FLARN MANAGES
by Luthienn
Author's notes:
For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Prologue.
Minbari words and expressions are taken from Hightower's dictionary, as always. Some of the enigmatic Galen speech is directly quoted from random episodes.
CHAPTER 2: THE END OF THE LINE
PART 2
Babylon 5, on the 22nd April 2271
Captain Elizabeth Lochley reached Customs mere minutes before the Excalibur's arrival. There was no true need for her to come this early, but she was too nervous to concentrate on paperwork right now. She wasn't the only one waiting there, torn between anguish and anticipation – which was understandable. The five-year-delay to ultimate doom was almost exhausted. If no wonder happened, and very soon, mankind would be reduced to the population of Mars, Proxima Three and a few small colonies. And the birthplace of the human race would be lost for them, forever.
She looked around at the tense faces of people waiting at Customs, desperate for good news. She had known most of them for years. They had gone through good times and bad times, yet never before had she seen them so unsettled. Even the always well-balanced Brother Theo looked terribly upset.
"Not upset… frightened," a very clear, almost painfully articulated tenor said behind her. "Which is a dangerous thin, isn't it? Fear makes wise men foolish; we can only hope that, when the need arises, it can make fools wise, for otherwise, what hope could mankind still have?"
Lochley whirled around, alarmed that someone could sneak up at her so close, and her eyes fell on a man clad entirely in back, a man with a bald head, piercing blue eyes and a strange staff in his hand. She recognized him, of course, despite never having talked to him directly.
"Mr. Galen," she said as a way of greeting.
A big, pale hand waved elegantly in the air.
"Oh, just Galen would be enough, Captain," the technomage said with that strange, almost electric gleam in his unnaturally bright eyes that always made people wonder whether he was secretly amused, insane or both.
"All right," Lochley nodded. "What are you doing here, Galen?"
"Nothing," the technomage gave her one of those intense looks that felt as if she'd be x-rayed. "I'm just here. We always have to be somewhere. This place seemed to be as good as any."
"I wish I could share your optimism," she muttered, knowing all too well that he was lying, that he knew she knew, and that she could do absolutely nothing about it.
Unexpectedly, the technomage took her hand – without asking first, for which she'd have broken any other man's nose, including the current President of the Interstellar Alliance – and squeezed gently. His fingers were strong, warm and dry, and there was a barely perceptive vibration in them, something akin electricity, due perhaps to the arcane technologies of his craft, integrated directly into his flesh as well as woven into the fabric of his clothes. For a moment, she shivered, imagining how that would feel all over her naked skin, then suppressed the thought ruthlessly. This was not the time for sexual frustration.
"Elizabeth," that strange, almost mechanical voice asked urgently. "Do you no longer believe that this is the place where you belong?"
"I don't know," she replied sullenly. "What if the Excalibur doesn't find the cure at all? Without Earth, we have no goal, no purpose, no reason to be here at all! Here… or in any other place. There must be a solutions, somewhere…"
The technomage looked at her with detached pity – it made her feel like a clueless little girl again. She hated the feeling.
"Your view of life implies a directed universe," he said. "It is tempting to believe an ultimate master plan that could give all our losses a higher sense. But it is a delusion. In your heart, you know as well as I do that there is no planning, no design to our lives."
"If that's what you truly believe, then why do you keep going?" she asked angrily, because how did he dare to crush her hopes, tentative and shaky as they might be. "Why helping Gideon? Why not just give up?"
The patiently pitiful look in those incredible eyes turned into something else – something dark and sinister. Something that made her shiver again, but not in the good way.
"Madam," the technomage said, "You cannot imagine what I have given up already."
With that, he kissed her hand, sending tiny electric shocks through her entire body, and then he turned around with a theatrical whirl of his heavy black cloak and strode out to unknown destinations.
For a moment, Lochley stared after him, utterly bewildered, but soon her attention was redirected to the welcome area, as the arrival of the Excalibur's captain and crew was announced. Their grim faces made abundantly clear that they had not succeeded. Earth was no closer to escape genocide than it had been four years ago.
Captain Lochley would have been surprised to find out that Galen wasn't going back to his own ship, even though he hadn't requested quarters aboard the station. No, his long, purposeful strides carried him directly to Green Sector, where the ambassadorial quarters were located, with such an easy self-confidence that no one asked him about his business there. He went straight to the now-abandoned quarters of once-Ambassador Delenn, which were kept in their former state, in case some Minbari dignitary would need proper accommodations for a night or two.
At the moment, the rooms were unoccupied, yet the door opened at his approach soundlessly. Good. That meant his ally had managed to get there unobserved.
Galen entered, leaving the door close behind him. In the now dormant rooms that had once housed the Minbari ambassador, only the BabCom unit was online, glowing barely visible in the near complete darkness. Technomages had night eyes, though, that enabled them to see in the dark like cats, and this Galen could spot the deceivingly slender frame of his collaborator. The dark, unadorned Worker Caste robe made the younger man melt into the darkness of the cabin, only the paleness of his face and hands was visible – and the faint gleam of the viewscreen glittering upon the carved peaks of his bonecrest.
Galen's heart trembled with joy at the sight of his mate – the one he'd found, badly injured, four years ago, whom he'd saved from near-certain death, whom he'd nursed to full health again with endless patience and never-wavering hope. Whom he'd fallen in love with and bound to himself for eternity.
He never thought he would fall in love again. Not after losing Isabella, whom he'd loved with all his heart and soul. Their love had been deeper than anyone could try to imagine, a merging of minds and thoughts and souls, pure and virginal like freshly fallen snow, never spoiled by the desires of flesh. After her death, he'd fallen in darkness, living a bleak life in celibacy and utter solitude, as he couldn't imagine loving anyone else ever again.
Until he'd found the young Minbari in that damaged little ship, heartbroken and tormented by his inner demons, seeking out death to escape his heart-ache and the suffocating weight of his guilt. And Galen whose ideal had always been a chaste, spiritual love to an equal-minded woman, like the one he'd felt for Isabella, discovered in the deep recesses of his heart that while that place would belong to his lady, forever, he was, indeed, capable of a different kind of love for this desperate, brave and gentle soul – and didn't hesitate to reach out the unexpected gift.
Just as he reached out now to take his mate by the shoulders and to greet him with a kiss that was everything but chaste. It had been too long since he could taste those soft, delectable lips.
"You are here," it was a simple enough statement but filled with triumph. Despite the constant scheming of a malevolent, utterly chaotic universe, they were together once again.
And he who'd once been Lennier, priest of the Third Fame of Chu'domo, and later Anla'shok Lennier, considered lost and killed by all his former friends, returned Galen's kiss with equal devotion, having finally found the place where he truly belonged.
"You called," he replied simply.
Galen nodded and traced the outline of the cerulean patches seaming Lennier's bonecrest with his fingertips, sending little shocks of sharp pleasure through the Minbari's body. His brethren would frown, did they know he used their elaborate technology for such mundane reasons, but he didn't care. All he cared about was the task at their hands – and the most satisfying reunion that was to follow.
"Do you have the codes?" he asked.
Lennier endured his touch with total acceptance, not arching into it but not flinching away from the almost-painful, tiny shocks either, not demanding more than what was freely given. Only the dilating of his dark eyes revealed his pleasure.
"I do," he said. "But are you certain that this would help, Da'cal? I grant you, Valen's Prophecy about the Chosen One can be interpreted the way you do, but what if you are mistaken? The scientist of Earth have worked for all those years on a cure and found nothing. Captain Gideon has looked for a cure just as long, and not even with your help could they find anything. What do you still hope for?"
"It has been my experience, that when one door is closed, another one would open," Galen replied. "Was it not how I found you? We are technomages – we wield both technology and magic. I have exhausted all sources of technology that were at my disposition; now I shall turn to magic to find an answer."
"And you believe there is one?" Lennier asked doubtfully.
Galen sighed. "I have helped Matthew to choose his targets, and it did not help. Now I have to choose mine, and pray with all your heart that I pick the right one. Because we'll only get one shot in this."
"We?" Lennier repeated with a faint smile. "What am I doing in this?"
"You keep my heart alive," Galen said. "Now, give me those codes – it's time I contacted some higher powers. Assuming there are any out there."
Lennier keyed the codes for a secured diplomatic channel wordlessly, so that the receiving person would think the message had come from Delenn herself, and then he watched Galen creating it with the virtuosity of a concert piano player. Only that it didn't contained of melodies but of a series of rapidly changing images and whirling colours, with nothing than gibberish half-words and broken half-sentences. It had an almost hypnotic effect, making one feel that it only took a minute or so, but Lennier's inner clock told him that it lasted almost half an hour.
He had only seen a message like that once before, but he knew it was needed for the electron incantation, so that Galen could later call the receiver of it to himself through space. Sometimes the abilities of his mate almost frightened him. And yet, he would never give up this man, now that he'd found him… or, to be more accurate, that he'd been found by him.
"Well," Galen said brightly, shutting off the ambassadorial BabCom unit, "my work here is done. Let us leave this place."
"What now?" Lennier asked, following him obediently and hiding his face under his wide hood.
"Now we wait," Galen told him. "On my ship, where nobody can find you. And I have an astounding idea how we should spend the time of waiting."
"Oh?" Lennier raised a hairless eyebrow. "What could that possibly be?"
"It depends," Galen stared at him intently, and Lennier had no doubts that the mage could see him in the shadows of his hood just as clearly as he would in the brightest sunlight. "What are you willing to give me?"
"Everything you want," Lennier answered simply. "Everything I am."
"In that case," Galen laid a possessive hand on the small of the Minbari's back, "I shall take everything."
TBC
Da'cal my heart, an endearment between lovers