A Place to Call Home
By Terri Osborne
terri@terriosborne.com
Part 21
All Babylon 5 characters and settings belong to JMS, Warner Brothers, TNT and anyone else with legitimate legal claim. No infringement of copyright is intended by this work. Only a few select characters are mine, and should the Great Maker need them, or anyone similar to them, I can probably be bought off with a story credit. ;-)
Even though this covers the same time period and the same major event, no infringement upon J. Gregory Keyes' novels is intended. Though, I will draw upon them for some background information.
Content Warning: [AC] [AL]
Anything encased in * these * is telepathic speech.
Spoilers through Season 5 and the Psi Corps novels.
And thanks to Sarah, Sharon and Keith, my eagle-eyed beta readers! Virtual boxes of Godivas to all of you!
----------
May 2, 2264
Susan didn't even bother to
knock as she stormed into Alfred Bester's office and dropped the requisition onto his
desk.
Typically unflustered by the
interruption, Bester slowly scanned the request. "May I ask why you require a
new liaison, Captain? Miss Winters is-"
"Trying to scan me
illegally," Susan interrupted, punctuating her statement with her fist against the
desk. "If she's not immediately removed from this case and disciplined, I'll do it
myself!"
Pressing what Susan figured
was some sort of call button, Bester simply smiled in the paternal, all-knowing manner
that drove Susan crazy. "Why do you think she would attempt such a highly illegal
action? Surely you don't have proof of your accusation?"
Her blue eyes narrowed as she
stared across the desk. "Do you want the whole list, or just a general
overview?" She allowed memories of one of Alfred Bester's last visits to Babylon Five
to move into her surface thoughts; memories of him approaching Garibaldi about a dust
shipment that had made it onto the station illegally, memories of Bester's starfury
approaching the station to dock, memories of clearing Command and Control so there would
be no witnesses.
The fear in his eyes confirmed
her suspicions.
A knock on the office door
kept her from confirming his.
"Enter," Bester
said, a tightness barely registering in his voice.
Susan retreated at the sound
of the door opening, turning so that her back was neither to Bester nor toward the new
arrival. It was a healthy case of paranoia, the kind that kept her alive and one eye on
Bester at all times.
A young man with neatly
trimmed black hair came in, closing the door behind him. He strode over and stood at
near-attention before Bester's desk. If he'd been in Earthforce, Susan might
have been impressed.
This guy's got
wannabe military' written all over him.
She noted that he was about
her height, give or take an inch, with features that belied a heritage somewhere in one of
the Oriental consortiums, she couldn't quite place which. He held himself with an
almost military precision, even dressed in a rough brown, almost tweed, suit, and ivory
shirt. She'd seen Garibaldi similarly attired once, but his suit had been a better
fit. Psi Corps just didn't get the tailors the corporate execs got, she presumed.
Although, this guy was in good shape for the Corps, almost good enough for Earthforce.
That clinches it. He's
not a Cop, but if Bester can order him around, he's definitely not high on the
trust me' list.
"Mister Matheson,"
Bester said, putting on what Susan could only think of as his snake-oil salesman smile,
"I would like you to meet Captain Ivanova."
Matheson turned friendly eyes
on her, which were considerably brighter than when he'd walked in. She'd seen
that look before, but not since the height of the Shadow War when everybody and their
brother had been worshipping John Sheridan as if he were some kind of god.
"Captain," he
jovially said, extending a gloved hand. "It's an honor to meet you."
She stared at him for a long
moment, deciding finally not to return the handshake. "Mister Matheson."
His smile faded, and she
wondered precisely why he believed that meeting her was such an honor'.
Bester slowly rose from his
chair. "Captain Ivanova has expressed an interest in having a different member of the
Corps act as her liaison during the investigation she is conducting for Edgars-Garibaldi
Industries."
Matheson's face lit up
like a sunrise. "Sir."
"You will assist her with
anything she needs," Bester continued. "Files, personnel, general cultural
information regarding the Corps. If she asks you to jump, you ask her how high."
"Yes,
sir!"
The excitement coming from the
kid nearly filled the room. "Mister Matheson," Susan began, "understand one
thing. If you give me even the slightest hint that you're trying to scan me,
you'll find yourself on the surface without a breather. Got that?"
Matheson visibly swallowed.
"Yes, Captain."
Susan raised a dark eyebrow at
that. For a kid, he picked up quickly. "Good. Meet me in my office first thing in the
morning. Dismissed."
Matheson gave a sharp nod,
turned on his heel, and stepped out of Bester's office. When the door was closed,
Ivanova turned back to Bester. "Miss Winters-"
"I will investigate your
allegations, Captain. Myself. If she has broken our rules, the appropriate disciplinary
actions will be taken."
Susan's brain attempted
to concoct various punishments for the blonde, but not a single one fit the crime.
"What's the punishment for an illegal scan?"
Bester simply stared.
"Call it curiosity,"
she quickly added.
"If I find that your
allegations are true," he said, clinching his good hand, "Miss Winters will
spend a month in the reeducation facility adjacent to this complex. There she will be
instructed in the error of her ways."
Images of a snowball in Hell
began forming in Susan's mind. No matter. Even if Bester did nothing, which she fully
expected, Susan had still accomplished her primary goal. Of course, now she had this
Matheson kid to figure out. She'd seen telepaths that had wanted to be military
before their abilities surfaced before, but Matheson was a bit on the overeager side. It
was just enough to raise her suspicions.
Not to mention make her glad
that she had submitted the complaint about Talia Winters to Bester's superiors.
----------
May 3, 2264
"Yes, Elizabeth.
That's it. You're picking this up rather quickly."
The encouraging tone in
Alina's voice, even from down the corridor, told Lyta that she had stumbled upon one of
Alina's numerous training sessions for what she'd heard had been called the Circle. Interesting,
she thought. Now I can see what's really going on with this. If she says it's nothing
for me to worry about one more time, I think I'll scream.
"Stefanie, that's good.
Still a little on the rough side, but I think you're progressing quite nicely. Now, Mister
Montoya," Alina said, disappointment tingeing her voice for the first time, "you
should practice some more on the cellular repair."
As quietly as she could
manage, Lyta stuck her head around the doorframe to watch what was happening. She was a
touch surprised when Alina handed a young man, Mister Montoya, Lyta presumed, a stack of
what actually looked to be sheets of paper. "Here," Alina encouraged,
"practice with this. Rip pieces and bind them back together again. If I can look at
it under a microscope and not tell that there was any damage, you will be as far along as
need be. Is that all right with you?"
That was when Montoya's eyes
raised, and he acknowledged Lyta's presence with a nod.
Alina turned and smiled.
"Something we can do for you, Lyta?"
Stepping forward slowly, Lyta
realized that she wasn't quite as certain about pursuing her original idea as she had
been. Just the prospect of it was filling her stomach with dread. The last thing they
needed was one of their own to turn against them. "I need to talk with you
alone."
"Of course," she
replied. With a nod to her students, she gestured toward the corridor. "I wanted to
speak with you, too. I suspect it's the same subject matter."
"Susan?" Lyta asked
as they reached a quiet area.
Alina nodded. "Andrew
told you?"
Lyta's stomach fell to
somewhere around her knees. "She really did find the lifeline?"
"I had nothing to do with
it," she stated. "Susan - I don't know how she found it."
"It doesn't
matter." Lyta stalked across the small chamber, fighting to control the feelings that
were rising. Susan's reputation for vengeance was legendary. If she found out that it was
Lyta's order that put the lifeline into her mind. I don't want to think about that.
"She's going to want
to know why it was there," Alina said.
One red eyebrow raised.
"Really? And here I thought she was just going to have my head."
Alina placed a hand on her
arm. "Put it on me if you have to. She doesn't have to know that you were even
involved. No, it wasn't what you intended. She found it in a panic, that's all I
know. You were there, Lyta. You know what the Shadow Planet Killer was like."
"I'm not surprised
the Corps is teaching that attack pattern," Lyta said. "Now that we know, we
need to teach our people a defense for it."
If there is one.
----------
May 7, 2264
"I've got an
idea."
Those words would not normally
have given Lyta Alexander pause. Everyone got ideas, small ideas, big ideas, good ideas,
bad ideas. It was an everyday occurrence, one might even say it was normal for people to
get ideas.
It was the person whose brain
had come up with this particular notion, whatever it happened to be, that caused Lyta to
pay attention. Michael Garibaldi never had ideas that were anything resembling mundane.
Most of his ideas bordered on universe-altering. Besides, he was just as much a part of
everything as she was. If he had an idea, it certainly bore hearing out.
"What is it?" she
asked, staring across the conference table.
He held out a closed fist.
Turning his palm upward, he opened his hand. A small, dull silver capsule, perhaps an inch
long, rested in his outstretched palm.
"That's very nice,
Michael. What am I looking at?"
Garibaldi smiled a wide,
conspiratorial smile. "A homing beacon."
"A what? What do we
need-"
"Think about it," he
said. "Just think about it, Lyta. What if one of this bunch gets captured during this
attack. How would you find them?"
Lyta shrugged.
"Telepathically," she replied. Was there any other way?
Garibaldi leaned closer.
"What if they've been given sleepers?"
"I could still
sense them."
Garibaldi's grin turned tight.
"What if you can't track them for some reason?"
She wanted to smile, but
resisted. Raising one red eyebrow, she attempted to feign ignorance. "Why
wouldn't-"
"Look, Lyta, just humor
me here, okay?" he asked, exasperated.
Still resisting a smile, Lyta
nodded. "Okay. Say one of my people were captured and I wanted to find them,"
she said, the patronizing tone in her voice making it very clear that she was only playing
along. "What would you have for me, Michael? What is this homing beacon about?"
He carefully handed her the
tiny device. "My best engineer designed this. Guy has a fixation for anything that
ties into telepathy, and he's one of the best I've ever seen at what he does. Only problem
is that these won't work on telekinetics. They'll only work on telepaths."
All inclination toward humor
left her at that point. "That would be a problem."
"Easily remedied by
making sure that no telekinetic goes out alone."
"Or making sure they
don't go out at all." Thinking it over for a few moments, she added, "I'm
interested. How are these things at getting past security scanners?"
Garibaldi's Cheshire-cat grin
made a reappearance. "They'll pass ninety-eight percent of the scanners used today.
The only ones we had a problem with were Minbari-made scanners. We're still working that
one out." His voice took on the tone of a child with a new toy. "See, they're
implanted right under the skin. Close enough to the surface so that you can get them out
without it hurting too much, but still in far enough that the body's electrical impulses
help them pass by the security scanners. When they're implanted, they're turned off. No
power signature."
Lyta raised a skeptical
eyebrow. "What good does that do if they're turned off?"
"Helps the masking,"
he replied. "Once you get them out of the skin, they're turned on."
"Giving that person away
to anyone who's listening, Corps or otherwise."
"Not quite. They have to
be triggered telepathically once they've got power. The idea is to calibrate it to the
person's own telepathic . . . . signal. Whatever. Only the person that gets the implant
will be able to turn it on."
She studied the small device
in her hand. It wasn't quite shadowtech, she'd have felt it if that were the case. How had
they done it? Vorlon technology? No. I'd know it if they went to Vorlon. They couldn't
have gone there without my knowing it.
If they weren't shadowtech . .
. and they weren't Vorlon tech . . . what the devil were they? Lyta's palm closed around
the small capsule. If there was one thing she knew for certain, she had to inspect these
things more closely
"One of your engineers
came up with these?"
He nodded. "Why?"
"Michael, where did the
design come from? You know as well as I do that we don't have this kind of tech."
"Ah," he said,
brightening, "that's the beauty of it. It's part of old William Edgars' anti-telepath
campaign. Best I can tell, the plans for these things were abandoned when he found the
virus." Holding one of the small capsules between his fingers, he continued, "My
guess is that these were originally going to be implanted into newborns, and as soon as
telepathic abilities surfaced, they would trigger. I'm not sure what they were originally
supposed to carry, but the trigger was definitely workable. We figured out how to adapt it
to function with a homing beacon."
"How long does the
calibration take?"
Garibaldi shrugged. "The
process isn't quite perfected yet. It takes maybe two or three days for each one."
She had to admit, it was a
good idea. Her abilities would probably be able to track even a sleeper-affected telepath,
but what if something happened to her? Her people had to have a way to find each other.
"Okay. You've got six days. Start with Alina's Circle. They're more important right
now."
"What about-"
"I'm no different than
Byron was. If anything happened to me, someone else would take my place. Alina's
telepaths, though, we can't replace. Start with them."
Garibaldi nodded.
"Tomorrow."
"No," Lyta flatly
stated. "You'll start today."
----------
May 10, 2264
Three more days.
Susan drained the last of her
coffee with something akin to trepidation. Three days before the crew was scheduled to
come in, and she had absolutely no leads on the final two masks. Her first instinct had
been to just ask Marcus in one of her dreams, to go back to that time-honored tradition of
consulting with advisors.
Of course, I'm still not
convinced he's anything more than a figment of my imagination, but it's better than
nothing.
Another thought struck as she
stared into the empty mug. Besides, he hasn't shown up since I got here. Maybe I really
was dreaming it all.
With a loud sigh, she reached
for another folder.
That was when she heard the
woman screaming.
"I said no!"
Susan grabbed the PPG from her
desk drawer as she stood. The sounds of a scuffle began coming from someplace close.
"C'mon," a slurred
male voice said, "you know you want it."
"No!"
Susan was through the door
before another word could be spoken. Sprinting in the direction of the sounds, she called
out, "Get away from her, now!"
"Help me, please! Get
off!"
Rounding a corner, Susan ran
up to what normals would have considered a crime in progress. The poor woman was being
pinned against the wall by a heavyset man easily twice her size. The woman was pounding
her fists furiously against his chest. Considering that she was possibly an inch or two
over five feet tall, this was no mean feat.
"C'mon, Sara. Gimme a
little kiss," the man said. He was easily more intoxicated than any human being Susan
had ever seen.
Hell, he might even be able
to give Londo a run for his money. Just what I needed. A horny, drunk telepath.
"I said get away from
her, now!"
He backed away from Sara
slowly, his meaty hands reaching toward his waist. In his intoxication, however, he made a
mistake. He backed away just far enough to let Sara wiggle free and run to where Susan
stood.
"He's drunk," she
attempted to explain.
"No, really?"
"Be careful, he's a
P12."
Great, a drunk Psi Cop. It
only gets better.
"Wow! Two pretties!"
The man staggered toward them, belt unbuckled and the zipper of his trousers partially
undone. "You are a pretty one, aren't you? I've always wanted to try a
threesome."
Susan charged the PPG and
aimed it directly at the man's groin. "Give me one good reason not to blow your brain
off right now."
The man staggered slightly
attempting to follow Susan's line of sight. He smiled what she could only consider a
blatantly patronizing smile. "Dat's not where my brain is."
"Maybe not," she
coldly replied. "But it's sure as hell what you're thinking with right now."
He took a step forward.
"I'm serious," she
warned. "One step closer and it's self-defense."
What must have been an attempt
at an erotic look crossed the man's pudgy features. "Dangerous women are such a
turn-on."
"Then you'll die very
happy."
"Mister Medfield,
don't!" Sara said, much more calmly than before.
"Medfield?" Susan
asked. She was getting tired of holding a gun on the man's privates. Maybe knowing the
man's name would get some progress. "Medfield, zip your pants up and go back to
whatever hole you crawled out of, and know that I will file a report on this
tomorrow!"
"Don't wanna,"
Medfield replied.
Susan aimed directly between
the man's eyes. "Don't make me kill you." Gesturing with the gun, she ordered,
"Back into your office."
Medfield's meaty hands rubbed
together in anticipation. "Wanna do it in my office? Excellent."
With a sigh, Susan realized
that there was no way the idiot was going to take anything she said as something other
than innuendo. She really didn't want to kill the guy just for being drunk and disorderly.
Attempted rape was a pretty good reason, though. It was enough to put Susan on the
proverbial fence. Shaking her head, Susan lowered the PPG and stepped toward Medfield. P12
or not, there was only one way out of this situation. "You're not worth it."
Curling her fingers into a
fist, she put Medfield down with one punch.
Turning back toward Sara, she
coaxed the woman toward her office. "Come on, let's get you a cup of coffee and
figure out what to do with that idiot."
----------
May 11, 2264
"We've got to blow
that transit line on our way out. With Susan out, why not?"
"Because it would leave
the entire facility without a way to bring in food?"
Lyta's only partially
sarcastic reply fell on deaf ears as Andrew continued with his argument. It was one she'd
heard a thousand times in the last week. Something tells me that sticking my fingers in
my ears and humming really loud just wouldn't improve the situation.
It was a simple plan, if she
really thought about it. Send a small team - three, maybe four people - to attack the one
remaining transit line into Syria Planum. Andrew had, to Lyta's abject surprise, managed
to tone the assault plan down this time. At least he's not talking tactical nukes
anymore.
When he'd finished what she
had long since dubbed Schpiel 957, Lyta slowly arched one red eyebrow. "No nukes this
time. I'm impressed."
"Lyta-"
"Andrew, what you're
talking about is basically laying siege to the place. We don't have the people to support
it. Besides, the mundanes are starting to side with Psi Corps. Garibaldi said there's
something before Earthgov that would-"
"Politics!" Andrew
pounded the table. "Lyta, you have never given a damn about politics for as long as
I've known you. We're fighting our own civil war, here. Sure, until now it's been
small-scale bombings and stuff like that, but don't you think it's time we showed them we
are serious? Sheridan-"
A shudder ran down Lyta's
spine. Deep inside her soul, she felt the sleeping darkness begin to stir.
"Sheridan," she began in a low voice, "was a fool. He played dice with the
universe." Her vision began to blur, slowly resolving into a grayscale version of her
world. "He took things that were not his, used superior creatures as nothing more
than cannon fodder. We will make certain that he pays for his transgressions."
Having spoken its mind, the
darkness receded back into its cubbyhole in her mind.
What the hell? What spawned
that?
She hadn't touched the portion
of herself that belonged to them for quite a while. There simply hadn't been a
need. It had helped her defeat them, even helped her destroy Z'ha'dum, but never before
had it come out without an overt reason. All Andrew had done was mention . . . .
She felt it stir within at the
thought of his name, the thought of taking revenge upon John Sheridan for so callously
using her people, the thought that there had not been so much as a note of gratitude for
her people's sacrifices for his cause, the thought . . . .
All will be atoned for in
due time, the darkness whispered as it returned to its slumber.
She closed her eyes, willing
her vision to clear. At that moment, she would have loved to see Andrew's face in color.
In grayscale he looked white as a sheet.
"What the hell was that,
Lyta?"
Opening her hazel eyes, she
was happy that the world had returned to its usual Technicolor. The darkness used to stay
in her vision for hours after she had touched it. At least this was an improvement.
The sight of Andrew's
expression was every bit as amusing as she had suspected. He looked as if he'd just seen a
ghost, which wasn't that far from the truth.
"It's nothing,
Andrew."
"Nothing? You call that
nothing?"
"Yes, I do," she
said, putting as much finality to her voice as she could manage.
The look in his eyes said that
he was fighting pursuit of the subject. When she caught his surface thoughts, they were
fearful, panicky. That was when the plan formed.
"Andrew," she began,
attempting to soothe him. "Stage a decoy raid on the transit line. Three or four
people. Interfere with it. Keep them distracted from us."
She could sense his surprise.
"You want to do it?"
"I see the advantages of
the idea now," she replied. "You organize it, but keep it separate from the main
plan of Alina's. Now that I think about it, there's no sense troubling her with it at
all."
Andrew watched her for a long
moment, his skepticism written on his face. Finally, he said, "This is a test, isn't
it? Whether or not I'll blow it up?"
With a small smile, Lyta
turned on her heel and left him to figure it out.
----------
May 12, 2264 - 1:17 a.m.
"This is going to take
all night," Susan said, punctuating the statement with a loud sigh.
"More coffee,
Captain?"
Susan somewhat blearily
glanced at Matheson. She wasn't certain whether to kiss him for mentioning it, or berate
him for thinking that he had to ask. "Word of advice, Mister Matheson. Learn what
your superiors want before they want it." Handing him her empty mug, she
added, "With me, asking is redundant."
Matheson smiled, picking up
the mug. "So noted."
No sooner had he left the
small office than Sara walked in, folder of flimsies in her slender hand. "This one
you might find interesting, Captain," she said, handing her the sheet in question.
"It looks like a report from someone named Wade dated in the right time frame."
"Thanks, Sara. I'm
glad we were able to work out getting you involved here."
Sara "So am I,
Captain."
Sara Susan scanned the
document. It was precisely the one they had been looking for all night. "Remind me to
bless Garibaldi for getting these documents released."
Sara raised dark eyebrows.
"I take it that's helpful?"
"It's exactly what we've
been looking for," Susan replied. Reading further, she was troubled by the fact that
this Wade person had been essentially working for the Corps, reporting back to Bester as
often as was possible. Wonder if he didn't get the same programming as Talia. Psi
Corps must have known about that virus. Garibaldi said that Edgars used to have telepaths
working for him for just such an occasion. Susan read on, seeing for the first time
the true details of the telepath-hating virus. Genetic recombination, modified DNA, it was
a nasty little bug William Edgars had developed from the genetic defects of two telepaths
in the Corps. Amazing when she actually thought about it. A man who hated telepaths as
much as she'd gathered William Edgars had, working covertly with them to genetically
engineer their downfall. Well, considering that we were genetically engineered to begin
with, suppose that's a nice Russian ending.
She read it through, along
with the attached reports of two other Corps operatives, operatives who had been sent in
to kill Edgars and get the vial. Operatives who had telepathically coerced Edgars into
accessing his wall safe and giving it to them right before they killed him.
If she had ever wanted
concrete evidence against the Psi Corps' dirty tricks squad, she held it in her
hands.
"If that's it,
Captain," Matheson said, re-entering with a steaming mug of coffee. "Where is it
being kept?"
Susan scanned the reports from
the two assassins. "Some lab called Gamma Level."
"Never heard of it,"
Matheson replied, shaking his head.
"Nor should you
have," Sara added, running a hand over her chestnut brown hair. "It's even
a rumor here, and it's supposed to be part of this place."
"I knew there was a
reason I wanted you in this, Sara," Susan said, taking a sip from the warm mug. The
brew tasted passable. It would certainly do in a pinch. "What have you heard?"
Sara slowly lowered into the
chair opposite Susan. Ivanova could sense fear coming from the young woman like never
before, not even in Medfield's presence. "It's almost like something you
tell a child when you want to keep them away from something. Horror stories, mostly. Even
worse than the Grins. People go in and never come out. All sorts of bizarre things going
on. The way I heard about it, you'd think it was some sort of mad scientist's
laboratory."
"Makes me wonder if our
virus didn't originate there," Susan said.
"If the stories are even
remotely true," Sara stated, "it's entirely possible."
Susan leaned back in her
chair. "The big question is, if this Gamma Level really does exist, how do we get in
there?"
Sara pensively tapped a finger
with her lips. "Well, the stories say that only the most powerful telepaths in the
Corps can come and go from Gamma Level. The most powerful, and the most loyal."
"Sounds like a Psi Cop to
me," Matheson offered.
"Yes. Yes, it does."
Susan's eyes turned to Matheson's, wondering precisely how much of the
Corps' dirty tricks squad he had seen before this assignment. I'm willing to
bet absolutely none of it. This must be one hell of a learning experience.
Susan reached over to her
computer terminal, quickly pulling up a map of the facility. "So a Psi Cop can get us
in. The question is whether a Psi Cop would know where the place is. It's sure as
hell not going to be on any of the maps." Scrolling through the various levels, she
reached the diagram of the facility's third, and apparently least used, level. It was
there that she noticed the discrepancy. "On second thought, maybe it is."
"You're
kidding," Matheson said, walking around the desk.
"I've never seen it
on any map of this place," Sara added.
Susan studied the map more
closely. "It's what's not on the map that gives it away."
Sara walked around the desk
and leaned over Susan's shoulder. "That's the storage level. Hardly anybody
ever really goes there."
"Okay, I'll buy
that. It's storage. All of this space is storage. But what about this?" She
pointed to an area of the map that was devoid of information. To the casual observer, it
would have appeared as simply rock underground, space where digging had yet to occur,
which was precisely what Susan had first thought. "This is space that's occupied
on every single level above and below it. For six out of seven levels, this space is
occupied. You're telling me they didn't bother to dig that space out on the
third level down?"
Susan's eyes went from
Matheson to Sara, both looked as if the thought had never occurred to them before.
"That's it,"
Sara breathed. "It really does exist."
Susan smiled. "Now all we
need is a Psi Cop that we can blackmail."
Sara smiled devilishly, and
reached for the comm unit.
[End Part 21]