Ode on Shadow and Form

by Aris Merquoni

Being the adventures of a Shadowminion after he has perished, and the revelation of several grand conspiracies and many secrets of the universe. The plain text version on my website has the original, intact formatting.

3. Act 3: Epode

Act 3: Epode. 2267.

"We're on approach, Captain."

Captain Matthew Gideon, IAS Excalibur, pulled himself out of the mild stupor that staring into hyperspace usually put him into and nodded. "Excellent."

Matheson smiled and turned back to supervising the navigation station. Matt stifled a sigh and looked forward into the deep again. It wasn't that he liked looking into hyperspace. No sane person did, for long; it played tricks with your eyes. But it was always there, and always intoxicating to stare at.

"Sir?"

He looked up. Matheson was staring at him again, expectantly. "Yes, lieutenant?" he answered.

"There's a call coming in for you from Captain Ivanova of the Diomedes."

Matheson's tone was neutral, but the name still rang like a bell. Captain Ivanova? "This is the same Ivanova who..."

"Yes, sir."

"How long until we reach our destination?"

Matheson didn't even have to look. "Twenty-seven minutes."

Gideon stood. "I'll take it in the conference room. You have the helm."

"Aye, sir."

He probably didn't have to feel envious of how good Matheson looked in the captain's chair. Maybe if he spent less time wandering around deserted planets and more time on the bridge he'd feel more relaxed in it.

He stepped around the conference table and faced the screen. "Receive."

There was a pause as communications synchronized, then Captain Ivanova appeared on the screen. Matt had seen her picture before, of course; all of John Sheridan's command staff had become somewhat notorious, especially those who returned to Earthforce and took highly classified warships out for shakedown cruises on the far rim.

"Captain Gideon," she said.

"Captain Ivanova," he replied. "What can I do for you?"

"First off, let me reassure you that I know your current mission is important. But out here on the rim there aren't many full-fledged warships at any time, and there's something I'd like your help with."

That wasn't very reassuring. From what little he knew, the Diomedes was a prototype destroyer herself, perhaps not quite as nasty as the Excalibur but certainly capable of taking care of most problems short of an invading fleet. "What's the problem?"

Ivanova manipulated a control offscreen briefly. Her image disappeared, replaced by a camera's-eye-view of a blue-green planet. In the immediate foreground, sharply contrasted against the planet's cloudscape, was a ship.

"In case you're unfamiliar with the design," Ivanova said, "that--"

"That's a Vorlon transport," he said, astonished.

That wasn't possible.

"Yes, it is," Ivanova confirmed. "And yes, I know that's supposed to be impossible. The Vorlons are supposed to be gone. And yet, here it is." Her face reappeared, grave. "Captain, I don't know what it's doing here. So far it hasn't taken any hostile action, and we're not trying to communicate. But for all I know an entire Vorlon fleet could be hiding somewhere and waiting to pounce. I'd just feel better not going this entirely alone."

"Understood. We're on our way. Gideon out."

Matheson was deep in communication on his link, but he looked up as Gideon approached. "Twenty minutes to destination, captain."

Matt shook his head. "Change of plans, lieutenant. We're going to rendezvous with the Diomedes instead."

"Sir." Matheson was taken aback slightly. "Aye, sir." After giving the order to nav, he looked up again. "Eilerson won't be happy."

"Since when was he ever?" Matt shook his head. "I'll give a briefing in ten minutes in the conference room for the team. Let everyone know."

"Aye, sir."

"In the meantime, I'm going to do a little research."

Earthforce had files on the Vorlons. Very large files. There was nothing in them, of course. So Matt was slightly irritated when he returned to the conference room emptyhanded to find the rest of his team glaring at him with varying degrees of annoyance.

"There's been a change of plans," he said, hoping to forestall any complaints.

Max Eilerson had already settled into his chair and his attitude, somewhere between a huff and a sulk. "We're not going to Saulis Five," he said.

"No," Matt confirmed. "We're not."

The archaeologist shook his head. "Why is it," he said, still sulking, "that whenever we approach a site of actual interest to IPX we either turn around or leave before I get a good look at it?"

"Because we're trying to save the human race," Dr. Chambers said wearily. "Not turn a profit."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I thought trying to save the human race meant doing actual archaeology once in a while. Translating notes trying to find information that might help." Max shot another glance Matthew's way. "Which means occasionally landing on those planets we decide to land on."

"Something else has come up," Matt repeated. "We're going to meet up with the Earthforce vessel Diomedes and help them out with a little problem."

That elicited blank stares from everyone. It was Galen, leaning nonchalantly on the doorway in calculated distance from the official team, who broke the silence. "Well, I don't know about you, but helping a highly experimental destroyer with a problem they find too hot to handle was right on my list of priorities."

"An experimental cruiser?" Max sounded even less happy. "A new prototype? Great. What can Earthforce's best and brightest not cope with that we can?"

Matthew reached to his link and brought the image of the Vorlon ship up on the monitor.

Reactions were varied. Most of the team had never seen a Vorlon transport before. Dr. Chambers looked as though she would say something, then changed her mind. Dureena gave him one of her 'Am I supposed to be impressed?' glances.

Galen started, then said slowly, "That's a Vorlon transport."

"Yes," Matt said, "it is."

"Wait a minute," Dr. Chambers said. "I thought all the Vorlons left when the Shadows did. What's one of them doing here?"

"I don't know. But since they are here, we've got a great opportunity." He nodded at Eilerson, who had dropped his sulk and was staring at the screen in naked interest. "The Vorlons were at the same technological level as the Shadows. If they've come back, maybe they can offer us a cure to the plague. If this is an abandoned ship... even taking apart their ship and the records aboard should set us ahead."

"Vorlon technology..." Eilerson whispered.

Matt checked the time. "We reach our rendezvous in three hours. When we get there we will be coordinating with the Diomedes. Nobody, and I mean nobody," he sent Galen a pointed look, "will be sending any messages, or making any contact with the Vorlon ship before we authorize coordinated communications."

Galen smiled brightly. "Sounds like an excellent plan. I commend you."

"I mean it, Galen."

"Oh, you needn't worry about me," Galen said. "I don't plan on going near it. Vorlons and techno-mages have an... mmm... less than salubrious history, to tell the truth. I'll keep quiet."

"Oh?" Eilerson said. "You guys get jealous that they're even more inscrutable than you are?"

"But you're staying?" Matthew asked, ignoring Max.

Galen nodded. "If there is a Vorlon on that ship, I want to ask why they've returned. And if there isn't... I want to know what is."

The Excalibur leapt to normal space in the shadow of the planet, just offside the Diomedes. A minute later, Matt was down in the docking bay, welcoming Captain Ivanova onto his ship.

"I don't understand why you don't want to coordinate from the Diomedes, Captain," he said as they took seats in the core shuttle.

"Easy," she said. "I have to assume that they're tapping our communications, so I want to talk to you in person, and the Excalibur has better sensors." She gave him a smile almost devoid of humor. "At least, the White Stars had better sensors than the Diomedes does. And I don't think Sheridan would have stood for a downgraded version on his newest pride and joy."

There was that feeling again, oh yes, of being in the same room of someone who routinely made history for a while. Good thing he wasn't easily impressed. "That's all well and good, Captain, but this is my ship. We can't have conflicting orders getting in the way of our operation."

"Of course not. It's your bridge." She leaned back and smiled again. "How many Vorlons have you met, Captain Gideon?"

He didn't bother answering. "How many have you?"

"Two, personally, or as personal as you can get. More on the other side of a firefight. I'm not questioning your ability, Captain, just your experience."

He smirked. "Touche. All right. You get first say. But I give orders to my crew, understood? Especially in combat."

She nodded. "Hopefully, it won't come to that."

"Hey, c'mon," he said as the shuttle coasted in to a stop. "Surely we can take out one transport without any trouble."

Ivanova's smile was grim. "Oh, the transport isn't what I'm worried about."

Back on the bridge, Matt accepted the helm back from Matheson. Ivanova stood on his left, taking in the surroundings. "Nice."

"We like it," he said. "So. You have the experience with the Vorlons. How do you want to handle this?"

"They haven't hailed us so far," Ivanova said. "So we should try and open the conversation."

"What if they don't respond?"

She shrugged. "We think of something else."

Galen laughed behind them. "I love the completeness of your plan. Every contingency covered."

Ivanova looked over at the techno-mage, narrowed her eyes warily. "Who is this?"

"Captain Ivanova, meet Galen. He's a techno-mage and part of my team."

She glanced back and forth between them in surprise. "I thought all the techno-mages had left."

"Most of us have." Galen nodded enigmatically. "I am an exception."

"Obviously." She turned back to the view of the night side of the planet. "If things go sour..." she hesitated. "Jam their communications and destroy them. We don't want them calling backup on us."

Matthew nodded.

"Well," Galen said. "Let's hope the negotiations go well."

"Move us into line-of-sight," Matthew ordered.

"Aye, sir," Matheson responded. "Coming around the planet."

It appeared over the horizon like a yellow-green flower, one of the carnivorous ones. He snuck a glance at Ivanova. She was glaring at it, her chin tilted up slightly.

"I thought the Vorlons were the good guys," he finally had to say.

She spared him a glance. "Ever see a Planet Killer?"

He didn't have a good answer for that. After a few more moments, she cleared her throat and said, "This is probably close enough."

"Keep this distance," he told Matheson, who nodded. He turned back to Ivanova. "Is there anything special I should know before hailing them?"

She mulled it over for a second. "Try to be diplomatic," she finally said.

"Diplomatic," he repeated. "Great. Comms, open a channel."

At the nod, Matt raised his voice slightly and said, "This is the Interstellar Alliance starship Excalibur to unidentified Vorlon transport. You are in Interstellar Alliance territory in direct violation of your agreement with President John Sheridan. What is your purpose here?" The comms officer signaled they were sending. Matt looked at Ivanova. "Diplomatic enough?"

"We'll see if they start shooting."

"We're receiving a response," Matheson said. "Text-only. I'll put it on screen." The view of the transport was overlaid with lines of text:

(Hello, Excalibur. This is the Vorlon transport Orestes. I am here delivering a passenger. As a representative of the Interstellar Alliance, you are authorized to take custody of my passenger if you so desire.)

"Well," Galen said.

"Well," Matt echoed, and turned to Ivanova. "What do you think?"

"I think God is testing me," she said.

Matt opened the channel again. "Can we speak with your passenger?"

The response came swiftly. (That would be impossible. My passenger is in suspended animation.)

"Who is this person?"

(An associate.)

Matt sighed and closed off comms. "Suggestions?"

"I say go for it," Galen said. "Call me curious."

"Offhand I'd say it's a bad idea," Ivanova said. "But hell, I'm curious, too. I want to know who's so special the Vorlons decide to ferry them back here. A new ambassador? A scientist with a cure to the Drakh plague? Elvis?"

"Or a saboteur," Matt said.

Ivanova shrugged. "It's your bridge. But if it is someone we don't want to see, at least we'll know who they are."

"If this ship goes down, Earth's best hope for combating the plague goes with her."

"That also means you have the best containment facilities onboard."

Matt eyed the Vorlon ship. It was very tempting. Risky. A gamble...

He opened the channel one last time. "Orestes, why are you so keen on handing your passenger over to us?"

(It saves me the trouble of figuring out how to land.)

That startled a laugh out of him. "Fine. We'll clear you for docking. Synch up with our signal to initiate docking procedure." He stood. "Back down to the docking bay, then. Matheson, I want a squad with rifles and riot gear to meet us there."

"Aye, sir."

Ivanova was calling the Diomedes on her link. Matt turned to Galen, who was watching the approach of the transport. "Coming?"

Galen smiled. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Back to the docking bay. The squad was already in place when they got there, fanned out from the door in targeting formation.

The atmosphere equalized. Matt gave the go-ahead, and the riot squad preceeded them into the bay, taking up positions close to the wall. Steeling his nerve, he walked in, flanked by Galen and Ivanova.

"Well," Ivanova said, "This can't possibly be more surreal than the last time I watched someone walk off a Vorlon transport."

Matt didn't get a chance to ask when that was, because the side of the ship... dilated, and the man inside stepped forward to meet them.

Impressions flashed through Matthew's mind quickly. Short, supremely self-confident, dark hair, bright eyes. He didn't get much more than that because Galen broke his train of thought by choking out, "You were dead."

The visitor smirked. "Yes. I was. I have a feeling that's going to come up a lot."

"No, I don't think you understand," Galen said, agitated. "Not, 'you were missing, presumed dead,' not, 'you vanished in that mysterious explosion,' not 'nobody could have survived that fall.' You were dead."

The smirk vanished. "I know. Believe me, I remember that part."

"What," Ivanova said, voice icy, "were you doing on a Vorlon transport?"

The man raised his eyebrows, looked back at the transport, then back to Ivanova. "Being transported."

She glared for a moment, then said, "I suggest we stick him in the brig."

"Is this going to be like the last time I was held without charges?"

"Just. One. Moment." Matt held up his hands. Once he had their visitor's attention, he said, "Hi. I'm Captain Matthew Gideon. The Excalibur is my ship. You are?"

The man smiled softly. "I'm Mr. Morden. I used to work for the Shadows."

Oh.

Matt couldn't stop himself. "Then what were you doing on a Vorlon transport?"

Morden rolled his eyes. "Nothing in particular. I was unconscious for most of the trip. Speaking of which, what year is it?"

"2267," Galen said.

That seemed to take Morden slightly aback. "Hunh. Long trip."

"To where, exactly?" Matt asked, trying to regain control of the interrogation.

Morden jerked a thumb at the transport. "The Vorlon ship wasn't a clue?"

Matt was about to retort when Morden held up his hands and said, "I'm willing to give you some real answers. But it's a long story and I'd rather not be standing up with rifles pointing at my head when I tell it. Might we adjourn to somewhere more... comfortable? Even the brig, if Captain Ivanova insists, as long as it has chairs."

Smooth. Very smooth. Matt snuck a glance at Galen, who still looked pollaxed, and Ivanova, who was quietly fuming. "Holding room D, I think," he finally said. "Sergeant Briggs, take a couple of your men and escort Mr. Morden there."

"Yessir."

"The rest of you, keep watch on this ship." He motioned Galen and Ivanova out ahead of him. When they were alone in the corridor, the door sealed behind them, he turned and opened his hands. "Well?"

"He's supposed to be dead," Galen said.

"I know," Ivanova said. "He died in the blast that Sheridan set off."

Galen shook his head. "No. He survived that."

"He survived a nuclear explosion? How?"

"He survived that," Galen repeated, ignoring her question, "and he died on Centauri Prime. Londo Mollari had his head cut off and stuck on a pike."

Matt exchanged a glance with Ivanova. "That sounds... fatal," he said.

"Extremely," Galen said. "I want to know how he managed this."

"So do I," Ivanova said. "He set up President Santiago's assassination with Clark. He stirred up all kinds of trouble on Babylon 5. If I didn't want to know why the Vorlons gave him a ride home from the Rim I'd shoot him myself."

Galen shook his head again. "He was a tool of the Shadows, not a conspirator. He didn't have control over his decisions."

Ivanova crossed her arms sharply. "'Just following orders' hasn't been an excuse since Nuremberg."

Galen turned to Matthew, an intense look in his eyes. "The Shadows were masters at manipulation. Everyone who they chose to work for them was given implants. Deep implants, completely controlling the endocrine system, nerve endings, and even subtler mechanisms. Their intermediaries had no free will, and didn't even know they wanted it."

"Where do you know this guy from?" Matt asked.

That set Galen back slightly. "The first stirrings of the Shadow War were heralded when Morden came around to the techno-mages and tried to buy our services for the Shadows," he said. "It was one of the things that precipitated our leaving. Morden... made some personal enemies, in that time."

"But you're of the opinion he was being controlled?"

"I'm certain of it," Galen said. "The signature of communication from the Shadows was unmistakable."

"And," Matt pressed, "you don't think he's being controlled now?"

Galen slowly shook his head. "I don't believe so."

"That doesn't change the fact that he chose to serve them at one point," Ivanova said. "Just because he was under compulsion doesn't absolve him of guilt. I mean, that was a Shadow Planet Killer the Drakh tried to use against Earth. For all we know, Morden was instrumental in picking the targets the Shadows did manage to hit."

"Well, we could ask him," Galen said.

"Assuming he'll give us any sort of answers. Assuming he'll tell the truth."

"I rather think he'll talk to me," Galen said. "And if not, there is someone else on board we might want to try."

Matt found himself staring in surprise. "Who?"

Galen shrugged. "Well, Morden was an archaeologist and xenolinguist when he flew on the Icarus to Z'Ha'dum. We could ask our resident expert in the subject if they happen to know each other."

---

Susan had been waiting since Galen's introduction as a techno-mage to be impressed with the gravity, wisdom, and depth of thought that John had attributed to them back on Babylon 5. So far, Galen seemed to be lacking all three. She followed him and Captain Gideon up through the ship and considered reasons why the techno-mage would be so concerned with the Shadowminion. She didn't like any of the answers she got.

The resident archaeologist and xenolinguist, Max Eilerson, was in his quarters when they got there. He was late fortyish, had sandy hair, blue eyes, and was glaring up at them from a desk overflowing with crystals and printouts. "Ah. Captain. Galen." He made a conscious effort to modulate his voice when he spotted her. "Captain Ivanova. Nice to meet the person who's responsible for bringing us in. The chance to look at that ship is the chance of a lifetime. I've been reading up."

"Mmm," she said. "Be careful with your investigations. The ship might decide to eat you."

His grin vanished. "Um."

"Maximilian," Galen said, "we were wondering if you could help us."

Eilerson sent another glance at her, briefly. "With the ship?"

Galen pursed his lips. "Not... precisely. We were wondering if you knew someone. Another archaeologist and xenolinguist, actually. Dr. Morden?"

The title made Susan blink. Of course Morden would have a PhD. She shouldn't be surprised.

"What, Aaron?" Eilerson asked.

'Aaron'?

"Sure, I knew him," Eilerson continued. "He used to work for Earthforce, New Technologies division. Why?"

"We have him in custody," Gideon said.

Eilerson shook his head. "Must be a different Dr. Morden, then," he said. "The one I know has been dead for over ten years."

"Actually, we're pretty sure he's the same one," Galen said, looking smug.

The archaeologist was staring in disbelief. "He's alive?" he said. "Is he okay?"

"Nice to see someone concerned," Galen said.

"Of course I'm concerned. He's my friend." Eilerson stood, turned around and distractedly pulled his jacket from the back of his chair. "I have to talk to him."

"Somehow I have a hard time picturing Morden with friends," Susan said before she could stop herself.

"Everyone has friends, Captain," Eilerson said. "Lawyers have friends. Tax collectors have friends. It helped that he never wanted to publish. Unless he was really interested in something, I mean. He'd just throw away publishable analysis. I think he was put off the whole process in grad school, when his advisor published his work on Voynich without mention and then went on extended sabbatical in Rio. He's still getting quoted. Well, his advisor, anyway." He stopped fiddling and stared at them. "What's going on? Why is he in custody? What happened?"

Susan cleared her throat. "He was on the Icarus," she said.

"Of course he was on the Icarus. I know who was on the Icarus. I attend conferences with these people." Eilerson shook his head. "Stupid policy, if you ask me. They shouldn't name ships things like that; Icarus, Odysseus, even Agamemnon. It's bad luck. Do you know what Clytemnestra did to Agamemnon?"

She shook her head, ignoring him. "The Icarus landed on Z'Ha'dum."

Eilerson broke off and stared at her. After a couple seconds, she elaborated, "Z'Ha'dum was the homeworld of the Shadows."

"I know that," he said, weakly.

"Anyone who did not choose to serve the Shadows was destroyed," Galen said. "Their bodies were used as the central processing units for the Shadows' ships. Those who did choose to serve..."

"He decided to do it," Eilerson said. "Judging by the way you're suddenly concerned about my feelings. Given his state of mind at the time I'm not deeply wounded. But what's happened to him now? The Shadows are gone. They've been gone for years. What's he doing here..." His eyes unfocused for a moment, then came back. "And if he was working for the Shadows, why was he on a Vorlon transport?"

Susan shook her head in admiration. "You picked that up a lot quicker than I thought you would."

"Thanks; it's my job to be the smart one. Correlating data. So I'd appreciate more of it."

Galen shrugged. "I don't know what he's doing here. Last I heard he was dead."

"Funny," Eilerson said, "Last I heard, too. Seems we were both wrong."

"The last I heard," Galen repeated, "was that he had been decapitated. The Centauri decided that as the Shadows' representative, he should pay for their crimes."

Eilerson was looking ill. "Decapitated."

"Indeed."

He shook his head again. "I need to talk to him."

"Well, good," Captain Gideon said. "That's what we'd like you to do. Talk to him and try and get some answers."

Eilerson looked up and narrowed his eyes. "You're going to be recording this conversation, aren't you."

"Well, he is in a holding cell," Susan said. "That comes standard."

"Fine. But I'm not going to pretend otherwise. He is my friend."

"Nobody comes back from Z'Ha'dum unchanged," Galen said.

That elicited another glare. "Nobody comes back from having their family blown up unchanged, either. I'll consider it an improvement if he starts returning my calls."

He pushed past them out the door. Susan exchanged a glance with Captain Gideon and followed. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Eilerson turned slightly without slowing. "His wife and five-year-old daughter were killed when the terrorist group Aleph Omega took out the Io jumpgate."

Her stomach lurched. "Oh."

Gideon frowned. "What exactly happened?"

"Transport Leander was halfway through the jumpgate when the bomb went off," she said. "We only found enough debris to account for part of the ship, and no survivors. On either side of the jumpgate." At the confused looks, she clarified, "I was assigned to Io Station when it happened."

"Leander," Eilerson muttered. "Another stupid name for a ship. You know, if I were in charge, ships would get nice, neutral names. Like Telemachus. Nothing terrible ever happened to him."

"Except having his father go missing for twenty years," Gideon said.

"A trifle. At least he wasn't sacrificed to Artemis by him. Though now that I think about it, Iphigenia might be a perfectly good name for a ship. You'd be guaranteed fair weather."

"There is no weather in space."

"See? It works perfectly."

Susan ignored them and took a seat across from Galen in the shuttle. The techno-mage was watching the discussion, pensive. He turned his eyes to her and smiled. She ignored him and stared resolutely out the window.

On reflection, she mused, it wasn't strange that Mr. Morden--Dr. Aaron Morden, PhD--had a past, a life, friends... people he'd left behind. But it was unsettling. It had been unsettling when she'd learned that Bester cared for something other than the domination of humanity by the Psi Corps. She hadn't had much interaction with Morden, herself, so this was perhaps less unnerving...

Suddenly she wondered what the Shadows had offered him, that selling out the rest of the galaxy had seemed like a good idea.

The trip passed in uncomfortable silence. A short walk later and they were in the bowels of the ship, outside a security wall behind which was one Mr. Morden.

In front of the wall was a black woman in civvies, staring at a datapad and frowning. When they walked in she singled out Gideon with a stare and said, "Captain, this... doesn't add up."

"What's wrong?" he said, crossing his arms and cocking his head. Susan checked the monitors. Morden was pacing his cell, slowly.

"Everything is wrong." The woman sat down and buried her head in her hands. After a moment she looked up at Susan. "Sorry. I'm Dr. Chambers, ship's medical chief of staff and coordinator of the plague unit."

"Captain Ivanova, Diomedes," Susan introduced herself. "Has he done anything strange?"

"He hasn't done anything," Chambers said. "His metabolism's so off-kilter I don't know where to begin. I mean, he's not breathing."

"What?" Eilerson said.

"I mean, he's breathing, but he's not respirating. There isn't any oxygen bonded to his red blood cells. His metabolism has completely shut off. But at the same time, I'm getting energy readings like I've never seen before, and ECG patterns that are more complex than the computer can handle." She looked down at her pad and bit her lip. "And that's not even the really weird part."

"What is the really weird part?" Eilerson asked, something funny coloring his voice. Barely-controlled anger was Susan's guess.

Dr. Chambers was startled, but held up her pad. "Just after he got here, I picked up some odd resonance on the spectrophotometer... it looked almost like an organometallic coupling of some sort. I managed to chart some of it, but as soon as I tried for another pass it vanished."

"Could it be a glitch?" Gideon asked.

"I don't think so."

Gideon and Eilerson were looking at the datapad when Chambers said that, so they missed the look she gave Galen. Susan pretended she hadn't noticed and eyed the model on the screen. It showed some sort of pattern... a trace, almost, of thin wire-like lines running down Morden's back and parts of his arms. They didn't seem to connect up anywhere, as though the pattern were only partly complete.

"There's more like this, but that's the best image I got." Chambers pulled back her pad, tapped a few times, then dropped it on the desk. "This is ridiculous. I don't even know where he's getting his metabolic energy from. Zero-point energy? Perpetual motion? A really big, invisible thermocouple?"

"Luck? The good will of the Universe?" Galen suggested.

"You still think the Shadows aren't controlling him?" Gideon said.

Galen shrugged. "Do I think they had a hand in the anomalies that Dr. Chambers noticed? Almost certainly. However, that does not mean that he is under their control."

"How would you be able to tell?" Eilerson asked.

Galen gave him a significant look. "A few minutes' conversation should do the trick."

Eilerson glared back. "This is getting fishier by the nanosecond." He turned to Susan and pointed threateningly. "I'd better get a few good pieces to turn over to the company by the time this is over."

"Sure, I'll just take a PPG rifle and blow off one of the ship's guide struts," she suggested. "I'm sure it won't be missed."

"Ha, ha." He turned to the door guard. "Let me in."

The doctor looked worriedly at Gideon, then back at Eilerson. "You're serious?"

"Yes, doctor."

Gideon nodded his assent, and the security man punched a code into the door. Susan watched the monitor. Morden looked over as the door opened, stopped pacing as Eilerson walked through the door.

"Audio," murmured Gideon.

"Max?"

"Aaron?"

"What a--"

"What are you doing here?"

The two men hesitated, then Morden took a seat, warily. "That's a real good question. A real good question."

"And what happened to you? I mean..." Eilerson hesitated, then started to pace himself. "I mean, they're recording this."

Morden looked directly into the camera, smirked. "I know."

Eilerson stopped pacing and leaned against the door. "Shadows, Aaron?"

Morden sighed and looked down at his hands. "Yeah. It's a long story."

"A long story. That's what you have to say for yourself?"

"It's not that--" Morden cut himself off with an aggrieved noise. "Look... how much do you know?"

"I know the Shadows were working with the Drakh," Eilerson snapped. "I know that it was a Shadow Planet Killer the Drakh aimed at Earth last year. And a Shadow virus they dumped into our atmosphere."

Morden was staring, aghast. "They what!"

Eilerson just nodded.

Morden groaned and put a hand over his eyes. "God. I leave for a couple years and the whole place goes to hell."

"And where were you before those few years, huh?" Eilerson said accusingly. "You died in '56."

"Well, no, we didn't actually--"

"And Galen said you got your head cut off."

"Well, I--"

"Your head cut off? What did you do, Aaron?"

Morden grimaced. "I had Mollari's girlfriend killed."

Eilerson made a little strangled noise. "Emperor Mollari?"

Morden looked surprised for a fraction of a second, then nodded.

"Jesus, Aaron." Eilerson tugged the opposing chair out from the table and collapsed into it. "You're an archaeologist, not a secret agent. What happened?"

For a few seconds, Morden did nothing but stare at his hands again. Finally he said, "Earthforce Grey."

Susan traded a shocked glance with Gideon. Earthforce Grey meant black ops. Earthforce Grey meant connections, and shadowy places in the government she'd only gotten glimpses of before. Galen's theory of innocent little Shadow-minion was losing ground by the second.

"What?" Eilerson said.

Morden sighed. "Back in '53 or so, IPX had a team on Mars," he said. "They were digging for... oh, I don't know, Hoagland's Face, or glass snakes, or little green men. You know, something profitable." He grinned, but it didn't stick. "Except this time they found something. News got back to Earth, and to the boys in black. Before you could say boo they were plundering our department for experts and swearing anyone dumb enough to say yes to State Emergency-level secrecy."

"Jesus," Eilerson said again. "What did they find?"

"An intact Shadow ship."

Even though Susan had heard this story before, she couldn't help but shudder. Morden continued. "They pulled the IPX team out and sent us in. It was... well, it was terrifying. There were more security constraints than I'd ever seen on a site and rumors flying everywhere, that some guy had died just by touching it... and then there was the ship itself."

"What was it like?"

Morden hesitated. "Black," he finally said, "And cold. And... wrong. Something about it made all those deep primitive impulses you keep in the back of your head jump up and start keening at you to get out of there." After a second, he laughed slightly. "And considering what we now know about the Vorlons, that's probably not far from the truth."

"Woah, one thing at a time." Eilerson held up his hands. "Vorlons later. So this ship... there was writing on it?"

"A little, on the inside. Actually, there was a small network of caves underneath it... but we couldn't get to those until the other ship came to take it away."

"Wow."

"Yeah... we put a homing beacon on it as soon as we could. It was signaling as soon as your people got it unearthed. We tracked the beacon and started setting up an expedition to take a look..."

He trailed off. Eilerson cleared his throat. "So this was what, '55?"

"Yeah." Morden shook his head. "I didn't want to go. That ship was bad news. But you know Earthforce. Even the civilian branches get ordered around. I kept trying to negotiate, but..." He sighed. "After... the accident, there didn't seem much point."

"I guess not..." Eilerson said. He sounded stunned.

"Anyway. We got Dr. Chang and a few of his people on board because of a J/Lai dig they'd been working on. They found a Shadow artifact that wound up putting about twelve telepaths in a coma."

"Jesus!"

"Yeah. That got Earthforce moving, you can bet."

"Psi Corps, too."

"Yeah. They forced someone onto the team. We packed in a rush."

"Wow." Eilerson blinked a few times and leaned back. "So how was the trip?"

Morden grinned harshly. "Miserable. I spent most of my time locked in my cabin doing translations."

"Sounds like a good plan. Hey," Eilerson leaned forward. "Did you try out Babelgrid?"

"Max..." Morden sounded aggrieved.

"With a partial sample like that you need all the tools you can get." Eilerson was gesturing, animated for the first time in the conversation.

"No, I did not use your precious program. I was looking--"

"I don't know why you're so biased. It's not like we're living in the stone age of linguistics any more."

"I don't like your program, Max. It's haphazard."

"It's brilliant. You just won't give it a try."

"It makes assumptions that don't always turn out--"

"You should just learn to trust in technology some time."

"Maybe you should learn to appreciate the subtleties of distributed morphology."

"Maybe you should learn that Chomsky can bite me."

"I didn't use BabelGrid, and I found--"

"Version nine has two new algorithms that--"

"Similarities to Kandarian and L5, neither of which--"

"Can simplify analysis considerably--"

"Has an L'-style context-free grammar to analyze!"

"Ha!" Eilerson shouted. "Version nine has an L'' algorithm, and it can account for perturbations and inconsistencies in the general matrix. And it does Welsh."

"Yeah, yeah." Morden leaned back in his seat. "You try siccing your program on the Shadows' language sometime, and we'll see who's laughing."

"I will." Satisfied, Eilerson settled down. "So you landed on Z'Ha'dum..."

"Yeeeah," Morden said. "The Shadows made us an offer. Churlstein accepted, if that tells you anything."

"Churlstein. What an ass." Eilerson shook his head. "What happened to him?"

"The Psi Corps woman shot him."

"Oh." Eilerson looked slightly ill.

"It wasn't exactly a productive working environment."

"What happened to the people who wouldn't cooperate?"

Morden shook his head. "They were put in those ships. They... you know the Shadows used people as the processors of their ships, right? They wired people up with all sorts of brain implants and plugged them right in. It wasn't pleasant."

"So what did they want you for?"

"Diplomacy," Morden said with heavy irony. "I started wars."

"Huh," Eilerson said. "That's the opposite of diplomacy. Undiplomacy. Anti-diplomacy. Anarchosyndicalism."

"No, I was pretty much a tool of the establishment."

Eilerson laughed. "Great."

"Yeah, laugh a minute."

"How did you stand it?"

Morden grimaced. "Mostly they had me drugged up the entire time."

"Ahhh. The enough-morphozine-and-everything's-okay route?"

"Something like that. Everything was fine until Sheridan blew up the planet."

Eilerson leaned forward slightly. "So... President Sheridan really died on Z'Ha'dum? And came back to life somehow?"

"I guess so. I wasn't really paying attention at that point."

"How did you survive?"

Morden shrugged stiffly. "I don't really remember that part, either... the next thing I knew the Shadows had some of their people stitching me up. Then I was really on morphozine up to my eyeballs." He smirked. "Not that it stopped them from throwing me back into the arena."

"And then you got your head cut off?"

"Uh... yeah."

"Seems pretty attached now."

Morden winced. "Yeah... what do you know about Soul Hunters?"

Susan's breath caught. Galen, next to her, went "Ahhh..."

"They're a myth," Eilerson said.

"No, they're not."

"You're telling me that some immortal aliens snapped up your soul and stuck it in a jar?"

"Pretty much."

"Okay." Eilerson rubbed his eyes. "Fine. How did you get out of that?"

Morden frowned. "I'm not sure."

"What, another thing where you blacked out and--"

"No, I did something." Morden shook his head. "I'm just not entirely sure what, or how... I've been doing things like that ever since getting out."

"Yeah. Dr. Chambers says you're not breathing."

"Well..."

"Did the Shadows do this to you?"

Morden sighed. "Yes. When I went out to see the other First Ones, they took out all the booby traps. At least, that's what they told me."

"Hah," Eilerson said softly. Then, "So the Shadows aren't controlling you any more?"

"I don't think so."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because," Morden said grimly, "If they were controlling me, I don't think I'd hate them this much."

"Touche," Eilerson muttered.

"So anyway," Morden said after a pause, "After getting away from the Soul Hunters, I borrowed a ship and went looking for some more answers. Here, actually--this planet we're orbiting. I found this database full of the history of the Shadows, all their technology, all their secrets. All their motives. I was coming back to get it, but the ship kept me asleep until you guys showed up."

"Wow," Eilerson said. "All the secrets of the Shadows."

"And most of the other First Ones, too. It's pretty thorough."

"Does it say why every sentient race has discovered Swedish Meatballs? I've always wondered about that."

Morden stared at him. "Actually, yes," he said. "There was a miscommunication. It turns out that 'Swedish meatballs' and 'telepath' are the same word in Vorlon."

Galen was making slight strangled noises. Eilerson half-laughed, then shook his head. "Wow."

"Yeah."

"So, wait," Eilerson said. "This database... it has information on all the Shadows' technology? Even weapons, those sorts of things?"

Morden frowned. "You said the Drakh dropped a Shadow plague on Earth... are you telling me you still haven't found a cure?"

"No," Eilerson said, "Not yet."

Morden stared for a second, then said, "Well, if the Shadows made it, it'll be in that database."

Eilerson nodded, slowly. Then he blurted, "Aaron--are you okay?"

Morden froze. Softly, he said, "Getting better all the time."

Captain Gideon turned away from the screen. "We have to go down there."

"How can you be sure he's even telling the truth?" she said.

"I can't," Gideon said, cutting off Galen, who looked about to intercede. "But I have to take that chance. This is the best lead we've had about information on this plague."

"His story's as flimsy as tissue paper."

"It doesn't sound any stranger than some of the things said about Sheridan," Gideon pointed out.

The door opened, and out stepped Eilerson, looking haggard. He walked to a chair and sat down, sighing sharply.

"Well?" Galen finally asked.

"Huh?" Eilerson looked up. "Oh, it's him, all right. He's changed, but it's definitely him."

"Changed how?" Gideon asked.

Eilerson shrugged. "He's more cynical. He's actually a lot more like he was back before he met Rebecca. She turned him into a gooey-eyed optimist." He shook himself. "Sorry. I just can't believe this is real."

Gideon turned to Galen. "What did Morden mean, when he talked about doing 'things'?"

"Pardon?" the techno-mage said, projecting innocence.

"Don't 'pardon' me," Gideon said. "You know what I'm talking about. And I know you know something. Cough it up."

"You don't know anything of the sort," Galen said.

"No?"

"Wild conjecture does not count as knowledge, Matthew."

"You said that Morden came looking for the techno-mages to work with the Shadows. Why?"

Galen shrugged. "They were looking for all the support they could get."

"And yet you also said the Vorlons and the techno-mages have never gotten along. Why is that?"

"We don't take orders well," Galen said. "From anybody."

"Especially not former allies? Or enemies?"

"Techno-mages make it a point not to have enemies." Galen smiled nastily. "At least, not for long."

Gideon glared. "Do you have any idea what he's capable of?"

"Some, perhaps, based on study and interpolation. A lower limit."

"Do you think it's safe to use him as a guide?"

Galen's eyes widened in surprise. He looked over at the cell, then back at the captain. "Well. I don't believe it's any more dangerous than leaving him locked in here."

---

Matthew Gideon was not having a good day.

"So who is he?" Dureena asked as she dogged his heels back to the bridge.

"Hm?" he said noncommittally. They stepped into the bridge, and Matheson nimbly removed himself from Matt's chair. "Matheson, how's that surface scan coming?"

"Slowly," the lieutenant replied. "There's some odd atmospheric disturbance. But we're picking up a lot of forests, animal life, and some structures."

"Any signs of inhabitants?"

"No, sir. None moving, anyway. And no active power sources."

"I said," Dureena said, "Who is this guy? The one from the transport?"

"Not now, Dureena," he said, stalling.

"Oh?" She tilted her head sideways, challenging. "And why not now? You've started preparations for landing. I can only assume this guy told you something."

"We're going to have a meeting in five minutes. You can ask questions then. In the meantime...?"

"Captain, you can't leave me out of the loop like this."

He really didn't want to admit out loud in front of the bridge crew that they were working with a former Shadowminion. And he didn't want to be the one to break that news to Dureena, who was prone to violent outbursts of temperament, and whose planet had been a victim of the Shadow Planet Killer in the final days of the Shadow War.

Dureena also carried knives. Lots of them. Sharp ones.

All of this ran through Matt's mind as he sighed and said, "Fine. Conference room. Matheson?"

"Sir?"

"You should hear this, too." And he wanted backup in case Dureena went for his throat.

Dureena sat, very quiet and very still as he gave his explanation. She remained very quiet and still as Matheson said, "That still doesn't explain why he was on a Vorlon ship."

"No," Matt said. "It doesn't. But if that database has information on how to stop the plague, I'm willing to hold off and get the rest of the answers later."

Dureena still wasn't saying anything. This was worrisome.

Matheson cleared his throat. "Can you be sure he's telling the truth?"

"No." Matt wanted to pace. He restrained himself by remembering that he didn't want to present Dureena with a good target. "But we've gone into situations as dangerous, or worse, for leads that weren't this good. This is a chance to get our hands on actual Shadow technology, information straight from the source."

"Or it could be a trap," Dureena finally said.

He was startled, but grateful her first contribution wasn't an edged weapon. "We'll be careful. I'll discuss the full containment procedures when everyone else gets here."

"Including Morden."

The edge in her voice was almost inaudible. "Dureena, we need his help."

"No we don't." She jumped to her feet and came around the table at him. "No, we don't need his help. We don't need his interference. We can find this thing ourselves if we need to. We can look somewhere else. We can take apart his ship for information. But we do not. Need. Him."

"Dureena--"

"This man destroyed my planet, Gideon!"

"No he didn't, Dureena," Matt said, holding up his hands. "The Shadows did that."

"It's the same thing!"

"No, it isn't. Galen says--"

"Oh, Galen says, Galen thinks he knows everything!" Dureena was up on her toes, shaking in fury. "Galen can forgive anyone, Galen can talk about temperance, Galen never had his entire race wiped out by the Shadows--"

"You would be surprised," Galen's clear, even voice cut through hers.

Dureena turned too sharply, fell back against the table. Galen watched solemnly as she picked herself up and struggled to regain her composure. Matt was shocked, more than anything. Dureena wasn't prone to falling over, ever.

"The techno-mages are in hiding," she growled. "You told me that."

"True," he said. "But we have more in common with your people than it first appears. We have lost all we had, save our lives. And we are slowly losing those, to time, to age, to our exile from our places of power. We have all lost loved ones, homes, and families because of the Shadow War. Because of the Shadows."

She shook her head once, sharply. "How can you defend him, then?"

"By recognizing that Morden himself has been scarred by his experiences. That he was not in control of his actions. That the Shadows did him wrong as they did us."

Dureena stared at him, breathing hard. Then she shoved her hands under her arms and stalked to a corner, putting her back against the wall and glaring at the opposite doorway.

Eilerson, who stepped through the opposite doorway a moment later, was brought up short. "What happened?"

Matt cleared his throat. "I broke the news."

"Ah." Eilerson shook his head distractedly and found a seat. "Ah." Dureena didn't seem to notice him.

Ivanova was less fazed. "I see we've found another fan," she said as she took a chair.

"Yes," Galen said. "Dureena's judge of character has often been described as 'swift and merciless.'"

"I've heard some stories."

Dureena suddenly stood up straight, arms dropping to her sides. Matt turned to see Dr. Chambers entering, followed by Morden. A pair of guards stopped just outside the door.

Morden nodded. "Captain." Some of his suaveness seemed to have worn off, after his conversation with Eilerson. But he was still remarkably composed as Dureena charged around the table and stopped almost eye to eye with him.

"You're the one," she said.

"Yes..." Morden said, confused.

"Do you remember Zander Prime?"

His eyes widened, slightly. "Oh."

"Oh. You do remember."

Matt hadn't believed she would actually stab him. If he had seriously considered the idea, he wouldn't have let Dureena get within ten feet of Morden. Certainly not within arm's reach.

There was an electric buzz and sudden smell of ozone as Dureena's long flint knife stopped midair, its tip just grazing the front of Morden's jacket. Dureena grimaced and twisted her arm helplessly as Morden slowly backed away.

"Dammit, Galen!" she yelled.

Morden cleared his throat. "It wouldn't have done much good anyway."

Dureena stared at him, then dropped the knife. It fell to the floor with a clatter as she turned and stormed out the door.

"That could have gone worse," Eilerson offered.

Morden turned to glance at him. "Not by too much." He bent to retrieve the knife, looked it over, then shrugged and put it on the table.

"Well," Matt said, trying to regain control. "After that introduction I think we'd better get down to business before she comes back with a sledgehammer."

The meeting passed quickly. Morden pointed out on the map approximately where the site was, and Matheson had their sensors confirm there was a large group of structures there. Everyone agreed to take the virus screen nanites before landing. At the first sign of trouble, they'd leave. Morden had the good grace to only point out once that the entire planet was deserted, and he only looked politely exasperated as Matt went over the precautions.

Dureena showed up again at the virus screening. She wouldn't meet his eyes. She very pointedly didn't look at Morden. Even Galen didn't make smart remarks in her direction, merely handed her back her knife.

The shuttle ride down to the surface was chilly to the point of being arctic.

They landed in a temperate forest, outside of a vast, decaying metropolis of a native stone which looked like white marble. The local plants had taken over long ago. Morden looked at the rubble and squinted. "It's just a few blocks that way," he said, pointing southwest into the city.

"Impressive," Matt admitted, absently fingering his PPG.

"What I want to know," Galen said, eyeing the ground, "Is why my old ship was here." He turned an aggrieved expression on Morden.

"Ah," Morden said. "Sorry. The Vorlons blew it up."

Galen stared at him for a few seconds with a blank expression on his face. "You're going to have to back up a bit and explain slowly."

"Well, you were going to have it self-destruct," Morden said reasonably. "So the Shadows captured it, put in in parking orbit around the next planet in, and forgot about it when they left the galaxy. I borrowed it for a while."

Galen nodded slowly. "And then the Vorlons... blew it up."

"I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Galen shook his head and turned toward the city. After a moment Matt started after him.

The streets were wide, paved in stone, and threaded with vines and small plants that had pushed their way up through the cracks. Large plants, in some cases. But there was a path, down which Morden led them, winding around the worst deadfalls and through a couple of the massive buildings, whose roofs had long fallen in, trees in place of columns jutting toward the vaulted sky.

Matt was surprised when Dureena slipped past him to walk beside Morden. He wondered if he should forcibly separate them. Then he wondered exactly what sort of forcible separation would work. Before he could frame a plan, Dureena broke the ice. By talking, not violence.

"So you remember Zander Prime."

Matt backed off slightly. She sounded resigned to Morden living, which was about all he was going to ask for the moment.

Morden looked at her askance. "You're trying to get something from me. What?"

She shrugged, shortly. "Admission? Guilt? Some sort of sign that you realize what happened to me? To my world?"

"You want an apology." His voice was flat with disbelief. "You want me to apologize for destroying your planet."

"That would be a good start!"

He half-laughed, a high, pained sound. "I... oh, God."

She kept walking, back unnaturally stiff. "You could just say it."

"No. No I can't. It wouldn't mean anything. No, listen," as she stepped towards him angrily. "It's too big. I can't... I can't comprehend it. Apologizing would be meaningless. It's just too big."

"I can sure as hell comprehend it!"

"I'm not saying..." Morden shook his head. "Listen, okay? There was a library, on my world, three thousand years ago. Alexandria. It held hundreds of thousands of texts, literature, philosophy, history, myth, poetry... all the culture of an entire continent. And it was destroyed in a civil war. Demolished. There wasn't anywhere else that knowledge was secure, and most of it was lost. Over the next three thousand years we've pieced together maybe a hundred texts, with another hundred fragments... but the rest is gone.

"I can't... know that. I grew up on that stuff. I learned Greek just so I could read the Oresteia in the original. But I can't really conceive that there was so much there, and so much lost. I don't know what it means to lose that much history.

"And now you're asking me to... to try and apologize, because your world, everything, not just one nation, or three, but every story, every song, every tradition of your planet has been reduced to you? There's nothing remotely graspable about that!"

They walked in silence for a while. Matt almost thought it was the end of the conversation when Dureena said, "That's not enough."

"I know it isn't. What do you want?"

Dureena stopped walking. She looked into Morden's eyes and said sharply, "I want you to hurt. I want you to burn. I want you to have nightmares every night for the rest of your life, about what you did to us. To me. To everyone you ever hurt."

Morden, with a kind of quiet dignity, replied, "That, you can already be assured of."

Matt realized he'd also stopped, forced himself to walk past them very quietly. He felt uncomfortable. Their footsteps started up again after a moment.

Dead leaves were thick underfoot. The sky was a brilliant blue. The only sounds were footfalls and the occasional calls between security teams. No birds, no animals.

"We're almost there," Morden said on his left.

Matt looked up. Morden was the picture of serenity itself. "So... you found this thing," he asked.

"Yes."

"You were living here?"

Morden shrugged. "For a while. I'd been looking at a few other abandoned First Ones colonies before this one, but this one looked like it was the oldest. And it turned out to be the most interesting."

"Interesting?" His sense of trepidation wasn't being helped by this conversation. "Interesting how?"

"Data. Information. Old stories that come together." At Matt's look, Morden sighed. "Look, every time I try to put together the sentences, it sounds like a bad conspiracy theory. Which it is. I'd rather you get it from the source and not consider me completely off my rocker before I hand it over."

"That inspires so much confidence," Matt said, as Morden stepped up to a rather more complete building and pushed the door open.

Here were signs of habitation. A cot was shoved into the far corner, a bookshelf on the opposite wall was covered in trinkets, small artifacts. And just inside the door was a desk, and on the desk was a black... box.

Everything except the box was covered in a thin layer of dust. Morden crossed to the bookshelf and picked up a small glass sphere which he absently polished and stuck in his pocket. Then he pointed to the box. "That's it," he said unnecessarily.

'It' was completely featureless, shining slickly in the sunlight that leaked in through holes in the roof. Matt stared at it for a few seconds, then got up his nerve and touched it.

Nothing happened. It was cool to his touch, and felt like nothing more than extruded plastic. "Well," he said, drawing back his hand. "Does it talk?"

"Sort of." Morden shrugged. "You can access it with the right hardware."

"Oh. Great." Matt gestured at the giant paperweight. "Would you care to demonstrate?"

Morden stared at him for a moment, then reached out and rested his hand on the featureless surface.

'I hope I didn't just do something incredibly stupid,' Matt had time to think before a holographic display snapped into existence above the database. Alien writing glowed on a dark background, a bulleted list of scratch marks that could have been either a table of contents or a grocery list.

"Max?" he said.

Eilerson stepped forward, leaned in to study the characters, then shook his head. "I don't recognize the characters."

"Maybe you should sic your shiny new software on them," Morden said, smirking.

"I will, thank you," Eilerson said.

"A recorded history of the... builders of bridges, I think," Galen said.

"The complete record of the culture, achievements, and history of the Shipwrights and their associates," Morden corrected him. "But I'm impressed."

Galen glared at him. "That doesn't say Shipwrights," he said.

"No, but it's the shortened form of the real name of the Shadows, which translates better as Shipwrights than anything else."

"Builders of bridges?"

"That's another way of looking at it." Morden pointed at one of the menu items, and the screen shifted. He paged through a few more screens before backing away again. "There you go. Nanoviral plague."

And there it was, sparkling in the air in front of them.

Matt cleared his throat. "Okay. We're going to put this thing, and us, through quarantine. And then we're going to translate this file. And then we're going to use it to save the world."

---

Susan stepped back onto the bridge of the Diomedes with a sigh of relief. If the crew of the Excalibur wanted to bring back something a former Shadow minion had suggested to them, that was fine, but part of the agreement was that she be on her ship when it came back, just in case everyone on the Excalibur got infected with something nasty and died.

"Captain," Elle Jones, the only civilian on the bridge, greeted her. "We've got the targeting system working again. Mostly."

Elle was the Diomedes' weapons designer. And chief tester. And general go-to girl when something broke. Which was more often than Susan cared to admit.

"Well, that's good," she said. "Better than pointing the ship in the right direction and catching everything in the spread, anyway." When Elle didn't answer, she repeated, "Right?"

"Well, yes, it's slightly better than that."

Susan sighed.

"You know, it's really exciting to see the Excalibur," Elle said. "Fascinating design. Three fusion phased-plasma generators of that size, with the gravitational lensing caused by the engines... yes, it's impressive how they managed to put it all together, keeping the bridge centrally located and away from the energy generation, excellent cooling systems, a very efficient design." She nodded absently for a few seconds while Susan relaxed in her chair. "Still looks like a giant strap-on, though."

Susan looked up sharply. "Sorry, what?"

"A strap-on. You know, something you put on with a leather harness so you can do your boyfriend up the ass. Or girlfriend. Whatever."

Susan put her hand over her eyes. Trevor, her second-in-command, was just standing there snickering, she knew it. "Jones, what have I said about proper decorum on the bridge of a military vessel?"

"Oh? Sorry, was I talking about sex again?"

"You're always talking about sex." She looked over at Trevor, who was trying not to grin. "Lieutenant Commander, what's local time in Tuzanor?"

"Oh-nine-thirty, Captain."

He didn't even have to look it up. She stood. "I have to make a call. Don't blow up the plasma grid while my back is turned."

The plasma grid was Elle's pride and joy, a weapon that somehow, through rotating ionized plasma in a way that Susan couldn't explain or comprehend, was able to kill the engines of any ships using gravimetric propulsion. The problem was that so far it had either worked too well or not well enough. The targeting system was flaky. It had worked perfectly in the dockyard, and in organized tests, but not, so far, in the field.

Her office was just off the bridge. It wasn't very large, but it allowed her to make calls in private. And this was a call that needed privacy.

After a few minutes seeking a connection, John Sheridan's face appeared on her screen. "Susan!" he said, grinning. "It's good to hear from you. It's been too long."

She smiled. His grin was infectious, and it was good to see him again. "I know. And I wish this call wasn't about business."

"What's happening?"

For a moment, Susan reflected that it would probably be better for her career if she finished up her report to Earthforce before saying anything to John. Hell with it. "I'm going to have to give you this linearly, because if I hit the highlights it won't make any sense. Hell, it doesn't make much sense in order, either, but at least that way you won't be any more confused than we are."

"Okay."

"We found a Vorlon transport."

John started to croak something in disbelief, but Susan plowed over him. "Since the Diomedes is still a prototype, I wanted some backup, so I called in the Excalibur. Captain Gideon agreed to help. We made contact, and the ship wanted to dock and turn over its passenger." She paused. "I'd gone over to the Excalibur so we could communicate better, so I was there when the ship docked."

"Who was on it?"

She really tried to just give a straight answer, but couldn't bring herself to say Morden's name without a warning, first. "Well, who's the last person you'd expect to be on a Vorlon transport?"

John didn't bother guessing. He just visibly braced himself and said, "Who?"

"Mr. Morden."

"That's impossible."

"I know."

"He's dead!"

"I know." She shrugged. "Apparently things got complicated. We threw him in the brig, and he cooperated... to a point. His story's pretty incomplete in parts. But he found some sort of Shadow database that theoretically has information on the plague in it. And the crew of the Excalibur have just gone down to retrieve it."

Sheridan stared at her for a few seconds, then said, "They're trusting his word?"

"Gideon says it's worth it. And the techno-mage with him, Galen, says that Morden checks out. But I'm still worried. Morden said that the Shadows... did something to him. They modified him when they picked him up after you nuked Z'Ha'dum. By his own admission, they turned him into some kind of weapon. I don't trust this situation."

John looked profoundly unhappy. She didn't blame him. Finally, he said, "It's Gideon's call. He has to make the decision. And billions of lives will be saved if he's right."

"I know."

"The First Ones promised noninterference."

"I know."

John sighed. "I'll keep in contact with Captain Gideon. Thanks for letting me know about this. I know it's not exactly the normal chain of reporting."

She shrugged. "If Gideon manages to get us all killed with this stunt, I want someone to know about it."

John nodded and signed off. Susan sighed. She was going to catch shit for this, she knew it. But she had a greater responsibility to the entire galaxy if the Shadows were getting involved again.

Her link chirped. "Yes?" she answered.

"Captain, the Excalibur just called to say that their people are back from the surface," Trevor said. "They're in quarantine until Dr. Chambers can finish checking them out."

"Wonderful. Keep me informed." She tapped her link off and sighed again.

"Like I said," Morden said from behind her.

She was on her feet with her PPG pointed at his stomach before her brain finished processing his voice. He looked down at her gun with unhurried concern and then back up at her. "Please don't," he said.

Her mind was spinning. Morden shouldn't be--he was on the Excalibur, with the team, in quarantine--"How did you get in here?" was what she managed to ask. All things considered, she reflected a moment later, it was a pretty good question.

"I can teleport." He smirked at something, probably her expression. "What, didn't I mention that?"

She raised her PPG to shoulder level, pointed at his head. From this distance she could plaster that smirk across three feet of bulkhead. "What are you doing here?"

Morden sighed, looking sadly down the barrel of the weapon. "No, you're right. This really isn't helping." He shook his head and pulled a datacrystal out from inside his jacket. "Actually, someone wanted me to give you a message."

"A message." She stared at the crystal. He held it out, watching her expression. "Someone wanted you to give me a message. Who?"

He caught her gaze, held her eyes for a moment before answering. "No, you already don't trust me. Just a guess, but it's probably better if you find that out yourself."

"Why didn't you give it to me earlier?"

"Because, and this is another guess, mind you, I think the contents are personal. Not something you want Captain Gideon watching over your shoulder."

She didn't react. He nodded again and set the crystal gently on her desk. She looked down at it for a moment, and when she looked back he was gone.

Her hands were shaking, now.

She shoved her PPG back in its holster and picked up the crystal. Its surface was slightly warm under her fingers. It was real. She hadn't been hallucinating.

She wanted to bring up her link and call Trevor and have him go over the ship with a security team. She wanted to call Gideon and ask if Morden had been seen leaving the Excalibur, or if he was still there in quarantine.

She wanted to know what was on that crystal.

Her datapad was on the desk, and it was capable of playing video. Normally she watched messages on the screen, but there was no way she was plugging a crystal that Morden gave her into her ship. She grabbed the pad, inserted the crystal and cued up the video.

Talia's face. She nearly dropped the screen.

"Susan. I know you might not trust this message... or the messenger." Talia's mouth twisted in a rueful smile. "But it's the best I can do. If I could come back myself, I would. Please believe that. Please believe... that this is me, Susan. Really me. I'm back. She couldn't kill me. The Psi Corps didn't destroy me. I'm really here."

Susan had stopped breathing. She started again. It hurt.

"I don't have much time, and there's so much I want to say... Oh, Susan..."

She was not going to cry.

"I don't know when this will get to you, or even if it will, but... I wanted to say goodbye. She took everything away from me, and hurt you, and I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say thank you. I never got to say I'm sorry..."

Talia's face was blurring in the screen. Dammit. Damn it.

"I never got to say I love you."

Susan blinked the tears away, tugged at the stubborn ones with her sleeve. Talia was losing her composure, smiling bravely through her own tears. "I love you, and I wish..." She wiped her eyes with her fingers, and they came away glittering. "I love you. Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye."

The screen went black. It reflected her own face back at her, and what she saw there made her close her eyes and put the datapad down, away from her, on her desk.

When she'd regained her composure, she pulled the crystal and shoved it in her pocket.

There were really only two options. Either the message was genuine, or it had been faked. And even her cynicism wasn't vast enough to believe in a conspiracy so large that it could manage that. The message had been Talia. The real Talia. Her Talia.

She made up her mind quickly. She left her office and returned to the bridge. "Enners?"

Trevor was already at attention. "Yes, Captain?"

"Prep the shuttle; I'm going back to the Excalibur."

He blinked at her. "You've only been back twenty minutes, Captain."

"I know. But I need to discuss some things with their team that can't go over an open channel."

His eyes narrowed. They'd been working together for three years now, and they trusted each other... but he hadn't been in Earthforce when Clark was in power, had never had to make those kind of decisions. He was tactful enough not to mention Sheridan's name out loud, but it was obvious that he thought she owed him an explanation.

Maybe she did; she wasn't going to give him one yet, though. 'When I get back,' she silently promised.

Lieutenant Matheson met her in the docking bay. "Are they out of quarantine yet?" she asked as he led her to the core shuttle.

"Dr. Chambers is finishing her analysis. It won't be long."

Her mouth was dry as she took a seat. Desperate, she searched for a topic of conversation. "So... you're a telepath." Boy did that sound stupid. More scrambling. "I met a military liason teep once who always wanted to be a pilot. I wonder if he's got the chance to now."

"What was his name?" Matheson asked politely.

She had to search for it. He hadn't exactly made the best impression on her. "Harriman Gray."

The lieutenant shook his head. "I never met him. I was just a P-5."

P-5 to Talia. Again. "What branch of the Corps did you work in?"

He looked away. "Investigations."

"Investi--" it hit her halfway through. Psi Cops. "Oh."

He shrugged stiffly. "They always told us we were doing the right thing. It wasn't until it was almost too late that I realized... they were wrong."

The shuttle hissed to a stop before she could respond. She hoped that Matheson couldn't tell how hard she was mentally kicking herself as she followed him into the hallway.

Gideon was pulling his jacket on outside the quarantine zone. Dureena was behind a screen opposite Dr. Chambers, getting poked in the arm with a remotely operated needle and being arrogantly stoic about it. Gideon looked up in surprise as she entered. "Captain. I thought you wanted to stay away in case we accidentally blew up the ship."

The last thing she wanted to deal with, just at this moment, was bullshit machismo. "I just put in a call to President Sheridan to update him on the situation. If, indeed, we all go up in flames."

Gideon's eyes narrowed. "And what did the President have to say?"

"That it's your call, of course, but he appreciated being informed."

He relaxed, slightly. "Good."

"Did you find anything down there?"

"The database was there, just like he said," Gideon said, pointing to a separate room. Susan looked over. Through the windows she could see a table, upon which sat a featureless black slab, like a tiny monolith on its side.

"He pulled up some information. It's got data on the plague in there, all right."

"My friend has a name, you know," Eilerson said, butting into the conversation from Gideon's left.

"Yeah, your friend," Susan said darkly. "Where is Morden, anyway?"

Dr. Chambers answered. "We put him in separate quarantine, to keep an eye on him. And because it'll take me six hours to make heads or tails of his test results anyway."

"Do you think he's contaminated with anything?"

The doctor shrugged. "Nobody else was, so I don't see why he would be."

"Then you wouldn't mind if I had a word with him in private."

Gideon was staring at her. She didn't care. Dr. Chambers was also staring, which was more immediate. "No... there shouldn't be a problem."

"Why?" Gideon exclaimed.

"I have some questions for him." While Gideon groped for a response, Susan walked over to the quarantine booth, gestured at the door, and asked Dr. Chambers, "May I?"

The door was closing behind her before Gideon could form a coherent objection, and for the second time in as many hours she was facing Mr. Morden alone.

The room was tiny. There wasn't room for a chair, or a table; nothing to give distance. He stood there, staring at her in mild surprise until she asked, "Do you know if they're recording sound in here?"

That surprised him, too. "Yes, but..." He looked up, briefly. "Not any more. They can't hear us."

She took a deep breath. "Does anyone else know you can teleport?"

Morden looked out the window at the rest of the lab. It wasn't a very big window, really. "I don't think so. If anyone was paying attention and noticed, they're keeping quiet about it." He grinned sheepishly. "Actually, that was only the second time I've done that. The first time I broke my arm, which would have completely spoiled my entrance."

The crystal was in her pocket. She pulled it out, resisting the urge to clench it in her fist. "Where did you get this?"

His gaze went to the crystal, stayed there. "Out where the First Ones are."

She sighed sharply, frustrated. He shook his head. "Believe me, that's all I can say."

"Do you know what kind of an answer that is?"

"Yes," he snapped angrily. It brought her up short. He looked away, shoulders tense. "Next question."

There was an emotional taste in the back of her mouth, as though she'd swallowed blood. Carefully, she asked, "Why?"

He didn't look up. "Because she asked me to."

"That's not..."

"Because she asked me to. Because she said she wanted to say goodbye to someone and hadn't gotten the chance. Because I know what that's like."

He was being carefully neutral. His voice was flat, even, controlled. But he still wouldn't look up.

"What..." Once she started thinking the question, she couldn't keep from saying it. "What exactly did the Shadows offer you?"

His head snapped up, and she was caught in his eyes. She shouldn't have asked. She had no business asking.

'His eyes are blue,' she thought dazedly, trying to think of something other than the sinking feeling in her stomach. 'I've seen blue like that before, somewhere...'

"The Io jumpgate bombing," he said slowly. "In '56. My wife and daughter were on the transport. They found no survivors."

"The ship was almost through the jumpgate," she whispered.

He nodded, jerkily. "I couldn't... they could have been alive. I didn't know. Six months. I didn't know."

The sinking feeling had hit bottom and was turning to ice.

"The Shadows showed me... they knew where the rest of the ship was. They knew hyperspace better than anyone. They don't even need jump points. They showed me the transport. They were still alive. They were caught... they were s-suffering..."

He gritted his teeth and looked away again. Susan forced herself to breathe. 'I didn't know,' she told herself. 'I didn't know. They were declared casualties. We couldn't find anything...'

"I don't... know," Morden finally said, "If they were lying. I still don't. But I can believe now that they're dead."

There was nothing she could say. He stood there, not a foot away, carefully not looking in her direction. She couldn't think of anything to do.

The fingers in her right hand started tingling, complaining of falling asleep. She looked down. She had been clenching Talia's message in her fist.

"Thank you, for..." He looked at her, and again she stumbled. "For the message."

He stared for a moment. "You're welcome." Polite again. Distant.

"I thought I was the only one who did that," she said.

"Sorry?"

'I said that out loud. Shit.' "I... never mind. I need to get some sleep."

Now she was babbling. He was watching her, his expression worried, but not unkind. "You do that."

She nodded, and stuck the crystal back in her pocket before leaving.

Gideon was waiting for her when she came out. Irritated, he pointed at her and snapped, "I want an explanation."

She ignored him, and looked around for Galen. The techno-mage was standing nearby, practicing being inscrutable. "Galen, you said you had a baseline estimate of Morden's abilities," she said.

"Yes, but it's more of a guess, really." he replied.

"Did your 'guess' include teleportation?"

Galen stared at her. "Include what?"

"I'm sorry," Gideon butted in, "Teleportation? As in--"

"Because he can," Susan said over him, "So it's not really worth it to keep him locked up anywhere. He's cooperating for his own reasons, not ours."

She turned on her heel and left. Someone fell in beside her to guide her back to her shuttle. She pinched the bridge of her nose to try and stave off a sinus headache.

'I thought I was the only one who...'

'Everyone hurts, Susetchka. And everyone has to pretend the pain doesn't exist.'

---

Earthforce quarantine procedure was to keep all organic technology in scanned lockdown for two weeks. Not having any better ideas, Matt followed the regulations to the letter.

It was like pulling teeth.

He composed an elaborate excuse to send to his superiors in Earthforce, explaining that he was in the middle of a situation of some delicacy and he'd be sending a full report when there was confirmed news. He organized a meeting with the captains of the two Whitestars that showed up soon after Ivanova's call to Sheridan. He decided, after the rather amicable meeting, that he wasn't as mad at Ivanova as he thought he was. He invited her over for dinner to try and apologize.

"You guys definitely have better supplies than we do," she commented as he put the finishing touches on the pasta. "Smells great."

"Well, it's a matter of space," he said. "We get enough cargo room for food to even keep the civilians happy."

"Mmm. Even if this will keep me on the treadmill a bit," she said as he hauled the dishes over.

He rolled his eyes. "C'mon, relax." In his best Jewish-mother impression, he continued, "Put some meat on your bones, I don't know what they put in those synthetics, but it cannot be as good as real food..."

"Hey, I'm the Jew here. Leave the mothering to me." She was smiling, anyway. That was a good start. "My people suffered for thousands of years to learn that guilt trip."

"What, and you won't share it?"

"Never." Ivanova grinned. "We have to keep something after Earthdome nationalized the International Banking Conspiracy."

He chuckled. She relaxed a bit more. "So. Any idea what's in that database yet?"

"Not much." He shook his head. "Mr. Morden made it show us a few images when we were on the planet, but when we got it back up here we wanted to put it under observation. So I've basically decided to just follow Earthforce quarantine regs for organic technology."

"Good idea." She took a bite, chewed thoughtfully. "Nice."

"Thank you."

"From what I've seen of this stuff," she continued, "it's better to be safe than sorry. I remember one time an archaeologist slipped some organic technology through B5 customs, and two days later his assistant was covered in bio-armor and blowing holes in the station."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Good old IPX."

He hummed, thinking of Eilerson. Yeah, good old IPX.

After a few minutes he asked, "You must have seen a lot of pretty impressive things on B5, huh?"

"Yes, it was quite a posting. Well, you must have some stories yourself." She smiled inquiringly. "You were on an explorer-class ship before taking this job, weren't you?"

"Yeah, the EAS Explorer. Named before anyone in Earthforce had any creativity."

"Were you always in the explorations division?"

"No, I was..." He searched for diplomacy. "Forcibly transferred after what happened to the Cerberus."

She frowned. "What happened?"

"We were out in the Lanep system, just routine outer-sector patrol, when we were fired on." He grimaced, remembering. "The screens couldn't see anything and we couldn't tell at first what had happened, so my team was sent outside to take a look at the damage. Then... the ship started running. I couldn't tell what was going in, so I radioed in... all I could hear was panic and orders to get out. Nobody heard me. And that's when I saw the ship."

"What was it?"

He realized he'd stopped talking, looked up at Ivanova's concern, decided he'd rather stare at his plate. "I still don't know. But it took out the Cerberus in just a couple shots."

"A Shadow ship?"

"No, no... I've seen footage of those. This was different. And it wasn't a Drakh ship, either."

"Well," she said, "the Shadows did have other allies. We don't know much about all of them."

"Yeah. All I know is I won't forget that thing any time soon." He sighed. "When I got back to Earth, nobody would believe me about the ship. They said it was probably a jump engine malfunction."

"Mmm, I've heard that one before."

"So when I wouldn't play along, they decided I needed some 'rest' and transferred me. I served on the Cortez for a while, worked my way up through the ranks, and eventually got the Explorer."

"The Cortez." She grinned. "So you served under Captain Maynard, then."

"Yeah. You know him?"

"He stopped by B5 for a resupply once. He and Sheridan are really good friends."

"Jeez, does Sheridan know everyone? I keep running into people. I mean, he and Captain Lochley were married once, if you can believe that." He paused. "Did you ever meet her?"

"Once. I gave her custody of my coffee plants. And she took my quarters, of course."

"That was YOUR bed?" he choked. After a moment he realized what he'd just said. "... Shoot. Sorry."

She raised an eyebrow. "Well, glad it's done somebody some good."

So much for diplomacy. She was smirking, though. So he hadn't lost too many points.

"So, uh..."

"Galen trusts Morden. Why?"

The sharp conversational left turn took him aback. "I don't know why. I suppose he has his reasons." He shrugged. "It could be just what he said, that he believes that the Shadows aren't controlling him any more."

"But..."

"But techno-mages never tell anyone the whole story."

Ivanova sighed. He frowned. "You said Morden can teleport. How exactly did you confirm this?"

"Oh." She sighed again. "He showed up in my office."

"Oh, great."

"Yeah. I don't know. Maybe there is something to his story."

"What, because he can teleport?"

"Because if he wanted to cause a lot of damage," she pointed out, "he could. And he isn't."

"The innocent-by-lack-of-damage-so-far theory?"

"It's something to keep in mind." She looked grim. "A lot of people were victimized in that war. By the Shadows, the Vorlons, the Psi Corps, Nightwatch..."

"Well, Dureena still blames him for wasting her homeworld."

Ivanova shook her head. "I don't know. He's cooperating. I hope that means he isn't planning on screwing us over later."

With that reassuring conversation in mind he let Morden out of holding. That was scary. He worried for the rest of the day that he'd find one of Dureena's knives in his back for his decision. But if what Ivanova said was true, there was no use penning him in anyway. Matt had the former Shadowminion shown to guest quarters and asked Galen to keep an eye on him.

Eilerson took this as tacit allowance to haul Morden down to the dining hall, which counted as the best meeting and workspace on the ship, to talk his ear off and ask for opinions on the languages they'd encountered so far. Matt thought about calling him on it, but let it go. The archaeologist was anxious to get his hands on the archive. They all were.

Two weeks was an unbearably long time.

Five days in Matt was lounging in the dining hall, keeping an eye on Morden across the room, when Dr. Chambers walked in and stopped across from the Shadowminion. The place was quiet, so it was pretty easy to eavesdrop.

"Mr. Morden?"

Morden looked up from his data pad, surprised. "Yes?"

Sarah sat down, facing away from Matt and blocking his view of Morden. He shifted his chair sideways a bit. "I have a sort of request," she said.

"A sort of request?" Morden was amused. "Well, I might be a sort of help. What can I do for you, doctor?"

"A while ago, we met an alien... rescued him, really. He was being hunted by his own people. They lived under an oppressive regime which was systematically destroying all the art their culture had created. Did Eilerson tell you about this?"

Morden shrugged slightly. "He mentioned it." A brief smile. "Sort of."

Sarah relaxed a bit. "Well, he had a copy of everything that got destroyed. Or... most of it, anyway. What he could save. He had us make a copy of his crystals."

"Ah?"

"It's.. wonderful. What I can understand, anyway." She spread her hands. "Thing is, Max's translations are... I'm wondering if he missed some subtleties somewhere. In the poetry. It's all a bit sparse."

"I could see that." Morden stared at her, eyes narrowed. "Why ask me? Why not just bully Max until he does the job right?"

Sarah half-laughed. "Well, first of all, I heard your arguments over subtleties of translation." Morden winced slightly. "Second, Dureena tells me you have an impressive appreciation for culture... as she put it, more than you'd expect from someone in your line of work."

"My old line of work," he said tiredly. "Is there a thirdly?"

"Yes." Matt couldn't see Sarah's face, but he knew her wry smile. "Thirdly, I looked up some of your articles, and I saw your piece on Anfras love poetry."

"Ah." Morden looked off into the middle distance, somewhere over Sarah's left shoulder. "That. Hm."

"Fourthly, we've got nine days until the quarantine ends, and it's something to do."

He chuckled. "Best reason yet. Okay, I'll take a look. No promises I'll have anything by the time quarantine is up, though."

Sarah left to get the relevant crystals. Morden went back to scribbling on Eilerson's notes. Matt decided it would be a good time to go back to the bridge and pretend that something interesting was happening.

As a matter of fact, something was. The chief weapons tester on the Diomedes had talked one of the Whitestar crews into being the test subject for the Diomedes' prototype weapon. Matheson explained this as Matt watched the Whitestar make a few graceful banks and rolls, then suddenly stop maneuvering and just coast in a straight line for about half a minute.

Matheson checked their instruments. "That's nice. They didn't hit us that time."

Matt stared at him. "Wouldn't I have noticed if they'd killed our gravity drive? I mean, that's our gravity, right?"

"Not exactly, sir. It only affects exterior gravimetric field projections. Our internal fields aren't damaged in any way."

Matt considered. "Well. That's useful. Gives your enemy a chance to surrender without puking his guts out from spacesickness."

"One can only hope."

"Excalibur, this is the Diomedes," Ivanova's voice came over the comm. "We have a request..." she hesitated. "Ms. Jones wonders..." Another hesitation. "Elle wants to try it on the Vorlon ship. I've told her it's a bad idea, and she insists on asking. Would you mind inquiring of your guest if he'd be willing to set his ship up for target practice?"

Matt exchanged a long look with his XO. "I can go..." Matheson started to offer.

"No, I'll do it. I know where he is." He signaled his intent to speak to comms. "Roger, Diomedes. We'll request it."

There was a pile of crystals by Morden's elbow when Matt returned. "Mr. Morden?"

"Mmm-hmm?" Morden said without looking up from his pad.

'We now have two people on board with Eilerson's work habits. Great.' "The chief weapons engineer for the Diomedes would like to use your ship."

"What for?"

"As a target."

Morden looked up incredulously.

"They've got a non-destructive gravity drive nullifier of some kind. Perfectly harmless. They've hit the Excalibur by accident a couple times and we're fine."

"Interesting." Morden shrugged. "But why ask me? I'm not the one getting shot at. Ask the ship."

"Uhh..." That was a new one. "It's your ship."

"Frankly, I think Orestes considers me 'his human'. And he definitely thinks he's smarter than I am, otherwise I wouldn't be here. Which just goes to show."

"Oh." Matt took a couple moments to digest that. "So... that really was the ship talking to us on approach, not some coded..."

"Mmm-hmm. Vorlon ships have always been sentient. Scary thought, huh?" A flash of teeth, like a predator. "Go ask Orestes. I have a feeling he'll be tickled by the request."

He mulled that thought over all the way back to the bridge. When he finally got the nerve to call the Vorlon transport and inform it that they wanted to shoot at it, he was surprised to find that Morden was right. Orestes was curious about what had been going on outside the Excalibur's hull, and was, for lack of a better word, tickled to be asked to volunteer.

After some trepidation, Matt gave Orestes clearance to launch. Then he watched with teeth gritted as the transport executed some of the same loops and rolls as the White Star had, suddenly drifting in a straight lines as the Diomedes' weapon system kicked in.

(That is a most interesting experience,) Orestes sent on an open channel.

"Captain Gideon?" came a female voice from the Diomedes. "This is Elle Jones, weapons development. We're getting some readings over here I can't quite make out, and I was wondering if I could come over there to redo this run in real time while watching your sensors."

"Uhhhh..." Matt said, mind spinning in place for a couple seconds. "Sure. Come on over." Matheson was giving him a calculatedly bland look. He shrugged.

Jones proved to be a perky twenty-something Mars-born with short, ash-blonde hair and a vulgar sense of humor. She teased Matheson and told Matt exactly what she thought his ship looked like. The tests of the Diomedes' weapon went according to her satisfaction, and when she asked for a short tour of the ship Matheson offered his services, even though he was still slightly red from Jones' last comment.

Matt watched them leave with a raised eyebrow. Well, now.

Matheson came back after an hour to report that Ms. Jones was on her way back to the Diomedes. Matt gave him a look. "So what'd you show her?"

Matheson shrugged. "Oh, the usual. The rest of the bridge, rec area, dining hall, some of the more public bits of weapons, since she's a designer... then saw her off."

"Ah-hah." He couldn't help smirking. "Didn't make it to your quarters, then?"

"Captain," Matheson said, aggrieved.

Matt just waited. After half a minute, Matheson caved and admitted, "She did invite me over to the Diomedes for coffee. Strictly professional."

"Professional like 'mile-long strap-on with mounting points and a clitoral stimulator'?" He snorted. "On second thought, I don't think you should be seeing this girl. She thinks my ship is a giant dick."

Matheson coughed. "A giant plastic dick."

"Whatever." Matt looked back to the viewscreen, out to where Orestes was drifting over the upper atmosphere. "Ask the Orestes to dock again. I think Ms. Jones has collected plenty of data."

---

Morden waited for Lieutenant Matheson and the chirpy weapons designer to leave before he picked up the crystal she'd dropped, unobtrusively, next to the extant pile. After a moment's hesitation, he ejected the volume of poetry he'd been working on and slid the message in. It seated with a faint click, and he brought the contents up on screen.

'I'd like to discuss a few things with you,' it read in unembellished white-on-blue. 'And as you might guess, it's not the sort of thing I want Captain Gideon to overhear. Drop by when it's next convenient. -- Ivanova.'

It was unexpected, to say the least.

There was a taste in his mouth like blood. He was startled to find he was gnawing on the inside of his lip. He didn't feel...

Well.

Even Max hadn't been so eager to talk to him since he got back. Not that Max wasn't trying to be friendly. But he was trying to pretend that nothing had happened, and kept giving him that confused look when Morden pointed out that things had. So they had... collaborated. Joked like they had, years ago. But not talked.

He didn't trust this, that was the matter.

But why should he worry? She couldn't do anything to hurt him.

He pulled the crystal and shoved it in his pocket. In any case, it wasn't convenient, not right now. The Excalibur and the Diomedes were on synchronized day-night cycles, and it was midafternoon, so Ivanova would be busy for hours.

He read through Max's notes on the translations, brief though they were, and went back to reading the poetry. When he looked up again, it was ten o'clock. He still hadn't found any words for the poems, or decided what to do about Ivanova's message.

He gathered up the crystals, methodically stacking them in the case he'd earlier dumped them out of. As he walked back to the quarters he'd been assigned, he reached out and very gently tickled the internal sensors of the Diomedes.

-?-

-!-

Ivanova was still on the bridge.

He reached his room, put down the case of crystals and his pad. He absently scanned for monitoring equipment and shorted out Galen's bugs.

It wasn't that it was hard to teleport any more. He had been terrified, before delivering Talia's message, that he'd wind up in an out of control spin into the Diomedes' fusion drive, or something equally drastic. But it had been remarkably simple, once he put his mind to it. He'd even practiced, during the last few incredibly boring days, jumping down to the planet, over to the Diomedes' more quiet sectors, even once into Galen's ship, where he'd left the case Lorien had given him. It was a matter of finding the other place, knowing how far away it was, and... letting go.

What the hell did she want from him? He was getting sick of defending himself, of fending off glances.

He checked the Diomedes. The bridge crew was trading off, and even Ivanova was taking her cue to leave, heading back to her quarters.

Well, time to decide. This was certainly the most convenient things were going to get.

Captain's quarters on the Diomedes weren't all that much larger than the crew cabin he'd been given on the Excalibur, he was surprised to find. More lavishly appointed, with a small zero-g-safe kitchenette and an incredibly comfortable sofa set, but still small. And there was a curious lack of ornamentation to the place. He recognized it after a moment. Lack of nesting instinct. The furniture came with the apartment. So did the pictures on the walls, for that matter.

She could have just moved in. The Diomedes was a prototype, after all, and this was a shakedown cruise. He sat down on the sofa and absently checked the computer's flight log, then winced. Ivanova had been in command of the Diomedes for six months, and living in these quarters for almost as long. She was almost as bad as he was about decorating.

The door hissed open. Captain Ivanova walked in, briskly unfastening the collar of her jacket and tugging down the zipper. She saw him when she was a few steps in and froze, as the door slid closed behind her.

"If this isn't convenient, I can go," he said.

She stared at him, her right hand unconsciously pressing her jacket closed on her chest. Half-in, half-out of her armor, she was vulnerable, wary.

"No, it's fine," she finally said, and with visible mental effort finished removing her jacket and tossed it on a chair. "Do you want some coffee? Freeze-dried, but it's real."

"Please."

She crossed to the cabinet and started pulling down supplies and assembling apparatus, all carefully stowed in case of zero-g maneuvering. He remembered the procedures. The ritual seemed to focus her movements, and when she handed him a cup of warm coffee, her mask was mostly back in place.

He took a sip, and burned his tongue, and fixed it without thinking. It was getting to be a habit. He briefly wished he had sugar, or milk, but he put that thought aside. He wasn't actually here for coffee.

She sat in the chair she'd thrown her jacket over, to his left, holding her coffee between her hands. She avoided looking at him as she drank, occasionally closing her eyes for a few seconds or shooting glances at the top cabinet, where he assumed she was keeping a private stash of something alcoholic. He waited.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, staring into her cup. "For... grilling you. I mean," she looked up, met his eyes, "I mean, your past is your business, and it was... belligerent of me to demand an explanation of you, especially when it was so personal..." she looked away again. "I'm sorry."

He was staring at his hands, now. The scratching in his throat that he thought he'd banished after that inquisition was back. He closed his eyes and willed it away, but it didn't listen.

"Well," he said after a couple tries. It almost sounded normal. He tried again, aiming for lightness. "I think I know enough personal history about you from working for the Shadows... I guess we can call it even."

Strangely enough it helped. She half-laughed, relaxed a bit.

"Still," she said, sounding much stronger, "It wasn't fair of me. I'm sorry."

"Forgiven. And who ever said life was going to be fair?"

She chuckled. That was reassuring.

"So, was that it?" He found himself reluctant to leave things there. "You just wanted to apologize?"

"Well.." she shrugged. "I wanted to ask you a couple questions. You left a lot out of that interview."

He grimaced. "Some things were better left alone for a while. And I'm not sure Max even knew what questions he wanted to ask."

She nodded, slowly, then said, "What are you really trying to accomplish here?"

That took him aback. He tried to find words. "Well... I wanted to find that database. I wanted to give it to the right people."

"Mmmm, that's not really an answer."

He shrugged. "I wanted to help people."

"But why? Are you trying to make up for what the Shadows did?"

"Or what I did?" he asked bitterly.

She nodded. He sighed. "Not... I mean, not really. I don't think I can."

"So why did you come back?"

"Because," he said, the bitterness welling up in his throat, "Because the Vorlons and the Shadows and the rest of the First Ones are just sitting out there, pretending nothing is wrong, when they know damn well something is. And they've had us fighting their battles and dancing to their tune for the last few million years, and now they're just going to ignore us. Someone had to do something. Break the silence. Tell the truth. And they wouldn't let anyone else go."

She opened her mouth to ask something, and he cut her off. "No, I don't know why me. I don't know why not Winters, why not anyone else."

Silence. "Actually," she said wryly, "I just wanted to know what was wrong."

"Ah. That." He shrugged. "It's... It's not going to make any difference for about a million years. But... the First Ones were around for billions of years before we came around. We're supposed to have that sort of time. The fact that we may not is... galling."

"And we may not?"

He shrugged, tried to smile. "Well, not unless we do something about it."

She was staring at him, hands clenched, her cup forgotten on the table in front of her. Tension, suddenly, and that taste in his mouth like blood.

Softly, she said, "Has it ever gotten easier to live with?"

He closed his eyes, felt the ache grow, burn. "I... Day by day, I think I can live with it. But it never feels easier."

"I can't think what I would have done," she whispered.

"I should have refused anyway." Stabbing pain, like ice. "I should have made the deal, watched them stick by it, and then refused. But I had nothing left. Just my word."

"I just..." she said, and suddenly she was talking to him, instead of to herself. "I've been thinking, sometimes, that it might be the same for you, as it is for me..."

He had to try and find words, something, but they wouldn't come. He was a translator, it was his job to find words, and none would come. The world was still, and they weren't talking past each other any more, and she was staring, and he was silent.

"And sometimes," she said, "I can't stand... not knowing..."

And then he was reaching out and she was there and she was here in his arms and her lips on his were so warm, so soft...

---

Waking made the whole thing feel like a dream.

The clock said 0230. It was dark. Aaron's breathing was a steady rhythm beside her, deep in sleep.

Susan rolled over to regard him. Sleeping, he looked innocent. Troubled; his eyes fluttered in a dream. A nightmare?

She reached out and stroked the side of his face. He didn't react. She ran her fingers through his hair. It was irritatingly perfect; it wouldn't stay tousled for more than a few seconds. After a few minutes she gave up in frustration and dropped her hand to the pillow between them.

It was like being curled up next to a predator. She didn't know if she could trust him. She didn't even know if he knew. She just knew that he understood, enough...

Her hand twitched, involuntarily, and she yanked it back against her chest, suddenly terrified. Ice-cold knots in her stomach. 'No... I couldn't.'

She had never, never used her telepathy like that. Never... she wasn't strong enough to scan anyone. She'd never had any training. She probably wasn't even a P-1.

That's what she'd told John. God, that had been so long ago. And now...

Now she wasn't sure if it was true.

Not even a P-1... until she'd entered the Great Machine, and the universe had dropped out from underneath her. Not even a P-1... until she reached out across the vastness and felt the warmth of countless other minds. Not even a P-1... until she'd stepped out of the Machine and felt that something must have changed.

Her blocks since then had been perfect. Blocks were something she was good at. She hadn't noticed any changes in background noise... not really. It hadn't gotten any louder. Just sharper, in the moments just before she fell asleep and slipped headlong into dreams, or when she woke, fuzzy and uncomprehending.

Still. Even if she could scan him, she wouldn't.

She wasn't going to.

No.

She didn't need to scan him, anyway. At least, she didn't need to look into his past for anything. She didn't need to intrude. All she needed was to know if the Shadows were still controlling him, or if he really had been set free. And considering how the Shadows and their influence affected telepaths, well, that shouldn't be hard to determine, should it?

The fate of the human race was resting on trusting this man. She had to try something, or she'd never forgive herself.

Gently, she reached out her hand, and reached...

Pain!

Explosive, driving her to her knees, acrid taste in her mouth, dust everywhere, ringing in her ears--

'It's not you, it's not yours, it's an echo. Just an echo--'

Her vision cleared. It was a hallway, dirty, somewhere, stone, ringing in her ears turning to a voice--

"This is what they did to Refa, you know."

Londo? What was Londo...

She stood, shakily, pulling herself apart as Aaron answered, "I know."

"And fitting, is it not? He burned towns, sent many of their people to death camps, destroyed countless lives... but it was not why I asked G'Kar to have him killed."

More pain, a vicious punch to the stomach and Don't argue with him, he's a figment of your imagination and it doesn't do any good.

"No, that was your fault, Mr. Morden." Crunching of boots on gravel, and a sudden kick to the kidneys that had him sprawled on the floor, facedown on the rock. "You know what Adira meant to me."

"Of course," he mumbled into the floor.

"You knew! And you told your associates to have her killed anyway!"

And then pain, pain, and she collapsed and screamed and he looked up and saw her, and suddenly he was holding her, breaking free, and he was asking "What are you--" and she pulled away, fast--

"Wait," he said, grabbing her wrist. She pulled away, shrank to the other side of the bed. "Wait..." Wait...

She shivered, terrified, watching him, watching the confused expression on his face, staring at the hand he was holding out tentatively.

What were you doing? he asked.

"I..." Realization hit her. Oh, God. You're...

He grimaced and pulled back. "Sorry. I didn't realize. I really didn't. What happened?"

The ice in her stomach was back. "Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I..."

"You were scanning me?" He frowned, shifted back slightly. "Why?"

She couldn't even move, she was so terrified. When he realized it, when she saw him realize that she didn't trust him, she felt sick. She knew what that felt like. God, she knew so much of what he felt like.

Long moments passed. Then he reached out and took her hand, gently pulling her forward.

I didn't know you were a telepath.

She swallowed. I'm not much of one.

Neither am I. I mean, I wasn't at all, before... well. I guess I am now. Or can be. Something. He frowned in thought, then shrugged. Though I could have told you to stay out of my dreams. A wry, sad smile. They've been pretty nasty for a few years.

I'm sorry...

It's all right. Reluctantly, she let him draw her close. He held her, breathed forgiveness into her ear. I understand.

I just... I don't even know if you can trust yourself. I just don't know.

He reached up and brushed hair out of her eyes, caught her gaze, carefully neutral. Do you want to see?

I...

It's all right. He closed his eyes for a second, then looked up, nervous, hiding it. It's all right...

It was like sinking into mercury, soft, warm, quicksilver. She could feel, she could taste how terrified he was, how terrified she was, and how knowing that, they could relax, laugh briefly, hold each other, all right, all right...

And oh, God, she knew, and he knew they knew they shared and he said Do you know how long and she answered yes, and please, and his lips were gentle on her lips jaw throat breasts nerves like fire suddenly and she could see yearning feel and--

Flashback to warm nights on the beach with her and it was perfect and--

Flashback to her brother quizzically staring at her, holding her earring, and--

Flashback to the funeral, not even the decency to rain, Max had been trying to say something for the last ten minutes--

Flashback to her father, saying goodbye in the only way he knew how--

Flashback to Anna Sheridan, trying desperately to save him--

Flashback to Talia, not Talia--

Flashback--

His hands were tangled in her hair, and there were tears on her face, and she was kissing him and trying to breathe and not stop and she had never felt like this with anyone and she wondered briefly if it might have been like this if Talia hadn't left and she cried and he understood and didn't hate her for thinking of that at a time like this and when it was over she was so exhausted she could only breathe, together, if ever together meant anything.

She still had more questions than answers, even with the taste of him in her mouth, in her mind. But they were new questions, better ones, because all of the most frightening ones had been answered.

He was playing with her hair, combing through it with his fingers. He looked up when she caught him and smiled. "Hey."

"Hey." She reached out and tangled her fingers in his hair again, attempted to muss it up some. Failure. "Why does your hair do that, anyway?"

"Hm?" He looked up as though he could see it. "I'm not sure. Something to do with self-identity, I think. I like my hair to stay neat."

"So whatever the Shadows did to you, it lets you keep your hair neat?"

"That and all sorts of other things... like fixing a broken arm."

"When you teleported."

"Yeah." He stroked her hair. "You should sleep."

"Were you really in love with Anna Sheridan?"

His hand stilled, and his face went blank. "I don't know," he whispered after a moment. "I don't... I don't know. I think so. Yes. Maybe." He shook his head, then said, "Were you really in love with Marcus Cole?"

Oh, God. That still hurt.

"I..." Honestly? Honestly, Susan Ivanova? "I don't think I was. He was just so in love with me that... maybe I just don't remember."

"I understand."

Something occurred to her. "What did you mean, you weren't a telepath, but now you 'can be'?"

He made a soft hissing sound, nervous. "It was something Ironheart said. I met him for... what, ten minutes? And he said, I'm not a telepath, but I could be. I think... I think I get to decide."

"You get to decide." She chuckled, but her heart wasn't in it. "You get to turn your own telepath gene on and off?"

He nodded.

"Wow." The implications... "Can you do it for other people?"

He looked startled. "I don't know." He thought about it for a second. "I really don't know."

"Mmm. Well, see if you can figure it out without panicking anyone." She smiled, then surprised herself with a yawn. "Is it really oh-three-hundred? Hell. I should sleep."

He smiled down at her, touched her forehead lightly. "Yes, yes you should. Sweet dreams."

Like sinking into mercury, warm and dark.

---

Matt counted off the days on his calendar with gigantic red Xs. There were always things to do on the ship, piles of paperwork to avoid, inspections to oversee, lists of summaries that Matheson capably recited, and every day he ended the day thanking God that there was one less day left until that damn database was fair game. Everyone on the ship was getting wound up thinking about it. He heard whispers in the halls that were stilled as soon as the crew saw him. And of course, Eilerson was insufferable.

The only person, strangely enough, who was taking the delay with equanimity was Morden, who happily applied himself to his retranslation project. He didn't even flinch when, at three days to go, Matt told him that he wanted Eilerson and Galen to do the preliminary translation without him.

"That's stupid," Eilerson said when he broke the news. "Aaron's the only living expert on the Shadows' language. Wouldn't it be nice to have a preliminary translation as soon as possible?"

"I still don't fully trust your friend," Matt stated baldly. "And I want you and Galen to get a basic translation down before he helps with the details."

Two days. It was like chewing on tinfoil.

Eilerson griped. Endlessly. The dining hall was becoming an irritating place to try and relax, but it was still the best place to work on the ship, so Matt endured Eilerson's pointed comments.

"I mean it's just ridiculous," Eilerson said to Morden, who was poring over the stack of crystals and not looking very interested in complaining.

"I'm sure you'll come up with something," Morden said offhandedly.

"Well, yes, but we're looking for medical data. Something where a mistranslation could wind us in deep trouble."

"We'll burn that bridge when we cross it."

Eilerson made a disparaging noise in his throat, which died as Dureena stalked across the hall towards them. Conversations grew quiet, then started up again. Matt pretended to be absorbed in his coffee.

She sat down across from Morden, next to Eilerson, and watched as the former Shadowminion only barely recognized her presence. Finally she asked, "Do you really think there's a cure in there?"

He looked up. "I think so."

She nodded, apparently satisfied. Eilerson whistled softly.

"Max," Morden said suddenly, "Do you have the slightest idea what an allegory is?"

"Of course I know what an allegory is."

"Do you know what a good allegory is? As opposed to a bad one?"

Eilerson sighed impatiently. "If you wanted a poet, you should have hired a poet."

"You don't need to be a poet to understand exergasia."

"Now who's showing off their Greek?"

"What are you translating?" Dureena asked.

Morden looked up briefly. "Dr. Chambers gave me some crystals she got from a scholar of a race you encountered...?" he said, tipping her to fill in the details.

She nodded. "The Marati."

"Right. Poetry." He looked innocent. "Max's translations were perfectly serviceable. Kind of like the original Loeb translations of Catullus."

"That's just low."

"So you're, what?" She looked from one of them to the other, smirking. "Bringing it up to its proper literary standards?"

"Well, sort of. Most of it's just bad, after all."

She laughed, surprised.

"No, really. You have the entire poetic output of a planet here. Most of it's bound to be drivel, just statistically. It's the best ten percent that's really worth reading. And of course, it's all written from an alien perspective, so some of it just doesn't come across particularly well. And none of it has footnotes."

"Lovely."

He nodded, then frowned, slightly, in thought. He pulled the crystal from his pad, looked for another on the table, and plugged it in.

Dureena watched, eyebrows furrowed, as he tapped a series of commands on the pad, then started scribbling with the entry pen. He worked for a few minutes, occasionally pausing in thought, mostly writing or angrily signaling the backspace command, an input that Matt was able to identify backwards from across the room, thanks to long familiarity.

Finally, Morden looked up, turned the pad around and handed it to Dureena, expressionless. She stared at him, then took the pad and read it.

Her expression didn't change, and then she dropped the pad.

She concealed it, as well as she could, but she couldn't conceal that her hands were shaking and--her hands were shaking!--and she pushed it back to him with a jerky motion and said "I didn't know you were actually on Zander Prime. When did you learn my language?"

"I'm not sure," Morden said. He sounded distracted, confused.

Worried?

Matt wasn't sure he liked where this was going.

Two more days.

---

"Hey, Captain?"

Susan looked up from her paperwork to Elle, who was standing in the door of her office/retreat/sanctuary. "Yes?"

Elle looked around nonchalantly. "Some of the guys and I have been wondering when you decided to trust this guy."

That was precisely not what Susan had wanted to hear. "Sorry?" she replied, hoping that she was overreacting.

"You know the one. The guy we had that briefing about. Dangerous. Worked for the Shadows when that meant something. Can teleport." Elle gave her a long look. "The one you had me take that secret message to. The one you're now getting it on with, unless all my instincts on the matter have been switched off in the past week."

Captains couldn't shoot themselves in the head. It just wasn't done. Susan closed her eyes, sighed to herself, and said "Step inside and close that door. Who have you been talking with?"

"Ah, if it's official then we have to make it official," Elle said, closing the door. "I'm a civilian. This can be as unofficial as you like. Your crew trust you, boss, but they don't know if they can trust this guy. Especially because you told them you didn't."

"Shit," Susan said.

"Well?" Elle gesticulated grandly. "Why are you trusting him? He didn't put the voodoo on you or anything, right? And you're not the type to trust someone just because you want to screw them."

Susan perched her chin on her hand and thought, quickly. Elle would probably be satisfied with the answer of 'personal reasons.' For Elle, personal reasons were fine. But what about the people who she had, indeed, told about Morden, that he wasn't to be trusted, that they might be in danger just staying here?

Personal reasons wasn't going to go over so well, there. Nor was her conclusion that if he really meant them any harm, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it, anyway. She could just see Trevor's reaction to that.

"I asked you to take a message to him," she said, "Because I wanted to ask him some questions, and find out if some of the things I know, independently of Captain Gideon, matched up with the rest of his story. And they did."

Elle relaxed. "So his story does check out, then."

Susan nodded. "I trust it a lot more than I did last week. And you can quote me on that. For one thing, I believe he did meet and get his pass from Lorien. And that's a good reason to believe he's not here to cause trouble."

"You knew this Lorien guy pretty well, then?"

"As well as anyone can know any of the First Ones, I guess. He helped us a lot during the last bit of the Shadow War. A whole lot." She hesitated. "He brought Sheridan back to life, on Z'Ha'dum."

Elle's eyes went wide. "Woah. So the rumor is true? He did die, and all that?"

"Yeah." She suddenly felt a headache coming on. "And speaking of Sheridan, I'm going to have to give him a good explanation, so I might as well give the crew a formal update on the situation. And the guys on the Excalibur open the database in two days."

"Yeah, but John says they're not using that Morden guy for preliminary translations."

Susan had to do a few mental backflips before she remembered the name. "And how is Lieutenant Matheson?"

"Oh, he's good. Better now that I've taught him to use his fingers in conjunction with his tongue. You'd think a telepath would pick that up faster."

Oh, God. "Too much information, Jones."

"Sorry, was I talking about sex again?"

"You're always talking about sex."

"I think it's because I don't get enough." She suddenly grinned. "Do you think Mr. Morden's up to taxiing people back and forth?"

Susan groaned. Then another thought struck her. "You're not discussing my personal life with the crew of the Excalibur, are you?"

Elle blinked at her. "Uh, no, I'm not."

"Or any particular crewmember?"

"Honestly, Captain. I haven't told John anything about you." She paused, frowned in thought. "Maybe something about that one time you picked up that girl at that one place, and there was a bar fight with those two bruisers who thought they could take you. But just because their expressions were priceless."

Susan winced. "I guess I can live with that."

"But it's going to get out sometime, Captain."

"I know." She smiled wearily. "Hopefully not before I can come up with a really good excuse for 'fraternizing with the enemy.' Thanks for coming to me with this."

As soon as the door closed behind Elle, Susan groaned and buried her head in her hands.

"My ears were burning," Aaron said from behind her. "Are you all right?"

She half-turned and glared. "Are you bugging my office?"

He shook his head. "No." At her continued disbelief, he sighed. "It's more complicated than that. I can stop if you want."

"No, it's just--don't they miss you over there?"

"Galen might. He's supposed to keep track of me. He gets peeved because I keep turning off his monitors."

Despite herself she was struck by an image of the serene, mysterious techno-mage pouting over a tiny camera which had inexplicably stopped working, and she snickered. He smiled, maneuvered around her chair to perch on her desk. "See? It can't be that bad. What's wrong?"

She winced. "Elle and some of my senior staff have figured us out."

"Ah." He made a face, annoyed, but not surprised. "I wondered how long it would take."

"It's going to get back to the Excalibur eventually. If only because Lieutenant Matheson has been spending more time in Elle's quarters than his own, and that means Excalibur shuttle crews are over here on a regular basis." She sighed. "Which means, apart from any of this, that my judgment is compromised, meaning my voice in this whole situation is gone."

"Don't worry." He took her hand, and he was smiling softly when she looked up at him. "They're opening the database in two days. That'll give them something else to think about."

"What's in there, anyway?"

He shrugged. "Lots of information. Weapons, technology, history..." he trailed off. "The truth about a lot of things. Why the Shadow War happened. What they've been doing to us. Why they did it."

She watched him try to shrug it off, to smile, but whatever information he'd learned was dark behind his eyes. He met her gaze and his smile vanished.

"Why don't you want to talk about it?" she asked.

"I..." He grimaced. "Part of me just hopes it isn't true."

"And?"

"And..." He looked away. "I think there's more in there than I initially thought. Notes on us. And... I think I've been accessing it without realizing."

There was a ringing in her ears as she very carefully asked, "Oh? What do you mean?"

He shrugged, but she could tell that he could tell she was worried, and--"This morning, I learned Dureena's language in, what, five minutes? That's beyond even my considerable skill at languages." He grinned, lamely. "And when I--even talking about this is hard, all right? We don't have words for these concepts. When I looked at the information and tried to figure out where it came from, it was more... formal, than if I'd actually sat down and learned the language myself. When you learn another language you cross-reference. You find analogues in your own language for concepts and ideas that don't quite come across. This was different."

"You don't think it's... programming you?"

He shrugged again. Resigned. "If they'd wanted to do that, they could have programmed me during those two weeks they had me unconscious back past the Rim."

"Unless they just set you up to receive signals."

"And left this to beam messages into my head when I was sleeping?" He shook his head. "It's probably just an unconscious interface... thing I didn't know was there. Probably. I can't trust them, but at some point..." he sighed.

"It isn't paranoia if they are out to get you," she pointed out.

"Ha." He grinned, angrily, slightly manic. Then he stood and pulled her to her feet. "If you could go anywhere, now, where would you go?"

"I..." She looked around, laughed slightly. "What do you mean--"

"Anywhere. Now."

"St. Petersburg," she said reflexively, then suddenly realized what she was possibly agreeing to. "But the plague--"

She was there. They were there. Cobblestones under her feet. He was standing behind her and his arms were around her and he was whispering, as she stared up at the sky and around at the people, "It's all right. Trust me. I won't let you get infected. We won't pick it up."

It was evening, the stars overhead were twinkling, the lights all around, the people, the snow--"But..."

"You don't believe me? Here." And they were on the Moon.

Outside the domes. Grey dust underfoot. She gasped, instinct saying she was choking, but she could breathe, wasn't cold, and he laughed and pulled her close and they were floating, blackness everywhere, stars as far as she could see--

And then back, in her office, and he was laughing, and just a little hysterical, holding her as though he were drowning.

After a few deep breaths, she said, "Are you absolutely sure that we didn't pick up the plague in those few seconds?"

He was shaking. She was shaking. He stopped laughing and said, "Absolutely. One hundred percent."

"But how can you know for sure?"

"There are things I know for sure." His breath was warm on the back of her neck, his arms tight around her ribs. She grabbed his hands. They were cold. Her hands were cold. They had been floating in vacuum. There was moondust on her shoes, on the cuffs of her pants.

He held her, or held onto her, until the shivers went away, until she was sure she was really here, on her ship, and breathing, and he was sure... of whatever he hadn't been fully sure of, when he knew at least that they weren't killing the rest of her crew just by being here, from Earth.

"I can't just not do these things," he finally said, softly. "They wired me up, they put a set of instructions in my brain, and... a lot of it's instinct. If someone came at you with a gun, you'd know how to defend yourself. The universe comes at me with problems, and... I have to try and find answers."

"But what if someone gets hurt?" she whispered.

She could hear him--feel him--close his eyes, and sigh. "I just have to believe at some point, humanity means more than the Vorlons and Shadows put together," he said.

And that left her cold, when he pulled away, and there was only empty space and herself in her small office, and her concerns about who was keeping tabs on her personal life were suddenly completely insignificant.

And she wondered, as she sat down and tried to wipe the moondust from her shoes, if opening the database wasn't just another beginning, after all, and no closure in sight.

---

"Can he be in the same room as us?"

Matt deliberated the wisdom of attempting to beat his brains out against the wall. On one hand, he wouldn't have to listen to Eilerson any more. On the other hand, he wouldn't learn what was in the damn black box that he'd spent two weeks staring at.

"No, Max," he said wearily. "Mr. Morden is not allowed in the room while you're doing the translation."

"Captain, you are crippling me in the course of a scientific investigation which has the potential to not only save billions of lives, but make all of us indescribably rich."

"Max..."

"Medical data, Captain. I'm not a doctor and neither is Galen."

"Neither is Morden."

"But he's demonstrated that he's fluent."

Matt pinched the bridge of his nose and willed Eilerson to vanish in a puff of smoke. It didn't work. "Fine. But only have him there to consult on the details."

"Of course." Eilerson smirked in victory. "I have to prove to him that my lovely assistant the computer is more talented than he is."

Matt stayed down in the isolab long enough to watch Dr. Chambers run the final tests on the box, then crack the seals to let Eilerson pull it out and start attaching monitoring equipment to it. Then he went back to the bridge.

After twenty minutes, Matheson cleared his throat at his elbow. "Sir?"

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

Very quietly, Matheson said, "If it's driving you crazy, you should probably just go down there and watch them work for a while. I don't think we'll be facing a crisis up here."

He stared at his XO's concerned expression for a few seconds before admitting, "It's that obvious?"

"Yes, sir."

"I won't get any more information down there than I will up here."

"No sir, but you will have Eilerson around to take your frustrations out on."

He thought about that for a moment. "All right. I'll take any damage to the walls out of our operating budget."

Matheson still looked better in his chair than he did. Dammit.

Eilerson or some of the techs had dragged the database to the center of the room and hooked a bunch of equipment to it. A page of text was hovering over it, and a camera had been rigged to echo the view to a monitor on the wall. Eilerson was tapping away on his keyboard, and Galen was leaning against the wall studying the screen. Morden was back in the corner at a desk, flipping through his pile of Marati crystals. He looked up as Matt entered, smiled wryly. "Hello, captain."

Matt looked around. "Any progress yet?"

Eilerson made a growling sound. "I've finally managed to trace-scan the last of the characters into my computer, but the line structure is giving the parser a few hiccoughs... still, with Galen's able assistance I've hardcoded enough sentences and scanned in enough text to give us a basic working syntax and vocabulary. In a few more minutes I should have adjusted the parameters enough to try for a first pass translation."

"And you'll get gibberish," Morden said.

"Of course I'll get gibberish," Eilerson said, twisting halfway around in his seat. "That's what recursive translation programming techniques do."

"Well," Matt said. "Don't let me stop you."

"Believe me, captain," Eilerson said, already back to his keyboard. "It would take more than a few idle questions to upset the well-machined workings of my brain."

"No," Morden said. "Just the suggestion that Alais at Dawn is a piece of garbage."

"Is not," Eilerson shot back huffily.

"Sure it is."

"It's the most brilliant piece of cinema of our generation. It's both a visual and conceptual masterpiece."

Morden smirked and turned in Matt's direction. "He just likes it because it brought back Argentine tango and he could finally pick up women."

"And you hate it because you can't dance."

"Sure I can."

"No you can't. Do you know how I met Cynthia?" Eilerson gestured expansively. "We were in a bar in Boston, and she walks over and asks him to dance. And he, being the stupidest person in the bar, says he can't dance but I can."

"I said I'm not a dancer but you think you're the reincarnation of Mikhail Serkis."

"Whatever. I then proceed to prove to her that I am, in fact, the reincarnation of Mikhail Serkis and wind up taking her home."

"And eventually married her." Morden shook his head. "Where is she, anyway?"

Eilerson blinked, looked at his feet briefly before turning back to his computer. "She left me about five years ago."

There was an uncomfortable pause. "I'm sorry," Morden said.

"It's all right. We still keep in touch."

"Was she on Earth when..."

"No, she moved to Proxima when we split up." Eilerson shrugged, then went back to typing, slowly at first, then faster.

Matt traded a glance with Galen, who didn't look too surprised. Then again, Galen very rarely looked surprised. Especially when he was.

"Max," Morden said after a pause, "You don't use the word 'raptor' in a love poem."

"What the hell do you know about love poetry?"

"That it often gets mistranslated."

"Go and fix it, then. Why'd I even bother getting the PhD from Princeton in the first place?"

"I don't know. Should have taken a few more English classes."

"I was busy."

"You weren't busy reading Gallinger, that's for sure."

"Excuse me for wanting to train to do field work." Eilerson hit a few keys, then reached to a separate dial and fiddled. Text jumped over the database, on the wall. Galen looked up and peered at the hovering words.

"All right," Eilerson said. "Here's run one." He hit three keys with a triumphant flourish.

The wall displayed an overlay of English text in bright yellow. Galen frowned at it while Eilerson considered his laptop.

"Well," Galen finally said. "Some of the words have the correct roots."

"Right." Eilerson cracked his knuckles. "Give me some information."

Galen started translating, haltingly. "In the world of light we created art for the universe, and kept the city as a home for peace and life. Our finest arts and magics were turned to the task of building the vehicles we... became?"

"Close enough," Morden said from across the room.

Galen cleared his throat and continued. "We have been named by the stars, for we come to the stars for guidance. We have been chosen by the stars, for we come to the stars for wisdom. We have been chosen by destiny, for destiny is a name for all forces acting in concert. We are the ones who have created and become our creations, the synthesis that reaches the stars and our innermost souls. We are the ones who will teach and be taught, form ourselves and be formed by others. We are that which we create, and our work is blessed because it is in us. We have given ourselves to others so we may perfect ourselves and our creations."

"The word isn't creations," Morden said. "It's starships."

Galen shot him a look. "It doesn't say starships."

"It does."

"Let's try this again," Eilerson interrupted them. He entered a few keystrokes and the English text disappeared, then redrew.

Galen peered at it. "Not yet."

"You don't expect success on the first few tries." More keystrokes.

"So," Galen said casually. "How have the rest of you been spending your time waiting for this magic series of moments?"

"Trying to keep Max from drooling on the window," Matt said. "Why, how have you been spending your time?"

"Well, it's very strange. Some time ago I found that someone had left a gift for me. Inside my ship."

He glared at Morden, who smirked without looking up. "Happy Hanukkah."

"Yes, well, it got me thinking about what else Mr. Morden has been up to on his spare time?"

"What," Morden said, "Besides putting the iambic pentameter back in Max's sonnets?"

"I preserved the meter from the original," Eilerson griped.

"Sometimes to preserve accuracy you have to sacrifice precision."

"It's just that according to the rumors I've heard from over on the Diomedes you and Captain Ivanova have become rather fast friends over the last couple of weeks," Galen said.

Morden didn't answer. Matt stared. "Fast friends?" he said. "You've been over there entertaining Ivanova whenever you have a chance?"

"We've had a few discussions," Morden said.

"More than that, from what I hear."

Morden shrugged slightly. "Junior technicians have dirty minds. And I know for certain you haven't managed to plant one of your little cameras in Ivanova's quarters. Or her office. Or most anywhere on her ship, actually."

Galen frowned. Morden looked up and raised his eyebrows. "Moralizing disapproval from you, Galen?"

"What, is it true?" Matt asked, incredulous.

Morden frowned into space for a moment, then shrugged. "We have a lot in common."

Eilerson shook his head absently. "You and Captain Ivanova." Then he stopped typing and spun around. "Wait. You and Captain Ivanova?"

Morden looked up. "Yes, Max."

Eilerson stared in honest surprise. "She's not going to try and make you keep kosher, is she?"

"She's a Russian Jew. She doesn't keep kosher."

"Right, because I remember that argument. No paschal offering for you."

"I'm so disappointed I could spit."

"Anyway, I thought she hated you."

"Yes, well, every relationship has its hurdles to overcome."

"I guess that love poetry stuff works."

"Wait a minute," Matt said. "You actually got Captain Ivanova to trust you, after all that?"

Morden looked up with a bland expression. "Yes."

"How did you manage that?"

He looked pensive, shrugged. "I told her the truth."

"And the truth will set you free?" Galen asked.

"Here," Eilerson said, tapping another keystroke sequence. He leaned forward eagerly, then swore.

Morden stood, walked over to take a look at the output. "Well," he said. "You've managed to recreate most of Zero Wing."

"Go back to your Neruda," Eilerson grumbled.

Matt took the opportunity to excuse himself and walk back toward the shuttle. Ivanova and Morden. Not something he'd expected to happen. Now he was feeling out-flanked. He should call her up and demand--

Oh, no. That wasn't a conversation he wanted to get into. Not at all. He had a feeling that if he started demanding details of Captain Ivanova's personal life he'd find himself on the receiving end of a beating from his own severed arm.

Fortunately, he had at least one spy in the enemy's camp. When he got back to the bridge, he caught Matheson for a short conference out of hearing.

Matheson didn't want to get involved either.

"Sir?"

"Just have you heard anything. Any rumors..."

"About Captain Ivanova's personal life?" He looked skeptical. "Sir, they're all terrified of her over there. I mean, it's in a very respectful way, of course. But she's a legend."

"I know, I know. But... well, that weapons developer doesn't seem all that terrified of legends."

"Elle?" Matheson shrugged. "Well, she told me one story. But it's months old. Involved a bar fight on Beta Durani."

"Mmm, no, I was looking for something more recent."

"Sir? Is something going on?"

"I just have a few questions, Lieutenant."

He left the bridge. He wanted to do something, dammit. He'd been on edge since they picked up the damn box, and now that they were cracking it he had the distinct feeling that his control over the situation had been brushed aside. He wanted to go back to landing on planets and dealing with people shooting at him. That, at least, was straightforward.

Actually, not getting shot at was nice. Waiting for knives in the dark wasn't.

He went to the gym for a few hours. When he was done working off his irritation and cleaning up, he headed back to the translation team. Even before he got inside, he could hear Eilerson and Galen arguing.

"It is starships!"

"Maximilian, as much as I admire your linguistic talents--"

"You just don't want to admit that Aaron is right."

"Do you realize what the implications of your assertion are?"

Matt stepped around the corner in time to see Galen jabbing his finger at the screen. "There," the techno-mage snapped. "Read that from your precious translation."

Eilerson sighed and bent over the text. "'We agreed to continue in our capacity as the starships,'" he read, leaning on the word, "'for the other races while building our facade and reimagining our planet.' What's wrong with that?"

Galen stared at him. "The other races," he said. "The Vorlons."

Eilerson frowned, looked back at his translation. "Wait, what?"

"The Vorlon ships," Galen said. "That means that the Shadows... were the Vorlon ships."

Matt felt his mouth go dry. "Wait a minute," he said. They looked up, startled. "We've got a Vorlon ship in our docking bay."

They stared at each other for a moment. Matt closed his eyes, then looked to his right to glare at Mr. Morden.

Morden was leaning against the desk with his arms crossed, looking nothing so much as resigned. "I told you you wouldn't believe me," he said.

"That's impossible," Galen said, starting forward. "We would have known."

"What, the techno-mages?" Morden smiled, nastily. "You would have known?"

"Yes," Galen insisted. "The Shadows are instantly recognizable. Their technology--"

"Galen," Morden said, stepping forward. Galen pulled back in surprise. "Don't blink."

Galen stared at Morden for a few seconds, then hissed and shook his head. Morden nodded, slowly.

"The Shadows and the Vorlons have been running rings around us since before we were an ambulatory species," he said as Galen walked away to stand next to the database. "Did you really think that we could understand what they were up to?"

"Wait a minute, what did you just do to Galen?" Matt asked, angrily.

"Nothing," Morden said blandly. "I just demonstrated that I know more about what the Shadows can and can't do than he does."

"So, wait," Eilerson said, removing his glasses and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "If the Shadows and the Vorlon fleet were the same... people, does that mean they were shooting at themselves during the war?"

"Yes, Max," Morden said. "That's exactly what it means."

Eilerson looked up, spread his hands and quietly asked, "Why?"

Morden closed his eyes for a moment, as though... nerving himself? "Because they were willing to die for their cause. And their cause needed a war."

"Why?" Eilerson said again.

"Because it turns out the Shadows were right."

He let that implication sink in for a few moments. Matt felt himself growing angrier. "Wait a minute. You come back and bring us this thing just to tell us your old bosses were right?"

"Do you think I'm happy about that?" Morden snapped. "They--I--billions of people are dead, because of that war. Worlds destroyed. I want them to be wrong. I want their philosophy to be dead. I want to paint 'NEVER AGAIN' across the universe in supernovas to burn it into people's..." He gestured weakly, miserably, then pointed at the database. "Go back to the beginning and find out what their point was. Find out why. Find out what they were trying to save us all from."

Eilerson was staring at his friend. It took him a few seconds to turn around and manipulate the controls to bring up earlier text.

Matt cleared his throat as Eilerson typed in the translation command. "What are you translating, anyway?"

"The Shadows' true name," Galen answered quietly. "Their identity."

"What's a photino?" Eilerson asked.

Galen turned, brow wrinkling. "A what?"

"Oh, I understand," Eilerson said, manipulating the screen. Text flowed, and a new translation appeared. "It's all interlinked. See, I can input from the translation program and get a definition."

"Nice job," Morden said. He seemed somewhat calmer. "You've taught it that you speak English."

"A subatomic particle of dark matter," Eilerson said. Then, "What?"

"Never mind." Morden waved it off. "Keep reading. This is important."

Matt eyed him for a moment, then turned back to Eilerson. "Dark matter?"

"Yeah. There's baryonic matter... which is us," Eilerson said. "And then there's... uh, photinic matter, which is them." The text on the screen scrolled back, quickly. "See? The two types don't interact, except for gravity."

"That seems like a pretty big interaction to me," Matt pointed out.

"Not necessarily," Galen said. He was reading, speaking slowly. "It's fairly weak as these things go... not on the order of most matter-matter interactions..." he trailed off.

"They're killing stars," Eilerson said flatly.

Matt stared at him. "What?"

"You're right," Galen said. "That is what it says."

"The photinos," Eilerson said, pointing at the screen. "They're killing stars. Snuffing them out."

"Wait a minute. I don't understand." Matt held up his hands. "Which stars?"

Eilerson stared at him. "All of them."

That wasn't good. "... All? All of the stars in the galaxy?"

Eilerson's stare became slightly... what, pitying? "All the stars in the universe."

"All of them."

"All of them."

Matt looked over at the glowing text. "So how do we stop them?"

Galen answered. "No one knows."

"What, the First Ones didn't have a solution?"

"No," Galen said. He sounded at though someone had just yanked the rug out from under his feet. "No, they didn't."

"Great." He turned back to Eilerson. "How much time do we have?"

"Uh..." Eilerson stared at the screen blankly. "I have to calculate it. It's measured in rotations around the galactic core."

"Five hundred million years," Morden said.

"Oh," Matt said in relief. "That's not so bad."

"Captain," Eilerson snapped, "we're talking about the extinction of the universe. That isn't supposed to happen on these time scales. It's been over ten billion years since the beginning of the universe. Now this is saying we have less than one billion left."

Matt's head was throbbing. He rubbed at his eyes a bit but it didn't go away. "All right. Look. This extinction of the universe is a big problem, but we've got a little time to deal with it. In the meanwhile, we have the extinction of the human race to worry about. So why don't we put the history lesson on hold and go digging for a cure to the plague?"

Eilerson and Galen looked at each other. Then Eilerson shook his head and turned back to his console. "Of course. The plague. Right..."

"Tell Dr. Chambers and myself as soon as you have something you think we can use," he ordered. "We'll take off for Theta 49 as soon as we're ready."

Morden looked up, confused. "What's on Theta 49?"

"Test population."

He left without explaining. He had an urge to be back on the bridge, and bored.

---

Susan could have expected the recall order.

She'd finally sent her detailed report, skirting around her relationship with Morden but indicating that his story had been independently verified by Galen, admitting that she'd gone to Sheridan as an expert on the First Ones... and now she was on her way home, and the Excalibur was soon to be on its way... somewhere.

"Orion system," Morden had told her when she'd asked. "There's some sort of localized infected population there. It's a few days away, and we're leaving as soon as Dr. Chambers thinks she knows what she's doing."

It was a little more than two days to the Solar system. And now she was at Ganymede docks, handing the keys to the Diomedes back to General Spencer, saying goodbye to Elle and watching the rest of her crew get some leave time.

She was standing in front of Spencer's desk, waiting for her next assignment, and wondering if he was going to strip her bars for going over his head to the Alliance or promote her for possibly helping find a cure for the plague or...

"Good work, Captain," he said. "You're to be commended. Now, your next assignment. I need you to leave immediately."

She blinked. "Sir?"

General Spencer was a short man, a keglike frame on stocky legs. He stood and placed his hands on his desk, looking like a grey-haired bulldog with something to worry between his teeth. "We've got a ship for you and your crew. It's running a prototype AI system which has already been programmed, but we need a crew in case something goes wrong."

"And you already have a mission for it?"

"Indeed." He glanced down at his desk and picked up a sheet of paper an a few data crystals, which he handed to her. "Here are your marching orders. Get your crew together and get on it."

"But... shore leave--"

"This takes precedence, Captain. On your way."

She found herself outside the General's office, not entirely sure what had just happened. Shaking her head, she headed to the officer's club to find Trevor.

He was drinking with a gaggle of junior lieutenants--Tracy Neece, Lisa Connery, and Jessica Tanaka. The girls attempted to look sober as she came up, but didn't seem to notice anything was wrong.

Trevor did. "That was fast."

"Yes, it was. We've been ordered to a new command."

He nodded. "When?"

"Now."

The girls were startled. Trevor was appalled. "Captain, that's ludicrous. We've been on tour for months. We're supposed to have time off." He looked down at the glass in his hand. "At least to have a few drinks."

"I know." She thought longingly of the bottle of Medoyeff stashed in her personal effects. "I know. It contradicts all sense. But something's got General Spencer in a hurry, which means we're in a hurry."

"The crew won't like it. Hell, I'll be surprised if we can get underway at all."

She grimaced. "They're good soldiers. We'll make it. Dock 81-B. Round up everyone you can; I'll find our crew."

It took six hours to round up everyone, another two to finish stowing and touring. In the meantime, Susan got a shuttle pilot to give her a short-hop overview of her new ship.

It was black; instead of gunmetal grey like the rest of Earthforce, the cruiser was a flat black that barely reflected the stars. It was made of graceful curves, like a boomerang or a scimitar. Artificial gravity, plenty of space for crew to spread out. At least that would be appreciated.

"It's a beautiful ship," the pilot said. She was a quiet, focused Asian woman who looked half Susan's age. "What's her name?"

"Rhinegold," Susan replied. After a second, she had to chuckle. Eilerson was right. EA command had a lousy track record at naming ships.

"Captain on deck," Trevor announced when she stepped onto the command deck half an hour later.

"As you were," she ordered. She looked around. The bridge reminded her a good deal of the White Star model; consoles organized around a central open area, giving Trevor plenty of room to maneuver and organize. Her chair, on further inspection, had armrests with built-in tactical displays and controls for main screen overlays.

"So," she said after a few moments. "What about this AI?"

"Hello, Captain," came a flat male voice from her right armrest.

That was startling. Most Earthforce user interface systems had a female vocal synthesizer; the only male one she'd met was Sparky, the experimental AI that had briefly been around on Babylon 5. Until Garibaldi had his way with the system. "Uh, hello," she said. She looked at Trevor for assistance and only got a shrug in return. "How shall I address you?"

"I am the ship."

"So... Rhinegold, then."

"All crew have come aboard and we have been given clearance for departure," the ship said.

Trevor was looking decidedly unhappy. Susan knew how he felt. "You've been programmed with our destination," she said, "But it's mysteriously absent from my copy of our orders. Where are we going?"

The Rhinegold was silent for a disturbingly long moment. "Theta Forty-Nine, there to investigate possible instance of rogue colony survival based on rumors reported by scout, five days ago."

"Rogue colony?" Trevor asked.

"Possible contamination by Drakh plague," the ship clarified.

Drakh plague... test population?

She pulled up a map. Sure enough, Theta 49 was a planet in the Orion System.

"All right. Let's go investigate."

The ship pulled away from the dock. Her bridge crew suddenly looked very unhappy. Susan cleared her throat. "Is there any way to put maneuvers under manual control?"

"Manual control is for emergencies only, for backup in case primary control fails," the ship intoned.

Susan caught Trevor's eye and held it for a moment. He nodded, ever-so-slightly. She leaned back in her chair and tried to relax. It was a two-day jump to the Orion system, and she'd had a headache ever since coming on board.

---

Matt and the crew of the Excalibur had met Robert Black almost six months ago, tipped off by Earthforce that his small group of colonists may have caught the plague when they left Earth in the chaos of the Drakh attack. Earthforce hadn't mentioned that Black and his people had been victims of Earthforce R&D, bionic soldiers created and then discarded like so many hairless mice. The wise heads in Earthforce Gray had decided that the colony had to be silenced permanently, and deliberately seeded their food with the virus. Determined to not be shipped back to Earth in the care of General Thompson, Black had worked out a deal with Matt, sacrificing his shuttle for the life of the colony.

And now the entire colony site had been destroyed.

Matt stared at the hollow shell of what had been the main compound. The buildings had been hit from orbit, some time ago, but recently enough that the scars were still fresh. There was no sign of survivors.

"Thompson?" Dr. Chambers asked.

He nodded. "He must have found out somehow."

There was a whirr behind him of a starting engine. He turned in time to see Dureena trying to start one of their short-range flyers. He sprinted back to the cover of the transport, grabbed her arm before she could take off. "Dureena--"

"Let me go!" she snapped as the safeties killed the engine.

The last of her people, a lost colony, were on this planet. If Thompson had scanned the planet from orbit...

He held on as she tried to pull her arm away. "You can't fly this thing," he pointed out. At her glare, he added, "I can. Come on."

He'd never been to the settlement on the cliffs that Dr. Chambers and Dureena had described. As they approached, he hoped that the lack of smoke meant a lack of damage, rather than a lack of habitation. He landed near the edge of the plateau and Dureena was off running before the engine died.

He followed her toward the mountains, into rockier terrain. As he passed a tall outcrop of stone he heard someone sigh and holster a weapon.

He turned, PPG out, to see Robert Black step out from hiding. "Good to see you," Black said, ignoring the weapon.

Matt put the gun away. "And you. What happened?"

Black shook his head. "Someone hit us from orbit. We didn't have any warning. It was a week ago... they didn't show up on our sensors, just came in and wiped out the base. Tim is dead. Half our people are dead. The rest of us headed for the hills, but..." he trailed off, then stared. "You have a cure?"

"Yes," Matt said. "At least we think so. That's why we came here."

"The villagers are dying." Black motioned back toward the cliffs, vaguely. "They've lost six people over the last two weeks."

"Well, they won't lose any more to the plague, not if I have anything to say about it."

His wristcomm chirped. He turned from Black's exhausted expression to answer it. "Gideon."

Matheson. "Captain, where are you?"

"We've found survivors," he said without elaboration. "We're at the cliffs."

"Captain, something's showing up on our sensors. Another ship."

"Identification?"

"We're just getting a silhouette."

He looked up. Black was staring at him. Matt made some very fast decisions. "I'm going back to the shuttle. Tell Galen to get that transmitter set up as fast as he can. If the ship makes any hostile moves, destroy it."

"Yes, sir."

"Transmitter?" Black asked.

"The virus is made from nanotechnology, coded with a control signal," Matt explained. "We hacked the signal and figured out how to turn it off." He turned back to the flyer. Black followed him.

"That ship is probably the same one that destroyed the colony."

"I know. I want to get a good look at it." He activated his comm again. "Dureena?"

A hesitation, then "What?"

"Ship's been sighted, I'm heading back to the shuttle."

"I'm staying here."

"Fine. Galen's getting the transmitter set up." Matt jerked his head at the flyer, a question to Black. He nodded. "Black's coming back with me so Chambers can get a look at him."

"Fine."

He and Black landed at the shuttle a few minutes later. Galen had set up a... contraption that looked like several balanced tripods. It covered half of a table, and Dr. Chambers had put out as much monitoring equipment as she could fit on the rest. As Black went to talk with her, Matt sprinted into the shuttle.

Trace was in the pilot's seat, staring at the monitor. "Captain, take a look at this thing."

Matt maneuvered past him into the copilot's seat. He looked at the monitor and tried to make out the shape of the ship.

The shape against the stars...

Black, spiky, gliding...

(He wasn't breathing any more, he watched the ship move across his monitor--)

He was drifting and the Cerberus suddenly lit engines, and he called out on his comm but all he could hear was panic, "Jump! Jump!"--the beam lanced out and carved through the superstructure like butter, and all he could do was watch and scream and

"GALEN!" he bellowed, vaulting down the hatchway.

Galen had his eyes closed, hands on either side of the device. "I'm busy, Matthew," he said with perfect calm.

Black and Dr. Chambers were staring at him. He was fuming, and didn't care. "Galen, your ship's sensors are ten times as good as ours. I want you to take a look at that ship up there."

"Not now, Matthew," Galen said. "We have to save the human race, first."

"That ship destroyed the Cerberus."

"No, the ship that destroyed the Cerberus was destroyed. This is another ship."

"Then it was built by the same people."

"Almost certainly. Now if you'll excuse me--"

"Dammit, Galen!" He was seeing red. "I need to know who's behind this!"

"Captain!" Trace yelled from the shuttle. "They've opened fire on the Excalibur!"

Matt swallowed his rage and ran back inside. He watched on the monitor as the Excalibur's secondary guns strafed the ship. It was outlined in green fire for almost a minute before it exploded.

He slumped into the copilot's chair, fire turning to ice in his veins. 'It was real. It was all real. And now...'

"Well," Trace said. "It's dead now."

Matt thought about that for a minute. Then he called the bridge.

"Excalibur."

"Matheson, get an EVA team to gather any wreckage from that ship. I want a full analysis."

"Yes, sir."

He mulled the situation over in silence. After a few moments, Trace cleared his throat beside him. "A destroyer carries a crew of what, a thousand?"

"One thousand forty crew and support." Reflex.

"Damn," the pilot muttered.

"Trace, you trained to be a priest once," Matt said.

Trace looked up, startled. "Yeah, but..."

"What does the literature say about bad things happening to good people?"

Trace shook his head. "The Foundation says that we can never explain God, or define Him, or understand His motives."

Matt snorted. "Seems like a bit of a cop-out."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

He patted Trace on the shoulder and stumbled outside to see how saving humanity was going.

Galen was still focused on the machine, but his eyes were open and he was toying with screws and fiddly bits. Sarah was grinning as she read data off one of her monitors, and Black looked like he'd been pollaxed.

"We blew it up," he announced. "Good news here?"

Sarah nodded. "It's gone. There's no trace of infection."

"Wonderful." He still felt dizzy from watching the fight. "When you're done here, take Mr. Black back to the settlement, and start testing the people there." He turned to Galen. "You sure the signal will reach?"

"It's propagating very nicely through the atmosphere," Galen said. "You wouldn't know it, but there's enough virus in the air to carry the signal around the entire planet."

"So you don't need to move anything."

"No," Galen agreed smugly. "It's very convenient."

"How much longer will you need?"

Galen looked up and smiled enigmatically. "Not long."

"Great." He nodded at them. "I'm going back to the Excalibur, to find out what was shooting at us."

He sent Trace back to the surface to assist the others after they docked. Then he headed to the bridge. Anticipation was a low hum in his ears. He tried to relax.

"Captain," Morden said when he stepped onto the bridge. "Something about that ship..."

"Who let you on the bridge?" Matt asked.

Morden blinked. "I followed Max."

"Right." He took slight satisfaction in kicking John out of his chair. "What about it?"

"There was someone in it."

"What, its crew?"

"No, not like..." Morden trailed off, shook his head. He finished, softly, "Not like that..."

This was getting nowhere. Matt leaned forward and glared. "Like what, then?"

Morden met his glare. "The Shadows would incorporate people into the processes of their ships. Without a sentient being to be the ship's brain, the ship wouldn't function. There was someone in that ship, like that."

Matt could tell he was staring. After a couple seconds he closed his mouth and swallowed, hard. "The ship was using Shadow technology, then?"

"Sort of." Morden looked out the window meditatively. "But not wisely, and not well. It was broken. Different... I keep getting the feeling that I should know how to fix it, and that's..."

"Wonderful. If it wasn't the Shadows, who did it?"

"I can't tell." Morden looked back and frowned. "Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to tell you. Captain Ivanova has disappeared."

"What do you mean, disappeared?"

Morden shrugged. "Just that I tried to look up her records today to see where she's been assigned. Her records have been either moved or deleted."

Morden was very good at hiding his anxiety, but his hands were clasped together a little tighter than normal. Matt chewed his lower lip. "That can't be good."

"No. It can't."

He sighed. "Matheson, how's that retrieval coming?"

"Slowly, sir," Matheson replied. "The crew is having trouble finding pieces large enough to collect."

"Well," he said, "on the bright side, we seem to have a working cure."

That caught everyone's attention. "So the transmission works, then?" Matheson asked, anxious.

"That's what Dr. Chambers says. She's doing follow-ups right now."

A wave of relief swept over the bridge. He allowed himself to indulge in it himself, for a moment. Matheson was grinning. "That's wonderful news, sir."

"Yes. Yes it is." They could give the information to Earth Central now, along with the database and possibly Mr. Morden, and then go back to the Rim. Or maybe just retire. A few decades on a beach somewhere sounded wonderful just about now...

A comm chirp interrupted his reminiscing. He opened his eyes to greet Galen's image.

"There's nothing left for me to do here," the techno-mage commented. "So I'm coming back aboard to see if any of the bits from your opponent up there are interesting."

"Good. I'm looking forward to your input." Galen nodded, and his image vanished.

"Captain," Matheson said. "The retrieval crew has found something." He paused. "It looks like a body."

Morden didn't want to get dragged along to medlab to take a look at the autopsy, but Matt insisted. If he had a local expert on Shadow technology, he was going to get some use out of him. Morden dragged Eilerson along out of spite, and Galen met them there.

The body wasn't a pretty sight, but it was clearly human.

Morden recovered his composure pretty quickly. "Well, those aren't Shadow implants."

"Definitely not," Galen agreed.

"Ugh," Eilerson said. After wincing a bit more, he added, "It looks sort of like vicar tech."

"What?" Matt asked.

"Vicar, from VCR," Eilerson elaborated. "One of the few successes to ever come out of the cybernetics experiments of the twenties. Not many human ones around now, but you can find some firms advertising them as fair witnesses."

That wasn't reassuring. "So what you're saying is this looks human-made."

Eilerson shrugged. "Well, I can't be absolutely sure, of course."

Matt closed his eyes and tried to retreat to that beach. It wasn't happening. "Have there been any more recent brain-linked cybernetics studies?" He opened his eyes and looked meaningfully at Morden. "Earthforce Gray, perhaps?"

Morden shrugged. "If there were, I wasn't in that division."

Matt's comm chirped. Startled, he raised it. "Gideon."

"Captain, you'd better come to the bridge. A ship just opened a jump point halfway around the planet. Unknown silhouette... you're going to want to be up here."

Morden was rubbing his forehead, wincing. "Now that," he said, mostly to himself, "Is at least partly Shadow technology."

Not reassuring. "On my way," he said, and ran for the bridge.

---

The Rhinegold was giving her a headache. She was sure of it.

An hour on the ship and there was an ache at the base of her skull. A full day and it hadn't gone away. If anything, the feeling had intensified.

As they reached the Orion sector, the ache gave way to pounding. And stabbing. She gritted her teeth and told herself it was something else--heck, even morning sickness, the thought of which nearly sent her into a panic attack until she checked her contracep implant again--but it was the ship. Something about the ship was driving her crazy.

Of course, the rest of her crew was suffering. They liked the large quarters, of course, and the luxuries that had been built in, like a few dormatory-style shower rooms with real running water, which Susan wasn't sure how the technicians pulled off, but...

The ship's AI was a problem. Calm, never demanding, only interested in following orders. Only those orders included never giving over control of Susan's ship to her, or her crew.

The headaches were the real problem, though. They blinded her.

Barely an hour before they were to reach their destination, Trevor walked into her office and shut the door. Her nice, big, open office, in which she was getting absolutely no work done despite several doses of ibumax. He tapped a command into his link and then asked, "Rhinegold, can you hear me?"

The AI stayed silent. Trevor sighed in relief. "It works. We have a few minutes where he can't hear us."

That was a major relief. "Good. Can you get control back?"

He shook his head. "This ship is deeply under AI control. There are triggers everywhere. It's designed so no enemy could ever get control away from the central processor, and the manuals don't kick in unless the AI is fully dead." He hesitated. "And I think it's rigged to blow, first. Captain, this whole situation stinks."

She nodded.

"And... what are we doing with this colony, anyway? We know Captain Gideon might have a cure. Are we going to raze this place to the ground, when there's a good chance these people, even if they are infected, could be saved?"

Slowly, working around her headache, Susan said, "Trevor... I think we've been set up."

He gaped at her. It occurred to her that even with the evidence in front of him, he didn't believe anything bad of Earthforce. Clark's people were gone, and everything was bright and shiny now, right?

She hated to be the one bringing doses of reality to her senior officer, but he'd managed to live this long without any, so the job fell to her. "Just because we got rid of the obviously nasty people in the war," she pointed out, "doesn't mean they're all gone. There was black ops stuff going on when Santiago was in power. Hell, well before. And some of them are still there, mostly because we never knew about most of them."

"So they sent us out here to... what, to die?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. She couldn't think, with this buzzing. "What I do know is I want control of this ship. Find the AI core and burn it out if you can. They thought they could pack us into this box and control us, well, they're wrong."

"Yessir." Trevor's back straightened again. He tapped another code into his link, nodded, and left.

She looked again at the reports on her desk, sighed, and leaned back, trying to shut out the burning, buzzing, tapping in the back of her mind.

help...

She jerked up, looking around.

No. No one was there.

It was just her imagination.

They were coming out of hyperspace, soon. She should be on the bridge.

---

The ship that was hanging on the horizon was like nothing Matt had ever seen. Black, but matte black, not the sick glistening of a Shadow ship. Curved, almost like a Centauri ship, but with multiple decks and a definite human sense of aesthetics. And bristling with gunports like a very honorable Minbari warship.

"Shadow technology," Morden said, irritated, as Matt took his chair. "All through it."

Matt eyed him. "How did you get here before me?"

"I can teleport, remember?"

"They're hailing us," Matheson said.

Matt nodded. Probably nobody was more surprised than he was when Ivanova's face appeared onscreen.

"Captain Ivanova," he greeted her. "How nice to see you again so soon. Nice ship."

"Captain Gideon," she said. "Yes, they hustled me onto this command. She's a good ship. Impressive AI."

He caught something in her glance. It went beyond the worries of 'What is a warship doing here?' and 'What is Ivanova doing in another command so soon?'

This was straight to, 'I'm not in control of this situation.' And on Ivanova's face, that wasn't a pretty sight. This was a woman who had taken a handful of White Stars against Clark's fleet of Earthforce Shadow destroyers, and...

... oh, shit.

"How's the mission going?" she asked.

Careful not to betray his thoughts, he replied, "Well, the cure works. We'll be heading back to Earth, soon, to turn over all the data. Hopefully--"

The comm shut off with a screech. He cursed under his breath as Matheson reported, "They're opening fire!"

Shit. "Evasive action."

"Shall we return fire?"

"No!" Morden cried.

Matt glared at him. "No," he ordered Matheson. "Not unless we have to."

"We may have to," Galen said from behind him.

He swiveled to look at the techno-mage. "The AI," he started to ask.

"Someone in the ship... someone is the ship," Morden was muttering. "But it's all broken somehow."

Matt ignored him, pressing Galen. "If it is someone implanted in the ship, can you contact them? Tell them to break it off?"

"No," Galen said.

"What, just no?"

"No." Galen shook his head. "Matthew, I've tried before. It does not work. The ship only falls further into madness."

A hit from the other ship landed. The bridge quaked. Galen kept his footing, barely.

"Sir, the Excalibur's hull isn't compensating for the energy blasts from the other ship," Matheson said. "We're taking serious damage with every hit."

"We have to destroy it," Galen said.

"There are a thousand people on that ship," Morden snapped.

"A thousand and forty," Matt said.

Reflex.

He stood, faced Morden. "You said earlier that you felt like you should be able to fix... the other ship. Can you?"

Morden looked startled. "I don't..."

"Yes or no?"

"It's never that simple." Morden grimaced. Then he looked thoughtfully at Galen. "Maybe."

"Yes?"

"With Galen's help."

Galen looked startled. "I--"

"Do it," Matt ordered.

Morden nodded, then stepped forward and offered the techno-mage his hand. Galen stared at him for a moment, then took it. In another heartbeat they had vanished.

"Sir, they're launching fighters." Matheson checked his readout again. "At least, they look like fighters."

"Life signs?" At Matheson's hesitation, "Human life signs?"

"Negative."

Matt nodded grimly. "Those I want shot down."

---

The comm shut off, and the headache went from bad to blinding.

"Captain, we don't have--" Trevor stared at her. "Captain?"

"Enners, you have command," she snapped. And then, as the pain kicked up another notch, "Augh!"

He looked startled, but raised his link fast. "Tanaka, get a crew to section 4 and start burning your way in."

Susan couldn't concentrate on what she was hearing. There was only the buzzing in her head. Trevor's arguments with the AI were indistinct, background noise.

Here...

The pain snapped off. Aaron was there, looking into her eyes, worried.

"Ouch," she said.

"I can imagine. Come on, we've got to save your ship."

She almost laughed. "The ship is the problem."

"In any case, I need your help." He turned to Trevor. "Where did you say the core is?"

"Section 4. A team's there now."

"I see," he said, but he didn't seem to be listening. "Come on."

She only now noticed Galen, standing slightly behind Morden, looking distressed about something. Then they were running, toward the lift, which got them to sector 4, and the smell of ozone and plasma.

They stopped a few feet away from where Tanaka's team had already removed large sections of bulkhead. "Are you through yet?" Morden asked.

The junior lieutenant jerked her head at the hole in the wall. "We're removing another plate. We think it's the last, but we didn't have time to do a full ultrasound."

"Holy shit!" yelled a tech from inside the wall.

Galen gestured impatiently, and the piece of steel sailed out on no visible support to stack itself alongside another against the wall. Two technicians stumbled out after it, carrying a cutting torch, eyes wide.

Susan stepped forward into the glare of work lights and stared at what had been revealed.

In the living heart of the wall were cables and wires like tentacles, wrapping and covering and digging into the flesh of the man, a human man, strung up and pulled into the wall, a part of the living, breathing machine under and inside of her ship.

A man she knew.

A Psi Corps telepath. Harriman Gray.

"Oh, my God," she whispered.

"You know him?" Galen asked.

She nodded, horrified. Aaron stepped forward, put his hand to the wall beside Harriman's head. "This isn't all Shadow tech," he said. "There's something in his brain. Some sort of psi implant." He looked up. "Galen, come here. You're going to need to take control of the ship."

"I don't think you realize the enormity of--"

"Susan," Aaron cut him off, taking her hand and pulling her a step forward. She stumbled, still staring at Harriman's face, partly obscured by wires and implants stabbing into his temples. "Susan, listen to me. I need you to break the blocks."

"What?" She stared at him. "I... no. I'm not... I can't..."

"Yes, you can." He grabbed her hand, squeezed. "You can. Look, all First Ones tech is related, right? The Shadows and the Vorlons, the jumpgates and the Great Machine on Epsilon 3... they're all related. The tech will help you. He'll help you. But you have to break whatever loop they've got him in."

She shook her head, dazed. "No. You can do it, I'm not a telepath--"

"I have to keep everything together. I need you to do this. I need your help." His eyes held her. I've never done anything like this. I don't know if I can. I don't want everyone on this ship to die.

God--his eyes were the same color as Marcus'. What a stupid thought.

"All right," she said. "I'll try. When..."

He pulled her hand forward and pressed her palm against Harriman's face. The telepath's skin was cold. Waxy. Alien. "Now--"

She fell in.

She was drifting through a cold, foggy whiteness. She must be falling, or freefalling. The mist pressed against her face, was wet along her fingers.

There was no up, except the place she was falling from. There was no down, except where she was going. There were no features, no people. Nothing.

For a moment, everything else--the battle, the ship, Trevor's panic, her headache--was a dream. This comforting, drifting sea of white, that was real. The tangible intangibility. The mist, the cold. She could close her eyes, and relax, drifting down...

Harriman Grey's face, wires and cables--

"Hello?" she called into the whiteness. "Anyone? Mr. Gray?"

No response.

"Harriman?" she tried.

Nothing.

She was still falling, slowly, nothing all around her. A haze was growing in her mind.

She didn't want to be in this mist any more. She wanted to see. She wanted to touch things. She wanted to find Harriman Gray and beat him over the head until he stopped controlling her ship. And since nobody was going to pull her out of the fog, she had to do it herself.

She closed her eyes and imagined the most solid place she knew. Babylon 5.

"It worked for Jeff," she said out loud. "And he was being tortured. It worked for him, it can work for me."

But when she opened her eyes, she was still drifting in mist.

Now she was getting angry. Concentrating, she thought of every detail she could. Her console in C&C. What it felt like to pace back and forth in front of the window. The tables in the War Room. The straight-backed chairs in the Council Chambers. Walking down the central corridor. Coriolis effects getting onto the core shuttle. Drinks at the casino. The feel of the Zocalo corridor under her feet.

The feel of the corridor under her feet.

The feel of the corridor under her feet.

She stepped forward. She was coming up on the bar. Meeting Garibaldi for drinks and eating lunch at the adjoining cafe and avoiding Talia and meeting Talia and trying to forget Talia, and the chairs and the tables just so...

She walked around a booth and sat down at one of the tables. The place was deserted, but it had been bustling, full of people, when Harriman had walked out and sat down across from her. She remembered.

There was a flicker, almost a presence.

She held her breath, clenched her hands together on the table. Hello?

Another flicker.

Sit down with me. Have a drink.

The presence vanished, then suddenly flickered, in and out, in and out, before and behind her and beside her and finally across from her, barely more than a ghost. Gritting her teeth, she forced the image of Harriman sitting across from her, gray suit and black gloves, intense stare and failed attempts at rapport.

The presence hesitated, then suddenly there, there was Harriman Gray, sitting across from her and staring and his eyes were black and his expression blank and he said "I don't remember you," and she flinched away and he was gone.

She choked back a surprised sob and said, "Harriman, come back. I want to talk to you."

And he was there, again, his black eyes with no irises somehow focusing on her. "I don't know you," he said.

She swallowed. "We met, here," she said.

No response. God, she remembered eyes like that, on Lyta, at Z'Ha'dum.

"You were working for Colonel Ari Ben Zayn. For Earthforce Eyes. IA. You'd been ordered to scan the command staff, to check our loyalty."

His brow furrowed, slightly. But all he said was, "I am loyal."

"You took Commander Sinclair's side. Because he was right."

"Loyal..." Harriman whispered again.

She reached out for his gloved hands with her bare ones. "Sometimes it's more important to be right than to be loyal."

She took his hands...

Psi-Corps loyalty tests are nothing like Earthforce ones. They're telepaths. They don't need to ask questions. They're telepaths. They know if you're lying. They're telepaths. They protect their own. They can scan you. And scan you. And scan you. And--

She scrambled to get his gloves off and she might have torn his skin with her nails and he was bleeding and she had to think of something to distract him with and she grabbed his hands and squeezed and shouted "You wanted to be a pilot, Harriman, remember? Well this is what it's like--"

And she remembered, as hard as she could, all the sensations that she could, flying a Starfury, jumping in and out of hyperspace, dodging fire, the thrill, the terror, nearly crashing and hitting the eject just in time, all the intensity and yearning she could feel, and something stirred, and something railed against the loop that the endless deep scans had forced him into, and when she had exhausted herself with the memories he opened his eyes again and stared at her, startled. And this time the blackness was gone.

"Commander Iv--" he shook his head, corrected himself. "Captain Ivanova. Where... where am I?" He looked around, down at their hands, where she was still holding his tightly enough to cramp.

She was suddenly reluctant to let go. "You're in my ship," she said.

He stared at her hands as she relaxed, pulled back, worked her fingers as the tingling started. "You're a telepath," he said wonderingly. "I never guessed."

She nodded.

"I didn't..." he started to say, then stared at her, openmouthed, and reached for her hand, but he was already fading, losing corporeality. "I can't see anything--"

She tried to grab his fingers, but he was gone. She knocked over her chair in her haste to stand, but the illusion of Babylon 5 was crumbling around her, leaving only darkness--

--but for a moment, through that darkness, she could see everything--

Her eyes were stinging. She blinked several times and drew back her hand to wipe sweat away, and wondered how long she'd been standing there staring, with her eyes open.

"We've stopped firing," Galen said. She looked over. He was leaning against the wall, white with strain.

She tried speaking, and after a second croaked, "Did it work?"

"Yes," Aaron said.

She turned to face him. He was leaning back against the mass of cables and wires, staring into space, a mixture of confusion and wonder on his face.

Galen cleared his throat and levered himself to his feet. Aaron looked over at him. "What," the techno-mage asked, "Did you do, exactly?"

Aaron thought it over for a moment, then smiled slightly. "I built a starship."

---

Matt didn't expect Morden to come back with Captain Ivanova in tow, but he did, supporting her much more than was usually expected of even a starship captain's lover. Galen was moving on his own power, thought Matt noticed the techno-mage's movements were slower, more deliberate than normal.

Ivanova looked up and cleared her throat. "We need a conference."

He put Matheson in charge and ushered them back to the conference room. Ivanova collapsed into her chair. Morden didn't look in the least affected, but obviously found it a relief to sit down.

Eilerson followed them in and glared at Morden. "What the hell happened over there?"

Morden looked at Ivanova. She raised her link. "Harriman?"

The screen on the wall switched itself on. Matt turned, startled. On screen was a man he didn't know, late thirties, with dark brown hair, wearing a suit and leather gloves. There was a Psi-Corps pin on his lapel. The man smiled. "Hi, I don't think we've been introduced. I'm Harriman Gray."

Matt frowned. "I'm Captain Gideon. You're... Psi Corps?" He tried to make out where the man was calling from. It was a fairly generic office. No windows, nothing on the walls.

"Oh, heh..." Gray looked down at the pin, then covered it with his hand. When he pulled his hand away the pin was gone, a nice bit of sleight of hand. "I'm sorry. I mean, they told me it's all gone, of course, but the habit's hard to break."

Something was fishy here. "Just where are you calling from, Mr. Gray?"

"Oh. Um." Gray nodded, slightly embarrassed. "I'm that ship out there, Captain Gideon."

Matt felt as though the Excalibur had dropped several hundred yards without him. "Sorry?"

"The, uh, EAS Rhinegold." Gray grinned suddenly. "Which is amusing, of course, if you've read the original Eddas--"

"I'm familiar with the Ring cycle." He shook his head. This was too much. "You're actually, uh..."

Gray nodded.

"There have been a run of black projects going through Earthforce, combining Shadow technology with earlier cybernetic experiments," Ivanova said, voice raw. "They combined what they'd learned from their earlier failures with Shadow ships--"

"Including the ship in the Lanep system which destroyed the Cerberus," Galen said.

"And the dormant ship they found under Ganymede," Ivanova continued. "And they had successes, too, with the fleet of hybrids that Clark had built... but they weren't as good as Shadow ships. Without direction, Shadow technology doesn't work right."

Eilerson made an incredulous noise. "So they just kept trying to put people in these ships?"

Ivanova nodded. "But they needed to control them. And you don't get too many volunteers for that sort of business."

"They've been known to exist," Matt grumbled, thinking about the colonists on Theta 49 below, who had all been volunteers before being shot in the back.

"Not," Morden said, "for the kind of experiments that were necessary to turn someone into a ship's CPU."

"Nine years ago," Ivanova continued, "we saw the results of something called the Lazarus project. Taking people at the edge of violent death and forcing them into reliving that moment, while wiring the rest of them up to take orders like a computer. They used that technology to improve their hybrid Shadow ships."

"So what did you do?" Matt asked.

It was Gray who answered. "They broke the programming. They put me in control."

"But they didn't get you out."

Gray frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. "I'm strangely comfortable with that, actually. This has its benefits." He smiled shyly. "I always wanted to be a pilot."

"Harriman is not the last of these ships, unfortunately," Galen said. "Earthforce has been busy lately constructing them."

"Damn it." Matt's anger flared. "We have to do something."

"We will," Morden said. Then he looked at Galen.

Galen stared back. "You can't be serious."

"Come on, Galen," Morden said, grinning. "Haven't you ever wanted to change the universe?"

Matt felt as though he were swiftly being run-around. "Wait a minute..."

Morden turned to the screen. "I'll need your help too," he told Gray.

"Of course," the telepath answered, surprised.

"Wait a minute," Matt said. Morden looked at him. "Just what are you going to do?"

Morden gave him a level stare. "Wake them all up. Fix all the broken Shadow technology. Do for the rest of them what I did for Mr. Gray here."

Matt stared. "I don't know if you noticed, but whatever you did seems to have nearly killed Galen and Captain Ivanova."

"That's because I didn't know what I was doing, and they had to do a lot of the work. But it's clear now. I can see it."

Matt considered for a few moments. Then he looked to Galen. The techno-mage was staring at Morden thoughtfully, with a grudging respect.

"Can you do it?" Matt asked.

Galen looked up. "Possibly," he said. "And... it would be criminal not to try."

"All right," Matt said. "I don't know exactly what you're doing, or what's going to happen... but do it. And come back alive."

Morden nodded. Then he gestured, slightly, and both he and Galen vanished.

The screen shut off. Ivanova sighed and put her head in her hands.

"What's the worst that could happen?" he asked.

"They alert Earthforce to our plans and location and we get wiped out by a fleet of semiconscious Shadow ships crewed by innocent victims we can't attack," she muttered.

"You've had practice at coming up with this sort of scenario."

"I'm Russian. We're the ones with a sense of perspective."

---

Building a starship and becoming one are two different things. Morden reached out his hand and took hold of the connection, and for a final instant allowed himself to worry what would happen if things went wrong.

Then he closed his eyes and the world dropped out beneath him.

Understanding was like a gale-force updraft as he opened his eyes and opened his eyes and the universe spread out beneath him in a web of ever-changing ever-breathing gossamer seafoam strong as steel and filled with life, life, life! Oh, God, he could see!

He flexed his fingers and the tingle of the sensors of the Rhinegold echoed back. The planet below hissed and purred with the static crackle of movement and growth and change and if he squinted he could count every hair on Dureena Nafeel's head.

He dropped the sensors of the ship and touched the harpstrings of the galaxy; they played back the songs of every star, the blue-and-redshift allegro of the spiral arms, the susurrus of solar winds, the high bells of supernovas and the bass thrumms of spinning neutron stars. And there! Up and beyond, past the globe around M32, past the brilliance of a hundred thousand galaxies, to the beating heart of the universe, to the curtains of hyperspace and the dimmest brush of the photinos themselves.

He could see... everything.

"Wow," Galen whispered beside him.

"Yes," Harriman answered.

Their voices brought him back, here, the task at hand. "Let's show the rest what they're missing," he muttered, and turned his gaze on Sol.

They could all see the docks, hidden behind Venus; the ships built there already holding their captives. Harriman distracted their minds. Galen pressed the right places on the ships. Morden reached, and with a gentle thought, reconnected their souls.

While he was at it, he taught Galen how to teleport.

Galen. He batted aside the techno-mage's objections and pulled the location of the hideout from Galen's catalogue of numbers. With a thought, he was in their system, casting out the final traces of the Shadows--

It wasn't programming! He laughed at his own translation. Not programming, not a machine, not anything he could explain; it was organic, and alive, and the Shadows had told the tech to fight back, but that could be bypassed just for the asking. And it was working with him, finally, fully, and he could almost see the fire in his veins, fire that would let him light a torch to burn holes in the universe--

--and then was gone, before they could detect him. Then Harriman closed the connection, and for all that fire, it was as though all the stars had been hidden and the torches of all knowledge put out. Like being blind. Like not having a starship. Like barely having a soul.

Back to being only human. He opened his eyes and Galen was staring at him, amazed. "I see..." the techno-mage said.

"Did you do it?"

They were on the Excalibur again; he had taken them back without thinking. Blinking, he looked around the conference room. They'd left only minutes ago, but it felt like centuries.

Galen answered for the both of them. "Yes. And I believe that Earthforce's nastier bureaus will have plenty to think about with their entire fleet gaining independence and possibly going public with this information."

"Ha," Gideon said. "Good. Let them deal with the consequences for once."

He wasn't listening. He looked down at Susan, who was still sitting with her head in her hands. "Are you all right?" he asked softly.

She looked up, then stood and faced him. "Are you?"

He couldn't quite answer that one.

She narrowed her eyes. "You aren't going to transcend humanity and vanish off to the Rim or something, now that you've saved the universe?"

Ah.

He took a deep breath and let the last of the starship wash away. Human. Only human, but... he was remembering, now, all the best things about being only human.

"No," he promised. "No, I'm staying here." He smiled, suddenly...

Happy?

Hell, sure. Why not. Give yourself permission, Aaron, nobody else can.

He smiled, and she smiled back. "This is where the future is all happening," he said. "I'm not leaving until it's here."