Chapter Nine: The Gathering Storm

President Clark was furious. He had just heard about the loss of Starbase Jericho III with all its hands. It was a big setback for Earth Force. Jericho III had been an important research facility actively working on the next generation of weapons technology. That's why it had been well defended. No less than three Omegas had been permanently assigned to protect it. On retrospect, he should not have authorized such important work to a station so far from Earth. No, he had to listen to those fools that called themselves military experts. "This is the perfect location for top secret research facility," they said. "It's far from prying eyes yet deep inside Earth territory and will be easy to defend." So much for their perfect location. It was now nothing more that space junk, not worth a damn. But hey, all was not lost. When life gave him lemons, he was going to make lemonade. For a long time, he had been fighting hard to convince people about the danger aliens posed to the freedom and survival of mankind but no one had listened. This was going to change things. Soon, he would be going live on television to let humanity know that aliens were not to be trusted. Not now, not ever.

The light on top of the camera started flashing red. He was on live. "My fellow citizens," he began, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I have just been informed that Starbase Jericho III, along with three ships assigned to defend it have been lost with all hands. That's over five thousand brave men and women." He paused for effect and continued, "The perpetrators of this unspeakable action were no other than the Minbari. As you all know I have lately been accused of being paranoid and over zealous about protecting humanity but as this incident shows, I wasn't wrong about it. We live in dangerous times my friend. We live in a hostile environment, so we must take any and all actions to protect ourselves from those who want to harm us…"

Ambassador Londo Mollari was hurrying along on his way to confront Captain Sheridan when he literarily ran into G'Kar. He had a deep contempt for all Narn but G'Kar was by far the worst. He had that smugness about him that Mollari wanted to crush out but the thin veneer of civility prevented him from taking any action, at least for the moment anyway. He halfheartedly acknowledged the Narn ambassador and continued on his way. At first he did not notice it but he soon realized that G'Kar was following him. He turned to confront him but the Narn just walked past him without even breaking a step. "Damn!" he had allowed himself to be made a fool by that stupid Neanderthal. Why did he even bother to acknowledge his presence? If he had it his way, they would soon be back where they belonged, the slave camps.

He soon arrived at Sheridan's office and wasn't surprised that G'Kar was already there. He cleared his throat as he entered the office catching both their attention. Captain Sheridan looked up and said, "Ah, ambassador Mollari, what can I do for you?"

"Captain Sheridan, I came to ask you why you have not informed me about the incident with this new Earth Force ship today? I am the ambassador of the Centauri Republic and deserve to be kept appraised of all important events that happen here, no?"

"You and everyone else ambassador. I was just explaining that to ambassador G'Kar here."

Mollari just brushed that comment aside and continued, "So what did President Clark want Captain?"

"What makes you think he wanted anything?"

"Now, now captain, everyone knows that wasn't just a friendly visit."

"He's right Captain. My government demands that you reveal everything," G'Kar cut in.

Neither Captain Sheridan nor Ambassador Mollari liked that one bit. The Narn were getting too full of themselves. "Gentlemen, you will get the information when I deem it necessary. Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do." With that, Sheridan showed them to the door. This did not surprise Mollari at all. In fact, he would have done exactly the same if he had been in Sheridan's place. Never the less, he needed more information. He also needed to inform Centauri Prime. The Emperor did not like being kept in the dark.

Not five minutes after the two ambassadors left, Ivanova burst into his office. She clearly was flustered. "Did you catch Clark on the television?" she asked him.

"No, what's going on?"

"Turn on the vid-screen," she replied. He flipped through the channels until he got to one of the channels that was playing back the highlights of the speech. He watched it till two anchors came on and started discussing the speech with a third so called 'expert'. Sheridan was no longer interested in it. He stormed out of his office and headed straight to Delen's quarters. How could she not have told him about it?

When he got there, she wasn't in and that only made him madder. Where the hell was she? Frustrated, he made his way back to his office. He was surprised to see that Delen was waiting for him there.

"I know you want to talk to me about Clark's speech," she began.

"You think?" Sheridan cut her off. "What were you guys thinking? You've just given the mad man free reign to do whatever he wants. Its like pouring gasoline over a fire."

Delen knew he was right but she had been overruled. "I tried to stop them but they wouldn't listen."

That was not enough for Sheridan. "And when were you going to tell me about this?"

"I couldn't. It was classified under military affairs."

"Great!" He simply didn't know what more to say so he walked out of the room. He didn't make it far before Ivanova intercepted him. She had more bad news.

"I just got word that Clark has a fleet of thirty ship headed this way."

Things were getting worse by the minute. "How long before they get here?"

"Two days, tops."

"Great! Just freaking great. Get the senior staff into the briefing room ASAP."

"Yes Sir," with that she walked away leaving Sheridan to ponder his next move.

G'Toll couldn't remember the last time he was as happy as this. The alliance with the Klingons was proving to be very fruitful. After the hangover from the blood wine had passed, both their crew had gotten down to the business at hand. Not surprisingly, it turned out that the Klingons possessed extremely advanced technology and were more than willing to share their knowledge with him. In fact, the technology was so much more advanced and different that it would take years to fully grasp it. But that was ok. Their engineers were more than happy to upgrade his ships for him. They had already installed a cloaking device that allowed his ship to completely disappear from almost all sensors and were currently working on upgrading his own sensors. He was sure that not even the vaunted Minbari stealth field would be able to fool it once completed. A few more days and he would also have a couple of disrupters replace the particle lasers that they now employed. While it wouldn't be as powerful as the ones on the Klingon ships, it was substantially more powerful than what he currently had. As for the rest of the upgrades, it would have to wait till they got to a proper facility. For now, he just couldn't wait to test this puppy out. What should he use it against? He knew the Centauri had a deep space station not too far from here. Maybe that's what he should destroy. Yes, that's what he would destroy.