Thirdspace, p.21
Thirdspace, page 21
Then, over the chatter, he was able to make out a Starfury pilot calling out over his com unit, "Alpha Six to Control. We can barely hurt those things! We have to hit them four times before they even notice!"
A reply came quickly from Ivanova, "Then you'll have to be four times as accurate!"
"We have to withdraw!"
Although Sheridan shook his head within the helmet, still he said nothing. Nor did he have to, for Ivanova responded firmly, "Negative. This is just the first wave, sent to soften us up for the main fleet. If we can't take these guys, sure as hell we can't take the rest. Keep at it. Everyone else ... defend yourselves but continue to target the energy field surrounding the artifact! Hit it as much as you can and don't stop!"
And Sheridan, inching his way through what seemed an excruciatingly long period of time as he edged toward the artifact, watched the Starfuries continue to dart about, trying to stay one step ahead of the alien vessels, drawing their fire away from the Minbari cruisers and White Stars, while at the same time providing offense of their own. Meantime the other vessels stepped up the level of their attacks. Bursts continued to dissipate against the artifact's shielding, but it seemed to Sheridan that more and more of the blasts were hammering home with some effect. Even though they weren't getting through, the energy flare-up seemed more continuous each time, and
Sheridan could only pray that the enemy's resources were not limitless.
Then a shadow cast itself over Sheridan and he looked up- "up" being a relative term, of course-just in time to see two White Stars hurtling right toward him. His impulse was to try and dodge, but that would have been an utter waste of time. The White Stars-which he could now see were being pursued by several of the alien vessels-were moving in an evasive pattern that precluded his having any idea whatsoever which direction they were going to go. Even if the airpack could propel him quickly enough to do any good, he had no clue which way to send himself. Every muscle in his body tensed up as he froze in place.
The two fighters swooped past him, too fast and much too involved with their own survival to take any notice of him at all. Instants later the alien vessels flew past him, as well, spi-raling down-again relative-and away. Any of the ships would have been capable of killing him without even knowing they'd done it.
And Sheridan said out loud what he'd been thinking from the moment he'd set foot out of the station-
"I have got to be out of my mind...."
Chapter 17
Dr. Stephen Franklin thought that he was going out of his mind.
Barely twenty-four hours earlier, the Zocalo had looked like ... well, like the Zocalo. Nothing extraordinary. The same place that Franklin had been going, day in and day out, for the last four years, each time his shift was over. A place where people went to meet, greet, and take it easy at the end of a long day.
The place he was in now was virtually unrecognizable as that place of relaxed partying. The Zocalo was, quite simply, a mess.
Zack had, in passing, mentioned to Franklin that Security's major job at the moment was running all over Babylon 5 putting out fires. But he had been speaking in a metaphorical sense. Here, though, the concern was genuine, as small fires raged throughout the Zocalo. The entire place had been completely trashed.
Franklin, for his part, didn't have the time to take in all of the damage or start compiling a detailed list. He was far more involved with damage control on the Human level. At the moment he was busy attending to one woman who was trapped beneath a kiosk that had toppled over. Franklin couldn't know for sure whether it was done as some sort of deliberate attempt to injure her, or if her situation was simply the result of being in the wrong place when the kiosk went down.
Ultimately, it didn't matter. All Franklin was interested in doing was getting her out and to safety. She lay there, moaning, making vague attempts to pull herself free, as if she were operating from within a deep fog.
He could have remained in Medlab, of course. That might very well have been the sensible thing to do. However, most of the injuries that were coming in were banged up security guards, and they weren't staying. He'd seen them staggering out with busted arms, dislocated shoulders, bleeding wounds that Franklin had barely had time to tie off before the guards had charged back out again. He wasn't exactly sure what they were putting in the guards' feed these days, but if it could be bottled and sold galactically, they could all make a fortune.
And most of the civilians had managed to make it back to their quarters. So although there was all manner of insanity going on around the station, the amount of action that medlab was seeing was actually relatively light.
But Franklin knew that people had to be out there, injured and perhaps even dying. And with security stretched to the limit as it was, with the good Samaritans already occupied, Franklin felt it behooved him to go to the source of the problem.
So that was what he had done.
He'd already managed to treat a half dozen people up until that moment, people who had been injured or beaten by roving gangs of lunatics. But he knew he was pressing his luck, that sooner or later he might run into one of those gangs himself.
"Stephen!"
He recognized the voice instantly and looked up toward its origin. Zack and several security men were passing by on an upper catwalk. From the looks of them, they'd all been deeply involved in a very violent struggle ... involved in several of them, in fact. Their uniforms were disheveled or torn, their hair in disarray, and an assortment of cuts and bruises decorated their faces.
Upon seeing Franklin laboring below him, Zack turned to the rest of the squadron and said, "Go on, I'll catch up!"
They paused for only a moment, as if reluctant to let Zack head off on his own, but then they acceded to his order and continued on. Zack, for his part, backpedaled and headed over to, and down, the stairs. He hurried to Franklin's side, but if Franklin thought he was about to get a big heaping helping of empathy, he was to be sorely disillusioned.
"I thought I told everybody to stay inside!" Zack spouted in anger and frustration.
"You did," Franklin said, trying to sound reasonable. "But we've got injured people out here, I can't just leave them..."
Zack started to chew out Franklin for putting himself needlessly at risk, then stopped. Bottom line, he knew that to Franklin this wasn't a "needless" risk at all. Franklin was where he felt he needed to be, and Zack could either argue about it with him, or try to take it in stride and deal with it. "I know, I know," sighed Zack. "Here, let me give you a hand."
Combining their strength, the two of them managed to lift the kiosk clear within seconds, freeing the trapped woman. Franklin knelt over her, not even sure where to start. From the tenderness in her chest, he suspected she had broken a couple of ribs. There might even be internal bleeding, considering the size of the bruises that were appearing on her skin. She was moaning still, looking for all the world like a woman who was in shock. She might be concussed, she might be anything.
Franklin, with his portable med kit, was doing the best he could with the field situations that he was encountering, but he was particularly concerned about this woman. She didn't look to be in especially good shape.
"What's your name?" he asked her, hoping to get an answer and to keep her conscious.
"Marion," she suddenly said, so unexpectedly that it startled him a little.
"Okay, Marion," he said after a moment. "We're going to get you all taken care of." "I'll be fine," she told him, speaking in a very distant voice. She definitely sounded as if she were in shock. She started to move as if she had some hope of actually getting to her feet, and even as Franklin told her to stay where she was, she let out a shriek that reverberated throughout the Zocalo. Her head slumped back and her eyes rolled up, her body shuddering in pain. God only knew what she had done to herself in her foolish endeavor to move.
He did the best he could to immobilize her even as he tapped on his comlink, saying, "Franklin to Medlab."
"Won't do you any good, Doc," Zack said. He was perched nearby, his gaze slowly sweeping the area like a conning tower. "Comlink is off line."
As if he hadn't heard him-which perhaps he hadn't- Franklin said once again, "Franklin to Medlab..."
"I keep telling you," Zack said with increasing annoyance, "com systems are down..."
Franklin looked up at Zack in exasperation. "I need a trauma team," he said, as if saying it with sufficient annoyance would somehow cause the team to pop into existence. "I can't take a risk on moving her any further without..."
"What are they doing outside?"
Slowly Zack and Franklin looked up toward the person who had just spoken. It was Vir. He was standing several feet away, and there were a few people with him. They were all wearing that look of menacing calm that Zack had come to recognize as a very, very dangerous expression. But Zack forced his voice to stay level. "Don't know what you're talking about," he said casually.
Slowly the people began to advance. Their gaze never wavered, their posture never came across as anything other than menacing. Franklin, sounding as authoritative as he could, said forcefully, "Vir ... look, don't make us ..." His voice trailed off as he realized that-considering he and Allan were sorely outnumbered-they were not in the best position to make threats. He switched tactics, going for sympathy, trying to appeal to some basic core of decency that was buried within these people- hopefully beyond the artifact's reach. "This woman's injured, she needs help..."
It was as if Franklin hadn't even spoken. Vir and the others formed a circle around Zack and Franklin, leaving them no way out. "I asked you a question," said Vir in such a way that Franklin couldn't determine whether Vir had heard anything he'd said. "What are they doing outside the station?"
By this point, Zack knew it was hopeless. There was no way they were going to get out of the situation without a fight. To Zack, it seemed as if he'd been doing nothing but fighting for the past twenty-four hours, and it wasn't as if it was about to get any easier. He was in batde mode, though, operating on instinct and fighting everything that was thrown at him.
This time was going to be a little trickier, but one has to play the cards one is dealt. He handed his shock stick over to Franklin, who looked at it questioningly and then tried to hand it back to Zack. But Allan put up a hand, indicating that Franklin should keep it. Zack was the one who was on full-battle autopilot. Franklin was a surgeon-he had to worry about his hands. Last thing he needed to do was risk busting those irreplaceable finger joints on the chins of a bunch of insurgents.
Still, he couldn't resist saying to Franklin, "Next time maybe you'll listen?" "If there is a next time ..." Franklin said grimly.
Zack rolled his eyes in mock scolding mode. "You're such a Pollyanna..."
And that was the last thing he had the opportunity to say before the minions of the One attacked.
"Beg," whispered Leo.
He was positive Sheila was awake. She was lying on the ground, unspeaking, unmoving, her head slumped to one side. But he knew that he'd seen her eyelids fluttering. She was awake, playing possum. He was sure of it.
He glanced across the room at Alex, who was lying on the floor where Leo had left him. His shirt was completely soaked with blood, his eyes staring upward glazedly. To Leo's surprise, there was still very slight breathing coming from him. He might very well be in a coma, but there was an off chance that he was still aware of what was going on around him. Well, that was okay. In retrospect, if it meant that Alex was witness to Sheila's final humiliation, then so much the better.
"Beg," he whispered again, this time a bit more loudly.
He felt a pounding in his head and had to lean back against the wall. The words of Vir came back to him, about how he was needed in the Zocalo. And he felt the One pushing in his head as well, trying to urge him to do what had to be done. He had thought that the One understood. That the One loved him. The view of the city was still so clear, but now the One was hissing within his mind. He could feel it, like tentacles, wrapping itself around his consciousness, telling him that the One was threatened, that this indulgence with his former wife-while a celebration of all that the One stood for-would not benefit the great fight.
Just a little while longer, he begged.
And he could almost feel a dark smile of tolerance. An appreciation for the depths of bitterness and anger that lurked within him, and were the epitome of the One. The promise that he, Leo, would be granted a high place in the hierarchy of the One, when the final moments were at hand.
Feeling reenergized and confident, this time he fairly shouted,
"Beg!" and he hauled back a foot and kicked her in the side. She emitted a cry which he found most satisfying.
"Pl-please don't, Leo," she managed to stammer out, giving up the pretense of unconsciousness. She opened her eyes and looked at him, tears brimming. "Please... please think of what you're doing. You're ... you're not yourself...."
"Yes, I am," he said. "For the first time, I'm myself. And the One Who Dwells in Darkness ... he understands me. Appreciates me. Loves me for myself, something that you never did."
"I did, Leo, I swear I did," she told him. "You have no idea what it took for you to kill that love. No idea at all."
"I know exactly," said Leo fiercely. He pointed at Alex's un-moving body. "All it took was him."
He reached into the folds of his shirt and came out with a knife. It was vicious-looking, even in the dimness of the room. He turned it over and over, smiling at it.
"I could have used this on Alex," he said. "But I wanted to save it for you. I wanted it to be special."
She shook her head desperately, out of words, her throat constricting.
He took a step toward her.
And then the door to his quarters hissed open.
Leo didn't hesitate. Even though he couldn't see who was entering, his fingers seized the point of the knife and, with a quick snap of his arm, he hurled it. Not so long ago, he couldn't have exhibited such expertise and aptitude in injuring others. But since he had embraced the One, had given himself over to the embrace, there were things he knew that he'd never known before. Things of such importance that he couldn't quite understand how he had survived not knowing them until now. The knife hurtled through the air, spinning viciously like an angry buzz saw ... and struck its target.
***
Some time ago-an eternity, it seemed-Garibaldi had shown Sheridan an Earth vid from the Earth Film Preservation Society, an organization of which Garibaldi was a dedicated member, mostly because of their commitment to classic animation. In his capacity as a member, he wound up getting all manner of oddities for screening. One evening Sheridan had walked past Garibaldi's quarters and heard the security chief laughing like a madman. He'd called through the door, asking if Garibaldi was all right, and for a response Garibaldi had emerged from his quarters, grabbed Sheridan by the arm and said urgently, "You've got to see this!"
It was a vid of an ancient film entitled The Great Race. The sequence which had elicited such high hilarity from Garibaldi involved a massive fight in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pies were being hurled by assorted participants on either side of a fairly large room. The pies were slamming into everyone and everything, with incredibly messy results. Garibaldi had thought this to be a laugh riot, and Sheridan had been loath to comment that he found the whole thing fairly juvenile.
What Sheridan did find amusing, though-downright funny, in fact-was the manner in which one man, presumably the hero since he was dressed in white, calmly and serenely walked right through the pie fight and remained untouched. The strategist in Sheridan could appreciate the choreography and careful planning involved to carry off such a visual stunt, but on a basic level he also simply found it funny that the imperturbable hero was spared, until the very end, the indignity of getting plastered with a pie. Yes, very funny, in fact.
Sheridan found it substantially less funny now.
For in the life and death struggle that was raging around the artifact, that was exactly the situation in which Sheridan found himself. Blasts, Starfuries, Minbari cruisers, White Stars, and alien invaders, all hurtled about him with reckless abandon.
In what seemed an endless journey from the station to the far side of the artifact, Sheridan had been nearly pulped at least half a dozen times. And yet he had managed to remain miraculously unscathed. Not a lot of laughs to be had, unfortunately, although he tried to tell himself that at some point in the future, he would indeed be able to look back on all of this and garner a chuckle or two. Then he looked up at the massive artifact which floated in front of him, and decided that probably wasn't going to be the case after all. Look back on it and laugh? He'd be lucky if, every so often, he didn't wake up screaming.
His view of the battle up front was obscured as he moved around back of the artifact. Next came another daunting unknown with which he was going to have to deal. He had to let Ivanova know that it was time to move ahead with the plan. That yielded two problems. First, for all he knew, being on the far side of the artifact might somehow interfere with his transmission. And second, if someone or something within the artifact, or any of the alien ships, were to lock on to his transmission and realize where he was, they could swing around and blow him out of space with a single shot. Still, he had absolutely no choice in the matter.
Activating the send function of his comlink, he announced, "Sheridan to Ivanova... I'm in position. Go."
"Confirmed," came back Ivanova's voice, which prompted Sheridan to let out a quick sigh of relief. At least one of his main worries had been groundless. Now as long as he didn't find himself staring down the gun barrel of an alien vessel, they might actually have a shot at pulling this off. Ivanova's voice sounded choked, though. She was coughing, and he realized that her ship had probably sustained some damage. He prayed it wasn't too extensive.
