A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 1 : Learning How to Live addm-5

by Gareth D. Williams

He finished cutting through her bonds and she fell limply to the floor. He caught her effortlessly and gently lowered her. He then removed his coat and wrapped it around her.

  "She's mine!" Rem moved slowly sideways and picked up the kutari beside the wall. One of his little treasures from Gorash. He'd never been allowed one of these before. He remembered touching a nobleman's sword once as a child and being flogged for it, but now he had his own sword. It was his!

  Just like the girl was, and this nobleman wasn't going to take either of them from him.

  He charged forward, holding up the sword and screaming. He would defend what was his. He was entitled to defend what was his.

  The nobleman must have tricked him. Yes, it was a trick. Nothing else could explain how he had moved so fast, knocking the sword out of his hands. It was all a trick. Rem felt the cold touch of Marrago's kutari against his face, and the warmth of his blood trickling down his cheek.

  "She's mine," he said.

  "I should kill you for what you've done to her, and elsewhere. But this is a different place, and different rules apply.

  "But come near her again, and I will kill you, and to hell with the consequences."

  It was not fear that made Rem stammer like that. Not fear at all. It was.... a bluff. He was lulling Marrago into a false sense of security. That was it. Let the nobleman think he was helpless, and then....

  It was a testament to his acting skills that he was still trembling a long time after Marrago had left with the girl.

  * * *

  Rem Lanas finished his garbled story and Moreil looked at him. "She's mine!" he said again. "You've got to help me get her back."

  Moreil had no further time or patience for the fool. "Go," he said.

  "But she's mine! You have to get her back for me!"

  "I said go! Recover her yourself if you are strong enough, but trouble me no longer."

  Moreil did not watch him flee. The lordling was of no concern to him any more, but this Marrago was.

  It was past time the two of them had a little talk.

  * * *

  Whispers from the Day of the Dead — V

  "You aren't dead."

  "No. I am not."

  "Is the sun coming up, then? I can't see. Everyone I've seen tonight is dead. Everyone. I didn't realise I'd killed so many people, but I suppose I have."

  "You don't look like a warrior."

  "No. I'm nobody. Not any longer. I used to be a soldier, but.... after a while I just couldn't take any more. All of them.... At first, I thought it was.... justified. It was for defence and protection, but then it became revenge, and then it was a new war and it was for defence again and then.... and then...."

  "You just did not know how to stop."

  "How do you know that?"

  "We were the same. I heard.... pieces from the Grey Council. It started in anger and continued in pride, because we were too stubborn to admit we were wrong."

  "It wasn't stubbornness. It was just.... we didn't know anything else. Good God, have all those people died for something so pathetic?"

  "No. They died for understanding. We know each other better now. We understand each other."

  "Are you sure you aren't dead?"

  "I am not dead. It feels as if I am sometimes, but no, I am not dead."

  "I came here because.... I'd heard the dead came back, and they would answer questions. I hoped they would tell me some things, tell me what I needed to know, but all they've done is haunt me. All they've done. There are so many of them, and....

  "You're the only person who's said anything to me all night. The others just looked."

  "That is why you came here. For understanding."

  "No. For forgiveness. Why did you come here?"

  "There was one whom.... I loved very much. I hoped to see him here, to tell him everything I should have said while he was alive. To share one last night with him."

  "Did you?"

  "Yes."

  "There was one woman I was hoping to see. I think I loved her, but I was never sure. I used to wonder if it wasn't more the idea of love than love itself I had with her. I wanted someone who would want to be with me, someone who could care for me, someone who could provide a focus, an understanding of what I was fighting for. Was that love? Shouldn't love be less.... selfish?"

  "Perhaps. I don't know. I know only that I wanted to spend every minute with him, every second of every minute. Was that selfish of me? I do not know."

  "Nor do I. I wish I'd seen her here. Or maybe I did and she was just a face in the crowd."

  "Where are you going now?"

  "I don't know. Somewhere they stop talking to me, I hope. Anywhere they stop talking to me."

  "You were a soldier?"

  "Yes. I was."

  "My.... husband was a warrior. Like you, he had fought too much and seen too much and grown tired of it. He found peace at the end of his life, as a worker. He built and he created and he gave up destruction. If you want to, you can come home with me. There is a lot to be done there. I cannot guarantee you will find peace, but it is a place to look."

  "It was me who destroyed your home, did you know that? Me, and people like me."

  "I do not believe you, but it does not matter. Whatever guilt you carry, justly or unjustly, you can try to work it away. Do you wish to come with me?"

  "Yes, please.

  "Yes, I think I would like that. Maybe then they will stop talking to me."

  * * *

  It had taken Dexter Smith several hours to stop shaking. In spite of what he had told Julia and Zack his first port of call was not the Edgars Building, but his apartment. Once there he had vomited everything he had eaten that day, drunk several large glasses of Narn liquor, and then vomited again.

  A shower, a change and a shave later, he felt a little better, but not much. He could still feel that thing crawling around in his mind.

  He'd had few dealings with telepaths. His mother had sometimes spoken to him inside his mind, and he had felt touches occasionally from Talia, testing and probing, but nothing like that. Nothing like that....

  .... thing.

  A human. Once a human. It had called him 'brother'. It had spoken to him. It had invited him to join it.

  'It'. It was an 'it'. Not a 'he', 'it'.

  He had known fear before. He had grown up in a nightmare of crime and pain and despair. He had stood in battle. He had faced down an angry mob intending to kill Delenn and he had looked into her green eyes as he killed her himself. He had even looked at a hundred expectant faces as he prepared to deliver his first speech before the new Senate.

  He had never felt anything like this. Never this kind of revulsion. The sense of something so.... so Other.

  He looked at the mass of papers on his desk. They had to be studied and some signed and others likewise dealt with. The Senate was to debate the new Tax Bill on Monday, with important discussions on the Alliance Treaties following. The Alliance had invited the Proxima Government to submit candidates for the position of Babylon 5's Commanding Officer. There were two new members to welcome formally, meetings of the Reconstruction Committee and the Wellington Corruption Tribunal, not to mention a great many letters to get through. Smith did not particularly want a secretary, but it was growing more and more likely that he would need one.

  He had taken the night off for 'Poker Night', and he should be getting back to them by now. Instead he turned away from the mass of paperwork and left the apartment.

  He was able to catch a taxi not far away and instructed the driver to take him to the Edgars Building. The driver quite happily talked about films, his wife, the state of humanity today, the Minbari and why trusting them was not a good idea, some businessman he had taken for a drive a few years ago and was now some bigwig on Centauri Prime of all places, and hey aren't you Senator Smith may I get your autograph for my wife please only she's a big fan of yours has all your interviews and everything even the one way back when you were made captain of that sh
ip oh what was it called again be forgetting my own head next the Babble-on no silly that's not it the Babylon yes that's the one here you are by the way sir won't my wife be impressed when she hears about this.

  He paid the driver, gave him an autograph and probably an over-large tip, then walked up the steps to the imposing Edgars Building. It seemed to loom above him. Even after the damage done during the Battle of Proxima, when by all accounts President Clark had ordered the building itself bombarded from orbit, the Edgars Building was still impressive. It had already been fully repaired, and Smith was not surprised. The old man had enough in his personal account to pay for it all himself without troubling insurers or the Wartime Compensation Board. The repairs were probably even tax-deductible.

  Smith was not surprised to be ushered through the lower levels and directed to the old man's private offices on the top floor. He was even less surprised to reach the new reception area, looking an awful lot like the old one, and find the secretary Lise Hampton there, still working despite the time of night.

  He was not surprised in the slightest when she said, "Good evening, Senator Smith. Go right in. Mr. Edgars is expecting you."

  * * *

  The most powerful man in the galaxy closed his eyes and imagined the rain falling on the roof above his head. The gentle pitter-patter sound existed only in his mind, a reminder of long years gone and a life now consigned only to memory.

  He was having trouble sleeping. That happened quite often these days, whenever he was apart from Delenn. With her beside him he felt safe and happy and content and reassured that everything he was doing was right. When she was far away, all the old doubts came creeping back.

  And he was very far away from her. He was in a part of the galaxy he had never even seen before, following a trail of whispers and rumours and hearsay. He might as well have been seeking King Solomon's Mines, or the source of the Nile, or the Holy Grail.

  That was what had first attracted him to space — the sheer vast emptiness of it, the feel that there could be anything out there, anything at all. Uncharted systems, ancient worlds, wonders never seen by human eyes, and he could be a part of it all.

  This mission should have been perfect for him. Travelling distant and uncharted courses in search of ships of immense power glimpsed only in shadows and flickers and dead men's eyes.

  But something nagged at him, something he could not explain. It was not just the potential risk of one lone ship seeking what might well turn out to be a legacy of the Shadows. It was not even the pain of being apart from Delenn.

  It was just that it all seemed so easy.

  The rumours had been circulating for years of powerful, ancient ships out there somewhere. The words formed capital letters in his mind. Out There. Not here, not somewhere safe and understood and predictable, no. Out There. In the wilderness, past the frontier, in unexplored territory.

  There had always been rumours, but over the last year they had grown. So much so that he had elected to send Dark Stars to investigate. Most had come back with nothing. Some had not come back at all. There was nothing particularly unusual in that. Space was full of dangers after all, both mundane and rare.

  But instinct was warning him of something, and his instinct was rarely wrong. Once it had been terribly wrong and he had never trusted it as much since then, but still....

  This all seemed too easy. He had taken his ship to some of the most recent recorded sightings and scanned for anything out of the ordinary. At about the third location they had detected a rare radiation trace which led into hyperspace, and they had followed it. The trace remained strong enough to follow even through the swirling eddies and currents of hyperspace, and although it led them far from the beacons the Dark Star could navigate easily enough. It was a ship built almost entirely by the Vorlons after all, and there was little they did not know about hyperspace.

  But still, this all seemed too easy. Why had the other captains not seen this? It was tempting to think that they were not as skilled as he was. He was the Shadowkiller after all. He had been the first human captain to destroy a Minbari warship in open battle. He had done more in one lifetime than most could do in three or four.

  But he was careful not to believe that. Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make proud.

  He supposed it could be that he had a bond with his ship. Many Dark Star captains disliked spending too much time on their ships, but he was quite the opposite. He had spent so much time here he felt he knew it almost as well as he had known the Babylon. Sometimes he even thought the ship was alive.

  Pure conceit of course. Humans had always ascribed human feelings to their vessels, going back to the earliest boats of wood and twine. Their ship was the greatest protection the old explorers had had against the elements, and so they spoke to it, named it, saw it as a shield and even as a friend. Time and technology had changed many things, but not that. If his ship failed him, a man was just as dead in the vacuum of space as he would be in the middle of the Atlantic.

  But sometimes he thought there was more than that. A real presence here, a voice, almost a spirit.

  "Are you here?" he asked the silence of his room. There was no reply. There never was. But still he wondered.

  David had certainly seemed to think so. His reaction when he learned that the Dark Star 3 had had to be scuttled was almost as if he had lost a friend.

  He paused. Why the need to scuttle it? It had seemed obvious at the time, but now he couldn't remember. Surely it could have been repaired?

  He frowned. There must have been a good reason.

  "General Sheridan?" came a voice through his link, and he sat up, opening his eyes.

  "Yes?"

  "We've found something. You're going to want to have a look at this."

  * * *

  He was alive. She had always known that, somehow, but to have it confirmed like that.... It was as if a shining light had fallen on her, refreshing and enlightening and lifting her spirits. Talia wrapped herself tightly as a barrier against the cold and lost herself within her thoughts.

  He was alive. She had seen him, spoken to him. She had always known it, but now....

  They had not been able to talk for very long, although time meant little within the network. The constant roaring and rushing and screaming still haunted her. That was what truly horrified her about the network — the constant noise.

  She was used to noise, used to the voices. She was a telepath and lived always with a perpetual conversation going on in the next room, but the network was not just a muted conversation nearby. It was a million voices all yammering away in terror and anguish. So many people taking and no one listening.

  He did not know where he was, where he had been imprisoned. Talia did not think he was inside a Dark Star. From what she had learned the less powerful telepaths were placed in external nodes like the Dark Stars, or relay points, funnels to the more powerful nodes. A psychic as trained and disciplined as Al would be in one of the central nodes, funnelling countless messages through himself to the rest of the network.

  She wondered how long it would take for his escape to be noticed. There was so much she did not know about the network, but she did know it was patrolled. The Vorlons scanned it constantly, knowing that so much of their power was based in there. She had been lucky in skipping past them so far, but luck would not carry her forever. Nor would the artefact.

  A sudden burst of pain twinged in her mind and she winced. The headaches were lasting longer these days, and usually when she was away from the artefact. She supposed she had been using it too much, but what other choice did she have? She had to use every weapon she had.

  And that was why she was travelling hidden in the freezing cargo hold of this ship. There was a weapon — and if she was being honest to herself, a little more than just a weapon — she had not used. She had not wanted to use.

  But things were getting desperate, time was growing short, and she did not dare let personal concerns distract her from
her mission.

  The shuttle continued towards Proxima 3.

  I wonder how Dexter is doing these days? she thought to herself, and felt a tiny pang of guilt when her heart fluttered slightly at the thought of his name.

  * * *

  His wrists were covered in sores from the manacles. The muscles in his legs had wasted away from lack of use. The bright light hurt and burned at his eyes from long hours spent in the darkness. His hair was lank and greasy from too long in the dank cell.

  But Durla was still a Centauri, and he was still a noble, and so he remembered how many days he has been kept in this cell — one hundred and fifteen — and he did not cower as the door opened and an unfamiliar person stood before him.

  His eyes adjusted slowly, ever so slowly, but he refused to avert them, refused to show any weakness to this intruder. He took in all he could. Not a Centauri. A human. Finely dressed. Carrying no visible weapon. Alone. Power in his bearing. Durla knew of no human like that. But then he had been away from home for far too long, and of the one hundred and sixteen days since his return to Centauri Prime, he had spent one hundred and fifteen of them here.

  "Durla," said the human, in a flawless accent. "Second son of Lord-Captain Sollaris of House Antignano. Younger brother to Solla Antignano, who died of poison a good many years ago, murdered by a jealous suitor over a woman."

  Durla said nothing. These were simply words. Words are air, nothing more.

  "In fact the poison came not from a jealous suitor but from yourself. You poisoned yourself as well to maintain the illusion and later attempted to court the lady in question yourself, only to be rejected. Following this, you served in the Palace Guards for several years, never marrying, until the truth of the incident came to light some eight years ago following an investigation launched by First Minister Urza Jaddo. You were stripped of your title and banished from Centauri space. Then you returned four months ago, and were promptly arrested and sent here, where you have been detained ever since."

  Durla remained silent. The human was trying to intimidate him with his knowledge. That was all.