Chapter 6: Patterns of the Soul
The sleepy citizens of Plia, the capitol-city of the mostly human Ropalo agricultural colony, the farthest member of the Terran Empire, awoke to a brilliant day. Then again, all days were brilliant here, with her twin suns Dinato and her sister Xtipima, seeming to circle the planet simultaneously in an endless dance, but indeed, it was not the suns that whirled around the planet, but it was the rotation of the planet which made one full rotation every seventeen hours.
The colony was only seventy years old, established by mostly humans from the nation-state of Greece on Earth. Greece had been all but destroyed during an earthquake eighty years beforehand, and many of the survivors, two thousand and three to be exact, decided they needed to leave Earth forever. They had escaped the ravaging appitites of the Minbari conquerors.
The Narn War had ended by that time, and one of the concessions of the humiliated Narn Regime was a planet they called Ul'Si'Ed, which translates to "Absurd Planet." The Greek leader, a man by the name of Milo, saw the planet and after months of wrangling with bureaucrats, had at last gained the right to relocate his people there. The natives of the planet, a race called Ult, blue-skinned and about the size of a six year old child, welcomed the new-comers with open arms, grateful to be rid of the Narn and Centauri oppressors. They were so eager to make new friends and be rid of their old evils that they even asked if the humans had a new name to call their planet, and welcomed the name Ropalo, a Greek word for "Club."
The planet was small, barely twice the size of Earth's moon, which had been called by that time, Luna, to avoid confusing it with the billions upon millions of other moons that had been discovered and circled the other planets in the Galaxy. Ropalo had no moons, but, it did have a satellite, an asteroid they called "Submission", a name apt for an asteroid, though almost half the size of the planet, had settled in comfortably around the orbit of the planet. The asteroid acted like a magnet, dragging storm fronts away from the mainland and into the Reveal Ocean which covered eighty percent of the planet yet ensuring the rainstorms came over the farmlands of the lower Bludgeon Continent.
The settlement had bloomed very well. Everything that was touched seemed to grow healthy. Indeed, they were the healthiest people in the alliance, and they had little in the way of modern conveniences, deciding to abandon technology for the most part in favor of a society of simplicity.
The people went about their daily morning business, going to work and heading to school. One of these people, caught in the midst of the traffic of 15,000 people, was a human, taller than most of the inhabitants. He wasn't the most sociable of people, and his answers were short and to the point, but, he was a generous soul when people needed it. No one had ever seen his face; as he preferred to keep a cloak on at all times and the hood drawn over his face, but, they had so far had no need to fear him, and in the six months he had been there, they called him "Hood" in honor of his cloak.
His eyes cast about, and he saw what he was after. Walking with very even steps, he approached a small flower stand and he stopped by the side of a young woman who on her way to work stopped by the flowers each day to smell them.
He had come to respect her and trust her so much she was the closest thing to a friend he had. It was hard for him to get friendships with people due to his line of work. It was too…dangerous.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and said, "Hello Cydia."
She started and turned to him, and seeing him smiled, "Well, well. If it isn't the mysterious marauder."
"I wouldn't call myself that," he shrugged, "I'm just a simple man."
"A man of mystery," she corrected him, "I don't even know your name."
"To know my name," he said slowly, "is to know pain, death and loneliness. To know my name is to burden and lose. To know my name is to know sacrifice."
"The poet," she laughed, "Are you going to walk with me today to my work?"
"I've never had a knack for computers," he lied. But, he was so proficient at lying that it was the truth.
"Too bad," she sighed, "I really wish I could convince you to work with me."
If only he could. But he had something important to tell her. "Listen," he said, "I'm leaving Ropalo."
"You are?" she asked, looking at him in surprise, "When?"
"I have friends coming to pick me up today," he said.
"Where are you going to?" she asked.
"I can't tell you that," he replied.
"When will you come back?" she asked.
"Come back?" he said to himself, as if he had never thought about it, "Come back. Why would I come back?"
A silence fell between the two. The old woman who kept the flower stand, looking at them and realizing the importance of the conversation, ducked and went about making sure the grass around the wheels weren't flattened.
"We all care for you here," she replied at long last.
"We?" he asked sternly, "Or you?"
She grew frustrated and said, "What do you want me to say? I have grown very fond of you in the time I have known you. And I know that I know nothing about you, but, I want you to come back to me."
He stood, staring down at her, not saying anything. Deep were his thoughts. So deep, she would have drowned in their depth. But, slowly, he laughed. The laugh got stronger and louder, until it drew the attention of people around him.
"I think I might," he chuckled, "I do not know when or if I shall come back, but if I do, I promise to help fulfill your desire to have a family. For you to have children and a good life. Expect when you least expect me to show up."
"May I at least know your name?" she asked, and turned, and he was already gone.
He had never been long in goodbyes. He now walked through the streets, stopping once to help out a small child who had fallen and scrapped his knees. But, he made more or less of a straight line to the outskirts of the city, not really looking sideways or slowing. No one thought much about it, leaving Hood to himself.
As soon as he was outside the city, he pulled the hood off his face and if anyone had been there to see it, would have seen a man with long blond hair which was tied back in a ponytail, a scar from the top of his ear that went down the length of his face to the cleft in his chin. The blue eyes seemed dead and anyone who could have looked into his eyes would have known what he had been or maybe still was. A cold-blooded killer.
"Is that the man you are after?" the Governor asked, standing with the two black-leathered men on the roof of his office, who were looking through binoculars that could pick up details even at fifty miles.
"Yes," the older looking of the two said, "Chen."
"You haven't told me what he did," the beanpole man said, "And I want to know."
"It is business of the Imperial Telepathic Brigades," the older man, who was obviously the leader said, "That's all you need know."
When the God-Emperor John Sheridan had been in power, a little known project of his was to create entire colonies of telepaths, bred to be massive intelligence networks against enemies of the Terran Empire. They soon had rivaled even the Anla'Shok in the brutality they had enforced upon the citizens of the Empire. Even with Vir Cotto in the lead, the Telepathic Brigades had not been disbanded, but had actually increased, giving the nature of the frayed front-lines.
"It my business now," he replied with a snarl, "He's on my colony."
"Your colony?" he raised an eyebrow and his tone maintaining the very cold professionalism of his line of work, "This is Terran Imperial territory. You forget your place. Wherever someone is in the Empire, we have complete jurisdiction. Coming to you is a mere courtesy. But, to be fair to you, he tried to leave the Brigades six years ago. When we tried to stop him from leaving, he murdered three men. We must have him."
"Why is he so important?" the Governor asked, unwilling to be intimidated, "You could just shoot him and be over with it. Why arrest him?"
"That's not the way of the Brigades," the man said, looking at him, "We want to help him out. Let him know we still love and care for him. The Division takes care of its own."
The Governor sighed and turned to look out the window. "I don't like things like this happening on my colony," he muttered, "We're always a peaceful planet that causes our neighbors no-"
He crumpled to the floor with a thud as he was knocked across the back of the head. He wasn't dead, but, as the man bent over and put his hand on his head, the memory of the meeting was forcibly removed and a false memory implanted. One needed to be a strong telepath in order to do such a thing in such a short time.
The Governor awoke a couple hours later, and grabbing his head, said aloud, "I shouldn't drink so much."
Chen continued walking, the farmlands stretching in every direction. He could hear domesticated animals mooing in the distance, sounding their calls of either mating or dominance. The dirt clung to the ground, and there was almost a spring to the turf as he walked.
"Well well well," a voice said from behind him and he halted his forward movements.
"About time you showed up Jacobs," he said, his hands hanging loose to his side. "I thought you'd never come extract me from the backwater hole."
"Come now Chen," said the voice and he turned. It was the older man, his hair gray with streaks of black in it. "You are too valuable an asset to lose."
Chen snorted, "I doubt that very much."
"Do you have the information?" Jacobs asked, his men closely behind him.
"How do I know that you will keep the end of the bargain if I tell you where it is?," Chen asked, "This information I have on the Hand is dangerous dear Jacobs. Not to be taken lightly."
"Of course not," Jacobs replied, sliding a hand into a pocket of his coat jacket, "Ropala wasn't exactly the dream job. But I have a good position, just for you. But first I need the information."
Chen reached into his pants pocket and slid out a data crystal. "Everything I have is on this data crystal. You'll need my password to get on it."
"I don't think that will be necessary," Jacobs said. Chen frowned, but he didn't have time to react when all three men pulled their PPG's and fired a succession of rounds into his body. He collapsed backwards, his body riddled with holes. Jacobs smiled and walked towards him slowly, watching the struggled last breaths.
"That's what we have death bed scans for," Jacobs said, and grabbing his head between his hands, thrust his mind into Chen's dying mind.
Slowly she opened her eyes, the ceiling above the bed looking nothing like anything she had ever seen. Never had she been inside a hospital before, even at birth. Not even to visit anyone. But she knew enough to realize it was a hospital. The smell of sickness and death was pretty heavy in this building.
The bedsheets pressed down on her body, unwilling to relent in it's pursuit of holding her captive to the cage of cloth and frames.
"I see you're awake," a male doctor said, the dark skinned human walking into the room. He had a pepper and salt trimmed beard on his face, and he walked with a stiff posture. "It was touch and go for a while, and the doctors on Earth didn't like my requesting you be brought out here, but Babylon 5 has the best medial facilities in the whole galaxy. Certainly the Empire at least."
"Excuse me?" she asked, frowning, and pressing against her chest, "I though I was dead. That horrible man shot me."
The man looked at her with a look of patronizing disbelief. "I'm sorry," he said, picking up the medical chart, "But you were they only one not shot in that building, unless that blood on your body was somehow transplanted from your veins to your clothing without incision. Truth be told, besides the two weeks in your coma, the only thing of note was the dislocated hip."
She frowned, none of the information making any sense. In fact, some reason she felt odd. Certain things were missing, although she couldn't put her finger on it. But she knew that she had been shot. She could remember the burning plasma as it tore through her chest.
"I'm not sure I follow," she finally admitted, "I was shot and killed. I was attacked. I'm sorry Doctor..."
"Franklin," he said, as if meant something to her. When he realized that recognition was not forth-coming he spoke slower. "Stephan Franklin. Come on, Mr. Bester. You've known me for years. We worked in the rebellion for years. Don't tell me you forgot who I am."
"Bester?" she frowned, and seeing a mirror across the room, she pushed herself up. Where she was sitting, there was a man. A short man. Dark hair, well-combed. A permanent scowl seemed etched on his face. She looked down, and saw that it was a man's body. She looked back up at her reflection, and the reflection did everything she did.
"My name is...Alfred Bester?" she asked.
"Yes," Franklin laughed, "Although I don't know what you'd call yourself."
"No," Lotaria said, a smile crossing her and the reflections face, "I think I know exactly what's going on now."
