Set during "Shadow Dancing"
****
"That's a lot of ships." It was an understatement. The Shadow fleet was enough to blot out the stars.
"That's a bloody awful lot of ships." The same awe and terror that had formed into a hard knot in her stomach were apparent in the Ranger's voice.
"Jump engines back on line yet?" Ivanova could feel beads of cold sweat running down her back. The fact that she had just had this uniform cleaned flitted through her mind. Easier to think about a sweaty uniform than the nightmare that she was currently in charge of.
"No. If I signal the fleet, they just might pick it up. If they do, and we can't get away.." Marcus left the rest unsaid, but everyone could hear the dull tolling of the death knell in his voice.
It was harder than she would've thought to make the order, but she wasn't allowed the luxury of showing it. Command robbed a person of such beloved signs of humanity. She could still remember the pain on John's face when he told her about this mission. The years she had spent serving under him allowed her to see that when he said that the odds of returning were fifty-fifty, what he meant was that no one expected them to come home. The years she had spent being his friend allowed her to hear the unspoken plea in his voice: "Don't go. I can send someone else." That was the part of him that was her friend, and weak. The part of him that was her commanding officer had weighed the odds, the risks, and knew that she was the only one he could send on this death mission. As his subordinate, she had accepted the mission without question. As his friend, she had wanted desperately to give in to that unspoken entreaty.
Friendship had to take a back-seat with them, as it always had before. Now that she was out here, feeling the weight of all the lives on this ship in her hands, she desperately wished that she didn't have to make this decision. The order about to find its way out of her mouth would kill half a dozen Minbari, one demented Ranger, and herself.
"Who wants to live forever?"
She did. She had come to Babylon 5 filled with excitement and a fierce desire to succeed; to use the position as a possible springboard into her own ship. Two years ago, she had looked at her surroundings and realized that she could continue her military advancement or do what she felt was right. She had made that choice, giving up any future in Earthforce to follow Sheridan into rebellion and possible death. The moment she joined the cell group devoted to exposing the truth about Clarke's regime, her life had seemed to morph into one long run along the razor's edge. Even at the worst moments, though, death had just been a possibility, with not even the closest shaves approaching the horror of this situation. This decision was to willingly embrace the certainty of death, when every previous experience had conditioned her to fight tooth and nail for life.
To stay silent was to live. To give an order was to choose death. Susan Ivanova wanted very much to live.
She didn't want to be standing on this bridge, holding all the lives on the ship in the palm of her hand. She wanted to be in a thousand different places, everywhere that this order would deny her forever. Choosing to become Russian flambe on the trouble end of a Shadow laser didn't appeal to her.
It crossed her mind that her shopping list was lying on her kitchen counter back on Babylon 5. The fact that she wouldn't be able to pick up some oranges down in the Zocolo suddenly struck her as an injustice on planetary proportions. When Sheridan or Garibaldi or whoever cleaned out her quarters, her shopping list would get shoved at the bottom of some storage box or get tossed in the trash. It would never serve the use that she had penned it for.
That was one of the regrets crossing her mind, certainly not the only one. She regretted that she hadn't had a cup of real coffee this morning, since now the last morning of her life had been without a decent jolt of caffeine. She regretted that she didn't know the names of all the Minbari crewmembers. She regretted that she didn't know Marcus' middle name. Hell, this close to death she was regretting that she hadn't jumped the bones of every handsome guy who had ever crossed her path, Marcus included.
She regretted that her tombstone wouldn't read: Admiral Susan Ivanova. She regretted that back at home, her passing would only be regarded as one less rebel to deal with. She regretted that there wouldn't be enough of her body to give a funeral to, and that in the middle of a war there just wouldn't be enough time for any of her friends to sit shiva for her. She regretted that now she would never know the mixture of joy and insanity that comes with having children.
The litany in her mind marched on and on as she spoke the order. But as Marcus reached down to hit the button that spelt their deaths, the litany slowed. As she looked at the Shadow ship that blotted out the stars with terrifying beauty, her deepest regret was that she would never see the skies above a snow-covered St. Petersburg again.
With the final fight of her life beginning, Susan placed her regrets on the sacrificial altar of their cause, and was mildly surprised that she couldn't smell them burn.
*******
Six hours later...
*******
She was alive, and they had won.
Sitting in her quarters, her shopping list clenched in one hand, Susan shuddered and kept reminding herself of that fact.
She was alive, they had won, and someday she would see the skies above St. Petersburg again.
((end))