Could It Be?
The stars rotated here, as you stood looking towards the darkness. They would turn, not of their own accord, but due to the rotating influence of the station's gravity generating motion. They might turn long after he turned away from what he had here, however long that might be.
It was the end of his first day in command of Babylon 5, this massive conglomerate of metal, union of alloys and materials brought from both Earth and Minbar. That union, born in fire, still unsure.
Nearly as unsure as the far more diverse and heterogeneous mixture within its steel confines, far more volatile and far more promising. Humans, Narns, Centauri, Minbari, and so many others, combined beneath his feet, stood as he was on the command deck. In that mixture, which he would patrol and preserve for the foreseeable future, he would see the infinite possibilities in life, all in a microcosm of life-supporting atmosphere, all alone in the dark.
He smiled slightly, remembering that phrase that he had heard as he had gone through his predecessor's logs. Yes, Jeff Sinclair had certainly had a way with words – a shame that he had gone to Minbar as ambassador. As an Earthforce officer, he had far much more left to offer. Ah well….
A trio of Starfuries shot past the porthole and he watched their blue glowing engines dwindle into the distance for a moment, before turning his attention to the stars again. Yes, the Minbari….
Odd, how everything to do with this station seemed to revolve around the Minbari. Even now, their Ambassador, Delenn, was performing some mysterious ritual in her chambers, and the reports warned that a Minbari warship was about to come screaming down onto Babylon 5 like a bat out of hell. And those Minbari ships, when roused, were like hell itself….
Still, he was Starkiller, and that definitely counted for something. He had heard the polite screams of protest from the Minbari when President Clark had announced his assignment as military governor of Babylon 5. And this time, if he had to face off against another cruiser, he wasn't commanding a crippled warship in the middle of an asteroid field, knowing that the moment he signalled for help, he was dead.
That was odd as well, he mused, allowing the stars to take his thoughts into their swirling motion and mix them as freely as milk into coffee. Odd, that the first time he had felt truly… alive… was the moment at which he had made the decision to fight back.
Terror, fear of death, and outraged fury at the Minbari had mixed together in his mind to produce a plan to destroy the Black Star, the Minbari flagship which had decimated his fleet in brief moments. Adrenalin had begun pumping, his heartbeat had speeded up and he had never felt more calm and decisive before – or since. In that moment, he had known what to do with his life, and known that he wanted, more than anything else, a command on the front line.
And then the Agamemnon….
He shook his head, glanced away from the stars, bringing his mind back to his body. He looked around the C&C deck, and sighed faintly. Yes, he'd been taken away from that front-line command and thrown into a completely different situation. Could it be –
His link bleeped. He tapped it and spoke. `Sheridan.'
`Captain,' said a familiar voice, belonging to a youthful, principled doctor who had accompanied Sheridan and G'Kar to a rendezvous with one Minbari, in a failed attempt to end the war. `I thought that you might like to come down to Medlab for your routine physical.'
`Will do, Doctor. Sheridan out.' After all, there was no need to put it off.
He looked one last time at the stars, smiled, and held out a hand to trace their spiralling motion.
Could it be –
Again?
The stars didn't spiral here. They couldn't – the White Star had a gravity generator that didn't require the rotary motion that had slowed down the advance of Earth's frontline starships for so long.
His eyes, old and tired, stared out at the silent, unmoving stars one last time. Death was no terror any longer – he had known it coming, known its advance, seen its approach, accepted his fate so long ago, at Z'Ha'Dum, that at this final end, he almost welcomed it. He was so tired. Would it be –
He smiled slightly, remembering how he had asked himself that question, interrupted so often by duty, and crises – especially by crises, he remembered.
20 years he had been given, once, 20 years in which to do all that he had promised. And somehow, beyond all hope and expectation, he had succeeded. Maybe, if he had more time, he might have been able to share more time with Delenn. With Michael, with Susan, with Londo, with Stephen, with G'Kar, with –
So many faces, so much done, so little time. So little to do.
Babylon 5.
Stood at the centre of all that they had done – even when he had turned away, sooner than he had predicted. That had been the hardest thing to do, even harder than turning away from his uniform, turning against his friends and colleagues, turning against the man who had given him that command.
Yes, hardest of all had been turning away from those spirals of starlight, facing towards another future, turning towards Minbar and what was waiting there for him. The Interstellar Alliance. His Presidency.
Delenn.
It was funny, how everything in his life had revolved so closely around the Minbari. A race who had acclaimed him a war criminal, had reviled his very name for the destruction of a war cruiser during the Earth-Minbari war, had wanted him dead from almost the very moment he had stepped aboard the station – he had lived amongst them for so long, learned their ways, and as much of their culture and language as possible, married one of them….
They were closer to humans than they believed. Than they wanted to be.
Heterogeneity of form, he had noticed, was not so prevalent as some thought. Even regarding Delenn and her statements on what the Minbari had discovered at the Battle of the Line, there was only a certain limit to the variety of shape and form of these humanoid creatures that now populated the galaxy. Even the Pak'mara, with their tentacled faces and barely human thought processes, were only one variation on those massive numbers of humanoid forms.
Only two races that he had extensive contact with had ever distracted him from the normal, human problems. The Vorlons and the Shadows. Neither of those had been exactly human in either form or thought. That had been exasperating at times – and also somewhat relaxing.
His eyes closed further, trying to block out the silent stars from his view. Why didn't they move? Wasn't that how they should be, instead of perpetual stationary calm, shining their light down on to the ship he had brought here, brought here to die aboard, at the site of their greatest victory?
He opened his eyes slightly at that thought – fleeting, that victory had proved. Within days, they had been embroiled once again in that war with Earth, a shooting war this time. Fought against his friends, his colleagues, killed them and moved on with barely a thought –
Odd, truly, how he had only felt truly alive twice in his life – once, against the Dark Star, and the second time, when he had given that order to fire on his Earthforce colleagues. Not how he had imagined life to be when he had stood on the C&C deck of Babylon 5, reaching for the stars.
Tracing their motion –
Hands outstretched –
He frowned slightly. His questing hands were outlined against the stars by an actinic light that blazed with the glorious outpouring of energy that he had seen only once at such close range….
- Who are you? -
- What do you want? -
… There was a name for that light.
"Lorien…."
A short conversation would follow, one that he had expected somewhere deep in the recesses of his soul, but really, there was only one question that would be and might be asked – and answered, at last.
Could it be –
Over?
Finis