Note: this chapter may contain spoilers for season two of Battlestar Galactica

Thirteen

Chapter Thirty-One

The Falling Darkness

Centauri Emperor Vir Cotto still was getting used to his new position as leader of the Centauri people. He didn't know if he was up for the job, but then he remembered his two predecessors, as well as the Regent between them, and realized that he had no choice in the matter. His people had been through so much that they needed a leader who could give them the space to breathe and recover their spirit.

The revelation that all of Prime Minister Durla's efforts to regain Centauri dominance in the galaxy were nothing more than the handiwork of the Drakh had shaken the people to their core. Their faith in the Great Maker had been shaken, and it was Cotto's job to help restore that faith. He had no idea how he would do that, so he decided to leave it in the hands of the Great Maker for now and move on to more practical matters.

The Drakh were the servants of the Shadows, and when the Shadows left the galaxy at the end of the Shadow War, the Drakh searched for a sense of purpose. They found it in vengeance, and went to the one place that they knew they could begin building towards their revenge upon John Sheridan and Delenn: Centauri Prime. For almost two Earth decades, they had infested Cotto's homeworld like a cancer. They had placed a keeper on the Regent and forced him to help them frame the Centauri for attacks on Interstellar Alliance shipping. This was the first step in their great campaign: alienating the Centauri from the Alliance and isolating them.

They killed the Regent and then took control of Prime Minister Londo Mollari, who became emperor and declared that the Centauri would shun the rest of the galaxy and rebuild their world, damaged by an unauthorized joint attack by the Narn and the Drazi, themselves. This had also been part of the Drakh master plan, as they now had a wounded and angry people, resentful at the Alliance, to be their labor force to build the fleet they would need to tear down what Sheridan and Delenn had built.

The Drakh didn't trust Mollari, so when Durla came along, they found in him the perfect vehicle for their ambitions. They didn't need a keeper to bring him to heal, just an offshoot called a dreamweaver to implant certain ideas into his head while he slept. The being in charge of all this, Shiv'kala, personally oversaw all of this, and it seemed like everything was coming along according to plans.

However, they had not counted on Vir Cotto to organize a resistance powerful enough to throw off the Drakh from Centauri Prime. They thought him little more than a menace, and hadn't thought of him as being in charge of the movement that was plaguing Prime Minister Durla's efforts to build up a powerful Centauri fleet. Durla had planned to use his speech at the Royal Palace as a signal to the fleet to attack the Alliance worlds, but he was interrupted when the building he had had constructed to centralize those efforts, the Tower of Power, blew up before his shocked eyes. Inside the very top of the Tower of Power, which had been closed off at Durla's orders, Drakh were blown out of the enclosed spire and the shreds of their bodies were sent away from the blast with great force.

Durla's cabinet turned against him, pleading with him to call off the attack. In his typical style, he gunned them all down, and then entered his quarters to send the signal to the fleet to launch its attack. However, his wife Mariel attacked him and managed to stop him by sending them off a balcony and down to their deaths.

Mariel, Vir thought as his eyes got misty. It was his great sin, having the technomage Galen whisper the seven words that would make the former wife of Londo Mollari fall in love with him so madly that she would do anything he asked without question. He had asked him to do it out of spite, and Galen had called him on it when Vir wished to change her back. Vir had used her as his instrument, getting her to agree to be Durla's wife because the prime minister was obsessed with her. This gave him vital eyes and ears to gather intelligence for him, but Durla was abusive to Mariel after people began to think that it was Mariel, and not Durla, who was the real power.

In the end, Mariel did what was needed, but Vir didn't know if he could ever forgive himself for what he had done. As he entered the throne room for his meeting with General Rhys, he tried to cover up the haunted look on his face at the sins of his past.

General Rhys smiled as the emperor took to the throne a bit hesitantly. Like himself, Emperor Cotto was a humble man. The only difference between them was that Cotto had been born to a higher class, while Rhys was born into a lower one. Neither had expected to be where they were now, especially Cotto. However, Cotto had won him over with his organization of the resistance, and Rhys had begun to admire the short, thin man who now was the ruler of his world. Cotto didn't know it, but to Rhys, he was the perfect man for the job.

Today's meeting was to go over the joint offensive against the remaining Drakh ships. The Interstellar Alliance had joined forces with the same Centauri fleet that Durla had created unknowingly for the Drakh to go after them. The Drakh had been responsible for the plague that almost wiped out all life on Earth, and Rhys knew that Sheridan and Hollifield both wanted to see the Drakh wiped out.

Cotto had appointed Rhys his chief of staff for the military, and Rhys had taken to the job just as Cotto had taken to his. Both were capable, but both weren't hindered by their egos, and both did it out of a common desire: to fulfill a need that the Centauri people had. For Cotto, it was to rebuild his world and to bring peace to it. For Rhys, it was to enact vengeance upon the Drakh and to rebuild relations with the ISA through the joint operations.

Rhys brought in a table full of maps and reports to go over with the emperor, and the emperor abandoned the throne to sit down in a rather plain chair to see where the joint task force was going to strike next. "We have traced them down to a system three jumps from Vorlon space. It's called the Horvan system, and it only has one habitable planet, Horvan V. Our reconnaissance probes have discovered that the Drakh have a sizeable fleet there, and they look to be building up for an attack of some kind."

Cotto nodded his head and asked, "Any idea if they may have entered Vorlon space, by any chance?"

Rhys hadn't thought of the possibility, and admitted as much to his commander in chief. Vir said, "Before the Colonials were found by the Earthers and we learned of the Cylons, I wouldn't have asked that question, but with what I have learned about them, I don't discount any possibility."

Rhys looked at him in shock. "Do you really think that the Drakh would form an alliance with these robotic Cylons?"

Vir's look was steady as he began to paint a very frightening scenario for him. "Think about it, General! The Drakh go to the Cylons and form an alliance. Somehow, they have with them the DNA of several Centauri. We've seen that they are capable of creating human models of themselves with organic technology that can infiltrate society and work to undermine it, as they did with the Colonials. Whose to say that they might not be doing the very thing right now on Earth, and whose to say that they wouldn't do it here?"

Rhys was thunderstruck at this possibility, and sat down thoughtlessly in the chair that the emperor had stood up from to make his point. Cotto never said a word at Rhys' actions as the general said, "How likely do you think this will happen?"

"It's probably unlikely, but if they do form an alliance, they'll go after the humans first, then the Minbari, and then us."

A thought occurred to Rhys and he voiced it, "What if the Drakh aren't wanting to form an alliance? What if they are desperate and plan to attack the Cylons to take their technology and use it on us?"

"You have a point, General. It's possible that they might be doing that very thing. Besides, why would the allies of the Shadows go into Vorlon space and try to form an alliance with a race that may or may not have had connections with those very same Vorlons?"

Rhys noticed a peculiar look in the emperor's eyes, and said, "Yes, it would seem to be rather silly that a Shadow ally would have anything to do with an ally of the Vorlons, wouldn't it?"

Cotto looked out the window at the still heavily damaged capital, which had suffered greatly when the Drakh detonated fusion bombs in retaliation for the resistance, and sighed. "There is an interesting saying I learned from the humans: 'desperate men do desperate things'. The Drakh are desperate, so they are likely to do anything.

"So there are two possibilities. The likely one is that the Drakh have found the Cylons and plan to attack them so that they can gain their technology and use it against us. The unlikely one is that the Drakh have found the Cylons and have formed an alliance with them in the hopes of doing what each of them would like to do: attack Earth. Given what we've gone through over the last couple of decades, General, which one do you think is most likely?"

Rhys looked down at the reports on the table, but wasn't seeing them, as his mind was deep in contemplation. Finally, he said, "We need to work on what we will need to do with both these possibilities. By your leave, Your Highness, I ask that I be allowed to travel to Earth to consult with President Hollifield and his general staff about this possibility."

"By all means, General. Leave as soon as you can, and I'll personally make the arrangements. The sooner we let the humans know of what we may have discovered, the sooner that we can prepare to deal with whichever of these possibilities crops up." Cotto replied. General Rhys bowed before his emperor and turned to leave, leaving his staffers to gather the maps and other reports as well as the table they had brought in.

Cotto left them to it as he looked out the window and lost himself in thought. Could they possibly do the unthinkable? Vir thought. Could the Drakh join up with the Cylons? Vir shook his head and tried to dismiss the possibility from his mind. However, try as he might to rid himself of that unthinkable linkage, it held onto him like the grasp of a desperate man.

He spent the rest of the evening writing in his private study, going over the journals left by his predecessor and friend, Londo Mollari. He didn't manage to get much done, though, so he retreated to his bedchamber to sleep it off. Inside, his love Senna was there waiting for him. They had not officially announced their wedding date yet, but their engagement was common knowledge.

Vir took of the vestments of office, sarcastically called the "ice cream suit" by Michael Garibaldi, and placed them on a nearby chair. He slid under the bedcovers with Senna, who kissed him and tried to start something more, but she noticed the look on his face and asked instead, "What troubles you my love?"

Vir told her all of it, and Senna listened to it without emotion. She had been just as instrumental in the resistance as he was, so she was used to hearing about the inner workings of the government and the military. However, the possibilities Vir brought up troubled her even so, and she added, "So what will we do when we find out what they are up to?"

Vir snorted and said, "Stop them, or course! Whether we can or not…that's only known to the Great Maker. Now, let's get some sleep. We've both a busy day ahead of us tomorrow." Senna kissed him goodnight and they both fell fast asleep, but neither slept well that night.