"Alpha 7 to Alpha Leader, I'm hit!"
Static swallowed the rest of the frantic words. Even as he shouted his reply, Earthforce Lieutenant Jeffrey Sinclair saw Quinton Orozco's Starfury flash past overhead, trailing smoke and flames, shadowed by a Minbari fighter, "Pull out! Pull out! Alpha 7!"
"He's gone."
That was Bill Mitchell's voice in the earpiece of his helmet. Sinclair checked the scope on his instrument panel, then did a quick visual check through the cockpit windshield and canopy. How many of his squadron were left against the Minbari onslaught? How many Human ships were left at all?
"Stay in formation," Sinclair ordered as he brought his Starfury around, turning away from the sun to face what seemed to be the greater concentration of Minbari fighters. "Hold the line. No one gets through, no matter what!"
"Understood," came Mitchell's voice again, then a burst of static and "Alpha Leader! You've got a Minbari on your tail!"
But Sinclair had already seen it, and was about to initiate a defensive response within the formation when he saw Mitchell's Starfury break formation to loop up and back, over Sinclair's head and toward his pursuing attacker. Other members of the squadron followed Mitchell's lead.
"I'm on him."
"No! Mitchell! Stay in formation! It might be a--"
Sinclair's instrument panel indicated a massive jump point opening behind him, right out of the blinding glare of the sun. "Oh my God. It's a trap!"
It shouldn't have been possible. Assurances had been made that a widespread pattern of vortex frequency interference would be broadcast continuously, making it impossible for the enemy to open jump points within the Line. But a shadow fell across Sinclair's ship as a massive Minbari cruiser, larger than any he'd seen before, came out of a jump point behind him. The only chance for escape was to outrun it and regroup, but what was left of his squadron had been lured into heading full speed right at the cruiser.
"Mitchell! Break off! Break off!"
It was too late. He saw Bill Mitchell's ship blown to bits. Devorah Eisenstadt's Starfury cut in two. Jake Owasaka's ship sent tumbling wildly to smash into Alo Makya's Starfury, destroying both. Within a few seconds, every ship of his squadron and all the ships around him were destroyed.
An energy beam from the Minbari cruiser sliced through the skin of Sinclair's upper starboard engine, spinning his craft out of control. His computer gave him the bad news as he fought to regain control of his ship.
"Aft stabilizers hit. Weapons systems at zero. Defensive grid at zero. Power plant near critical mass. Minbari weapons systems locking on."
Sinclair reestablished control of his Starfury and turned it back toward the looming Minbari warship. "Not like this! Not like this!" he shouted, not caring that they didn't hear him. "If I'm going out, I'm taking you bastards with me. Target main cruiser. Set for full-velocity ram. Afterburners on my mark...Mark!"
Sinclair was thrown back in his seat as every last bit of fuel in his craft ignited to send him hurtling on a collision course toward the Minbari cruiser. Ten, nine, eight, seven...
But something was wrong, even more terribly wrong than it had been just a moment before. The Minbari cruiser was changing, undulating like a living creature, morphing before his eyes. Long tendrils grew outward from the ship, and a powerful energy surge crackled along the tendrils gathering to a sphere of destructive energy at their tips. Suddenly it wasn't a Minbari cruiser at all. It was a Vorlon warship. And there were hundreds more of them, all converging on Babylon 5, intent on destroying his space station. But what was that just beyond the outermost Vorlon ship, moving back and forth between the lights of the distant stars? Shadowy shapes, dark and spindly, difficult to see or even focus on. What was happening?
Before Sinclair could react, a blinding flash obliterated the scene--
Metal fiber ropes bit into Sinclair's wrists and legs, held him motionless, suspending him at the center of a darkened, cavernous room where one bright beam of light shone down on him. Just beyond the rim of light, he could see shadowy figures, humanoid, robed. The torture he had endured at the hands of those creatures for--what? hours? days?--had been so intense that he was now moving beyond the pain that racked his body. His consciousness seemed to be floating above the scene. One of the hooded figures approached, stood before him, held up a small triangular object that seemed to be wire and metal shaped into a triangle with a stone suspended at the center. A Triluminary. The stone began to glow.
"Who are you?" Sinclair managed to force the words out through his pain. "Why are you doing this?" He tried to look at the face under the hood--it was Minbari, clearly, but who? For a moment it could have been Neroon, but then it might be Rathenn, or perhaps it was Jenimer, the Chosen One, or--Delenn?
"We claim your soul," said the voice from under the hooded robes, "as our own."
"No!" Sinclair shouted. He struggled against the binding ropes, felt them bite into his flesh, felt the blood running down his arms and legs. "NO!"
Sinclair woke up shouting, and with a violent motion wrenched himself upright in the bed. Drenched in sweat, his heart pounding furiously, he shivered uncontrollably from the intensity of the dream. At the same time, for a short, disorienting moment, he could not figure out where he was. These were not his quarters on Babylon 5.
Slowly, he began to calm down and regain his bearings. He looked around at the small bedchamber which was dimly illuminated from one corner of the room by a small brazier filled with some type of glowing stones rather than coals. There were two doors, both shut, and no windows; the walls were unadorned, and the only furnishings were the hard, narrow bed he was sitting up on, a single low bench on which some clothes were carefully laid out, and a large metal chest, inlaid with a delicate triangular pattern of gems.
Minbar. He was on the homeworld of the Minbari Federation, former deadly enemies of the Human species, and now their most powerful ally. He was in the capital city Yedor. He was in his quarters in the exclusive residential area set aside for off-world visitors and residents such as himself. He was Earth's first ambassador to Minbar.
Sinclair realized he was now shivering more from the cold temperature in the room than the dream. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and let the feeling of the cold, stone floor against his feet wake him further, also knowing that motion would signal the automatic sensors to turn up the heat.
He wasn't in the midst of his enemies. He wasn't on Minbar as a prisoner. He had agreed to come here.
Sinclair wondered what time it was, then laughed at himself a little; he was always wondering what time it was. The Minbari day was twenty hours and forty-seven minutes long. Ever since arriving on Minbar a little under three Earth standard weeks ago, his just-under-twenty-five-hour Human body clock had been precessing through the shorter Minbari days, leaving him with what felt like a permanent case of jet lag.
With a sigh, he rose and went over to the bench where he had left his watch. It was set to count off the Minbari hours, and indicated he still had another half hour of sleep coming to him. He turned off the alarm. All he wanted now was a shower to clear his head and some time to himself before his assigned Minbari helpers showed up to bring him breakfast, straighten up the room--not that he had much for them to straighten--and scurry around and bow to him.
Sinclair shook his head as he crossed the room to the bathroom door. He could not get the Minbari helpers to look him in the eyes, or to stop bowing to him. If it were just polite social bowing, common in some cultures, it wouldn't have bothered him so much. But this too often became the bowing and scraping that he'd only seen in movies when the all-powerful ruler of some exotic, ancient land entered a room. It got to be a little embarrassing at times.
When he opened the door to the bathroom, the bright light from the early morning sun streaming through the skylights momentarily blinded him. Bedrooms did not have windows, but the bathroom was open to the sky. He checked the clothes he had washed the previous evening in the rock pool and miniature waterfall, which served as bathtub and shower and which were even now splashing cheerfully in a continuous recycling of water. It always reminded Sinclair of a hotel room in New Vegas, but somehow more spiritual.
Good, the clothes were dry. He wanted them folded and put away before his "helpers" arrived. He knew his Minbari hosts thought it odd for an ambassador to be washing his own clothes, but he had left Babylon 5 for Earth and then Earth for Minbar so abruptly he had only brought a couple of changes of clothing with him, and now that he had no idea when he might get more sent out to him, he was guarding what he did have carefully, not wanting his clothes to disappear into the helpful hands of the Minbari staff, perhaps never to reappear again.
Sinclair carried the clothes over to the metal chest and opened the heavy lid. Inside were most of the few possessions he had been able to bring along with him on the sudden, rushed transfer from Babylon 5 to Earth and then to Minbar: his few clothes; a couple of AV data crystals containing a selection of music, text, readings, and movies; two real books: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and a specially printed collection of his favorite poetry, which was a long-ago gift from his fiancée, Catherine Sakai; one bottle of the finest, most expensive, aged whiskey, a more recent gift from Catherine; a small case that contained his badges of military rank and some of his medals; and a small framed photo of Catherine.
Sinclair stacked the clothes neatly away, then picked up the photo to say a silent good morning to the woman he had vowed to marry days before events had separated them again. Where was she now? Had she heard about his transfer? Did she know where he was? He would try again today, as he had done every day since coming to Minbar, to get an answer to those questions. Those and many other questions.
When Sinclair finished his shower and emerged from the bathroom dressed and ready to begin another day, he found the Minbari crew had already entered his quarters. He could see one of them setting out his breakfast in the sitting room. The other two had quickly and discreetly removed the towel he had wedged into the mechanism of the bed the night before to keep it horizontal instead of tilted at the forty-five-degree angle the Minbari preferred.
As Sinclair approached, they bowed expectantly, looking always down, awaiting his orders.
"I don't wish to be rude, but I've asked you not to do that. It takes a great deal of effort to get that wedged in there just right so that the bed will remain horizontal. Please, in the future, leave it that way."
"Yes, Ambassador," they said in unison. But that was what they said every morning. It was pretty much all they ever said to him. They seemed to be devoted to his every need, but not to doing what he asked them to do.
"You do speak English, don't you?" It was not the first time he had asked.
"Yes, Ambassador," they said in unison and then quickly scurried out to the sitting room where they and their companion then hurried out of Sinclair's quarters.
He resolved to try it again that evening in the dialect of the Minbari religious caste, which he had been studying intensively since arriving on Minbar. He had begun a study of the Minbari language after the war, but had until now focused mostly on the dialect of the military caste. The religious-caste dialect was far more difficult, with a demanding and intricate set of grammatical rules that changed from situation to situation, depending on who you were speaking to and about what. It was far too easy to say the wrong thing to the wrong person in the wrong grammatical way in the religious-caste dialect, and thereby commit a faux pas or an interstellar incident. He much preferred the straightforward, more vigorous approach of the military-caste dialect, or even the simple, unadorned style of the worker caste. But come the evening, he was resolved to try just one sentence in his best religious-caste Minbari. "Leave the bed in a horizontal position, please." Eight words in English, twenty-seven words in the most polite, precise Minbari he could muster.
Sinclair went over to the table where his breakfast had been set out. He knew there would be no bacon and eggs under that ornate, gold alloy cover. No pancakes. No toast with butter. No breakfast steak.
Oh, how he had been longing recently for just one well-cooked steak. But the meat that the military and worker castes ate on Minbar was unfit for Human consumption, and the religious caste was, in the main, vegetarian. His breakfast was what it always was, for the religious caste prized order and continuity: a custard made from the eggs of the temshwee, which in flavor and texture in no way resembled chicken eggs; a porridge made from local grains and fruits; spring water. It was nutritious. It was even palatable. But it was also more or less what he would get for lunch and for dinner, just in different forms, such as in cakes or casseroles. And it was beginning to drive him to an obsession with food, something he had never before experienced in his life. Until now, food had been mostly a necessity to him, to be enjoyed but not overly concerned with, even when faced with shortages during the war, or when certain foods weren't available during the early months on Babylon 5.
But on Minbar where Human food was almost impossible to obtain, he found himself longing for coffee. And steak. And maybe just a piece of chocolate cake.
Sinclair looked at the breakfast and realized he wasn't hungry, was in fact feeling a little uneasy. The nightmare, as vivid as any he had experienced since coming to Minbar, had upset him more than he wanted to admit.
The sitting room, as Spartan as the bedroom, was furnished on one side with one table and three chairs, and on the other with a small Minbari altar and a meditation pillow. Sinclair threw the pillow down in the center of the room. He had a long day ahead of him, even with the shorter Minbari day, and needed to be focused and calm. He sat down, closed his eyes, and began counting backward from four with each breath.
He hadn't finished the first set of four, when the door to his quarters opened. The Minbari had different notions of privacy, and admittedly he had not locked the door. He opened his eyes to find Rathenn looking at him with an expression that was somehow both apologetic and pleased.
"Forgive me, Ambassador, for disturbing your meditation. I was just informed you had risen a little early this morning."
"Not a problem," said Sinclair. He stood and kicked the pillow back to the other side of the room. "Just a habit I picked up in my youth. Helps me focus."