<<OVERTURE>>
* * *
"In the beginnning, there was the word.
And the word was...CHAOS.
Chaos comes in many manifestations, and even with the Shadows and their weapons of war banished, we found lurking in other shadows the pretenders to their throne. Rise up to attack those they saw as *responsible*, they did...but with my aid, Sheridan was able to stop them from destroying the Earth.
But not without price. A price I had not wanted my race to pay. A price that no one should *ever* have to pay.
Earth now lies under sentence of death, and time is running out. For this reason, and others, I have chosen to ally myself with the crew of the Earth Alliance destroyer EXCALIBUR...because unless we act, unless *I* act, every living creature on Earth will be dead, five years for now.
And those that caused this, those pretenders to the throne that the Shadows left behind? The Drakh are still at large. What we cannot allow ourselves to forget is that they continue to exist as a race... and that despite the defeat they were handed by Sheridan, they have not changed and never will.
Until the end, that is. But what end that will be has yet to be determined. Having destroyed the only shipyard capable of building vessels like the EXCALIBUR, they grow bold, and believe that with due dilengence, victory can still be theirs.
What the Drakh are about to find out, however, is that even shadows can be stalked.
The Seeker has been loosed upon an nearly unsuspecting galaxy. And none of us who are involved will be able to escape her touch."
* * *
The edge of Vree territory.
The signs told the story, as always they did. A bridge twisted, flames and smoke flickering among dead bodies floating through the air. A single hand slowly pushed its way out from beneath a pile of wreckage, and the hand's owner eventually appeared. Zenaknon was his name, and like all Vree, he was slight in stature and gray of skin, but that grey was covered in blood, now, and the large expressive black eyes of his kind were dulled by pain.
Zenaknon knew that his time was coming soon, knew it in the hiss of air slowly escaping to space, in the jagged tumble of the proud vessel once commanded by his Chythrei. But before that time arrived, before he went to walk amidst the Halls of the Night, there was a final duty to be performed. Slowly, very slowly, the Vree pulled himself over to the station set aside for such duties, when the end drew near. He was the last survivor of the bridge crew, and this duty fell to him now.
"I speak, to those who will listen, to those who will discover this recording. They came upon us unawares, and attacked without mercy. We had done nothing to them and their kind, but still, they destroyed us, killed my shipmates, stopped our passage. I have...I have heard that the heartworld of the humans, that place that my forebears visited, so long ago *and* more recently, was poisoned by these creatures. If so, they have committed a great crime, and now..."
Zenaknon paused, then, as a wave of dizziness struck him. It would not be long, now. "Now, they have committed...another. They must be stopped, in what they attempt. Be warned...
Beware the Drakh. But stop them...someone must. Before it is too late for us *all*."
Zenaknon slumped then, as the blood loss became too much, as the air became too thin. He did not rise again.
* * *
Through the long darkness, the Vekh'shivalht named Palakz walked, his expression bitter as he thought back on recent events. Many of his Order had died attacking the Primeworld of the humans, a great many indeed. The accursed Sheridan, the shak'vez who had already caused his kind so much pain, had guided two great dagger-shaped starships against them, and these two spears had struck deeply into the heart of the weapon they had resurrected, with the help of their followers.
'Fists of Darkness' his kind had named them, when first the Nak'laht had built them for the Dark Ones, so long ago. Five there had been to begin with, but gradually, over time, that number had diminished. In the previous cycle of Chaos and Order, two had been destroyed in one fell blow. And then, when *that* human had resurrected the First One and banished his Masters beyond the Galactic Rim, the Dark Ones had taken two with them, leaving behind the only one they could not resurrect.
In recent history, however, the hopes of the Sha'drakh and the rest of the Entire had been reinvested when the greatest Nak'laht of this age had found a way to activate the Fist, and brought it under their command! Threaten the renegade Z'shailyl with it, they had, and brought them back into the fold. It was then, Palakz remembered, after the test at the place named Daltron 7, after the first encounter with the human daggerships, that the Sha'drakh had commanded the Fist and its escort warships turned towards the nestworld of the humans...the world they called (unimaginatively, in his opinion) Earth.
The Drakh scowled deeply, as he strode towards the bridge of his command. That of course, was where it had all began to go wrong. Even with the added backup of the bioplague the loyalist Z'shailyl had helped to recover for them, the plague they had eventually chosen to spray into the human world's atmosphere, the loss had been enormous. The Fist had been destroyed...he had not believed that any of the humans had possessed that order of sio'nah!...but he had watched it happen, had watched the crew of that human warship sacrifice themselves so that the Fist might be destroyed. Sacrificed themselves so that their world could be saved.
Palakh twisted his mouth into a laugh at that thought, of course. Soon enough, the world named Earth by some, and something else by most others, would be denied to the humans, despite the sacrifice of the daggership and its crew. Soon enough, the billions of teeming creatures on that cursed sphere would shudder and be destroyed by the teeming plague toxins within them.
It was apt, he supposed, that since his kind had been denied the opportunity to shatter that world asunder, that it should be denied forevermore to the race that called it home.
For now, though, there were other matters to attend to, and other roles to fulfill. The Entire had commanded the spreading of Chaos, and this order he would not ignore. Would not ignore the honour of working in *their* memory, yet again.
The doors snapped cleanly aside, as always they did, as he reached the end of the corridor, and stepped onto the bridge of his warship. Instantly, all conversation, both heard and mostly not, halted... and without pause, more then a dozen sets of narrowed eyes focused on their master and leader. Palakz allowed himself a small smile, at that. Even now, after the failure at Earth, after the loss of his commanders and of the Fist, the obedience was still there. The *belief* was still there.
"Raeznon!" he began. "Our status?"
"All proceeds as planned." his Vaarliht replied, her eyes gleaming within their deep, shadowed eyesockets. "The strike missions are progressing admirably, and between the destruction of the daggership construction yard and our continuing series of strike missions against the worlds of the Alliance, our war of revenge progresses apace."
"Yes." Palakz noted with a ominous frown. "I have seen this also, my Vaarliht. With the accursed ships of the Rangers scattered far and wide, and the single surviving daggership of the humans sent out on its futile quest, the primitive fleets of the Alliance Worlds are ours to ravage. And yet..."
"I sense doubt in you, Vekh'shivalht Palakz..." Raeznon clincily noted, her eyes icy. "Do you choose to share your thoughts with one as lowly as I?"
Palakz grunted, and cast a long gaze around his dark, smoothly operating command-bridge before replying. "This is not *his* way to rely solely on the more primitive fleets of the Alliance. For the longest of time, the shak'vez Sheridan has worked hand in hand with the *Minbari*, and used their technology of war to his advantage.
But now...now, Raeznon, now he sends his White Star Fleet and his greatest weapon of war away from us, and leaves his heartworlds...unprotected? It is not like him to make this kind of tactical error, not like him at all.
What he is up to?" Palakz mused, his expression dark. "What are we missing?"
* * *
Interstellar Alliance Battlecruiser SHARD OF NIGHT. The outer fringes of Minbari Space.
A shimmer of chimes sung through the darkness around the candles, while the walls appeared to be open to the darkness beyond in every direction. Behind the black-robed figure knelt in the center of the room, the brilliant belt of the Milky way shone as it always had, in her experience. From out here, on the runs between transfer gates, it all looked so peaceful, but that was, of course, a deception.
There was no peace among those stars, now, and perhaps there never would be. No matter how hard they tried, the periods of peace were always shattered by war, by races responding to wrongs both perceived and imagined. One such race had struck at her homeworld all too recently, and now she walked with her followers as a shadow between those stars, a shadow that no one, most *especially* not the enemies of her people, was meant to see.
With the fluid grace that had come to her since she had aligned herself with the order named Anla'shok seven years before, she rose to her feet, pausing briefly to sweep her long, nearly black hair back away from her face, before cupping her hands around the candleflames. The light reflected off of dark brown eyes that had seen too much; in those eyes, she knew, both pain and joy could often be seen in equal measure. Joy felt at the victories the Rangers had already attained, but also pain because of what she had already faced in the name of the One...and more pain still, because of the sentence of death now hanging over most of humanity, after the assault the Drakh had conducted in Earthspace, seven days before, an assault that had ended with that race spraying countless tons of plague toxin into Earth's atmosphere.
Her eyes hardened at that point. Somewhere out in this darkness, the EXCALIBUR had already begun the hunt for the cure to that disease, a hunt that had to succeed. And if Captain Matthew Gideon and and the rest of his destroyer's crew were to to succeed, they would, from time to time, need protection...
She had sworn to John Sheridan that she and her crew would fulfill that duty, and also conduct their own hunt for the cure, at the same time. They were Rangers, and she was their Val'na. And as the President had told her before she had left Minbar, failure was not an option to be considered.
A shimmer out of the corner of her eye warned her that her time of meditation and contemplation was coming to an end, and Julia turned to witness the brilliance of a hologram piercing the darkness of her chambers. An image appeared, an image of a bridge and its crew hard at work, even at this late hour. An image of one she had been given cause to call friend.
The Minbari in the image was neither stern nor placid, but was, in her opinion, the ideal mix of all possible worlds, and for now, sat calmly in her own chair of command. "Anla'shok Larieken." she began, a slight smile coming to her face. "You have something to report?"
"Something, indeed." her closest friend in the Rangers replied, his expression quite serious. "A message from Minbar has reached us. It is President Sheridan."
A stab of cold passed through her, then, and also, a touch of anger. They were less then a day out from that world, and already the President was checking up on her? Admittedly, the President *was* one of the few who knew how to get a hold of her, and also possessed the right to do so when he felt like it...but every time she spoke to someone outside, there was a chance that the Drakh would find out the SHARD existed. And this was a danger she would not accept too often.
"And our good leader wishes what, exactly?"
The Minbari shrugged. "He would not say, only that the matter was urgent, and for now, was only to be discussed with you."
"I see." Pausing to wrap a thicker cloak around her, a cloak emblazoned both with the sign of the Anla'shok and also the Circle and the Star, she nodded resignedly. "You may put him thorugh to my quarters, then, Larieken."
"It shall be as you say. Val'na." Larieken bowed respectfully, even as his image faded away. "I pray that the news is not too disturbing."
That she would find out what this was all about was quite clear, of course, as another larger image rippled down into the air in front of her: larger then life, as usual, and frowning, which wasn't anything new for him, either! "Mr. President," she began, "From your expression, can I assume we should skip the preliminary greetings and 'how are you doing's' and come straight to the point?"
"A fair analysis of the current situation, Captain, yes. And while I didn't believe it would happen this quickly, the current situation out on the Alliance frontier has given me a reason to make a slight addition to your orders, far sooner then I might have believed."
"Mr. President; you're not saying what I'm thinking you're saying, are you?"
"Not quite, no. Your prime mission has not changed, Captain, and in fact, just as soon as this little side jaunt is finished, you and your crew are to continue your pursuit of the EXCALIBUR exactly as we previously discussed. For now, though, there are more critical concerns.
A little more then a week ago, the surviving squadrons of the Drakh fleet that attacked Earth destroyed the only shipyard in the Alliance capable of building EXCALIBUR-class destroyers. Those squadrons have since gone on to attack fleet units in both the Brakiri and Vree spheres of influence."
Julia let out a long breath. So that was what he wanted her to do...fair enough. "I understand, sir. So, without making things too obvious, you want me and my crew to teach them a lesson they won't soon forget?"
The President nodded. "Exactly. It's my belief that the Drakh believe us unprotected and vulnerable now that the EXCALIBUR and the White Star Fleet have begun their hunt for the cure. They must be taught otherwise, Captain, and that's where you and your command come into the equation.
Can I count on you to get the job done?"
She didn't even pause, of course...William, Jennifer and all the rest had taught her that when the commanders called, it was a Ranger's duty to get the job done and ask questions later, and this was, after all, part of the SHARD's job description: to take on the Drakh and the other enemies of the Alliance, without anyone seeing them coming. "Until we try this for the first time," she mused, "We won't know whether it's going to work or not, now will we?"
Sheridan nodded. "Makes for one hell of a test case though, doesn't it, Captain?"
She smiled. "Sometimes, Mr. President, that's the only way of doing things, and I have, after all, been taught by my peers to take on six impossible tasks before breakfast without asking twice. SHARD OF NIGHT *out*."
* * *
Tuzanor. Moments later.
"You know what?" John Sheridan warned the figure reclining on the windowsill of his office, "The mouth on that young woman's going to get her in trouble, someday."
William Westcastle leant forward into the light, and laughed. "And you don't think this hasn't happened already?"
Sheridan cast a baleful glance in the direction of his Ranger friend. "Now how did I *know* you were going to say that?"
* * *
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