John narrowed his eyes.
"Did you do any maintenance on the weapons diagnostic system?"
"No, that wasn't on my schedule."
"Did you do a general inspection when you came on shift?"
Spano shrugged.
"I looked things over like I always do."
John thrust the bridge at him.
"Do you know what this is?"
Spann looked at it, and his face grew curious. He held out his hand, and John gave the bridge to him.
"It's an electronic component, probably from the diagnostic system. It looks like a bridge. Where did this come from?"
"From just where you said. Ross found it on the floor when he came on duty. Any idea how it got there?"
Spann handed it back and regarded him with his opaque, flat eyes.
"No."
"A few weeks ago, you seemed pretty eager for a war. You wanted to be a war hero. How much do you want it, Spano? Enough to kill a quarter of a million people?"
"What are you talking about? How can I kill anyone if the laser is inoperative?"
John clenched his jaw. Spann had a short fuse. The way to get him to confess was to light it. He began to pace in a circle around Spano's chair.
"This is not a drill, Spano. We are tracking a terrorist Homeguard ship filled with nuclear explosives. If we don't stop it in the next eight hours, it will proceed to Babylon 5, where it will make a suicide run on the station and kill hundreds of thousands of humans and aliens. Some weapons expert aboard this ship has sabotaged our laser system, leaving us unarmed. I think about why someone would want to do that. Maybe they hate aliens. Maybe they don't like the idea of us living in peace with them. Maybe they wish we'd go back to war. And on all counts, Spano, you come up first on my list."
Spano was sitting up straight now, his head turning to follow John's course.
"But then I think of what a cowardly act this is. Sneaking around the ship, damaging systems. And in the aid of an even more cowardly act, the peacetime bombing of innocent civilians. And I remember that you thought mines were cowardly, and I think, how could Spano possibly be involved in something so low?"
"Captain, I'm not! I swear I didn't do anything."
Spano was nervous now.
"And then to deny it."
"But I didn't do anything."
John turned on him and began to yell.
"You want to convince me you're not responsible? Then give me information to help figure out who is. Because right now you're looking like the only game in town. And that means you better enjoy being spaced."
Spano held out his hands.
"I don't know anything. I worked my shift, I went to bed, and I woke up when the battle alert sounded."
"You're not helping, Lieutenant. The sabotage probably occurred during your watch. If you didn't do it, then who did?"
Spano's nostrils were flaring, but this time in fear rather than anger.
"I-I did leave for a few minutes during my shift. I know I'm not supposed to, but while the gunners were on their way back from the maintenance on the cannon, I went down to the mess and had a drink."
"How long were you there?"
"Maybe ten or fifteen minutes."
"Did anyone see you?"
"No. No one was there. I just helped myself."
"A lovely story."
"It's true, sir. That must have been when it happened,"
"Are these trips to the mess a regular habit of yours, Lieutenant?"
"I go about once a shift."
"You didn't happen to see anyone go in or out of the weapons bay while you were on your travels?"
"No. Sir, you can't blame me for this. I didn't even know about these terrorists."
John felt his face go red, and he stabbed a finger at Spano.
"Yes, I can blame you, and I will blame you. Even if you didn't sabotage the laser, your failure to run an inspection when coming on duty and going off duty prevented the problem from being discovered for hours, and makes it ha rder now for us to pin down when it happened. Your abandonment of your post may have allowed the sabotage to occur. And your disobedience of Ross's orders to stay in the mess has caused us to waste valuable time looking for you. You are responsible. You think your bad attitude and disregard of procedure has no consequences? Well how about these consequences-you kill two hundred fifty thousand people."
The thought of those people dying terrified John. The thought that he would be responsible if they did.
"You want to know what a hero is? A hero is someone who does what's right, even if he doesn't think it will make a difference. Because it's the right thing to do."
He had run out of words. He couldn't tell if Spano was responsible or not. The truth was, he sensed that Spano was telling the truth. And if he was, then the saboteur was still walking freely on the ship. John crossed his arms, feeling more alone than he had since the war.
"You're being charged with insubordination, desertion of post, and dereliction of duty. Other charges may follow."
John turned to the two guards.
"Take him to the brig."
* * *
The scanners, once again, were of little use inside the cave. They identified the energy source that had been detected as some sort of plasma energy, but it seemed to be coming from all directions. The reflective effect, again. Anna led her team down into the darkness of the cave, to the spot where it separated into three branches. Even with the thirty techs, each with their own light, and the string of floodlights from their first trip, the darkness of the cave seemed to envelop them, a watchful presence that could absorb any amount of light. Anna scratched uneasily at the back of her neck. Dust and sand had gotten under the collar of her jumpsuit on the walk from the crawler to the cave. In her jumpsuit and boots and the breather, a clear oxygen mask that fit down over the front of her face, she usually felt quite comfortable, much more so than in the confines of an EVA suit. But now they left her feeling exposed to the darkness. The cool stillness prickled along the backs of her hands, the back of her neck, her scalp.
The jumpsuit felt a flimsy, inadequate protection against the sharp-etched stone of the cave and the creatures who lived within it. The great, vaulted darkness conjured up awe, but it was'no longer the awe of reverence; it was the awe of fear. She'd never felt an unease like this before. She wished she'd worn an EVA suit. She'd determined in the trip over in the crawler to confront the creature in the nodule. Try to communicate with it, threaten it, kill it if necessary.
Morden had the PPG, and she had her favorite digging tools. It had all seemed very logical in the crawler. Now the thought of facing its malice and hunger again made her want to run back into the open air. She ordered her team to split, fifteen techs down the left passage, fifteen down the center, her and Morden alone to the right, down the passage where they'd found the nodule. The techs found this division a little strange, she could tell as she gave the orders, but they obeyed, each group starting a new series of lights into the darkness. She felt bad sending the techs off with such little knowledge of what they might face. But then what did she know about what they would face? She and Morden started down the narrower passage, following the trail of dim blue lights. Morden was carrying a full bag of floodlights and a scanner that he checked periodically. He'd left his shiny digging tools behind. After all, they were here to search for missing crewmen, not excavate. Anna turned off her link, using the remote control adhered to the back of her hand. The listening and speaking mechanisms of the link were built into the breathers. But with the link off, she and Morden could both communicate merely by speaking, their voices transmitted through the screens of the breathers. If the others needed her, they would link in.
"You seem to have a plan."
His voice, through the screen of the breather, was smooth.
"Not really. I'm going to try to communicate with that creature. It knows where the others are. We could search these caverns for days without finding them. If it won't c
ooperate willingly, maybe we can threaten it. And if that doesn't work, we'll try to kill it."
"You don't believe in the indirect approach, do you?"
"We don't have time. And unless we can locate that energy source, I have no other ideas. You don't have a better idea, do you?"
"Calling in a squad of GROPOS would be nice."
They approached the desiccated corpse they'd found before, and as Morden ran a scan of the area, Anna paused beside it, thinking of the living creature trapped within the biomechanical shell. For this race, inferior creatures were simply biological components to be inserted into their biomechanical tools. Anna wondered what purpose the living creatures served. Did their brains serve as some sort of processing center? Or were they somehow utilized as an energy source? A circulatory center? Whatever their purpose, it seemed that bigger or more complex tools would require bigger or more complex biological components. She'd seen only small tools so far, nothing like the spaceship Morden had described. They continued farther down into the cave, forced once again to crouch as the walls closed around them. As they reached the end of the lights, they slowed as Morden installed new ones at regular intervals. The darkness felt close and thick around them, as if they were the only ones in this place, and this place was the only place in the world. Her sense of uneasiness grew as they approached the location of the nodule. She hit her link.
"Group one report."
She waited, the link silent. Of course they'd drifted too far away from each other. As she'd discovered before, their links couldn't work through more than thirty-six feet of rock.
"Group two report."
No answer.
She and Morden were totally isolated from the others. 1f anything happened to the techs, she wouldn't know. And if anything happened to her and Morden, the techs wouldn't know. The techs could send a runner, of course, but only if they were able. Anna swept her light ahead. She couldn't see the nodule. They continued farther, the floor sloping down, down. Then the cave started to widen again, the ceiling rising to the point where they could straighten up. They had passed the location of the nodule. It had been at the narrowest point in the cave. And now it was gone. Her breath hitched in relief.
"I've got a clear reading on the energy source."
Morden came over to show her on the scanner.
"It's just ahead."
They moved forward, their flashlights sweeping the ground before them. Anna's flashed over something, and she slowed, bringing the beam back onto it. Morden's beam joined it. It was a piece of machinery, human in origin, a metal box about two feet by two feet that was emitting a low hum. They crouched down over it, the darkness closing around them.
"This looks like a placer generator," Morden said. "I think it might be from the probe."
His tone had an odd quality she couldn't name.
"The probe couldn't have gotten this far. The safety lock wouldn't permit it. Besides, where's the rest of it?"
She cast her light across the cave floor.
"I don't know," Morden said, standing.
Anna remained crouched beside the generator. She realized that the cave floor here was smoother. There were no large rocks in the way and most of the fragments were gone as well, leaving large slabs of stone visible. As she ran her light across the ceiling, she saw that it was smoother than it had been up to that point and more of a uniform height. No headache stones here. Someone had cleared them away.
"That nodule was here before to block our way," she said.
"They didn't want us to get any farther. On this side I see definite evidence of improvement to the cave."
"If there is a living society on this planet, it's most likely underground," Morden said, "where our scanners haven't been able to read."
Perhaps it was the stillness, the darkness that focused her thoughts. Or perhaps it was her decision to block out the human distractions and focus on the culture they had encountered. But connections were becoming obvious to her. Either they had moved underground during the war, or they had always lived underground and the structures on the surface had been a diversion. The cave entries were kept natural to disguise their presence. This was a secretive race, a race who worked through diversion, misdirection.
"I think they knew we were coming. Could they have found the beacon on board their ship?"
"Why do you think they knew?"
"It's all too neat. They live underground, where our scanners can't detect them and our probe can't go. Above ground, all we find is ruins... and one astonishing, living artifact. An artifact that promises all that is desired. And everyone who goes to investigate that artifact disappears."
"Given my choice I would have gone there, instead of the caves."
"Maybe they thought they would catch us all that way. With that bait. They didn't expect us in the caves. When we came in, they blocked our way."
"And now the nodule is gone. Does that mean they're ready for us?"
"Yes, it does ."
She stood.
"They provide an intriguing energy source to draw us in. And here we are. But what I can't figure out is why they would want to hide from us and then attack us. They don't even know us. You were there on Mars. Did something happen that you didn't tell me? What was one of their ships doing on Mars anyway? It suggests they've had some connection with humans in the past?"
As she talked, a strange change came over Morden's face. The muscles went slack, his carefully composed expression melting away. He reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit, and as she realized he was going to pull out the PPG, she remembered his encounter with this race on Mars, his shiny tools, his smooth palms, Chang's warning to her, and Donne's, and his statement, almost a warning in itself: "I find I'm much more effective if I go about my job quietly."
As the PPG came clear of the pocket and began to rise, she shoved him, hard. The gun went off with a reverberating blast. She lost her balance, heard rocks falling, and then a flash and she hit the cave floor. She covered her head with her arms and tucked her body into a ball. She'd been in rockfalls several times before, all minor, so she'd always thought Chang had been joking when he'd described the cave-in at Al-mover: "it was like being an ant in the center of the bowling pins when God hits a strike."
But that was exactly what it felt like. The world collapsed around her, huge rocks clashing and crashing in a great cascade like thunder. One rock slammed into her legs, another into her back, the heavy gravity increasing the impact. The ground shook as if she were in the middle of an earthquake. Her arms squeezed desperately around her head. From the thunder, the rockfall seemed to be concentrated a few yards up the passage, where Morden's PPG must have hit. Two great slabs of rock shattered against the cave floor, and then the rumbling trailed off into silence.
She forced herself to remain in a ball for the count of thirty, while unstable rocks dropped haphazardly from their unlikely resting places. Then she straightened, her body throbbing. She was in total blackness. The floodlight farther up the passage had either been knocked out or blocked by the cave-in. She groped for her light, forcing herself to ignore the sound of the rocks settling. Her hand closed around the familiar shape. She turned it on, and a dim light illuminated the cave floor. She shone it toward where Morden had been standing.
He looked as if he had been picked up and thrown at the cave wall. He was twisted up against it on his side, the orange jumpsuit over his chest fluttering with quick, shallow breaths. On the right arm of his suit was an odd, dark shadow. She thought at first that a rock was somehow balanced on it, but as she looked at its edges she realized that it was a burn. His right hand still gripped the PPG. Another cascade of rocks sounded behind her, and with his left hand Morden pulled the PPG out of his clenched fingers. A light shone off the mask of his breather, and Anna followed the beam back behind her, farther down the passage than they had gone. Her link chimed as someone linked in.
"He destroyed the probe."
Donne's voice ran like poison into her ea
r.
"Did your good friend tell you that?"
CHAPTER 15
John was in his office, reviewing all the ship's logs for the sixteen hours during which the sabotage had occurred, as well as interrogation transcripts and investigation reports. So far he hadn't found anything helpful, and he was about ready to throw these down, climb into an EVA suit and try to help Ross. Time was running out. It was almost twenty-three hundred. They had only three hours until the cruiser reached the jump gate. Ross's estimate had him finishing an hour before then, if all went well, but what if he didn't finish in time? The starfuries didn't have enough power to take out a cruiser, not one that was fighting back, anyway. Without backup from the Agamemnon, it would be a slaughter. John's link chimed, and a surge of nervous adrenaline shot through him.
"Sheridan. Go."
"Captain."
It was Ross.
"I'm afraid we've run into a major snag. The damage to the laser tube is much more extensive than I thought. It's very subtle. I didn't spot it until we removed the section around the primary mirror. We're going to have to remove a much larger section. Then the whole thing is going to need to be realigned."
"How long?"
"I need more help, Captain. This is delicate work. The gunners aren't qualified for it."
He hated to put either Watley or Spano out there. If either of them was involved in the sabotage, the laser system would never get fixed in time, and they might pose a danger to Ross and the other crewmen.
"How long if you don't get more help?"
"Nine more hours, sir. I'm sorry."
"How long if I send you just Watley?"
"Maybe six hours."
John's jaw clenched.
"And how long if I send you Watley and Spano?"
"Maybe three hours."
So there it was. The only chance of repairing the ship in time was to trust the two people who had most likely sabotaged it.
Babylon 5 07 - The Shadow Within (Cavelos, Jeanne) Page 18