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"STAR AND CIRCLE: THE SEEKER'S FIRE" |
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EPISODE THREE: "A GALLERY OF WHISPERS" |
(disclaimers and associated descriptions in overture)
* * *
GUEST STARRING
LANCE HENRIKSON as Praetor Questus
ANDREW ROBINSON as Fhedayar
JEFFREY COMBS as Moreil
*and* DWIGHT SCHULZ as Willein
<<ACT ONE>>
Bridge Level Conference Room; Feb 13th, 2267, 07:00 hrs, Ship's Time.
"So what do you think?"
Sheynell sighed, before drinking deeply from her morning cup of coffee, and turned her attention back to the commander of the battlecruiser SHARD OF NIGHT... a woman that seemed barely older then herself, *until* you looked into her eyes. She'd been right about a notion she'd begun to have in the last week or so, and this latest meeting with Julia only proved the point. While they were all Rangers, and thus the best at what they did, having serving members of four different Interstellar Alliance races on the same command-bridge sometimes created problems that no one, not even President Sheridan, could have forseen.
It was becoming increasingly clear that Julia was finally beginning to miss the regular contacts with the other human Rangers she knew so well, and who could blame her for such a reaction? Larieken, while he protected her and was her friend, would not tell her certain things about his own past, and the same went for Klairika, while Dasouri could be so damnably *Drazi* at times.
That left her... a telepath, a citizen of the Interstellar Alliance; but finally, a human being just like her. And because of this, a pattern was slowly establishing itself. Most mornings nowadays, the two of them would sit together at breakfast, and simply *talk* about things. Nothing critical and revealing, of course, for they both had their own fair share of secrets, but talk they did, regardless. Perhaps they would talk about the mission, or maybe a guess would emerge at where Matthew Gideon was going to take his ship next. Today however, that pattern had changed dramatically; today, Julia had skipped right by breakfast in her haste to follow a lead to what sounded like it might be a cure for the Drakh plague...
"Let me see if I've got this straight," Sheynell mused, as Julia paced slowly back and forth between the window and the door. "Moreil's located a piece of Shadow history in this shattered crystal of his that *seems* to indicate these 'R'kaht' found a way to at least partially defeat the effects of the Drakh Plague."
"Which is exactly why I invited Moreil to come up to the bridge this morning and coordinate the search for their world with Klairika and Dasouri. The area of space he's talking about contains only three numbered catalogue stars, and none of the Alliance races have ever been to them!"
"If you don't mind me asking, how far away from the EXCALIBUR will the pursuance of this rumour take us?"
The smile of anticipation faded from Julia's face, to be replaced by some small measure of anxiety. "Farther then I like, Sheynell. Whatever clues Captain Gideon and his crew are presently following, for at least a few days we're going to be hundreds of light years away from them, as things are measured in normal space."
"And if the Drakh choose to attack them while we are diverted by this search for the R'kaht world?"
"We have to hope that doesn't happen, and while our primary mission to protect them remains an active and ongoing concern, we must accept that another part of President Sheridan's orders will occasionally overrule that prime concern. If these R'kaht found a way to beat the plague, a method we can use to save the billions of humans and creatures back on Earth..."
"Then recover it, we must." she replied, conceding the point. "How long is it going to take to reach the coordinates that Moreil has provided for us?"
"Twenty-six hours at maximum burn." Julia ruefully admitted, as Sheynell quickly downed the last of her coffee, and tried not to grimace; it had gone cold, of course, during the discussion.
"I sure hope this is worth the effort." she replied, as she rose from her seat, and began to drift slowly towards the door. "Because if we're on a wild goose chase, we're going an awfully long way on the word of an alien we can barely trust."
* * *
Elsewhere. A place of majesty, and of terror.
"You understand what it is we want you to do, then."
The other bowed. "We do. And though the hunt may be long and arduous, he and I have been preparing for this task... for some time now. We seek two great prizes, and if one cannot be claimed, then perhaps the other will fall to us."
"Eventually." the first to speak reminded the second. "The Well has been whispering to us of the one named 'Seeker' for some time now, and only recently do I begin to understand the reasons for this. She is a pivot upon which destinies turn, a type of individual I never believed I would see again in my lifetime. Her kind walk among the stars as legend, and no few of them reside *here*, as you know. But it has been long since a *Sha'naktoweire* walked among the stars we know."
"But now she has come upon us, and perhaps she will lead us to the prize we seek. Before the end."
"Perhaps. Go now, before it is too late."
Another bow. "I go.
Primarch."
* * *
February 14th, 2267; 17:21 hrs, Ship's Time.
"This," Julia muttered to no one in particular, "Is not good." Briefly, she cast a baleful gaze in the direction of her dark-robed 'ally', who had, for the better part of the last day, been using one of the spare science consoles in the rear hemisphere bridge... and it hadn't taken him that long to learn how to use it, either. In any case, Moreil had said very little since arriving on the bridge earlier in the daywatch, and as the first and then the second of the three stars nearest to the Z'shailyl's coordinates had revealed nothing more then orbiting gasballs and barren, sun-blasted worlds incapable of supporting life of any kind, he had sunk into what for his race appeared to be a melancholy silence. And now, soon enough, they would see whether there was anything orbiting the third star on their list...
"We are approaching the biozone around Star Three, Val'na." Larieken reported, his expression as grim as any of the other crew; even he was starting to doubt the legend, to question the coordinates that Moreil had provided for them.
"Stand by to jump to normal space." she wearily replied.
"Jump engines coming online." Klairika reported from behind her, and Julia turned, and met met her XO's bleak gaze. She didn't believe in this legend at all, and soon enough, maybe the tale of the R'kaht would only be what it had seemed from the beginning... another false lead.
"Let's get this over with." she said. "Take us in, Klairika." The Brakiri brusquely nodded, and passed her hand over the jump-crystals on her board. Mere seconds later, the familiar interdimensional tunnel of a jump point sprang into being ahead of them, and the SHARD fell through the discontinuity and back into normal space.
And it was then that she rose to her feet, awestruck at the vision before her. Around the bridge, a number of the crew were heard to gasp, and for a very good reason, as the SHARD's main computer completed its scan of the local area, and then zeroed in on the *only* habitable world in the system.
Although in this case, WORLDS was more accurate.
"Is that... what I think it is?"
"Yes!" Larieken replied, after a long, long moment. "Although I must note, in all the hundreds of years my people have travelled between the stars, a place such as this has never been found. Predicted, yes, but never found!"
"The scientists of my race also have made similar predictions from time to time." Klairika commented. "I am... familiar with those predictions. A binary planet; the odds are against such a set of worlds ever forming, and yet, there they are!"
"What was it you said to me, Moreil?" she noted, turning towards the Z'shailyl. "When see it we do, know it for their world, we will?"
"Yesss. Balanced between fire and ice, thisss place iss, exactly as the legend describess." Moreil briefly turned away to converse with the Ranger in charge of the holoimager, and then, Julia, Klairika and a few of the others on the bridge gathered around it, as the image of the two worlds sprang into being.
"Your analysis?"
"This is a remarkable find." Larieken commented, as he analyzed the infomation the SHARD's whisker network was sending to its mothership. "The two worlds are close enough that they share a common atmosphere at the orbital pole, and also, their shape is not entirely *round* because of this closeness..."
"It's a Rocheworld." a familiar voice drawled, and as one, everybody whirled to meet the openly curious, and *quite* surprised visage of Nicholas Dawson, who had just entered the bridge. "Damn! I never thought I'd see the day when we'd find one."
"Why do you call it a 'Rocheworld', Mr. Dawson?" Julia inquired.
"A long time ago, a human named Roche was the one, in our race at least, who was responsible for the theory of binary stellar interaction. And not *quite* so long ago, there was another man named Robert Forward who wrote a series of novels wherein a fictional crew of his found a place just like this; I've never read them, but I remember reading about his works in school. He called it..."
"Rocheworld." Now she remembered.
"Exactly."
"AS I was saying," Larieken continued, casting a somewhat irritated gaze in the engineer's direction before he did so, "A remarkable find. One of the planets in the system appears to be a dead world, although, I will note, the deadness does not appear to be natural. Observe."
The image blurred for a moment before it zoomed in on the larger and drier of the two planets, revealing thousands and thousands of craters, and also many active volcanoes. "Are those planetkiller strikes?" she asked the Minbari.
"That would my guess, yes. The other member of the pair is over two thirds covered with water, although a great deal of that water is presently frozen."
"So that one's in an ice age, right now."
Larieken nodded. "You call them such, yes."
"Well, well." she continued, as the crew resumed their stations, "It would appear that the legend of the R'kaht may be true after all. My congratulations, Moreil, on the success of your search." As the Z'shailyl bowed in her direction, Julia then shifted her attention to other, more critical concerns. "Klairika, bring us into orbit around the dry world's equatorial regions, and commence a search for ruins. If those R'kaht were as advanced as Moreil is suggesting, they were bound to have cities of some kind."
"I will commence the search immediately. May I assume, Val'na, that we will be descending to the world below once we've located likely targets to explore?"
"Yes, but not until we're fully rested. I don't want to have to deal with any of us making mistakes because of exhaustion."
"And this time, you will be letting me take the explorer team to the surface, won't you?"
She laughed, and rose from her seat. "Well I suppose it *is* your turn, isn't it?"
"We do not want a repeat of what happened at Talangahta." Klairika dryly noted. "And as the captain of this vessel, your place is here."
"I'll accept that argument... this time. Now, unless there's anything else?"
Moreil cleared his throat. "Before you go, there is perhapsss one more thing you ssshould know; a part of the ancient his-ss-tory I did not feel important enough to mention until our arrival. A large percentage of the R'kaht population were sssaid to be Tainted Onesss..."
"And what," she pointedly asked him, "Are Tainted Ones, Moreil?"
"Like her." came the reply, as Moreil turned his full gaze towards Sheynell. "Telepathsss, you would say."
* * *
Later that evening.
"Computer, activate personal log, begin recording." Sheynell ordered.
"-Ready-"
"Ever since I became Anla'shok, I knew this day would come." she began. "That there would come a time where I would be called upon to interact with telepaths from races other then the Minbari. For years, the Corps trained me to fear and hate those among the other Great Powers who were like us... and it wasn't until I reached Minbar that I knew this wasn't true. The Minbari, however, don't have any more telepaths then we do, as near as I can tell!
Now, however, we've come upon a planet of the dead, and those dead were almost *all* telepaths. With that amount of mental power, a power they may have drawn upon to fight the Shadows and their plague, what might they have left behind the-"
<flash>
Darkness.
"Lights." a voice said. Her voice. A man sat there, bound into a chair, his face haggard; she knew this man of course, had hunted him from the moment she'd become an officer of the Corps. Carlos Weintraub, P11 rogue, and terrorist. Her enemy, the telepath that Mr. Bester had sent her to capture. A test it had been, the hardest one yet, but she'd succeeded, of course.
Failure had not been an option he would have accepted.
"I see that you've woken up at last, Carlos..." she began, as she approached and then knelt beside him, fixing the taller man with a sharp, analytical gaze. "Your timing is, how shall I say it, ideal!"
"Man, he must be getting pretty desperate these days, if he's down to using children as Bloodhounds..." Weintraub ground out, his eyes narrow with pain. "Are we pushing your master to the limit, Ms. Keynes? Have all his best been killed?"
"I *am* his best." she coldly informed the rogue. "I caught you, and you are not the first. I have done things in his name that you and your kind cannot possibly comprehend. I have killed for him, Carlos; do not make me kill you."
"You, kill me? With what, a..."
<Enough! I caught you, and I broke you, and now you will tell me EVERYTHING I want to hear!>
"You... can't make me." Weintraub choked out, as a glint of fear finally appeared in his eyes. "You don't have the guts."
"*I* don't have the guts?" she exclaimed. "It would appear that I must remind you, yet again, who I am! I am a loyal servant both of the Corps and Alfred Bester, and now, you will tell me their names. You will tell me their numbers, and you will tell where they are hiding. And you will do this *now*, or I will drag it out of you, and fry every one of your brain cells in the process!"
<back>
Sheynell cried out involuntarily, and rose to her feet, her eyes wild. The nightmares were emerging into the conscious world, now... what could possibly be causing this?
<Is this who you are? Or what you were?>
She whirled, but the room was quite empty. "What the..."
<You will not see us that easily, Wanderer. You search for the answers, you search for someone to trust. You search for approval. Come to us, then, we will explain everything, and perhaps, we can give you what you seek.>
<Where are you? WHO are you?>
<A dream of what was, an echo of sadness and tragedy... and madness. It has been so long, and while you are not of our kind, you are, perhaps, the only one who can save us... the only one who can set us free.>
<Are you... R'kaht?>
A silvery laugh sounded through her mind. <It has been long since we have thought of ourselves in those terms, but yes, we were once called that. For now, however, our power reserves are nigh to empty; for the answers you seek, you must come to us. You must come to stand on the Whisperglass, and there the decision shall be made.>
<The Whisperglass?> she cried out. <But what is that?>
Silence. Evidently whatever was down there had overextended itself, but equally obviously, it (or they) wanted very much to talk to her again. Sheynell slowly moved over to her bed and lay down on it, her thoughts in turmoil. She'd seen a few of the reports on the ruins below; cities there had been down there at one point, but everything had been destroyed when the planetkiller had come, so long ago... but then, an idea began to form in her mind.
This mental force she'd just encountered, what if that was all that was left of the R'kaht race? If she was able to convince Julia to let her go down with Klairika to explore the ruins, maybe she could find this 'Whisperglass' and make contact with the R'kaht? Maybe they she would even be the one who would learn how they were able to defeat the plague...
As she drifted off to sleep, suddenly exhausted, she realized that she like that idea *very* much indeed.
* * *
Feb 15th, 2267; 07:10 hrs. The Officer's 'Mess'.
"Absolutely not!" Julia exclaimed, as she fixed her tactical officer with a furious glare, before sharply stabbed her fork into the remnants of breakfast. "I've already decided to send two of my senior staff down there, I will not go so far as to send three!"
"Your arguments has merit, Val'na," Sheynell replied, as she forced herself to take on, once again, the coolness she had learned from her time in the Corps. "But I believe that before we descend, you should give me a moment to air my own opinions. I do not argue with your choice to send Klairika down to the surface with a team of Rangers, but I do not believe it prudent that Larieken accompany her down there..."
"You want to replace him. May I ask why?"
"Yesterday, Moreil told us that a large number of the R'kaht used to be telepaths. What if they've somehow left some sort of telepathic residue behind them in the ruins that only I can sense? There isn't anyone else onboard this ship that has my abilities, and I'm among the strongest telepaths in my generation, Julia; I assure you, if there is anything down there for me to sense, I will sense it."
"I... see. And you believe Mr. Holm is capable of defending this vessel during your absence?"
"I do. He's already proven himself in one major battle and several smaller skirmishes with Drakh scouts in the last month; I trust his combat senses implicitly. He will keep this ship safe while we're down below trying to find the clues we need to cure our people."
Julia sighed. "I'm not going to change your mind about this, am I?"
"Not in the slightest."
"All right, okay!... you can go. Just be careful."
"I will." Sheynell replied, as she rose from the table, and left the dining area. She managed to keep her face straight until she entered the corridor, but then, allowed a wide smile to appear. *Now*, she'd show all of them what she was capable of...
"Keynesss."
She whirled. "Moreil?"
The Z'shailyl emerged from around the corner, and he appeared almost... displeased! "You have convinced your captain to let you go down to the sssurface, haven't you?"
"How did you know that?"
The Z'shailyl shrugged. "Asss your kind says, a good guessss; things to tell you, I have, now this choice you have made.... a third part of the legend there isss, for your earsss alone. After the world of their allies wasss destroyed, did the Great Enemy send Tainted Ones to make contact with any remnant force that remained. None who were sssent to thiss place returned to report their findings to the Enemy, those you call Vorlons. It seems clear that thisss place destroyed them in some way; that even though they were allies of the Murdered Ones, something in this place rejected and then destroyed them."
"If you are trying to make me change my mind, Moreil, you may as well stop now. I'm going down there, and I'm going to make a difference."
Moreil sighed. "Listen to me you will not; ssso be it. Remember only thisss, telepath; beware the voicesss you may hear in this place. Draw you in they may with wordsss of welcome, but the welcome hidesss the hate beneath, the hate that may try to destroy you. Warned you I have, I can do nothing more."
"I will return to prove you wrong, Moreil." she told him, before turning sharply away, and striding down the corridor.
"We sshall see."
* * *
<To be continued!>
* * *
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