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,