and a withering glare. "Lady."
Brettaria did not move.
Vizhak bowed, turned the bow into a sweeping step and came up as he moved past her. The crowd shuffled uneasily and began to trail after him. Sherann threw Kyrell an angry, hurt look and ran to catch up. Brettaria stood a moment, sighed, then followed.
Kyrell stood still, as if he'd been slapped.
****************
THE GARDEN
17:46 EST
35 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Two hundred and fifty thousand people.
Zack had always known that was the population of B5, more or less. He also knew what he was looking at here probably wasn't even half that. But the Garden seethed and boiled in the sporadic, harsh light of the floodlamps the Security personnel had set up on tall poles throughout the field. From where Zack stood at their impromptu command centre, he could see the crowd shifting and undulating like a sea of human flesh, a sluggish Sargasso thick with fear and confusion. Away into the distance it stretched, only the barest semblance of order imposed by guards frantically racing back and forth with megaphones, flashlights and authoritative commands.
Thank God they'd chosen a fallow area: all that was being ground into black soil by a hundred thousand pairs of feet, or other ambulatory appendages, were the crushed remains of an already-harvested wheat crop. Had they gathered in a harvesting zone the food resources of the station would have been crippled.
{{Yeah, like you think there's a chance you'll ever eat again?}}
Zack swallowed the terror that had risen in his throat, as he had done every few minutes ever since he'd realized exactly what was happening. It didn't go down easily: it was a lump of dry ice, solid, searing cold, fizzing and crackling in his veins. And every time it went down harder. He hadn't felt this scared since...frag it, he'd never been this scared.
No. Strike that. He had been, once.
Just after the Shadow War, when Ivanova had hauled that gigantic... thing...the Vorlons had made back through the jumpgate - that had scared him like this. Terrified him with the real and certain knowledge of his own death, of a force coming down on him that no defiance could stop, no quick wit or swift dodge could evade. Like a Roman at Pompeii, he thought, remembering faraway school lessons. Seeing Vesuvius vomiting fire and knowing all was lost, yet too hopelessly attached to life to let go of hope and the fear that came with it -
{{Jesus, STOP it!}} Zack lifted the megaphone to his lips as another group of guards ushered a new wave of refugees out of an emergency ladder entrance well. "Okay, take those guys over there!" he bawled.
In the middle of the refugees, Philip Hume glanced around, bent over the burlap sack he cradled. It had once been the shirt of a lurker; the old man would have no further use for it, and Hume needed it to carry what he'd taken from that locker.
B5's security systems were good, but they had never been intended to protect against the very people who had helped design them - and they were a generation or two out of date by now anyway. {{When you run away from home, children,}} Hume thought with a curl of his lip, {{you can't expect all the newest toys any more.}} Breaking into the locker had taken barely thirty seconds. Now, all he needed was to organize a suitable distraction.
"...crisis situation here, you will do as you're told!"
Ah. That sounded promising. Hume moved in the direction of the angry voices and saw Sergeant Satamba just stomping off; a young man - stubbled, bristle-haired, clad in worn denim and leather - stared after him in resentment that only thinly masked his terror. Hume smiled. {{Perfect.}}
"What was that about?"
The young man started, then slumped. "Jarhead thinks he can order us around like it's a concentration camp," he muttered. "How many they gonna save, if they can? You think the uniforms'll take street crap like us?"
"Then maybe you should make sure they can't leave you out."
"Yeah, how?"
"With this."
The young man's breath stopped. He stared down at what Hume had just put in his hand. "Man, I - no, man, I don't - "
"Do you want to die here?" Hume snapped. "I don't. They know what they're doing. They'll let us all fry. I'm not gonna let that happen. Neither are the others."
"The others?" The young man gaped at him, almost hypnotized.
"You'll know it, when we act. Can I count on you?" Hume held his gaze.
"I..." The young man moistened his lips. "Yeah. Sure."
Hume smiled and moved on.
"GLENN!"
Satamba whirled at the shout; a moment later, he was shoving his way blindly through the crowd, ignoring all the cries, until Miriam was in his arms. He swung her around, Akili and Jojo jumping in to grab him as well. When he set Miriam down, she staggered. "Are you all right?" he gasped.
"I'm fine, I'm fine, we're all fine." Miriam smiled breathlessly, knelt down to hug Jojo and Akili to her as if afraid they'd go hurtling off like rogue planets, then stood again. "What's happening, Glenn? What's going on?"
Staring into her eyes, Glenn's voice died.
{{"I'm sorry, honey, but this is just to make people think we're doing something, it's not actually any use. Because we're dealing with a runaway fusion reactor and if we can't figure out how to jettison it in thirty minutes - or unless our Captain comes up with a miracle - we're all dead."}}
He couldn't say that to her.
So he smiled, as if nothing in the world was wrong. "The reactor's down, honey, there was a power surge. They're trying to get the power on line right now. We shouldn't have anything to - "
"They're gonna let us all die!" screamed a male voice, somewhere in the middle of the crowd. "Frag 'em! Frag 'em all!"
PPG fire erupted, blazing across the Garden. Screams surged up from the whickering weapon like a tidal wave rippling out from a meteor impact. And then, impossibly, there was more fire, from another point - and more! Blasting out in wild, random directions, the plasma bolts tore into the crowd. A wavefront of panic crashed across the mob as people began to scream and run.
Glenn's hand shot out and he grabbed up Akili; the little girl screamed as he flung her over one shoulder. "Daddy!" she wailed.
"Sweetheart, Daddy loves you, but shut up!" He turned to Miriam,
who had grabbed Jojo and was cradling the bawling boy in her arms, her eyes wide. "Follow me! Stay behind me!" He drew his PPG and began bulling his way through the crowd, using his sheer mass to smash a path through the mob. Like a quarterback trailing a blocker, Miriam followed.
"Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!" Zack dropped the rangescope on his rifle, face drawn with fury and despair. He didn't know where the weapons had come from, but somebody had seeded this crowd with the equivalent of gunpowder and then touched off a spark. He raised the megaphone to bellow. "All guards, seal the exits, don't let them get out, use whatever force you have to but stop those shooters!" He flung down the megaphone and grabbed his rifle back up, putting his eye to the rangescope once more. {{Okay. First one, there he is... gotcha.}} He fired.
The shooter dropped, a black hole trailing steam from his chest. Zack closed his eyes in pain. But they had no time for anything else, they were under martial law, and he had to stop this. He made himself open his eyes again and resighted on the next victim.
Near a locked door into one of the rec centres, Hume surveyed the chaos with satisfaction. Perfect. No security guard would leave this for more than twenty minutes at least. And that was all the time he would need.
He ran a skeleton key over the mag-locked door; the ESI's override signal registered smoothly, and the lock clicked from red to green. Silently, Hume slipped inside, locked the doors behind him, then headed for the stairwell down into the other sectors of the station.
****************
GREY SECTOR, SECTION 92
17:48 EST
33 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
As they climbed the emergency ladder, Trish swallowed several times, trying to dispel the ringing in her ears and the churning in her stomach. Neither obliged her by disappearing. She had to slow for a moment to get her whirling skull under control.
"I can't believe it worked," muttered Vir, sounding dazed.
"It's probably blown again by now." Corwin shrugged. "But let me tell you, I'm damned grateful you're not a Minbari, Vir."
"Hah?"
"Minbari don't sweat the way Centauri or humans do. It was the ice crystals that the sweat turned into that solidified the fabric long enough. Otherwise, odds are good it would have just gone straight through, and we'd have followed them pretty shortly..." He slowed, looking down at Trish with concern. "Trish? You OK?"
Angrily Trish swatted at her own face. "I'm fine," she snapped. She didn't know what was making her want to cry more the narrow escape they'd just had, everything that was happening, the fact she was letting it get to her, or the fact that someone was actually worried about her because of it. Nobody ever worried about her except Selene, and that didn't count because Selene was her sister, it came with the job description. Maybe Taan, but he was a Drazi, he was hard to read anyway and why was she even thinking about this? "I'm fine," she called up again.
Corwin sighed. "Okay. Come on." He resumed climbing. Vir said nothing - her voice seemed to have reminded him he was half-naked in the presence of a female, and he'd turned bright red. His tentacles were clenched tightly to his side, almost but not quite invisible against the blush colouring his torso, and as he climbed he was hunching his head like a turtle trying to disappear inside its shell.
Trish considered telling him not to worry - she'd seen too much in her time at the Dark Star to be embarrassed by one seminude Centauri - but if Corwin didn't know enough about Centauri physiognomy to realize Vir felt pretty much exactly like Corwin would if he lost both trousers and underpants in public, Trish wasn't going to bother letting that slip through a useless reassurance.
"Here we are - Level 19." Corwin slid off the ladder, hauled around the release wheel and swung back the bulkhead door. "There should be a working tachyon station down this way."
"Where're we getting the power?"
"Operating power, from here." Corwin slapped his tool bag as they slipped into the black, empty corridor and hurried down it. Their breath was misting again as the slow decline in heat continued, but compared to the arctic air they'd escaped from, it felt balmy. "The cells I've got here should get it up and running for a few minutes. Just long enough to hook into the life-support battery and fire off our pulses."
"Great Maker," mumbled Vir, his arms wrapped around his torso as if to hide his tentacles, "please let there be a ship nearby."
"Yeah, like one ship could clear the whole station in time," Trish grumbled.
"No, but there are other options. There!" Corwin increased his pace to a run and closed the distance to a panel with weakly flickering lights. He dropped to his knees, tore open the maintenance panel, scrabbled through his bag, then came up with a couple of short heavy cylinders and slapped them into the guts of the tachyon station. The screen lit up, every light coming on line. "Now, let's see what we can see..." He ran a quick diagnostic.
"Do we have time for this? Send the damn signal and let's get to the Garden!" Trish urged. She looked around nervously. God, but she hated the dark. Despite - or perhaps because of - all the time she'd spent as a semi-lurker, she absolutely hated the dark. And the quiet. She had thought the noise of the Dark Star was abhorrent, but compared to this deadly, sickening silence....
"Hey!" Corwin stiffened.
"What is it?" said Vir.
"The detonation charges are still intact!"
"Big deal." Trish cupped her elbows in her hands, shivering. "What good's that without an arming signal? You told us the triggering circuitry was fried."
"It is. But if we could get someone down to the actual charges, outside the reactor at the tail end of the station, they could trigger and detonate them manually!" He finished punching in his commands, pulled out a molecular separator, sliced off the molycable and wound it into the powerpoints. "Okay, folks, here we go - " He hit EXECUTE. A sine wave pattern flickered across the screen.
Then the station died.
In the silence, for a moment, there was nothing. Then the slow sound of clapping, heavy with a bitterness too profound for sarcasm.
"Brah-voh," Trish drawled.
"Wait." Corwin's voice was utterly unfazed.
Trish's sardonic applause faltered, faded.
A hum stirred weakly to life. The screen came alight, words flickering across it.
TACHYON SCAN PULSE SENT
NO SHIPS DETECTED WITHIN RANGE
Corwin slumped with an outrush of breath. "Frag it," he muttered, and hit EXECUTE again. The blackness came down once more, held for a few moments, then retreated. New words flickered across the screen.
DISTRESS CALL SENT
POWER CONSUMPTION INDICATES 49 MINUTES REMAINING
TO EMERGENCY LIFE SUPPORT BATTERIES
"Forty-nine minutes!" Vir stuttered, shocked out of his humiliated silence. "Lieutenant, if we only have forty-nine minutes - "
"If something doesn't get here to help us in thirty-two minutes, Vir," Corwin cut him off, "we're going to be far beyond worrying about battery power shortage."
"How far beyond?"
"About the distance from here to Epsilon 3."
"Ah."
****************
BROWN SECTOR, SECTION 15
17:49 EST
32 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Jaida regarded the blank wall before them pensively. To either side, the passage stretched away in a T-junction, but there was no hint of the ongoing corridor the girls had promised led straight to the Garden. "I'm sure this wasn't here the last time I came this way," she said at length.
Selene sighed and rolled her eyes. "You just can't ever admit it, can you? Why can't you just say it? Admit it. We're lost."
"We're not lost. I just don't know where we've found ourselves."
"That's what lost means."
Lilian, who had had to tune out the screams of the dying and the sounds of a war zone, nonetheless had to grit her teeth to block out the girls as, still bickering, they turned and went down the left passage. G'Stral knelt across from her as she bent over the Narn woman; only his worried, reddish-violet eyes, so adult and yet so young in his narrow face, gave her something to cling to. The Narn woman groaned, writhing on the floor between them; a low, tortured sound.
"Not long now, is it." G'Stral murmured it for her ears alone.
Lilian bit her lip, then shook her head.
G'Stral stared down at the woman, his jaw tightening, relaxing, tightening, relaxing. Then he looked up at Lilian. "You got anything in that bag that can put me into nursing mode? A hormone injection or anything?"
"You can't - " Lilian swallowed her protest. At the rate they were going, G'Stral might very well have to; she didn't expect to be able to get this woman to an incubator in the next thirty minutes. "I could give you the appropriate hormones," she said instead. "But - G'Stral, I'm sorry, I have to ask you this: have you ever mated?"
G'Stral's jaw worked. "No," was all he said after a few seconds.
"Then your reaction to the hormones will most likely be extremely traumatic." Lilian sighed. "Without the pheromonal and glandular reactions produced by a true mating, your system won't be prepared for the hormonal influx or for the adjustments in your biochemistry. You could experience anything from nausea to extreme pain, possible synaesthesia, dangerous blood pressure - "
G'Stral cut her off. "Would it work?"
Lilian's automatic {{No}}} died in another painful groan from the Narn woman. She closed her eyes and admitted the truth. "Maybe."
"Then we're gonna have to try it."
Lilian let her breath out in a despairing sigh. "All right." She bent over her bag. "We'll need a combination of s'harratol, m'reskhadine - probably some g'vraja'ile - "
"DOCTOR!"
G'Stral and Lilian leapt upright, twisting around to see Jaida and Selene tearing back down the corridor towards them. Behind them, light and noise swelled, flickering and roaring: the sound they'd heard before, the sound of a terrified mob. But there was an ugliness to this roar, fear sublimated into rage; and as Lilian dropped down to try hauling the Narn woman to her feet, she saw the crowd's faces: dirty features representing half a dozen species, backlit and hollowed by candles and weakly flickering lanterns, eyes and other sensory organs glittering with terror and hunger and hatred. They came boiling towards the little group of five wanderers like a tide made of acid, frothing with destruction.
Without hesitating G'Stral drew his PPG, charged it and fired four shots straight across the corridor floor at their feet. With screams and howls the mob slowed, staring hungrily at them as G'Stral held the PPG absolutely level, arm straight out. "Doc!" he shouted. "Come on!"
Obscenities bubbled from the crowd, oaths and curses in twenty different languages. Lilian shook her head and bent again, the Narn hanging limply against her, to get her bag.
Something struck her on the temple and everything went black.
G'Stral realized his fatal mistake half a second after he'd made it - just half a second too late to take it back. He'd turned to check on Lilian...and taken his eyes off the mob.
Stones, pots, broken lanterns and dozens of other objects came flashing out of the crowd, hurled by furious and crazed strength. That very madness, and the crowding, ruined most of the lurkers' aim, but a broken chunk of hull-plating had knocked Lilian senseless to the deck. Another one crashed against his shoulder, staggering him; his arm flailed skyward, the PPG pointed harmlessly at the ceiling. Before he could regain his balance, the lurkers rushed him.
As the crowd surged over them, he heard Jaida and Selene begin to scream.
****************** Act Three *****************
BROWN SECTOR, SECTION 15
17:50 EST
31 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
The tide of human flesh bore G'Stral against the wall, crushed Jaida and Selene against his sides and trampled over the unconscious bodies of Lilian and the labouring Narn woman. And G'Stral, feeling the maddened, berserking hands tearing at him, striking blows he barely felt through the panic of terror and adrenaline, cast wildly around for some way, any way out.
He saw the figure on the far side of the mob with a surge of unconscious recognition he could see no face, could not even make out its true shape, but something about it was familiar. With no more than that fleeting half-conscious perception, G'Stral, in a split second, made the decision that would eventually change the course of his life.
He screamed something he had not said in over ten years:
"HELP!"
And with a flailing twist of his arm he hurled the PPG over the heads of the crowd towards the dim figure. A slim, elegant hand plucked it out of midair; the other hand came up to charge it even as the muzzle came down. The gun levelled itself at the mob -
-- then was pulled back to point at the ceiling.
Sickened, G'Stral dropped down to cover Jaida and Selene with his body, feeling them shriek and writhe in an attempt to escape. He ignored them, back and hide numbing from the ceaseless pounding of blows upon his jumpsuit. So far nobody had managed the coherence to pull a knife, but any second now someone would get through. He closed his eyes, cursing sulfurously, and braced himself for the end. Of all the fragging stupid ways to die -
PPG fire whickered into the ceiling. A voice screamed in a high feminine pitch, cutting through the screams of the mob like a laser torch through cardboard. "STOP IT, ALL OF YOU! STOP!" More PPG fire, and G'Stral felt the blows on his back ease. The pressure of the crowd fell away, the blows slackening, stopping. G'Stral heard the grunts and gasps of blows striking stomachs, punching and shoving bodies to either side. He risked opening one eye.
Just before him, a slim leg ended in a brown but well-tooled leather boot.
He knew those boots.
Oh, no.
"You know me, all of you." Standing above him, Lyndisty Marrago held up both hands, empty now as she faced the crowd. Several of the lurkers had been downed, lying wrapped around themselves in various states of windedness or pain - the Centauri girl might not have used the PPG to clear her way here, but there was no doubt she was just as deadly, weapons or bare hands, as the rumours had painted her. He wondered what she'd done with his PPG. G'Lan, but that was the second weapon he'd lost in six months!
"You know who I am," Lyndisty went on. "I know who you are! Marek - " She snapped her wide, brilliant eyes to a grizzled, grey-haired man in the front rank of lurkers; he cringed back as if physically struck. "Do you not know what you are doing? Don't you realize that these are children?"
She tapped G'Stral with her heel, a quick, imperious kick. Smoldering, G'Stral nonetheless made himself uncurl, revealing the huddled forms of Jaida and Selene. They stared at the crowd, frozen, and the lurkers stared back as if it was the first time they'd really seen them. G'Stral stood with a groan, twisting his joints and limbs in an effort to work the bruised pain out of them. Marek watched him with eyes that mingled suspicion and shame.
Lyndisty's gaze dropped to the floor. With a muttered curse she pushed her way into the crowd of lurkers, sweeping them to either side as if parting a sea with her bare hands. She knelt to pick up Lilian, cradling her in her arms with startling strength. G'Stral looked again at the downed lurkers. This was the woman who was running a service station for the lurkers? This small, slight figure who looked like a lost waif, who could carry a grown woman without visible strain?
"You know Dr. Hobbs," Lyndisty hissed, and such was the angry disappointment in that sound that the lurkers actually shuffled back a few steps. Jaida and Selene pressed themselves close against G'Stral; disconcerted, he didn't even try to push them away. "Are you so terrified by a little darkness you would hurt the one who has done so much for you? Are you so lost you would kill the helpless just to convince yourself you are not helpless? Have you all forgotten who you are?"
In Lyndisty's arms, Lilian stirred and groaned. Lyndisty let the doctor down, balancing her on her legs until Lilian roused. She blinked hazily at the Centauri girl. "Lyn... Lyndisty?" she whispered.
"Yes, Doctor."
"What are you... what are you doing here?"
"I believe the human phrase is 'saving your ass'."
G'Stral ground his teeth.
"Can you stand?" Lyndisty lightened her hold, then rapidly tightened it again as Lilian swayed. Her lips thinned. "Never mind. I see you cannot."
Lilian pressed a hand to her scalp, where blood was trickling down in a dark stream, then to her throat. "...think it may be a...a mild concussion." She tried to push herself away. "I can walk, dammit...don't need to be carried..."
"Certainly, Doctor." But Lyndisty didn't move, keeping one arm around the human woman's waist. Her eyes found G'Stral's. "G'Stral? Can you assist Tru'Siel?" With one foot, she tapped the arm of the unconscious Narn woman.
"You know her?"
"Strange as it may sound, G'Stral, I do know people on this station that you do not." Lyndisty's voice sharpened with impatience. "Just as I am sure you know people I do not. Now shall we go?"
"Go where?" Selene's voice was small.
"To the Garden. I have encountered Rangers and other station personnel who are sending everyone there, however they can. If there are medical resources left anywhere on the station, it will be there."
G'Stral took a deep, shuddering breath. To be rescued by a Centauri, and then to be lectured by one... and by this Centauri - but no; it would have to wait. There was no time now. He would figure out a way to repay Lyndisty Marrago for putting him through this later.
For the moment, all he did was to bend, wordlessly, and gather up the Narn woman - Tru'Siel - in his arms. With a jerk of his head, he indicated the left junction. "That way."
****************
GREEN SECTOR
17:52 EST
29 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Sherann of Rhell did not normally think of herself as a vindictive person, but she was unable to repress the surge of satisfaction she felt when Vizhak - visibly more and more disoriented by the moment - finally led the gathering of refugees to a bulkhead door he did not even recognize as the one that had thwarted them ten minutes ago. Only when Brettaria cleared her throat and murmured something indistinguishable yet acid-sounding to him did Vizhak leave off trying to undog the manual lock, and Sherann saw the scales on his neck ripple with anger. His nostrils flared with a furious hiss of breath.
[To be a hachtarnoth of the Ashvalkhir,] the Gaim ambassador observed in its buzzy translator voice, [apparently endows one not with a sense of direction.]
Vizhak whirled, snarling, but froze as Sherann reached forward to touch his arm. Behind her, she heard a stifled gasp: Kyrell, reacting to the breach of protocol involved in a Federation Ambassador actually touching without permission the Ambassador of a Younger Race. But, mercifully, he had the good sense to say nothing.
"If life support is as damaged or as nonoperational as it seems," said Sherann in a low voice, but one pitched to carry, "then we could not have made it to another passage in time anyway. We will have to find a way through this one."
"And how do you propose we do that?" Vizhak growled.
Sherann's urge to smile died. She'd been thinking about that precise question nonstop for the past ten minutes, in fact, and the only answer she'd been able to come up with was not one she liked at all. But they were running out of time and choices.
"I have some knowledge of environmental systems," she said quietly. "And Minbari can hold their breath for several minutes at a time and remain functional. I believe I can survive the toxic atmosphere until I have reached the backup envirocontrol panel, and there I can reprogram the support systems to inject an oxygen atmosphere."
A horrified gasp. "Sherann, no!" And Kyrell actually grabbed her from behind, spinning her around; Sherann almost wanted to laugh at the look on his face. She'd been wondering what it took to crack that shell of reserve he'd somehow developed since she'd last seen him, three cycles ago. "What if you can't reach the panel in time, or it fails to function? You'll kill yourself! And we'll have to seal the door behind you, we won't even know if you succeed or not - "
"Kyrell - "
"You cannot do this. I can't let you do this - "
"Kyrell!" The shout, angrier than she had ever used with him, stopped him like a slap; she had to bite back an urge to apologize at the numb look of surprised hurt blossoming in his eyes. But there was no time for this. "We have no other choice, Kyrell. There is no time to find another route. There is no other route. If we are to get to safety this must be done." She leaned in, touching her forehead to his, trying to show in her eyes the love she knew she could not allow in her voice. "Would you put everyone at risk to give one person a mere illusion of safety? Even me?"
"Sherann, I love you - "
Kyrell's voice stopped, as if he had shocked himself at the outburst. Sherann felt a little poleaxed herself. Kyrell's mouth worked, as if he was struggling for something more to say and couldn't find it. Something twisted in Sherann's breast.
But there was no time.
"I know," she whispered, and kissed him lightly on the lips, once. Then, smoothly, she stepped back - Kyrell stumbled a little - and turned to the bulkhead control wheel, hauling it counterclockwise with smooth, strong movements.
"What are you doing, young lady?" Her voice stern but not chilly, Brettaria might have been reproving a young niece found making mud pies in her best dress.
"What I said I would do," muttered Sherann. Now that the moment was upon her she was feeling unaccountably cold. Life support hadn't dropped that much. "I was under the impression that was still a virtue, even in Centauri circles."
"Foolishness is a virtue nowhere, young Sherann." The Centauri matron's voice hardened to a whipcrack. "Vizhak. Go with her."
"Lady?" Vizhak sounded floored.
"Backup, Vizhak, backup! Or are you military men calling it something else these days? Alone, she stands even less of a chance!"
Sherann paused as she completed the final turn of the unlocking wheel, casting a glance over her shoulder. Vizhak stood, irresolute. Then his eyes caught hers.
Enough.
"Back away, all of you." Sherann raised her voice to carry, and the crowd shuffled clear. Sherann sucked in a breath and hauled the door open.
The air that spilled over her was no warmer than that outside, but fire immediately began to sting in her eyes, and the corridor blurred in a wash of tears. Sherann ignored it, squinting her eyes almost shut, and leapt in, hauling the door closed. Vizhak vaulted in behind her just before the bulkhead slammed to, his quick reptilian movements unslowed by age. Together they sprinted down the passageway to the panel at the far end, its lights flickering erratically. Sherann dropped to her knees, where, underneath the main panel, a smooth pane of metal waited beneath a tiny keypad. She punched in the safety code issued to those with Ambassador-level clearance or above, and slid back the metal panel.
The controls within, a sparser, more pared-down version of the broken panel above, were dark and dead.
Vizhak elbowed her aside. From a compartment inside the panel's cubicle, he pulled down a magnodrill and spun out the tiny fasteners holding the controls in place. Sherann lost sight of them instantly in the dark, blurry nothingness of her vision. She could barely make out the control panel as Vizhak lifted it out of its frame and handed it to her, opticables trailing like muscle fibres from a surgically detached piece of skin. Tears trickled down his snout as he jabbed an angry finger at the controls, twiddling his talons as if manipulating something. Sherann understood. Bending close to make out the manual controls, she began setting them to the correct levels.
Oxygen: 21%.
Her gut was clenched now, everything from her belly to her throat twisted in a tight lock of dizziness and pain.
Nitrogen: 77%.
A light, swimming feeling was bathing her brain, a seductive, relaxing warmth that blotted out thought.
Helium: 0%. Hydrogen: 0%. Nobles: 0%.
Her hand fluttered over the panel, skin numb. Her torso felt as if it was a giant rag, twisted and being wrung slowly inwards, her ribs creaking under the pressure. But she knew there was something else she was forgetting, even as blackness slipped stealthily in from all sides. One other control...one other setting. Vizhak had gathered two cables in his hands and was tugging, snapping one free from its bindings to make them reach one another. With unsteady movements he tried to mate them.
Sherann's eyes shot open. She gasped, in pure reflexive shock, and doubled over gagging as her chest filled with fire, but got out the word:
"Methane!"
She thumped feebly at her panel, unable to control her movements, but Vizhak understood. He dropped the cables, grabbed up the panel and set the methane gauge to 0%, then picked up the cables again. He brought them close to his mouth, expelled the last of his breath in a heaving puff around the cable-heads - surrounding the opticables with inert carbon dioxide for the second of their connection - and locked them together.
The panel in Sherann's hands lit up. Cold air blasted down on them from the vents. Sherann sucked in the life-giving oxygen with a gasp, then jackknifed again, hacking and coughing. The sputum tasted coppery; she could not see the blood in the darkness, but knew it was there. Bit by bit, the spasms eased as Vizhak held her.
She dared a look up, to meet an unreadable expression.
****************
BROWN SECTOR
17:55 EST
26 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Tessa Halloran was no stranger to pain, but the past couple of years had dulled her acquaintance with it somewhat. She hadn't been seriously injured since well before the end of 2261 - and the human mind being the wonderful protective mechanism that it was, she'd forgotten just how badly pain hurt. Dorothy Sheridan's unexpectedly strong support was helping, but not enough. Every step, as they hobbled along the corridor, sent lances of fire through her side and chest.
Far worse, though, was the pain of knowing what she knew. Knowing what she couldn't tell anyone else.
Knowing that she'd failed.
She hadn't realized that she'd begun to weep until Dorothy stopped moving. "David," she called, her voice low but urgent.
From where he was scouting ahead, Tessa's PPG in hand, Sheridan came loping back, eyes flickering around the corridor with an alertness Tessa would have far more expected of his son. Then again, she supposed muzzily, John Sheridan had to get it from somewhere. She wasn't aware of much as Dorothy lowered her to the floor: just the pain in her side, and the harsher pain in her chest that was matched now by a sore thickness in her throat. I will not cry. Dammit, I will not.
Dorothy touched her forehead, then exchanged a worried frown with her husband. "She's burning up," she muttered. "We have to get her to some proper medical facilities soon, David."
"Medlab's probably out," said Sheridan pensively, kneeling beside his wife. "My guess is most of the major facilities remaining will be in the Garden. If we can get down to the next section, we should be able to get up into the Garden through one of the emergency access ladders."
"No transport tubes?"
"Highly doubt any are functioning, m'dear."
"He won't be going for the Garden," muttered Tessa. Strangely, the pain was beginning to ease; she felt warm, relaxed. "Not Hume. He'll have an escape plan. He always goes out the back." As if from a long way away, she saw Dorothy and David shoot quick looks at one another. "Ten to one...someone's coming to pick him up..."
"Someone?" It was David Sheridan's voice and yet it wasn't: serious, intent, the midwestern twang had faded. "Who would this someone be, Theresa?"
"Forces unknown..." Her head felt so heavy; it was far easier to let it fall back against the wall, let the cold metal hold it up. "I'm tellin' this all wrong. I gotta start at the start."
"David, she's becoming delirious - "
"Not delirious!" Tessa waved a peevish hand at Dorothy. She squinted at Sheridan. "Sheridan...you're Ambassador to ISA. From EA. Something. Somebody should know. 'Case I don't...don't make it."
"That's enough of that kind of talk, young lady." A cool hand massaged Tessa's forehead, and she smiled, leaning into it. "You will be all right."
"Yeahssure. And there really is a Sanna Claus..." Tessa took a deep breath, fighting for clarity. "President Luchenko came to the ISA early this year. Said the ESI had turned up some ... some patterns, when they were doin' their last purges of all the Clark-regime loyalists. Some records and contacts they couldn't trace. Out-Alliance comm links." She put a hand to her side, which felt dry and hot, and jerked back at the pain. "Sheridan sent me the data, told me to keep an eye out. One of the names on that list...was the guy who held you hostage. Hume. Philip. Hume." She relaxed, feeling dim and disconnected. There. She'd gotten it out.
"That's why someone's coming to pick him up?" David sounded perplexed.
Oh, crap. Of course. Her hazy euphoria drowned in a sudden surge of misery. "Has to be. And if I'd had...half a brain I'd have prepared for it."
"I'm not following you, dear." Dorothy, this time. "Are you saying you weren't ready for this man Hume?"
"No, no, no..." Why weren't they listening? "Wasn't ready for his...backup. Thought it was just ESI paranoia. Didn't trust the Earthers to do a decent job...thought Hume was just a rogue running for cover. Thought he'd run out of places to run. Should've listened, dammit, I should have listened..." Her face screwed up and she felt herself beginning to cry. The sobs echoed loudly down the corridor.
"Oh, dear, oh please, no, you can't blame yourself..." Dorothy moved to sit on Tessa's unwounded side and slid a careful arm around her shoulders. "You did what you thought was the best possible thing at the time, you're in pain, you're not thinking clearly. Once we get you to a doctor, you'll see it was all for the best." She cast an intense look at David, who nodded worriedly and ducked to get his shoulder under Tessa's other arm; Dorothy shifted her grip. "Now come on, let's just get you upright - "
They lifted her as smoothly as possible, but the shock of pain still tore through Tessa's haze and shocked her back into something approaching clarity. For a few moments she hurt too much to think. When she came back to herself again they were in one of the central Brown Sector corridors, a passage already laid waste with abandoned possessions and garbage. The walls were scored with graffiti and broken panelling.
"Where are we?" she mumbled.
"Feeling more like ourselves, Ms. Halloran?" For all his avuncular tone, Tessa couldn't help but notice that he held the PPG in a very professional grip. "We're not far from the Garden. This is the most direct route I could find - shouldn't be long now before we're safe."
Something about the words tugged at Tessa. She scowled, trying to think. The Garden. Safety. The route -
The most direct route.
In her memory she heard her mentor, imparting hard-edged lessons once again: Never take the most direct route anywhere...unless you're going to trap it for those coming after you.
Oh, crap.
"David, no, wait -" she began.
On the wall ahead, a life support panel blew out with a blast of flame and sparks - far too much energy to be purely a set of blown circuits. Burning material scattered across the corridor trash, which flared up entirely too quickly. As smoke poured into the air a metallic screeching sound cut across the sudden hungry crackle of flame: Dorothy whirled, dragging Tessa with her, to see an emergency bulkhead come down and slam shut behind them. At the other end of the corridor section, David shouted a blistering oath Tessa would never have suspected him of knowing as a second bulkhead swung shut and sealed.
"Son of a bitch," muttered Dorothy, and Tessa felt the strongest urge to laugh.
****************
GREEN SECTOR, GARDEN ENTRANCE
17:56 EST
25 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Those Narns who followed G'Quon or his disciple G'Lan often made a virtue out of showing off their emotions - of being open and honest, as G'Quon had taught. G'Kar had certainly been known for that trait, as had Warleader G'Sten before he'd been killed in the last battle with the Shadow-Centauri alliance. Whether you considered it charming openness or histrionic theatricality depended largely on your attitude towards such displays, and on the Narn himself or herself.
Ta'Kor, on the other hand, had taught the virtues of a stringent control of your body, your mind, and your emotions. There was nothing wrong with feeling passion, but allowing it to affect your capacity to act - either through the shameless distraction of theatrics or through genuine incapacity - was foolishness at best, self-destructive at worst. Hence, those who followed Ta'Kor's ministries, and took his Patron-name - like Ta'Lon - made at least a nominal virtue of impassivity; which, for Ta'Lon, was as much about the subtle but real advantage gained by discomfiting others, as much as it was any belief in the objective value of self-control.
Still, even he was hard-pressed to keep any sense of calm when he, Captain Lochley, Colin Ferris and Jamie Pratchett managed to undo the last safety barrier and almost got swamped by a horde of screaming, fleeing citizens. At least, Ta'Lon assumed they were citizens; he didn't see much beside the door swinging back and then a flood of people disgorging like water from a high-pressure hose. Over the sound of their screams, as Ta'Lon slammed himself against the wall out of their way, the Narn Ambassador could hear the sound of PPG fire echoing in the open space of the Garden.
"What the frag?!" Lochley shouted.
"I can see PPG fire!" cried Jamie, pressed up against the wall beside the Captain. "It's coming from the Diplomatic Compound - there are Security men all around it!" Her eyes narrowed. "There are others in the crowd not many and people are down!" Her voice darkened. "People are down everywhere!"
"That's it, we're shutting this down - " Lochley shoved her way into the crowd, bulling her way into the flow on sheer guts and anger. "THIS IS CAPTAIN ELIZABETH LOCHLEY!" she bellowed at the top of her lungs, and so loud was the cry that the crowd actually began to slow, people spinning in bewilderment to see who had shouted. "THIS IS THE CAPTAIN OF BABYLON 5, AND I AM ORDERING YOU ALL TO HALT NOW!"
Around her, in a slow spiral, bafflement turned to awe and then to sudden hope. Out of the moiling confusion rose whispers, swelling to shouts: "...the Captain..." "...the Captain!" "The Captain!" Ta'Lon stared, mouth open.
"All of you, stay here, stand still!" Lochley forged forward into the crowd, paused, then turned to Jamie. "Anla'shok Pratchett! I could use a hand here?"
Jamie grinned. "How about a leg?" She slid sideways towards Lochley, then ducked down; Ta'Lon saw Lochley bite back on a startled yelp as Jamie rose, balancing her neatly on her shoulders. "Howzat?"
"This is hardly dignified," complained Lochley.
"Hey, it gives you the height intimidation advantage. Don't bitch." Teetering only slightly, the two women turned and began plowing ahead into the Garden. "Liz, you better duck - " They dipped neatly under the overhead edge of the bulkhead door.
Ta'Lon looked at Colin...and raised an eyeridge as he saw the human telepath open his eyes slowly, clearly coming out of a psionic trance. He glanced at the dazed crowd staring after Jamie and Lochley, put two and two together, and indicated them with a nod of his head. "Your work?"
Colin shook himself with a deep breath. "Just a natural augmentation of the charisma and command skills the Captain already possesses," he murmured back. "Technically, it's not a scan or a dominating influence, just supporting the actions of someone else. Hence, no broken laws."
"Then I suggest we continue to provide that support."
"An excellent idea, Ambassador."
"I am pleased you think so, Officer."
It was like watching red dye diffuse into a tank of clear water...or like watching clarity diffuse, somehow, into a tank of blood. From where the Captain moved, borne atop the Val'na of the Babylon 5 Anla'shok, ripples of stillness and awe spread out. Moving at the side of both women, Ta'Lon added his voice to the call for order, shifting through various languages to calm the Narns and the other aliens. His eyes flickered around the crowd, watching, watching
"Captain! Down!" he shouted.
Jamie dropped to her knees, pulling Lochley down and out of the line of fire as the PPG bolt shot through the space her head had occupied. Colin straightened, eyes blazing as he found the shooter: a ragged youth some ten metres away, face crazed with fear. A second later the boy's face went blank, his eyes rolled up and he collapsed.
I rather doubt that broke no laws, Ta'Lon mused, but he kept the thought to himself. Strictly speaking, under martial law - which this most certainly could be considered - the rights to be free from undue telepathic interference were suspended along with most other civil rights. Still, he doubted Colin had acted with such considerations in mind. He had simply seen danger to the Captain...and he had acted. Instinctively.
Furiously.
Protectively.
Ta'Lon was not sure what that meant. But as the riot began dying, and security guards moved from trying to control the crowd to pinning down and isolating the Diplomatic Compound, he wondered exactly how far Colin Ferris would be willing to go for Captain Elizabeth Lochley...and how far they had already gone together.
****************
BROWN SECTOR, GARDEN ENTRANCE
17:58 EST
23 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
"Wait." Trish paused. "Is it warmer in here?"
Corwin shrugged. "We're getting closer to the centre of the station; we should only be a few more minutes from the Garden. Once I can confer directly with the Captain - "
"No, no, she's right." Vir unfolded his arms for the first time since they'd left Grey Sector. "It's distinctly warmer in here. And..." He sniffed. "It smells like a...a blacksmith."
Corwin's eyes widened. "Oh, hell - " He licked a finger, held it up to check the movement of the air, then charged down the corridor at top speed. For lack of anything else to do, Trish followed; Vir brought up the rear, puffing with fatigue. They caught up to Corwin frantically wrenching at a bulkhead wheel and not moving it; beyond him, the bulkhead radiated dim heat, and red lights gleamed on the handle of the lock.
Dorothy, Tessa and David huddled together at the far bulkhead. The fire had settled on the fuel that was there and didn't seem inclined to spread along the duralloy floor towards them, but that was not, Dorothy knew, its primary danger. Fire ate oxygen at a ridiculous rate, and the emergency fire seals were airtight. Once the flames burned themselves out, which wouldn't be much longer, Dorothy guessed they would have only a few minutes before they asphyxiated.
She glanced at Tessa, wanting to find someone to hate, but somehow couldn't muster it. "You knew, didn't you?" she asked instead. "That the corridor was trapped?"
"I guessed." Tessa sighed and let her head droop. "He might have trapped one or two others, as well, but this is the main corridor leading from our part of Red Sector - it was a safe bet that even if we escaped this, we'd be delayed." She coughed hackingly and swiped at her eyes; Dorothy could feel her own eyes stinging.
"Why did you tell me about Hume, Tessa?" said David.
"I don't know." Tessa scowled at the ceiling, let out a breath, then closed her eyes. Dorothy watched her, somehow certain more was coming.
She was right.
"All my life," Tessa said finally, "secrets were the...the currency I dealt in. Not gossip, nothing that petty. Gossip's all about rumour. I just dealt in finding things out. Not spreading them around, not blackmail...just knowin. It was like - insurance. No matter how secret something is, if one person knows it who you don't know knows it, it never gets completely forgotten..." Amazingly, she smiled, though it was a tight and painful expression. "I will start making sense soon, I promise."
"Oh, why break a streak?" David chuckled.
Tessa made as if to hit him. Dorothy managed a few giggles herself. She couldn't believe it; she'd never felt less like laughing.
"So when I dropped the ball on dealing with that one secret, telling you was like...like a punishment, I suppose," resumed the Director of Covert Intelligence, her voice low. "Penance for my arrogance."
"I think the Universe is inflicting penance enough, my dear, without any need for you to add to it." David's voice was desert dry. He put an arm around Dorothy's shoulders.
Trish grabbed Corwin's shoulder and shook him until he whirled on her, enraged; but she stood her ground and jabbed her fingers at the control panel on the wall. "It's a fire seal, Corwin! We can't open it without an override!"
Corwin stared at her, then at the panel, and his face abruptly twisted. He lunged past Trish to grab the PPG in Vir's belt as he came puffing up, then pushed her away and aimed. "Here's your fragging override," he spat. Trish plugged her ears and cringed away.
In a corridor two sections over, the middle-aged Minbari who only appeared to be there bent a vision unmatched in the galaxy on Corwin's efforts. He sighed. That would not work. Corwin would only seal the lock beyond breaking.
"That is to say," Draal whispered to himself, alone in the darkness, "he will not know it cannot work."
From massive generators deep in the bowels of Epsilon 3, through focusing devices as precise as a quantum fluctuation, a tiny, narrow thread of force reached out.
"And therefore..."
It touched the mechanisms of the lock Corwin aimed at.
"...he will not see anything suspicious when it does work."
Superheated helium plasma poured into the control panel, liquefying it in a blaze of golden light. Corwin grasped the wheel, spun it, and shoved the bulkhead open. Heat exploded out at them, and Corwin staggered back.
Vir gave a cry. "David! Dorothy!"
The fire, fed fresh oxygen, surged upwards. Corwin stripped off his uniform jacket and ran forward, beating at the flames and kicking burning garbage to either side. Trish waited until he'd cleared enough of a path, then ran forward, jumping the places where the flames still burned to reach the three figures huddled on the far side. She sucked in a breath at the sight of Tessa's injury and promptly began hacking the smoke-filled air back out.
"Trish! Come on!"
Corwin's panicked shout brought her back. She ducked down, grabbed Tessa up and with the tough, wiry strength learned through several years in the station's underbelly lifted her completely. The Sheridans gawped at her; Trish jerked her head at the path Corwin had cleared. "Go!" she yelled.
Old or not, the ISA President's parents were spry. Trish followed their hasty exit until they were out of the pod, but didn't stop, even as they slowed and staggered. "Come on!" she shouted, hurrying down the hall. "We have to get out of range before the system closes the next bulkhead!"
Corwin, Vir, David and Dorothy exchanged one glance, then bolted.
They almost didn't make it. Even as they rounded the corner an alarm went off, and the next bulkhead began swinging to. Only a frantic dash from Vir got him onto the other side, and even so, he lost another scrap of clothing when he had to rip the cuff of his trousers free from the bulkhead's iron-jawed grip. Trish wondered for a lunatic moment if he'd end up completely nude by the time this was all over.
She became belatedly aware somebody was thumping on her back. "...put - me - down!" Tessa hissed.
"Oh! Sorry." She lowered Tessa to the floor, suddenly feeling the strain in her arms; the DCI wasn't a small woman. "You okay?"
"No, I'm not, I'm injured and I'm stupid and I'm fed up with being rescued!" Tessa lunged out and snagged Corwin's trouser leg, jerking him upright from where he had sagged against the wall. "Lieutenant, Hume has backup!"
Corwin blinked at her. "Who, what? What are you talking about?"
Tessa made a snarling, frustrated sound, closed her eyes and punched the floor. "Philip Hume!" she shouted. "Rogue ESI agent, loose on the station, probably trying to get to an airlock so his backup can pick him up!"
Corwin's open mouth closed with a snap. He looked at Trish, then at Vir. "Do you two know the way to the Garden from here?"
"I, uh - yes, I think so," Vir stumbled. Trish only nodded.
"Good. Trish, run on ahead, get to the Captain and fill her in on what we've seen and heard, including the status of the jettison charges and this rogue agent. She'll give you further orders. Vir, take Director Halloran and the Sheridans and follow her to the Garden, then stay there."
"Where the frag are you going?" Trish snapped.
Corwin paused. "To an outer airlock at the back of the station. I'm going to arm those charges and set them off manually."
Trish's jaw dropped; but before she could think of anything to say he was gone, tearing away down the corridor at top speed. And Vir was looking at her as if he expected her to make the next judgement call.
They all were, she realized abruptly. For a moment she wanted to scream. Then she gave it up. "Vir, you know what to do. Do it."
She turned and raced down the corridor after Corwin, then paused at the first emergency access ladder and began to climb.
****************
BROWN SECTOR
18:01 EST
20 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Even with the slowing rotation and lessening gravity, Tru'Siel's deadweight should have exhausted G'Stral in minutes. Surprisingly, it had not, but G'Stral knew why that was so and was not reassured. She was tensing and spasming subtly in her unconsciousness, forcing him to keep adjusting his grip and preventing his arms from growing stiff and sore in one locked position - evidence of a grinding pain so acute it was disturbing even her coma. G'Stral knew what that pain meant: Tru'Siel was minutes away from delivery. If the infant was not safely placed in a male's prepared pouch within minutes after that, it would dehydrate and die. Tru'Siel might die herself, if the delivery was botched.
G'Stral did not think much about children. He barely remembered being a child himself. He remembered being physically younger than he was now, but that was far from the same thing. And he had seen too much dying to be particularly impressed by death, either. He didn't know Tru'Siel. He owed her nothing.
He wasn't so un-self-aware he didn't know what it meant that he was angry at the thought of Tru'Siel dying. It meant he had started to care again, not just about the very few who had managed to worm their way past his shields - Selene; Sherann; Ta'Lon; even, though he would admit this only to himself, Captain Lochley - but about total strangers. What he didn't know was why it had happened, or even when it had started. Most of all, he had no idea how to stop it.
Caring was pain.
G'Stral had had enough of pain.
"Is she all right?" The soft, accented voice sounded more worried than any Centauri should have been constitutionally capable of. Lyndisty peered over his shoulder at Tru'Siel.
G'Stral gritted his teeth. "Why do you care?" he tossed back at her without looking.
A startled beat. "Because she is in pain."
G'Stral had to laugh. The universe had generally borne out his observations about what life was really like, but seldom so promptly - or so ludicrously. "Centauri don't care about Narn pain."
"You state that as if it is a physical law." Lyndisty's voice sounded cautious, rather than hurt.
"Might as well be. I sure haven't seen any examples otherwise."
"Not even Jaida?" Lyndisty nodded at the little girl, who had moved ahead with Selene to take a scouting position. "She is Centauri too, you know."
"Yeah, well, anybody can be too young to know better," G'Stral muttered, though truthfully it was very hard for him to think of Jaida as Centauri; her youth and human-influenced ways tended to put her outside the range of his well-developed reflexive antipathy. "Look, Tru'Siel's hurt and she's not improving any, and that's all I know. You got any other reasons to waste our breath?"
Lyndisty's mouth tightened, but her voice remained carefully neutral. "Since when is concern for another's welfare a waste?"
"Don't try to convince me you care about her, Lyndisty. Don't even go there. You think a few months of charity work makes up for the years you and your father spent torturing us, all over the fragging galaxy?" G'Stral kept his voice down, but the acid in it burned at the back of his throat, almost startling himself. "You don't care about her. You just care about this conscience you somehow miraculously grew a few months ago. G'Lan's name, for all I know you're just trying to impress that weakling Cotto by showing him what a nice person you've suddenly become - "
Hard fingers pressed into his shoulder, just above the nerve. G'Stral's arm locked in a spasm of agonizing fire, so sharp and sudden he couldn't even scream. Lyndisty's harsh voice whispered in his ear, so close only he could hear it. "You will not slander my intended's name again, G'Stral. He is far stronger than you will ever believe." She released her grip; G'Stral's arm fell loose, and he staggered against the wall, letting Tru'Siel's legs drop.
"You all okay?" Marek loomed over her, scowling worriedly. Lyndisty waved him back, eyes intent on G'Stral.
The young Narn choked out a laugh as he found his balance. "There's the Centauri in you, Lyndisty. The moment a Narn says something you don't like, hurt him."
"Ambrisone guide me " Lyndisty rolled her eyes. "I thought we were friends, G'Stral."
"Because I sold you a few things and got the best value I could from you?" G'Stral snorted. "I'm a businessman, Lyndisty. I'll sell to any market I can. Just because I don't generally bother telling you what I think of you - what I think of every Centauri - you think somehow I see you differently?" He bent, got his arm under Tru'Siel's legs and lifted her again. "Newsflash: I don't. I hate you just as much as the rest of them. But your money's better than most."
Lyndisty stared at him, her mouth open. But before she could respond a shriek came from up ahead, a girlish yowl of triumph:
"WE FOUND IT!"
"It" was of course the entrance well to the Garden, an emergency ladder chute that led downwards all the way through Brown Sector to the lowest levels. Voices and light boiled down from above as Security and medical personnel began helping the refugees up into comparative safety; for a few minutes there was no time for anything but quick directions, as the able-bodied helped the less so up into the crowd. Finally G'Stral had helped the last of the lurkers up and climbed up himself. He paused briefly to check that the medics were looking after Tru'Siel, then - half reflexively, half for reasons he didn't want to think about - he checked around for Jaida and Selene.
For a moment, the sheer size of the crowd, the pure volume and almost psychic pressure of so many people in one place at one time, left him shaken. From the Diplomatic Compound, about half a kilometer away up-curve, he could vaguely see a broil of Security men, and wondered what he'd missed.
From out of the crowd Selene hurtled, latching on to him as if he was a branch overhanging a river in flood. The length of her leap betrayed the fading gravity. "G'Stral! Have you seen Trish? Or Ari?"
"I just got here too, y'know," he grumbled. Then he winced; he was no longer quite angry enough to be able to ignore how petty that sounded. He sighed. "C'mere." Kneeling, he boosted her atop his shoulders - with their weight lightened by the slowing spin, it was startlingly easy - and turned slowly. "Do you see either of them?"
"Jaida?" Selene waved, and a moment later Jaida pushed her way over to their side. Her scowl implied no good news. G'Stral looked questioningly down at her.
Jaida grimaced. "I can't find Papa. I don't even know where Lyndisty went. Can you see anybody up there?"
Selene squinted. "I think I can see - there! Yes!" She waved frantically. Across the sea of bobbing heads, G'Stral could barely see a tall, curved shape beginning to make its way towards them
Oh no.
Volga Jaddo burst out of the mob, the elderly figure of the Centauri gardener at his side. Ari Tefano gave a cry of "Jaida!" and swept her up in his arms. Before G'Stral could move Selene had wriggled free, jumped down and joined the embrace. G'Stral stared, too numb to evade as Jaddo, grinning like a fool, grabbed his arm at wrist and elbow and pumped it furiously.
"Excellently done - guarding a citizen of the Centauri Republic in danger - selflessness that could bring our peoples together!" Jaddo gushed. G'Stral yanked his arm away, trying to remember how to be angry. Jaddo didn't seem to notice. "Your actions must be documented, young Narn - what's your name?"
"G'Stral," said G'Stral numbly.
"G'Stral, ah, you must be a follower of G'Quon or G'Lan - which is it? Never mind, never mind, there'll be time for that later!" Beaming, Jaddo went back and rested a proprietary hand on Jaida's and Tefano's shoulders. Neither noticed; they, like Selene, were too busy weeping.
Just like ordinary people.
"If you feel exactly the same about me as you do about Jaida," said Lyndisty dryly, materializing at his elbow, "then I think I would rather have your hatred than the so-called affection of many Centauri I know."
"G'Lan damn you." G'Stral couldn't even find anger for that; the imprecation came out exhausted. "If you really do care about me then why can't you leave me in peace?"
Lyndisty shrugged. "If you were in peace, G'Stral, I would."
****************
GREY SECTOR, LEVEL 30, SECTION 100
18:03 EST
18 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
It was probably the fastest suiting-up Corwin had ever done; he didn't think he'd missed anything, he'd certainly tried not to because it wouldn't do anyone any good if he killed himself through a stupid error caused by panic-born haste, but the possibility existed. He'd found an emergency ladder chute and simply dropped headlong down it, the gravity light enough now that he could control his fall with periodic grabs on the rungs; he hit bottom at Level 30 slower than most parachuters would touch down, rolled to take the shock, and come up running for the emergency airlocks. Now, suited up and thrusterpak strapped to his back, he stepped into the airlock, closed it shut behind him, then without bothering to check the safety overrode the outer hatch control and braced himself.
The floor gave way beneath him; the outrush of air spat him into space. His hand tightened on the thrusterpak control.
Something grabbed him by his belt. Shocked, Corwin spun on his own inertia before a new surge of force slammed him against the outer hull of B5. His magnetic boots automatically locked to the hull with a solid thunk as a booted foot came down on his chest, pressing him against the curving surface. A PPG, held in a gloved hand, drew a bead on his suit. A helmeted visage leaned down over him, shining silver in the light of Epsilon 3's sun, and touched its clear plexicrys visor to his. Beyond the helmet, Corwin could see the glow of B5's reactor like a second sun, beginning the emergency plasma dumps that would stave off the runaway fusion reaction only a few minutes longer.
A buzzing voice came to him, conducted by the contact of helmet to helmet:
"Commendable dedication, Mr. Corwin. But I'm afraid I can't let you save the day just yet."
****************** Act Four *****************
THE GARDEN
18:04 EST
17 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Trish ran, staggering with fatigue and aftershock. The walls seemed to rush by her in pulsing surges, bouncing with each stride as it grew longer and longer; the babble of voices she could hear dimly in the distance swelled with every turn, pounding in her ears like the thrumming roll of her blood. On a dim half-conscious level she knew the station's spin was almost exhausted - the gravity would be gone soon. A bubble of hilarity burst in her fatigue-thickened throat. She didn't envy whoever would have to clean up after this attack of zero-g sickness...
She rounded the last corner and saw the wide doors ahead, the bulkheads not yet sealed. The fence of the baseball diamond was visible just ahead over the top of the moiling crowd. That would mean the diplomatic compound was off to the left beyond it, by this entrance - she only hoped the Captain would be there. She took a last stumbling step and flung herself at the crowd.
An arm caught her across the chest and slammed the last of her breath out of her. She doubled up, hacking, as the Security guards she hadn't seen closed in from either side of the door.
"Whoa there, girl," the man rumbled. "Where do you think - "
" have to see the Captain now!" Trish wanted to scream it, but could only get out a choked gargle. She grabbed the guard's hand and wrestled herself upright. "There's a rogue ESI agent, Lieutenant Corwin told me to - "
The guard laughed. "Girl, the Captain has better things to do than listen to stories - "
"No, wait, Parks." The second guard, a woman and younger than the first, came forward. "Sergeant Satamba called me in to help with something like that, a minute before this went down - " She bent to look in Trish's eyes. "What were you saying about Lieutenant Corwin?"
"He's gone..." Trish was infuriated. She'd been sure she was in better shape than this. "He's gone to... to arm the detonation charges. For the reactor. Manually." She glanced up at their blank looks and wanted to scream again. "Don't you know anything about - ?"
Horrified realization filled the woman's eyes. "Parks! Bring her!" She turned and plunged back into the crowd, shouting and shoving people aside. Parks didn't look any more enlightened, but with a shrug he grabbed Trish's wrist and dragged her into the crowd, following the woman as they plowed through. Trish reeled, still trying to get her breath back. For some reason the only thing she could think of was Corwin's face, just before he'd sprinted off to find an airlock. He hadn't been exhausted or if he had, it hadn't mattered. He hadn't let it matter.
{{Why do you care?}} The voice was tiny, a minuscule thread of acid pain in her mind. {{You know what's happening. Do you really think he can make it in time? Do you really think any of you are going to live through the next sixteen minutes?}}
A sickening hollowness tore through Trish's guts, freefall and terror combining in a freezing clench of pain. The crowd's noise dimmed around her; the echoes rang in the cavernous space of the Garden; her leaping, floundering steps over the grass seemed syrup-slow. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
They were all dead. Every last one of them.
They just hadn't stopped moving yet.
"...Livingston - Miss Livingston!" A crack of fire across her cheek; Trish jerked, gasped, snapped back to clarity with a shock like a splash of icewater. Lochley yanked her upright by the shoulders. The Ranger chief, Pratchett, stood behind her to one side; at her other side stood the Psi Cop? But Lochley was shouting again. "Where's Lieutenant Corwin? What's happening?"
Trish gulped. "The rogue ESI agent," she whispered. "Hume. We found where he'd trapped Director Halloran and Ambassador Sheridan - " A gasp. "He's trying to escape the station. Corwin said he was going to an outer airlock. To set off the reactor jettison charges."
Pratchett stiffened. "Manually? He's out of his mind!"
"My God." The Psi Cop sounded more shaken than any telepath Trish had ever heard. "Even if he successfully jettisons the reactor, the radiation release will kill him if he's still out there!"
"Unless we can get him inside a shielded craft in time." Lochley spun. "Sergeant Satamba!" she called.
From nearby, where he was conferring in a low voice with Chief Allan, the burly sergeant hurried over. "Sir?"
"You're coming with us."
"Right away, sir - uh, where? And who's us?"
"Me, Officer Ferris and Val'na Pratchett. We're going to save my XO from his own heroism." She clapped Pratchett and Ferris on their shoulders, pushing them into motion as she hurried away with Satamba at their heels. "Dying in the name of duty's all very well, but I like to preserve my resources when I can..." Her voice faded as the four of them disappeared in the direction of the entrance.
Trish looked at Allan, who frowned at her. "God, Livingston, you look like hell...." He trailed off and the frown dissolved into a worried look. "Are you all ?"
She never heard him finish the question. Her legs twisted out from under her and the ground came up at her with remarkable lassitude. She didn't feel it hit before the blackness covered her.
****************
THE GARDEN
18:06 EST
15 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Three minutes. Three miserable minutes. It was all G'Stral had been able to maintain his pose of indifference before he broke down and admitted it: he had to know what was happening to Tru'Siel. It wasn't caring, he told himself savagely. He didn't care whether she or her spawn lived or not, he just couldn't stand not knowing. The habits of information dealing. That was all. He turned and began to push his way back towards the entrance they'd come in by, leaving Jaida, Selene, Ari and Jaddo to their own devices.
Less than a few metres away, a horrid groan of agony wafted over the heads of the crowd like a wave of stench. G'Stral stopped dead as that groan hit him with a wave of physical pain in his stomach. Dismayed, he cursed and forced his way into the tiny clearing that had developed around Tru'Siel's body where it lay. A human doctor - Hobbs' second? Neiman, the man's name was - knelt between her legs, carefully tracing a line between the lips of her pouch with his scalpel. Beneath his hands, the hide of Tru'Siel's belly moved and rippled as if...well, as if something was alive inside, and trying to escape. Which only made sense, after all.
As if drawn by the turmoil in his mind, Neiman looked up. Over his surgical mask, his brow knotted. "You're the one who brought her in? Are you going to take the pouchling?"
Time stopped. It had to have stopped; there was no way everything in G'Stral's mind could have passed through it so swiftly.
{{AreyouinsaneIhaven'tevenmatedyetyou'llhavetogivemetheshotIdon'twanttheshotIdon'twanttobeafatherbutifIdon'tthepouchlingdiesshediesafteralltha t?letthemdie?mylifeIdon'tcareIdon'tcareIDON'TCARE}}
And yet he knew the word on his tongue, as he opened his mouth, was
{{Yes.}}
"No."
The word felt like a slap. G'Stral blinked - saw the other Narn in the circle, an older male, already unlacing the front of his jerkin. The Narn nodded at him. "You've done your part, boy, and you're too young for this." He knelt down by the doctor. "I'll take the infant."
"You're sure?"
"I've carried four others." The Narn's voice was dry. He pulled his jerkin apart and began, businesslike, to stroke his fingers along the lips of his pouch. G'Stral jerked his gaze away, feeling the hide of his face tighten in embarrassment: what the older Narn was doing was a very intimate function, and something of a sexual manipulation as well.
If Neiman knew that, he didn't seem to care. But then, he was a doctor; he wouldn't. He only nodded and leant closer. "Okay - I'm going to cut the last membrane." He glanced over to a medic. "Get ready with those bandages, there'll be blood - the placenta hasn't thinned properly - and here we go - "
He drew the laser scalpel across Tru'Siel's pouch in a single quick and steady stroke. Her pouchlips parted with an audible sound like nothing G'Stral had ever heard before. Blood trickled down Tru'Siel's hide on right and left, bright red against the white cloths the medic used to swab it up. G'Stral fought down the desire to be sick. Yet he couldn't look away.
As he could never look away from death, so this too, this blood and trauma, held him helpless.
"You ready?" snapped Neiman to the Narn, who only nodded. With a firm, gentle movement, Neiman slid his hands inside the ruptured placenta and extracted the pouchling, which was choking and coughing as nutrient fluid slid away from its emerald green hide. Gently Neiman cleared its mouth, severed and sealed the two umbilical cords on right and left with quick scalpel strokes, and leant over. The Narn stretched open his pouch like the neck of a sweater. Neiman rotated the pouchling to face the inside of the pouch, where, G'Stral knew, a row of nipples offered food to the newborn.
As the infant slid inside it began to wail, shrill and rasping, an altogether horrible sound. But the crowd broke into applause and murmurs of triumph. Dumbfounded, G'Stral saw that one of the watchers, a human woman, was actually crying. The wail broke into gurgles as the infant found a nipple and latched on, and the Narn smiled, closing his eyes. G'Stral closed his as well, on the verge of crying himself and with absolutely no idea why.
"Are you sorry it wasn't you?"
For the first time, it made absolutely no difference that the owner of that voice was who she was. G'Stral clenched his arms around himself, turning away from Lyndisty. "No. G'Lan, no. I'm not ready for this."
"But you would have tried, if there had been no other choice."
Were there words that could answer that adequately? No would have been a lie. Yes sounded like egotism. Maybe sounded like weakness.
And anything else would have been an evasion. G'Stral held himself tighter and said nothing.
Not that Lyndisty really needed an answer. Centauri never did; the most taciturn of them would talk to hear his own voice, for lack of other amusement. But even that thought was too drained to be more than a reflex.
"Sometimes," she murmured, "it takes more courage to live for someone than to die for them."
A slim hand rested on his shoulder. G'Stral considered shrugging it off. He should, after all; he was a Narn, she a Centauri - and not just any Centauri but the bloodthirsty daughter of Lord-General Marrago, terror of the camps and relocation centres. He should rip that hand off his shoulder, off her wrist, and stuff it down her throat.
He did nothing.
The hand squeezed his shoulder gently, and if he found it comforting, it was an admission he would make only to himself.
****************
ENGINEERING SECTION, OUTER HULL
18:09 EST
12 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
"Ah, there we are." Hume glanced over Corwin's shoulder, looking ahead, as they drifted towards the ridge where the fusion reactor joined the Engineering section. "Just a second or two more..."
Corwin strained his arms and legs futilely, but couldn't move; the magnetic binders Hume had slapped on his forearms and ankles held him with unbreakable spring-steel strength. Even his thrusterpak was out of control, slaved to a radio unit in Hume's hand by some secret ESI gadget Corwin hadn't even known was possible until Hume had clipped it to his pak. He had considered raving and roaring and discarded it. Better to save his energy now. Every ounce might count very soon.
The ESI agent touched his remote and manipulated his own belt controls. Corwin's suit-jets fired, decelerating him. Hume's fired simultaneously; together, they drifted to a stop over the master unit. Hume reached down with his boot and touched a toe-tip to the hull, pulled himself down as the boot locked to the metal, and squatted over the charge. Above him, stars reeled in prismatic glory; bare dozens of metres away, long flares of searing golden plasma arced into space as the emergency discharges accelerated. The light flickered on his helmet like a burning forest.
"Now, let's see...how does one do this again? Ah, yes - master remote unit there - " He pulled free a metal rod studded with controls, similar to his suit remote but larger. "And disabling switches there, there, and there." Hume threw them and regarded the charge with a satisfied expression. "There. Nobody's setting this off by remote or by circuit."
"Why are you doing this?" Though he'd meant to keep silent, Corwin couldn't hold the question back; it literally burst out of him. "You'll die too! You'll die along with the rest of us!"
"Mm, yes, I suppose I will." Hume sighed. "But my death isn't up for debate, and given that, I might as well make it useful. You know - " He paused and gave Corwin a quizzical look as he tucked the wand away in a belt-loop. "I've never understood just what it is about this station that makes it such a thorn in the side. Why are you people so capable of disrupting affairs with your mere presence? Hm?"
"We do our jobs. If that 'disrupts your affairs' - " Corwin spat the words venomously - "then maybe you should think about what that means."
"Ah. Idealism." Hume smiled. "Yes, I suffered from that too, once upon a time. I suppose I still do, in a certain light. But is it idealism if you're devoted to a practical reality?"
"Practical reality?"
"Power, boy. Power." Hume looked at Corwin, and the younger man felt a chill as he met Hume's dead eyes. "You don't know what power is until you've seen what my employers will bring to the galaxy, boy."
He kicked himself loose, touched his belt, and lifted his remote control. Their jets fired, and they accelerated around the circumference of the reactor to the next charge. Plasma streams lofted above their heads like the dying limbs of some great firebeast.
****************
COBRA BAY ONE
18:11 EST
10 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
The cobra bays were dark and frost-misted, and as Lochley bounced clumsily towards her Starfury in her e-suit, a coldness gripped her. The station's rotation was so slow now that the kick of inertia normally used to send a 'Fury clear of the station would be almost nonexistent. Yet if they fired their engines too soon they'd slag the entire bay and kill whoever was manually triggering their release.
She looked back towards the launch centre window, on the rear wall. In it stood Satamba, suited like herself - a necessity now; the life-support here wasn't enough any more to go unprotected. He did not look up, his hands moving frantically as he worked to get the cobra bay doors on line. On the next catwalk, Jamie had already climbed into her fighter and begun running preflight checks. Lochley turned back and opened a radio channel to Colin as, ahead of her, the Psi Cop unlocked the hatch of his 'Fury. "You sure you'll be all right?"
"It's not the model I trained on," Colin's voice was dry in her helmet-speakers, "but I can manage." He bounced a little on his heels, a movement that was now slow and treacly. "It'll take us a few seconds longer to get out than normal, you realize that."
Lochley nodded impatiently. "And I also realize the longer we wait the tougher it'll be to launch. Get in there." She shoved him towards the 'Fury, turned away, and bounded towards her own fighter. In the light from her helmet lamps the phoenix on the nose shone brightly, like the hope Lochley didn't dare let herself feel. Feelings would be for later.
If there was a later.
She popped the hatch, slid inside, and strapped herself in, running preflight checks as quickly as possible. Light after bank of lights came on, and a thrum of power vibrated along her spine. She grinned. God, it just felt so good to know there was energy at her back. "Lochley to Pratchett and Ferris, preflight status?"
"Five by five, ready to rumble!" Jamie chirped.
"All systems green," said Colin evenly. "Status ready."
Lochley touched a control. A low hum began to rise in pitch and volume as the ignition capacitors charged. She switched channels. "Sergeant Satamba?"
"Ma'am?"
"Launch us on my mark: now, now, now."
Satamba activated the commands he'd programmed. On the screens before him, messages danced and flickered with warnings of drained, irreplaceable power, as his jury-rigged connections sucked energy from the batteries. The cobra bay doors rolled open slowly, the vibrations rumbling through the soles of his e-suit.
With a tangible clunk they locked into place, and the mechanics took over. The launch cradles swung downwards with an eerie lethargy, as if time had slowed in the cobra bay. There was so little spin left, even the weight of the Starfuries was only gradually accelerating away. But it hadn't - quite - reached zero, and after some seven or ten agonizing seconds the cradles had reached their full downwards extension. Catches let go. The Starfuries fell free, slowly, dreamily.
Satamba was no telepath, but he knew his captain. He hit the emergency shielding on the launch centre window and began closing the bay doors again, then turned and sprinted from the room as he triggered his comlink:
"Captain?"
"Now."
Lochley jammed the final command key home with her thumb. The capacitors discharged. For an instant not measurable by human senses, hyper-powerful magnetic fields flashed into being inside the Starfury's quadruple engines. Inside that infinitesimal instant, a second magnetic pulse compressed the deuterium and He3 flooding into the drive field to stellar densities. Fusion and plasma erupted, a minor proportion of the released energy supplied to the drive fields to sustain them and the vast majority directed backwards by those shaped drive fields. Four streams of starfire blasted out of the 'Fury's engines, fountaining up against the closed cobra bay doors that were normally much further away when this moment occurred, warping them, blistering them, melting them.
But acceleration was already pressing Lochley back into the cushioned support like a giant hand, heavy and brutal. The Starfury shot away from the station. Instinctively, Lochley angled her control joystick left, and the computer translated her movements into a careful reshaping of the drive fields. The Starfury arced to port. To either side, she could see Colin's and Jamie's fighters matching her move flawlessly, and the helpless joy of starflight sang through her like an electric shock.
The three fighters roared towards the back of the station.
****************
THE DIPLOMATIC COMPOUND
18:12 EST
9 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
By the time the ambassadors and the refugees from the Alien Sector reached the Garden, Kyrell could barely walk - though not for any difficulty supporting Sherann, who he had carried ever since their passage through the blocked corridor. No, Sherann's weight had grown lighter and lighter over the past few minutes, until bearing her was hardly an effort. But it was exactly that fading weight which made movement difficult. The ground was obstinately refusing to stay safely put beneath his feet. Every step seemed to push himself and Sherann farther forward, higher off the ground, and Kyrell had had to swallow several times to keep his stomach where it belonged.
The other refugees were coping with the same problem, with varying degrees of dignity. Vizhak's grim movements had become more and more controlled, while Lady Brettaria - and where had she learned anything about micro-gravity manoeuvring? - had somehow contrived to simply glide along in long flowing steps, her gown hiding any awkwardness of motion. But some younger members of the pilgrimage had already succumbed to zero-g nausea, with the appropriately messy and smelly results. When the security guards at the lower entrance to the Diplomatic Compound saw them approaching and hurried forward to help them up the stairs into the darkened halls, Kyrell didn't know whether to be grateful that they could help or infuriated that the magnetic boots they had donned granted them the dignity he knew he was lacking.
He, Sherann and Vizhak were ushered into a small room off the main hall, lit by a security lamp left on the table. Vizhak snarled at the guards, seesawing between Drazvok, Interlac and English in a furious babble that nevertheless got its point across: he wanted to see Chief Allan and now. Kyrell subsided onto a chair, feeling only the faintest pressure from beneath as he supported Sherann across his lap, her arms around his shoulders and his on her waist. Fatigue and fear were heavy grey weights along his bones, making up for the lost gravity. As the guards rushed off in search of the Security Chief, Vizhak turned and moved over to them in a single controlled leap.
"Well?"
Though her eyes were closed, Sherann answered. "I am well, Vizhak."
"Do not lie, Sherann. Your lungs were damaged."
"I am as well as I need to be." Sherann opened her eyes, lines of exhaustion hollowing them into deep wells of shadow. Kyrell's heart twisted. "If order and power can be restored soon, then I can be treated in Medlab. If they cannot, then I suspect I will not have time to die of damaged breathing."
"Do not speak like that, beloved," Kyrell murmured, stroking her forehead.
Sherann's eyes widened; a grin tugged at her lips. "But I have been instructed not to lie, Kyrell."
Kyrell had to smile himself.
For all the nine cycles he had known Sherann, he had been drawn by her mischievous, gokkish sense of humour. They had met when the Rhell family had been chosen to renew the Temple at which he'd been an initiate, and had begun the requisite three-cycle engagement just before Delenn of Mir had broken the Grey Council. Together, they had followed Delenn in defiance of the Warrior Caste's resistance. They had been heady times, those first few days, as religious and worker castes worked together frantically on the construction of the White Stars. Knowing that they were forever changing the face of Minbari society, by making the Anla'shok into a second weapon in the Army of Light...it was more intoxicating than any properly brought up Minbari should admit.
Yet it had been those first days which had sown the beginning of this discord, too.
Though it was not required, it was customary for one member of a bond-coupling to convert to the caste of the other, an act of both traditional and practical value - the separation of duty imposed by differing castes was not something lightly chosen. And, though this too was seldom formally articulated, it was customarily the worker who converted. Nearly all cross-caste couplings were worker/religious or worker/warrior; almost never in the last few centuries had any wed between religious and warrior caste, and Kyrell supposed in hindsight that should have been one of the Federation's warning signs. Yet no one had realized, and the customs and assumptions had grown up as they had.
Had Kyrell thought about it, genuinely thought for even a minute, he would have realized what Sherann's reaction to that kind of assumption would be. But he had not thought. He had simply, blithely assumed she would do as most workers did, and join his Temple. It was an honour, after all. Why would she not want to join?
When the issue had finally been raised - not, ironically, by Kyrell himself but by an idle comment from his father about Sherann's future role in the Temple - it had almost shattered their bond-coupling. Only Sherann's inability to stay angry, and Kyrell's own frantic peacemaking, had smoothed over the breach the argument had provoked between the families of Nae'jon and Rhell. And though Kyrell had eventually convinced all involved that the mistake had been his alone, he had never quite been able to discard all of his hurt or confusion. He knew in his mind her choice of a different path to follow had not been a rejection of him - had he not said as much to his family, and to hers? - but his soul was less easily swayed.
The victory over the Shadows should have brought peace: a chance to reconcile and to heal. It had not. The Warriors' resistance had calcified, becoming opposition, rebellion and destruction, and civil war had burst upon the surface of Minbar for the first time in centuries, wreaking further transformation upon them both. Both had thrown themselves into the tasks of helping their colleagues survive the war, and it had permitted them little contact. And with the reformation of the Grey Council, the investment of unprecedented power in the worker caste, and the ongoing reconstruction efforts from the war, the social matrix in which their engagement had flowered was tossed boots over bone.
Sherann's star had risen in a way neither of them could have anticipated, even as Kyrell's order turned to ministry to the displaced and ruined of the War, helping them find new homes and lives. The calling of duty, caste and clan had kept them apart for close on two cycles, with only infrequent and hurried comm messages to renew their bond...and all that while, Sherann had risen higher and higher in the ranks of Minbari society, while Kyrell's order sank further and further into obscurity. By the time they had finally been able to schedule some time together, Kyrell had found himself sick with dread. What if he found her feelings had changed? What if he found his feelings changing, upon spending time with the woman he feared might be more memory than reality? What if he were to discover that her choice to remain a worker, which he'd once believed a steadfast loyalty to her own ideals, had instead been a coldly ambitious decision to take advantage of Minbar's new political climate...and that a lowly monk from a lesser-known order of the religious caste was no longer a fit bond-mate for one of her status?
Or, perhaps, worst of all...what if he were to discover that he was, himself, truly no longer worthy of her? If Sherann had come through all she had come through, and yet retained her sense of humour and joy in life, while he had found himself saddened and permanently changed by his ordeals...was that not proof irrevocable that she had kept her strength, her spirit? And that his was weakened, somehow, no longer the equal of hers?
He sighed, bending his head over hers. It was not her disrespect of his caste or his rituals that had irritated him, he admitted. It was not even the thought that she had changed - for she had not changed, not in the important ways. It was he who had changed. And not, perhaps - he echoed his own earlier thoughts in bitter irony - in any way that would strengthen their bond.
"You are sad, my love," Sherann whispered.
Kyrell's voice was equally quiet. "Am I your love? Am I the person you loved, when we first met in Temple?"
Sherann's pause was minute, but it was the first real sign she'd shown of startlement. Kyrell felt obscurely gratified. "How could you be the same?" she whispered after a moment. "After all we have done, all we have seen and been through - I am not who I was. Nor are you. That does not change how I feel about you."
Beyond, Vizhak turned away, focusing his gaze on the door in a way that could only be deliberate, and Kyrell felt an urge to laugh. Tact from a Drazi. The universe truly was ending. "But perhaps it changes how I feel about myself," he said, and looked away. "And how can I know what love means to Kyrell of Nae'jon when I no longer know who that is?"
He brought his gaze back to her face again, meeting her eyes. "Kyrell of Nae'jon once knew how to laugh," he said. "Kyrell of Nae'jon once knew how not to be offended if rituals were not followed to the letter. Kyrell of Nae'jon once knew that you could not put those you loved in a cage, so that nothing could happen to them because that would hurt you. And Kyrell..." He let out his breath in a sigh, and his gaze dropped. "Kyrell of Nae'jon would not have been jealous of his beloved's success and status."
He held himself still. After a moment, Sherann tightened her arms and pulled him close, resting her chin on his shoulder. "Kyrell of Nae'jon," she whispered, "has worked ceaselessly for three cycles to help those less fortunate than himself, without recognition or reward. He would be more than mortal if that did not affect him somehow. You haven't changed, Kyrell. You have only forgotten some things." She drew back, and her eyes shimmered in the darkness; her voice was husky now with more than methane damage. "It is the proper place of the lifebonded to restore each other's spirits, and I will not shirk that responsibility now."
Kyrell tried to think of something to say, and couldn't. There were no rituals for this. Then, in an oddly liberating rush of feeling, he thought, {{Rituals be damned}}, and pressed his lips to hers. She returnedthe kiss eagerly, her arms tightening about him in an almost bone-crushing embrace.
Vizhak's heavy, deliberate throat-clearing broke them apart a second before Chief Allan entered the room. Sherann looked up, but made no move to rise from Kyrell's lap. "Ah. Zack."
The Chief's brow furrowed at the raspiness of her words. "What happened to you?"
"Atmosphere toxins," Vizhak growled, his own voice equally raspy. "No time, Chief Allan. What happens?"
"We're experiencing some temporary - "
Vizhak slashed his hand across the air. "No lies!" he barked. "We are ambassadors to sovereign powers of the Interstellar Alliance, Chief Allan. Not children. What is happening?"
Zack sighed, suddenly looking terrifyingly old. "Runaway fusion reaction," he said. "It fried most of B5's control systems before the safety jettison procedures could cut in. We've got people outside trying to manually jettison it now..."
"How long until fusion breach?"
Zack checked his link, then looked up. His eyes were bleak and unflinching, though his voice was barely audible. "Just over eight minutes."
Vizhak's face was like stone. "If the reactor is jettisoned this instant, it will almost certainly not have moved far enough away before the explosion. Even if Babylon 5 survives the blast, we will all be killed by the radiation release."
Zack opened his mouth as if looking for something to say. Then he closed it, and it was that silent, hopeless motion which brought it home to Kyrell.
They really were going to die.
All of them.
Vizhak turned away, gazing into space. Zack spun abruptly and left without any further speech. Kyrell sighed.
"I, Sherann of Rhell..." Startled, Kyrell blinked down at his bond-engaged. Her voice was low but perfectly steady. "...do hereby promise myself to Kyrell of Nae'jon, to be the other half of his soul. All that I am shall be part of him; all that he is shall be part of me. Upon being joined by the Appointed in sight of the universe...."
It was the ritual of bond-engagement, delivered flawlessly. Kyrell bent his head and began to recite it along with her; it was long and complex, and it was conceivable they might not finish in time. "I, Kyrell of Nae'jon, do hereby promise myself to Sherann of Rhell, to be the other half - " His voice broke inexplicably, but he forced himself to recover. "To be the other half of her soul..."
****************
BABYLON 5 ORBITAL VECTOR
18:13 EST
8 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
It had been some time since Colin had stood at the helm of a Starfury, but he was gratified to find all the old reflexes coming back; the fighter answered his controls with all the eagerness and acuity of any Black Omega model. Granted, he still felt uncomfortably like he'd missed something in the pre-flight check - Black Omegas possessed stealth systems most Earth craft only dreamt of, which required a long period of pre-flight activation - but he could deal with that. And it wasn't like they were going to be facing hostile fire, which would be unnerving to deal with in something this comparatively unhidden...
A flare of radiance, actinic, hot and golden-white, spurted up beyond the horizon of the station rim and dissipated in a shower of searing fragments. Colin's stomach plunged. Every plasma dump had been getting brighter and brighter: proof that the runaway reaction wasn't slowing. He profoundly hoped Corwin had gotten to the jettisoning charges in time.
"Jamie, Colin: increase thrust." Evidently Lochley had the same worry. "Make sure you can decel over the reactor, but pick it up!"
"Ten-four, Cap!" said Jamie.
"Roger," Colin acknowledged. Grimly, he pressed his feet down, increasing the fuel flow to the engines. The plasma reaction intensified, and the Starfury leapt forwards with more acceleration, grinding him into the back-padding. The surface of the station flashed away beneath the fighters, the shadows of the 'Furies flickering over the hull like dolphins leaping over a metallic sea.
The computer bleeped as they passed the midpoint of the station. Without waiting for orders Colin shoved one control stick forward, kicking the engines into decel mode. Three gravities switched their pull on him in a microsecond, hammering him forward into the restraint straps with a bruising force. He grunted, feeling the fighter vibrate around him with leashed nuclear fury as it decelerated towards the reactor.
Corwin saw the sudden glare off Hume's helmet, but something - Corwin never knew what - warned the ESI agent. Perhaps it had even been Corwin's own gasp. The agent kicked one leg free of the hull and snapped it in a whipcrack, spinning himself around on his other heel. Corwin tried to spin himself, writhing inside his suit to generate kinetic energy, and managed to knock his suit into a slow turn. But he hadn't revolved very far before Hume's hand shot out to finish turning him and drag him close, into position. Corwin heard the clank of the PPG muzzle making contact with his helmet.
Above them, the three Starfuries finished their deceleration with perfect precision, hanging over them like waiting thunderheads. In Corwin's ears, the radio transceiver crackled as it opened up. "This is Captain Elizabeth Lochley to unknown intruder! Identify yourself!"
"No," said Hume. "Shoot me and you shoot your Lieutenant. More important, you shoot the one remaining trigger unit for your jettison charges." He brandished it in his free hand, then tucked it away in his belt and picked up his jet control unit. He moved the PPG to Corwin's midsection and took a grip with his remaining fingers on Corwin's belt, the gun's muzzle pressed against the stiffened airtight fabric. With a flick of his fingers, Corwin's jets triggered, and he began to move backwards, dragging Hume with him as if he was a jetsled.
"Unknown intruder, you are ordered to drop your weapon and surrender!"
"What part of 'no' don't you understand, Captain Lochley?"
"Dave - " Jamie's voice, cutting in. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Jamie." It was odd, but Corwin had finally decided: he definitely didn't like 'Dave'. If they got out of this he was definitely going to ask Jamie not to call him that.
"Who's that?" said Hume.
"Jamie Pratchett, Val'na of the Babylon 5 Anla'shok. But I'm not gonna ask your name."
"Oh no?" Hume actually laughed. "And why not?"
"Because I already know what you are. You're a dead man."
The flat promise in the uninflected words was worse than any screamed imprecation. Corwin snuck a look at Hume's face. It had gone equally flat. Corwin gulped.
It made no sense. He was drifting only metres from a miniature star due to go on overload in less than eight minutes, and he was completely helpless. But the women overhead, and the man next to him, were scaring him more than that runaway reactor ever could.
****************
THE GARDEN
18:14 EST
7 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Ta'Lon had never been particularly attracted to meditation; he far preferred more active forms of peace-seeking - the exhaustion of a good weapons rehearsal, a competition or a workout. But given the crowds, the noise and the lack of room - as well as, he had to face it, the lack of time he had gritted his teeth, found an out-of-the-way place to stand and closed his eyes, opening his mind to his Patron's.
There was no obvious response. Not that Ta'Lon had expected one. Unlike some other Patrons, Ta'Kor had no miracles attached to his name. Not for him the histrionic gestures of G'Quon, or the sly, worldly wit cultivated by the followers of Na'Kiri Ta'Kor was about stoicism and endurance, the unchanging strength of silence. The closest he had ever come to miracle was on the day of his death. Flayed and hung high by the last overlord of the Shadows, before the final rebellion that had thrust the Ancient Enemy from the world of Narn, Ta'Kor had (so it was said) been the only one, of the thousand Narns flayed that day, who had never uttered a sound. Even G'Quon and Na'Kiri, it was said, had cried aloud in pain and sorrow. But Ta'Kor had never spoken, even when they drove the nails into his hideless hands.
His eyes, it was said, had been judgement enough. And after his death - so the Book of G'Quon told it all those creatures who had participated in his torture and murder had apparently flung themselves from the edge of the Black Canyon in regret and repentance.
Ta'Lon knew only too well how much he needed that stoicism now.
He had been close to death before. He had begged John Sheridan to kill him, years ago aboard the Streib vessel. He had expected to die facing the Shadow Warrior, at the side of - of all people Lord General Marrago of the Centauri Republic. But through all that there had always been hope. More than hope: a total, complete certainty that somehow, he would survive this. That it was not his destiny to die in this place.
For the first time, he did not feel that.
In the silence of his mind, Ta'Lon admitted it: he was terrified. Not of this dying. It would be over so quick he would never know. But of what waited after. What if it was all just nonsense? What if there was only black oblivion? If Ta'Kor, G'Quon and Na'Kiri had died a thousand years ago, and their existence ended utterly with that death? If everything most species believed about the nature of death was false, and that there was nothing after? No light, no universal wisdom, no rebirth - nothing?
{{Then you will never know that you were wrong,}} said his obstinately pragmatic mind, {{and so there is nothing to fear, is there?}}
The fear did not retreat.
"...my God, come on - this way Ta'Lon!" The cry was like a lifeline, and Ta'Lon opened his eyes and started, more gratefully than in startlement. Zack waved him frantically over to a nearby entrance, and Ta'Lon's jaw almost dropped before he caught it; David and Dorothy Sheridan were limping into the Garden, carrying between them the semi-conscious form of Tessa Halloran.
"Come over here and give us a hand!" Zack shouted. Ta'Lon obliged, hastening his steps as he saw the ugly wound that had darkened Halloran's side. He took over from Sheridan, cradling the Director of Covert Intelligence in his arms easily, and followed Zack to an area near another entrance, the crowd parting for them in shock and horror as they saw Tessa's limp form.
"Doc - Doc, come on." Zack was pulling Lilian Hobbs up from where she was kneeling over a sleeping Narn woman, ignoring the fact the doctor's own head was bandaged. "Doc, you have to help her. Come on."
"Zack, I have to make sure Tru'Siel is - " Then she saw Tessa, and sucked in her breath in a gasp. "Oh blessed Brahma. Ta'Lon, put her down. Here." Ta'Lon obliged, placing her gently along the grass, and Lilian bent over her. Zack stood over them both, holding his elbows as if to keep himself from flying apart.
Ta'Lon shook his head. He wondered if he would ever have the chance to share this irony with either Zack Allan or Colin Ferris: that the two of them, who disliked each other so much and wished nothing in common, yet shared one very simple trait.
They had both developed feelings for those who should have been their natural antagonists. And if he knew them, neither would say anything until it was far too late.
But then again, it was already far too late...
...wasn't it?
****************
STARFURY ALPHA-ONE, CALLSIGN 'PHOENIX'
18:15 EST
6 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Lochley switched channels to interfighter tightbeam. "Jamie."
"Skip?"
"Can you handle two fighters at once?"
"Sure, if you don't get fancy - what are you doing?"
"I'm going to slave my fighter to yours and slip out through the emergency hatch. In thirty seconds I want you to let off a plasma burst over their heads to cover me. Maybe if I can get down there without him seeing me, I can sneak up on him."
"Do you need backup, Captain?" Colin's precise tenor, cool as ever.
"No. I don't want Jamie to have to handle all three ships. But anything you can do to hide me, Colin - cloud his mind if you have to - I'll take it and not say a word."
"I'll do my best, Captain, but if he knows any blocking techniques I may not be able to do much at this range. Good luck."
"Thank you, Colin. Jamie ten seconds." She unstrapped herself rapidly, vented the atmosphere of the cabin into the fighter's storage tanks, and reached down to the left, her fingers curling about the emergency hatch release.
****************
OUTER HULL, ENGINEERING
18:15:30 EST
5 MINUTES, 30 SECONDS TO FUSION BREACH
Hume had disabled nearly a third of the charges by now, and Corwin felt like spitting in his fury and frustration. If he didn't get a chance to reenable and arm those charges, every living soul aboard this station was -
Plasma erupted overhead, searing bright and blinding. Corwin snapped his eyes shut and cringed with a yelp. Hume ducked reflexively, then hauled Corwin close and jammed the PPG against his helmet. "Captain Lochley!" he shouted into his radio. "Try that again and I will kill your executive officer! Do you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," said Lochley's voice, oddly cool. "Understood. Jamie, Colin - stand down your weapons."
Corwin only barely listened. He was testing his wrists. The magnetic field of the binders was as strong as ever, but for a moment - for that one second as the plasma burst had blazed by overhead, throwing EM radiation everywhere - the field had weakened, and Corwin had felt his wrists move. If he could somehow get his back to the next flare, the power of which was that much stronger than an ordinary Starfury blast...
Lochley's boots touched down against the station without any sound; she'd shut off the magnetic grapples built into their soles. Lying flat to minimize her silhouette, she carefully hit her thrusters, gliding over the surface of the station towards her foes. Her eyes were cold and intent.
****************
18:16 EST
5 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Hume bent, clicked back the disabling switches on yet another charge, and straightened up. With a burst of jet thrust he and Corwin drifted towards the next charge. Corwin had counted. Seventeen out of forty disabled so far. There would be no way to reenable and arm all of them now, but if Corwin could move fast enough, he might be able to arm the minimum of twenty needed. He'd have to exhaust his thruster fuel to do it, but he could worry about that later -
The night turned brilliant white. Hume ducked, covering his helmet with one arm, as a plasma flare blazed up against the stars. Corwin kicked himself away from the blast, spinning to present his back to the flare, and strained as hard as he could against the binders.
The magnetic plates parted with a tangible snap. Without hesitating, he slapped his belt, triggering a wild thrust of power, and surged at Hume. The two crashed together; Corwin heard the crack as helmet met helmet. He grabbed on and held tight, letting his momentum spin them both over and over. Hume struck powerfully at him, but with no gravity to work against, his blows spent their force throughout the suit, accelerating their spin. His other hand, the PPG gripped in it, spasmed on the trigger as Corwin held it out and away from them. The PPG, silent in vacuum, discharged again and again. Tiny stars flared and shot away from the station.
****************
18:17 EST
4 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Jamie's console bleeped at her with a signal so unexpected it took her a moment to recognize it. She blinked, then shouted, "What the hell?"
"Jamie? What is it?"
"The jumpgate's opening! It might be help!" She linked her flight computer to the jumpgate operating program and watched the vortex generators coming on line. Data on the incoming ship scrolled up her screen, and she exulted. "It's a Minbari flyer, Colin! Maybe it's Delenn! Maybe - "
"Where's the flight ID code?"
Jamie jolted to a stop. Her body went cold as she realized what Colin was saying.
Where the ship data should have held the ship's ID code - the code every ship used as part of its jumpgate activation signal, the code no ship should have been able to activate a gate without, even if it was a falsification - there was nothing.
Whatever was coming through that gate knew how to activate it without sending its own ID code, and that was not something any Minbari she knew could do.
"Colin - I gotta go." Without waiting for an answer she unslaved Lochley's fighter, spun her ship about and smashed it to full thrust inside of a second. Her breath flew from her, carried on a punch of adrenaline, acceleration and dread.
Light ran down the jumpgate tines, coalesced, and opened into void. Out of hyperspace came the flyer, flat, spade-finned like any Minbari ship - but painted jet-black. A colour no Minbari would ever paint their ship, not even the warrior caste. Black, that unrelieved black without decoration or insignia, was the unluckiest colour in the spectrum. It had been ever since Valen's day, and the Great War.
Jamie wasn't terribly superstitious, but at the moment, she believed it all.
The flyer opened fire, green beams streaking across the void like unsheathed swords. Jamie couldn't even be surprised. Of course they would have armed it. She spiraled out of the way with automatic grace, and returned fire in a shower of blue-white plasma bolts. The flyer shifted vectors, eluding her shot with the dexterity only a magnogravitic drive could have provided, and shot towards her with clear and deadly intent.
"Oh no you don't, buddy," she said between clenched teeth. "I don't care who you think you're here to rescue, you are going down."
****************
18:18 EST
3 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Corwin felt another bounce slam him to the hull, and this time he came down at just the wrong angle. Hume got his boots down on either side, locking himself to the hull plating. He twisted an arm free. Before Corwin could wriggle away, Hume seized the rim of his helmet and began pounding it savagely against the hull. Plexicrys and metal smacked Corwin in the forehead and the crown of his skull, four, five, six, seven times, and then he lost both his count and his frantic grip on Hume's wrist. Snarling like a maddened animal, Hume jerked the PPG up and aimed it at his face.
A spacesuited figure crashed into Hume from the side just as Hume's finger was tightening on the trigger. One carefully timed punch smashed at Hume's hand, and the PPG went spinning away into the void. The impact was enough to disrupt the magnetic grip; once more Hume went tumbling over, this time in the clutches of -
"Lieutenant Corwin! GO!" shouted Lochley's voice over the suit com.
Corwin didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed the hull, oriented himself, and switched his thrusters on full. At full power he shot back along the curvature of the hull, decelerating only slightly as he approached the jettison charge. One swipe of his hand reenabled the charge, a stab of one finger hit the arming button, and then he was shooting onwards, the hull blurring away beneath him. He skipped the next charge, only decelerating to re-enable and arm the third.
He could feel every second ticking away with the pounding of his heartbeat as plasma flames climbed high into the night beside him, unceasing now, furious and blinding.
****************
18:19 EST
2 MINUTES TO FUSION BREACH
Jamie hurled her Starfury aside almost too late. The green neutron beam brushed her top starboard engine strut. Metal blazed and deliquesced, and stress-warning signs blazed on her console. Jamie cursed. She wouldn't be able to go to full power on that engine now, not without risking tearing it off the ship. She reduced thrust in the top port engine to compensate and kicked the ship into decel, bruising herself against the straps; the flyer shot by, decelerating to come around in an arc.
Much as it hurt, the Starfury's capacity for stop-start motion was probably saving her life right now. Most magnogravitic pilots learned to take advantage of the inertia-free vector shifting the drive offered, and that very capacity for easy turns left most of them forgetting the more brutal but more unpredictable manoeuvring of true Newtonian motion. Whoever this pilot was, he was flying as if he'd learned his tricks on a White Star -
Jamie's breath caught.
Without thinking about it - because sheer horror at the idea would have stopped her from even contemplating it - she burst into acceleration again, going for the flyer's port wing and deliberately off-angling herself a little to give him an opening. If she was right, any second now the pilot...would...
...would dive and spin himself in mid flight, to take her from beneath with his main guns. And only the fact that she was expecting exactly that manoeuvre let her trigger her low port vertical thrust at exactly the right moment. The ship arced out of the beam's path, tumbling over and over, and Jamie cut loose with her rear guns. A chaotic wave of plasma bolts careened across space after the retreating flyer, straight into its widest possible surface area, unplanned, unaimed, and undodgeable.
The flyer vapourized in a burst of light and metallic shards. Jamie closed her eyes in pain, not bothering to correct the fighter's tumble as she spun away from the doomed Babylon 5 station.
That manoeuvre was a classic Anla'shok tactic. If it had been used against a normal Earthforce Starfury pilot it would have killed him. Either their enemies had somehow stolen Anla'shok training manuals or...or....
Jamie refused to answer the rest of that question.
It was not possible.
It was just...not...possible.
****************
18:20 EST
1 MINUTE TO FUSION BREACH
For a man dedicated to killing himself and everyone else, Hume fought like a cornered panther. Lochley dodged a ripping strike at her air paks and kicked out, slamming him solidly in his midsection; the kick thrust them both away from one another before Lochley triggered her thrusterpak, decelerated, and came hurtling back at him. Hume spun, grabbing her and flinging her past him; she shot towards the hull. With a crack and thump she bounced off the metal plating. She let herself spin into a somersault, twisted as she rolled over herself, and came down facing him, feet locking to the hull. On the border between the engineering sector and the reactor hull, Hume climbed his feet. She gestured with one hand, a quick "come on, come on!" flicker of her fingers, beckoning him.
Hume unzipped a pouch in his belt. And removed a magnetic punch.
Lochley swallowed. A foot long or so, the device was an emergency repair tool meant to drive bolts through hull plating. A space-suit's skin would be no barrier at all. And there was no way she could dodge it at this range.
But then again - and the thought came to her with a truly astonishing coldness - it didn't matter. Even if the shot punctured her main suit, she'd still have about thirty seconds before losing consciousness, and that would be enough to wrestle the control from him and trigger the jettison sequence. And if she could ensure Babylon 5 would survive, there was no choice at all. She kicked free, hit her thrusters and shot towards him at full blast.
Hume aimed the punch carefully, taking his opportunity. Lochley tried desperately to will herself to move faster; nothing happened. She was close now, and she could almost see Hume's face - could see it, eyes narrowing in merciless deadness, fingers tightening on the punch's triggering lever -
Starfire tore the sky above their heads apart. Hume's hand jerked up; the punch went off, sending the first of its rivet magazine harmlessly spaceward through the blast Colin had fired overhead. Before the rogue could bring the punch back down, Lochley had crashed into him. They rolled onto the reactor hull together. Warnings shrieked in Lochley's helmet as her computers sensed the radiation and heat leaking from the dying fusion reaction, but she ignored them. The only thing she could do now was what she was doing. She slammed Hume's helmet against the hull again and again, then reached over, grabbed the punch, pressed it against the shoulder of his suit and fired.
Hume screamed: she felt the vibration through her fingers. Air blasted from the hole in his suit in a tight stream. Lochley grabbed the remote trigger unit from his belt and leapt back, leaving him pinned to the hull of the reactor. She hit her thrusters at full reverse, sending her hurtling backwards towards Engineering. The stream of air continued jetting out, a tiny plume of white as Hume writhed and struggled.
"Lieutenant Corwin!"
"Twenty-three of forty charges armed, Captain!" Corwin shouted back over the radio circuit. "God willing, that'll be enough!"
Lochley's eyes narrowed. "Enough to kill your ass, you bastard," she breathed, and leveled the remote trigger.
"Burn in Hell."
Her thumb depressed the ACTIVATION key.
****************
18:21 EST
BREACH
Around the narrow circumference where the reactor joined Engineering, twenty-three jettison charges went off simultaneously. Shaped to distribute their kinetic force against B5's rotation, they had little to work with now, but the force of the plasma flares did the rest. Hull plating broke and shattered; metal tore with whiplashes of vibration that would have become a sound of shrieking agony in atmosphere. In a huge, slow, horribly wrong movement, Babylon 5's fusion reactor broke free, its pluming plasma dumps giving it more and more momentum. End over end, the massive cylinder tumbled away, bleeding fire and light. Its plating began to buckle and rupture as the fusion reaction within entered its final, most dreadful phase.
Nobody in Babylon 5 could see or sense the tractor beams that reached up from the planet below to accelerate the reactor's spin, sending it farther, faster, than the laws of physics required of themselves. But the driver of those tractor beams knew even he could not move the reactor fast enough to save the station, not without betraying himself irrevocably. And so, with sensors that could track the quantum leaps of electrons within nuclei, he watched the fusion reaction reach its crucial point of overload -
- and detonate.
Half the sky vanished in a circular plane of white fire that would have blinded anyone looking directly at it. Beyond the station, in her still-tumbling fighter, the betrayal-numbed Jamie Pratchett was saved by her sensors, which polarized the Starfury's viewpanels before she knew what had happened. Colin Ferris had triggered his Starfury's polarization in advance, and Elizabeth Lochley and David Corwin had known to flatten themselves to the hull and close their eyes. They did not expect to live - the radiation shock alone should have killed them - but there was always the chance it would be enough. Life could not stop hoping.
Hope would not have been enough, here. But the watcher had played his penultimate trump. The force shield that had sprung into existence in the instant of the reactor's destruction would be detected by no sensors, seen by no technology known to the Younger Races. It stood between the station and the raging fire of destruction, holding back every wavelength but visible light. It stood only for some few seconds, an unmeasurably short time in cosmic terms, as the fusion reaction consumed itself and died.
As blackness returned to space, the shield vanished, as undetectably as it had gone up.
In his cradle of safety, suspended deep in the heart of the Machine, Draal of Tyrim sighed. Perhaps this was its own risk in a way. But those who would realize his interference had already known of him, and no secret could be kept forever. It was time, now, to do nothing but trust.
He closed his eyes and sent his last signal, his last action of assistance, deep into a rift between space and time.
****************
COMMAND AND CONTROL
18:23 EST
FUSION BREACH PLUS TWO MINUTES
Alone in the command pit - she had sent the others off to the Garden to be with their friends at the last moments - Amanda Kreies looked up. It took her some seconds of staring at the clock before she realized what had happened. Weirdly, her first thought was, {{No that's wrong. By Lieutenant Corwin's calculations her existence should have ended two minutes ago.}}
But she was here. She breathed. She felt her heartbeat.
What...?
"...Kreies? Lochley to C&C, is anyone there?"
As if in a dream, Kreies rose, went to the captain's station and activated her link. "Kreies here, Captain."
"Status?"
"Internal communications are still down, Captain - let me see what I can find - " She tapped orders at the one working terminal. The screen flickered weakly and came back with readings. She repeated them. "Reactor jettison sequence complete. Radiation readings minimal."
"Minimal?!" Corwin's voice came over the link. "That's not right. We should both be dead, Captain!"
"Right now, Mr. Corwin, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Ms. Kreies? What about battery power?"
"Battery power has..." Kreies' voice trailed off. She made herself speak up, more firmly. "Battery power readings indicate fifteen minutes remaining."
There was no answer.
"Captain?" Kreies didn't recognize the precise tenor voice. "Exactly how long will B5 remain viable without power?"
A long, slow, tired breath. "According to the engineering specs I read when I came on board, Colin, about ten to eleven hours before all heat is lost to space. My guess is most of us will freeze to death after about seven or eight."
Kreies's knees gave way. She let herself slide to the floor, wishing she could sob but somehow not able to; her eyes were wide, and felt dry and itchy. After an hour of terror and a miraculous last-minute reprieve, the sentence of death was back. Just extended by a few hours. And instead of a blinding, painless, instant flash, it would be the slow cold agonizing death of freezing. Kreies wanted to shriek, or to curl up on herself like a baby. It wasn't fair. Goddammit, it wasn't fair.
The computer bleeped. Kreies ignored it. There was nothing it could say now of any importance. They were dead, all of them, as surely as if that reactor had gone off still attached to the station. They just hadn't been made to stop breathing yet.
The computer bleeped again. Light flickered against the C&C windows. Kreies reluctantly sat up to look out onto space - and stiffened. She blinked, knuckled her eyes, then staggered to the windows and stared out. An unbelieving grin grew on her face.
The jumpgate flashed. Space opened once more. Through the interdimensional rip, huge and graceful and powerful, two ships came: the curved and fluted shape of a Centauri war cruiser, and beside it the huge shape of a bulk deuterium/He3 tanker. From where she floated over the broken and jagged end of the reactor housing, Lochley watched the ships draw parallel to B5 and thought that she had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.
Over Lochley's circuits came a voice she had never heard before, but which carried with it an unmistakeable ring of authority: a woman's voice, older than her own, speaking English perfectly but with a faint accent she remembered from Londo Mollari's days on the station. "Centauri war cruiser Justarius to Babylon 5."
"This is Captain Elizabeth Lochley, CO of Babylon 5."
"We are Lady Morella, Imperial Consort of Emperor Turhan. By virtue of those special gifts that are the province of Centauri seers, we were vouchsafed advance knowledge of your need. We have commandeered this ship, under the command of Captain Carn Mollari, to provide you with assistance, if necessary. May we be of service?"
Mollari - Morella. The names came back to Lochley, bubbling up out of the half-forgotten memories of intelligence reports. Morella was a prophetess, a precognitor, a seer of the future who had been the favoured wife of Emperor Turhan, but fallen out of favour under Cartagia and, strangely, even further out of favour under Mollari. Carn Mollari: the Emperor's nephew, watched with great suspicion by the Emperor's enemies and even greater suspicion by the Emperor, as all successful military men were watched in the Republic. Survivor of the Raghesh 3 Incident in 2258. Being commandeered by Morella would only stain his record further.
But all that was secondary to the fact that somehow, unbelieveably, they were here. That the miracle Lochley had believed impossible had happened, right in front of her eyes.
Her voice was thick.
"Yes, Lady Morella. Your service..." She had to pause to clear her throat and wished she could rub her eyes through a spacesuit helm. "Your service is gratefully accepted."
****************** ENVOI
*****************
OUTER HULL, ENGINEERING
13:22 EST, 06/04/2263
FUSION BREACH PLUS TWO DAYS
Once again at the helm of her Starfury, Lochley hung in space and watched the slow healing of the wounded Babylon 5.
It was the clumsiest, fastest job B5's engineering crew had ever done - plugging the vital circuits of a Human space station into a Centauri war-cruiser's reactor was not something either structure had ever been designed for - but it had worked. For two days a bare minimum of life-support had run off the Justarius's reactor, regularly replenished by the tanker, until the Earth ships could arrive. Now, a series of tankers and freighters hung in orbit about B5's shattered stern, assembling a new fusion reactor from prefab components and anchoring it to its new place.
What Lochley hadn't expected - although, she supposed irritably, she should have - was the warship that had come with them.
Earth hadn't suffered from the Centauri depredations of last year as much as some planets had, but they had lost shipping. More to the point, President Luchenko was very wary of doing anything to jeopardize the potential benefits of ISA membership, and that included keeping up appearances against the ISA's formally rejected antagonist. So the Omega-class destroyer Achilles was now circling the station at a slow pace, keeping sensors and weapons carefully trained in the Centauri's direction and ready to disable or destroy the Justarius if it even looked like it was powering up to combat status. The tanker, of course - which so far as Lochley could tell didn't even boast a name, merely a number of one of the lesser Guild Houses - wouldn't last a second.
The ingratitude of it stuck in Lochley's throat. But as Senator Quantrell had told her rather acidly in their StellarCom exchange yesterday, gratitude was not something the Senate felt it could afford. Not for the sake of a station which had itself been a significant thorn in Earthgov's side upon more than one occasion, and not for a race whose political untrustworthiness had been proven, again and again. This was one gift horse that very definitely was getting looked in the mouth.
Which, in its own way, led her right back to the dilemma she'd come out here to ponder, and which had become no clearer for her sabbatical from C&C.
She sighed, and accelerated towards the docking bay.
****************
GREEN SECTOR
14:16 EST
"Captain Lochley." Morella stood as Lochley entered the guest quarters they'd quickly assigned her. Carn, who'd been sitting nearby and conversing ith her in Centauri, also stood. His awkward look reminded her strangely of Vir for a moment. "We are honoured."
"Likewise, Your Grace." Lochley inclined her head. "May I?" She indicated an armchair; Morella nodded, and Lochley took her seat with as carefully neutral an expression as she could manage. She suspected Morella wasn't fooled, but the niceties had to be observed.
"My government wishes to thank you both, again, for your assistance in this time of crisis," she began. "But..." Despite all her efforts, a grimace of distaste twisted her lips, as if she'd bitten into a lemon. "But in view of the political situation in the galaxy at this time, they do not feel they are able to offer asylum to yourself or Captain Mollari. They will express their strongest gratitude and recommendations to the government of the Republic..."
"Tell them not to bother." Morella's flat tone cut Lochley off like a slap. "Your Lieutenant Corwin brought this down a few minutes ago." She held up a data crystal, then slotted it into the tabletop viewer. "We have already viewed it, and we could not say we were surprised at the contents..."
A smooth, blandly handsome Centauri man, his greying hair elegantly coiffed and crested, appeared on the screen. His expression was the stern disapproval of a just-minded father. "Message to Her Prophetic Grace the Lady Morella Illiana Turhan, and to Captain Carn Mollari of the Centauri Imperial Navy. You are hereby ordered to return at once to Centauri space, where you will be placed under arrest and tried for treason to the Centauri Republic. Subcaptain Kier Torasso will assume command of the Justarius to return you to Centauri Prime. This is by Direct Royal Command of the Emperor Mollari II, all praise and glory to his name."
The screen went blank.
Lochley bit her lip. She looked at Carn. "I'm sorry, Captain."
Carn sighed. "We understand these things, on Centauri Prime," he said. "The Emperor's power cannot be restricted by so distant a blood tie as ours. Too many succession wars taught us that."
"And we find ourselves of the opinion," said Morella, "that the greater our distance from the Centauri Republic in these days, the better." She cut off Carn's interjection with a raised hand. "Did you never wonder why we did not go to the Centarum immediately, Captain Mollari? It was because we knew they would not accede to our request."
"But the words of a Seer are - " Carn began.
"As frangible as anyone else's, under the rule of Londo Mollari," finished Morella ruthlessly. "No, Carn, we will not - " She paused, then continued with slow deliberation. "I will not set myself against Londo. Not here, not now. You and I, Carn, we cannot remain on Centauri Prime, but our poor broken realm will not survive another struggle for power such as we would set off. Dark as Londo's rule is, it is preferable to further strife.
"At least...for now."
The weight of those words held them still for a moment. Finally Carn slumped. "Well, then, where will we go...? Where can we hide that the Royal Guard will not find us?"
Lochley cleared her throat. "I, um...I actually do have a suggestion for that."
****************
GREEN SECTOR
AMBASSADORIAL QUARTERS, NARN REGIME
14:43 EST
Ta'Lon's reaction was the last thing Lochley had expected. She'd prepared herself to deal with fury, with a flat refusal, even with a polite deferral that might or might not have any real desire to help behind it. What she had not expected was a burst of guffawing laughter that had collapsed the Narn Ambassador into a chair and rendered him physically unable to speak for some few minutes.
She waited Ta'Lon out patiently. Beside her, Morella sat with an equally bland look, although if Carn's expression was anything to go by he was feeling the rage Lochley had expected of Ta'Lon. Probably not on his own behalf - Carn didn't strike Lochley as arrogant enough for that - but on behalf of the Seer, who was, after all, a revered figure among the Centauri.
Still, if this actually worked, respectful deference would be far down on Morella's list of priorities.
"Forgive me - " Ta'Lon sat up at long last, wiping moisture from his eyes. "I cannot have heard you correctly. You are suggesting that I hide a fugitive Centauri seer and naval captain on Narn? From their own people?"
"Where better?" Lochley shrugged.
"You're serious."
"Deadly."
"Yes, that would have been the word to choose." Ta'Lon leant forward, pointing at Morella. "Are you prepared to live in hiding for months, possibly years? Are you prepared to run the risk of being lynched at any time by people you have never met, to whom you have done nothing wrong? Are you willing to become the lowest of the low, hated and reviled by almost anyone who realizes what you are? If you are not - " Ta'Lon clenched his fist - "you may as well go back to Centauri Prime and die."
Morella smoothed her dress over her lap. "I am not a gambler, Ambassador," she said at length, and Ta'Lon's eyeridge lifted as he realized she'd abandoned the royal plural of an Imperial Consort. "Yet I am willing to take risks when the alternative is less appealing. And from Narns such as yourself, hatred and vilification may well be preferable to the smiles of an Emperor with a dagger in his sleeve."
Ta'Lon held her eyes. Morella did not look away. And slowly, a smile grew again on Ta'Lon's face. Lochley braced herself, but the Narn didn't seem inclined to fall apart this time. "I confess, the notion of concealing a wanted Centauri criminal on my own world has...appeal."
"And if your government chooses to take offense at the decision, at the very least you will be shipped someplace safer, and probably less stressful," observed Morella dryly.
Lochley startled herself with a burst of laughter. She choked it off, but when both Ta'Lon and Morella turned the same sly twinkle on her, she was unable to hold it back.
Carn sighed the sigh of a man who knew he had missed the joke once again.
****************
MEDLAB ONE
15:25 EST
"Lieutenant. I didn't expect to see you here." Lochley raised her eyebrow at the small gathering: Tessa Halloran lay in her medcot, eyes heavy and drowsy with medication, while Vir and Corwin sat to either side of her. Corwin straightened reflexively, then subsided as she waved a hand at him. "Don't worry, David, I'm not in a formal mood right now. How's the patient?"
"The patient is pissed off," mumbled Tessa thickly, but she managed a smile and touched her side where bandages and regen paks clustered thickly over the flesh. "Problem with spaceborne postings...everyone uses PPGs. Damn plasma burns don't respond to regen 'swell as gunshot wounds."
Vir shuddered. "Director, you're the only person I know who can make a joke about preferring one type of deadly injury to another."
Corwin stood. "I can't stay, Tessa, I have to get back on duty. But I've had your assistants winding up the legal details. The Hume case is closed."
"'Bout bloody time," Tessa said sleepily. "Lissen, Vir, you take care'a yourself on Centauri Prime, huh?"
"So you were able to get a ship," said Lochley.
"Lieutenant Corwin secured passage for me on the Justarius," Vir explained as he got to his feet. "I'm bringing official confirmation that they were innocent dupes of Captain Mollari and Lady Morella." He looked wry. "Which is true, but nobody would believe them if they said it, so you'd better have somebody who's so tongue-tied talking to the government he couldn't possibly be able to lie."
Corwin grinned, but Lochley's smile was more lopsided. "Don't count on people underestimating you forever, Vir."
The Centauri blinked, then looked thoughtful as he followed Corwin out. Lochley took his vacated seat beside Tessa. "How're you doing?" she asked again. "Really?"
Tessa's vague smile collapsed into a pained look. "I hate these fragging drugs," she admitted. "Head feels like it's fulla treacle. But Lilian tells me if I didn'have'm I'd be in...how'd she put it?...'unbelieveable agony'. So, not a lot of choice."
"How long are you going to be laid up?"
"Three to four weeks. If I'm lucky."
"Luck is ignorance."
Lochley jumped at the booming baritone voice, then slumped and put her hand over her face in irritation. "Damn you, Draal!" she snapped. "Can't you ever make a quiet entrance?"
"Is that any way to speak to the man who saved your life?" Draal folded his arms across his broad chest and moved to stand beside Tessa, who was staring quizzically up at him. "Granted, I was unable to do anything to prevent the actual detonation, but - " He broke off as Tessa reached up and carefully slid a hand back and forth through his hologrammatic arm. "Can I help you?"
"Helluva lot more wordy than any hallucination I've had." Tessa scowled. "You're not just the drugs talking, are you?"
"Myself? No. Though I've had some fascinating conversations with many a complex chemical chain. Have you ever spoken to a forming space-borne molecule of life in its own fresh-created language?"
"Can't say as I have."
"You have not lived."
"Draal - " The Minbari turned; at the sight of Lochley's face, his grin faded somewhat. Lochley had folded her arms and was gazing at him with a cold, flat look. "I'm not feeling very welcoming right now. You could have prevented all of this. You didn't. So don't try claiming any credit for our phenomenal good luck. If Morella hadn't had her vision - "
"Ah, yes. A prophetic advanced warning of your disaster, so that she might get here in time to save you, beginning her journey before your catastrophe had even begun. How convenient that that should occur...and how lucky that it should come to a Centauri seer, whose people revere seers so much that they will neither question the accuracy of her vision nor argue when she gives commands. Thus, she brings help faster than any government might - even yours or mine."
Lochley stared at him. "That vision - "
"- was a signal. A telepathic signal from the Great Machine, sent back in time through a local instability in the temporal continuum."
Lochley scowled. "That's - "
"Impossible?" Draal cut her off; his eyes locked to hers, and his voice sharpened. "Indeed it is. As impossible as Babylon 5's mysterious acquisition of an almost total immunity to hard radiation in the few seconds a sun burned far too closely nearby. How fortunate it is that you yourself did not die with a carbonized nervous system two days ago. Is that not also impossible, Elizabeth?"
"Who are you, anyway?" said Tessa irritably.
"A friend." Draal did not look away from Lochley. "As much as I can be, though necessity prevents me from doing as much as I would want to."
Shockingly, Tessa snorted. "Yeah, man, I know how that goes..." She let her head fall back, her eyes fluttering shut. "Cap'n, you mind if I nod off here? I'm just...really tired..."
"That's all right, Tessa. Have your sleep." Lochley didn't look away from Draal, but her shoulders relaxed slightly as Tessa drifted into slumber. She closed her own eyes briefly for a moment and sighed. "Draal, you risked the lives of two hundred and fifty thousand of my people to keep your precious secret. I'm not happy about that."
"I would not expect you to be, Elizabeth. But happiness..." Draal sighed, turned away and clasped his hands behind his back. "Happiness is not something we have a right to. For all the words of alliances and governments, the most any law or principle can guarantee is the greatest possible freedom to look for it. Not all the power in the universe can insure that we will find it."
"So we're all just a victim of indifferent circumstances?" Lochley shook her head. "I don't buy that. I never have and I never will. We matter, Draal, and I won't let my people be sacrificed in the name of a principle. I won't have an ally who I can't trust to back me all the way, 100% down the line. I won't say I'm not grateful for what you've done; I am, believe me." She came around Tessa's cot to face Draal, her gaze and voice steady. "But nothing is more important to me than the safety and welfare of this station, Draal, and if you can't back me on that, I don't want you in the picture. You'll just make things more complicated and dangerous."
Draal blinked at her. "You truly mean that."
"Without hesitation."
The Minbari looked pensive. Finally he heaved a deep breath. "I cannot but admire your dedication, Elizabeth. But it is misplaced. I am here. I will help you as best I can, when I can. You are speaking from rage, because you feel betrayed; the time will come when you need me, Elizabeth. And I will not let you throw that away from your own temper."
Lochley's hold on her anger snapped. "Get out of here!" she shouted.
With a sad smile, Draal's image dissolved, fading from the ground up until his dark, steady eyes were the last thing visible. Then they, too, vanished.
At the same moment a rattle and crack of plastic came from behind Lochley. She jumped and spun, then gasped in horror. The sound had been the regen paks and bandages falling away from Tessa's side and hitting the floor, exposing -
- absolutely clear and unmarked skin.
Tessa stirred, propped herself up on her elbows, then frowned. "Hey, what the - " She reached for her own side; her fingers encountered the exposed, scarless skin, and she jackknifed upright. "What the frag?" She looked down at herself, eyes wide, utterly undrugged and caught in a blaze of incomprehension and anger. "How did this happen? Who did this?"
Lochley made her decision. Perhaps it proceeded from at least mildly petty impulses. But most of it made too much sense. If Draal was going to play with her life in the name of his own duties, then by God, she was going to return the favour, and she knew the first person she was going to start with.
"His name's Draal," she began.
It took her about two minutes to tell what she knew. Tessa was silent for perhaps three minutes after that. She remained unmoving, except for one hand, which kept probing her side as if looking for the wound that no longer existed.
"A Great Machine," she said.
"Yep."
"Sheridan knew about this. Delenn and the Anla'shok knew. Pratchett knew." Through clenched teeth, as if this last was particularly difficult: "Garibaldi knew. And nobody ever told me."
"Nope."
Another pause.
"I need a vacation," Tessa announced abruptly. "If I have to go back to work with this fresh in my mind, I'll order somebody on a suicide mission."
"Anywhere you want to go," said Lochley. "God knows you've earned it." She hesitated. "I could get you quick passage back to Earth, maybe, if...if there was anyone you wanted to see...?" Her voice trailed off.
Tessa shook her head once, jerkily. "No. No, Stephen couldn't help me with this. I don't know if he'd even understand why I'm mad..." A sidelong look. "You do, though. Don't you."
"Utterly."
Tessa let out a breath. "Mars."
"Mars?"
"Yeah."
"Any particular reason?"
"I could say there are some things I want to look into - which is true; I want to try tracking Hume's movements, and there's the Marsgov elections coming up and all that, but..." Tessa drew her knees up to her chin and hugged her legs, unselfconscious as a child. "Really, I just need to go home, Elizabeth. I need...I need to be home, for a while. I need to think some things over."
"I know." Lochley looked away. "I think we all do."
They sat for a while in silence.
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