A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 1 : Learning How to Live addm-5 Read online

  A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 1 : Learning How to Live

  ( A Dark, Distorted Mirror - 5 )

  Gareth D. Williams

  With Babylon 5 complete at last, the Alliance is ready to enter a new age, a golden time of peace and prosperity. But in a galaxy that has known only war, the concept of peace is hard to grasp. The new age brings many challenges, not learning how to fight, but learning how to live. Some seek that understanding through work and labour, others through continuing to build a better world, while for some there is no understanding, only continued war. And across the dead vastness of space, ancient ships continue to move, gathering for a purpose no one can comprehend.

  Gareth D. Williams

  A Dark, Distorted Mirror.

  Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants.

  Part 1 : Learning How to Live

  Chapter 1

  The Alliance had been shaken in 2262, the Drazi Conflict representing its first real test since the end of the Shadow War, but ultimately it had held. The union of the Blessed Delenn and General John Sheridan, the Shadowkiller, kept the disparate Alliance together through months that were largely marked by peace and optimism. The completion of the Babylon 5 space station at the end of the year was meant to mark a new beginning for the galaxy.

  And it did, although not in the way anyone could have foreseen. Babylon 5 comes later, though. The early weeks and months of 2263 were distinguished by activity elsewhere, by a slow building of forces, by steadily burning tensions.

  And by the continued absence of Primarch Sinoval.

  NEY, S. E. (2295) The Birth of a New Dream. Chapter 1 of The Rise and Fall of

  the United Alliance, the End of the Second Age and the Beginning of the

  Third, vol. 4, The Dreaming Years. Ed: S. Barringer, G. Boshears, A. E. Clements, D. G. Goldingay & M. G. Kerr.

  * * *

  And at the same instant, they all woke up.

  They were spread out across the galaxy; rich people, poor people, powerful people, helpless people. They were the people who shaped the galaxy, in one form or another.

  And they all woke up at the same time.

  Londo Mollari awakes from a dream he can remember now, wet tears on his face. He is a young man again, standing alongside Marrago and Urza and Dugari and Malachi and so many others. He is boasting in the way that only a young man can, and the others are agreeing with him. "I am going to be Emperor one day," he says, and they laugh. And then he looks up at the throne, and Refa is there, nailed to it by his own kutari. And then he looks back and sees Dugari covered with blood, coughing up more blood with each breath and taking those awful cough tablets of his which are covered with blood. And he looks back and he sees Marrago is not here any more, and Urza is dead and Malachi is dead and they are all dead except him and only his enemies are left, and Cartagia raises a mocking toast to say 'I won' and Elrisia combs out her long beautiful hair and Kiro plays an open flame across his fingers and it does not burn him and Mariel and Daggair laugh and plot and Morden is behind them all, smiling as he always does and saying, 'You owe me a favour, Emperor or Minister or peasant or wanderer, you owe me a favour and a man must always pay what he owes.'

  And Emperor Londo Mollari II wakes up, carefully, so as not to wake Timov, and he goes to a window and looks out over the many lands of his domain.

  Dexter Smith awakes from a dream. He was poor once, born in a slum of lost hopes and dead dreams to a mother who barely spoke to him and a father he never knew. Now he is a Senator, a man of importance, a man who is known and respected, a war hero, a champion of the people. But in his dreams he sees green eyes fill with blood as he kills her again and again and each time he hears the voices blaming him.

  And Senator Dexter Smith wakes up and lies in his bed for many hours until dawn comes and he has things to do that will make him forget.

  David Corwin awakes from a dream he does not want to remember. He cannot move, or think, or even remember his name. All he can do is scream, and there are so many people walking directly in front of him, Susan and Lyta and Mary and John and Delenn and Carolyn and none of them can see him or hear him and he is left to scream alone, the sounds echoing in his mind.

  And David Corwin, once a captain but no longer, wakes up to the sensation of the sun on his face, but it is so cold and the sky is full of dust and the water is full of mud and his waking brings him no joy.

  Talia Winters, who has more names than friends, awakes from a dream in which she is with her family. Abby is there, and Al, and they have more children, and she isn't wearing gloves, and she has only the one name, but she cannot remember what it is, and everyone is calling her different names.

  And Talia Winters, who takes several minutes to remember that that is her name, wakes up and goes to check on her daughter. They have been apart for far too long and she will not let them be parted again.

  Satai Kats awakes from a dream where she is in a circle of light, but she is not screaming and she is not afraid and as she touches Kozorr's hand and says the words she is bidden to say, she can feel herself crying, but in a good way. The sun is touching Kozorr's face, and he is looking up into it, unafraid of the light.

  And Satai Kats wakes up and touches the necklace around her neck, the last thing he was making for her before he died, his last effort at a life where he created rather than destroyed. It is strangely warm to her touch.

  Delenn of Mir awakes from a dream like many others she has had. It is not something she wishes to recall, but she hears that heartbeat echoing from stone and metal always, whether waking or sleeping.

  And Delenn of Mir, the most powerful person in the galaxy, rolls over in her oddly horizontal bed and reaches for the person who should be there, but he is not, and she feels the cold where his warmth should be and she lies still for a long time.

  And they all wake up and they all remember the same thing. Some recall the dreams, some do not, but in that one instant of half-slumber, half-memory, when what is real and what is not become blurred, a moment that Susan Ivanova would call the 'Hour of the Wolf', they all have one image burned into the back of their minds.

  A pair of dark eyes and a fearsome voice saying one word.

  "Remember."

  But most of them forget.

  * * *

  There are more of them than people think, out there in space. They are the ancients, the forgotten, beings who walked the stars at the dawn of time. Mortals call them 'the First Ones' but they do not understand what it is they have named. They do not understand what it means to walk among the stars like giants, to look down at the younger races, at the mortals, beings little more than ants.

  They have been forgotten now, largely. The Shadows and the Vorlons chose the twin paths of helping and aiding the younger races and the others.... they have gone, hidden, pursuing their own concerns, inhabiting their own floating cities and dead tombs. For countless millennia they have stood aloof from the rest of the galaxy.

  Things change.

  There is a world that no outsider has been to in tens of thousands of years. It has no name that anyone can know. The people who live there are forgotten and unknown. It is a world of cities crafted of air and rivers flowing among the skies. It is a world of hazy mists and whispered memories.

  No ship has left that world for a very, very long time.

  Until now.

  It rises from the greatest city on the world, floating upwards on wings of water.
As it leaves the atmosphere, the wings fold up and engines come to life.

  And the First Ones' ship makes for a secret destination, far away from the worlds of the younger races. They have been apart from the galaxy for far too long. It is now time for them to return. There is one last piece of business for them to attend to.

  * * *

  Fear wasn't something he was meant to know. Not him, one of the special, one of the unique, one of the few. Fear was a lesser thing, for lesser beings. For mundane beings.

  But as he ran frantically, his breath burning in his mouth, his heart pounding as if to break free from his chest, his blood rushing, Chen Hikaru knew fear. The thought uppermost in his mind was that this was not meant to be happening. He could not be afraid. He was a telepath, a personal agent of the Psi Corps itself.

  Telepaths were not meant to be afraid. Not ever.

  But he was, and he doubted anyone could blame him. The things chasing him, they were not human, they were not natural. They looked human, they talked like humans and acted like humans, but they weren't, and only one type of person could tell that they weren't human.

  The special people. Telepaths, just like him.

  This was supposed to be a routine mission. A simple reconnaissance. He had been here for three years, just keeping an eye on things for the Corps, or what was left of it. There was not much to Mokafa Station, at least not much to the public eye. A Brakiri trading station set up across a couple of moderately important trade routes. A layover point for traders and travellers into a few of the less explored regions towards the Rim.

  But what the Corps knew but few others did, was that Mokafa held a secret lab making Dust, run by one of the more prominent Brakiri crime syndicates. Such a lab needed watching, and that was what Chen had been assigned to do. Just watch. He had been warned it might be a long time before he heard back from his superiors, and so he had not been unduly worried about the long period of silence. The rumours about the loss of Sanctuary and Mr. Bester going into hiding had troubled him, and he had even heard a whispered report that Laton had been taken and Bester killed, but he had not believed it.

  It was only when the strange humans arrived that he realised something very wrong was happening.

  They looked no different from any other travellers. There were four of them, a businessman of some kind, a secretary, a local guide and a bodyguard. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary. At least, to any mundane person. Chen had sensed something strange from the first moment he had seen them and a subtle probe of the businessman had confirmed his suspicions.

  There was nothing there. No thoughts, no memories, nothing but a brilliantly shining light, a light that burned and blazed and raged at him. He had stumbled back before the unexpected pain, and all four of them had turned to look at him. And all four of them had smiled.

  That was when he had started to run.

  They had followed him, moving effortlessly. He could hear them communicating with each other, not by words, but by the thoughts he had been unable to sense. He could also hear them talking to him, sinuous whispers, soft echoes of childhood nightmares. Come to usss.... Be with usss.... We will show you the light. We will show you beauty and power and an entire universe of majesty and terror.

  He wanted to scream, but he did not have the breath. He wanted to fall and collapse crying, but then they would catch him. Somehow he knew that they would catch him anyway.

  Something twisted beneath his leg and he fell, his knee striking the floor hard. He stumbled forward and tried to scramble to his feet, but all he did was roll forward a little and hit his knee again.

  Then they were there, just materialising behind him.

  Let us show you the light, one of them whispered.

  "Who are you?" Chen said, tears in his eyes. He was one of the special, one of the unique. He shouldn't have to feel like this.

  Fear was for lesser beings.

  We are the Hand of the Light, the first one said. He could no longer tell them apart. Everything seemed to be melting, clothes, features, build, everything. They were becoming mannequins, twisted approximations of what a human being should look like, made by someone who had never seen one.

  Chen tried to lash out with a telepathic attack, but there was nothing to attack. There was simply nothing there. No mind. Nothing.

  Come with us. We will show you the light.

  "What are you?" he asked again. "What.... what are you?"

  We are the Hand of the Light.

  "You mean, you are worthless abominations," said a new voice, one harsh and strong, one that did not fear anything. Chen reached out with his mind to welcome the newcomer, but he recoiled. A mundane. How could a mundane be so calm when he was so terrified?

  "Die!" snapped one of the creatures. There was a blur of motion and the thoughts of many telepaths joined in one. The sound as a PPG was fired, and one of the creatures fell. Another one stumbled back, clutching at its head. Chen could see light pouring from its distorted eyes and mouth. Something terrible and dark was seeping into the creature's head.

  He shifted his gaze, only just daring to move, and he saw a tall man, dressed in innocuous grey, holding a PPG. There was a long scar down the side of his face. This was the mundane.

  There were also several telepaths, led by an elegant, hard-faced blonde woman. They were joined, and holding off one of the creatures. The mundane shot another, moving with almost blinding speed.

  Chen breathed out slowly and lent his own mind to the telepaths. Joining was a simple exercise, taught to every child. He had been warned in training that some joinings could remove control from him entirely, but he had not expected anything like this.

  His mind was swept up in a current of energy that immediately pulled him free from any moorings he might have tried to form. It was a flowing river of darkness, that felt foul and smelled foul and was foul. He gagged at its touch and at its presence, but he could not escape. All he could do was try to stay sane and force the flow in the direction the others wanted — into the ball of light inside the last remaining creature.

  It moved forward, unbelievably fast. The mundane fired again, but it managed to grab the throat of one of the telepaths. Looking with his eyes rather than his mind, Chen saw the light flow into her body. She gagged and stiffened, choking. He watched helplessly as the thoughts fled from her mind, the blood left her body, and she died, the body decaying practically before his eyes.

  The creature turned to him next, and he trembled. He wanted to scream, but he could not even muster that much independence.

  It stiffened and clutched at its throat, looking for all the world as if it were choking. More and more of the darkness poured into it, and finally it fell.

  As soon as it hit the floor the joining ended and Chen was freed. He rolled over onto his side and shook, his stomach heaving. He gagged, and vomited helplessly until his stomach was empty.

  He did not know how long he lay there, shaking, lying in his own vomit. Patches of conversation reached his ears, but he dared not even try to hear with his mind.

  "No! We need one of them alive."

  "They won't tell us anything. The last ones certainly haven't." That was the man, the mundane with the scar. Chen felt he should know him, but he just could not think clearly enough.

  "Then maybe this one will. We certainly won't find out anything if we kill him." That was a woman's voice, but he did not know who she was.

  "Another one dead, though. Was this worth it? Look at him, throwing up like a student celebrating his birthday." Chen felt his contempt and there was a moment's anger within him. Who was this mundane to criticise him? Him! He was a telepath, one of the special few, not some mundane, ten-a-penny mouse.

  "At least she died free, not in one of their machines. We're doing something here. Each step we take is a step closer to ending all this."

  "If you say so," the mundane grunted. "I'll take your word for it."

  Chen rolled over and looked up at them. The woman was shor
ter than the man, and despite signs of strength and conviction in her face, he looked so much stronger than her. Of course she was a telepath and he was a mundane, but it was odd to see him taking orders from her like that.

  "You shouldn't have tried to do that," the woman said, noticing Chen's efforts to rise. "It's more than a little disorienting the first time. And the second, come to that. It'll get easier though, once you've communed with the artefact."

  "Artefact?"

  "You'll see. We'd better get out of here, quickly. We can explain later."

  Chen looked at the mundane, and suddenly he remembered who he was. "You're Captain Ben Zayn," he said. "You work for Mr. Bester."

  "I work for her now," he said, pointing at the woman. "And so do you. It's the least you can do in return for us saving your life."

  "Who are you?" he said to her. "What were those things? What did they want with me?"

  "Do you believe in evil?" she asked simply.

  Chen blinked. "I.... I don't know. I've never really thought about it. Why?"

  "Those things are evil. What they do with telepaths is evil. We'll tell you all about it, but you'll wish we hadn't once you know everything. You really will. You can call me Talia. I know who you are."

  "How...?" Chen stopped. He believed her when she said there would be explanations later.

  He also believed her when she said he would not like the answers.

  * * *

  Whispers from the Day of the Dead — I

  For one night, and one night alone, Brakir belonged to the ghosts. Marrago could see them moving through the streets of their cities, costumes of flamboyant whites and golds, masks and banners and jewellery.

  There were many strangers here this night, aliens come to witness an event that most would never see in their lifetimes again. The Day of the Dead. Some came merely to say they had been there. Some came seeking answers to what lay beyond. Some came hoping for one last word with a loved one, now passed away. Marrago had his reasons for being here, and they had little to do with his mission for Sinoval. For six months he had been scouring the galaxy seeking soldiers and mercenaries and sellswords. Now he had a force of nearly thirty, with at least two he trusted as lieutenants. He had given them command, and he had come here.