[Cue Dramatic Music]
KLAIRIKA ALIDIAE
We are the Watchers...
[Klairika standing on the bridge of the SHARD OF NIGHT, an image of the EXCALIBUR hanging in the air in front of her.]
SHEYNELL KEYNES
We are the Warriors...
[Images: Sheynell at the tactical station, the battlecruiser firing its main gun and destroying a Drakh capital ship]
LARIEKEN
We are the Guardians...
[Image: Larieken defending his Captain against Z'shailyl attackers, warrior pike in hand]
VEYSHAHK
We are the Healers...
[Image: Veyshahk at his desk in MedSection, an image of the Drakh virus on his computer screen.]
DASOURI and NICHOLAS DAWSON
We are the exiles...
[Image: Nicholas in Engineering, Dasouri at the helm of the SHARD]
JULIA TIKOPAI
And I am the Seeker.
[Image: Julia's face, lit by candles, the stars of the Galaxy beyond]
KLAIRIKA ALIDIAE
We are the Rangers of the SHARD OF NIGHT, in this, the Earth Year 2267.
[Image: The SHARD OF NIGHT enters, from the left...]
JULIA TIKOPAI
This is our story.
[... before engaging darklight mode, and going into hyperspace.]
* * *
S T A R A N D C I R C L E: "T H E S E E K E R' S F I R E"
* * *
STAR AND CIRCLE created by
David Goldingay <dgolding@connect.ab.ca>
* * *
Legal Disclaimer:
BABYLON 5, CRUSADE and all characters and situations thereof are the creations and copyrighted property of J. Michael Straczynski and Babylonian Productions. This series is a non-profit creation for the purposes of private entertainment only. Original characters and situations are copyright of the author, 1997-99.
* * *
<<OVERTURE>>
ISAS SHARD OF NIGHT, February 13th, 2267. Early morning, ship's time.
Captain's Log...
It's now been over a month since the SHARD and my mother's destroyer parted ways... a month I've needed to try and put behind me what happened during that momentous few days when ships based on technologies created by two ancient enemies worked together for a common goal...and I first encountered that most mysterious of emotions... love. And also, the touch of another. I forced myself to say goodbye to him, but it was harder then I had thought it was going to be... seeing, at the end, the smile he gave me to remember him by, as we wandered away in seperate directions to walk amongst the dusty, abandoned and mysterious worlds of the Rim.
And one of those mysteries walks with us as I write, and how many secrets does the Z'shailyl named Moreil hold behind those red eyes of his? Much of the crew does not trust him because of his past association with the Shadows and their various other servants... and because of that distrust, he's kept mostly to himself in that horned ship of his for the past few weeks, a ship we've kept tucked off in a mostly unused corner of the shuttlebay up near the starboard fighter launchpoint.
Klairika, of course, was all for abandoning it right there and then when my mother's people threw it out the front end of the DE'MOLAY, but Nicholas and I argued otherwise, although for very different reasons. My chief engineer is *dying* to learn more about Shadow technology and how it works, you see. Jaiena Mithrush never took him on a tour of her ship, so now he's trying to inspect the 'poor man's' version of Shadowtech that's now lurking a hundred metres below my head and four hundred behind...
<beep>
Julia scowled, and raised the pen from the page in front of her. The crew *knew* never to interrupt her at this hour, who could this be? Just before sleep and just after was when the 'touch' of her Calling was always the strongest. "Yes?" she exclaimed, perhaps just a *little* too sharply for her own peace of mind. "Who is it?"
The door slid open, revealing the light of the corridor beyond, and also a familiar and for now *unwanted* shape. "Moreil." she muttered. "So what brings you up from your scaly little nest?"
The Z'shailyl grinned toothily as it entered the foyer. "Wisshed to discuss mattersss with you, Huntleaderr. Mattersss you may consider critical."
"Why do you keep calling me that?"
"Because it iss what you are, Sss-ulia." Moreil cryptically noted. "You hunt for cure to plague of Dark Onesss, and as Huntleaderr, you deserve to learn what it isss I have discovered from fragment of lost archive."
"Please don't tell me you're *still* playing with the bits and pieces of that crystal that Aazhvar broke?"
Moreil nodded, a trifle excitedly, she noted. "Your kind gave up too quickly for my tasstes, information they retrieved wass not complete. Have now spent many of your days attempting to unravell other bits and piecesss of the whole. Have discovered sssomething very important."
"Which is?" Was he going to get to the point any time soon, she wondered?
"Fragment of data revealsss location I recall learning about in my youth, mossst exciting thing, you sssee! Battle between the Dark Onesss and the Great Enemy was at its height in war before your Valen came, when civilization there wasss, named R'kaht. Loyal to the Enemy they were, and hard fighterss, but finally, the Mastersss chose to apply... lethal force against their new foes."
"You mean the planetkiller, don't you?"
"No," the Z'shailyl replied, "Not at firrsst, no! The Masters wished to punish their enemies instead, and fill them with chaos and pain. Plague they used..."
"*The* plague?" she exclaimed, rising to her feet.
"Perhapsss it iss the same one, yes." Moreil's brow furrowed then, however. "Curiousss legend about those times is thisss; the R'kaht did not die as easily as the Masters had intended them to, and while their numberss diminissshed, healthy some became... healthier then wasss deemed possible, and on the R'kaht did fight. Finally did the Masters lose patience, and a Fissst of Darkness was summoned, to finish the tasssk the Plague had begun."
"Which may imply," she mused, "That these R'kaht either found a way to delay the action of the plague virus, or elliminate it completely, in at least a percentage of their population!"
"Yesss!" Moreil agreed. "You have it, asss your kind sssays."
"And you have the coordinates for their world?"
"Roughly." the Z'shailyl admitted, after a moment. "Will have to ssearch a little, but legendsss describe world of R'kaht as umisstakable. When see it we do, they say, know it for their world, we will."
"Which means what, exactly?"
"Saying there is, included in legend of thiss place." Moreil straightened, then, much of the hissing in his speech vanishing as he concentrated. "Great Enemy named their allies this way; 'balanced between fire and ice, they are; of neither, and of all."
"That's typically Vorlon, isn't it?"
"Regrettably, yesss. Much information, but no clearnesss."
"But it *is* a lead, isn't it?"
"Yes. Well, I have done?" Moreil inquired, a glint of pride now visible in his eyes. "Helped you and your people, I have?"
"That," she tartly replied, "Has *yet* to be seen. Now you have to convince the rest of my senior staff that this 'legend' of yours has a fragment of truth in it somewhere."
"Ah, yesss..." Moreil sadly noted as Julia shooed him out the door so she could get properly dressed. "The greater of two evilsss."
* * *
"So close it seems," Klairika whispered, as she reached her hand out towards the glistening image of the EXCALIBUR that hung in the air in front of her. "And yet in truth, so far away."
"Many light years away, yes." Larieken admitted, as he walked over towards his first officer's station to stand beside her. "But courtesy of Varsak's whisker array, we are able to view their activities nearly in real time, as long as they are relatively close to the hyperspace beacon network, and even if not, the individual elements of the array are more then capable of talking to one another in hyperspace."
"To a degree. You do recall, however, the Chief Engineer's warning about their use in normal space, do you not?"
The Minbari snorted. "The humans, as a whole, have applied *far* too much emphasis on the problems of this universe, and their... mania, shall we say, related to the speed of electromagnetic energy in this domain, while it has receded since the Centauri gave them jump technology, still remains far too active for my own tastes. Fear not, Na'lai: the way I have the array set up, realspace delays should *never* become an active concern."
Rather abruptly, Klairika caught the Rangers at the back of the bridge straightening, and began to smile. "Our Mistress," she noted dryly, "Has arisen."
"And the Z'shailyl walks with her." Larieken observed "Interesting. Do you suppose our careful, long distance pacing of the EXCALIBUR is about to end?"
"Anything, as the humans say, is possible."
* * *
Again and again, the dream returned to her; the day she had begun her long run. The day a dream had died, wiped from her sight by fire created and by blood spilled...
<panic>
"What has happened here?" she exclaimed, as she passed through waves of confusion and fear. "Who has done this to us?"
Brianna turned in the teeming corridor, a curious smile on her face. "You know the answer to that question, young one; the serpent has many heads... cut off one, and many more arise. *He* never learned that lesson, you know, as much as he tried to prove otherwise, he never learned a thing. And now it's too late for him, Sheynell; too late for so many of us.
But not too late for you."
"No!" She strode forward, and seized the other woman's gloved hand in her own. "I was the first to return; he sent me on ahead to contact you... you cannot ask me to leave! I am an officer of the Corps, my place is here, fighting to protect his telepaths!"
"*His* telepaths?" Brianna skeptically replied. "They were never his telepaths, Sheynell, and now the others have come to destroy those he holds dear. You will leave this place... *now*."
"You dare to give an order to me?"
"WE dare, yes." was the reply, and involuntarily, she found that she'd retreated a step... for Brianna's eyes had glowed, if only for a moment. "You will leave this place, before it it too late. Your future is not here."
"Who are you?" she gasped out. "*What* are you?"
"A dream; a possibility... a means to an end." Brianna half-turned away, then. "We are done with you, and with this place. Face your destiny now, or not at all."
A distant rumble shook the building then, and for the first time in a very long time, she knew fear. The enemy had entered their citadel of power, was there anywhere they couldn't go? *He* had said, not so long ago, that he would keep her safe, that she was the guardian of his dream. He had made her what she was today, but the dream? Was it dead, now and forever?
Another face came to her then, that of the young female Ranger who had helped to save her on Babylon 5; and a memory, of a promise that had been made. The Ranger had approved of her actions, then, and while there were things she'd done that the Ranger had certainly *not* liked, the implication had been clear. Two paths lay before her...one to death and destruction, if she stayed, and the other?
The other lay... elsewhere. She turned away from the growing chaos, and began to walk, and soon enough, the walk became a run, while behind her, the laughter of the woman who was Brianna Tolmanes, and also something else, filled the hallway. Filled her mind until she re-entered her small personal transport, and flung it skyward, away from that laughter. A sound that was only silenced when the horizon behind her lit up, brighter then the sun...
<scream>
With a cry, Sheynell arose into the conscious world, and the cry quickly became a gasp, a gasp that concealed bitter tears just below the surface. It had been *that* dream again; the memory of one of her greatest failures, and also one of her greatest losses. So *many* of the Corps had died that day, the day she'd started to run away from her past.
The day a dream had died. The day the lies had begun.
Repressing a violent shudder, she slowly walked over to the mirror in her quarters, and ran her hands back through her long blonde hair, the dark eyes below shadowed with remembered pain. There was so much they didn't know, so much she hadn't told them; but it was all for a very good reason, of course. Would they have accepted her so readily, if they'd known about the monstrous things she'd done, in the name of her former master? Would they have been so quick to approve of her, to name her Anla'shok, if they had known, if *he* had known that she'd been forced to abandon one of his dearest friends to the Fire? How Brianna had stood and laughed, as one of the Corps' greatest bastions had vanished in a nuclear pyre?
No! There was no proof that had happened; she'd never seen it happen. Admittedly, Brianna and Lyta Alexander had been close at the end, and everyone knew what had happened to *her*... but there was no proof Brianna had died that day. Just as there was no proof that Bester was gone, either.
Only rumours.
It was then that the shimmering sound of the message-chime sounded through the air behind her, and Sheynell turned away from the mirror and her dark memories, and forced a smile onto her face. "Yes?"
"I wasn't sure if you were awake, Sheynell; it's not quite the start of your shift, yet..."
"You don't have to worry about that, Julia," she matter-of-factly replied. "I very rarely sleep deeply, nowadays, for some reason."
Her captain sighed at that remark. "Shadows of the past coming back to roost, again?"
"Perhaps. Now," she critically noted, adroitly switching topics, "Shall we return to the reason you called?"
"Probably for the best, yes. If you're up to it, I wouldn't mind if you'd join the rest of us up on the bridge. Moreil's recovered what looks like a very interesting fragment of information from his wrecked crystal..."
Sheynell yawned. "Oh, wonderful. Please tell it's not another long garbled report on Shadow troop movements? The last one he recovered gave me a headache when I tried to translate it."
"Not quite, no." She winced, then, as a particularly *vivid* smile appeared on Julia's face; that always meant trouble. "What would you say if I told you the fragment seems to contain mention of a race that fought the effects of the Drakh plague, and may have won?"
"That I definitely want to hear the rest of this in person."
"That's what I thought you'd say."
* * *
To be continued...
* * *
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