—Extract from Security Chief Michael Garibaldi's interview with Ambassador Londo Mollari—

What is there to say? We all knew going into that room what would happen to us unless we could prevent it. Our hands were tied with plastic behind our backs and we were pushed in. I could not keep my footing, and I fell. By the time I looked up, the humans were gone and we were alone.

I had been trying for the last hour to do something with that damned ring. Anything. I had kept hold of it even when I was unconscious, and the feel of it biting into my skin was becoming familiar. But no matter how I manipulated it, nothing happened. Lying there and looking at that floor, I tried again. I don't even know why. It is not as though I trust Kosh, or that I think he can see the future. It was simply that it made no sense that he would give me something that could not do a thing.

It didn't do anything that time either.

Delenn was the only one of us who had remained on her feet, but she could do little enough to help us as we struggled to stand. When at last we made our way to the center of the room, it hit me that we were alone. Not just on that ship, you understand, but in the galaxy. No one would reach us in time to save us, if help was coming at all.

I said, "They are going to kill us."

"Unless one of us has a brilliant plan, I would imagine they will," G'Kar said. He was so calm, so ready to die. The Narns and their unending love for martyrdom, yes? It made me all the more determined not to die, just to see the disappointed look on his face.

"Londo?" Delenn asked me. She sounded so hopeful I tried again.

I suppose I had thought one of them would end up with the ring. You know how the Vorlons and the Minbari get along. I have very few illusions, Mister Garibaldi, and I know I am not a hero. Delenn, she is a hero. Even G'Kar is somewhat heroic in a self-important way. But me? Please. I am well past my glory days, and they weren't that impressive.

So I said, "It's not working. I've been trying, and it's not working." And then, because the universe loves making me look like a fool, the ring slid around the tip of my brachiarte.

What is that? Oh, it is the technical term for … yes, exactly.

Delenn must have seen my surprise, because she asked, "Londo?"

"It worked."

"What?" G'Kar hissed. We were close enough together it would be hard for the camera to pick up our voices, but if it was already broadcasting, everyone across the quadrant knew he was startled.

I kept my voice as low as I could. "It just worked! I put it on!"

"Onto what?" G'Kar asked. Then he realized. "Oh, for the love of G'Quan. Honestly?"

Delenn was more mature about the issue. "What does it do? Can you tell?"

"It is warm," I said. "Warmer than it should be, I think."

"Is that it?" she asked.

"It tingles a bit."

G'Kar looked disgusted. Really, you think he could be more appreciative than that when I had a chance to save our lives. "I have no desire to hear about any tingles you might be having, Mollari."

"Londo, please concentrate," Delenn said, "Vorlon technology is organic. It may be trying to communicate with you."

I had no idea how some piece of Vorlon technology would communicate with me, and I said as much. Delenn did not have any real answers, although she may have said something that boiled down to Minbari mysticism. G'Kar kept an eye on the door and said nothing, apparently done with any conversation that involved even the implication of brachiarti. Me, I think he is just jealous.

And then, very suddenly, I felt as though a spike had been driven between my eyes. I must have fallen, because Delenn was shouting, and even G'Kar was on his knees next to me. I scrabbled with my other brachiarti to pull the ring off, but it would not move. Another spike hit, and some part of my brain knew it was a form of information. Too bad it wasn't a form compatible with the Centauri mind. Damn Kosh anyway. He may understand the 'big picture' better than the rest of us, but he is not so good at the details.

So there I was, on the floor, as some bizarre alien ring tried to download itself into my brain. I think I had a seizure, but I don't remember it. But after a while the information slowed, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. That turned out to be blood, because I'd bit my tongue. The weight I felt very suddenly was also less metaphorical and more G'Kar pinning me down with his knees on my arms and his weight on my chest. Delenn was laid out across my knees.

"Get off me," I told him.

"Are you going to stop trying to kill yourself? Because I for one refuse to try and get into your shirt to get that ring out." Great Maker, Mister Garibaldi, he almost sounded concerned. It was probably for his own well-being and dignity, but it was still disconcerting.

I looked up at him, and I found I knew things. They were not concrete things, and they moved away whenever I tried to focus on any one of them, but a plan started to form. Maybe it was mine, maybe it was the ring, maybe it was both. I don't know. All I do know is that the pieces fit together. "I can get us out of this room," I said, and I knew it was true. "I don't know how, but I can. After that … G'Kar, during the occupation, the Narn resistance forces liked to manipulate shipboard computers, convince the Centauri crews that their engines were failing containment so that they abandoned the vessel and the Narn could take it over. Did you ever do that?"

"A time or two," he said, and then comprehension dawned. "It would only work if I could get to the bridge. I wouldn't know any other weak points in a human vessel."

Delenn's face appeared around G'Kar's hip. "I am not entirely certain what sort of ship this is, but human design tends to follow certain patterns. I could get us to that bridge, but we would have to fight our way there."

"Better to fight than sit here and get executed," G'Kar said.

"Good," I said. I felt mad and reckless as I had not done since I was young and convinced that nothing in the universe could hurt me. "Then one of you had better undo the lower buttons of my waistcoat and shirt."

G'Kar rolled his eyes. "And by 'one of you' I suppose you mean me."

"Well, while you're there …"

"This is the most undignified escape plan ever, and I am ashamed to be a part of it," he said, and then grabbed at my buttons.

He very nearly crushed me when he tried. "Ach!" I managed to get out while having all the air driven out of my lungs. "Be careful!"

"Oh, stop fussing!"

It was only Delenn who stopped me from kneeing him before he could do any more damage. Somehow he managed to open my shirt without crushing anything beyond repair. Maker only knows how.

He had maybe three buttons undone when the door opened. Luckily for us, humans like to assume things, and seeing us like that? Well, let's just say that the expressions on their faces convinced me that they were drawing the wrong conclusions.

"Jesus," one of them said, "get them off one another. Animals."

G'Kar looked at me, and I at him. He needed to know I was ready to get us out of the room. I nodded to him. I may not be a hero, Mister Garibaldi, but I am very good at surviving.

We were seized and dragged into a line on our knees. As they moved me I rearranged my brachiarti so that two were near to the opening in my shirt, one of them still caught in that ring. The humans were armed with PPGs, and several of them carried knives. One such knife hung from the belt of the man who dragged me into place and held me there. Even as he took his place behind me I remembered where that knife was.

I felt the press of a PPG to the back of my head. The camera would pick up the second it blew my face across the floor. And those humans called us animals.

I heard a woman somewhere over my shoulder say, "Ready."

The man who had kidnapped us stepped a bit in front of us. I caught Delenn's eye and I mouthed the word 'distraction'. She looked up at the man as he began to spout his rhetoric for the camera. Do I remember what he said? No. Like I told you before, he was average. Boring. It did not matter what he said. The words passed his lips and you forgot them the next moment. Delenn had said they were all trying to get noticed, but the only thing I will remember about them is they tried to kill us. They weren't people to me. Their cause meant nothing. They were just guns with an organic extension off the end.

The man was just saying, "We will retake the power on our world. We will restore our dignity. We will—" when Delenn started to laugh.

The man started to splutter in shock, like he thought it was the universe's time to take him seriously and we were ruining it. Idiot. The universe takes no one seriously.

G'Kar did not hesitate to join Delenn, giggling even as he said, "Shh! He's trying to make a point."

It felt amazing to laugh in their faces, Mister Garibaldi. Better than almost anything. I could not see them but I could feel them lose control of the situation. They might have been guns, but we were minds. And that made us free no matter how they bound us.

"Oh yes," I said, "very serious." We all cackled too hard to speak for a few moments. When I could go on, I said, "Sorry, sorry! Did we ruin your big moment? I promise that if you turn your monologue into an aria, I will listen with rapt attention."

If G'Kar could have applauded, he would have done. "An excellent suggestion, Mollari! I second the motion for a musical number."

Delenn looked up at that human who had looked like death incarnate a minute before, and now just looked ridiculous. "I am sorry," she said, and sounded like she meant it. "You have waited your entire life to finally have everyone's attention, everyone's fear. But fear does not remain. It is shown to be hollow, something to be passed through and forgotten. Hope remains."

"Let's see them forget what you look like without a face," the man said, his calm stripped away and his tone ugly. "Let's see the others laugh after you die."

That was my cue, wasn't it? If I did not act, Delenn would die, and we would die shortly after. I pulled out the ring from my shirt and I could feel the way the energy in the room moved. I am not speaking metaphorically. Somehow I could feel the way particles bounced off one another in the air. I could feel the surge of them in the power cord to the camera, and in every PPG. Each of those points was like a beacon to me.

The man shouted. A bigoted human like him? I cannot imagine he had looked too hard into Centauri anatomy. He probably did not even know what he was seeing. He raised his gun, and I pushed. The ring burned. I could hear behind me the explosions of half a dozen PPGs, and the power cable went up like a firework. I could barely see. The ring had burned itself away, and yes, that hurt just as much as you might think. So did the overload of the PPG against my head, even if the majority of the force was directed back away from me.

I was thrown forward. A piece of shrapnel tore the side of my neck. I twisted around and I could see the man who was to kill me lying on the floor without a hand. I used my other brachiarte to grab his knife from his belt and stab him before he could do anything else. He died while I cut away the bonds on my wrists.

Many of the humans were not going to be able to attack us, being unconscious or dead and missing limbs. But a few had only burns. I closed with the man who had spoken, and he had barely reached for his own knife when I stabbed him in the heart. He died as forgettably as he lived.

"Mollari!" I heard, and I turned to see G'Kar head-butt one of the men in the stomach from where he was still on his knees. The human doubled up over him and G'Kar snapped his head back to break the human's nose. Delenn was on her feet, as graceful as I have ever seen, and she did not need her hands to fight a man who lunged at her.

I cut her bonds on the way past, and she knocked the human unconscious with the heel of her hand.

There were only a few left, and one of them came at me with his own knife. I do not know who taught him how to fight with blades, but his technique was woeful. I am nowhere near what I was in my youth, but he was dead in seconds.

I cut the ties on G'Kar and he reached behind me to deliver a blow to a human attempting to sneak up on me. I turned and drove my blade into the human's throat.

And with the sound of his body hitting the floor the room fell silent. We knew we had to move quickly, that others in the ship were likely watching our intended execution and would be on their way to stop us. I hoped they did not think us so mad as to run to their bridge, and we could avoid many of them while they went to the docking bay.

The door had shorted out, and it opened and closed sporadically. We ran out, and I pulled my brachiarti back into my shirt. It hurt more than I had expected, and I clutched at my midsection for several seconds until the pain receded.

As we ran, Delenn asked, "Were you hurt? I saw the ring turn white-hot."

"I will not object to medical attention when we get back to Babylon 5, but it will keep," I said.

She took the lead, and G'Kar and I followed her. There were going to be more humans on the bridge, and they would have PPGs that did work. I no longer had the Vorlon ring, and of us, only I carried a knife. I wanted us to run into human stragglers, if only to gain PPGs of our own before we reached the bridge and the inevitable fight there.

"I don't suppose you have an idea about clearing out the bridge, while you're at it?" G'Kar said. "Because they're likely to have PPGs there too, and the Vorlon ring is gone."

Delenn's smile was not one I would want turned on me. "Have you not noticed the torn out panels in these corridors? I think a little rewiring outside the bridge may prove quite useful."

She is a canny woman, Delenn, and far more ruthless than she would like you to think. I knew that what was ahead of us was just as dangerous as what we had just done, but I was no longer afraid. Delenn was right, you know. Fear is a thing you pass through. We had escaped from certain death, Mister Garbaldi. And even if we faced it again, who could stand before us?