Author's Note:Disclaimer: None of this stuff belongs to me (like you didn't know that, right?). Les Miz lyrics (c) 1985 Alain Boublil Music, Ltd. and used without permission...This is a piece inspired by the musical Les Miserables, but you should be able to follow it without any knowledge of Les Miz...the lyrics are there for background. As always, feedback is appreciated.
Author's Note 6 July 01: In the interests of avoiding any problems with the current copyright controversies on FF.N, I'd like to add this additional disclaimer: Although I wrote the full text of this story myself, the lyrics at the beginning and end of this fic are taken directly from the opretta "Les Miserables" and are no creation of my own. Any other direct quotes - from anything - are strictly accidental.
We meet again.
Javert:
You've hungered for this all your life;
Take your revenge!
How right you should kill with a knife!
(Valjean cuts the ropes which bind Javert.)
Valjean:
You talk too much,
Your life is safe in my hands.
Javert:
I don't understand
Valjean:
Get out of here.
Javert:
Valjean, take care!
I'm warning you...
Valjean:
Clear out of here.
Javert:
Once a thief, forever a thief
What you want you always steal!
You would trade your life for mine.
Yes, Valjean, you want a deal!
Shoot me now for all I care!
If you let me go, beware,
You'll still answer to Javert!
Valjean:
You are wrong, and always have been wrong.
I'm a man, no worse than any man.
You are free, and there are no conditions,
No bargains or petitions.
There's nothing that I blame you for.
You've done your duty, nothing more.
If I come out of this alive, you'll find me
At number fifty-five Rue Plumet
No doubt our paths will cross again.
Valjean fires his gun into the air, Javert leaves quickly. Muted applause from the students who think Javert has been shot.
The view from the transport shuttle was somehow not as impressive as the brochures made it out to be. At this range, Mars was simply a large, dusty red globe floating in space, dotted with the dirty soap bubbles of city domes. Nightside, they glowed with a muddy yellow light, casting specks of false brightness into the depths of space.
The rather aged, melancholy man had seen this view many times before, and it never failed to depress him. Mars was an inhospitable planet, through both its environment and its inhabitants. Even more so to the man travelling there now - telepaths had never been welcome on Mars, and Psi-Cops even less so.
Former Psi-Cop; he had to remind himself. The recent telepath war had dismantled the entire organization of Psi Corps, sending rogues and cops alike scattering all over the galaxy. Several had gone to Minbar or Centauri Prime to coordinate with the alien telepaths, but the man travelling to Mars now had kept to his own. The remainder of the Corps, the Cadre Primers who had known nothing else, was banding together. They weren't as strong as the Corps, but they could be. They would be. Their headquarters moved frequently, and now it was on Mars. It was not his choice, but Alfred Bester had fallen from grace, and he had to take what he could get.
The shuttle rotated slightly, shifting into position to execute docking procedures. Bester turned away from the viewport, pulling on the black gloves that he wore now out of habit rather than law. He held no shame in what he was, and black gloves were still the mark of a telepath. The people of Mars still feared telepaths, and fear was a powerful ally.
Michael Garibaldi lounged comfortably in his living room, accompanied by a box of expensive cigars and a pitcher of orange juice, reflecting upon such important matters as the latest baseball game.
"Lousy Dodgers," he muttered to himself, flipping through the sports page of the Mars Tribune.
"As always," his wife, Lise Hampton Edgars Garibaldi, agreed teasingly, coming up behind him and kissing him on top of his head.
"Lise," Garibaldi said with a grin, reaching up to grasp his wife's hand. "I didn't expect you to be up and about yet. Did you get the mail?"
"Yep," she replied cheerfully, going over to the computer and quickly reviewing the messages. "Junk mail…advertisements…hmm…an update from Zack on B5…oh, and something else for you - someone wants a meeting at 0900, before you meet with the board."
"Oh?" Michael said casually, trying - and succeeding - to hide his surprise and suspicion. "Does it say who it's from?" he asked as he moved to peer over Lise's shoulder.
"No, just an initial," Lise said as she checked over the text-only message again. "L?" She raised an eyebrow, obviously trying to decide if she should be suspicious.
"Oh, yeah, she's, uh…one of the underground agents. Probably just something she's not sure the board would like, and she'd rather I brought it up." Lise looked at her husband. She was sure he was hiding something, but she decided to let it pass. She trusted him too much to be really nervous.
"All right. It's almost 0900, you'd better get going."
"Yeah," he answered quickly, still staring at the message on the comm screen. Then he suddenly leaned over, pressed a button and deleted it. "See you later," he said to Lise, and, kissing her, grabbed his coat and headed out the door.
The Board of Directors of Edgars/Garibaldi Industries was waiting impatiently in the council room for the aforementioned official. The unofficial spokesperson of the group, Alex Crabb, wandered about the room restlessly, punctuating every step with an insult to his superior, hoping to get them all out of his system before Mr. Garibaldi finally showed up.
Crabb was a short man, and dark, with a hawk nose and an expression of perpetual annoyance. He was also a very vocal man with a nasal voice that had often annoyed many superiors during his fifteen years at Edgars Industries. That was the reason he had gotten this far. In fact, that was how most of the board had made their way this far. When Mr. Garibaldi had discovered that the former Board had arranged to have himself and his wife killed, he'd fired and begun blackmailing most of the company's executives, promoting the smart-mouthed but competent middle-ranked employees. They held this position with the understanding that if they screwed up, Garibaldi would have their heads on pikes.
Crabb had been expressing his distaste with these views to the rest of the Board, and rather loudly too, but he stopped very quickly when the door opened and Mr. Garibaldi entered. The board members snapped to attention as their boss staggered to his seat and sat down, clutching his head.
"Sorry I'm late, guys, but I've got this throbbing headache, so why don't you just go ahead…" He did not sound well.
Crabb stared at Garibaldi in surprise for a moment. -He sounds like he's hung over, -- Crabb thought incredulously. -I thought he was back on the wagon. -- Then he shrugged, sat down, and got down to business.
The first hour of the meeting was actually fairly worthless; the various members of the board went through their respective reports, and Garibaldi made an occasional affirmative grunt. Then, just as they were wrapping up, Crabb decided he had to bring out the report he'd received from one of his underground contacts.
"Mr. Garibaldi? There's one more thing I'd like to mention…"
Garibaldi gave him a look of pain and despair, and said, "Keep it quick, Alex, please?"
"Umm…yes. Of course," Crabb replied quickly, shuffling nervously through his papers. "Well, it's not an official report by any means, and I'm not sure it actually carries any weight, but…"
"Get on with it, Alex," Garibaldi interrupted.
"Yessir. Well, it seems that the former headquarters of the Mars Resistance appears to be back in use." He paused, waiting for a response, and when he got none, he went on to the real issue. "The occupants appear to be…Psi-Cops."
That got a reaction. Garibaldi's head snapped up, his intense blue eyes staring at Crabb incriminatingly. "That's impossible," he snapped. "The Psi Corps was disbanded at the end of the telepath war. And even if there was a movement to get a new Corps organized, they'd never base on Mars." Then the former security chief seemed to remember his headache, and lowered his head into his hands with a thud.
"Nevertheless," Crabb continued cautiously, "that's what it looks like. Do you want to organize a team to check it out?" While not necessarily legal, it was standard procedure for the large Mars corporations to keep an eye out for their own interests, especially when concerning possible terrorist activities.
Garibaldi shook his head slowly, still staring at the table. "Yeah…yeah, we'd better check it out." Then he rose to his feet, gathered up his papers, and headed for the door.
"Mr. Garibaldi," Crabb called after him. "Don't you want to designate a leader for the team?"
Garibaldi looked around and met his eyes for the first time in the meeting. "What, are you kidding? I'm leading it."
In the underground meeting room that had once been the domain of the Mars Resistance, a dozen former Psi-Cops sat around a rough table, discussing their situation. The eldest of the group, though not necessarily senior in rank, was protesting something vehemently.
"And I don't see why we had to meet on Mars anyway," Bester emphasized. "I of all people have reason to be paranoid about being here; why was I not consulted?"
"Andersen, top ranked of the renegade Psi-Cops, shot back, "You were much too far out of the way to make secure communication reasonable. And Mars was the only logical choice…"
"Besides," sneered Montoya, the youngest of the group, "I thought you were sure those blocks of yours - Asimovs, weren't they? - would hold. There's no way he could have found someone to take them out."
"He's got a point, Al," O'Hannlon added. "No one could take out those blocks but a P12, and all of them are either here - or dead."
"Maybe," Bester said speculatively. "Maybe." The Psi-Cops looked at him strangely, but Bester was oblivious, going over some very worrying possibilities in the privacy of his mind.
It was Jackson, another telepath, who finally broke the nervous silence. "Well, if they don't know we're here, it won't matter if the blocks are working. Bester, you're the most obvious of the group. Were you…"
Bester shook his head slowly and said, "I was outside for all of five minutes, at the spacedock. I don't think I was recognized."
Just then the main door burst open, half a dozen men with PPG's swarmed in, and all hell broke loose.
Michael Garibaldi felt a rush of adrenaline as he burst into the oddly familiar underground chamber, PPG in hand. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed this, how much of a paper-pusher he'd turned into.
His attention was caught by a figure moving into the shadows and down the nearest corridor. Though Michael only saw the man from the back, he recognized him instantly. "All right, let's split up, I want one man down each corridor. Gather 'em up and bring 'em back in here. Go!" He barked his orders out to his men, then headed down the nearest passage, a hunter after his quarry.
Two minutes and three turns later, he once again caught sight of the former Psi-Cop, just in front of another curve in the tunnel. He fired off his PPG between the corner and the telepath. "Freeze, Bester." He pronounced the name like it was an insult.
The renegade Psi-Cop turned around slowly, keeping his hands in full view. When he spoke, his words were sure, but his tone was less certain. "You can't hurt me, Mr. Garibaldi. The Asimovs won't let you."
"Oh, can't I?" Garibaldi was as cocky as ever.
"No," Bester replied, and made a lunge for the other passage. Garibaldi reacted quickly and certainly, his PPG going off again. Bester fell back, clutching his right arm. Shock fought with pain in his eyes. He made a visible show of collecting himself, then said, "All right, you've made your point. The blocks are gone. I don't know how, and right now, I don't care. You have the chance you've always wanted. Kill me."
Garibaldi stared at him over the barrel of his PPG, obviously weighing his options. Then he shook his head slowly from side to side. "No."
"No?" If possible, Bester looked even more surprised. "Frankly, Mr. Garibaldi, if you're not going to kill me, I think I deserve an explanation."
Garibaldi laughed, a sound without humor. "Yeah? Yeah, why not. After all, you did the same for me, seven years ago." His voice grew bitter as he recalled the day he was released from Bester's telepathic control. "So I suppose you would be wondering why I'm not gonna kill you. Hell, I'm kinda wondering why myself. But do you have any idea why I'm not gonna splatter your brains against that wall? It's because I can't afford what killing you would cost me. I've got a good life now - a wife, a little girl, a good job. If I killed you, they'd take that all away from me, lock me up for a few years, and I'm just too damned old to start it all over again, especially on your account.
"And it's because I'm not like you, Bester. I put some value on a human life - even so pathetic an excuse for a human life as you put up. Killing people is not something I do on a daily basis.
"And because I've been doing some thinking. About your life, how you were raised by the Corps and all. And I got to thinking, maybe you didn't have to be the slimeball that you are, if the Corps was gone. It's gone now, you know, and nothing's gonna bring it back, whatever you and your associates think." He lowered his PPG a few inches. "So I guess what I'm saying is that you'd better get going while I'm still feeling generous."
Bester looked at him in astonishment as Garibaldi lowered his PPG the rest of the way to the ground. Then, with a shaky nod and a familiar salute, he headed down the corridor, and out to freedom.
The next morning, Garibaldi once again left early for an unscheduled meeting, this one in the dome's main docking bay. This early in the morning there was little traffic, and he saw no one but his contact as he made his way across the bay to a small Narn transport.
"Hey, Lyta!" he called out. The red-haired telepath turned to face him, a small smile on her face as Garibaldi tossed the borrowed PPG back to her. "Thanks."
Who is this man?
What sort of devil is he
To have me caught in a trap
And choose to let me go free?
It was his hour at last
To put a seal on my fate
Wipe out the past
And wash me clean off the slate!
All it would take
Was a flick of his knife.
Vengeance was his
And he gave me back my life!
Damned if I'll live in the debt of a thief!
Damned if I'll yield at the end of the chase.
I am the Law and the Law is not mocked
I'll spit his pity right back in his face
There is nothing on earth that we share
It is either Valjean or Javert!
How can I now allow this man
To hold dominion over me?
This desperate man whom I have hunted
He gave me my life. He gave me freedom.
I should have perished by his hand
It was his right.
It was my right to die as well
Instead I live... but live in hell.