Babylon 5 02 - Accusations (Tilton, Lois)

by Accusations (Tilton, Lois)

  It was hard going, ducking the thrown missiles that came flying from the hands of the angry rioters, but eventually they reached a place where Sheridan could swing up on a catwalk and be several feet above the heads of the surging throng. Unfortunately, it would also make him a target for every hand holding something to throw, or even a weapon. Garibaldi pulled the captain back. "Let me get their attention first."

  He picked a convenient nearby power junction, aimed his gun, and the sudden blinding flare of sparks caused by the high-energy plasma burst did indeed get the instant attention of the mob.

  Sheridan lost none of the opportunity, immediately climbing up to the catwalk and shouting, "I'm Captain John Sheridan, commander of Babylon 5! What the hell is this disturbance all about? If you people have a grievance, tell me about it! Now! So what's going on?"

  Several dozen people began yelling all at once. Sheridan shook his head, waved for silence. After a few moments the voices quieted down and a couple of people stepped forward. "We want all the arrests stopped! All the prisoners released!"

  Someone from farther back in the milling throng yelled, "Or else we take this station apart to get them out!"

  Several dozen of the crowd cheered that remark, and Garibaldi took a firmer grip on his PPG.

  "What prisoners? What arrests?" Sheridan demanded again. "You want me to release murderers, is that it? Traitors?"

  "Not criminals! Innocent men and women!" There was even louder agreement with this statement, but a few voices also added, "Patriots! Not traitors!"

  Garibaldi reached up to get Sheridan's attention.

  "Nagy," he explained. "The guy I arrested, the guy with Free Mars. That's what he called himself, a patriot."

  "This isn't getting us anywhere." Sheridan took a worried look at the restless mob. Raising his voice again, he said, "I want to meet with your representatives. Bring me a list of names. If innocent people have been arrested, I'll personally see that they're released."

  There was a long moment as the speakers in the front of the crowd turned back to consult with the others. People were shoving forward to try to be heard, calling out names. Some were angrily demanding more concessions. One man yelled, "It's like a police state!" and that comment again was greeted with approving cheers.

  Garibaldi tensed, and security agents braced themselves, but there was no new outbreak of violence. Sheridan got on his link and contacted Kohler again. "Lieutenant, meet me in briefing room three with that list of people you just arrested. And bring Commander Wallace with you!"

  Four people stepped forward again, three men and a woman, and one of them said, "All right, Sheridan, we've got the names. Let's meet. Let's see what you do about this!"

  A cordon of guards cleared the way to the briefing room, with the crowd surging behind them, willing for the moment to wait to see what came of the meeting. Garibaldi wondered how long their patience would last and hoped they could resolve the issue quickly.

  The foremost spokesman was a man Garibaldi recognized as Hank Ndeme, proprietor of the largest food-service operation on Babylon 5, and a native of Mars. He got right to the point before Sheridan could say a word, holding out a notebook in his hand and shaking it in the faces of the Earthforce officers. "Here are the names! I've got them all right here! Now let's see them released!"

  "If they're innocent," Sheridan reminded him. "Let me inform you, in case you don't know it already, that there've been three murders on Babylon 5 in the last ten days, plus an assault on the station's chief security officer. If you think I'm going to tolerate that, you're going to find out otherwise."

  "Is that any excuse for turning this whole station into a police state?" Ms. Connoly, the Dockworkers Union Rep, demanded, repeating the phrase. "Is that any reason to pull men and women out of their quarters, off their jobs?"

  "I'm checking into that right now," Sheridan told her. "There may have been excesses. If so, they'll be rectified."

  But Ndeme shook his head. "This has got to stop," he insisted. "Every man, woman, and child from Mars on this station is treated like a criminal, like a terrorist. What is it, a crime to be born on Mars? You come from Mars, you've got no rights? Is that how things are?"

  "Not just from Mars," Connoly protested. "They took three people from my section, none of them ever set foot on Mars"

  Garibaldi interrupted, "Let's hear those names."

  Ndeme activated the recorder. The first couple of names no one recognized; the third was "Val Williams."

  Garibaldi said, "Val Williams is a pseudonym for Josef Nagy, who was taken into custody earlier today. Mr. Nagy has confessed to complicity in the attack on an Earthforce officer."

  Ndeme seemed taken aback by this information, but only for an instant. "What about Allen Rodgers, then? Irene Hardesty? Nick Patinos?"

  "None of these people is currently being charged with any crime. They were taken in for questioning in the case of the assault on Mr. Garibaldi," Sheridan said.

  "Taken in for questioning, under arrestwhat's the difference?" Ndeme demanded. "All we know is, security comes and drags them away to the lockup. You ask why, and no one gives you any information, everything is classified, and then they start to ask: What connection do you have to the suspect, anyway?"

  Sheridan and Garibaldi looked at each other, both thinking the same thing: Wallace.

  Sheridan looked irritably at his link, but just then the briefing room door opened and Lieutenant Kohler came in, looking agitated and slightly the worse for wear. With him was a hostile and truculent Lieutenant Miyoshi. "Sorry, sir, I couldn't reach the commander. I did bring the lieutenant, though."

  Sheridan's jaw tightened. "C&C, this is Captain Sheridan. I want Commander Wallace to contact me now, and that's an order!" To Miyoshi, he said, "Where's your superior, Lieutenant?"

  Defiantly, "The commander doesn't want to be disturbed!"

  "Lieutenant Miyoshi, you will get on your link and contact Commander Wallace."

  "You don't have the authority"

  "Or I'll have you under arrest for insubordination and refusal to obey a direct order."

  Miyoshi, glaring at Sheridan, toggled her link. "Commander, this is Miyoshi. Captain Sheridan has ordered me to call you. Are you there, Commander?" She looked up from her wrist with a smug and bitter expression of triumph. "He doesn't answer."

  "You'd better hope it's not because someone shoved him out an air-lock," Garibaldi said uncharitably.

  But Sheridan decided to give up on Wallace for the moment. He asked Kohler, instead, "Do you have that list of names?"

  "Yes, sir." He took out a data crystal, handed it to Sheridan, ignoring Miyoshi's shrill protest: "You can't do that! Those names, all that information is classified!"

  "To hell with that!" Sheridan said decisively, inserting the crystal into the reader. The list of names appeared on the screen, and Ndeme and the other representatives crowded around it, saying, "Yes! That's him! There they are!"

  There were at least fifty names. "These were all arrested in connection with Lieutenant Khatib's murder?" Sheridan asked Kohler.

  "Well, no, sir. That's just the list of suspects. We didn't bring all of them in yet. The disturbance broke out"

  But Sheridan had already found the second list, the names of people actually in custody. "There'll be no more arrests," he reminded Kohler, and Miyoshi as well. "Not without my express order. No more people dragged in for questioning without my authorization."

  "I understand, sir," said Kohler. Miyoshi said nothing.

  Sheridan went back to the first list, muttered to himself, "This is too much."

  Garibaldi added, "If you wanted to bring in everyone on this station who might have wanted to shove Khatib through an air-lock, you couldn't hold them all in the main docking bay."

  "All right," said Sheridan. "Lieutenant Kohler, I'm ordering every person on that list to be released, immediately. Monitor their whereabouts, but let them go." To Miyoshi, anticipating her protest, "If Commander Wallace ca
n show any cause to connect them with Khatib's murder or any other crime, we'll pick them up again."

  "I think, with Nagy in custody, we can release these others," Garibaldi added, meaning Patinos, Hardesty, and the rest brought in for questioning about his assault.

  The civilian representatives, skeptical, were still going through their list, comparing them with the names on the screen. "There's still more," Ndeme insisted. "More names aren't on that list." He named some of them. Connoly added several more.

  Sheridan took a breath. "I have to explain something. Commander Wallace and his aides, from Earth Central, have been conducting an independent investigation into a terrorist incident which occurred on Babylon 5. The specific details are classified, but I know that they include at least one murder. You understand, the commander is operating directly under the authority of the Earth Central. If Commander Wallace has authorized arrests, I don't have direct knowledge of them. All I can promise you, and I do promise you, is that I'll do whatever I can to find out what's happened to these people.

  "But I warn you, I'm not about to let the murderers of an Earthforce officer get off free. This crime will be investigated and the guilty parties will be punished according to the law. I hope that's clear."

  The representatives consulted with each other. Finally, "I guess that'll do, Captain," Ndeme said.

  "If the rest of these people are released," Connoly added.

  "They'll all be released unless we find specific, concrete reason to hold them," Sheridan promised. "And there'll be no repetition of today's incident. All arrests in connection with this investigation will have to be authorized by me." He fixed Miyoshi with a hard stare. "Do you understand me, Lieutenant?"

  "I'll inform Commander Wallace," she said stiffly.

  "Mr. Garibaldi, will you take those names?" Sheridan ordered.

  In a few moments more it was done, the lists of names recorded and cross-checked, everyone but Miyoshi agreeing that they were satisfied for the moment.

  As the civilian representatives left the briefing room, Garibaldi held Sheridan back for a moment. "Sir, you're taking quite a risk, aren't you? Wallace is bound to try to take your head for it."

  "I did what I had to in an emergency," Sheridan insisted. "To disperse a riot. This damned witch-hunt of his is disrupting the entire station, interfering with normal operations. There's got to be a limit."

  "Well, I have some information that I think will help." He explained, "I just found some of this out. Anyway, you remember, when we found Yang's . . . remains, that Wallace said he knew nothing about the case? And I said he was lying? Well, it seems that Yang was an enforcer from a company on Mars, looking for J. D. Ortega. In fact, the evidence points to Yang as the one who killed him."

  Garibaldi took a breath. "Just now, when I was going through Khatib's uniform, I found a holo card with Ortega's personnel file, taken from the company he and Yang both worked for. And the signature authorizing the transfer of the file was Fengshi Yang." A pause. "There's only one way Khatib could have come into possession of that card."

  "So Yang killed Ortega, then Khatib ..."

  "Killed Yang. I'd put my money on him, anyway. And Wallace knew about it, at the very least. That's why he lied, so we wouldn't connect him with the murder."

  "So that's murder and complicity, and concealment of the crime," Sheridan said. "But is it proof?"

  "We'll have proof for sure if we find Yang's prints or other traces of him on that card, as soon as we can do a forensic scan . . ." He stopped as the thought occurred to him, only an instant before it occurred to Sheridan, too: the evidence implicating Wallace, still in Medlab.

  Where they'd left Wallace. And Wallace, nowhere to be found. Garibaldi had his link on first. "Dr. Franklin! This is Garibaldi! It's an emergency!"

  "This is Franklin, what is it, Garibaldi?"

  "The evidence! Khatib's effects! Are they still secure? Listen, whatever you do, don't let Commander Wallace"

  "You're too late, Garibaldi, he was already here." Only the tone of amusement in Franklin's voice kept Garibaldi from cursing out loud. "And the evidence? Is it safe?"

  "Come and see for yourself."

  "I figured it must be important, whatever it was, the way you and Wallace were fighting over it," Franklin was saying. "So I put it in the most secure place around here, the biohazard lab. Not too long after you left, Wallace pulled out a gun and demanded I turn over the evidence. He said he was the only one authorized to have access to it. Well, I don't argue with a gun in my face, so I opened the lab and let him in."

  Franklin was grinning. Neither Sheridan nor Garibaldi quite got the joke. "You might remember, I just recently upgraded the security for the biohazard lab."

  "Yeah," said Garibaldi, "I remember you said something about adding more fail-safes."

  Franklin nodded. "Now there are two sealed air-locks, each one leading into the next compartment. Unless you activate the override sequence, the locks don't open until the person in the chamber has undergone a prescribed decontamination procedure and put on an environment suit. And if someone doesn't wait for the procedure and tries to force the lock ..."

  Now Garibaldi was grinning. "And you didn't hit the override switch when you sent him in there, did you?"

  Franklin looked pleased with himself. "I don't much like it when people force their way into Medlab and wave guns in my face, no."

  The air-lock door with the biohazard warning was clear, and Sheridan looked through, then Garibaldi. Commander Wallace lay unconscious on the floor. The inner seal of the air-lock showed signs that it had taken and withstood a direct burst from a PPG.

  "That's one seriously sealed lock you've got there, Doc," Garibaldi commented.

  "Biohazard contamination is a serious potential problem on a space station," Franklin replied in a humorless tone of voice. "The knock-out gas is released automatically when someone tries to force the seal. And that's the outer compartment. If someone tries to leave the inner chamber without going through decontamination, the gas that's released is lethal."

  Garibaldi gave him a look of respect. "And the evidence bags are in there?"

  Franklin nodded, stepped to a console, and input a command. "Of course, with the system deactivated, there's no risk. Do you want to go retrieve the evidence?"

  Garibaldi hesitated. "You wouldn't want to go first? Just in case?"

  CHAPTER 26

  "Commander Ivanova, we're cleared for docking at Babylon 5. ETA twenty minutes."

  "Thank you, Mr. Bogdonovich. Could you get me a clear channel to the station?"

  "Here you are, Commander."

  Ivanova was on the Duster's bridge, her prisoner under guard back in the ship's small medlab. When the channel opened she said, "This is Commander Ivanova, could you put me through to Mr. Garibaldi?"

  But C&C replied, "I'm sorry, Commander, but Mr. Garibaldi isn't available at the moment. There's a disturbance on the station."

  Ivanova swore to herself in Russian.

  "What was that, Commander?"

  "Never mind. Can you contact me with someone in security, then? Ensign Torres, possibly?"

  "I'm sorry, Commander, but there's really no one available in security right now."

  "How big of a riot is it?"

  "It's sort of a big one, Commander, from what I hear. Unless you have an emergency"

  "Not an emergency, exactly, no," Ivanova admitted. "But it is important. I suppose the captain is unavailable, too?"

  "Sorry, Commander."

  "Well, please have Mr. Garibaldi contact me onboard the Duster as soon as he's free."

  "Trouble, Commander?" the transport's copilot asked.

  "Some trouble on the station, it looks like. I don't have the details. A disturbance of some kind."

  "I hope it doesn't mess up our docking."

  "I doubt it. They wouldn't have cleared you if there was trouble in the docking bays." She thought a moment. "Could I borrow your guard after the ship docks? Massie,
that's his name, isn't it? I'd like some more security when I take the prisoner onto the station, especially if there's trouble going on."

  "Duke Massie, sure. Go right ahead and borrow him, Commander. If it weren't for you and your fighter squad, we probably wouldn't be docking now or anytime."

  Things got busy then on the bridge as the crew prepared for docking. It was no simple maneuver with a ship as large as the Duster, and for a while Ivanova watched Bogdonovich's work on the bridge with professional interest. But halfway through the process she left to take charge again of her prisoner.

  The raider didn't look so very dangerous in the custody of Massie, whose size had probably been one important qualification for his job. Zaccione wasn't so subdued, however, that he couldn't look up when Ivanova came into the room. "Hey, Earthforce, you're back! Missed me, did you?"

  "Shut up, slimeball," said the guard.

  Ivanova ignored both of them, saying to Massie, "I'd like you to help me take the prisoner to the lockup after we've docked. There's a disturbance on the station, and no security available."

  "Sure, Commander, be glad to. He won't give you any trouble while I'm along."

  "Thank you," she said uncomfortably, a little stiffly, while the raider grinned.

  Ivanova uncharitably observed that his swollen, broken nose rather negated the intended effect of his boyish charm. She counted the minutes until the transport was docked and she could get rid of both prisoner and guard. She stood quickly when the announcement came over the comm system: Docking procedures completed. Passengers may begin disembarking now.

  "That means us," she said briskly. "Let's go."

  "Let's go," Massie repeated to the raider, gesturing with his weapon.

  Zaccione got more stiffly to his feet. "Whatever you say."

  The Duster did in fact carry a few passengers in addition to freight. Ivanova encountered them on the way to the boarding hatch. When the civilians saw the armed Earthforce officer, the massive armed guard, and the prisoner between them, they quickly stepped back to give them plenty of clearance.