Chapter 14

Summon The Heroes

Earthdome

Earth Alliance Congress

House of Commons Chambers

February 10, 2271

House Speaker Lei Peng saw the Sergeant at Arms nod her head, and he banged his gavel and called the joint session of the Earth Alliance Congress to order. The Sergeant at Arms, Serena Ngoba, then yelled out to the assembled body, "Mr. Speaker, the President of the Earth Alliance!"

Members of Congress, Senators, Joint Chiefs, Supreme Court Justices, and selected guests rose to their feet and applauded as Garrison Hollifield entered the chamber. Much like presidents before him, he shook hands with members on both sides of the aisle, but this time, unlike those when it was more for show, this was sincere, The president took seemingly forever to make it to the dais as he was hugged and kissed by members of Congress, and politicians on both sides of the aisle had tears in their eyes as they welcomed their newly-sworn in president back to his homeworld. The applause thundered around the room for minute after minute, and it seemed that they weren't just congratulating the president for helping to cure the plague, but also celebrating their own survival.

He finally made it to the dais, took copies of his speech from an aide,and ascended onto the dais. He shook the hand of his newly appointed vice president, Fabiana Santos, as well as the speaker, and handed them copies of the speech he was about to give. Santos leaned down and kissed him on the cheek and spoke a few words into his ear, "Welcome back, Mr. President! Thank God that you were able to save us!"

He shrugged and replied, "I didn't do it alone, Fabiana. We had plenty of help." He then turned to the lectern, opened his speech, and set it down in front of him. Of course, he wouldn't read it from the paper, as he glanced at the TelePrompTer screens to see his speech appear on it.The people inside the chamber were still applauding, despite the best efforts of the speaker to gavel them quiet. Finally, the president raised his arms and motioned for the crowd to become silent. When silence was achieved, Lei Peng promptly broke it by bellowing out in his precise English, "Senators, Members of Congress, Joint Chiefs, Justices of the Supreme Court, honored guests. It is my pleasure to introduce to you, the President of the Earth Alliance, Garrison Hollifield!" Peng then joined in on the resumption of the rapturous applause, which kept going despite Hollifield's attempt to motion them to peace.

Finally, the assembled decided that they wanted to hear what the president had to say, so, slowly, the applause ended. Hollifield nodded,
looked down at his speech one last time, and began:

"There is a saying that the Minbari have: faith manages. When they were on the cusp of wiping us out twenty-three years ago in the tragic war we fought against one another, I somehow managed to keep my faith that we would survive, and we did, as the Minbari woke up from their madness and grief for the loss of their leader at our hands and ended the war. In those years, our two races have become closer than we could have ever imagined, and they have given of themselves to help us out in our hour of need.

"It was with their help, as well as those who now make up the Interstellar Alliance, that we defeated the Shadows and Vorlons and secured our right to make our own decisions regarding our fate. However, a remnant of the Shadows, the Drakh, sought to punish us for running off their masters, the Shadows. They came here, initially, to destroy our homeworld with a device called a planet killer, carrying thousands of nuclear missiles that, had they succeeded, would have dug down deep into our surface and detonated, laying to waste all that we stand for. Thanks to the brave sacrifice of the crew of the Victory, however, they were denied their vengeance of our destruction. However, we did not know how low they would stoop to see us wiped out.

"They seeded our homeworld with a virus set to kill us all in five years. Not all at once, but slowly building up to a final extinction of all life on this planet. Sadly, we've lost millions already to this virus, including my predecessor and good friend, Suzanna Luchenko. For most of you, you only saw her public and political side, and you don't know the personal and private side like I knew."

Flashback: September 22, 2245

Gridiron Bar and Grille Geneva, Switzerland

Captain Garrison Hollifield was glad to get a break from his duty for a while. He was frustrated with still being in his position as captain of the president's personal guard, mostly because he really wanted to be a Starfury pilot and lead his own squadron. However, his father, a famous Dilgar War veteran who, fifteen years later, still suffered from the horrific sights he saw in the war, had personally asked President Elizabeth Levy, an old classmate of his, to not have his son serve in combat duty. Normally, a soldier wouldn't mind being in his elevated position, but it chided him because he didn't want the preferential treatment.

Now, with the Minbari War going on, he really was chomping at the bit to be reassigned to combat duty. He even pleaded with President Levy herself to order the generals to reassign him to no avail. So, here he was, sitting in a bar, nursing a beer and waiting for his girlfriend to arrive. He supposed he could go see his wife, but their relationship had deteriorated since he joined the military, and especially since the war began.

Victoria Estes was a struggling jazz singer, making the rounds on the road, when she met the undergrad while playing at Lucky's just off the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an interstellar relations student, in his final year of college. He had just broken up with his girlfriend, Keely, and was drowning his sorrows while listening to the music. She caught his eye and smiled at him, and he intrigued her for some reason. When she finished her performance, she came over to him and sat at his table. They talked from the time she sat down until the time the bar closed, then accompanied him back to his place and they spent the weekend together in his bed.

They married a year later on the Kennedy estate at Cape Cod, which was now a historical site. He had entered the Masters of Business Administration program at Harvard, and she was the star of the jazz scene in the American Northeast, playing clubs in Boston, New York,
Toronto, Philadelphia, Washington, and so on, with occasional excursions to jazz centers like New Orleans and Chicago. They later moved to Washington, where he worked on his law degree at Georgetown. His goal at the time was to start his own media company, and to give acts like hers a chance to shine.

It was in Washington where things began to go wrong. It was Victoria's hometown, and her parents were descendants of the power elite that used to rule the free world until the Earth Alliance came along. Washington was still the capital of the American Consortium, but the place had lost a little bit of its luster since the United States technically ceased to exist. Her parents were active in one of those Beltway standbys, a Washington think tank, and were major players on the DC social scene. They had a big family of four sons and five daughters, with Victoria being the youngest. She was the black sheep of the family, and, to her parents' chagrin, she skipped college to start touring with her jazz band from high school.

So living in Washington meant seeing her family, and they were trying to force her to give up her music career and finally go to college and "get a real job". They also didn't like Garrison because he was from North Carolina, and, thus, a "damned redneck". With all this stress in her life, which included the absence of her husband due to school as well as his job working for the Washington Generals professional football team, she began to turn to drugs as a release. Garrison, once he found out about her habit, tried to get her to quit, but she just fought with him and, once night, literally threw him out of their brownstone in the Georgetown section of Washington.

That night, he got smashed drunk and wandered the streets of Georgetown looking for trouble, and he found it in the likes of a teenaged hooker who looked like a junkie. "Hey, mister, wanna get your rocks off? Just a hundred credits!" He smiled, took her by the hand, and led her back to a run down hotel a few blocks away.

When he woke the next morning, he had a hangover from hell. He turned to look and saw her there lying beside him in bed. It was then that it struck him that he'd just shagged a sixteen year old. He left the hotel, leaving his credit chit on the night table, which had much more than the agreed-to 100 credits. He walked back to his brownstone, fumbled for his keys and opened the door. His wife was lying there, with a needle sticking out of her arm. That was when he broke down and cried his eyes out.

He soon moved out and in with some friends of his, one being Suzanna Luchenko, who was attending Georgetown to get her Masters in Political Science. He lived there and got his law degree, and was soon working for a prominent law firm. But he hated it, and one night, he and Suzanna went out on town and talked about things. They had a few drinks and went back to their home and lay on her bed for a while, talking. One thing led to another, and they were soon naked and making love to one another.

It was her that encouraged him to enter into EarthForce. His uncle and aunt, who raised him when his father had to be committed for his mental breakdown, objected, but he satisfied them by saying he would leave when he had fulfilled his term. His in-laws were oblivious, but his wife went nuclear on him. She moved out of Washington and to New Orleans, where she became a star jazz performer with her lover, Peter Andre.

Years later, Suzanna came into the bar in Geneva and sat down in front of Garrison. She knew about his problem, but secretly she was glad he was still guarding the president. These days, she was aide to Russian Senator Vladimir Petrovski and being groomed to eventually run for office herself one day. But, right now, she didn't care; because all she saw was her friend and sometimes lover pouring down a Foster's. She ordered a Heineken herself, and she touched his arms, asking, "Are you ok?"

He smiled and said, "I saw the latest report on the war. We lost Powell station off Betelgeuse V to the Minbari advance. Lost some good friends there."

She looked down and said, "I'm sorry."

He shook his head, "Don't be. If it hadn't been for that son of a bitch that commanded the Prometheus firing on that Minbari ship, we wouldn't be in this mess. Scuttlebutt says we killed their leader and they've gone mad with rage, and you know how scuttlebutt is."

She smiled and said, "You want to go back to my place?"

He nodded and said, "Sure. I've got a pass for the weekend, and I don't have to be back until Monday at 6am."

Suzanna smiled again, went over and paid the tab, and they walked out of the place.

Earthdome

Earth Alliance Congress

House of Commons Chambers

February 10, 2271

He looked over at Captain Elizabeth Loughley and went on with his speech. She was the only one who knew of that night where his moral center went out and he slept with that hooker. The hooker was living nearby in a burned-out hotel with a friend, and, when she finally woke up, she saw that her friend had died from choking on her own vomit. It scared her so bad that she called her dad, who was a Marine, and he, along with six of his buddies, took her back home. She went to Earthforce Cadet School and later Earthforce Academy, where she met John Sheridan and briefly married him for three months.

Years later, they met again on Babylon 5, where Hollifield was Earth envoy to the Interstellar Alliance in its first year. She had just become commanding officer there and didn't know his name. When he entered her office for the first time, he was stunned to find that the hooker he had slept with was now commanding officer of the station. It took a few weeks before he tearfully admitted it to her that he was the guy who had slept with her and begged her forgiveness. Touched by the admission, she forgave him and they soon became very close friends.

He looked around the balcony and continued with his speech, "We were in dire straits, but, as it seems to be sometimes, miracles do happen. When I was growing up at the Cherry Hill Earthforce base with my aunt and uncle, I went to a Baptist church, and I remember the preacher telling me the story of a woman who was driving her skimmer down I-40 towards Wilmington when she had a heart attack. As she was struggling with it, she accidentally hit the manual switch and the computer turned over control to her, and she promptly crashed into a guardrail, right in front of an ambulance that was parked nearby at a roadside store on break. They came over and saved her life. The pastor then said, 'The Lord works in mysterious ways."

"My friends, I do not know why these ships from another time appeared here to help us in our darkest hour. I know that the rift in Sector 14 is a mystery to us, and whomever controls it must have been watching out for us. We have our friends from the Yamato, the Wildstar, the Hercules, the Enterprise-E, and the Defiant III to thank for their aid, and we honor them by awarding them the highest honor that we can give them."

After the speech was over with and the members assembled in the Rotunda for the awards ceremony, Hollifield took a moment to go to the bathroom. After finishing up in the toilet, he washed his hands and took a moment to wash off his face. As per security protocol, he was alone in the bathroom, and armed security was outside.

He looked into the mirror and said aloud in a whisper, "I hope I'm doing right by you, Suzanna, because if you only knew what was coming, you would have wanted to be here to help me bear this burden. I had to stand up there and act like I was happy for our salvation, but they don't know that we are still in peril of being wiped out, this time by a race that makes the Drakh look like earthworms. I know I have some help with these new allies, but the sheer magnitude of what we're facing...it's unbelievable!"

He turned away from the mirror and thought for a moment, then turned back and saw her image in the mirror. She said, "Don't be troubled, my old friend. You can bear this burden, because you have only scratched the surface of what you are and what you can do."

He blinked and her image was gone, replaced by his own. A knock came on the door, and it was Captain Twanissa Hudson. "Mr. President, are you ok in there," she asked.

Hollifield called out, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just rehearsing my speech. Be out in a second." He then placed the paper towel into the recycler and walked out, looking back at the mirror for a second just to see if she would reappear.