[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.]
| |
|
STAR AND CIRCLE |
| |
|
"THE SEEKER'S FIRE" |
* * *
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>>
System GC 17881; status: uninhabited. 30 light years to galactic spinward of Sinzar colony.
Earth Alliance Warlock Class Destroyer DE'MOLAY.
Two words, was how it began. Two words spoken by someone both familiar, and unexpected.
"Hello, Mother."
This was a voice that Bethany knew... the voice of her only child. But how was this possible? How could Julia be on a alien starship that had just been responsible for destroying three Drakh carriers at Sinzar, damaging another, as well as swatting dozens of their smaller light cruisers from existence?
"We need to talk."
She let out a long breath, as the larger-then-life image displayed on the bridge's primary viewscreen confirmed her initial assessment. There Julia was, her dark hair long and intricately braided, her eyes flashing their usual incontravertible challenge. And yet...once again she'd changed, but was this a surprise, given the time that always seemed to pass between their meetings?
Briefly, she touched on the memory of the girl that Julia had been before all of this had began; a time before her captaincy of the now-destroyed NIOBE...an age before secrets, before Shadowtech Earth destroyers, before the series of events that had started with the DE'MOLAY's departure from Jovian orbit in the middle of winter, five years before. And she thought of all the pain, the joy and the successes that had lead to this moment...
"Well I will be *damned!*." her executive officer, Paul Telluride, muttered, a moment later, breaking her chain of thought. "Would you look at that!" Even after all the sights she'd seen, this one made her eyes widen too, as a grayish-pearl starship materialized seemingly straight out of nowhere several hundred kilometers in front of the DE'MOLAY. The new arrival was racing towards them in a manner that all but screamed 'artifical gravity on board', which its shape had already implied. Streamlined and rapier-thin, the Ranger warship (to go by her daughter's by-now familiar uniform, and the crew visible in the image) was lithe and dangerous looking, but in a fashion completely at odds with the immensity of her own command.
"Specs coming up now." Malcolm Piesch, the DE'MOLAY's OpO, casually noted...but his indifference soon faded, as Piesch got a good look at the stats the destroyer's sensors were downloading into his station. "What we can make out with our sensors, that is...some of the stuff aboard that ship is stealthed up the wazoo, even when it isn't cloaked! I'll echo the Commander at this point, Captain; that's one... Hell of a design, and from what little I can deduce, it's got as much firepower for its size as we do. If not more."
"I'll tell you what it looks like..." her chief helmsman, Lt (j.g) William McLelland added a moment later. "It looks like the offspring of a White Star and a Shadow cruiser."
"Lieutenant!" Commander Telluride barked.
"Well it does!" McLelland exclaimed. "A three-engined White Star that can disappear and appear when it likes, AND blow up Drakh carriers with one shot? If not Shadowtech, then Vorlontech, maybe?"
"Which," Piesch muttered, "Might be more likely, given how we were able to track that ship down."
"You have a great deal of explaining to do..." Bethany frostily informed her daughter, a tone she regretted a moment later, as she received a dose of the Tikopai 'glacial glare' she'd patented at Julia's age; a glare which, if it had been launched at close range, looked like it might have frozen her from head to toe. "You can begin by..."
"This vessel is named, in the tongue of our ancestors, SHARD OF NIGHT. I am her captain."
Bethany blinked. "Would you... like to run that by me again?"
"I know you heard me, Mother, so don't try and play that game with me, I'm really not in the mood right now. For the moment, please understand that I can't say more on an open channel; we'll discuss the *entire* matter when I come aboard your command in a few minutes time."
"But why the secrecy?" she asked, and shivered, as Julia smiled a smile at her that spoke *volumes*. "Why the stealth?"
"The stars have ears, Mother. Some more sensitive then others, as well you should know, after all you've gone through with your present command in the last few years.
SHARD OF NIGHT out."
"Wow..." McLelland mused. "Captain, if you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you manage to survive her adolescent years?"
"That, Lieutenant," she replied, "Is a far more complicated question that you might suspect. To cut a long story short, the Shadow War was doing a *great* job of interference, at the time, as I recall."
"Uhhh...she was born, when?"
"The week we nearly all died as a race, Mr. McClelland." she replied, her thoughts suddenly far away. "The week the Line was drawn."
"I... see." the bemused helmsman noted. "A little...mature for her age, isn't she?"
"A *little*, yes." she wryly replied. "For right now though, I think it's time we began to figure out exactly *how* we managed to detect my daughter's... command." At which point, Bethany accessed the intra-ship comm network, and put in a call to the woman who was in charge of the brilliant (if sometimes crazy) imps who kept the DE'MOLAY running smoothly.
"Lt. Commander Mithrush, this is Captain Tikopai."
"This is Engineering, go ahead." her Chief Engineer replied, a moment later. "What's up, Captain?"
"Commander, a ship's just arrived off of our port quarter that you might be interested in taking a look at..."
There was a brief pause, and then, an quickly muffled cry of disbelief came through the link, to the amusement of the bridge crew, who were, by this point, used to their Chief Engineer's... eccentricities. "Where'd *that* come from?"
"A very good question, Commander," Bethany finalized. "I hope to have some answers for you in due course, if you can't figure them out yourself. But to start with, there's a few things you should know..."
* * *
The SHARD OF NIGHT. Enroute to rendezvous.
"Okay, Lesaki." Nicholas began, "What's so important that you had to drag me all the way over from the other end of the section? Why didn't you just holocast it to me?"
"I did not believe that would be prudent." Lesaki replied, as he and several other Minbari peered both at, and within the secondary operations board that was creating all the interest. "This only happened just a little while ago, and by Valen, I do not understand how it did, without us seeing it."
Nicholas peered over Lesaki's shoulder at the offending console, and then, he frowned, too. The control systemics on the board, like all the others on the SHARD, were laid out in the White Star style, which meant a combination of touch-sensitive controls pads and gesture-sensitive crystalline matrices. Unfortunately, the pattern on this one, a pattern he was familiar with from having helped install the damn things...
Had changed somehow.
The crystal matrix at the heart of the board had shifted its form, and now, it was quite obvious what was intended, though who the intended victim was, was another question entirely.
Because laid into the surface of the crystal, was the form of a human hand, right down to the ridged whorls of the fingertips.
"This," Nicholas muttered, "Has just *got* to be some sort of joke."
"If so," Lesaki noted, "I would very much like to meet the instigator of the... prank, do you say?... and have them explain it to me."
"Yeah, you're probably right; so much for assumption A. Okay, what about assumption B, then?" Nicholas turned aside, then. "Engineering to MedSection... you there, Veyshahk?"
"Unfortunately." the reply came, as the hologram of the doctor sprang into view, in between Nicholas and Lesaki. "Although I must say, Mr. Dawson, that I find your call a bit of a surprise, given we're not in battle at the present time, and about to come alongside an Earthforce Warlock Class destroyer. Did someone try and stick their hand into a fusion reactor, perhaps?"
"Yeah, doc, I guess you do have a point, there..." Nicholas mused. "Anyone with a half a grain of sense wouldn't want to come within a thousand light years of *this* pairing... and while this does has something to do with hands, it's not... quite like that, I'm afraid."
"Are you going to come to the point before we all evolve onto the next plane of existence, Mr. Dawson?"
"Hey, no need to be snappy, Doc!... yeah, as a matter of fact, I am. Look, something weird's happened down here, something that we could use your help with."
"Such as?"
"Computer!" Nicholas snapped. "Capture and enhance view of SecOp7, trasmit to MedSection Primary 1!"
A moment later, Veyshahk leaned forward, his amused indifference replaced by perplexed curiousity. "I believe I now understand your concerns, Mr. Dawson. I will be there shortly."
* * *
Ordinarily, Lt. Commander Jaiena Mithrush's entire focus was on her work, her duties, and most *especially*, on the smoothly humming innards of the DE'MOLAY's primary fusion reactor, among other things. Like so many others, she'd been with the Warlock Project from the word 'go', grabbed straight out of the Academy and thrown into a very large room with lots of other eager young engineers and a LOT of Shadowtech, and eventually, into an adventure that none of them, least of all her, had been able to predict in advance.
That however, had been then, while this was now. Jaiena briefly glanced around the DE'MOLAY's mammoth, catwalked engine chamber, touching on the familiar figures of her people amongst the maze, before her eyes fastened, yet again, on the monitor at her station. For the first time in a *very* long time, she'd encountered something more interesting then the innards of a Warlock Class Destroyer...it was an unusual feeling, to say the least.
But then again, as a few of her fellow officers had only just mentioned on the bridge a moment before, the ship they'd just encountered was unlike anything she'd ever seen before. And while it shared *certain* design characteristics with the Interstellar Alliance White Stars, the similarities began and ended with that general design.
After a moment, she grabbed her portable pad, and began making somewhat cryptic notes for later referral. Three engines, instead of two, enough firepower to take on anything in the Alliance arsenal, sealable hull, given the egress of the small Ranger shuttle even now on its way over, more then twice the size of a White Star, and check out the *main gun* on the prow. Geez, no wonder the Drakh at Sinzar had been all torn up like they had!
But most importantly, the Ranger ship had what looked like an organic hull. And while it probably did the same job for the SHARD OF NIGHT (damn interesting name) as the Shadowtech meshwork in the DE'MOLAY's hull, it clearly wasn't Shadow technology at all... the look was completely different.
"The scuttlebutt going around," a familiar voice began, "Is that we've encountered something that even gives you pause, Commander." Jaiena turned her head and smiled, as her tall, iron-haired CPO, Kenneth Weibe, came around behind her and glanced closely at the image on the screen before whistling. "And now, I think I'm beginning to understand *why*."
"This," Jaiena began again, "Is one of the most interesting scenarios I've ever come across. This ship we've encountered, the SHARD OF NIGHT, has what appears to be an semi-organic or even *completely* organic hull, and who knows what other interior organic components. The XO, interestingly enough, was able to trace their course out of the battle at Sinzar with the sensors..."
"Which, of course," Weibe dryly noted, "As we both know, were partially hooked into the Shadowtech in our hull as an *experiment*, before we left Jupiter, five years ago."
"If I didn't know any better," she concluded, her eyes bright, "I'd have to guess that ship's got as much *Vorlontech* in it as we've got Shadow, probably even more.
All right!" she declared, rising to her feet, as an amused Weibe, by now used to his Chief's volatile moods, got rapidly out of the way. "That settles it; I've just *got* to get a closer look at that ship!"
* * *
Elsewhere...
Hyperspace flared with the colours of death, as a quintet of tiny spacecraft pursued a larger one of similar style through the gravitationally bound murk, their energy weapons lancing through the reddish vacuum. The individual at the controls of the pursued vessel checked on his pursuit, and hissed softly, before shaking his dark, wedge shaped head in irritation, and increasing the thrust of his ship, briefly leaving his pursuers behind.
This, Moreil considered, had happened far sooner then he had imagined it would. The Drakh, having forced the majority of his race back into servitude, had sent hunters after him; hunters that had, no doubt, been instructed to return him to the Drakh for interrogation if not outright termination.
Briefly, Moreil's mouth twisted into what was, for a Z'shailyl, a smile. The Drakh were right to fear him, of course; he was, as near as he could tell, the only member of his race to refuse the Call of Darkness and of Service, but the reasons were apt in his opinion. The Drakh, while they had served the Dark Ones (like he had, so long ago now, it seemed) were *not* the Dark Ones. And so, some time before, he had broken away from the other elders, and set out to walk the long road, the path that would either lead to his freeing the Z'shailyl from their servitude...
Or to death.
Death, unfortunately, seemed the likelier of the two outcomes at present, as the hunters once again drew near. Who would help him? Moreil knew not the answer to this question, but unless help came soon, matters would shortly become unpleasant.
And for a Z'shailyl, that was saying a *great* deal indeed.
* * *
To be continued...
* * *
Return to "The Seeker's Fire" Episode Index