Red Fury Read online

  “Shields at fifty percent,” Denar said.

  “Hold,” Sheridan ordered.

  “Once the beam penetrates our shields we will die,” the Minbari said, trying his best to keep the panic from his voice.

  “I said hold, damn it!” Sheridan barked.

  The beam stopped firing suddenly and the Vorlon ship hung in space before them. Sheridan opened a comm channel.

  “Susan? Can you hear me?”

  “John?” her voice came back.

  “Yeah, it’s me. You’ve got to stand down.”

  “I can’t. You don’t know what he’s done.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea and I’m here to tell you that this can’t happen. Even this far in, I can still pull you out. They started this thing, I know, but I can’t do a damned thing to help if you kill Bester.”

  “You should listen to him,” Bester said, cutting into the transmission.

  “Bester! Shut the hell up and stand down.” Sheridan snapped. “I swear to God if I see so much as a single shot fired from any of your fighters then I’ll let her have you.”

  “President Sheridan...” Bester began.

  “Not one more word. You really want to push things further than you already have today?”

  Bester’s signal cut out.

  “I’ve had enough politics for a lifetime,” Susan said angrily. “There’s nothing left but to see justice carried out. That’s what’s going to happen today, John. I don’t care about myself anymore; I’ve got to see this out. He’s got to pay.”

  “I’ve been in that thing Susan. The Vorlon ship makes it hard to keep your head straight. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “From where I stand it’s crystal clear. There’s always another agenda, always a reason not to attack him, that’s the game he plays. How many more people have to die before we wake up? I’m only going to say this once John--stand aside.”

  The signal cut out and Sheridan’s eyes widened when he saw organic pulse cannons emerge from the Vorlon ship and target his White Star.

  “Give me manual control of the ship,” he ordered and an instrument panel immediately lowered from the ceiling, fitting over his command chair.

  He opened a channel to the docking bay on Babylon 5. “Lyta?”

  “I’m here. I’m trying to touch Susan’s mind but she’s beyond reason. You’ve got to get her in here. I need to be close to her. If you can keep the ship in check I just might be able to get her out.”

  “I’ll do my best. Keep trying to get through to her for now,” Sheridan said. “I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

  And then Susan was coming right at him, cannons firing.

  “Damn it! Divert power to shields. Come about, we’re going to take her on.” His finger hovered over the trigger of the White Star’s neutron cannon.

  Ivanova’s cannons pounded away at his shields and he wished he hadn’t let her hit his ship for so long. At least Bester was listening.

  Sensors told him the Black Omegas were hanging back, no doubt enjoying the show.

  “Shields are down, sir. We have no defenses. Will we return fire?”

  “No. That’s just going to piss her off more.”

  The Vorlon ship swung above him suddenly, maneuvering to a high position, targeting his engines.

  “She’s taken out the gravimetric engines!” Denar said.

  “I know. What’s the status of the rear port and aft thrusters? And the tractor beam?”

  “Fully functional, sir.”

  “Good.”

  “Good, sir?”

  “Be patient,” Sheridan said. “The good news is Susan’s trying to knock us out of action first. She’ll only shoot to kill as a last measure.”

  The White Star shook wildly as the Vorlon craft struck again.

  “That’s good news? She just disabled our cannons. We’re helpless,” the Minbari said.

  “Clearly you’ve never played baseball, Mr. Denar.”

  “Base. Ball. A dance festival conducted on a military station?”

  “She’s coming about for another pass. She’ll be in position in ten seconds. Anchor the nose of the ship with the tractor beams. Fire rear port and aft thrusters on my mark!”

  “What are we doing sir? Are we going to ram her?”

  “Mr. Denar, we’re going to hit a home run. Mark!”

  With the nose of the ship held firm by the tractor beams, the selected thrusters swung the White Star about in a sudden, sweeping arc. The starboard hull connected solidly with the side of the Vorlon ship, smacking it clean out of the fight and sending it hurtling right at Babylon 5’s hull.

  “Lochley? She’s coming in fast,” Sheridan said, contacting Babylon 5’s C&C. “I want you to trap her in a hangar bay with standard Earth gravity. A rough landing will knock the fight out of her. I hope.”

  “Affirmative,” Lochley replied.

  “There’s no metal in the Vorlon ship, you can’t grab her with magnetic grapples. Fire cable hooks at her.”

  Before the Vorlon ship could recover, dozens of grappling cables shot out from the station, flying past it, extending their claws and then drawing back. More than half of them caught on, hooking the ship, drawing it into the gaping maw of the hangar bay.

  In his mind Sheridan could hear the Vorlon ship scream. Tentacles emerged from its body, flailing about as it tried to free itself. Lasers formed at the tips of those tentacles and started cutting through the cables that trapped it.

  “It’s going to pull free,” Sheridan said. He knew if he lost it there would be no second chance. Susan would be more cautious the next time round, much more likely to use lethal force to accomplish her objective. He still had one more card up his sleeve. He sent a signal back into the jumpgate, which activated instantly in response. A massive EarthForce destroyer appeared, charging towards Babylon 5 at full speed. Titans, Susan’s own ship. Sheridan had explained the situation and Commander Berensen had been happy to help try to rescue his captain.

  Titans moved in and rammed the Vorlon ship with all its mass, smacking it right back into the hole it had been trying to pull away from.

  “Here she comes!” Sheridan called out.

  “We’ve got her,” Lochley replied.

  He watched Susan’s ship hit the hangar bay deck at high speed, the grapple cables slack as she raced back towards their anchor point.

  Sparks flew as her hull skidded against steel and then a powerful impact as she collided with the crash wall at the end of the bay. The wall was specifically designed to cushion the impact of a ship coming in hot, but Titans had propelled the Vorlon craft down the runway at twice the velocity it was rated to handle. Fire retardants automatically sprayed the ship and as he followed her into the bay, he lost sight of the Vorlon ship beneath clouds of chemical foam.

  “Get in there with a fire crew,” Sheridan said to Lochley. “I’m docking right now. Activate the force field the second I’m inside. I don’t want that ship going anywhere.”

  He switched channels again.

  “Lyta? Is she alive?”

  “She is, though I’m having trouble distinguishing her mind from the ship’s. I’m going to need you.”

  “On my way.“

  Lochley’s voice chimed in. “We have an official request from Mr. Bester seeking permission to land in the hangar bay. His Star Fury has suffered severe damage. He says if he can’t dock immediately he will perish in space. We can’t open up another bay in time.”

  “Damn it, all right,” Sheridan said. “We can’t let him die now, not after all this. The second he’s in I want the bay sealed, and make sure he’s put at the opposite end from Susan. I don’t even want them to catch sight of one another.”

  Sheridan cursed beneath his breath as he landed beside the Vorlon ship. No, nothing was simple anymore.

  Five

  Susan lay inside Babylon 5’s hangar bay, covered with limp grapple cables and foul smelling chemicals. Did they really think they could hold h
er? When Bester was so close?

  But what was it she had seen at the last moment? Titans. Her own ship.

  It had helped Sheridan. It had rammed her, forced her into this flimsy trap. But why? They had as much reason to pay Bester back as anyone. It was their fellow crewmates who’d died. She was confused and in pain.

  “Susan? Can you hear me? Lyta’s formed a telepathic link between us.”

  It was John. She could see him standing there, on the other side of her shell as if it were transparent, clear as day. It was John, and yet it wasn’t John. She saw him overlaid with the form of the First One. Lorien. She quivered with reverence, awe, most of all, fear. No, they weren’t her feelings, they belonged to the ship.

  She understood its reaction. If John separated them then what would happen to it? Where would it go? Back to Deck 7 aboard Titans?

  No, never again. It had a mission. It had to carry out its duty. She had taught it that.

  “Susan, you’ve got to come out of there. Human minds aren’t meant for this. We’re not ready to see the galaxy through Vorlon eyes.”

  “You did,” she said.

  “No. Whatever gift Lorien left me allowed me to cope with being inside it, but I can’t remember a thing after. It’s like being inside a dream. Think about it for a second. Do you actually know where you are inside the ship? Where your body is?”

  It was then Susan realized she had a serious problem. Her body was somewhere inside the ship, she was sure of that, but where exactly was another matter altogether. She could feel every inch of the ship and its systems but the overlapping dream of being surrounded by the cocoon and also piloting her favorite Star Fury was gone. Now she was a vague, amorphous consciousness. Mist on a window that could be wiped away at any moment.

  “You’ve got to come out of there before it’s too late,” John said. “You’ll become so much a part of it that you won’t know where you start and it ends.”

  “A dream,” she said. “You’re right, it’s just like a dream.”

  “And now you need to wake up, Susan.”

  The ship was trying to rekindle the feelings of anger within her, to get her to give it the spark that it could magnify into a firestorm.

  “With this ship, I can take out Psi Corps as a threat, once and for all, won’t that be worth it?”

  “Worth losing you? No. No it won’t. Come back, Susan. You have to want to come back, you have to let go of all your anger, that’s what’s holding you there.”

  The ship railed against his words.

  “It’s alone, John,” she said. “If it lets me go it wants to know what will happen.”

  He placed his hand upon the ship’s skin and spoke directly to it.

  “I don’t know,” Sheridan said. “You want to go home, but no one knows where the Vorlons and Shadows have gone. I can try to help you find them but you have to let her go now. This isn’t the right way.”

  Susan was suddenly back in the cocoon of threads and Lyta was there with her in her telepathic form, gently pulling at the red strands, drawing them out of her body. Susan felt the fire fade as each thread was withdrawn. Cool, clear currents trickled through her mind.

  Suddenly the ship fired its engines and began to pull away. This was a trick! Sheridan had distracted it. Made a space for the telepath to penetrate its defenses.

  “Lyta!” John called out in warning. It was too late. The ship sent a psychic shockwave into Lyta’s telepathic form, scattering it. Susan heard Lyta scream in pain as her mind was thrown back into her body without warning.

  Susan’s mind and the ship’s mind began to blur together. There would be no more humans. It didn’t need Ivanova’s mind, just her feelings. They provided a purpose, a focus. It would carry out its mission and then it would fly far away to the Vorlon homeworld, where it would live in isolation. Susan knew she couldn’t fight it, she could barely even tell which thoughts were hers anymore.

  She shook with a sudden, violent intensity. Susan thought they were under attack again but there was no weapon strike. The ship had responded to a signal of great power, a transmission beamed out into distant space. The signal didn’t originate from Babylon 5 or Titans but it came from somewhere nearby. It carried information the ship considered priceless--the coordinates to where the Vorlons and Shadows had left the galaxy. Its need for anger dissipated, evaporated by a radiant hope. If it traveled there it might be able to follow its kind.

  It would no longer be alone.

  The Vorlon ship fired its engines in excitement and, almost as an afterthought, began to expel Susan Ivanova from its body. She was impure, not of Vorlon. When it arrived at the coordinates it might be rejected if she was inside it. Susan found herself suddenly ripped apart, pulled in opposing directions by the connecting threads.

  Lyta was there again, inside the thread cocoon, hurriedly pulling strands from her body, knitting her mind and body back together.

  Susan became aware that she was back inside her body the split second before a portal in the Vorlon ship opened and she was spat out onto the hard, metallic deck of the hangar bay.

  She couldn’t move at first. She just lay there on her side, watching the ship as it broke free of the grapple lines and sped away, passing through the hangar bay force field with no more effort than a leaping fish breaking through the surface of a lake. It shot towards the jumpgate, activated it, and was gone.

  “Thanks for nothing,” Susan said in a hoarse, worn voice. Hands helped her sit up--John and Lyta’s hands. Her whole body was in pain. She could feel her senses returning though, her mind clearing and regaining a rational, human perspective.

  “Oh, God,” she said looking at them. “What the hell was I doing? What was I thinking?”

  John smiled at her, his perfect, reassuring smile. The smile said that everything was going to be okay. But how could it? After what she’d done, after the damage she’d caused. Nothing could ever be okay again.

  “Yeah,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “That’s how I felt when I first had a Vorlon in my mind. Don’t worry, it fades with time and then you start to feel normal again. Well, mostly normal. Don’t worry, we’re here for you. We’ll sort this out.”

  “What else are friends for?” Lyta said and Susan was sure the comment was directed more at John than at her.

  “There was a signal,” she explained to John. “Someone transmitted a signal that would allow it to follow the Vorlons and Shadows.”

  “Then that’s the last of them gone,” Sheridan said. “I can’t say I’m sad to see it go.”

  As they helped Susan to her feet she spotted Bester, standing beside his Star Fury at the other end of the hangar bay. He’d failed in his mission to get the Vorlon craft, he’d failed to kill her, but he’d played a dangerous game and survived, and that meant there’d be another day.

  Another throw of the dice. Another day her friends would be at risk.

  “There’s still something I have to do,” she said.

  “Susan...”

  “It’s okay, John. I’m just going to talk to him.”

  “Is that true?” John asked Lyta.

  “Sure,” Lyta replied. “Absolutely. Basic communication.”

  Susan Ivanova hobbled painfully across the deck, forcing herself to stay upright until she stood before Bester. He seemed perfectly unconcerned, still sporting his signature smirk.

  “Captain Ivanova. Susan. I suggest you restrain yourself or I’ll be forced to...”

  She slowly curled her fingers into a fist and smashed Alfred Bester in the face with as much strength as she could muster. He fell backwards, landing awkwardly on his rear. He looked up at her in shock. He’d expected his psychic defenses to have repelled her, prevented her from raising a hand to him.

  “You’ll regret that,” he said to Ivanova.

  “Learn to like it,” she said to him. “I’ll be coming back for you when the dust settles.”

  She walked back to her friends, making sure to give Lyta a quick,
courteous nod for blocking Bester’s psychic defenses long enough for her fist to hit home.

  “You said she wasn’t going to hurt him,” Sheridan said to Lyta.

  “I said she was going to communicate with him,” Lyta replied.

  “And I did,” Ivanova said. “With my fist.”

  She limped past them, heading for the turbo lift. “I need vodka before I can deal with this,” she said. “Lots of vodka.”

  “You got it,” John replied. “Right after you receive medical treatment.”

  “Vodka is medicine. Vodka first.”

  He didn’t argue.

  “The only thing that puzzles me,” John said, as the turbo lift carried them to Earhart’s in Red Sector, “is who beamed the transmission with those coordinates? It came out of nowhere and just in the nick of time.

  Who has access to that kind of information?”

  Susan Ivanova shrugged and said nothing, but she had a pretty good idea of exactly who it was she had to thank.

  Epilogue

  Garibaldi terminated the signal transmission beamed out by the Great Machine. Only the Great Machine’s network was powerful enough to track the Vorlons and Shadows to the precise point from which they had left the galaxy.

  Draal, the caretaker of the planet-sized computer, had given Garibaldi permission to choose the moment when the signal would be activated and terminated, but only on the condition that he not be permitted to know the signal’s end point--the knowledge of those coordinates were to remain a secret until humanity was ready to take its place with the galaxy’s advanced races.

  Garibaldi removed the neural interface and stretched. He’d been up for almost a full 24 hours without rest.

  “I’m getting too old for this stuff,” he said.

  He’d analyzed the entire scenario, calculated where Sheridan and Lyta’s plan was most likely to fall over and then devised a strategy to pull their butts out of the fire before they all got burned. He had to save Bester, he couldn’t resist that compulsion, but he could shape the exact way in which the Psi Cop was saved. He could ensure his friends suffered the least harm in the process.