0-In the Beginning

by Peter David

  "Mollari ... owes me money," he said slowly. "Money ... lost gaming."

  "Money," G'Kar said. "And for that, you would try to kill him. Does it occur to you that, if he is dead, your money will not be forthcoming?"

  "It. . . should have," G'Mak admitted. He drew himself up. "Do you desire that I... apologize to the Centauri representative here?"

  "Well . . ." G'Kar could not suppress a smile. "I don't think we have to go to extremes."

  G'Mak turned away, unable to look me in the eyes anymore. I could not blame him, for standing there, I had begun to understand. Whatever self-loathing he might have felt at that moment, it could not be dissimilar to what was going through my own mind. I felt my very soul shriveling over the concept that the Humans might possibly have had salvation at hand. But the prospect had been dashed from those hands by a sweep of my own.

  "I am G'Kar," G'Kar informed me with a slight bow. The bow had more of a mocking aspect to it.

  I couldn't stop staring at him, and it took me a moment or two to realize that I should return the formal introduction. I made a perfunctory bow in return and said, "Londo Mollari."

  "You have something of a reputation which precedes you, Mollari."

  "Oh? Do I?" I said, rather tonelessly.

  "Yes, yes. I have my contacts, my connections. You would be amazed what I know."

  "Is that a fact?"

  "Yes." His voice dropped. "I know the truth about you. About your little secret."

  For a moment the world seemed to fall away from me. "Oh, really?"

  "Definitely." And he sneered. "I know that you cheat at cards."

  Relief flooded through me, and then I realized that that was precisely the wrong reaction to show to G'Kar. If I acted as if I were hiding something, then there was every likelihood that he would perceive it and, suspicions aroused, probe further. So, with every bit of acting capability at my command, I drew myself up as if I had been mortally offended. "That is a spurious lie!" I declared.

  "I know that you cheat, and how you cheat." He shook his head derisively and made a gesture that indicated I should feel shame. "What happened? Did G'Mak catch you at it? Force you to play on the up-and-up and, consequently, lose?"

  "As you say" was my only reply.

  I turned and started to walk away quickly. My head was still whirling with what I had learned. A peace initiative. An attempt to stave off genocide, and I had been too narrow-minded, too much the fool to believe it possible. On my head ... all those deaths still to come, an entire race to be obliterated from the galaxy, and it was my fault.

  I tried to tell myself that the peace talks would never have come to anything anyway. That Sonovar had been correct, that the Minbari were still dead set against it. That it was merely the deluded dream of a handful of Minbari who could never have brought matters to fruition.

  But I knew. I knew that this was all rationalization, all attempts to assuage my guilty conscience.

  They were doomed. Doomed and damned, and it was my fault. All my fault.

  Then I heard G'Kar's voice calling behind me. I stopped, turned, and waited for what he had to say.

  He wagged a finger at me and said, "Mollari... a warning. In the future, I'll have my eye out for you."

  For a moment my dream of my death flashed into my mind. The single red eye glaring at me from a face twisted in hate.

  "You have no idea," I told him, and walked away.

  ~ chapter 15 ~

  It may seem to you that that is the end of the story. But I assure you, it is not.

  At the point where the peace initiative had failed, fifty, maybe sixty thousand Humans had died in the Earth-Minbari War. With their one chance for peace ruined, and Lenonn dead, the war escalated. Over the next six months, two hundred thousand more Humans died. The end of the story? No, not the end at all. The greatest slaughter of all still waits for us. It changed everything .. . everything ...

  The heat...

  My world ... my Centauri Prime .. .

  When the wind mercifully blows in the other direction, I can pretend to be above it all. But when it blows toward the castle, the heat can be overwhelming, and the smells . . . the charnel smells.

  Perhaps I am hellhound. Perhaps I am seeing merely a preview of what awaits me for eternity. Ironic, is it not? I had every window in the palace blocked off because I was afraid that if I came around a corner and saw . . . this . . . unprepared, I would break down and cry. And yet I spend all my time here in this room. Looking at it.

  I see the many buildings, buildings which have existed for centuries. Conceived by the greatest architects of Centauri history. A sort of ongoing record of the growth of the great Centauri empire. For each emperor, for each triumph, for every planet that fell beneath our sphere of influence, there would be a new monument erected, a new building constructed to memorialize it.

  That pile of rubble over there? I received my first tutoring there. That pile down at the base of the hill? The home of my best friend. Far in the distance, that incinerated grove of trees? That is where I brought the first woman that I. . .

  Women.

  In my life, I have had four wives. I cared for them all deeply. But I loved Centauri Prime. Loved every street, every tower, every inch of our world. Everything I did, I did for her. And look what we have done to her. Still. . . there is hope. But it will be hard. It will be so very hard . . .

  But I stray from the topic?

  I am sorry. Accept my apologies. The apology of an emperor-that should certainly be worth something, eh?

  Where was I? Oh, yes ...

  The war.

  The Humans, I think, knew that they were doomed. But where another race would have surrendered to despair, the Humans fought back with even greater strength.

  They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In all my life, I have never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would pray, they would say good-bye to those they loved . . . and then launch themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself. Never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved by their courage. Their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they fought with guns. When they ran out of guns, they fought with sticks, with knives, with bare hands. They were magnificent.

  Tales of their heroic confrontations ranged throughout half a dozen star systems. The battle of Sinzar, where a wounded Minbari battle cruiser tried to escape, and a crippled Earth vessel rammed into the Minbari, destroying themselves and the Minbari in the process.

  The fierce land war on the Flinn Colony, where ground-based weaponry drove the Minbari to the surface, and incredible hand-to-hand struggles ranged across the planet's surface. The Minbari came away from the battle triumphant, but bloodied and bruised.

  Word of the Humans raced through all levels of the Minbari. Every caste whispered of it. It is far easier, you see, to destroy an enemy you have demonized. As such, the enemy must have no redeeming value whatsoever.

  Remember that the attack on Dukhat had been perceived as the cowardly attack of savages. Savages have no sense of nobility. But the Humans clearly did, and they had further proven, in battle after battle, that they were not cowards. Although they did attempt from time to time to surrender, every rebuff actually appeared to revitalize them. They were determined, as a race, to give an accounting of themselves. It was as if they knew that they could not survive, and that their single goal was to take as many of the Minbari with them as possible. When twenty of their fighter ships were destroyed, the twenty-first would fight with just as much vigor and disregard for his own safety as ever.

  I only hope, when it is my time, that I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes at the end.

  They did this ... for two years. They never ran out of courage. But in the end . . . they ran out of time.

  The pilots' ready room-the place where Ganya Ivanov had once heard the announcement that there was someone to see him-had also once hummed with
enthusiasm and assurance. The pilots had walked with swagger, with confidence. They were positive that they were the best and the brightest, that somehow, in some way, they would triumph over the aliens who were determined to wipe out Humanity.

  As month had followed month, had gone from one year to the next, that confidence had been eroded. The pilots who were there may have been the best and brightest that Earthforce had to offer. More to the point, they were the last. Many of them had seen battle with the Minbari and barely survived to tell the tale. Others had shown up after fights, been part of rescue operations, and seen close up the devastation that resulted from a battle with the Minbari.

  They lay on benches or on the floor, trying to catch a few moments of sleep, seeking respite in dreams that were laced with frightening, massive engines of destruction coming for them. Many lay awake, staring at the ceiling, not wanting to risk the dreams. All of them had haunted looks in their eyes.

  All but one.

  Jeffrey Sinclair sat off to the side, by himself. He was not staring off into space. He was staring into himself, as if all the answers ... or at least all the answers he needed . . . were there. One of the pilots glanced at him as he walked past, and slowed a moment. "You okay?" he asked.

  Sinclair looked at him with calm confidence. "We're going to win this thing, Mitchell," he said.

  Mitchell looked at him with something akin to amazement. "You really believe that."

  "Yes. I do. And you had better believe it, too." He raised his voice slightly, catching everyone within earshot. Another pilot, Annie Wheeler, who had been one of those lying on the bench staring upward with a hopeless air about her, glanced over at him. Henderson, Lombardi . . . others began to look up at him. He continued, "No battle was ever won by people who believed that their cause was hopeless. Do you have any idea of the wars that have been embarked upon where it seemed clear who the winner was going to be? Any idea how many bodies; of surprised non-winners have littered battlefields?"

  They seemed to be listening to him, ever so slightly. Throwing off the shroud of defeat that had cloaked them for so long. Sinclair's mind raced as he considered his next words carefully.

  And then he was interrupted by a burst of static. He winced against feedback that issued from the speakers, and then looked up as the overhead screen flickered to life. He heard a familiar voice-the voice of the President, Beth Levy-ask in what sounded like confusion, "Are we on?" Obviously someone confirmed for her that they were indeed, for she continued to speak. "This is . . . this is the President."

  He remembered when he had seen her at her Inauguration. Her hair had been elegantly coiffed; she had worn a simple short string of black pearls which had been out of fashion for thirty years-and which promptly came back into fashion as a result of her wearing them. She had been lovely and striking, and possessed of an intelligence that glittered through her eyes.

  There was none of that now. Her brown hair was short but elegant, but otherwise she seemed rather unremarkable. In fact she seemed . .. smaller somehow.

  "I have just been informed," she said tiredly, "that the midrange military bases at Beta Durani and Proxima Three have fallen to the Minbari advance. We have lost contact with lo and must presume that they have fallen to an advance force."

  Sinclair looked around at the others near him. Mitchell still bore an air of quiet determination, but he had known Sinclair the longest. Wheeler was starting to look beaten again, and as for the others ... their eyes were already glazing over. The eyes that had seen too much war. Whatever confidence they might have begun to acquire from Sinclair was evaporating in the face of this new announcement of hopelessness.

  "Intelligence believes the Minbari intend to bypass Mars and hit Earth directly. They say the attack could come at any time. We have ..." Her voice caught for a moment. "We have continued to broadcast our surrender, and a plea for mercy. They have not responded. We can only conclude . . . that we stand at the twilight of the Human race."

  Sinclair wanted to scream at her. What kind of speech is this? Where is the determination? Where are the stirring words inciting pilots to victory? We need encouragement in the face of overwhelming odds, not hopelessness!

  Wheeler passed by Sinclair. She wasn't waiting for the rest of the speech; she knew where it was going. They locked eyes, and she paused only to put out a hand. He clapped it once, firmly, in a sort of power grip, and they both nodded. Mitchell, a short distance away, nodded in approval as Wheeler walked off. Mitchell followed her a moment later as the President's words continued to fill the air.

  "To buy time for more evacuation transports to leave Earth, we ask for the support of every ship capable of fighting to take part in a last defense of our homeworld."

  Others were moving out, Sinclair's attempts at spirit-raising forgotten or simply deemed irrelevant. Some of them couldn't even look Sinclair in the eye, as if they were letting him down by being convinced that they could not win.

  "We will not lie to you," Levy continued. "Survival... is not a possibility. Those who enter the battle . . . will never come back. But for every ten minutes we can delay the enemy advance, several hundred more civilians may be able to escape to neutral territory."

  To her credit, she did not add that there was no guarantee the Minbari would honor the concept of "neutral territory." They might very well follow the last of Humanity wherever they ran and obliterate them. That seemed to be the plan, after all. Still, the pilots knew. Knew that even the smallest shred of hope was likely a futile one. But at least it gave them something to fight for. Sinclair shouldered his load, took his helmet, didn't even bother to glance up at the President as she continued, "Though Earth may fall, the Human race must have a chance to continue elsewhere. No greater sacrifice has ever been asked of a people. But I ask you now to step forward one last time . . . one last battle to hold the line against the night."

  Sinclair was the last one out. He glanced around the pilots' waiting area one final time. And even at the last. . . he refused to believe that he wouldn't be back.

  We'll find a way, he thought, and walked out.

  The President's final words- "God go with you all" - were spoken to a deserted room.

  John Sheridan was going out of his mind.

  At that point he was serving aboard a battle cruiser called the Hector, part of a small convoy of vessels that had learned of a planned Minbari incursion against a colony in the Triad sector. It had been a two-day journey via jump gates to arrive there, and it was only once they had arrived in the Triad sector that word was received of the Minbari push toward Earth itself. So the Hector, upon learning of the last desperate defense of Earth, immediately turned around and started to head back, but Sheridan knew he wasn't going to make it.

  He thought of the evacuation going on, of his parents and Elizabeth desperately trying to get to evacuation vessels. He had begged his father to relocate the family to someplace remote, someplace that even the Minbari wouldn't find. But the elder Sheridan had refused, saying that there was no such place, and besides, running wasn't his style. John Sheridan had alternately cursed and pleaded with his father to change his mind, but nothing had managed to convince him. Typical. So typical.

  And John thought of Anna as well. Was she gone? Was she safe?

  In the intervening two years, he had seen her-on and off-and their relationship had grown, blossomed and developed. Somewhere along the way, Sheridan came to the realization that-had he been someone with a normal life- he would certainly have married the woman by now. That was how strongly he had come to feel for her. That alone meant more to him than he would have previously thought possible.

  Was she safe? Were any of them?

  Earth was dying and he wasn't there to defend her.

  He barely slept for the entire voyage there, and by the time he arrived, it had ended ... but not in a way that anyone had expected.

  It would later be called the Battle of the Line. Twenty thousand ships and fighters, arrayed in a last-ditch e
ffort to defend the homeworld of Humanity. A homeworld that had survived the trauma of birth . . . meteor strikes ... ice ages . . . and, most challengingly, the abuse heaped on it by the race that first began crawling on the surface barely half an eyeblink earlier, as the planet itself reckoned time.

  In point of fact, the homeworld would survive this debacle as well. The Minbari did not care about the blue-green planet itself. The world, as far as they were concerned, could continue in its rather dreary orbit around its sun until time itself came to an end.

  But the people-as far as the Minbari were concerned- were doomed.

  Truth to tell, we all believed that as well.

  I had long before retreated to Centauri Prime, knowing that the Earth was a lost cause and knowing that I was-in some measure-responsible for that. I kept mostly to myself, every so often monitoring the progress of the battle. When word of the final battle came, I sat in my home and stared out at the green, rolling hills of Centauri Prime and wondered in a very oblique fashion what that would be like. To fight a hopeless battle against impossible odds. To know that one's world would likely soon be in flames.

  Some advice to you, my friends: Never idly speculate. Because someone out there notices such things, and takes a perverse pleasure in providing concrete examples. As you can tell, considering that . . . once again ... the wind has shifted.

  ~ chapter 16 ~

  The Minbari fleet was a very different affair from the desperate last defenders of planet Earth. Whereas the Earth-force fleet clearly displayed results of the many battles they had been through, the Minbari vessels looked unperturbed. As they cruised through hyperspace, heading for their final assault on Humanity, one would simply have been unable to tell that they had been involved in a wearying, two-year-long war.