BABYLON 5: THE VIRTUAL SIXTH SEASON
"THE PRICE OF FREEDOM"
Episode 14
MIDNIGHT AT MOMMY FORTUNA'S
"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone."
Selene wasn't quite sure what a 'lilac' was, but she sighed happily anyway, settling into the deep chair Taan Churok kept in the back room. Since the Dark Star had re-opened after the Captain's crackdown on illicit activities, the bar no longer served as a pickup point for prostitutes or rendezvous for drug dealers, so Selene's older sister Trish had lifted her ban on the eleven-year-old's coming to visit her on the job. It still wasn't what upscale parents would consider a 'wholesome' environment, but it beat running loose through DownBelow or being confined in their shabby quarters when Selene's work was done and her best friend, Jaida Tefano, was otherwise occupied.
Normally Selene wasn't a big reader, but 'The Last Unicorn' was one book she had not only finished, but re-read three or four times now. The first time had been right after her father disappeared, almost three years ago, when she had found the datacrystal in a box with some other things in his room. The box had her name on it, and she had taken it as a sort of legacy. The book, with its lyrical language and odd quirks of humor - not unlike her father's, she recalled sadly - had helped get her through those first few difficult months.
It was then that she'd taken to calling her sister 'Molly Grue' - though not to her face, of course. The older girl would never have gotten it, and at first she would just have laughed derisively and gone off with her Lurker friends. Since Trish had gotten the job at the Dark Star and settled down, though, Selene sometimes felt that the name was even more apt - from a cynical and bitter adolescent she had turned into a finicky, almost obsessively responsible adult practically overnight. Trish worked so hard to support them - even now that Selene was taking a little of the burden with her co-ownership of the fledgling IGOT Coffee and Tea Company - that Selene often wished she could just...loosen up a little. Spend some time in a unicorn's wood, perhaps.
She had tried to get Jaida to read the book, back then, but the Centauri girl had been put off by the alien references - and besides, that had been when Jaida was in her 'techie' phase, soaking up everything she could access on math and hard science, and disdaining fantasy and frivolity of any kind. Fortunately, she'd gotten over it. Indeed, since the arrival of those three Centauri ex-Ranger trainees, and their own adventure in rescuing Sgt. Satamba's kids, she'd been regaling Selene with tales of Centauri swashbucklers and romantic heros during their work hours in the greenhouse.
Hey - maybe this would be a good time to try her on 'The Last Unicorn' again, Selene thought suddenly. Flicking off the display, she clambered out of the chair and darted out into the noise and bustle of the Dark Star. Her sister called an admonition to be home by 21:00 as she flitted by, but she blithely ignored it, skipping out into the corridor ahead of a pack of loudly carolling Narns in baseball uniforms.
Trish stood shaking her head for a moment, then went back to loading up a tray of glasses for the sonic cleaner. "So, tell me about this Mr. Bowman," she said. In the aftermath of the crackdown and the Dark Star's changes in policy, the bar's owner was finally, after all these years, coming to visit, and the staff was understandably curious. The Drazi manager shrugged and slung a glass of blue ale down the bar to a waiting Llort.
"Don't know much," he said laconically. "He hired me over the comm, and he calls a couple times a year to check on things, but other than that, he leaves me alone - which is how I like it." Taan Churok's reptilian head swiveled toward a shaggy-maned Brakiri draped unartistically over the bar. "Rukh, you're cut off!" he said brusquely. "Go on home, now."
"Ah, Churok!" that worthy protested. "My uncle Ock never threw me out of here - are you going to start now? Especially this early in the night..." Brakiri were nocturnal by nature. Most of those who dwelt onstation, among Humans, Minbari, and the other daywalkers, adjusted their schedules to match, but there were some who just didn't care, and others who found it...advantageous to prowl while the rest of the station slept.
"This early in the night, you have no business being that drunk," observed the draz. "And Ock is no longer manager here - I am."
"Ah, but you never would have been manager, if I had not put in a good word for my old friend from the Mutai..."
"And you wouldn't have survived the Mutai if Taan hadn't covered your ass," put in Trish. "I've heard all your stories, Rukh, and I'm tired of hearing 'em. Now just run along and bother somebody else for a while." As the Brakiri muttered something about 'going where he was appreciated', she turned back to Churok. "But surely you can tell me something about Bowman - how old is he? Does he have kids?"
Again, the draz shrugged. "How old? Older than me, which is saying something. In Human terms...eighty, ninety perhaps? The rest you can ask him yourself - he's coming in on the Asimov tomorrow. Why don't you take the little one and meet him?" he added.
"I might just do that," said Trish with a grin. Neither of them noticed as Rukh slunk out the door, a furtive smile echoing in his dark, snakelike eyes.
****************
Captain's Quarters
19:45 EST.
Captain Lochley was technically off-duty, but she had her portable monitor up anyway, checking the latest dispatches from Earthdome. She was looking for one in particular, and she smiled triumphantly when she found it. Now for the next step - she was pretty confident, though. As strictly as she preferred to adhere to regulations and protocols, there were times when being a personal friend of the President of the Interstellar Alliance did come in handy, and she doubted that John Sheridan himself would consider this small favor to be anything but a just reward.
As she was about to start recording the message, a call came through from C&C.
"Comm for you, Captain," said the brisk voice of her second in command, Lieutenant Corwin. "It's coded personal, from the Asimov."
"Put it through, Lieutenant." Now who on Earth - or in this case, off it - would be calling her from the Asimov?
The face, when it appeared, was that of no one she knew - a clean-lined Caucasian face, male, perhaps a well-preserved sixty, with ice-blue eyes and a short sweep of steel-grey hair matched by a precisely-trimmed mustache that set off his strong chin and aristocratic cheekbones. The man smiled, an odd diagonal slash of a smile, and for no reason she could name, Lochley felt a chill run down her spine.
"Can I help you?" she asked, abruptly aware that her hair was down and she was wearing the sleeveless t-shirt and sweats she worked out in.
"Elizabeth? Pardon me - Captain Lochley - but that's how I've always thought of you, you know. Little Lizzie. I must say you've grown into quite an impressive...officer." He smiled again at her affronted glare, and went on before she could speak (fortunately or unfortunately, the Stellarcomm hyperspace relays made communications delays negligible for relatively short distances). "You probably don't remember me, but I was a good friend of your father's. Colonel Avram Peterson - retired now, of course," he added, with a gesture indicating his expensive, charcoal-grey civilian suit. "I will be staying on Babylon 5 for a few days on business, and I was hoping we could get together and talk about old times...dinner, perhaps, if your schedule permits?"
Lochley suddenly felt like she'd been flying a Starfury in an advanced maneuvering drill - whipsawed in half a dozen directions at once. Peterson - she vaguely remembered the name. A friend of her father's, yes, although she wasn't sure just how eager she was to discuss 'old times' with anyone, even now...nonetheless, aside from anything else, being polite to civilians was part of her job. She pulled together a tight smile of her own and agreed graciously. "Just give me a call when you get settled, Colonel, and we'll work something out."
"Splendid," the grey-haired man said, smiling that lopsided smile again, and signed off.
****************
Starliner Asimov
Hyperspace
19:48 EST.
The man who had called himself 'Avram Peterson' was still smiling as he leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers contemplatively before him. Two decks away, still in the First Class section of the massive passenger ship, another man, equally contemplative though less generously endowed in the hair department, fired up an expensive cigar. Two decks away from him, a third man, older than the second and older-looking than the first, tossed restlessly in a dark and dangerous dream.
****************** Act One *****************
Babylon 5
Customs/Debarkation
12:35 EST, 07/15/2263
The Security guard at Inbound Processing was a new guy, and his expression was blank and bored as he asked for Garibaldi's identicard. Something flickered in his eyes as he read the name - was it that Garibaldi? If so, should he say something? But he settled on a safe, businesslike, "Welcome to Babylon 5, Mr. Garibaldi", which only made the former Security Chief feel that much less welcome.
And then there was the entourage. Last time, a month ago, he'd managed to get away on his own. This time he wasn't so lucky. The deal with SeroTech of Orion was a complicated one, and the negotiations would require a knowledge of the nitty-gritty details of the pharmaceutical business that Garibaldi didn't have and didn't particularly want. For this one, he was serving mainly as facilitator and rubber-stamp - at least as far as his official business was concerned.
As for his unofficial business - Garibaldi swept a practiced eye over the crowded chamber as he waited for Meeker and Spence to work their way through their own line. Lyta's people had said their contact would meet him here, but he had no idea what the guy was supposed to look like. He could be anybody. That was the worst fragging thing about telepaths, Garibaldi thought to himself, they could be anybody. As he was savoring the familiar flare of anger at that thought, like worrying a loose tooth, his gaze locked onto another passenger coming through the First Class line. It couldn't be...
But it was. The man turned as Garibaldi started forward -- the darkened hair and mustache were no disguise at all to the ex-Security Chief. What the hell was the leader of the renegade Earthgov organization known as "Bureau 13" doing on Babylon 5? Their eyes locked across the concourse. Molyneux gave a brief nod, and Garibaldi swore. This couldn't be good. Before he could move closer, though, he bumped into someone.
Normally he would have pushed right by, but something about this woman stopped him. She was tall and slender, with long, curling mahogany hair, coffee-and-cream skin and the face of a Nubian goddess. As he groped for an apology, she looked back and smiled at him, and suddenly he knew...
"Damn!" he said reflexively, and in that moment she was gone.
So was Molyneux.
"Damn!" he said again.
"Is something wrong, Mr. Garibaldi?"
It was Meeker, a top-level Edgars-Garibaldi Industries accountant who fully lived up to his name. Spence, the Process Analyst (whatever the hell that was), stood beside him, a faintly disapproving look on her prim features. Garibaldi sighed. "No. Come on, let's go - our first meeting's in an hour and a half, and some of us," he added, with a glance at Spence, who seemed as poised and unrumpled after their three-day journey as she would have at an eight A.M. StatRep back on Mars, "need to settle in first."
"Hey, Mr. Garibaldi!" the call, in a light, childish voice, came from a slender arm waving above the heads of the crowd. With a sudden grin, Garibaldi turned aside to greet the two excited girls, sparing a brief frown of almost-recognition for the thin, dark-haired young woman who accompanied them. Her return frown of warning and disapproval reminded him of Spence, and he glanced back to see his assistants hovering behind him uncertainly.
"You go on," he called, "I just need to say hello to these ladies." He turned back to the girls. "Have you grown a meter each since I saw you? And what's this I hear about you guys finding some abandoned coffee and tea plants and turning them into a business?" he added with a broad wink. Jaida giggled in delight, but Selene managed an ostentatiously disapproving glare - obviously modeled on her sister's.
"And what's this we hear about you visiting the station last month and not stopping by to see us?" she retorted.
"Woops," said Garibaldi with not-entirely-feigned chagrin. "Honest, I meant to, but things got a little...hairy while I was here..."
Jaida shrugged. "So what else is new?" she said. "Anyway, how long are you here for? Will you have time to come to the greenhouse? The plants miss you, you know - and we can introduce you to the new ones..."
Garibaldi laughed. "The plants miss me? Yeah, right," he said, but relented at her earnest expression. He sighed. "Look, I'll see what I can do - trouble is, I've got a lot of meetings to go to, with people who make your plants look like Albert Einstein in a green wig."
That one got under Selene's guard - even the sister cracked a smile. Garibaldi tried out one of his own on her. "Don't I know you from somewhere? I know you must be Selene's sister Trish, but..."
"We've met, a time or two," the young woman admitted. "I've been working at the Dark Star for about three years, and before that, well, we ran into each other once - I'm afraid I wasn't too polite."
Garibaldi snapped his fingers. "Now I've got it! It was when I was looking for that rat Devereaux - before I got shot in the back. Never forget a face," he concluded smugly. He looked her up and down appraisingly, and she raised a faint blush. "Looks like things have been working out for you," he added.
"You, too," she managed awkwardly. "Look, we have to meet somebody..."
"And I've gotta go. I'll give your dad a call when I get a minute," he assured Jaida. She nodded, and after a brief hesitation he stooped to give both girls a quick hug. As he moved off, Trish fancied she could read embarrassment in the lines of his shoulderblades, and allowed herself another small smile.
She turned back, squaring her shoulders and walking up to the Security guard at the First Class line. "Excuse me, I'm waiting for a Mr. Bowman, Christopher Bowman, from Earth? I don't know what he looks like..."
The guard scanned his passenger list. "He hasn't come through yet. Why don't you wait back there, and I'll send him over?"
Trish nodded and steered the girls out of the way of traffic. It wasn't long before the guard looked back at them, then gestured to direct a passenger's attention their way. Trish gasped in spite of herself.
"Why is he riding that...that chair with wheels?" Jaida asked.
"Hush," snapped Trish absently, stepping forward to meet the elderly man. He was, indeed, older than Taan Churok, even allowing for the differences between species, but he was still hale, with a large, lean frame that would have been impressively tall if he had been standing. A white fringe of hair decorated an open, amiable countenance, with smiling eyes that picked Trish and the girls out of the crowd unerringly. At the touch of an armrest control, the powered wheelchair moved smoothly over to them.
"Ms. Livingston, I presume?" Bowman said, smiling faintly as at a private joke. "And this must be Selene - and Dem'selle Tefano, of course. Delighted to make your acquaintance, ladies!" As the bemused girls worked through greetings and wondering how he knew who they were (Taan Churok's reports had apparently been more thorough than Trish had suspected), their meeting did not go unnoticed. Across the room, a rather seedy-looking Human in nondescript jacket and jeans watched them closely under the pretext of studying the arrival display. When they moved off toward the transport tubes, he followed, just barely making it into the crowded car with them.
****************
Brown Sector, Level 26
Alfredo's Pool Hall
13:06 EST.
"Make it quick, j'Nialth, it's past my bedtime," the Brakiri said. Behind him, islands of light dotted the dimness of the long room, where players of various species were using long sticks to poke heavy balls around long, flat tables, with due consideration for the effects of station spin. An irritated rustle preceded the proprietor's reply.
"I am on call 256 [un-renderable Thrakallan time-units] a day, Rukh," came the overly-enthusiastic tones of the insectoid's vocoder. "I expect those who work for me to do likewise. I have been considering the news you brought last night, of the arrival of the owner of the Dark Star on Babylon 5."
"He should be here by now," Rukh pointed out. "Are you going to go talk to him, try to get him to sell you the bar? Maybe he'll be more agreeable face to...um...face," the Brakiri added dubiously, considering the masked, alien visage before him.
The Thrakallan made a dismissive gesture with a foreclaw. "I have initiated negotiations with this Bowman creature four times via StellarComm, and been refused each time. I see no reason to think that a fifth would be any different. And I have not summoned you for a consultation on my business affairs, in any case." Rukh bridled at that, but the insectoid either did not register the silent protest or chose to ignore it. "There is an object that I wish to obtain. A specific object. And you, Mutari Rukh, are the optimal being to obtain this object."
****************
Red Sector, Level 6
Conference Room 12B
15:10 EST.
The decibel level was rising again, and by now the only thing that kept Garibaldi from calling Security to take all five of the squabbling corp-rats to the brig was the fact that Zack would never let him hear the end of it.
SeroTech was a relatively small but growing pharmaceutical manufacturer based in the Orion cluster of colonies. In fact, growth was its main problem at this point - increased demand since the end of the Shadow War had tempted management to overextend, and neither the control systems nor the infrastructure were in place to handle it. They did, however, have several excellently-positioned production facilities that could be expanded given an influx of expertise and capital, a lock on several patents developed using native alkaloids, and a good, if now faltering, relationship with their customers.
The newly-renamed Edgars-Garibaldi Industries, on the other hand, had just about filled its niche in Sol nearspace, and with the recent drastic cutbacks in the chemical and bioweapons divisions, was in very real need of a base of operations from which to expand into the rimward markets. Since said cutbacks had also resulted in a temporary increase in the cash reserve, the match seemed made in heaven.
Which was one of the good things about getting married in Medlab, Garibaldi thought as he watched the prospective "in-laws" from the two companies butt heads across the conference table.
"You break down the pre-packaging phase into twenty-seven distinct steps - our systems only allow for fifteen. There's no way we're going to be able to backfill all the data, and half of it is irrelevant for our processes anyway..." the analyst from SeroTech was whining again.
"Then your processes will have to change," said Spence, for the seventh or eighth time.
"But the expense..." that was the ST accountant, of course.
"And the retraining..." they'd brought a Human Resources flack, too - probably just so they could assure their employees that they were 'fighting the good fight'.
"We can always replace workers rather than retraining them. It would probably be cheaper anyway," retorted Spence, with a look at Meeker, who nodded reluctantly.
"Replace? Are you nuts? We're talking upwards of fifteen thousand employees here, most of them with advanced degrees!" protested the HR guy. "The Orion colonies aren't Calcutta or BosWash, Ms. Spence - you can't just sweep Ph.D's up off the sidewalks!" The guy was turning faintly purple, and there was an ugly glint in Spence's eye - Garibaldi sighed.
It was just like a brawl at the Dark Star, only with words instead of fists. He felt an upwelling of retrospective sympathy for Sheridan - he'd sat in on a few of the nastier League and War Council meetings, but he'd never been the guy in charge. Those were the good old days, he thought.
"Hey!" he said loudly, using his water glass as a makeshift gavel. Fortunately, it was empty. "There will be no replacements." At Spence's startled look, he added, "At least, not on any kind of mass scale. And if your people are as sharp as you seem to think," he added, turning to the HR guy, "retraining will be a non-issue, anyway.
"This meeting was intended to identify critical issues - that's critical issues, not this twelve versus twenty-seven step crap - and determine approaches for attacking them. And that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm calling a recess for two hours, and once you've all had a chance to cool down you'll reconvene here - you will reconvene - and you will draw up a document listing the top three issues, with three approaches for each, including pro/con lists and estimated costs for each approach. This report will be on my monitor at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow morning, otherwise all of you will find yourselves on the short list for the replacements that do get made. Is that understood?"
Silence, then, slowly, five nods.
"Now I'd suggest you take the next two hours and recharge, rethink your perspectives. Have some lunch, take a tour of the station - it's a pretty nice place. Stay out of Down Below, though. I don't want to have to come fish anybody's butt out of a Pak'ma'ra's lunchbox.
"Oh, and just out of curiosity, do any of you have Ph.D.s?" he asked. They all looked at each other. After a moment, Meeker raised a tentative hand.
"Well, Dr. Meeker, you're in luck - the weather is lovely in Boston this time of year."
With that, the others began picking up their files and trailing out of the room. Once the SeroTech representatives were out the door, he barked, "Spence!"
She halted and turned.
"Yes, sir?"
Garibaldi put his hands in his pockets and strolled up to her where she stood in the doorway. He looked down into her cold, perfectly made-up eyes. "You married, Spence? You have any kids?"
"Mr. Garibaldi, I hardly think that my marital status is pertinent to this discussion!" To his patiently raised eyebrow, she reluctantly replied, "No. No husband, no...no children," she added, faltering a bit.
"Pets?"
"Certainly not! As much as I travel, I wouldn't have anything like the time to take care of an animal, even if I wanted one - which I don't," she protested, perhaps a bit too emphatically. "And I still don't see what that has to do with the SeroTech acquisition."
"Empathy, Ms. Spence. We're coming into these people's turf, threatening their jobs, their livelihoods, their families. Have you ever heard the old saying, 'walk a mile in a man's shoes'? Take this time to try looking at things their way, Ms. Spence. Walk a mile or two."
Spence's mouth tightened. "I'm afraid that's not in my job description, Mr. Garibaldi." She started off, then turned back. "Perhaps you might consider hiring a telepath?"
He watched her walk away, chewing on the inside of his lip.
"Riiight," he said at last, and headed off the other way along the corridor.
****************
The Zocalo
15:40 EST.
Security Chief Zack Allan spotted the guy first - a decidedly suspicious-looking character leaning on the catwalk that overlooked the Zocalo, watching the crowd. He nudged his second, Sergeant Glenn Satamba, and the other man nodded. The two split up and headed for the stairs.
"All right, all right, move along," Zack rasped, shoving the big man's shoulder roughly. "We don't allow no vagrants in the Zocalo, pal!"
"This loser giving you any trouble, Chief?" Satamba's bass rumble echoed from the 'vagrant's' other side, and the man darted a quick glance behind him. The Sergeant was half again as big around as he was, though a head shorter, but that didn't deter him from spinning back to get the Security Chief in a quick head lock.
"Trouble? You want trouble?" the man said menacingly, a wild-eyed grin denoting either stark insanity, or...
Muffled choking noises were coming from under the man's armpit, and Zack's arms flailed wildly, as though unable to find a grip. Satamba snorted, then lost it completely. Garibaldi finally let up on Zack - he couldn't help it, really, he was laughing so hard the Chief had no trouble breaking away once he put his mind to it. Zack rubbed his neck as they exchanged back-slaps.
"Man, you been working out? And here I thought having a desk job had slowed you down some!"
"Ah, don't you believe it, Zack! Keeping these white-collar types on their toes is harder than it looks. Besides, I've got me a personal trainer now - actually, he's my wife's bodyguard, but..." At Zack's expression he stopped short. They looked at each other a moment, then they both cracked up again.
"Ah, never mind. Long story. I'll try and bring him out next time, though - I think you two would get along." He turned to the Sergeant, who had managed to retrieve his own composure by then. "Glenn, isn't it? Good to see you again. I heard Zack made you his second - I just hope he doesn't give you as much grief as I gave him..."
As the manly greetings wound down, something caught Garibaldi's eye down by the Eclipse Cafe. A Human, male, with shaggy light-brown hair, dressed in a fake-leather jacket and jeans. There was something about the walk, the set of the shoulders...he looked up, for just a moment, and Garibaldi was sure he knew the face. He couldn't place him, though.
"Hey, Zack," he said. "You know that guy?"
Zack turned around. "What guy?"
"That guy..." Garibaldi pointed - but the man was gone. He scanned the crowd, finding no sign of him. He shook his head. "Never mind. Look, I've got some things I need to see to, but why don't I stop by the stationhouse later? We can catch up then..."
"Sure thing - we've got rounds to make, anyway," said the Chief. As he and his second made their way back down the stairs, Zack couldn't help muttering, "His wife's bodyguard..."
"I wouldn't touch that one, if I were you," advised Satamba.
"Hey, it's not my touching anything that's the question!"
****************
Captain's Office
16:00 EST.
Approval of Captain Lochley's plan had come in from ISA Headquarters on Minbar earlier that afternoon, along with a brief personal note from the President expressing his regret that he hadn't thought of it himself. Now, the Captain regarded the official printouts with a suitably grim expression as Lieutenant Corwin stood stiffly at attention on the other side of the desk.
"Lieutenant," she said crisply. "I have been reviewing your performance over the past year and a half, and I am forced to say that I cannot, in good conscience, describe it as 'adequate'."
She knew that she was being callous about this - but after all they had been through since she came aboard, plus all that the station logs and personal stories told of what Corwin had been through in the years before, she simply couldn't think of any more appropriate way to handle the situation.
"But, Captain, I've done my best," the Lieutenant protested, looking younger than his nearly thirty years and even more painfully earnest than usual, "I know there have been some slipups, some things I could have done differently, but..."
"Lieutenant!" The young man subsided, as she rose to pace deliberately around the desk and confront him at close range. "I have served in Earthforce for almost twenty years now, nearly half of that in command positions. I had the privilege of Captain Foraker's support on the Acheron, and for a while I was afraid that that experience had spoiled me for future XO's..." She muttered "one way or another" under her breath before going on. "However, as I said before, your performance cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered 'adequate'."
She took a deep breath, and the grin finally escaped.
"It has been outstanding."
The expression on Corwin's face was all she could have hoped for. Before he could find words to respond, though, she hit him with the big guns.
"I have here the documentation required for a Lieutenant Commander's commission in the Interstellar Alliance's Army of Light, in which you are currently serving as full Lieutenant. Since the Army of Light," she couldn't quite suppress a grimace of distaste at the rather ostentatious name, which she avoided using whenever possible, "consists solely of those officers and crew who seceded from Earthforce at the beginning of the Shadow War, and then declined the amnesty offered by President Luchenko, you will, of course, not only be the only holder of a Lieutenant Commander's commission, you will in fact be the highest-ranking officer in that Army - in name as well as in fact," she added with a wry smile.
"However exhilarating that may sound," she continued, "there is also...another option. I have conferred with the proper authorities at Earthdome, and by special dispensation you have been offered a second chance to reclaim your place in Earthforce - with a Lieutenant Commander's commission there, as well. It's up to you, David." The glow in his eyes was positively nuclear. To shield herself from it, she ducked her head as if to reread the papers, moving toward the window.
"I'm sure you know what my advice would be," she added. "But in the final analysis, it's your call." She looked up, to find that he had regained enough presence of mind to nod acknowledgement. "Take some time to think about it..."
As Corwin was stammering out a response, Lochley spotted a gamine face peering around the edge of her doorway.
"Can I help you?" she said pointedly, and Jaida and Selene popped unabashedly into the office, followed by an uncomfortable-looking young woman and an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair.
"Captain! Mr. Bowman is here!" the girls chorused. The man in the wheelchair cleared his throat.
"Captain Lochley, I do apologize for the intrusion - I was intending to set up an appointment for later, but the young ladies were showing me around the station, and they insisted on stopping by here..."
"Not a problem, Mr. Bowman," Lochley said, recovering quickly. "This is my Executive Officer, Lieutenant..." she shot a quick smile at Corwin, noticing that he seemed to have re-misplaced whatever composure he had begun to recover before they were interrupted "...David Corwin. Ms. Livingston," she acknowledged with a nod, which the younger woman returned stiffly. "I believe this is your first visit to the station, Mr. Bowman, is that correct?" she continued.
"Chris, please, Captain, and yes, it is. Of course, I've followed the ISN reports, but the reality of this place is simply...staggering," Bowman replied, with a smile that invited her to share the small joke at his own expense.
Almost against her will, she found herself returning that smile. As determined as she was to disapprove of this man - a man who made money off of other people's weaknesses, after all - she couldn't help warming to him. As she was about to reply, though, her link bleeped.
"Lochley, go."
"C&C here, Captain," came the voice of Lt. Kreies, filling in for Corwin. "I have a call for you from a Colonel Peterson."
"Put him through," said Lochley, resignedly. If it wasn't one thing, it was three or four others. When the Colonel's coldly handsome face came on the big screen, it was smiling that wry smile again - a smile that did not seem to touch his eyes. They flicked over the room behind her, narrowing as they lit on the elderly man in the wheelchair.
At the same moment, out of the corner of her eye Trish caught the sudden clench of Christopher Bowman's hand on the chair arm.
"What can I do for you, Colonel?" said the Captain.
"I was hoping you had managed to find the time to join me for dinner, Captain," said Peterson smoothly. "I understand that the Fresh Aire restaurant recently received a four-star rating from Fodor's, and I was just about to make reservations. Shall I make them for two?"
Lochley remembered to close her mouth. Might as well get it over with, she thought. "If you don't mind making them for, say, twenty hundred?"
"That would be fine - I'm not quite on station time yet myself," Peterson agreed, and signed off amiably enough. Trish cleared her throat, and Bowman looked up at her, his gaze slightly unfocused. It sharpened, and he turned back to Captain Lochley.
"I won't take any more of your time, Captain - we'll talk more later. I believe the ladies wanted to show me the...Zocalo, did you call it?"
Jaida and Selene jumped in with enthusiastic descriptions, sparing Lochley the effort of more than a cursory farewell. Corwin took his leave immediately after, promising to get back to her as soon as possible about his...decision.
Of course, no sooner had she settled back at her desk with the next piece of hardcopy from her in-box when her link bleeped.
****************
The Zocalo
16:20 EST.
The small cavalcade wound its way through the Zocalo, with Jaida and Selene vying for Bowman's attention as they pointed out the toy store, the jewelry stall, and the place where the Babylon 5 Emporium used to be (now a shop selling rare books). Suddenly, Jaida waved to a pair of young men wearing brightly-colored jackets and proud Centauri crests. One had the typical fair-skinned brunet coloring, while the other's crest was an unusual pale blond - almost white.
"Peya! Alto, Prado! Arrente mari'!" she called. The former Ranger trainees conferred briefly, smiling, and made their way over. The girls made the requisite introductions...
"And this is Selene's sister Trish..."
"And how do you do?" the brunet, Alto, cut in, with a distinct Centauri accent and an all-too-familiar gleam in his eye. Trish gave him her second-best 'yeah, right - don't mess with me' smile, which he returned with oblivious good humor.
"Where's Armani?" asked Selene, referring to the missing member of their trio.
"He's at Dok's, teaching a class," replied Prado, who was the more fluent in English, as well as Minbari and several other languages. "It's a beginner's class - mostly Centauri kids, a few Humans, even a couple of Brakiri..."
"You know who he really wants to teach," put in Alto, "Is that G'Stral - the Narn Ambassador's son."
"Oh, they're not related," Jaida corrected, "they're just friends."
Alto snickered - at the girls' inquisitive expressions, and Prado's admonishing look, he protested, "What? You know how Narns are - that whole 'father' thing. It is...how do you say...an instinct. One minute they are all 'be sure to finish your spoo, children' and the next they are trying to act like warriors or something."
By now, the whole group was regarding him oddly.
"I am not saying there is anything wrong with it," the young man floundered, "it is just...how do you say..."
"Alien?" prompted Prado.
"Yes - that is it. That is it exacting!" he said with evident relief.
"Hey, Alto," ventured Selene thoughtfully. "When you were on Minbar, did you ever run into a girl named Julia Tikopai?"
The handsome young Centauri winced. Prado smiled, and leaned his pale crest close to murmur "Tuthonos alla Westcastl'ini, morro!" to his friend.
"'You've been Westcastled'?" translated Selene, who had picked up a little Centauri from Jaida. Alto looked a bit sheepish as Prado explained.
"The wife of the High Councillor was one of our instructors. Alto's first lesson with her was..." he hesitated, looking for the right words..."highly educational."
"For you, maybe," put in Alto. "I did not learn a kolvadi thing!"
"Obviously," sighed Prado.
"Where's Mr. Bowman?" Trish asked, noticing that he was no longer with them. After a moment the girls spotted him, talking animatedly to a strikingly beautiful woman with light brown skin and a dark, curly mane over by the Abbai's wine shop. Suddenly the woman shook her head defiantly and stalked away, leaving the old man looking rather stricken behind her. As they hurried over, he pulled himself together and apologized.
"Is nothing to apologize for," said Alto graciously, looking appreciatively after the woman as she threaded her way through the crowd. Prado's eyes followed her too, although the speculation in them was far from erotic.
Selene was looking in another direction entirely - suddenly she grabbed at her sister's arm. "Trish, look!" she cried. "Remember that guy?"
"What guy?" Trish asked, trying to figure out which of the twenty or thirty male humanoids in the general direction Selene was pointing she actually meant. The younger girl shook her head, frustrated.
"He's gone now. But I just know it was that guy Dad used to hang out with, right before..."
"Yeah, well, a lot of people come through here, you know that," said Trish quickly, not wanting to encourage the girl. "It's probably just some guy who looks like him, whoever he was, anyway." Selene didn't look at all convinced, but there wasn't much she could do about it at this point. Meanwhile, Jaida was inviting the young men to join them for ice cream at the Eclipse Cafe.
"Ice...cream?" repeated Prado dubiously.
"Yeah, it's kinda like frozen spoo, only sweeter. You'll like it, I promise!" the Centauri girl assured him.
****************
Grey Sector
16:45 EST.
{{That's far enough.}}
Garibaldi stopped, halted as much by his sudden anger at the silent voice as by the command itself. "Stay out of my head," he said tightly.
The woman from Customs stepped out from behind one of the stacks of containers piled high in this neglected storage compartment. "Do you have it?" she asked.
"Right here." Garibaldi fished a datacrystal out of his pocket and tossed it to her. "Encrypted using your codes, which I don't have the key to. It has the account numbers and access codes for your operating expenses for the next six months. You need more, just get in touch."
"Good. That's fine, thanks," she said absently. She seemed distracted, as though her mind was somewhere else - which, seeing as how she was a telepath, was quite possible.
"So, ah, you're a friend of Lyta's, Ms...?"
"What?" She looked up, startled. "Oh! Sorry. Walters - Toni Walters. And no, not really. She contacted the Resistance after Byron died, and we started working together - coordinating strikes, sharing information. Since she left, Byron's followers have to some extent been...absorbed into our organization."
Garibaldi was confused. "But...I thought the Byronites were Resistance?"
Walters shrugged. "A lot of them started out with us. But the Resistance leadership never really trusted Byron. Not just his association with Bester - although that certainly didn't help - but his whole attitude. He was just a...a loose warhead."
Garibaldi snorted. "And Lyta isn't?"
The woman smiled wryly. "Nuclear. But she's gone off with that Narn, for the time being anyway, and her people are some of the best. Hopefully, by the time she gets back we'll have put together a team that can do some real damage."
He nodded. "Hope so. Speaking of damage, did you know Molyneux is onstation?" At her look of incomprehension, he repeated, "Molyneux? Head of Bureau 13? Shadowtech in his head, can't be scanned? Ring any bells?"
Her gaze sharpened. "He's here? How do you know?"
Garibaldi chuckled, shaking his head. "You walked right past him in Customs. You telepaths crack me up. So sure of your 'special senses' that you don't bother developing the regular ones - but with this guy, you'd better be on your toes. He can sneak up on you and you'll never even know it until the knife goes in."
She pursed her lips - a sight that would have been most intriguing if he weren't quite so happily married. "That's a bit harsh, Mr. Garibaldi. As I recall, it was you yourself who arranged for our people to work with him, in exchange for certain resources and contacts..."
"That doesn't mean I trust the guy," Garibaldi pointed out. "Speaking of which, I'd appreciate it if your people could keep me posted on what he's up to - anything that might shed some light on his agenda, that sort of thing."
Walters eyed him thoughtfully. "I'll make you a deal, Mr. Garibaldi. We'll let you know what we can find out about Molyneux, and you let us know what you can find out about FutureCorp."
Now it was Garibaldi's turn to be puzzled. "FutureCorp? What about them?"
"That's what we'd like to know - particularly any connection with a certain telepath, a Dr. Paul Frost."
"Corps?"
"He was - he went renegade several months ago, and since then we've been getting...overtures, of a sort, from him. Indications are he has some pretty heavy-duty backing of his own, and the trail leads back to FutureCorp. Needless to say, given the incident with Mr. Edgars, we find any connection to the megacorps...disturbing, to say the least."
Garibaldi pursed his lips. "Deal," he said at last.
****************
Red Sector
Transient Quarters
19:50 EST.
The door bleeped. It bleeped again, then a third time. At that point, the person outside finally noticed that it was open a crack.
"Mr. Bowman? Did you still want to go out for dinner?" Trish called. There was no answer. She frowned, then went ahead and shoved the door back in its runner.
"Lights," she said. An indirect glow came up to reveal the stark furnishings of a standard guest suite, tumbled about as if a whirlwind had swept through. She took a couple of steps inside, which brought the sleeping alcove into her line of sight. She gasped.
Christopher Bowman hung half out of his wheelchair, a look of stark terror on his face...and the ornate hilt of a very large dagger protruding from his bloodstained chest.
****************** Act Two *****************
Stationhouse.
20:20 EST
"Looks like I got here just in time," said Garibaldi.
"Hey, Chief," said the Chief absently. "What do you make of this?"
Garibaldi looked at the dagger on Zack's desk. "Drazi," he said curtly. He picked it up and peered at the hilt. "Mutari ceremonial dagger. This the murder weapon? Any prints? DNA traces?"
"Not a damn thing. I don't get it, though. What connection could there be between the Mutai and an Earth Alliance businessman like this Bowman guy?"
Garibaldi shrugged. "Maybe none. Maybe..."
From the doorway came the unmistakable sound of a reptilian throat clearing.
"Chief Allan," said Taan Churok, "We need to talk."
****************
Fresh Aire Restaurant
20:10 EST.
Captain Lochley was a few minutes late for her dinner date - partly due to a snafu in the outbound routing that cropped up at the tail end of her shift, and partly due to an unforeseen difficulty in coming up with a suitable outfit. The last time she'd had the opportunity and the inclination to go shopping for civilian clothes, those horrible calf-length hobble-skirts had been in fashion and she had absolutely refused. Therefore, all she had in the closet were a few things she had hung onto over the years, stubbornly hoping the fashion cycle would come back around to them. After entirely too much time spent debating the issue, she had finally pulled together the top from one ensemble - a sleeveless, keyhole-necked white brocade tunic - and a pair of narrow silver satin trousers from another. With her hair up and tiny amethysts dotting her earlobes, she supposed she looked presentable enough for dinner with an old family friend. Now if she could just avoid spilling marinara sauce or whatever on the damned thing...
"Good evening, Captain - a rare honor indeed!" the maitre'd gushed. "Would you care for a table by the fountain?"
"I'm meeting someone," she demurred. "He's probably here already - a Colonel Peterson?"
"Indeed," the man said with what came suspiciously close to being a smirk. "Right this way." He led her to a table at the very edge of the 'open air' restaurant, where a hedge of thornless roses made a low wall between the diners and the Gardenlands beyond. Far across the fields and halfway up the curve of the immense cylinder, the white tower of the Rangers' compound glinted in the reflected sunlight of the local day.
"I'm sorry I'm late," Lochley said, and the Colonel looked up from his contemplation of the view.
"The exigencies of command," he replied easily as he stood to greet her, a study in subtle shades of grey. "I remember them all too well. I took the liberty of ordering wine and appetizers. I hope you don't mind burgundy, and...I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what these are..."
Lochley smiled gratefully as she took her seat, and explained about the gnurrils. When she confessed that she didn't remember meeting him as a child, he promptly produced a fully-loaded pocketpic. The images of her parents, younger than she remembered them, moved her more than she had thought possible, and she couldn't help blushing at the fat-cheeked, somber-eyed baby that they both seemed so delighted by. The other man in the pictures, barely more than a boy at the time, seemed much warmer and more approachable than her tablemate, who despite his gracious manner seemed, in some sense, even more closed and remote in person than he had via comm.
As they talked, she begain to suspect that she knew where he had lost most, if not all, of that innocence - the same place so many had: the War. Peterson mentioned that he had been invalided out in the last Minbari push, right before the Battle of the Line.
"By the time I came out of the coma, it was all over," he said, a wry quirk flickering under his mustache. "And somehow, we'd won! I'll tell you, it took some getting used to." He sobered, looking at her searchingly. "I was so sorry to hear about Hank."
She shook her head quickly, dismissively, but he persevered. "I meant to get in touch with your mother, but there were some...problems..." his eyes clouded. "At any rate, by the time I had put my life back together, there didn't seem to be anything I could say."
"No, there wouldn't have been," Lochley murmured. She looked out over the fields, not really seeing them. "I'd just made Lieutenant, then. I was serving on the Demosthenes, a short-range cruiser stationed out near Drazi space. We tried, but we couldn't get back in time." She started and shook her head quickly, just as the waiter came back with the entrees.
"And now we're trading with them," Peterson said, picking up a safer - or at least less disturbing - thread of the conversation.
"Hmm?" Lochley was concentrating on her fish - and the rather slippery, though delicious, green sauce it came in. "Oh, the Minbari. Yes, it's ironic, isn't it? They've become one of our staunchest allies."
"And that doesn't worry you?" Peterson's icy gaze seemed oddly intent.
Uh-oh, I hope he's not one of those, thought Lochley warily. She shrugged, allowing a touch of defiance to leak through. "Why should it? History is full of similar situations. Two aggressive powers meet, clash, and only then begin to discover grounds for cooperation."
"Ah, yes, but that usually happens after one side has proven dominant - in this case, the issue was left undecided. Almost suspiciously so, in fact."
Lochley speared another forkful of fish, heedless of splatters now as she warmed to the argument. "Maybe it was deliberate," she suggested. "Maybe...somebody thought it was time people started talking to each other without having to prove who has the bigger guns, for a change."
As Peterson smiled a condescending, lopsided smile and opened his mouth to reply, a soft, musical voice interrupted.
"Captain, how fortuitous to find you here." Lochley looked up at the tall, robed form of the Minbari Ambassador, flanked by two other Worker Caste Minbari.
"Fortuitous, indeed," she agreed. "Ambassador Sherann, I'd like you to meet Colonel Avram Peterson, retired, from Earth. Colonel, this is Ambassador Sherann of Rhell, the official representative of the Minbari government to Babylon 5 - and a personal friend of mine."
The two other Minbari looked almost as shocked as the Colonel, but there was an answering gleam in Sherann's eye as she took her cue, drawing herself up to her full height before performing the complete form of the Bow of Greeting.
"I would be honored to discuss the harmonious relations between my world and yours at a later date, Colonel, Captain. However, my new assistants Heyonn and Vuralt have recently arrived from Minbar, and I must escort them through the Third Ritual of Acclimatization to Foreign Customs. I believe they are serving chocolate mousse this evening," she added. Lochley nodded with a completely straight face as the Ambassador and her entourage swept off to a table by the fountain.
"Now, what were you saying about the Minbari, Colonel?" she asked politely.
****************
Stationhouse
20:25 EST.
"So you're telling us that this is your knife that was found sticking in the chest of your boss, but that you didn't put it there?" Zack summed up, with perhaps the slightest hint of skepticism in his voice. Garibaldi snorted softly. Behind him, Satamba watched, expressionless.
"Correct," replied the draz. "As soon as Ms. Livingston told me what happened, I looked for my zhotakhe blade, and found it missing. Reporting the theft appeared to be the most...prudent course of action."
"You could have run," Garibaldi pointed out. "With your contacts, you could quite easily have lost yourself in DownBelow, or even managed to get offstation. Maybe. Of course, that would have pretty much confirmed that you did it," he added.
"Just so," said Churok. "Besides, I have no desire to 'lose myself', on or off this station. We have had our differences in the past..." his beady eyes touched on each of the three Humans in turn. "...but you have always dealt honestly with me, and I with you - insofar as circumstances have permitted. I would rather trust to your regard for justice, Mr. Allan, than attempt to circumvent you.
"And you, Mr. Garibaldi," he added, turning to the tall Human, "Perhaps it is a stroke of Fate that you are here at this time. If anyone can determine the truth of this matter, it is you. Will you help me?"
Garibaldi balanced the dagger in his hand as he looked consideringly at the tall, powerfully-built draz, whose eye-level matched his own. This was no longer his jurisdiction - his turf - and it wasn't as though he didn't have enough to keep him busy this trip. Still, Taan Churok had done him a favor or two, over the years - and the fact that he had come forward voluntarily spoke well for his innocence. Then again, streetwise as the ex-Mutari was, he had to know that despite Garibaldi's words earlier, his chances of a clean escape would have been slim. Perhaps he was trying to bluff it out...which was a bit subtle for most Drazi he'd met, but Churok was a cagey old lizard. Garibaldi looked at Zack, who gazed back at him steadily, ready to support whatever decision he made. He put down the knife.
"You sound like a man who thinks he needs help," he pointed out.
Churok gave a thin reptilian smile. "Someone has obviously gone to a lot of trouble to lay this on my balcony, Mr. Garibaldi. As yet, I do not know who - and it is never wise to underestimate an unknown enemy."
"Fair enough," the Human acknowledged. "So, where were you from 17:00 this afternoon until Ms. Livingston told you about the murder?"
The draz hesitated. "I'd rather not say," he admitted at last. "It was...personal business, and I promised the others involved that it would remain confidential. I can assure you, however, that I was nowhere near Red Sector."
Sergeant Satamba's heavy sigh was echoed by both of the other Humans.
"Well," observed Garibaldi, "this investigation is certainly off to a rip-snorting start!"
****************
The Zocalo
The Eclipse Cafe
21:45 EST.
David Corwin knew he shouldn't be drinking coffee this late, but he somehow doubted he'd have gotten to sleep anyway. Ever since the Captain had dropped that bomb on him, his thoughts had been racing, and he didn't think they would stop until he made his decision.
The promotion part of it was almost anti-climactic. In the back of his mind he'd known that he was overdue for one. Hell, he'd been holding down Ivanova's job for a year and a half now - officially. Unofficially, given how much of her time she'd spent dealing with the Shadow and Civil wars, it was almost twice that - and she'd come into it as a Lieutenant Commander. A couple of times he'd considered chatting up Lieutenant Balamanga, the unsung hero who coordinated the less glamorous details of maintaining the Army of Light, to find out exactly what procedures would have to be gone through to make that promotion happen, but he'd always found an excuse to procrastinate.
Really, with things the way they were, it had never made all that much difference. There were twenty-nine other full Lieutenants onstation - not counting a few Earthforce regulars who'd been rotating in and out as needed - but he had seniority on most of them, and by now they were all well accustomed to looking to him for direction in the Captain's absence. The crisis a month and a half ago, when the reactor core had nearly blown and had taken almost all the station's systems down in the process, had made that abundantly clear.
Still, having his growth as an officer acknowledged felt pretty good - as much for the confidence in him that it showed, on the part of both the Captain and President Sheridan, as for anything else. The other part, though - the chance to rejoin Earthforce, to pick up the career he'd thought he'd turned his back on forever - that was the part that had him trying to see the future in a cup of IGOT coffee at the Eclipse Cafe when he should be catching up on the daily reports and getting ready for bed.
To this day, he wasn't sure why he hadn't jumped at the chance to join up again at the end of the Civil War, as Captain Ivanova had. He'd told himself that it was because so much needed to be done onstation, and nobody had the knowledge and experience he had, but sometimes he wondered if it weren't simply that, after everything that had happened, on some level he was afraid to leave.
Well, if he went back to Earthforce, he'd be reassigned elsewhere sooner or later. Probably sooner - the higher-ups would undoubtedly feel that getting him away from Babylon 5 was a top priority, for several reasons, most of which he had to admit made sense. He wasn't at all sure how he felt about that. He thought about his brother's visit to the station, a few months ago, and how they had parted...well, almost friends, for once. Being closer to his family - even Adam - would certainly be a good thing, although there was no guarantee he'd be posted closer to Earth! Maybe they'd put him on an Explorer ship, send him out toward the Rim. Maybe they'd want to keep 'questionable' characters like him away from the new recruits...
Darn, he thought, Maybe I have been here too long - I'm starting to think like Mr. Garibaldi, getting paranoid and second-guessing the higher-ups' motives.
On the other hand, if he stayed...as Captain Lochley had pointed out, he would effectively be the 'higher-up'. That was another thing he'd avoided thinking about - maybe for too long. The infrastructure of the Army of Light had been running pretty much on autopilot since Captain Sheridan had become President Sheridan. Their pay was still channeled from the station's docking fees by Lieutenant Balamanga and his staff, but ranks had been essentially frozen. With Captain Lochley in command of the day-to-day operation of the station (and, of course, the continuing crises) there had never seemed to be a screaming need for 'in-house' leadership or long-term planning for the AoL as such. Maybe that was a job that should be tackled - by someone who knew this station, and the people who ran it, like the back of his hand.
Maybe it was a job for Lieutenant Commander David Corwin.
As he was digesting this rather daunting concept, he noticed that he'd gotten to the bottom of his caffe mocha. He rose to take the cup back to the counter, and spotted a familiar figure drooping disconsolately over her own coffee cup at a nearby table.
Odd. He would have thought Ms. Livingston would be at work by now - if she weren't still escorting her employer, that Mr. Bowman, around the station. In fact, this was the first time David had ever seen her just hanging around the Zocalo - not that he'd been looking, or anything. Before he had consciously decided to do so, he found himself walking over.
"Ms. Livingston?"
She looked up, and the nervous smile froze on his face. Her eyes were black pits of despair, and the tracks of tears gleamed on her face. Halfheartedly, she brushed at her cheeks.
"Yes, Lieutenant? Is there something I can do for you?" A touch of her usual acerbity tried to lighten her voice, but it was buried beneath the burden of whatever grief she was carrying.
"No! No, I just saw you sitting there, and..." without thinking about it, he slid into the other chair. "Are you all right? Is...is your sister..."
"Oh, she's fine!" Trish said quickly. "I'm...fine. Everybody...oh, God...everybody's fine but..." helpless, and furious at her helplessness, she started sobbing again, turning away from the dismayed Lieutenant.
"Um...can I...um...oh, oh hell!" He dragged the chair around and gathered the young woman into his arms, surprised at the delicacy of her thin body and half-afraid of breaking her. He knew she was strong, though - their scramble through the guts of the station during the reactor crisis would have proved that, even if he didn't know that she held her own every night at the Dark Star among some of the nastiest customers this side of Proxima. What could have done this to her, if it wasn't some harm or threat to her little sister, Selene?
After a few minutes, Trish got herself more-or-less together, pushing away from Corwin abruptly and apologizing. He turned so that he was actually sitting at the table and folded his arms on it, not knowing what else to do with his hands.
"Um...I'd really like to help, whatever it is..." he said tentatively.
She took a deep breath. "You know Mr. Bowman - the guy we were with this afternoon? Well...he was murdered. I found the body, in his quarters. And that's not the worst of it. I think...it may have been Taan Churok's knife that was used, which..."
"Which makes him the prime suspect," supplied David.
Trish nodded, thin-lipped. "And that's just impossible!" she said, slapping the table. David decided that anger was better than despair - at least it was something he was used to, from her. "Taan Churok is one of the best, most decent...well, people...I've ever met. Oh, sure, he was in the Mutai, and God knows what else besides - he's tough, and ruthless enough when he needs to be. But other than that..." she shook her head emphatically. "There's no way he could have done something like that. Not in cold blood."
"Drazi actually are warm-blooded," he pointed out. At her glare, he added, "A lot of people don't know that," rather defensively. "But...what if it wasn't 'in cold blood'? What if they had an argument, or something?"
"Over what? They got along great - we started our tour at the Dark Star, and it was a good thing there weren't many customers, because I could hardly tear them apart. Like old friends who hadn't seen each other in years."
"Were they?" Corwin asked.
"No - that's what made it so cute. Taan says he's only spoken to him on the comm, maybe a dozen times altogether."
"Well, then maybe it's that they didn't know each other. Maybe Bowman said something that offended Taan's...Drazi sensibilities, somehow...you know, in the meetings I've been in with the Ambassadors, they can get pretty riled up, and Ambassador Vizhak and his staff are among the worst."
Trish shook her head. "I don't know, but I just don't see it. If only there were something I could do - but I can't even go in to work: Security closed the Dark Star pending the investigation.
"That's bad," said David. "When things get really bad, the best thing I've found is to just...bury yourself in the work, you know? You just keep doing what has to be done, and somehow you come out the other side of it..."
"Yeah, tell me about it," the girl agreed glumly. "After my dad disappeared, for a while I just ran around with my friends - getting wasted, trying to forget about it. But I couldn't, and there was Selene to take care of, always reminding me. Once I got the job at the Dark Star, though, especially those first few weeks when I was learning the ropes, sometimes whole evenings went by when I didn't even think about it."
"Your father...disappeared?" Corwin couldn't help asking.
"Near the beginning of the Shadow War, though we didn't know that at the time," Trish explained. "He just went off one morning, and never came back."
"Couldn't Security help?"
The girl laughed derisively - a bit more like her old self, David noted. "Security? They were up to their ears in NightWatch, Narn refugees, and heaven knows what else - one lurker more or less wasn't going to light any rockets under them! I didn't even get to talk to Mr. Garibaldi or Mr. Allan - they just took my report and filed it."
"I'm sorry," said David.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, it wasn't your fault!" Trish's tone was snappish, but a quick smile flickered over her mouth as she said it. "Or theirs either," she admitted. "They really were swamped. Not that I could see that at the time, of course. Which is probably why I have so very little faith in their ability to get to the bottom of this situation. I'm just afraid they'll take the easy way out - arrest Taan and have done with it."
"Well, I can talk to Mr. Allan, if you'd like..."
"Thank you," she said, looking at him straight on for perhaps the first time since he'd sat down. "I'd appreciate that."
Inspired, he went on. "And maybe...I'm sure they're doing all that forensic stuff, and some kind of routine data search, but maybe we can...I mean, I can, try some angles that they might not think of - or have the clearance for..." he trailed off as he realized what he was saying. Use military clearance for the Earth Alliance datanets for a personal search...when he wasn't even, in fact, a member of Earthforce? The latter consideration probably wouldn't have occurred to him if the situation had come up yesterday, but since his talk with Captain Lochley, it jumped to the front of his brain in big neon glyhs. Trish was looking at him with a gleam of actual hope in her eyes, though, and surely there could be no harm in just looking around at the public-level information...
"Come on," he said. "If we're going to do this, we should get on it."
Neither of them thought twice about it as he led her off to his quarters.
****************
Red Sector, just off the Zocalo
Paulie's
21:50 EST.
The blue neon tracing out "Paulie's" over the doorway shone the same as ever, Garibaldi noticed, and the rich, red cloths and gleaming silverware on the tables provided the same air of casual elegance that they always had.
The last time he had been here was with Lise, the night before they headed off to Mars. He'd hoped Sinjun would be singing, but Paulie had said she'd gone off somewhere - and maybe it was just as well, he had decided. Sinjun and Lise in the same room was not a concept to bring peace to a newly-married man's soul, however technically innocent that man might be.
As he followed Zack to the bar, he cast an almost furtive glance at the stage, but it was occupied by a girl with long, dark hair tuning up a guitar, and there was no familiar gleam of deep auburn in the audience.
Just as well, he thought again.
"Hey, Paulie, how's it going?" Zack called to the proprietor, who stood braced against the gleaming wooden bar with a big, fat cigar stuck in his mouth. Same as always.
"Pretty damn lousy, since the Captain went and had that hissy-fit," Paulie replied, scowling amiably. "But I get by, I get by. Hey, rich man," he called to Garibaldi. "What are you doin' back here? Slumming?"
"Couldn't stay away, Paulie," the bald man replied easily. "Even us colonists need a little real culture now and again. So, uh, new girl?" he jerked a thumb back at the stage.
Paulie grinned. "Nah, she's been workin' here a few months. That neo-folk revival stuff is pretty hot right now. And no, Sinjun never did come back. Apparently, her other boss found some critical mission for her on the other side of the galaxy," The big man added with a grin.
Sinjun Ross had been one of the first Rangers that ex-Commander Sinclair had sent to keep an eye on the station. Although she was a brilliant operative, her 'artistic temperament' had sparked conflict with some, including the official chief of the Anla'Shok intelligence division, Colvhar Vendim. It wasn't too surprising that High Councillor Westcastle had seen fit to separate the two of them by as many light-years as he could conveniently manage.
"So, what can I get you guys?"
"Gingerale, if you got it," said Zack.
"Water," said Garibaldi.
"Back on the wagon, huh?" said Paulie sympathetically. Last year, Garibaldi had done all his drinking in his quarters, but somehow word got around.
The bald man's mouth tightened. "Yeah."
"Hey, Paulie," said Zack. "You know anything about a guy named Christopher Bowman?"
Paulie plunked down two glasses. "Not off the top of my head. Local?"
"He's from Earth, but he's - well, he was visiting here," Garibaldi amended. "He was the owner of the Dark Star."
"Oh, yeah, now I remember. You said was?" Paulie's eyes narrowed.
"Yeah," said Zack, "until about 19:00 this evening, when somebody stuck a knife in him. You know anything about it?"
Paulie chomped on his cigar for a moment before answering. "Now there's a hell of a thing - somebody goin' around offing bar owners. Might make a guy nervous. What does Churok have to say about it?"
"It was his knife," Garibaldi replied. "But he says he didn't do it."
Paulie snorted. "No motive. Running the Dark Star was a sweet deal for Churok, and he's 'way too smart a draz to throw that away."
"Maybe," said Zack. "And maybe the guy was going to fire him or something. That's just one of the many things we don't know about this case."
"And, surprise surprise, we thought you might have some leads," added Garibaldi. "You may have closed down the back room since the crackdown - you did close it down, right?"
Paulie did his best 'innocent' look - which was very impressive, if not at all convincing to the ex-Security Chief. Zack had told Garibaldi what happened when they raided Paulie's, early on in the crackdown: when they'd barged into Paulie's famous 'Back Room', fabled home of various and sundry upscale vices, all they had found was a bunch of old furniture and cleaning equipment. "What back room?" Paulie asked smugly.
"Yeah, right. Anyway, Zack says you're still plugged into everything that goes on on this station - so what's the scuttlebutt? Anything going on at the Dark Star? How did they handle the crackdown?" Garibaldi already knew the facts, from Zack, but he wanted to hear the other side of it.
"Not too great. They got raided, got closed down. Churok and that Livingston spent some time in the brig, some of the girls working the place got brought up on charges. Then I guess this Bowman guy must have called in some high-powered lawyers, because they opened up again a few weeks ago. Cleaned up, though, for the most part - or so I've heard. So, the owner finally comes out to visit, and somebody scrags him, huh? Hell of a thing. What's gonna happen to the bar now?" he asked.
"Why, you wanna buy it - start a franchise?" asked Zack, half-seriously.
"Nah, I got enough grief," Paulie replied. He chomped thoughtfully on his cigar. "But come to think of it, I know somebody who'd jump at the chance." A sudden grin split his wide face. "Figuratively speaking, at least. If I were you guys, I'd pay a little visit to Alfredo's."
"The pool hall down in Brown Sector?" Garibaldi asked, disbelieving. Zack swore, and Garibaldi looked at him, completely lost, as he pushed away from the bar.
"Thanks, Paulie. I owe you one," the Chief called over his shoulder as he hurried toward the door. Garibaldi started to follow, then turned back.
"Hey, Paulie - where do you get those cigars, anyway?"
"Fedor's, in the Zocalo, half a dozen doors spinward from the catwalk," the big man replied.
"They carry Morley Perfecto Triple Golds?"
Paulie grinned. "Only the best," he said.
****************
Brown Sector, Level 26
Alfredo's Pool Hall
22:09 EST.
"My father's name was Alfredo," Garibaldi said. The corridor was a main artery - which in Brown 26 wasn't saying much. Some of the lights flickered intermittently, and sullen eyes watched them from dark corners. Up ahead, a cheap biolume sign had been hung from the ceiling struts, with an arrow pointing to the open hatch, from which raucous noise and smoky light spilled out into the hallway.
"Yeah, I know," Zack replied, sidestepping a somnolent denizen.
"It's a good name," Garibaldi pointed out.
"Yeah, it is," Zack agreed.
"I hate this place," Garibaldi complained.
"Wait 'til you meet the new owner," said Zack.
Moments later - "Oh, Christ, not another Thrakallan! I thought we'd seen the last of those bug-eyed hoodlums when n'Grath got himself squashed."
"Yeah, well, they're members of the Alliance, so they've got as much right to be here as anyone else," Zack replied grudgingly.
"That's nuts. Their whole culture is based on organized crime!"
"'Alien business practices'," parroted the Chief. "As long as they obey our laws while they're here, we can't keep 'em out. And so far..." Zack sighed. "...we haven't been able to pin anything on him."
"Then you need bigger pins," said Garibaldi.
In Garibaldi's time, Alfredo's had been a favored resort of the lower-ranked Security officers, while the noncoms frequented Paulie's, and the Chief, of course, divided his time between there and Earhart's. Now, however, there were only a couple of off-duty Security there, both big, burly guys who nodded in acknowledgement of Zack's sharp look. Another dozen or so rather seedy-looking patrons, mostly Human, were at the tables, and a lone Brakiri sat at the bar, discussing something with the being Zack had pointed out as the owner.
The bartender - an Enfili, Garibaldi noticed - moved toward them, but j'Nialth waved him off.
"Chief Allan!" An incongruously hearty voice issued from the insectoid's vocoder. Accustomed to the precise, staticky tone of n'Grath's less sophisticated device, Garibaldi couldn't help being disconcerted - then amused. "To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this visit?"
"J'Nialth," Zack replied with slightly forced politeness. "You stayin' out of trouble?"
"Trouble, Chief? Why, we Thrakallans hardly know the meaning of the word. May I get you and your...friend a drink?"
"Ah, no, that's okay, we just wanted to stop by and say 'hello'." The alien's masked, mantis-like head tilted inquiringly. "By the way, my friend here is Mr. Michael Garibaldi - you might have heard of him."
"Indeed! Many tales have been told of your reign, Chief Garibaldi - and your most glorious ascension to the leadership of Edgars Industries. I am most honored, most honored indeed."
"Ah, likewise, I'm sure," said Garibaldi, balanced between revulsion and hilarity. He leaned an elbow on the bar casually. He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the Brakiri slipping out of the room. "Hey, listen, maybe you'd be honored enough to give us a little help on something. Paulie - you know Paulie? Well, he told us you'd been talking to Taan Churok about buying the Dark Star. Is that right?"
"Talked, yes indeed," replied the Thrakallan heartily (or at least the vocoder translated it heartily). "But, unfortunately, he was not in a position to make such a decision." Garibaldi and Zack looked at each other. The phrasing made it sound like Churok would have sold out if he could - was that an artifact of the vocoder, or egotism on the bug's part...or something else?
"Did you...discuss the matter with the owner, Mr. Bowman?"
"Yes, several times via StellarComm," the insectoid replied. "He did not wish to sell." Various hard-shelled limbs moved in a complicated Thrakallan shrug. "There was nothing else to be done."
Another possibly vocoder-born ambiguity, Garibaldi noted, wondering if his suspicion circuits were on overdrive again. "Did you talk to him in person, since he came on board?" he asked. Again, the insectoid head tilted.
"On board? Mr. Bowman is on this station? Why, I had not heard! I shall have to make an appointment at once!" The enthusiasm level of the artificially-generated voice rose to an almost sportscaster-like level. It seemed a shame that Zack had to disappoint the poor bug.
"I'm afraid you're a little late, j'Nialth. He's been murdered."
More limbwaving. "Murdered! How terrible. Do you have Churok in custody yet?"
This time, the two Humans didn't even have to look at each other, but it still took a moment for Zack to formulate the next question:
"Any particular reason we should?"
Nice, thought Garibaldi. Very smooth.
"But of course," the Thrakallan answered, as though surprised that the Chief would even ask. "In a...reorganization of this type, it is always the underleader who is the most likely to be responsible. I understand that you Humans do not reward such ambition the way we do, but rather punish it (which leads to an enviable subtlety in your methods of social progression), however, one cannot expect a Drazi to comprehend such complexities."
"Um, yeah, right," said Garibaldi. "But just assuming for the moment that it wasn't Taan Churok that did it, would you have any other ideas as to who it might be?"
"Ah, well, there are any number of possibilities. I was not the only one who had approached Churok on such a matter - I know that Eklos Sabijian, who owns the Oilcan down on 37, had an interest in obtaining the property."
The two Humans couldn't help making vaguely disgusted noises. The Oilcan was a dive that made the Dark Star look like Paulie's, and Alfredo's look like...well...a decent place to go to shoot some pool and have a beer.
"And then, of course, there were the providers..."
"Providers?"
"Pimps," Zack supplied. "Yeah, that's a possibility we need to track down. Even though the crackdown was the Captain's idea, some of the people running the girls that used to work the Dark Star might have been honked off when Churok kept them out. The drug dealers, too - and both types have a nasty habit of takin' out their grudges physically."
"But with..." Garibaldi cut off what he was about to say abruptly. Damn, was he losing his edge already? The Thrakallan tilted its head at him and clicked its mandibles thoughtfully. "So, how well do you know Taan Churok, anyway?" he went on, covering as best he could. "I mean, do you guys ever get together to shoot the breeze, bitch about the customers, that kind of thing?"
"Processing," said the vocoder in a completely different voice, then, "Ah - I understand. No, I am afraid we do not engage in predation on air currents. We are both very busy beings, you understand..."
"Yeah, right," said Zack. "Oh, by the way, j'Nialth, where were you from 17:00 until 20:00 this evening?"
"Why, right here, of course. Several of your Security officers can confirm that for you, I'm sure. One of them lost ten credits to me on that table, right over there," j'Nialth pointed with a foreclaw.
"You shoot pool?" said Garibaldi, surprised. "No offense, I just thought that..." Looking more closely as the Thrakallan displayed its multijointed limbs, which ended in even more multijointed and hardshelled fingers, he realized that his initial impression had been simplistic. The creature was obviously capable of stabilizing a pool cue at angles most Humans could only swear at, and those big bug eyes might even give him an advantage in calculating angles and trajectories.
"I have made a study of the art in the past few months, yes," the alien replied. "Would you care for a game?"
"Ah...maybe later," the Human said quickly. "We need to, um..." he pointed at the door.
"Thanks for your time, j'Nialth," said Zack.
The insectoid watched them go, head tilted consideringly.
****************
Back at Paulie's
12:23 EST, 07/16/2263.
"So, what have we got?" Garibaldi asked.
"One gingerale, one water," said Paulie, depositing two glasses on the table. "Any luck?"
"Not unless you count 'bad'," Zack replied. Paulie shook his head and moved off. "Forensics finished their sweep of the quarters - again, no DNA traces, and nothing seems to be missing. It definitely looks like our perp was searching for something, but we have no idea what it was, or whether he, she, or it found it."
"How about the team questioning the neighbors?" Zack's people had reported in while Garibaldi was making use of the facilities (since Paulie's were more agreeable - not to mention more hygienic - than those of most of the places they'd been in the last few hours).
"Nothing - that corridor is a fairly busy one, but nobody remembers seeing anyone stop by his room."
"Securicams?"
"Not a trace on the hall monitor - and no obvious looping, although I've got a guy going over the record with a pattern analyzer to be sure. The room cam was never turned on - we still don't do that unless we think we have a good reason, and in this case..." Zack shrugged. Who would have expected somebody to break in and kill an old guy in a wheelchair?
"And so far, in our first night of pounding the proverbial pavement, we've got..." Garibaldi started ticking them off on his fingers:
"One Thrakallan would-be real-estate mogul, who's trying to get his claws on every square meter of revenue-producing station space he can,
"One Human bottom-feeder looking to move up,
"Three 'providers' and half a dozen low-level drug-dealers, none of whom could have afforded this kind of a hit, even if they wanted to," he summed up.
"That one guy mentioned the Thieves' Guild..."
"I'd put them last on my list of possibles," Garibaldi replied. "They don't go for high-profile stuff like murder - you know that. No, so far it looks like we've got two things to go on: the knife, and the fact that it was a professional hit. Whoever is ultimately behind the murder ordered it done, he didn't do it himself."
"Unless Bowman managed to piss off a professional," Zack pointed out. "Hell, it could have been someone who followed him out here from Earth."
"Or someone here, who recognized him and held a grudge..." Garibaldi sighed. "Ah, hell, Zack, I'm gonna have to call it a night - I'm whacked."
"Yeah, me too - tell you what. Tomorrow morning I'll get a list together of people onstation who could have pulled this off, and we'll start from that end."
"Sounds good. I'll...oh, hell," Garibaldi said, suddenly remembering the report he'd already requested. At Zack's inquiring glance, he added, "My day job..." and gave the Chief a thumbnail sketch of the SeroTech situation.
Zack shook his head. "Sounds like fun all around," he said. "So, uh, how's it going, anyway? I mean, the job, and the wife, and, uh, the wife's bodyguard..."
Garibaldi laughed. "Yeah, okay, give it a rest, all right? Seriously, things are going great. It's a lot of responsibility, but I'm starting to get a pretty good team put together, and that's half the battle. And Lise..." he sighed again, but it was a happy sigh, made up of equal parts contentment and wonder. "I don't know how to explain it, Zack, but it's like she's the center of my life - where there was never a center before. Whatever happens, at the office or on a business trip - or even here, in the back of my mind I know she's there, waiting, thinking of me, and it's just...I feel whole, you know?"
Zack smiled wryly. "Well, not really, but I'll take your word for it."
"What about you, Zack? Is there anybody special?"
The Chief shook his head quickly. "Ah, you know me, Michael, half the time I'm too nervous to say anything to anybody, and the other half I end up with my foot in my mouth. And after...well, you know..."
"Lyta and Byron? That must have been pretty rough."
"Yeah. 'Rough' is a good word for it. Anyway, since then I just...." Zack trailed off for a moment, then started up again, hesitantly. "Actually, I did ask somebody out to dinner...just, thinking, you know, what the hell...but she turned me down. Which was probably just as well," he added, in an obvious attempt to convince himself.
"Anybody I know?"
Zack took a deep breath, and regarded his former Chief warily. "This is just between us, right?"
"Zack!"
"All right, all right - I just don't want anybody getting the wrong idea. It was just dinner, and she turned me down anyway..." he took another breath, "...it was Tessa - Director Halloran."
Garibaldi whistled, then a slow grin stole across his face. "Is that a fact? Well, I can tell you one thing - you don't have to worry about the Doc. She already dumped him. Sent him a 'Dear John' comm a couple weeks ago."
"You're kidding! Is he...okay?" asked Zack, quickly calculating that that had to have been after his abortive dinner invitation. Which meant...what? Nothing, probably, he decided.
"Yeah, he'll be fine. They were kind of a fair-weather thing anyway, you know? But, listen, Zack - if I know you, which I do, you're probably goin' around thinking you're not really good enough for her, stuff like that, right?"
"Well, yeah..."
"Let me tell you one thing I've learned about beautiful women, Zack - they're people, just like the rest of us. No, I mean it - they have as much crap to deal with in their lives as anyone else, it's just...different crap. If she's worth it to you, stick with it. Just...treat her like a person, you know? If there's something there, it'll come out, sooner or later.
"But...don't make the mistake I made," he added. "Don't put your whole life on hold waiting for something that might or might not happen. I got lucky - incredibly lucky - but along the way I made some choices that I wish I'd made differently. Passed up some...opportunities, because I didn't have my own head on straight enough to tell the difference between loyalty and...oh, I don't know. Self-pity, maybe, or just good old blue funk. But now, I think I'm paying for it."
Zack was confused. There was only one thing he could think of that his friend could be talking about, and he had a hard time believing that one - "You mean, like...technical stuff?"
"What? Oh! No, not that!" Garibaldi said dismissively. "Well...in a way, maybe, a little...but that's not what I was getting at. Just living with another person, dealing with them on a day to day basis - I'll tell you, it takes some getting used to! The first time around with Lise was like playing house - we were both so caught up in the roles we were playing that we lost track of who we were. I suppose that might have been part of the problem. This time, it's almost the other way around - at least for me, anyway. I'd gotten so used to being on my own...having my own space, not having to check with anyone when I go somewhere, all those little decisions...look, okay, one example - the house, all right?"
"The house? You mean, Edgars' house?"
"Bingo. Edgars' house. Edgars' company, Edgars' wife, Edgars' fragging living room with that...damned painting that looks like some lunatic three-year-old used a cat for a paintbrush..."
"So...move," suggested Zack. "Or redecorate. It's not like you don't have the money..."
Garibaldi snorted. "Move, he says. Like it's just a matter of boxing stuff up and hauling it up a couple levels and down the corridor. The house is attached to the main office, it's part of the whole complex. If we don't live there, what are we gonna do with it? Make it a bed & breakfast? And, in all honesty, there's no place better to move to.
"As for redecorating...look, you know me, Zack, I've always been kind of a homebody - my place is my place, it looks like my place, it feels like my place. And cooking - I like to cook. It helps me relax, you know? It's a...a creative outlet, if you will.
"But that house...she won't let me touch that damned living room -- says it's 'petty' of me to want to change it. It reminds her of...him, and she tends to get a little...tense whenever I say or do anything that sounds like criticism - calls it 'jealousy', which is just plain ridiculous. Yeah, the guy was nice to her, but to the rest of the world....well, anyway. So there's the living room. And the kitchen is about twenty meters down a hall and completely out of the way of the main living areas, because we have a cook to handle all that, so why should I even bother?" He realized that he had lapsed into a sarcastic whine, and took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry, man, I don't know why I let this piddly stuff get to me - like I said, everything else is going great. And we did redo the bedroom - together," he added with a leer. "And I turned one of the guest rooms into an office, so that's all mine. We made Edgars' old office into a kid's room, for when we get Deborah back..."
"Hey, yeah, how's that going?" Zack cut in, seizing onto the new topic eagerly. "Didn't I see something on ISN..."
"Probably. Her ex - Franz - " he said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm now, "is fighting it, but this time we've got the clout on our side - they'll stall as long as they can, but they can't win. The lawyer says probably by Christmas, we'll get her for good. Man, that'll be something - having a four-year-old running around the house..." he drifted off for a moment, then came back. "Meanwhile, the press is having a field day with the case - especially seeing as how it's an election year."
"Geez, yeah, I hadn't thought of that," said Zack. He laughed, suddenly. "Hey, you know, it's too bad you're not eligible for office - you could probably get some pretty good mileage out of the whole thing!"
Garibaldi fixed his friend with a totally humourless glare.
"Don't even think about it!" he said grimly.
****************
Blue Sector
Executive Quarters, Lt. David Corwin
00:30 EST.
Corwin yawned, buttoning the top button of his worn, blue-flannel pyjamas. Trish had gone off home about an hour ago, thoroughly exhausted from the various excitements of the day. Their parting had been...odd, fuzzed with fatigue and tinged with a tension that David hardly dared identify.
After she left, though, he hadn't been able to let go of the quest - there was always another query to run, which sparked another, and another...trouble was, none of them had produced anything that really seemed to help. All the public records of the Dark Star's 'birth', when the station had first been commissioned; everything that was publicly available about Bowman himself, his successes in the data warehousing business, his varied philanthropic interests - which Corwin had considered rather odd for a man whose other indulgence was ownership of a distinctly shady space-station bar - all very interesting, but very little to the point. Finally, he had forced himself to stop, after sending off one last query. He had early duty, and the day after he'd been offered a promotion was not the time to be showing up late, or yawning.
At the thought, he yawned again. In mid-gape the soft, yet penetrating voice of the computer brought his lower jaw up with a snap. He shook his head to clear it and bent over the monitor, peering at the information streaming across the screen...
"Holy Toledo," he said reverently. He shook his head again and hit "Save". Trish was definitely not going to like this - but it would have to wait until morning. If this meant what he thought it meant, their prime suspect wasn't going anywhere.
"Lights down."
****************** Act Three *****************
Red Sector
Stationhouse
10:47 EST, 07/16/2263
It was late morning before Lieutenant Corwin had a chance to break away from C&C. He made his way to Chief Allan's office with dignified haste, to find Mr. Garibaldi and - oh, dear - Trish and Selene already there, discussing the case.
"Oh, man, don't tell me the station's blowing up again," said Zack, looking up from his monitor as the young man skidded into the edge of the doorway.
"David - what's happened?" said Trish, prompting a sharp look from her sister.
"What? Nothing - that is..." Corwin pulled himself to attention. "Mr. Allan, I think I may have, um, stumbled across some information that might be pertinent to the murder of Christopher Bowman. If I could just..." he moved toward the monitor, but Zack held up a hand.
"Wait a minute. You stumbled across some information? Like what, a pile of dirty laundry with 'Property of Chris Bowman's killer' on the labels?" his eyes narrowed as Corwin floundered, and again when he caught the looks the Lieutenant and Ms. Livingston were exchanging.
"It was public information," Corwin finally managed. "I didn't use any military clearances...here, let me show you..."
Exchanging a look of his own with Garibaldi, Zack let him get at the terminal. Once he realized what the file was, though, and what it said, he swore and poked at his link.
"Pantazis, this is the Chief. Have you guys checked out Bowman's will yet?"
"Uh...it's next on my list, Chief. You want me to pull it up now?"
"Yeah, why don't you do that?" Zack suggested.
"Yes, sir. Here we go...last will and testament...leasehold and assets of the establishment hereinafter referred to as the 'Dark Star'...left to one Taan Churok, citizen of the Drazi Freehold..." the voice broke off with a long whistle.
"Hey, Chief, you know what this means?"
"Yeah, I think I got an inkling. Keep looking, see if you turn up anything else. Allan out." He tapped the link off. "Son of a bitch," he informed the room at large.
"You mean Taan gets the Dark Star?" said Selene. "That's great! I mean..." she looked around at the adults and noticed that none of them seemed to think it was all that great. "What's the matter?"
Trish drew a deep breath. "The thing is, hon, if Taan knew he was going to inherit the Dark Star, that gives him a reason for...but that doesn't make sense! Why would he use a weapon that could be traced to him?"
Zack shook his head. "I dunno. Some kinda Drazi honor thing? I know, I know - it still stinks like a cargo-podfull of dead fish to me, too. But it's all we've got to go on, so I'm afraid we're gonna have to keep him here until it gets sorted out."
"All we've got to go on?" repeated Trish unbelievingly. "What about j'Nialth, and those other guys you tracked down? What about that guy that was talking to the Captain, or the woman in the Zocalo? What about..."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," cut in Garibaldi. "What guy? What woman?"
Quickly, Trish filled them in on Colonel Peterson's call to the Captain's office, when the two men had seemed to recognize each other, as well as Bowman's discussion with the mysterious woman in the Zocalo. Corwin hadn't noticed Bowman's reaction to Peterson, but he did give his opinion that there was something he hadn't liked about the guy. Based on Trish's descriptions, Garibaldi muttered, "I'm not surprised," and volunteered to follow up on both leads.
"Wow," a new voice broke in at that point. "If I'd known you guys were having a party, I'd have brought beer."
"Ms. Halloran, come on in," said Zack. "What can I do for you?" A stifled snort from Garibaldi brought a tinge of color to the Chief's face, but he kept admirable control of his expression.
"I made a comm call to a contact onstation, and it got routed to Security. Thought I'd stop by and find out what was going on."
"Let me take a wild guess," said Garibaldi. "Your contact's name was 'Bowman', right?"
Tessa raised an inquiring eyebrow. "I thought you were out of the game," she observed.
"Who, me? Not a chance," he replied, grinning. "Nah, I'm just giving Zack a hand with the case."
"Gee, thanks," said the Chief wryly.
"Any time."
"Case?" said Tessa. "What case? Does it have something to do with Mr. Bowman?"
"You might say that," said Zack. "He was murdered last night."
Tessa blew out a sigh. "Frag," she said. "I knew I should have called him yesterday when he got in..."
"Oh, yeah? What's your connnection with Bowman - or is that classified?" Garibaldi asked.
Tessa returned his twinkling gaze with cool detachment. Just because he had held the position of ISA Covert Intelligence Director before her - had in fact had the position created for him by his friend the President - did not automatically make him privy to the information she gathered. "It probably would be, if I'd had a chance to find out what it was. I got a call from him about a week ago, on a relatively secure channel, and even then he wouldn't say much. Only that he wanted to meet me - in person - and that he had some information that I should be aware of. I didn't think all that much of it at the time. I figured he'd call me, but then some time opened up ths morning, so I thought I'd get it over with, whatever it was..."
"So you have no idea what this 'information' he had was about?" said Zack.
"Not a clue."
Lieutenant Corwin cleared his throat. "It sounds like you are considering other suspects, so, um..." he looked at Trish, who nodded gratefully. "I'd better get back to my station."
"Yeah, sure," said Zack. "And, Lieutenant? I oughtta give you the speech about not interfering in an investigation, but I guess you know all that already, so...thanks."
"Not a problem, Chief. Ma'am," he nodded to Director Halloran and glanced back at Trish.
"Oh, Lieutenant," said Garibaldi. "Could you ask the Captain to give me a call when she gets a minute? Tell her it's about this 'Colonel Peterson' character."
"Yes, sir," said Corwin, and he finally made his escape.
"Who's Colonel Peterson?" asked Tessa.
Garibaldi smiled grimly. "I'm afraid that's classified," he said, darting a glance of his own at Trish, who took the hint.
"Listen, we'll get out of your way. We just..." she looked around. "Hey, where's Selene?"
As the adults looked around, wondering when the child had disappeared and where she'd gotten to, a tousled dark head popped in at the doorway.
"Are we ready to go?" Selene asked.
****************
Red Sector
Stationhouse "Brig"
10:51 EST.
Security Officer Dipak Hsu was an Earthborn Human male in his early thirties, of mixed Hindu and Chinese ancestry. He applied the spiritual as well as physical aspects of his martial arts training to his work, and although his amiable features and deceptively slender build often led unobservant malefactors to underestimate him, his nearly five years of service, both under Earthforce contract and with the Army of Light, had been marked by dependability, good judgement, and effectiveness as a fighter when things got sticky. His only known quirk was a deepseated conviction that he was the reincarnation of the martial arts legend Bruce Lee, for which he received a certain amount of good-natured ribbing from his friends and co-workers. It didn't bother him - he made due allowance for their less-evolved spiritual natures and kept right on training.
Today he had brig duty, which was pretty boring. Things were relatively quiet onstation, as far as routine petty crime was concerned, and the only prisoner right now was the Drazi bartender the Chief was holding for questioning in that murder case. Since the guy hadn't actually been charged with anything yet, he was lodged in what they called the "Ritz" - a large, comfortably-appointed room with its own multispecies sanitary facilities. Dipak was whiling away his duty hours practicing kicks when he became aware that he had an audience.
"Is that fighting or dancing?" asked the dark-haired preteen girl who was watching him from the doorway.
Dipak pulled himself out of his low stance and fished his shoes out from under the desk. "A bit of both, actually," he said. "I don't think you're supposed to be here, though."
"I'm here to visit Taan Churok. My sister works for him - she's talking to Mr. Allan right now. He said I should come on back," Selene lied blithely. Actually, she had slipped out right after Chief Allan had said that they weren't going to let Taan go. She figured somebody ought to let him know what was going on - besides, she'd always wanted to explore inside the Security headquarters, which was normally off-limits.
"Well," said the guard uncertainly, "If the Chief says so - maybe I'd better check..." he reached for his link.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. He and my sister were discussing something important with Mr. Garibaldi - I don't think they'd want to be interrupted."
The mention of the previous Chief, for whom Hsu had the greatest respect, caused him to hesitate. Taking advantage of her momentum in a way any martial arts master would admire, the girl flashed him a blinding smile. "Is he down here?"
"Uh, yeah, number three - I'll buzz you in," replied the bemused guard. The whole time she was in with the draz - only about five minutes, but it seemed longer - Hsu worried that he had made a big mistake. What if the alien was more dangerous than they thought - what if he took the little girl hostage? Hsu had no concern over his ability to take the old lizard-man down, ex-Mutari or no, but he wasn't entirely sure he could prevent the child from being hurt in the process, and in any event, it would be a black mark on his hitherto-spotless record.
She came out again in one piece, though. Hsu sighed and reset the cell's automatic locks, noticing that she seemed pensive. Well, if her sister worked for Churok, that was understandable. With the owner of the Dark Star dead and the manager in custody, the older girl might well be out of a job.
"Thanks, Officer. I'd better get back to my sister now," was all she said as she passed by Hsu's desk.
****************
Command & Control
11:01 EST.
"Good, you're back. If anyone calls, I'll be in Cargo Bay 7 - there's been some kind of mixup with a Vree shipment, and they insist on talking to me personally."
"Uh, sure, Captain - um, Mr. Garibaldi wants you to give him a call..."
"Mr. Garibaldi? Oh, my God, that's right, he's back, isn't he? Where did you...never mind, it'll have to wait. Carry on, Lieutenant."
"Yes, ma'am, but..."
"Lieutenant Corwin? I've got a hail from the Narn transport Nu'patha..."
Corwin sighed in defeat as the Captain disappeared throught the doorway. "Route it to my console, Lieutenant."
****************
Red Sector
Stationhouse "Brig"
11:25 EST.
Officer Hsu peered through the double-strength plexicrys of the holding cell door. Inside, Taan Churok was working his way through an elaborate series of forms. As Hsu watched, the ex-Mutari came to a finish in what the Human recognized as a classic Drazi guard stance - low and centered, right side forward, left arm down. Although age had thickened Churok's limbs and darkened his scales, he still moved smoothly, and he didn't seem to be breathing hard after his exertion.
Intrigued, Hsu pressed the annunciator. Churok looked up and beckoned, and with only the slightest of qualms, he unlocked the door and stepped inside. Even the low-security cells like this one required an access code and handprint for egress, so the prisoner couldn't escape by overpowering the guard and stealing the "keys". Besides, Taan Churok had come in voluntarily, and wasn't officially a suspect yet, so why would he want to escape?
The Drazi greeted him politely, ushering him to the lone chair, and before long they were deep into a discussion of comparative martial arts theories. Hsu was thrilled - he knew Taan Churok by reputation, of course, and had tried several times to get him to talk about his experiences in the Mutai, but until now the old draz had politely but firmly evaded all such inquiries - from anyone, as far as Hsu could tell.
Dipak Hsu had been fascinated by the Mutai for as long as he could remember. The earliest records indicated that it had begun almost a thousand years ago, as a lingering remnant of the alliance of races that had fought in the last Shadow War. While the official military bodies of the various allied species (including the Minbari Anla'Shok) had withdrawn to their home territories, a few independent-minded warriors - including many now-legendary heroes of their own peoples - had banded together to forge a truly multispecies martial arts tradition, blending ruthless fighting techniques with the spiritual seeking that seemed universal among those races that made an art of personal combat.
Before the Interstellar Alliance, before Babylon 5 and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, the Mutai had been one of the few truly integrated organizations, along with the Thieves' Guild and, some said, the Order of Technomages. When Humans had come onto the galactic scene, quickly becoming a 'presence' with their primitive but enthusiastic military technology and their downright ferocious trading practices, the leadership of the Mutai had closed ranks against them, arguing both the newcomers' physical inadequacies and their lack of spiritual development. Needless to say, the Human martial arts communities were not pleased, and their displeasure took a myriad of forms, from deliberate isolationism to overt competitiveness.
Dipak Hsu had grown up with the not-uncommon daydream of being the Human who would break through those barriers, and only his admiration for Walker Smith had mitigated the sting of losing that dream when the boxer had fought the champion Gyor to a standstill and won acceptance from the Muta-Do of Babylon 5, only a few weeks after Hsu's arrival. Since then, a handful of other Humans had fought in the Mutai, and two had been accepted into the ranks of the Muta'haan, the Pledged Ones, from whom were chosen the Muta-Do'in themselves. Hsu, however, had not been among them. After the Walker Smith incident, Chief Garibaldi had made it abundantly clear that any Security Officer who showed a non-professional interest in the Mutai did so at the cost of his job, and Hsu hadn't been ready to make that leap of faith.
He still wasn't, but the chance to talk at length with a former Prime-level Muta'haan was not to be missed. The normally-taciturn Churok seemed to be almost eager to regale the younger Human with stories of his youth - perhaps, Hsu thought, it helped to take his mind off his current predicament. At any rate, he learned that Churok had become involved with the Mutai as a young Hunt-Second serving one of the larger trading-Houses on the colony world of Zaranash, on the border of Brakiri space.
Over a score or more of the local years, he had risen to become Sho-Rin, holding the champion's title for five and a half seasons before being defeated by a younger adversary. He then served for a time as a Master of the local Khut'mai, or dojo, and was eventually awarded a zhotakhe blade, the Drazi Form of the Talisman of the Muta-Do. This Talisman was said to lead the prospective Muta-Do on a quest of enlightenment, which might last a year or a century - and only the Muta-Do himself would know the precise nature of his (or her, or its) quest, or know when it was achieved. When Hsu wondered aloud if that didn't make it easy for power-hungry or impatient Muta-Do aspirants to fake it, the draz simply smiled.
"Perhaps," he said. "Although I would not suggest such a thing to HaaTuzTef, the Muta-Do of this place, if I were you. All I can say of my own quest is that four years ago it led me to this station, and now..." he gestured expansively, "it has led me to this cell." Churok smiled a reptilian smile.
Hsu glanced at his link. "Frag, I gotta go. If I don't check in," he added apologetically, "the Chief might think you whacked me over the head and took off, or somethin'."
Churok's smile widened to a grin. "Well, we certainly wouldn't want the Chief to think that!" He rose politely to see Hsu out, and equally politely averted his eyes as the Human punched in the access code.
Hsu was still smiling politely himself as he lifted his hand from the panel, heard the door whoosh open, and felt something very like a medium-sized shuttle hit him in the back.
****************
Red Sector
11:50 EST.
The office Garibaldi was looking for was at the end of a little-used corridor on the same lavel as the Stationhouse and the DCI's offices. It was identified only by a modest plaque above the room number - and the fact that the door opened just as Garibaldi raised his hand to the annunciator.
"Come on in, it's open," a confident tenor voice issued from within. Garibaldi put his hand back in his pocket and strolled inside. The office was small, just big enough for a desk and a couple of standard-issue chairs. An inner door with a state-of-the-art locking mechanism must lead to a makeshift holding cell, and a few chillingly spare Psi Corps posters hung on the walls. The young man behind the desk folded his Universe Today, swung his feet to the floor and rose in a smooth motion, black-gloved hand extended and a glint of unalloyed delight in his blue eyes. "Mr. Garibaldi! An unexpected pleasure. Colin Ferris, Metapol - how can I help you?"
Garibaldi just looked at the hand until it retreated. He met Ferris' polite gaze with his own frozen one, and was pleased to see a brief flicker of uncertainty cross the telepath's face. "You know who I am, you must know why I'm here," he said bluntly.
The blond man actually frowned. "I know who you are because I've done my homework, Mr. Garibaldi. But unless your antipathy towards telepaths is even stronger than I've been led to believe...no, I'm afraid I have no idea why you're here. Would you care to have a seat and tell me about it?"
Garibaldi backed warily into a chair, and Ferris resumed his seat behind the desk, leaning forward over steepled fingers with an expression of polite inquiry. The archetypical concerned public servant, thought Garibaldi cynically. He wasn't buying it. Despite Dr. Franklin's surprisingly generous report on the guy, and Zack's even more surprising grudging quasi-approval, Garibaldi couldn't manage to consider the idea of a full-time Psi Cop onstation to be anything but an affront. Maybe this Ferris character had managed to lull everybody else's suspicions, but Garibaldi knew teeps - he knew how treacherous they were. He also knew how incredibly dangerous it was for him to be in this office, less than twenty-four hours after associating with a known...better not even think about it. However, the information Zack's people had turned up on Bowman's family had been intriguing but incomplete, and Ferris was the only lead he had toward completing it.
The Psi Cop's mouth quirked. "Um, Mr. Garibaldi, I really am not going to read your mind. Which means that you're going to have to tell me what it is you want from me." He looked as though he was going to add something, but thought better of it.
Garibaldi reached deliberately into his jacket pocket and pulled out a brand new packet of Morley Perfecto Triple Golds. He waved one at Ferris by way of asking permission, and the Psi Cop nodded, producing a small glass dish from somewhere in the desk. Garibaldi snipped the cigar's little head off and lit up, carefully holding the flame from his platinum-plated lighter just under the end of the smouldering cylinder and never taking his eyes off the other man. He blew a stream of fragrant smoke in the general direction of the ventilator.
"What do you know about a guy name of Derek Bowman?"
Ferris frowned. "Nothing, offhand. Is he a telepath?"
"Was, according to the records. His father, Christopher Bowman, was killed last night just a few levels from here. I'm helping out with the investigation while I'm here, and Zack's people turned up the fact that his wife and son were both telepaths - both deceased, by the way. Since B5 security doesn't have access to Psi Corps records, that's about all we know. I was hoping you could fill me in a bit - see if there's anything in their backgrounds, or their deaths, that could be connected with the murder."
"I'd say the chances of that are pretty slim," said the Psi Cop with another frown. "But it never hurts to be thorough. You said the father was...not a telepath?"
"Not as far as we know - or as far as Psi Corps knew, presumably," Garibaldi couldn't help adding. Ferris nodded absently and went to work at his terminal.
As the file came up and the younger man scanned through it, his face went hard. Garibaldi waited, cultivating patience. At last Ferris sighed. "Phaedra Bowman was a P7 - commercial telepath. Met her husband on assignment for his company, bucked the Corps to marry him. One son - and he turned out to be a P12."
Garibaldi snorted. "So much for planned breeding," he said. Then he got it. He leaned forward to look at the monitor, which Ferris obligingly turned his way. "So the kid was a Psi Cop?"
"The 'kid' was the same age I am - to the month, as it happens. I don't recall ever running into him, but we may well have crossed paths somewhere along the line. He was based out of San Francisco - not that far from my home base, as things go these days." Ferris spoke absently, continuing to read down the file. As Garibaldi followed the scrolling text, he began to see why the other man might be a little shook at the parallel. Bowman had been shot in the pursuit of a fellow Psi Cop who had gone renegade - a woman, Anthonia Mkweze, of about Bowman's own age.
At Garibaldi's request, Ferris brought up Mkweze's file. The image was that of a coffee-and-cream-skinned woman with elegantly chiseled features and a tumble of dark curls: the woman who had been seen talking to Christopher Bowman in the Zocalo the day before. The woman who had introduced herself to Garibaldi as 'Toni Walters'.
"What?" said Ferris, eyeing him curiously.
"What what?" retorted Garibaldi, struggling to maintain his outer calm. If this were Bester, he'd not only have caught Garibaldi's flash of recognition, he would have sucked up the whole meeting with Walters by now - maybe this guy was a little slow, but he had to get out of here before the Psi Cop wised up and scanned him!
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