Author: Wocket
Email: wocket@start.com.au
Archiving: With Permission
Rating of this chapter: G (general audience)
Rating of overall story: M (mature audience)
Copyright: The original Babylon 5 characters are JMS's, but their lines, actions and plotlines within this story are mine.
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is indented to anyone. This story is a dedication, nothing more.
It started by delivering a message for Delenn. Wait. No, perhaps I have gone to far ahead. It began before that simple message. Stories always have their origins firmly hidden in the past.
By thinking back carefully I now know where it begins. The true origins of this story start with Londo Mollari and his youthful craving for power. Yes. That sounds right. So many stories start and end with Mollari, why should this not be one of them?
Mollari at the height of his youth, fitness and innocence looses at a game of cards. Repaying his debt by swapping places with a young, nameless, general who was to have lead Centari forces on a suicide mission to Ragesh 3. He believes himself a dead man and faces his fate like a true Centari. He gets quite astonishingly drunk.
During the battle his steering is so erratic that nothing can shoot him down. His aiming is so bad that he completely misses the decoy defense grid and accidentally fires a full blast at a tectonic rift. This triggers the release of a massive surge of energy that had been building in the planets crust and unleashes a massive earthquake. It wipes out the entire power grid and all defense communications for the main continent.
Victory is theirs and in a drunken celebration Londo boasts of his greatness. As they walk drunkenly down a darkened street they are met with the sudden apparition of an exceptionally large golden dragon. Londo's companions run off, but Londo has just taken on an entire planet and won. What is a relatively small dragon when compared to that?
The bares his sword and lunges towards it with a fearsome shout.
.he doesn't remember much after that. Some palace guards find him curled up in the emperors flowerbeds the next morning. Suffering from what he feels is one of the worst hangovers in Centari history he is brought before the emperors court to suffer a standing ovation.
The only piece of information left from the celebrations of the night before is a thought: Always be polite to a technomage. With a shrug he dismisses it as a line from a bad movie he must have seen after eating all that spicy Narn takeaway. He doesn't remember anything about the curse.
With this history my story begins.
*
I was a Ranger assigned to Babylon 5 in the year before the Shadow War. I'd been recruited from a small, forgotten, earth colony which had forsaken technology. Relearning the lost knowledge had been difficult-it often seemed more like magic than simple electronic mechanics. The other Rangers helped me through my difficult with grace. They never laughed at my startlement or disbelieving admirations of the strange devices I came across. For that I am ever grateful to them.
I am also grateful for my training in facing terror and self-defense.
One my first day I was to meet the co-ordinating Ranger in Down Below. I asked a security guard in Docking the way. With a frown he pointed me in the direction of a broken airlock and an overcrowded, dimly lit, passageway. With never a thought for my safety I went, being directed by strangers until I asked one man which way to go.
He pointed in the direction of an unlikely looking passageway. I went. He followed with five friends. It was a dead end. He loosened his belt.
"Sorry. Must have been the other corridor," he said, moving towards me.
"I'll be on my way then. I don't want any trouble."
"Unfortunately you'll have to pay our toll. We own this area, see?"
He moved towards me. I backed away into a wall wishing that I could melt into it and out the other side. Despite my training I didn't like violence. He came closer, his breath smelling of rotten meat.
Minbari do not eat other creatures and my colony had never raised cattle or eaten the local wild life. It was poisonous. To me his breath smelt like death.
"What sort of payment?'
His companions chuckled. There is nothing quite like the terror that can come with that realization. The entire body freezes up, like a small animal does when completely terrified. Even the Minbari could not duplicate this terror in their training. For them what these men wanted was incomprehensible. He came closer still, pushing up against me. I couldn't think, couldn't move. My gut instinct was that maybe if I didn't resist they wouldn't hurt me too much.
"For starters how about what you look like without this heavy clock?"
His hand touched my face and with that touch a thought from my lessons flashed through me: How old will I be in a year if I don't fight back? I might not live that long. How old will I be if I do?
I lashed out.
The Minbari do not have a word for it, but my people do. It is a bottomless pit of all consuming rage filling the soul. There is a reason why I do not like violence. Just one word describes the sensation. Berserker.
*
I don't remember the fight .just stumbling into the bar dazed, torn clothing and blood on my pike. A lot of blood. Some of it mine. The Ranger sitting near the corner rushed to me, tried to steady me. I smiled, I was safe, and I let the irresistible urge to collapse consume me.
I woke up to an argument happening over my bed.
"Marcus you can not space them."
"Why not? I had a cousin that was attacked just like this by some spacers back home. She went catatonic. Then one day, five years later she woke up and took her own life."
"That is still no reason."
"Really? I thought it as quite a good justification actually."
"They have enough broken bones and internal bleeding to have learnt their lesson."
"But you didn't see the look on her face when she stumbled to the bar."
I opened my eyes with the intention of telling whoever it was to go and argue somewhere else. I stopped mid syllable when I saw how it was. Marcus (the ranger from the bar) and Entil Dzar. Ranger One. She was holding my hand.
I freaked out. She was The One Worth Dying For. What the hell was I doing lying down? I tried to sit up, to stand, to bow and greet her properly but was only successful in causing my head to spin and my lungs to sear with pain. She looked down to me.
"It is good that you are awake. There is no need for a formal greeting. You have been through a lot. It is important that you rest."
"Where am I?"
"The med lab on Babylon 5," said Marcus. "You where attacked in down below."
"Did I win?"
Ranger One and Marcus exchanged a strange look.
"Marcus tells me that you have come strait from Minbar. When you are fully healed I would like it very much if you would come and see me, to tell me of homeworld." She looked uncertainly at Marcus. " For now I must attend to other things."
She left and out of sheer training I attempted to sit up gain, to give a formal bow of respect. The pain in my lungs returned and consumed me with a coughing fit, which only made it worse. Marcus pushed me gently back down to the sick bed.
"Don't. The doctor says you have a broken rib and mild concussion. It should heal in a week or two, but I'd prefer it if you didn't puncture a lung before then."
" I'm sorry that I caused so much trouble." I couldn't look him in the eye. There where more important things he needed to take care of.
"Don't worry about it. Things where getting boring around here anyway."
*
A week and a half latter I was striding towards Delenns quarters. Due to the wonders of Babylon 5's healing technology my broken rib was now merely bruised and my concussion had disappeared altogether. During my stay in Medlab I'd done my best not to think about my meeting with Ranger One. I'd been extremely disrespectful, so I busied myself with learning as much as I could about Babylon 5, the Med staff and their patients.
I never learnt where the men who attacked me had been taken. I guess they didn't want me to "exact vengeance" as my grandfather used to say. The thought of my grandfather made me smile as I walked towards Ranger One's quarters. I remembered his sage advise for when I was nervous or intimidated by someone: Just imagine them naked.
"Imagine who?" said a voice behind me. I spun around. Oh gods. I had said it out loud. With desperation I tried to change the subject. Then I realized that I'd seen him before.
"Why where you following me?"
"Actually I wasn't. We just happen to be walking in the same direction."
"You where in Medlab when I left."
He shrugged. "I was shot in the back by one of my own men. The doc was checking me for lasting damage. What's your excuse?"
"I was the Ranger who was attacked in down below a week ago. I've got the bruised rib to prove it."
"That was you? I imagined someone bigger- " His com beeped. "Garibaldi. Go."
"Code 7R, 15 minutes."
"OK." He gave me an apologetic look. "As much as I like to talk to someone who's almost as paranoid as me I've gotta go." He turned to walk away but paused and looked back. "Could you do me a favor? This came for Ambassador Mollari. I don't have time to deliver it."
"You're trusting a complete stranger?"
"Hell no, if it's from a Narn I don't want to be there when it blows. Besides. It's not far from Delenns quarters, it's almost on your way."
I took the box. It was quite heavy.
"How did you know I was going there?"
The guard pursed his lips a bit, as if mulling something over.
"That would be telling," he said and walked away.
*
Finding Ambassador Mollari's quarters was not difficult. I simply followed the Narn graffiti. The Minbari had us learn the languages of all the nonaligned worlds as part of training. I had done quite well in learning Narn and most of it's sub dialects. But even with my extensive training I discovered that Narn insults and threats where much or inventive than I had been led to believe.
Email: wocket@start.com.au
Archiving: With Permission
Rating of this chapter: G (general audience)
Rating of overall story: M (mature audience)
Copyright: The original Babylon 5 characters are JMS's, but their lines, actions and plotlines within this story are mine.
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is indented to anyone. This story is a dedication, nothing more.
It started by delivering a message for Delenn. Wait. No, perhaps I have gone to far ahead. It began before that simple message. Stories always have their origins firmly hidden in the past.
By thinking back carefully I now know where it begins. The true origins of this story start with Londo Mollari and his youthful craving for power. Yes. That sounds right. So many stories start and end with Mollari, why should this not be one of them?
Mollari at the height of his youth, fitness and innocence looses at a game of cards. Repaying his debt by swapping places with a young, nameless, general who was to have lead Centari forces on a suicide mission to Ragesh 3. He believes himself a dead man and faces his fate like a true Centari. He gets quite astonishingly drunk.
During the battle his steering is so erratic that nothing can shoot him down. His aiming is so bad that he completely misses the decoy defense grid and accidentally fires a full blast at a tectonic rift. This triggers the release of a massive surge of energy that had been building in the planets crust and unleashes a massive earthquake. It wipes out the entire power grid and all defense communications for the main continent.
Victory is theirs and in a drunken celebration Londo boasts of his greatness. As they walk drunkenly down a darkened street they are met with the sudden apparition of an exceptionally large golden dragon. Londo's companions run off, but Londo has just taken on an entire planet and won. What is a relatively small dragon when compared to that?
The bares his sword and lunges towards it with a fearsome shout.
.he doesn't remember much after that. Some palace guards find him curled up in the emperors flowerbeds the next morning. Suffering from what he feels is one of the worst hangovers in Centari history he is brought before the emperors court to suffer a standing ovation.
The only piece of information left from the celebrations of the night before is a thought: Always be polite to a technomage. With a shrug he dismisses it as a line from a bad movie he must have seen after eating all that spicy Narn takeaway. He doesn't remember anything about the curse.
With this history my story begins.
*
I was a Ranger assigned to Babylon 5 in the year before the Shadow War. I'd been recruited from a small, forgotten, earth colony which had forsaken technology. Relearning the lost knowledge had been difficult-it often seemed more like magic than simple electronic mechanics. The other Rangers helped me through my difficult with grace. They never laughed at my startlement or disbelieving admirations of the strange devices I came across. For that I am ever grateful to them.
I am also grateful for my training in facing terror and self-defense.
One my first day I was to meet the co-ordinating Ranger in Down Below. I asked a security guard in Docking the way. With a frown he pointed me in the direction of a broken airlock and an overcrowded, dimly lit, passageway. With never a thought for my safety I went, being directed by strangers until I asked one man which way to go.
He pointed in the direction of an unlikely looking passageway. I went. He followed with five friends. It was a dead end. He loosened his belt.
"Sorry. Must have been the other corridor," he said, moving towards me.
"I'll be on my way then. I don't want any trouble."
"Unfortunately you'll have to pay our toll. We own this area, see?"
He moved towards me. I backed away into a wall wishing that I could melt into it and out the other side. Despite my training I didn't like violence. He came closer, his breath smelling of rotten meat.
Minbari do not eat other creatures and my colony had never raised cattle or eaten the local wild life. It was poisonous. To me his breath smelt like death.
"What sort of payment?'
His companions chuckled. There is nothing quite like the terror that can come with that realization. The entire body freezes up, like a small animal does when completely terrified. Even the Minbari could not duplicate this terror in their training. For them what these men wanted was incomprehensible. He came closer still, pushing up against me. I couldn't think, couldn't move. My gut instinct was that maybe if I didn't resist they wouldn't hurt me too much.
"For starters how about what you look like without this heavy clock?"
His hand touched my face and with that touch a thought from my lessons flashed through me: How old will I be in a year if I don't fight back? I might not live that long. How old will I be if I do?
I lashed out.
The Minbari do not have a word for it, but my people do. It is a bottomless pit of all consuming rage filling the soul. There is a reason why I do not like violence. Just one word describes the sensation. Berserker.
*
I don't remember the fight .just stumbling into the bar dazed, torn clothing and blood on my pike. A lot of blood. Some of it mine. The Ranger sitting near the corner rushed to me, tried to steady me. I smiled, I was safe, and I let the irresistible urge to collapse consume me.
I woke up to an argument happening over my bed.
"Marcus you can not space them."
"Why not? I had a cousin that was attacked just like this by some spacers back home. She went catatonic. Then one day, five years later she woke up and took her own life."
"That is still no reason."
"Really? I thought it as quite a good justification actually."
"They have enough broken bones and internal bleeding to have learnt their lesson."
"But you didn't see the look on her face when she stumbled to the bar."
I opened my eyes with the intention of telling whoever it was to go and argue somewhere else. I stopped mid syllable when I saw how it was. Marcus (the ranger from the bar) and Entil Dzar. Ranger One. She was holding my hand.
I freaked out. She was The One Worth Dying For. What the hell was I doing lying down? I tried to sit up, to stand, to bow and greet her properly but was only successful in causing my head to spin and my lungs to sear with pain. She looked down to me.
"It is good that you are awake. There is no need for a formal greeting. You have been through a lot. It is important that you rest."
"Where am I?"
"The med lab on Babylon 5," said Marcus. "You where attacked in down below."
"Did I win?"
Ranger One and Marcus exchanged a strange look.
"Marcus tells me that you have come strait from Minbar. When you are fully healed I would like it very much if you would come and see me, to tell me of homeworld." She looked uncertainly at Marcus. " For now I must attend to other things."
She left and out of sheer training I attempted to sit up gain, to give a formal bow of respect. The pain in my lungs returned and consumed me with a coughing fit, which only made it worse. Marcus pushed me gently back down to the sick bed.
"Don't. The doctor says you have a broken rib and mild concussion. It should heal in a week or two, but I'd prefer it if you didn't puncture a lung before then."
" I'm sorry that I caused so much trouble." I couldn't look him in the eye. There where more important things he needed to take care of.
"Don't worry about it. Things where getting boring around here anyway."
*
A week and a half latter I was striding towards Delenns quarters. Due to the wonders of Babylon 5's healing technology my broken rib was now merely bruised and my concussion had disappeared altogether. During my stay in Medlab I'd done my best not to think about my meeting with Ranger One. I'd been extremely disrespectful, so I busied myself with learning as much as I could about Babylon 5, the Med staff and their patients.
I never learnt where the men who attacked me had been taken. I guess they didn't want me to "exact vengeance" as my grandfather used to say. The thought of my grandfather made me smile as I walked towards Ranger One's quarters. I remembered his sage advise for when I was nervous or intimidated by someone: Just imagine them naked.
"Imagine who?" said a voice behind me. I spun around. Oh gods. I had said it out loud. With desperation I tried to change the subject. Then I realized that I'd seen him before.
"Why where you following me?"
"Actually I wasn't. We just happen to be walking in the same direction."
"You where in Medlab when I left."
He shrugged. "I was shot in the back by one of my own men. The doc was checking me for lasting damage. What's your excuse?"
"I was the Ranger who was attacked in down below a week ago. I've got the bruised rib to prove it."
"That was you? I imagined someone bigger- " His com beeped. "Garibaldi. Go."
"Code 7R, 15 minutes."
"OK." He gave me an apologetic look. "As much as I like to talk to someone who's almost as paranoid as me I've gotta go." He turned to walk away but paused and looked back. "Could you do me a favor? This came for Ambassador Mollari. I don't have time to deliver it."
"You're trusting a complete stranger?"
"Hell no, if it's from a Narn I don't want to be there when it blows. Besides. It's not far from Delenns quarters, it's almost on your way."
I took the box. It was quite heavy.
"How did you know I was going there?"
The guard pursed his lips a bit, as if mulling something over.
"That would be telling," he said and walked away.
*
Finding Ambassador Mollari's quarters was not difficult. I simply followed the Narn graffiti. The Minbari had us learn the languages of all the nonaligned worlds as part of training. I had done quite well in learning Narn and most of it's sub dialects. But even with my extensive training I discovered that Narn insults and threats where much or inventive than I had been led to believe.