The Long Trial

by R Coles

Havah Lassee is a hybrid whose race is unknown. After fighting as a Marine in the EarthMinbari War, the identity of her alien parent is revealed. The ensuing Shadow War brings her to Alyt Neroon and the realization of her family and who she needs to be.

21. Chapter 21

This story is based on the Babylon 5 universe, created by J. Michael Straczynski.

Chapter 21—Ancient History

Havah awoke groggily, with pain screaming through her left arm and a polite Minbari physician smiling down at her.

He fiddled with the drain in her wrist. "How are you feeling?"

She mumbled, lips thick with anesthesia. "Ummmm, fil like crp." She tried to sit up, mouth dry.

The doctor arrested her with his hand and reached for a cup of water. "Just rest for now. Here." He helped her wet her mouth with a few sips. "You were still bad shape when they brought you here. The ship physician had to wait for the bone infection to clear before working on your hand."

Havah glanced nervously at her bandaged arm. She tried to wiggle her fingers but nothing responded. Her heart started racing and a cold cramping chill sunk in through her abdomen. The thought being paralyzed or losing a limb had always terrified her. She'd known the risk in Earth Force. She knew people who had lost limbs during the war by explosions, mines, burns. They were never quite the same, and people never treated them quite the same either. She'd always just put it out of her head. A lot of people in the Marines had just drunk to forget the awareness of their chances. She'd never had that option. What if it was paralyzed, hanging from her arm like a dead shriveled thing? How would she adjust?

The physician saw the play of fear across her glance and reassured her. He had cared for the Star Riders for most of his professional life and recognized that look. "Yes, it's still there, and you will be able to use it again. We were able to re-attach the tendons and ligaments and repair the blood vessels and the skin and muscle grafts were successful. The bone has already mostly healed, but it is still weak. It will be some time before you regain the function that you are used to. The surgery was difficult, since there was a lapse in time between the injury and repair. You will need more surgery to fully repair the connective tissue. But you can begin rehabilitation soon, after the next surgery, in a few days." Knowing she would remember almost nothing he told her now, he shuffled about and ordered food brought in. "Eat now." He stayed to guide her and make sure most of the food made it into her mouth, and then cleared the tray away and left her to sleep.

Pain woke her up in the middle of the night. She peeled back the bandages for a morbid look. Synth-skin plastered the wounds, rough and uneven over the scars forming from the grafts. The arm wouldn't be pretty, but at least it was still there. She reattached the bandages. Eventually they could remove the scars, but for now, she needed to see if she could learn to use those muscles again. She drowsed asleep again.

After the next surgery, her mind cleared and she noticed a still black figure in the corner. Neroon. He approached her bed.

"The doctor has informed me that you are recovering well. Now that you are more lucid and your memory will be functional, you can begin training. In fact, the stimulation will be good for your recovery. It will be another week or two before you can begin physical training, so you will begin with clan history." He laid an armful of scroll containers on the table next to her. "This is the documented geneology of the Star Riders clan. In the next two weeks, you will memorize your ancestors and be able to tell me the nature of their relations, what dates they lived and died, and what their prominent accomplishments were. I will question you thoroughly prior to the start of physical training. Do you understand?"

Havah uncapped one of the containers and unrolled the contents with her working hand and wide eyes. There had to have been ten-thousand years of history in this collection. Ten-thousand years memorized in the next two weeks? "Yes sir." She said warily. He nodded and left. And she sat, staring at the containers like Cinderella wondering how she was going to sort a silo full of grain by the end of the day. Where were the pixies when you needed them? But no magical creatures could force the knowledge into her brain, so she unrolled the rest of the containers and started at the earliest and began working her way up. And doing everything with one hand made it a slow business. At least it was not her writing hand that was out of use.

The physician brought her food, glancing at the scrolls strewn across the table, smiling. "Be sure to get plenty of rest. Not too late."

Havah ignored him and sat late into the night poring over the papers until the names started to blur and dance and laugh at her. They were really quite fascinating though. And the lineage appeared to be recorded farther back than she had first supposed. Translated into Earth time, the recorded lineage dated back 750,000 years, about 100,000 years after the last great migration from the polar regions, the Cold Times. That made these records far older than the Pleistocene era on Earth, while Homo erectus was still plodding through pre-Ice Age Asia! And these were not records of the first Minbari culture either, only one record of this particular geneology. This meant that not only had they evolved into their current form by this time, complete with culture, but this was archaeological evidence of written language that early! Jesus! She had known that the Minbari were an old species, but…She handled the parchments carefully.

These can't be the originals, they have to be copies, she thought. No one in his right mind would allow these out of a museum!

She laid back and mused for a moment. There were copies of genetics in her cells that could be traced back before Humans became Human. It was mind-boggling. And despite the various Minbari clan skirmishes, the texts had all been preserved.

What would our world be like now if the library at Alexandria hadn't been burned, and cuneiform tablets had all remained unscoured by the sand?

A hundred thousand names to remember. Thankfully, the Minbari were a long lived race, and didn't appear to produce as many offspring as Humans, or there would have been a lot more than that to memorize. She still didn't see how she was going to do it, but these texts were more than worthy of the attempt. After her eyes cleared a little she dove back into the scrolls with relish. In addition, she realized as she read, this was not the beginning of the clan, but the point at which it began being recorded as one. There was not one common ancestor but a few families, so even if they were geographically isolated, there was some genetic variation. She remembered the first names quite easily: Callir Goku 'shar, for whom her family was named, Callir Gokar-Killer, Haal Kal'tot Thanra—Haal Who-Keeps-Away-the-Kal'tot, Kishili Fit'An—Kishili Star Rider or Who-Speaks-To-The-Stars, and a few others, nine in all, nine families, nine houses. Nine, there was that number again. And it was notable that all of these ancestors were women. The geneology was matrilineal. Refreshing. As she perused the records, she found another set of names she recognized: Turanni of the family of Callir, her daughter Kuraal, and her husband Trelann. There were no family lines extending past Kuraal in that unit, and the inscription next to Turanni and Kuraal read 'Perished at Z'Hadum, 447700-447733, 447730-447733.' Next to Trelann, the inscription read 'Perished in the line of duty, 447695-447733.' These were Minbari dates, the dates of their births and deaths. Turanni had been 33 years old, very young by Minbari standards. Kuraal had been three.

Next year, Havah thought. I'll be 33 in a few months. She's my ancestor, sort of. Her direct line was interrupted, but we share DNA.

She continued reading the inscriptions listing Turanni as a member of the first Grey Council and an Alyt of the starship Ingata during the Great Shadow War.

Ingata? It can't be the same ship as Neroon's. They aren't even the same build anymore. They must have continued the names as the new models replaced the old ones, just another way of tracing lineage. I know you Turanni, more about you than your chromosomes and your ship. And she drifted to sleep with scrolls in her hand. But her ancestor remained quiet for now.

Neroon came in the next day, with what seemed to Havah, another truckload of scrolls and data crystals. He quickly scanned over the piles of scrolls on the table and in her lap, satisfied that she had been trying to make some headway on them, and presented her with a box of crystals, since there was nowhere to place them on the table or anywhere else. "The Star Rider's clan history. You must learn more than names and brief inscriptions. You must learn who we are, and how we are a part of the Minbari people." Fixing her with a pointed look, he left again, before she could ask when she was supposed to have this new data memorized. She looked at the mountain of material with a mixture of despair and wild exhilaration that she was going to be studying ancient history that rivaled the age of some of the oldest myths and legends on Earth.

Begin at the beginning, she thought. This history began with the nine families after their migration with the Minbari people. Not early enough. She knew that there was recorded history prior to this, there had to be, this was just a recording of the defined clan's place in this society. But if Neroon wanted her to understand, then she needed to see the formation of the clans to understand how this society evolved as it did. She had the physician call Felshenn, whom she knew was Neroon's aide. He would be able to get her these materials without bothering her father. He came in, glancing at the papers stacked around her. He just stared at her quizzically, waiting for her to tell him why he'd been requested. He had better things to do than play attaché to this Human.

"Do you have any material on Minbari prehistory?"

"What do you mean prehistory?"

She paused. She had read some things among the Anla Shok, but they'd been too lacking in detail. "Pre-history, like, before recorded or verified history."

"That makes no sense. If it is before recorded time, then how do you suppose we would have a record of it?"

Havah sighed. "Never mind." There was no way she could think of to explain what she meant. Maybe it was just an Earth concept, since Humans were so recently evolved. "Well, what about any records of the Minbari time in the sea, or anytime before the Ice Age?"

"Ice age?"

"The Cold Times."

He nodded. "Yes, I will retrieve some records and bring them when I have time, perhaps later. Have you finished all of this already, that you are asking for more?" He said skeptically.

"No, it's just that I figured that I'd understand all this better if I started at the very beginning."

He said nothing, just stared at her for a moment and then left.

He returned with crystals some hours later, put them onto another table that had been set up and left before she could say 'Thank you.'

But it was exactly what she needed. Historians had kept track of where the old settlements were reputed to have been before the transition to land. Having originated recently, in evolutionary time, from the sea, the Minbari were exceptional divers and swimmers, capable of withstanding extreme levels of water pressure with minimal amounts of oxygen for impressive periods of time. Divers had returned to some of these submarine ruins. The frigidity of the arctic water had preserved them well. There had been caves with pictographs carved into crystal, rock, and hardened coral skeleton from a time when the waters had been temperate. Some appeared to be tales, others maps. They were elaborate, with other markings indicating phonetics. Written language dating back to…3 million years ago! And that was only what had been found. These beings had needed no other shelter, and the sea had left few other relics. But they clearly had opposable thumbs or some physical capacity to write and build, maybe specialized fins, and obviously the mental capacity as well. There were no pictures to be had anywhere of the prehistoric Minbari, although there must have been some physical evolution after this point to allow them to survive on land as bipeds. But she was not a marine biologist, and couldn't even begin to imagine what their anatomy might have looked like.

According to the history, about 3 million years ago, the climate began slowly cooling. The Minbari began to change, generation by generation, natural selection weeding out those who could not respond to the cold and the sinking of the water consumed by the advancing glaciers. About two million years ago, the temperature and level of the water became unlivable to the Minbari species without greater technology to weather the changes than they possessed at the time, and they faced extinction. No one knew exactly when or exactly how the change was made and the climatic threat survived. But about a thousand years later than the threat of extinction was carved for record into the frozen reefs for no one but the loktari and arctic fish, glyphs appeared on land, nearly identical to those in the ocean ruins. The chain of language had not been broken. And petrified frozen remains of a sea-Minbari had been found and analyzed and respectfully left in its watery grave, with no pictures of course, indicating that the genetics were similar enough to confirm that the species carving the land glyphs was a close variation on the one that had carved them in the sea. There was a gap in written record after this for a period of about 10,000 years in which history was derived from songs, long elaborate songs, passed down precisely by verbal tradition and then recorded with pure phonetic representation, later, rather than the earlier mixture of pictoral and phonetic. At least no documents or carvings had been found during this period. The form of language was more ancient than the one she recognized from the time of Valen. It contained accents, clicks, rumbles and wails that her vocal chords were not capable of making, all of which were no longer present in the modern language. The songs were of the sea, the past, the cold, and the journey they had taken to the equatorial band. Here, though names were not recorded, the story of the Kal'tot and of the clans began, over one and a half million years ago, nearing the end of the last australopithecine line on Earth.

The songs talked about the bitter cold, the massive rivers of ice thundering inexorably through the land and shallowing sea. They learned to walk the rivers and crevasses, navigating south to the rivers' end. The stars often vanished in skies that were as white as the ice by day, and as blank as the void by night. But somehow, they found their way, by star when the stars were visible, by wave and the voice of the wind and the leaning of growth, by leaving markings to retrace their new faltering steps above water. Forty-thousand years, forty-thousand years they traveled to the end of the rivers where the ice melted into water again. Only one-third of the family lines that began the migration survived to finish it.

The songs indicated that when they finally arrived at a suitable place, they began to mine the rock to build homes, and fish, forage, and hunt, spreading out across the continent. But they found another species interfering with their new habitat, who also used the networks of caves, although they did not create new ones as the Minbari did. These occupants were proto-sentient, with rudimentary speech and a loose society, that appeared to the Minbari rough and uncivilized compared to the grace of the ocean creatures they had always known. After long months of frustrating attempts at first contact, they learned that these beings called themselves 'drahg' or 'drahgk', as near as the Minbari could tell from their speech. They could not entirely understand the syllables, foreign to the Minbari speech and vocal pipes as they were. So the Minbari called them Min Holori, Children of the Rock. They co-existed tensely for years, but resources grew sparse, and the nocturnal habits of the Min Holor did not fit well with the habits of the diurnal Minbari, who would sometimes find their stores of food pilfered or their hunting grounds usurped. Although, Havah thought, it sounded as though it was the Minbari who did the usurping, since the Min Holori were there first. While their habits led them to hunt different animals, the capture of certain species altered the ecology and drove away those that the Minbari sought.

Finally, both societies buckled under the population pressure and exploded into hostility. According to the songs, the Min Holori raided the Minbari villages one night in a unified effort greater than any the Minbari had expected from this 'primitive race', and hundreds died as fields and forests burned and homes were destroyed by rock-falls. In the dead of night, Minbari fought with the pirates, and the shrieks of the burned and frightened were drowned by the crashing waves as Minbari who tried to escape into the wild sea perished, the sea that used to be their refuge. Their near-annihilation drove the Minbari to a collective battle rage, and the following months saw the planning, organization and implementation of a greater assault on another species than the peaceful sea-dwellers had ever known. They began training to fight on land, crafting new weapons of metal and crystal, and a militia was formed of the men and women of 81 families, nine times nine, among them were the families of Callir, Haal, Kishili and the others who were now being called the Star Riders for their skill in navigating by starlight.

Years of skirmish and outright battle ensued, and slowly, the more advanced skill of the organized Minbari prevailed. They drove the Min Holori hill by hill, forest by forest, cave by cave up against the seas. Every warren they were found in was destroyed. But just as the long years of struggle seemed almost over, something went wrong. Minbari began acting strangely, turning on other Minbari. Members of the army began fighting amongst themselves, and turning on the rest of the populace in inexplicable acts of violence, ending in suicide. After months, the numbers of possessed grew and it was the Minbari who were being scattered out of their own homes into the forests and back against the rivers of ice from which they had come. No Minbari could trust the words of any other.

One brave woman examined the bodies of the possessed despite the risk to her own body and soul, and made a startling discovery. These men and women had indeed been possessed, by a parasite that had wrapped itself around the base of the neck, on the shoulder, and from there inserted itself into the neural and spinal fibers of the victims, controlling their every movement. Here the story grew mythical. According to the song, a guardian of Minbar, came to her the next night and told her not to destroy the bodies of their enemies because the answer to the plague was with them. She found the rough graves of the fallen Min Holori, risking discovery both by remaining enemies, and by the crazed members of her own tribes, and dug them up. The plague had issued from the Min Holori. The parasites were not isolated organisms at all, but buds of their own bodies, premature pods with each a single baleful eye, one of which stared blankly at the sky now that its parent was long dead. As a last attempt at self-preservation, the Min Holori were infiltrating the Minbari with their own offspring, and it was working. With revulsion at her new realization, Valeria returned to her people only to be scorned, beaten, and accused of being a spy herself, a Skin-Stealer or Kal'tot, as the possessed were now being called. Imprisoned and in despair, Valeria prayed to Dol'An to help her people believe her and deliver them from the yoke of possession. Her prayer was answered, and she was visited by a guardian, bathed in white light who never gave its name. It told her mournfully that there was no way to heal those who had already been taken, but they could regain their bodies for a short while again, long enough for everyone to see and know what had happened. And in that time, they could build a force large enough to destroy the last cells of the enemy. The guardian told her where to find the ingredients she needed to put the Watchers to sleep, without putting to sleep the victims, and gave her the location of the last remaining coves harboring the Min Holori, and led her out of her jail. She readied the draughts, and as the guardian distracted the tribes with its appearance, she released the mixture into the water supply. Within a day, those who had been possessed were tearfully themselves, like Eurydice returned from Hades for a single night, Havah thought. She showed them all what she'd found, and the victims confirmed what she'd said to the disbelievers.

Knowing their time was short before their souls were exiled again, they gathered and, led by Valeria, encircled the last bastion of the enemy. Only to find the place deserted. A scream rent the air, raking through their minds. Something many-legged and black tore the sky, and then there was nothing but the sounds of the woods and settling rock. The war party scoured the land until night wore into morning, searching through every nook and crag and stand of trees, but the Skin-Stealers were gone. Feeling the return of the unwanted Watchers, the warriors sacrificed themselves on their own swords rather than be cast out of their bodies again to betray their people. Valeria, in grief and chagrin at what her advice had led to, grabbed a fallen warrior's sword and would have joined them, but a guardian appeared and stopped her. With laments, she beat her hands against her head-crest and mourned the fallen. The guardian surveyed the events, vanished and was never seen again.

Valeria returned in dishonor to her people and told them what had happened. She was again imprisoned for abandoning the people she had led clearly to a fate worse than death. But as time wore on, and Valeria prayed and prayed to Dol'An who no longer appeared to be listening, the Kal'tot were never heard from again. No more members of the tribes were possessed. The war party had succeeded, and so had Valeria. Decades later, as she lay aged and serene, the Elders of the tribes met. The events of the past were reviewed, and she was released, honored and accepted as an Elder. She died after years of leading the tribes in wisdom, peace, and the meditation she had learned from her decades of captivity, as one of the most beloved leaders ever known.

Very interesting, Havah thought, as she looked up from a scroll. It was long past dark, as the physician scurried in and glared at her for ignoring him the last two times he had tried to get her attention. "You must eat, and sleep if you are to heal. The scrolls are thousands of years old, they will be here at least another day."

She let him take them away, and ply her with water and food. He checked her wound, examined her, and lowered the light, ordering her to sleep. But she didn't. The stories cycled through her head. It all made sense, the Minbari aversion to certain types of deception, fear that the Skin Stealers would return, the reaction to threat, the formation of a standing army following the militia. Here was the origin of the castes. Most societies remained somewhat egalitarian until population pressure forced them to stratify and diversify, specializing the division of labor as each body of knowledge grew, and the society became entrenched. The Min Holori, the Kal'tot, as the Minbari finally called them, the Dragkh, as the Kal'tot called themselves. Where had she heard that name before? They had released a surprising weapon against the Minbari, who were threatening the very continuation of their species, however 'primitive' according to the Minbari. My, how familiar that sounded. And the Kal' tot…they obviously didn't reproduce in the same way, in the family units that the Minbari were used to, so they must have seemed alien. The Minbari had forgotten that most species had last-resort defense mechanisms when threatened with extinction.

But where did they go? They were winning, why did they disappear? Most myths contain a grain of truth. Who are these guardians? Havah wondered, bathed in pale light. And what had loosed its scream on the night of the disappearance? The shadows in the room seemed longer than they had a moment ago, and Havah squeezed her eyes shut, determined to get some sleep. Psi-cops with yellow eyes peering from their necks, sawed at her arms and legs and she tossed until dawn, retching.

The smell of food woke her up as the physician badgered her to eat again and checked her progress. "I don't like those circles under your eyes. Do you need help sleeping? In another day, you can begin rehabilitation exercises. This will help to restore the strength, and range of motion to your hand." Havah nodded gratefully. She was starting to go stir-crazy, and the lack of one hand made her feel even more trapped. She dove into the crystals and scrolls again almost feverishly. Their world, locked in the past as it was, seemed safer. As the history continued, there was a period of relative prosperity, progress and leaps of technology that dwarfed those on Earth during the Industrial Age. But as the population grew, inter-caste and inter-clan tension grew alongside. Tensions blossomed into open rivalries. The worker caste families quarreled amongst themselves for the assignment of projects. The religious caste families competed for prominence in the temples. And the warrior caste clans formed and fortified their own fighting academies, each claiming to produce the toughest, fiercest fighters. The Minbari began looking to the skies and reaching out with new technologies.

The first space flight, 500,000 years Before the Common Era on Earth, was undertaken by the Star Riders, as their name heralded them. It was only appropriate. Their ancient system of navigating the stars was written in program and the ship was engineered and built by the worker caste. It ended in disaster. The trauma of take-off damaged one of the engines and they lost the ability to navigate in orbit. The ship fell back to Minbar and burned in the atmosphere. The blaze in the night sky sent the souls of the warriors back across the sea. The Star Riders were aggrieved. They blamed the workers for shoddy workmanship and engaged in a row that resulted in the embargo of the Shipwright's Guild. They would do it themselves. Rather than give up, this calamity only made them more determined to reach space. And with the help of a half-caste shipwright who left the guild, they built ship after ship and sent crew after crew up to die among the stars after falling back to planet again, freezing to death, or drifting into the sun. The Wind Swords pacified the angry Shipwright's Guild and gained their help in building ships that put them in direct competition with the attempts of the Star Riders. But, twelve years and five Star Rider crews later, their crude ship made it not only to space, but to a system world and back, alive. Havah made certain to memorize the names of all of these astronauts, since she was certain that these were among the ancestors she was expected to know.

The space race did nothing to decrease the growing hostilities between clans or castes. The ferocity of the competition grew between the different warrior caste clans, with the Star Riders and the Wind Swords, as they were now known, at the forefront. Skirmishes on their borderlands grew common, as each fighting group sought to display dominance and superior skill. The religious caste began to clash with the warrior caste families whom they had trained in certain fighting techniques, since they now felt that these skills were being abused. Meanwhile, political jockeying among the temples grew incessant.

Finally, there was the appearance of clusters of remarkable Minbari, Minbari who had special abilities, to communicate without speaking a word, to know the thoughts of others, even to bend wills other than their own and cast images outside of themselves. The Mind Benders. Instead of reacting with fear as Earthers had done, each caste and clan had sought immediately to claim their own telepaths along with the powers they possessed. The warrior caste used their telepaths to best each other in the skirmishes that were beginning to turn into full-scale battles, with significant deaths on both sides. The religious caste used theirs to gain political ground and gain closeness to the spirits. The worker caste used them to increase efficiency on the worksite in communication, and explored the possibility of telekinesis to reduce the need for manual labor.

A breaking point was reached. The warrior telepaths were sent against religious caste telepaths to gain information that had been denied them. Except that two of the opposing telepaths came from the same family. On the night of the invasion, the religious half-caste begged for mercy and a moment to listen. His cousin gave him the moment. Telepaths spanned the population, in every profession, across caste and clan. Their gifts should belong to no one of them alone. They should belong to the Minbari people as a whole. The warrior telepaths agreed, but what could they do? They had their orders. The religious cousin appealed to their reason and devotion to their people. It would require an initial act of mutiny, but didn't they owe their loyalty as warriors to the welfare of the Minbari people? What if their orders were not in the best interests of the Minbari people? The soldiers continued to listen. An alliance of telepaths was needed to show their own families and castes that they were not to be used for each clan's separate purposes. The warriors finally agreed. In the next couple nights, all telepaths were linked and entered the wilderness of Mount Thal'dhu. They had had enough.

Their respective clans were outraged and attempted to retrieve their errant clan members, but the collective powers of the telepaths hid them from all who approached. And meanwhile, the architects and builders among them built. When it was finished, the Thal'dhu Temple stood shielded by the mountain from which it had been quarried. At their chosen time, the telepaths used the broadcasting capacities of the temple to send a message to the Minbari people, in their homes, workplaces, temples, and academies.

"You demand our loyalty as clanmembers, but you have forgotten that your clan, your caste, is not the only clan or caste that makes up our people! What makes any of you think that you are better than any other? What makes you think yourselves worthy to speak for our entire race when you cannot even abide each others existence? You have forgotten that your clans, your castes exist to serve the others, each adding its part to the good of the people as a whole. You demand the loyalty of the telepaths without having proven your own! We are no longer at the whim of individual families! Our gifts are not to be used so cavalierly! We live to serve, not just our clan, but all who have need of us. We will determine this need from now on. If you have doubt of our loyalty or our willingness to serve our people, then come and show yours! You are willing to throw our lives away, but are you willing to give your own if it was asked of you?"

At this challenge, a heavy stone shield irised open in the zenith of the domed ceiling. Varenni, the leader of the new alliance, was bathed in a shaft of light. He swayed slightly as the microwaves generated by the giant wheel of karak'tan, a mineral that Havah didn't recognize or couldn't translate, began to heat up his organs.

"We are."

He stood silent as the wheel opened farther and farther, and his clothes smoked and his skin turned scarlet and sizzled. In a final burst of combustion, he exploded as the entire Minbari world looked on in horror and remorse. They flooded the streets and the hillside as Minbari flocked to the mountain temple to see in person what had happened and mourn the tragedy that had led to this. The few hundred telepaths ringed the temple, silent and menacing as the throng approached, but allowed them to enter and see the ashes of their leader. They surrounded the pilgrims and allowed them to feel their own grief. The ashes were gathered by the pilgrims and brought back to Yedor, the new capital, and the fractured Council of Caste Elders was called to resolve issues that had gone too long unaddressed. Extreme times called for extreme measures. This was to be the final word. Varenni had stated the solution succinctly. If any wished to demonstrate the value of their clan's leadership, they would have to prove it with their own lives, instead of wasting the time and lives of others. The alliance leader's ashes were returned to his temple, known now as the Temple of Varenni, and the telepaths formed a guild, supported equally by all of the castes. Their services were offered freely to all, and they were trained not only in assisting their own clans and castes, but cross-trained in order to assist others, military tactics, communication skills, meditation. Of even more interest to Havah was that Varenni had been a half-caste, religious on the side of his mother, and warrior caste on the side of his father, of the Star Riders clan.

She finally ate a few bites, lowered the lights and slept.

Psi cops peered through her own eyes, forcing her to move as they willed, as black suited figures cornered her with bone saws and amputated her hands. She watched her severed wrists as the tissue necrotized down the length of her arms before her eyes, the gangrenous black flesh melting off as the bones crumbled. She screamed on her bed and thrashed her arms to make sure they were still there, and slid off onto the floor. A medical attendant came running, but she irritably waved her away and climbed back onto the bed. After an hour, her eyelids sank closed again. Neroon stood in the center of a penetrating beam of white light, at the center of a vast stone circle in a huge domed temple. He raised his arms as the stream of light widened. She could see the fibers of his uniform vibrating wildly, and then there was a crack, a flash, and he was gone, curls of dust wisping up in the heated air. The stone shield grated closed and the temple was dark and empty.

"FATHER!" Havah shrieked, lurched forward and slid off the bed again. She sat on her knees, as the attendant rushed in again. "GO AWAY!" She yelled from her knees on the flagstone, and burst into sobs. The woman clucked and took Havah by the shoulders and helped her back onto the bed, poured some tea, put the cup into Havah's hand, and smoothed her wild hair. Havah sniffled and sipped the tea, mumbling 'thank you'. She sighed deeply, put the cup of tea onto the night table and laid down again, closed her eyes and pretended to fall asleep. The woman left, and Havah opened her eyes, and cried quietly.

The next day's studies didn't mute her imagination. Despite the new edict, the hostilities between the Star Riders and Wind Swords were only temporarily assuaged. As time passed, they rose again, even infecting the fledgling colonies that had begun to terraform outlying worlds in the sector. After a couple centuries, a new artificial gravity system was developed for the ships, along with a new navigation system, based on the old Wind Sword's methods of wave measurement. A recent breakthrough had been made among the premier aerospace engineers of the Shipwright's Guild: the detection of graviton waves. As soon as this discovery was known, the Wind Swords commissioned the engineering of a fleet of ships with diffraction systems, similar to the ancient ones developed by their best sea-farers, designed to detect the particle waves instead of water waves. The Wind Swords' prominence grew exponentially, and the competition between their clan and the Star Riders grew, eclipsing the other clans and drawing them in on one side or the other. There followed centuries of killing on both sides, sporadic and explosive, and then periods of calm.

In the year 447695, a new menace was felt among the stars, and then vanished again, as quickly as it had come. It was never seen, but there were isolated reports of something vast and dark passing ships near a certain sector by the Rim. More and more often, those ships would fail to report back. Had the Kal'tot returned? And then the threat was silent. No more ships vanished for a few years. The military remained vigilant, but the tensions, suppressed due to imminent threat, resurfaced. A year later, an accusation was made by the Star Riders, true or untrue, that the Wind Swords had created this threat or even collaborated with this unknown enemy, and were the ones responsible for the disappearances, since they were the only ones in the military whose ships had not encountered 'an incident'. The situation exploded too swiftly to allow for any evidence, if any existed, to be presented. Civil war was upon them. This had been a direct challenge of honor, and so the soldiers of the two clans were called off the ships to engage in a face-to-face battle.

At dawn on the eighteenth day of Lilishan, in the year 447709, one of the most savage and bloody single battles between Minbari was fought. For three days, the warriors raged, churning the initial plain and surrounding hillside into mud. Six-thousand lay dead or crippled when the massacre was over. The Star Riders had lost a few more, here and there, but it no longer mattered, when the remaining clansmen saw the field littered with intermingled corpses. The caste elders viewed the fields of bodies and wept. No accusation, regardless of how terrible should have caused such a loss of blood, especially during a time of need, when the Kal'tot may have returned. They assisted in clearing the field themselves, honoring the fallen, and comforting the families that they felt they had failed in allowing this challenge to take place. The field was consecrated, and the ashes of the soldiers, Wind Sword, and Star Rider were sprinkled together across it, the Plain of Six-Thousand. With the help of the worker and religious castes, a city was built for pilgrimage, in the mountainside next to the field: Tuzanor, the City of Sorrows. With a lump in her throat, Havah checked the geneology and realized that this was the battle that had lost Turanni her father.

She read on. The strange disappearances began again, almost immediately following the tragedy, as though whatever lay in wild of the Rim had been waiting for their forces to be decimated. The military trained and refined its skill and made innovations in technology, combat readiness, and investigative capacity, to no avail. The disappearances continued with as much anonymity as they had begun. Finally, ten years after the battle of Six-Thousand, after almost three decades of martial alert status, a single ship returned on autopilot. The Fire Storm. All of the crew was dead and frozen, following the failure of the life-support system hours earlier. But the log held a description of the silent enemy. It had not been the primitive Kal'tot that the Minbari still remembered from so long ago, but a force far more ancient and sinister. The Minbari's exploration had awoken sleeping shadows at the rim of the galaxy. And that seemed the only name for them, Shadows. So began the great Shadow War.

The Minbari despaired, and the warriors stoically prepared for almost certain annihilation. The next few years went hard, and the Minbari were losing. Most of their best ships were gone, along with most of the best crews. And it looked as though, despite the remaining tension between clans, there would be not be enough warriors to fight anyone soon, the enemy or each other. Then, a station appeared in empty space. Just appeared. At least that is what it looked like on the sensors of the nearby Fire Wing ship that went to investigate. What the boarding team found, was another Minbari, or what appeared to be, flanked by floating beings of light like those described in legends as the Guardians of Dol'An. The Minbari introduced himself as Valen, claiming to bring the station, and a couple of other items as gifts to the Minbari people. Naturally, the warriors were wary. It would have been a perfect ploy, and there were clear warnings in the scrolls about what had happened to Minbari who appeared to be Minbari before. But Valen's charisma was strong, and he obviously had the aid of the Guardians, who called themselves Vorlons. And they needed that aid, and the station. Gradually, he made himself indispensable with his military training, and adept tactics. He also possessed an awareness of these Shadows unparalleled by any other of their generals. By the end of the year, with the assistance of the Vorlons, he had organized a crack fighting force that superceded the previous squabbles of the military clans: the Anla Shok. Slowly, painfully, the war began to turn in their favor. His young aide, Turanni, of the Star Riders, distinguished herself with her tactical skill and efficiency. At the end of the war, the formation of a provisional governorship was announced by the exhausted Council of Caste Elders. It was comprised of nine Minbari, three from each caste, who had each demonstrated skill in their professions and appeared to have some degree of diplomatic ability. Turanni was among them, and the new council was led by Valen, who had pushed the idea through to the Caste Elders. As mysteriously as they had appeared, the Vorlons vanished, their assistance no longer required.

But the Shadows had not struck their final blow. Shortly after arriving on home-world, Turanni learned that her young child had been abducted. Wild with grief at the loss of first her husband, and then her child, she left in the blackest hour of night, believing her child to be held on the empty home-world of the Shadows. Either she would return with the girl, or would die avenging her. Neither she nor the girl were ever seen again. Valen mourned her loss bitterly, fasting and secluding himself for nine days and nights, blaming himself for what happened to her. After ten cycles, her place on the new Grey Council was filled.

Havah looked up from the screen to find her father standing silently in the doorway, watching her.

"How long have you been there?"

"Long enough."

Dammit! She was Anla Shok, how had she not heard him or seen him?

"The doctor has informed me that you can begin physical training." He laid down a bundle of black clothes and boots. "Be ready, an hour before first light." He turned and left.

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