Babylon 5's hangar bay that housed their Beta Squad was busy. A squad had just come back from patrol and everyone was unsuiting. They chatted lightly as they changed into their blue and white uniform. With the end of their patrol, their shift was over for the day.
The Starfuries that had just been on patrol were being locked down until their next flight. One of the pilots that had just come back from patrol didn't take her flight suit off. Instead she tucked her helmet under her arm and walked over to one of the techies looking at her Starfury. Her last name, Silver, was on a nametag on her suit.
"Hey," the pilot addressed the techie, "can I take my bird out again?"
The techie looked up from the Padd with the data on it and gave her a bizarre look. "Go back out? Why do you want to do that? You just got back. Harmony Silver, are you trying to get HTS?"
Silver smiled at his comment. She was well used to bantering with the techies here in the bay, for she was always going out on solo flights into Hyperspace. This argument was becoming standard.
"I don't get Hyperspace Travel Syndrome," Silver reminded the techie with an innocent smile. "Being out in Hyperspace with all those distortions just doesn't bother me. I find it soothing."
The techie gave Silver a blank look, and Silver sighed.
"Can I get my ship and go out for a flight or not?" Silver repeated in a more serious tone.
"I need to run a diagnostic," the techie said after staring at her for a few seconds more. "That will take half an hour. Since you want to go out on yet another unscheduled flight into Hyperspace you can use that time to get permission from someone in command."
It was now Silver's turn to give the techie a bizarre look, and she tilted her head to the left as she stared at him. "Really? You never made me do that before."
"And I got in trouble for letting you go out yesterday," the techie said in a scolding voice. "If you want to go, you're getting permission this time so I don't get demoted."
Silver exhaled in something akin to a sigh, and reluctantly surrendered. "All right. I'll be back in half-an-hour."
With that, she turned on her heel and walked to the dressing room to temporarily change into her uniform.
The techie shook his head as she walked away and went back to working on his PADD with a quiet, cross mutter of, "women."
Silver stripped off of her space suit and changed into her blue and white pilot uniform. She yanked her boots over to her, and sat down on a bench to start lacing them up. Although the techie had tried to speak quietly, Silver had still heard him hiss the word 'women' as she left. Women in Earthforce were the minority, and although Silver was well used to comments like that they still had a knack for putting her in a bad mood. For Silver, it was worse than just being a woman in Earthforce because not only was she a woman she wasn't even pure-human.
"Protocol this, protocol that," Silver grumbled under her voice as she finished with one boot and switched to the laces on the other one. "I had no idea there'd be so many blasted protocols when I joined Earthforce."
Once she had finished getting changed, she slapped her communicator on her hand and shoved her identicard into her pants pocket. Since she needed to find a superior officer to clear her flight she should probably go up to Babylon 5's C'n'C, but someone might get mad at her for pestering them on their shift. Maybe she could head to the Zócalo then, and find someone off duty.
The Zócalo sounded like the safer of the two plans, so that was where she headed. By the time she got out of the dressing room the members of her squad were already gone. Silver didn't altogether mind that, and paged for the turbolift. She was the only female in her squad, so there was no one else waiting.
The turbolift came, and Silver entered with orders for the turbolift to take her to "Red 5."
There was a chime of recognition from the turbolift, and it started moving. Silver finally allowed herself to relax and leaned against the railing. Just for this little bit, Silver was able to lower her guard. When she lowered her head, a lock of her thankfully straight auburn-black fell over her eyes. She crossed her eyes to look at the hair, and blew at it. It moved and then fell into the same spot.
Silver sighed, and reached up to manually tuck the bang back with the rest of her long hair that she kept pinned up out of the way. Her fingers traced the cat-like point of her ear as she was doing so, but Silver pretended that she hadn't noticed. There was a chime from the turbolift, and it announced that she had arrived on Red 5 as she was still fixing her hair. The doors opened, and Silver lowered her hand to her side as her guard came back up.
A wave of noise assaulted her as the doors opened and she stepped outside. It took a second for her to adjust to the chaos after the quiet of Hyperspace and relative quiet of the hangar bay. The sound of footsteps, the rustle of clothes, clinking of silverware from the restaurants, shouts form the casinos and quiet conversation between merchants and customers, and dozens of different languages being spoken at once all blurred together.
Once she settled down she stared walking along the Zócalo's central corridor, looking for officers she could ask permission from. Out of instinct she listened to the languages around her to see if there were any she recognized. Of course there was English and other human dialects, Narn, Gaim, Drazi, and then she heard Centauri.
The lattermost surprised her the most. Although Emperor Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic had not joined the newly formed Interstellar Alliance, she had heard that he was allowing his people back onto Babylon 5. It seemed the stories were true; however, many races were still wary around them and the friction between the Centauri and Narn was almost tangible.
A few of her Narn friends that she had made nodded greetings, and she returned them. She wasn't quite sure how she should act around the Centauri, so she pretended she didn't see them so she didn't accidently start a fight or something. Doing that would ruin her chances of going back out into Hyperspace for a solo flight.
As she walked down the corridor, still looking for an officer, she caught sight of her reflection in a store window. Her amber-gold eyes stared back at her, black pupils slitted slightly like a snake's. Silver's facial features were very beautiful, but feline like, a testament to her heritage like her eyes and her ears. She looked away from the window, and focused on her search for an officer.
After a little more searching she saw someone walking ahead of her in an officer's Earthforce uniform. Although she couldn't tell who it was by looking at their back, it was a woman and that instantly made Silver feel better about approaching them. She quickened her pace to catch up to the officer.
"Excuse me, sir," she addressed the officer politely and raised a hand towards them.
The officer stopped walking, and turned to face her. Silver tensed and her alien eyes widened when she realized she'd stopped none other than Captain Elizabeth Lochley. She had not been expecting her, and instantly came to attention.
"Yes pilot?" Lochley asked and read her nametag, "Silver is it?"
"Yes sir," Silver nodded. The movement made that lock of hair that had fallen in front of her face earlier do so again. "Harmony Silver from Beta Squadron."
Lochley hadn't been here for much more than a year, and there was no way she could know all of the Earthforce personal by name, yet Silver's name she recognized. Silver was acutely aware that Lochley was looking her over now, taking into account Silver's alien eyes, ears, and the non-human cast to her features. It was nothing she wasn't used to by now.
"You're…" Lochley stared to say.
"The hybrid," Silver finished for the Captain, "One of the few Earthforce members who aren't pure human. I'm only a quarter-alien, but the physical features of my alien ancestry are somewhat dominant over my human ones."
"And you're alien ancestry is-" Lochley tried to finish her sentence again.
"Dilgar," Silver interrupted quietly again.
Subconsciously, Silver clenched one of her hands by her side into a fist. With the Dilgar's extinction at the end of their war at 2232, and Jha'dur's death by the Vorlon's hands in 2258, Harmony Silver was likely one of the few people left with Dilgar blood. It was just a quarter, but in her family back when she had been growing up on Earth she had been taught the Dilgar's language before English. She had spoken the Dilgar's language long enough that by the time she had started learning English, the Dilgar's accent had stuck.
Although her family didn't see the Dilgar blood as bad, Silver hated the way she spoke and even the way she held herself as she walked, for anyone who had seen a Dilgar would know she was one of them. To have Dilgar blood, the monstrous race Jha'dur had led that had wiped out so many planets and species just because they could, was not a good thing. It didn't matter what her family said.
"Well Mrs. Silver," Lochley said after a moment of quiet between them. "What can I do for you?"
Silver was glad that Lochley had changed the subject, and she spoke up quickly while she could. "I just got back from a patrol with my squad, and I'm off duty for the rest of the day."
"Go on," Lochley motioned with her voice.
"I want to go out on a solo flight into Hyperspace, but since it's unscheduled I need an officer's permission." Silver explained quickly. "You're the first officer I found."
Lochley looked just as surprised as the techie by Silver's request. "You want to go onto a flight into Hyperspace?"
Silver smiled softly, glad that some things were still predictable, and explained. "Because of my other blood, my eyes are different from a human's. I don't see Hyperspace in the same way a pure-blood human would, and I can't get any symptoms of Hyperspace Travel Syndrome. It's one of the reasons I became a pilot."
Lochley was again surprised by Silver. She had no idea that Dilgar were immune to HTS, but it was suddenly a little easier to understand why the Dilgar had been able to gain such ground in the war. Immunity to HTS in a war that was fought by jumping through Hyperspace was an obvious advantage.
"Do I have your permission to go back out into Hyperspace?" Silver asked after giving Lochley some time to process the new information.
"What exactly is your route?" Lochley asked.
She still a little puzzled that anyone would want to spend more time in Hyperspace despite learning that Silver wasn't affected by it. Like most humans, she simply wasn't capable of understanding things from a Dilgar's perspective.
"I just do laps around the beacon," Silver assured Lochley. "I should only be gone for an hour or two."
Lochley wasn't in the habit of giving into such informal requests, but something about Silver's amber eyes unsettled her. There was something in them that was not human, as if Silver was merely pretending to be human. It made her skin crawl, and suddenly she wanted to dismiss Silver so she gave into her request.
"Very well," Lochley relented. "I'll contact the hangar bays now to tell that you may go if the technical staff there agrees that your fighter is good to go."
"Thank you Captain," Silver replied humbly.
Lochley turned on the comm on her hand and started speaking, so Silver turned on her heel and left to go back to the hangar bay. She knew why Lochley had given into her request. It was because she didn't want to be near her, and allowing her flight was the quickest way to get her to leave.
It was odd really, Silver reflected wryly as she made her way back to the turbolift. Aliens of all sorts were welcome, and treated with neutrality until it was clear if they were friend or foe, but not for mixed bloods. Hybrids like Silver technically didn't belong to the human race because there was something in her eyes that simply wasn't human, and it always offset humans. To them, it was like seeing someone who was an imposter with a human face meant to make you trust them, but alien otherwise.
Being a woman in Earthforce was not easy for a pure-blood human. For a mixed-blood whose alien heritage was the Dilgar, it was far worse. Silver let the thoughts come and go as she paged the turbolift. At least she had gotten permission to go back into Hyperspace.
First thing to say to my readers besides hello is this story's timeline. I have never seen the movies, only the series and this story takes place about a month after the end of the 5th season.
Harmony Silver is not the "girl with the gift" mentioned in the title. That character will be introduced soon. Silver is a quarter Dilgar, and the Dilgar's reputation does complicate things for her. She has been stationed as a pilot at Babylon 5 since it opened in the first season so she is aware of events of the five seasons because she lived them, and she did fight against President Clark during the civil war.
Franklin and Garibaldi are not on the station but they do show up a little. Lyta and G'Kar are just gone. Psi Corp and Bester do exist and they will be showing up later on. Ivanova is not on the station either, but she will also be making some appearances.
I think that's all you need to know. Read and review, for reviews encourage updates.