Author's note: Dialogue between Hedronn and Delenn in the first part of this chapter is taken from the novel IN THE BEGINNING. I wrote my own version of events on the Valen'tha subsequent to Sinclair's capture; hope you enjoy.
Part 11—Darkness and Dawn
Mayan's faith in me proved justified, though it would be nearly another year before I knew it. And the chance almost came too late.
We had captured or destroyed many of their bases and colonies that lay in the path of our advance toward Earth. When we reached the outer planets of their primary system, the decision was made to bypass the fourth planet and strike directly at the humans' homeworld. The remaining planets where humans resided would not survive long without Earth; decimating their birthworld would make a fitting end to our holy war.
We came past Mars, with the Valen'tha leading our fleet, and saw a wall of Earth vessels hovering in our path. Every ship they had left was arrayed against us—a pitiful defense, but they meant to make it nonetheless. Sick at heart, knowing I had run out of time to rectify my error, I could not help but admire the humans. What courage they had, to fight what they must know was a hopeless battle against a vastly more powerful foe. Their stubborn bravery shamed me. Here I was, giving way to despair in my own hopeless struggle… thus ensuring that it would be hopeless. I would fail, and the humans would die, and the souls of all Minbari would be stained with their blood forever…
No, I thought, and then the deck of the Valen'tha lurched under my feet in our opening battle maneuver. The forward batteries spat fire into the void. The Battle of the Line had begun.
The Earth ships—a few lumbering battlecruisers, the tiny Starfuries shaped like crossed sticks with a cockpit in the middle, and several clumsy vessels with jury-rigged guns that were clearly not military craft—threw themselves against our fleet. To no avail; we cut through them like a blade through fruit, their weapons fire mere pinpricks against our cruisers' hulls. Their small fighters were fast and maneuverable, but there were too few of them, and they proved no match for our sheer numbers. Within minutes, we had opened a gap in their wall large enough to permit me a clear view of their homeworld for the first time.
The sight sent a shudder through me. It should not have been familiar, yet it was. A planet like a jewel amid a field of stars, blue and green beneath swirls of white cloud…
I put out a hand, as if I could reach through the walls and touch it. Another memory surfaced from that long-ago Dreaming I had shared with Dukhat—the face of the alien man, with the light brown hair and piercing dark eyes. He was human. Dukhat had been right, the Vorlons were right. Humanity's destiny was entwined with ours. And we were killing them, down to the last man, woman and child.
No more time, I thought frantically as I watched ship after Earth ship hurl itself into the fray. Most were blasted to fragments in seconds, yet they kept coming. They were so brave, and so doomed…
"They fight bravely," I said, with no more outward emotion than one might say, it is a fine day, or be welcome in my home. "They cannot harm our ships, but they continue to try."
Satai Hedronn, who stood nearest me, scowled. "They know they will die anyway. So really, is this bravery, or simple desperation?"
An odd note in his voice caught my ear. His words were arrogant, and unusually blunt—but underneath, I heard something else. A flat, deadened echo of lost hope.
What had Hedronn been hoping for, that was now out of reach?
A glimmer of an idea came to me. I did not know if it would work, but at this point anything was worth a try. And perhaps I was not completely bereft of allies… "Perhaps they are the same thing." I chose my next words carefully; if Hedronn agreed with them, the others would as well. And I needed them to agree, or all hope was lost. "We should bring one of them aboard for questioning. If our next step is the final assault on their world, we must know their defenses."
I could tell nothing from Hedronn's dismissive reply. "Very well, Delenn. But choose quickly. We are fast running out of candidates."
He was right. My heart went cold as I surveyed the battlefield. Half the wall of Earth ships was gone, and many of the little Starfuries as well. The rest darted in and out amid other Earth vessels, Minbari ships and floating clouds of battle debris. Even as I watched, the Valen'tha's guns caught two more, and they exploded in bright fire.
I cannot choose, I thought desperately. Valen, choose for me…
My arm rose as if of its own volition, and I found myself pointing at a Starfury that was hurtling toward us. "That one." The pilot clearly meant to ram the Valen'tha, even though he was too far away to avoid warning us of his intent. It would be a simple thing to angle our guns and destroy him before he could reach us. He must have known it—and still he came, determined to cause our deaths with his own if he could.
Hedronn relayed the order. A tractor beam locked on to the fighter and pulled it aboard. We waited in the Council Chamber for the pilot to be brought to us—shackled and immobile, incapable of doing harm—so that we might witness the thorough scanning of his mind.
What the scans revealed shook us to our core… and, in the end, saved us all.
ooOoo
The human pilot said nothing at first—merely looked through us, as if refusing to acknowledge our existence. My first glimpse of him brought shock that I was hard pressed not to show. I did not know his name, had never laid eyes on him—yet I recognized that long-boned face, the light brown hair, the piercing dark eyes that would not react to our presence. This was the alien male from the Dreaming. I had seen his world, his smiling face—then both of them shattered by bolts of fire from a Minbari cruiser's guns.
I had seen, and failed to understand. And now here we were, with the fate of a people resting on whatever happened with this nameless human in the next few hours. Or minutes.
Satai Coplann—a warrior to his core—nodded toward the technician manning the neuro-scanning apparatus into which the human had been strapped. "Find out what their defenses are." Disinterested, willing to humor my desire for information, but fundamentally convinced that the Minbari armada could cut its way through whatever feeble resistance might remain once Earth's ragtag fleet was destroyed.
The technician passed his palm over a control rod. The pilot's body stiffened, and a grunt of pain escaped him. He was resisting the scan. I had not expected that. I felt my hands clench into fists, safely concealed by my long sleeves. My nails would leave marks, still visible hours later when next I looked.
The human closed his eyes and began to speak in a flat, toneless voice. "Jeffrey David Sinclair. Captain. Serial number 921-004. Jeffrey David Sinclair. Captain. Serial number 921-004. Jeffrey David Sinclair. Captain. Serial number 921-004…"
Coplann scowled. "What nonsense is this?"
I understood the humans' primary language by now well enough to answer him. "He is telling us his name and rank. And a number, though I am not sure what it means. Perhaps they keep track of their warriors this way."
The technician spoke. "He is using the words to block the scan. The repetition makes his mind difficult to control."
"Then override it." Coplann scowled at our captive. "Even now, you fight. I could almost admire that, if you weren't a barbarian."
They are not barbarians, I wanted to shout at him, we were wrong—but I didn't dare. We had learned nothing yet that I could use to change anyone's mind. Fool, I called myself, silently but savagely. This will fail too, and then there will be nothing left but darkness and blood… Sinclair was writhing now, jaw clenched and body taut. The more the scanner probed, the harder he fought it—and the more pain he suffered. A thin sheen had broken out on his face and hands.
"Let us see his thoughts," Hedronn said. The Council Chamber's holo-screen unfurled itself, and across its expanse we saw roiling clouds shot with flashes of lightning. The battle in Sinclair's mind, as he perceived it—a dry storm raging over a dusty, red, dome-dotted plain.
"More," Coplann said. "Break through."
The technician complied. Sinclair shuddered, and the lightning flared brighter. A harsh cry left his throat, and the holo-screen went white—
Then the blaze of light gave way to a surge of images. A brown-haired, dark-eyed woman laughing; a tall man, with Sinclair's face but eyes as blue as the Inland Sea, smiling down at a younger dark-eyed copy of himself; a little girl running to catch a ball on a dusty red stretch of ground with the curve of a dome glinting overhead. Scenes of childhood, family. Home. More images came: Sinclair in front of a mirror, admiring himself in the blue uniform of EarthForce. A Starfury, wheeling and dancing in the blackness of space near Earth's lone moon. The same ship from inside the cockpit, as its pilot dropped from a launch bay and soared outward toward a Minbari cruiser. Gloved hands tightening on the controls as laser fire split the blackness and cut down nearby Earth fighters, one by one by one.
"Bring out Earth's defenses," Coplann said to the technician.
He passed a slim hand over the rods once again. Sinclair struggled in his bonds, though it was no use. He was staring at the holo-screen, and the naked despair on his face made my eyes sting. He knew what we were doing to him, I realized as I blinked the tears back. And he knew he was helpless against it.
His eyes met mine, and he saw me. Truly saw me, as if for that moment we were not enemies on opposite sides of a deadly war, but merely one sentient being appealing to another. Help me, his eyes said. Please… For no sensible reason, I thought of my ancestress Shoshann. She had those same eyes, gazing at me across time from the ancient portrait I had found.
Then he shuddered again and seemed to pass out. I could not look at him any longer, so haggard and still where we had imprisoned him. Instead, I looked up at the holo-screen—and felt my mouth go dry.
The words left my lips before I knew I was going to say them. "Grandmother Mountain."
"What?" Hedronn, incredulous.
I stared at the image on the screen. I knew that slope, tapestried in silver-green and reddish-gold. I had grown up seeing the line of it every day against the morning and evening sky. "That is Grandmother Mountain, near Tuzanor. I am certain of it." My heart pounded against my ribcage. What I was seeing was impossible—and, perhaps, exactly what I was looking for. If only I knew what it meant, and how to use it…
"Don't be foolish." Coplann sounded annoyed now. "They have mountains on Earth, surely. You have mistaken some memory of this human's for—"
"I have not." I spoke more sharply than I intended, yet on a moment's reflection, I decided that might be a good thing. "Do you think I cannot recognize my home? I know it as I know my own soul." I addressed the technician, half sick at what I had to ask, yet all too aware of how necessary it was. "Probe this memory. Show us more."
"We need to know about Earth's defenses," Coplann snapped.
"No. We need to know if I am seeing what I am seeing. Or rather, you need to know. I am sure already." I nodded toward the technician, then snuck a glance at Sinclair. He appeared unconscious, a small mercy. At least I would not be tormenting him further.
The image of the mountain sharpened. Then we were closer, as if partway up the slope, moving downward with an easy walking rhythm. I knew the shape of the land, the colors along that stretch of it. Gold and red: the hues of the hala bushes that bloomed there in high summer. Then, around a bend in the path, a tall, narrow rock shot through with veins of crystal came into view. A handspan at the top of it bent slightly toward the northeast, pointing toward a familiar spot—the place where Mir family stories said the ashes of Mirilenn had been scattered. "There!" I said. "That marker. Do mountains of Earth have memory stones for Minbari ancestors? Will you tell me this is so, Coplann—that I am still mistaken?"
He sounded as shaken as I felt. "This cannot be. There must be some error somewhere…"
"No, Delenn is right." The new voice, slightly reedy with age, was Jenimer's. The eldest of the Nine and a religious scholar of note, he was of the family Talan, and like me called Tuzanor's mountains home. "I know those mountains, and I have seen that marker. I walked that very path with your father, of beloved memory"—he nodded toward me—"many cycles ago. We were each tracing old family stories, and he showed it to me." He frowned at the holo-screen, bewildered. "But how can a human remember a place that belongs to Minbari? A place where no human ever was?"
"Unless…" Even to myself, I sounded faint and faraway. "…he has been there…"
Coplann spoke again, all the harsher for his fright. "But we know no human has ever—"
"Then he cannot have been human." A cold wind seemed to blow through me, like the outriders of a blizzard. Nine days' storm, I thought nonsensically, as other fragments of the only possible answer shot through my consciousness like whirling darts of windblown snow. Dukhat, talking one evening about the slowly ebbing Minbari birth rate: It is as if there are fewer souls among us waiting to be reborn… and we do not know why. Hearing my father say to Draal, on the same subject one dark winter's night: If our greatest souls are not returning, then where are they going? "He was there, though," I said slowly. "He walked that ground once—and knew it as his own."
Jenimer's eyes widened. "What are you saying, Satai Delenn?"
He had used my title to remind me of my place. My obligation, to speak truth and avoid error. But I was certain of my ground, and would speak the truth I saw. "Tell the fleet to stop firing. Tell them to stop now. We cannot kill any more of them. We are killing our own souls."
Uproar. Protest rose from four throats: Coplann and Shakat from the warrior caste, Varenn and Durlan from the worker caste. I glanced swiftly around at the rest. Jenimer was frowning again, puzzling it through; Morann had gone pale as ice. Codroni, the third of the religious caste, looked as though dawn had broken somewhere inside his psyche—and Hedronn… Hedronn had closed his eyes as if in silent prayer.
I raised my voice and called the bridge. "Cease fire. Relay this order to all ships, on the word of Satai Delenn."
Coplann rounded on me, eyes blazing. "You are no warrior, and you do not command the Valen'tha! You have no right—"
"'I am Grey'," I snapped back. "'I stand between the candle and the star!'" Then, a touch more softly: "They are not going anywhere, Satai Coplann. We have decimated their fleet, such as it was to begin with. If I am in error, there will be plenty of time to finish them off. But if I am not in error…"
I left the rest unspoken. Better to let their imaginations fill in the unspeakable consequences. Minbari do not kill Minbari—that lesson had been ingrained in us for the past thousand years. No one had any wish to drag us back to the barbaric times before. But if this human, Sinclair, had been Minbari once, then…
"I agree with Delenn," Codroni said quietly. "Before we go any further, we must know."
"How?" It was Morann who spoke this time, still white-faced and drawn. "How are we to test this theory of yours, Delenn—that the human Sinclair carries a Minbari soul? How are we to know where this memory comes from, for that matter? What if it is your memory, and Sinclair took it from you? We know the Earthers have telepaths. He could be one."
"Of course." Coplann pounced on the idea, like a hunting cat on a baby gokk. "There is your explanation. There is nothing Minbari about the soul of this human; he is simply a mind-thief."
"If he were a telepath, the scanner would have registered that. And I would know in any case if he had tried to touch my mind. As would any of us." I paused, partly for effect and partly to work out what to say next. Many of them were halfway toward my view already; now I had to bring them a little further. "Let us follow this Minbari memory and see where it leads us. We may find out who he was, and why he was reborn human. Which, in turn, may tell us whether other humans are likewise Minbari reborn."
"This is foolish," Coplann muttered, but he gave a bare nod of assent.
I looked toward the technician, who had watched our debate with wide eyes. "Proceed."
Sinclair's face twitched, as if the scanner hurt him even in unconsciousness. Forgive me, I thought, and then wondered if I would ever have the chance to say it to him in person.
A new image coalesced on the screen. A view from a balcony, looking out over a city. Tuzanor, unmistakably—the buildings of blue-veined stone that glowed in the morning light, the tamed cataract that gave the city its power, the surrounding mountains that cradled it like a giant's hand. In the near distance, a half-built spire rose in the air. At the sight of it, someone gasped. Satai Varenn, of the worker caste Kinar clan.
"Valen's Tower," she murmured. "My twenty-times great grandmother helped design and build it, more than eight hundred cycles ago." One trembling hand rose to her lips. "How can this human, this… Sinclair… remember that?"
"This cannot be." Morann. So quiet, I could scarcely hear him. And desperate—the way someone sounds who knows he has erred terribly and would give anything to deny it.
The man on the balcony—through whose eyes we were seeing—laid a hand on the rail. The ring he wore caught my eye. I felt disoriented suddenly, as if the solid deck of the Valen'tha had turned to vapor beneath my feet. Two kneeling figures joining hands across a luminous oval stone… I had seen drawings of that ring in the scrolls my father worked with—ancient and rare ones, known only to the most serious scholars of Valen. The Anla'shok wore a brooch of the same design, had done so since their creation in Valen's time...
I was moving before I knew it. I flung myself toward Sinclair and began working at his bonds. My hands were shaking, my fingers clumsy. "Call a healer," I told the technician. "Tell them to come now. He must be tended, cared for—"
"What are you doing?" Coplann shouted.
"What does it look like?" One wrist was half-free now. I glanced toward Codroni, who stood nearest. "Come and help me. Someone must take his weight, keep him from falling."
Grave-faced, he came forward. His strong arms slid under Sinclair's shoulders as I finished with one wrist and moved toward the other. After a moment, Varenn came over as well and started working on one bound foot.
"You're mad," Coplann said, but did not sound as if he believed it.
"Am I?" I glared at him. "You know what you saw. What we all saw. This man is Valen, Coplann. Valen reborn! He has Valen's memories. He wears Valen's ring, lost for nearly thirty generations. No one has worn it since Valen died. But if you must have one more test—" My gaze fell on the Staff of Valen, held loosely in Jenimer's hands. I nodded toward it. "There is a Triluminary. Bring it near him. Let us see what happens."
Coplann opened his mouth, then closed it again as Jenimer carefully removed the Triluminary from its place in the center of the staff. With solemn reverence, he walked forward and stood within a handspan of Sinclair's motionless body. Codroni laid Sinclair gently on the floor; then the three of us near him backed away, out of the Triluminary's range. Slowly, Jenimer raised it. As it passed close to Sinclair, the heart of the tiny triangle glowed with a fierce white light.
Wonder passed over Jenimer's face. His hand drifted down to his side. "In Valen's name," he breathed.
"Yes." I choked back anguish I could not yet afford to show. Sinclair's—Valen's—face was so still, so pale and drawn… "Exactly. May the Universe have mercy on us all."
ooOoo
The Battle of the Line is legend now: the outnumbered but determined last defenders of Earth, who by a miracle forced the surrender of the impregnable Minbari fleet. Or, in an alternate version, the last defense of humanity's birthworld that would have been doomed but for the inexplicable decision by the inscrutable Minbari foe to surrender at the point of victory. Neither version is wholly true or wholly false. Earth was saved by a miracle, and that miracle did force us to surrender. Yet our decision must have seemed inexplicable. It certainly was to many of our own people, especially in the warrior caste.
Sinclair revived briefly before the healer came—just long enough to lunge toward me, who happened to be nearest. He was unable to do more than pull down my hood before Varenn restrained him and he passed out again. We left him unconscious but resting in the infirmary until he had regained some strength, then put him back in his Starfury and let him go. His people would rescue him, now that we had stopped firing on them, and would learn what they could from him—which would be nothing. We had seen to that.
At Coplann's insistence, we captured and tested other surviving humans from the battle as well. Of the twenty we scanned with the Triluminary before he was satisfied, nine had Minbari memories. Nearly half. "We must end this war," I told him, and the rest of the Council. "We are destroying our own kindred. How can we justify this? How would Dukhat ever have wanted this?"
"It was you who said no mercy," Coplann growled.
"And I was wrong." I heard the tremor in my voice, but let it go. "If Dukhat taught me anything, it was to follow the truth wherever it led. We all know where this truth leads now. I am not ashamed to admit it. I am only ashamed we did not know it and stop the bloodshed sooner."
What we had learned of Sinclair shocked me as much as any. I had not expected it. I had not expected anything. I had only hoped, desperately, to learn something about humans that might let me persuade the rest of the Grey Council to stay our hand. To find that our greatest soul had migrated to a human body was far beyond any luck I could have wished for—painful though it was to acknowledge the implications of our misguided holy war. After the Triluminary confirmed his link to Valen, even the most ardent war supporters could not deny the evidence of their eyes. But as the price for their acquiescence, they extracted a major concession: that our people remain ignorant of the reason for our surrender. They will not accept such a truth, they said. It will cause chaos, should they learn we are kin to barbarian killers.
I had misgivings—more silence, amounting to a lie of omission?—but did not voice them. The most important thing was to end the slaughter. Whatever price there was to be, I would pay it. Sinclair's secret would be known only at the highest levels of the religious caste, and among the Grey Council. Even the shai alytin, the highest-ranking warriors outside the Council, would not know it. As for Sinclair himself, we wiped his memory of all events related to his capture. They overruled me when I protested, and I had to concede their point. How could we conceal the truth from our own people if Sinclair revealed it to the humans?
And so our crusade ended, and the humans lived. For myself, the moment felt oddly hollow. I had finally made right my wrong, and yet I could not truly claim to have done so. How does one "make right" a quarter of a million dead? How atone for the lives lost—human and Minbari—in a conflict caused by my careless words? I could not do it, and yet I must. The Universe required it. Seeking guidance, I went home to Tuzanor and spent nine days fasting and praying at the temple there. When I came out, I felt weak and shaky and not quite substantial, but was no nearer an answer. The only thing that came to me was a recurring vision of something I had seen in that same Dreaming with Dukhat cycles ago—the long, thin, odd structure in space, colored blue and gunmetal grey. It hung near a huge, orange-tinted planet I belatedly recognized, and I realized it had to be a space station. But who had built it, and why had I seen it? More to the point, why was I seeing it now?
I had my answer a few days later, when Satai Hedronn met my shuttle upon my return to the Valen'tha. "We are to meet with the humans," he told me. "Envoys from the Earth Alliance government. In a city on their planet, called Geneva." He pronounced the word as though he could scarcely manage its alien sound. "They wish to discuss one of the treaty terms. Apparently, their President Santiago—" again, he spoke the strange syllables with difficulty— "wishes our aid in building a space station. A place for humans and other races to meet and trade and take each other's measure. So there cannot be any more misunderstandings that lead to bloodshed." He paused, with a thoughtful look. "It is not a bad idea, really. It may even work. Certainly there is no harm in trying. And we owe them something. We may as well begin with this."
He continued as we left the landing bay and began to walk down the corridor. "The Earthers have built these stations before, apparently. Four of them. All were destroyed. One of them actually vanished, from what I have heard. I am not sure whether to believe them fools or admire their persistence for trying again."
I felt a tingling across my skin. The ship's air seemed charged, as if a light-storm were developing. "Where will they build it?" I thought I knew, but I wanted to be sure.
"Near Fi'Tellanan," he said. "The humans call it Epsilon Three. They seem to have a fascination with numbers; there will be one in the name of the space station, too."
"What is the station's name?"
"Babylon Five."