OVERTURE

Security Chief Zack Allan stared bleary-eyed into the mirror that hung from the wall of his quarters. His tired, worn face looked back at him, reminding him again of how little sleep he had been able to scrape together over the past couple of days. The captain had been pushing him hard to solve the month long investigation into the murder of one of the Drazi ambassador's aides, and he had a feeling she wasn't going to like his final report. Since the murder he had spent a considerable amount of his time trying to track down the killer, but all avenues of investigation had come up against a brick wall. No-one had seen everything and when he asked around in Down Below the usual rumour mongers and snitches had vanished... even before he had approached them. There was something sinister going on here, and he hated being kept in the dark about anything, especially when it related to illegal activity on his station. But, without any reliable witnesses to the murder the investigation was at a stand still.

Of course, he could always seek the assistance of Colin Ferris, or one of the other telepaths on the station, to help facilitate a witness's recollection. But, like his predecessor, Zack had no great love of telepaths, not to mention the legal problems such a move would have. So he was forced to rely on the tried and true methods used by law enforcement officials across the galaxy. Unfortunately, nothing he did seem to make much headway with the case and he was left with a dead body and a Captain who was expecting answers.

Sighing, Zack picked up a comb and ran it through his unruly hair in a futile attempt to restore some sort of order to his crumpled appearance. Finally he gave up and, after picking up the few thin sheets of paper that made up his report, he left his quarters, heading towards the mess hall. After a meal more inhaled that enjoyed, he walked out of the mess hall and along the corridors leading toward the front of the station, catching up with Captain Lochley just as she was about to pass through the door into C&C.

Spotting the papers clutched in Zack's hand, Lochley said, "I hope you have some good news for me, Chief."

Zack grimaced. "I'm afraid not, Captain," he replied. "We still haven't been able to track down the murderer."

"This just won't do, Chief," Lochley said angrily, almost snatching the report from Zack's hands. She quickly leafed through the pages, her frown growing deeper as she scanned each page. Finally she reached last page and looked up at Zack "This isn't much use to me, Chief. I have to meet with the Drazi ambassador in an hour to inform him on the progress of the investigation and all you can tell me is how his aide died. It's been nearly a month. You must have a suspect by now."

"Sorry, Captain," Zack replied apologetically. "No-one seems to be talking at the moment. I've checked all my usual sources, but they don't know anything more than what's already in that report."

Lochley thrust the report back into his hands and strode through the open pressure doors in C&C, ignoring the cheery greeting from Lieutenant David Corwin, the officer currently in charge of the station's command deck. Zack quickly scurried after her, following the Captain across the command deck to her tiny station off to one side of the main work area. "What am I going to tell the ambassador?" Lochley asked as she sat down, spinning her chair around to glare at Zack.

"The truth," Zack suggested. "Tell Vizhak that you don't know who was responsible for his aide's murder. We try to solve every murder that occurs on this station, but, as much as I hate to admit it, there are always one or two that slip through the cracks. That's what I told the ambassador a month ago during the initial investigation. It was true then, and it's still just as true now."

"Yes I know all about that, Mr. Allan," Lochley said grimly. "The ambassador spent nearly an hour in my office on Thursday, which was supposed to be my day off in case you've forgotten, complaining about your lack of compassion towards the suffering of his people. Right before he spent another hour complaining about how there was no justice for non-humans on Babylon 5. Eventually I had to tell him that I had another meeting to go to." She sighed, "unfortunately I made the mistake of promising to meet him again today, so I had hoped that you might have come up with something for me to show him this time. Preferably something that will make him go away and stop bothering me."

"I've spent the past two days scouring the station, rechecking all the initial leads, but it's the same as before. No-one wants to talk about it. Back when it happened, I had teams searching Down Below for a week looking for some sort of clue, but we came up with nothing." Zack frowned. "Anyway, why are the Drazi dragging this up again now? I thought even they would have forgotten about it by now."

Lochley shrugged. "Ambassador Vizhak said something about the Shadak sending a new aide to serve him. I got the impression he thought they weren't very happy about what had occurred to his previous aide. He muttered something about Kri Maru. Do you know what that means?"

Zack nodded thoughtfully. "It's a Drazi religion, one of the minor ones. They worship a god called Drubunka or something like that." Suddenly he laughed, drawing a few strange looks from the bridge crew. "So that's what this is all about," he said, a smile still on his face. "Vizhak doesn't care about what happened to his old aide. He is just upset they are sending him a priest."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything," Lochley said irritably.

"The Drazi have a warrior culture," Zack explained. "They have a history of great warrior leaders, stretching back nearly three thousand years. The Kri Maru are one of the new religions. They preach peaceful cooperation, which doesn't really fit in with the way most Drazi think. Sending an aide from the Kri Maru is probably some form of punishment for Vizhak, which would explain why he is so upset. He's probably afraid it will make him look weak in the eyes of the other races."

"How did you get to be such an expert on Drazi?" Lochley asked suspiciously.

"I've arrested enough of them," Zack said with a grim smile. "I had to learn a little about their culture after four years."

"Well, maybe you can go and speak to..."

Another voice cut off the rest of the sentence. "Captain," Corwin called out. "I think you should take a look at this."

"What is it?" Lochley barked, annoyed at being interrupted.

"I have a shuttle of unknown configuration asking for docking clearance," Corwin replied, unfazed by the Captain's irritable tone.

"What do you mean 'unknown configuration'?" Lochley asked, standing up and walking the short distance over to the main console to see what Corwin had found. Putting his rejected report down on the console near the captain's chair, Zack quickly followed after her.

"I mean that it doesn't match anything on our record. Neither the hull shape, nor the signature of its engines, is familiar. Although the computer does suggest that there are some similarities with Vorlon vessels. Not enough for a direct match though, so it could just be a coincidence."

"Vorlon?" Lochley exclaimed, leaning over the console to check the readings for herself. She hadn't been on Babylon 5 during the Shadow War, but after listening to the way the residents of the station spoke about the Vorlons, she found the idea that anything related to them turning up on her station as more than a little worrying. "Have you spoken to the shuttle's pilot?"

"Just once, about fifteen minutes ago" Corwin replied. "She asked for landing clearance, and I told her to stand by. I've also done a thorough scan of her vessel and it doesn't seem to have the normal ident transmitter. It is also lacking a docking computer, which means the pilot has to land manually instead of letting the station's computer guide it along the navigation beacon. It makes for a slightly trickier landing than normal, but not overly so. I was about to grant clearance, but I thought that seeing you were here, you might want to be informed first."

"Which one is it?" Lochley asked, staring out of the observation window at the scattered collection of transports and shuttles awaiting clearance to dock.

"The small black shuttle over near that star liner," Corwin replied, pointing out a tiny shape, almost invisible against the background of space.

"It looks too small to be a threat," Zack commented. "Something of that size could only hold one person, and maybe a little cargo if you were lucky, but nothing more."

Lochley stared at the shuttle for a couple of seconds, but she was more worried at the moment about her upcoming meeting with the Drazi ambassador than the shuttle. "Let it dock," she ordered. "Babylon 5 is supposed to be a free port, so we can hardly refuse the pilot entry. I don't see why you even needed to mention this to me."

"There is one minor detail of interest, Captain," Corwin said. "I spoke to the pilot a moment ago, and she said that there was only one passenger on board, herself. But when I did the scan, the sensors showed two life forms on the shuttle, one was human, or at least I think it is, there is some sort of distortion that the sensors are having trouble with. The other is something completely different entirely, and matches nothing we currently have on the database."

Lochley face brightened momentarily. "Do you think this is a first contact possibility?" she asked hopefully, already imagining a way out of her meeting with ambassador Vizhak.

"That is a possibility," Corwin agreed, although he didn't sound very convinced. "The pilot mentioned nothing about another passenger though, so if there is some new alien species on that shuttle, then either they don't want to talk to us, or don't want us to know about them."

"A smuggler then," Zack said, watching the shuttle slowly manoeuvre into position alongside the star liner. "I don't think some new race is going to send out a single tiny shuttle to make contact with us, especially one with a human pilot."

"Some sort of alien plant life then?" Lochley queried. "Something that won't survive the quarantine."

Zack shrugged. "It's happened before. You would be amazed by what some people try to bring onto the station. We've already got vermin from a dozen worlds crawling around the lower decks, but there is always someone who tries to sneak some new species past customs. I'd probably better go down and take a closer look... just in case."

Lochley frowned. "I was hoping that you would talk to Vizhak for me. I don't really want to waste another morning trying to explain why we haven't found the murderer yet."

"This could be important," Zack said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the shuttle. "We don't usually pick up readings like this on a smuggler's cargo without a close scan. So, this could be something big... not to mention dangerous."

Lochley still looked sceptical, realising that Zack was probably just trying to get out of having to present at the meeting with Vizhak, hell she wouldn't mind getting out of it herself. On the other hand, the sensor readings were suspicious and did require further investigation. "All right, Mr. Allan," she agreed finally. "However, I want a report on my desk by sixteen hundred, with a full explanation for this sensor reading," her finger tapped the screen which showed the reading in question.

"You'll have it," Zack promised, heading for the exit, moving a little quicker than was necessary in case the Captain changed her mind.

"What do you think, Lieutenant?" Lochley asked, as soon as the security chief had departed. "Do you think that shuttle's pilot is a smuggler... or was Mr. Allan just trying to get out of the meeting with Vizhak."

"Probably the later," Corwin admitted with a smile, before his face turned serious again as he noticed a new sensor report. "But he is right about one thing. There is something very strange about that shuttle. I've been working flight control for years now and I've never seen anything like it. I'm getting power readings of it that are unlike anything I've ever seen before, well for a vessel of that size anyway."

"Do you think Mr. Allan might need some assistance?" Lochley queried, peering over his shoulder at the information the computer had just compiled. "Not that I don't have every confidence in his abilities, of course." Then she frowned. "Are these right," she said, pointing to the latest sensor reading which gave the shuttle a power to mass ratio higher than anything she would have thought possible.

"There is some distortion," Corwin admitted. "The sensors are having trouble penetrating the material in the shuttle's hull. It appears to be made of an alloy that they haven't encountered before and there is some unusual electrical activity inside the outer hull that is distorting the few readings that the sensors can make."

"Can you clean up the distortion at all?"

"Not unless the shuttle moves closer... a lot closer," Corwin replied. "However, Mr. Allan will be in a better position to look into it. Not a lot gets past him, especially when it concerns station security."

"I agree, Lieutenant," Lochley nodded. Then she noticed the chronometer on the console and swore loudly. "Damn, I have to meet with the ambassador in ten minutes. Keep me informed if anything happens concerning that shuttle that I should know about."

Under Corwin's amused gaze, she hurried across the room to collect Zack's report, and then almost ran for the exit. Grateful that he only had to deal with irate freighter captains and not ambassadors and other dignitaries, Corwin turned back to the console and sent a message to the pilot of the shuttle. "Shuttle Vozak, you are cleared to dock in landing bay six. Please keep to your assigned vector and do not deviate from the landing beacon." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Welcome to Babylon 5."

Inside a small, well-lit chamber buried in the interior of the shuttle, a white-robed figure sat cross legged on the barren deck, no sign of instrumentation or other controls in sight. The woman — for her gender was very plainly obvious to any observer — appeared deep in concentration. Her hands were steepled before her, almost as if she were praying, although the array of weapons and other equipment spread out before her were not the usual tools a priest or follower of most of the known religions — with the exception of a few of the more violent alien species. Instead she looked like a warrior preparing for battle, a holy soldier about to go to war against some evil enemy.

Then a soft voice whispered across the small chamber, interrupting her concentration. "There is a message, Mistress," it said in gentle tones, before replaying Corwin's last communication.

As the lieutenant's voice echoed around the barren chamber, the woman looked up, pulling back the hood of her robe to stare at the viewscreen in front of her. Impossibly pale eyes glinted with hidden energy as she scanned the information on the screen, tiny rows of alien script flowing quickly across it as the shuttle reported its findings on every little detail of the station, the other vessels waiting to dock, and even the sensors that were currently probing for information about the shuttle.

The woman smiled briefly, the report appearing to meet with her approval. Then she silently cancelled the display, the shuttle sensing her thoughts and deactivating its sensors. "Proceed slowly my friend," she said, speaking to the vessel as if it were alive. "Keep to their beacon, but be very careful. I have not come eight hundred years and an unimagined distance to die now, not when the key to my goal is but hours away."

The shuttle gave no verbal response, but as soon as the woman had finished speaking the lights in the chamber dimmed as energy was transferred to the engines. Picking up speed, it moved out of the shadow of the huge star liner it had been parked next to and moved closer to Babylon 5, dwarfed by the gigantic space station as it followed the landing beacon towards the docking bays.

Under Corwin's watchful gaze, the small shuttle left its holding position, gliding forward without even the slightest trace of emissions from manoeuvring thrusters. That certainly drew some attention from the pilots and bridge crews of other nearby vessels as they realised that the shuttle, despite its size, was equipped with gravimetric engines, a technology only the Minbari, the Centauri and a couple of other races were known to possess. To encounter a shuttle of unknown make possessing such technology was certainly something to comment on, if not something to note down for further investigations, although with new races being discovered every day, it was not an overly unusually occurrence. With much of the galaxy still unexplored, there always seemed to be something new waiting around the next star system and sooner or later you were bound to run into a race you hadn't encountered before, especially at a place like Babylon 5.

But, while the attention of most observers quickly turned back to more important matters — like trying to convince the station's flight controller that, due to some special circumstance, their vessel deserved to be shunted forward to the front of the docking queue — two sets of eyes continued to contemplate the shuttle's passage. In the spacious first-class lounge on the liner Lord Nelson, two men watched the shuttles passage from the viewing window, scrutinising the tiny shuttle closely as it moved towards the gaping maw of the docking bay.

Although their interest in the shuttle, and its pilot, had bought them together, there was little else akin between the two men. The taller of the two was Nicolai Luchenko, the nephew of the Earth Alliance's current president. A tall, ruggedly handsome man in his late twenties, he sat back in one of the well padded chairs and watched the shuttle with an expression of bored disinterest. He wore a plain, but elegantly tailored suit, and sipped a drink one of the thoughtful stewardesses had placed on a nearby table shortly after the liner's arrival in Babylon 5 space. In short, he portrayed the appearance he'd crafted with calculation, that of a calm and collected gentleman to whom space travel was a daily occurrence and nothing to get excited about.

But as his gaze followed the shuttle's path, he was anything but calm or collected. Inside he was almost bursting with excitement and anticipation, aware that the coming few days could spell either the end of a dream or the beginning of a new life, one free of human concerns. Placing his glass down on the round table near his chair, he stood and walked the short distance over to where his companion stood.

Unlike Nicolai, who somehow always managed to appear composed and at ease — no matter if he was meeting with friends of his Aunt's, dining in some alien king's banquet hall, or even up to his neck in mud on some IPX dig — Alex Kurmis looked nervous and ill at ease. The short, dark-haired man — who looked about forty, although he was actually younger than Nicolai — was pressed forward against the window, an almost rabid look of hatred in his dark eyes. He wore a dark suit that had obviously seen better days, and his hands were covered by a pair of black leather gloves, very similar to those worn by telepaths when around normals — although he lacked the Psi-Corps badge that would have placed his allegiance beyond doubt.

Nicolai stood beside him for a moment, watching the shuttle as it manoeuvred past a bulk freighter and began its approach to the main docking bay doors. "Is that her shuttle?" he asked finally, his voice holding only the slightest trace of a Russian accent.

Alex's eyes didn't leave the shuttle. "That's it," he confirmed, his voice harsh and obviously still carrying a fair amount of anger. "I can sense her foul presence from here. We have finally found her, and I will finally get my revenge for what she did to me."

After observing the emotions playing across the dark-haired telepath's face closely for several seconds, Nicolai cleared his throat. "I see," he began, a little nervously, always cautious about broaching this particular subject with the telepath. "Just don't forget who is financing this particular trip. Two first-class bunks on a ship like this don't come cheap, not to mention the small fortune I paid informants to watch out for her. If it wasn't for the fact that she was arriving here to meet with a Thrakallan acquaintance of mine, I wouldn't have been able to arrange this little get together at all. Just remember that I want something out of this venture as well. I haven't paid tens of thousands of credits just to help you get revenge for some minor incident."

"Minor!" Alex screamed angrily, turning on Nicolai. "It took them three months to dig that machine out of my mind and even now I can still feel the effects of what she did to me." Then his voice dropped away and turned back to the window. "Besides, this is not just about me. I do this for all telepaths, to end the threat this woman presents."

"Just remember..."

"You'll have your pound of flesh, or blood, or whatever it is you want, Luchenko. But, I want to see her suffer — to personally witness her death — only then will I know the threat she poses is ended and be free of the dreams that haunt my nights."

"I still think we would be better off contacting station security about this," Nicolai said softly. "We have enough on her to arrange an arrest warrant, and I'm sure Earthforce would back us up. There is no need to do things this way. We hold all the cards, we know who and what she is, we don't need to do it this way."

Alex looked at him for a moment. "That's not how the Corps works. We look after our own."

"But I thought Psi-Corps had forbidden..."

"We look after our own, Luchenko!" Alex snarled. "Just because those fools thought it was too dangerous to pursue her, doesn't mean that they didn't want me to." The telepath's gaze returned to the view outside, his dark eyes narrowing as he saw the shuttle was finally entered the station. "We look after our own," he said again, his voice almost a whisper now. "I don't care if I have to tear this place apart looking for her, I will have my revenge!"