Jack smiled as he felt the vessel carrying him come to a stop not more than a day or two after leaving Babylon 5. That would be his backers coming to "take custody" of him. After this, he'd likely have to stay under the radar, just in case the small-minded old-world command staff of Babylon 5 spread his picture about, but that was fine, he was fine working in the shadows.
He waited patiently for the guards to come to his cell.
They came with a woman in the ill-fitting uniform of an Earthforce commander, not the uniform that Jack expected to see.
"Who are you?" he asked, furrowing his eyes.
The woman, in her early thirties, produced a broad smile under eyes that were intelligent but glassy in an uncomfortably unnatural way.
"You act like you expected someone to be picking him up," the guards said.
"He did," the woman said, producing a knife from her sleeve as she stood behind them.
"What are you doing?" Jack demanded as he watched the woman move.
She reached around to slash the knife over the neck of one guard and viciously into the eye of the next, twisting it.
"What the hell?" Jack shouted. "This is insane, it's supposed to be a simple transfer of prisoners and then I get lost in the paperwork. That's the contingency that was on the books..."
"Oh, I was getting tired of the mask," the woman said with a giggle. "This game is much more fun. You like us to play this game well, don't you mistress."
The woman came up to the door of his cell and opened it without regarding the cooling corpses behind her and she walked up straight to Jack and grabbed his injured hand, jerking it up toward her until the shackles that chained him to the wall pulled tight.
"This is her work," the woman said eagerly. "We've been watching her for you, her and they, and her work is here before me."
"What are you talking about?" Jack asked hesitantly as the woman stood up then.
She stepped back and opened her uniform up, revealing that the inside was heavily bloodied even if the surface seemed to have come out clear. Out from it she drew a syringe and a vial.
"And now it is finally time for us to start our task," she declared feverishly before looking over toward Jack.
He tried to fight her off, but the handcuffs and ankle chains hampered him, as did the injuries he still had. With those limits, he couldn't do much in the face of her lunatic drive and the needle slipped into his skin.
And after that he was swimming in a world of fantasy and imagining as he was carried through, the scenes of blood and death that littered the halls of the ship fading only in the background of his thoughts.
"Leave this ship to be found," the woman said, the words filtering dazedly through his drugged blanket. "She would love the chaos this will cause. What a fun game that will be."
The giggle that followed was more than inappropriate for the thirty-something woman, especially in its childlike sound.
"This Earthforce prison transport was discovered by a civilian freighter drifting in the space between two jump gates," the reporter on the news said. "When the crew of the freighter boarded the vessel they found this horrid scene."
And the screen behind the reporter shifted to shaky, scattered views of blood streaked walls and slashed Earthforce personnel. Much of the scene was fuzzed out to avoid showing "sensitive" material to potentially young viewers.
"Pause program," someone commanded.
The TV froze and a figure turned around to look at his fellows.
"Who is behind this?" the froggy, bald man demanded angrily. "Who'd attack one of our shi..."
"Two, President Clark," a small man in the dark uniform of a Psi-Cop said. "The ship intending to pick up the agent is also missing and I presume we won't find it any time soon in less than a hundred easily sellable pieces."
"Is it the Mars separatists?" Clark wondered.
"Doubtful," he said. "Forensics suggests that the violence was mostly for the sheer fun of it. Someone smart, crazy and with friends. That, however, isn't the biggest issue."
"And what is Mr Bester?" Clarke wondered irritably.
"Resume program," Bester said clearly looking toward the television.
"Included on the ship were information and reports that implicated the prisoner carried by this ship in an assassination plot against the late President Santiago," the reporter continued.
Clark frowned and swallowed angrily.
"Tainted evidence," he said immediately.
"You're still not seeing the big issue, Mr. President," Bester said, pointing to the screen. "We can deal with and repair this situation. We can even use it. The question is, how did this even get on the air without our..." he paused and made a brief condescending smile, tapping his forehead "...excuse me, Mr. President I meant your? How did this get on the air without your approval and foreknowledge?"
The president frowned at that. He was an ambitious man, not unintelligent and well educated, but his ambition had surpassed his patience and despite legitimately being one of the driving forces of the new world order, he wasn't one of the primary movers and shakers, bot by a long shot.
"Right, I'll have to look into that," he said.
"This is not good," Rally said with a frown as she paused to look up at the news screen and the report of the derelict craft's state was made plain.
The bounty hunter frowned, she was not unused to psychopaths breaking out of jail in order to get revenge on her for something. However, Jack hadn't struck her as anything but a soldier working for a cause, maybe not a true believer, but a loyal follower none the less.
Shaking her head, she bent back down to her work, doing some maintenance on Garibaldi's heirloom slugthrower. Not that there was much need for it, he apparently took good care of the weapon.
Rally grimaced as she came to the grudging realization that there didn't seem to be many members of the educational profession on the station. It was rational, most of the people there were laborers, merchants and military personnel, most of whom had family back on Earth or various colonies.
It wasn't a colony, it was a station.
She wouldn't expect to find schools or teachers at a mining facility either.
There were only a handful of children of various ages and species, probably less than a hundred overall. At the moment, she had them on correspondence courses set up so that she could go online and monitor their progress on various subjects.
It was considered a viable alternative to school for those that lived out in space away from established and stable colonies. However, Rally would prefer that they had someone to talk to other than her about subjects.
"Excuse me," a voice asked from the doorway to Rally's little office. "Are you the investigator?"
Rally looked up from her papers and smiled in a friendly manner as she stood up and walked to her counter to look at this potential customer. The man, a Brakiri, looked a bit nervous and fidgety, probably the first time that he'd ever thought to need a private investigator.
"That's me," she said, gesturing for the man to come forward. "How can I help you?"
"I need you to find some...something," he said, looking around.
"All right," Rally said, her thoughts running toward hidden motives. "What would that be?"
He looked at her curiously for a moment, as if trying to decide what to think of her.
"You have experience at this sort of thing?" he asked.
"I can assure you that I've been an investigator and bounty hunter for close to twenty years," Rally said. "Barring the years of the Earth-Minbari war, during which I was a front line soldier."
The man blinked in surprise at that and Rally resisted a smirk. The Brakiri had been male dominated for generations and only relatively recent developments had changed that. Some of them still had a little bit of trouble accepting females as equals.
"I see," he said, coughing self-consciously. "You will of course keep this confidential."
"Barring a court order, yes," Rally said.
The Brakiri nodded and looked back over his shoulder.
"There's nothing illegal," he said. "Just...a bit embarrassing."
"All right," Rally said. "What's the issue?"
"I was...accosted while returning to my living quarters from work yesterday," he said.
"Have you reported this to station security?" Rally asked, frowning.
"No, no need for that," the Brakiri said. "I'd rather keep this situation...out of the public view. The criminals got away with a petty amount of cash and some jewelry, but they also took a data crystal."
"Uh huh," Rally said. "And do you want that data crystal returned or destroyed?"
"Returned," the man said quickly. "I have a business meeting soon for which that crystal is vital. Without it, I'll lose a profitable deal."
"Is it of use to anybody else?" Rally asked.
"No, my biometrics are the key to decrypt the information," he said. "It is basically show of trust and identity. Without me, the information is unobtainable, but if I lose the data crystal, then I'm obviously not a trustworthy business contact."
"So you want me to get the crystal back without anybody realizing that you've lost it," Rally reasoned.
"That's right," he said. "I don't have time to get someone from off station and you seem to be the only investigator on the station that is not one of the station security."
"Okay," Rally said. "What can you tell me about the guy who mugged you."
She took the man's name and wrote down the information. There were two thugs involved and one had used the other's name, at least a street name, "Grip".
That should be somewhat easy to track down.
She said good bye to her new client and turned to the little phone she carried to contact her girls.
It was only a pair of rings before Shanti answered the phone.
"Heya, Rally," she called happily and Rally looked to the background of the view and saw that she had gone back to arcade pretty much as soon as she was allowed out of the quarters.
"Kitten, I need you and your sister to watch the store for a bit," she said casually.
"Both of us?" Shanti asked.
"Both of you," Rally confirmed. "And, remember, messages, information..."
"Don't take orders, don't do any work," Shanti repeated with a sigh. "I know, I know."
"Good, Mr. Garibaldi's gun is ready and he might be over in the next little while," Rally said. "So I'll show the both of you where it is when you get here."
"There have been some rumors circulating around the Minbari on station," Na'Toth said.
"A Minbari rumor?" G'Kar said leaning forward curiously. "That's most unusual, they're usually a very tight-lipped people. What are they talking about then?"
"The rumor is about an Earth-Minbari war veteran," his aide said, handing over a data crystal for him to look over.
"Ah, that would be Sheridan," the ambassador said, waving the concern aside. "Everyone is well aware of their rather intense dislike for the fellow. This is nothing new."
"Actually, the person they're talking about is a Rally Vincent," Na'Toth explained.
G'Kar blinked and looked up toward his aide casually.
"Really, I've met the woman, what has she done to bring whispers against her?" he asked.
"They say that she's an Earthforce assassin," the ever pragmatic aide noted. "I looked into it."
"And what did you find?" G'Kar asked as he pulled up the information on the crystal. "Hmm, I might have to look into shopping today."
"Uh, Londo," Vir said nervously.
"What is it, Vir?" Londo asked, sighing as if facing a heavy frustration. "I'm busy. The Abbai are proving troublesome over one of our trade routes that apparently somewhat brushes past their territory. They apparently want us to pay fees or go around for merely skipping over a corner."
"Of course, sir," he said. "I just thought you might like to know that I think I've identified that human girl you mentioned."
"The what?" Londo asked.
"The human girl who you said interested the technomages?" Vir noted.
"Oh, yes, her," Londo noted with a nod. "Well, it is good to see that you are able to follow through on such minor, curiosity driven requests while I am trying to escape paying these amphibian vultures their little bribe."
"If you please, Londo," Vir said nervously. "I gave you a report on the Abbai situation already, the report is in your computer under the treaty files and I think you'll find that we are currently passing through Abbai space for three whole d..."
"Yes, Vir," the older centauri said irritably. "I'm aware of the numbers, why did you feel the need to put it into a report?"
"Because, that's what reports are for, to note down the facts," the ambassadorial aide noted.
"Vir, Vir, you always amaze me with your naivete," Londo said. "Facts are the last thing you want to place in a report. If you place a fact in a report, there's no way to deny it later."
"But what do you put in a report?" Vir asked.
"Nevermind, Vir, just tell me this information you found," the bombastic amabassador said. "Perhaps it might be an amusing diversion for a little bit."
"Well, her name is apparently Vivian Vincent," Vir said, opening his mouth to continue before Londo interrupted him.
"Oh great Maker what an unfortunate name," Londo said. "It sounds like someone stuttered as they were naming her."
"Maybe so," Vir said. "But her mother apparently runs a weapons shop in Red Sector, Gunsmith Cats. She's supposed to also be some sort of private investigator."
"Ah, yes," Londo said. "I know of this profession. They're basically licensed, freelance spies. It seems to be a tradition of the humans to use such agents to peek at their husbands and wives being unfaithful. Is there anything else? Anything that might explain what makes her unusual?"
"Not that I could..."
"Nevermind, Vir," Londo said standing up and grabbing his coat. "I think I'll shall pay a visit myself."
"But the Abbai..." Vir said.
"Just make sure we lose neither time nor money on the matter and you can handle it as you want," Londo said dismissively as he left the room.
Vir's mouth held open for several seconds after he was left alone.
"How do I..." Vir wondered before shaking his head. "Nevermind, I'll think of something."
Rally had left the Red Sector thirty five minutes ago, the people there still buzzing over the arrival of the Cortez. Probably the only explorer ship many of them would ever see. She had to see about giving the girls a chance to see it.
Something to tell their children about.
For the moment, however, as she entered the deeper parts of down below in search of this "Grip" and his partner, she was more concerned with her immediate surroundings than events of historical significance.
Until she found what she was looking for.
"Hello again," she said idly.
"Oh God," the thug said turning around to face her. "You're here again?"
"Yeah, I need directions," the bounty hunter noted, bringing out a credit chip. "Where can I find someone named 'Grip'?"
Finding Grip was a lot easier than she expected, the man was making no attempt at hiding. In fact, it seemed like he'd made a big deal of being something of headache for half the lurkers of Down Below. Nobody seemed to care too much about whether or not he got pinched or killed.
She'd been on easier jobs, but until the job was over, she was always more cautious when things got too easy.
The bounty hunter turned a corner and glanced over her shoulder towards the clattering of a sound. She waited momentarily and frowned as she waited for more to develop out of that sound before continuing onward.
Slowly the sound of a laughing, drunken voice singing wondered up through the halls and she started to track in on it until she came to see a weaving human sitting at a table with a scattering of items of miscellaneous variety including a gun case, several data crystals and assorted jewelry and credit chips.
Walking over cautiously, Rally pulled the gun case away from the insensate man and stopped as she recognized an engraving on one corner of the case. With narrowed eyes, she opened it to see a familiar weapon within.
Her CZ 75, a weapon nearly three hundred years old with only a few replacement parts and kept in religiously good working order. She'd left it behind on Mars so that Vivian wouldn't accidentally get her hands on it and see such things as Goldie in all her psychotic fury.
"Where'd you get this?" Rally demanded the dazed thug as she took it and checked it over quickly enough before sliding the fully loaded clip into its stock.
"Huh? It? Get this?" the man asked. "I get it good. I get it fine. Get it all the time."
Rally put the gun in the back of her pants and snatched the visible data crystals before turning and grabbing the drugged out thug by the collar.
"Where'd you get the gun?" she demanded looking around cautiously.
"Get the gun, hold the gun, keep the gun," the man muttered chuckling without any apparent concern up until the energy burst destroyed his face.
Rally rolled out of the way and into cover as she dropped the corpse and directed her gun towards the direction the blast had come from, hearing a stream of cursing Minbari as she did so.
She looked about her surroundings quickly muttering to herself as well, cursing herself with a muttered "this sucks."
"Was that shot meant for me?" she asked out loud.
"Don't paint me with your brush, assassin," the other person called out. "I am not part of your dirty profession, I am merely here to see honor done."
The Minbari she heard couldn't be the shooter, his voice was in entirely the wrong direction. That meant he was trying to distract her for his friend or friends.
Well, she could handle that.
Shanti sat on a work stool, humming cheerfully to herself as she fingered the gun case in front of her and scanned about to see if her sister was paying attention.
The humming got a bit quieter as she started to undo the latches on the case as carefully as she could. One of them snapped open a bit louder than she wanted and she hummed louder for a moment as she started to look around for Vivi again and then turned her attention back to the case. She was cracking it slowly open, the light starting to work it's way in when...
...it closed with a thunk and she only just got her fingers out of the way.
"Vivian!" Shanti snapped angrily. "What did you do that for?"
Vivian stayed calm, enough used to Shanti's hair trigger that she was never worried about it when directed at her or Rally. Getting excited back just made things worse, staying calm tended to keep her sister from going over.
"It's a client's weapon, Shanti," she said, locking the case closed and taking it to the back of the shop again. "So no touching."
Vivian was treating the case as carefully as Shanti at first, though for different reasons. However, it quickly became apparent that the case itself didn't have much if anything for her to flash on.
"I wasn't going to touch, I just wanted to see what it was," she said poutingly. "Oh! Maybe he has a desert eagle...no, the case is too small."
"Just leave it alone, Sis," Vivi said, rolling her eyes.
She moved back to the front of the store and turned on the monitor before switching over toward the Mars 1 formula races. Shanti groaned and rolled her eyes as she sat at the counter and kicked her feet out.
"Uh oh," Vivian said in a wincing tone, drawing Shanti's eyes to the TV in time to see a car fly upward into the air in Mars' lower gravity before smashing into the high wall that surrounded the track.
A brilliant fireball erupted on the screen kicking the driver compartment outward into the center of one of the pits. The crew there scattering for cover from the safety pod and various other shrapnel.
"I'd watch racing more if that happened more often," Shanti noted, pointing to the screen as the fireball was replayed.
As the driver came out of the pod conscious and alive, but with a clearly broken leg, Vivian sighed in both relief and grief simultaneously.
"He's on my fantasy team," she muttered sadly.
"Hello," a curious voice called out from the doorway. "Is anybody here?"
Vivian and Shanti turned to the doorway to see a slightly rotund Centauri of middle years standing there, a trace of white through his crest of hair.
"Oh," the man said. "There you..."
He stopped and frowned as he looked between the two girls, noting the similarities that weren't quite hidden by their differing tastes in clothing and hairstyle.
"Let's see, which of you is the young lady that I've conversed with previously," the man asked curiously.
Vivian raised her hand as Shanti looked over at her, after which, the long haired girl pointed to her sister and stared at the centauri.
"Ahh, I see," Londo said. "Right, I remember now, just shy of a proper centauri woman's hairstyle."
"Centauri women go bald," Vivian noted.
"Yes, that's true," Londo said.
Her sister twittered in response.
"You're looking for Rally, right?" Vivian asked harshly.
"Actually, I was wanting to..." Londo was interrupted as another person walked into the small shop.
"Excuse me," the Narn coming into the shop said. "Miss Vincents, I was wondering if I might see your..."
The Narn stopped talking as he noticed who he had just brushed past.
"G'Kar, how interesting to see you here of all places," the centauri said.
"I was just thinking the same thing, Mollari," G'Kar said with narrowing eyes.
"Yes, I suppose you were," returned Londo with a self-important nod, eyes latched to his old rival. "Watch yourselves, children, G'Kar here is an incorrigible womanizer. If you let him talk too long I'm guessing your virtues surrendered."
"Excuse me?" Vivian demanded, blushing.
"Huh?" Shanti asked, blinking.
"What ar...Mollari!" G'Kar snapped, "Only you could leap to such a despicable assumption off the bat. Most species have enough decency to recognize a child from a woman."
"Hey!" Vivian snapped, angry this time.
"Just what are they talking about?" Shanti wondered, doing what she usually did when things were confusing: sit coquettishly and blink with wide eyes until someone explained things.
"Yes, so they do," Londo said. "I'm glad to see the narn are starting to realize that fact, maybe they're just a few evolutionary scales away from adopting such decency themselves."
"Mollari, are you accusin..." G'Kar started to shout angrily before pausing and then laughing darkly. "Oh, I see, you're trying to distract me are you? Just what are you doing here at Miss Vincent's place of business, were you thinking to...take out a contract of sorts?"
Outside assassins, the narn thought, of course the Centauri would sink so low. It was the sort of bloodthirsty thing they could think of.
"What are you..." Londo paused and frowned. "Ah, aha! You can always tell an enemies plans by what he accuses you of! I see, G'Kar...I suppose you have a request of the...the operator of this business yourself. Some rocks to kick over, eh?"
Certainly the Narn would start turning to other races for spies, their own questionably-labeled minds could at least understand that that would be a clever thing to do.
"Oh!" Shanti called out in a sharp excited tone, drawing all eyes toward her. "Do you have anymore war stories, Mr G'Kar?"
"War stories?" Londo asked. "You think you can get war stories from a narn? Their idea of a war is picking up two rocks and pounding them together in hopes of sparking a lightning bolt."
G'Kar fumed for a moment and then leaned forward with a smile toward Shanti.
"Well, that's about all one needs to blow away something as stuffed up as a Centauri," G'Kar said.
"Stuffed up?" Londo said. "What would you know about fashion and dignity, your world is a dry thing with almost no color."
"Yes, one wonders how that happened," the narn said with dry and controlled rage.
"So, umm, stories?" Shanti asked, blinking cutely.
"How about I tell you about the valiant liberation of Illaz III," Londo said with a beaming smile.
"The liberation?" G'Kar noted. "How about the slaughter of Illaz III?"
"Well, this is amazing," Londo said. "First the realization about a proper age of courting and now he's properly labeling the senseless violence of his people."
"Are you guys going to keep arguing like that all the time?" Vivian asked.
"There is no arguing with the narn," Londo protested. "They simple rant nonsense at you until you get bored."
"Nonsense is one thing I will agree you have an expertise in Mollari," G'Kar noted with raising voice.
Shanti leaned over toward her sister.
"I hope they're still doing this when Rally gets here so I can have evidence for the next 'old enough to control yourself' lecture," she whispered.
Rally drew out the CZ with her right hand and put a PPG in the right as she listened and watched signs and breathed in the air.
"I'm not surprised to find you sneaking around down here dealing in such sordid messes as this," the Minbari was saying.
He was moving, slowly, his voice was distracted with exaggerated caution. There were occasional clinks here and there from what she expected was a prematurely extended fighting pike.
She rolled her eyes at the obvious innuendo that came with that thought and then turned back to the situation at hand.
In any case the, the inexperience was rank.
The Minbari wasn't the only one around.
She could hear shuffling feet moving about the make shift barricades, people trying slide their feet so they didn't make noise. Then flickering lights that were partially visible through gaps in the ramshackle walls were blocked out. The lingering smell of energy blast discharge wafted through the recycled air along a path that told her her shooter was behind one of the make shift walls and moving to find a new entry at her. Small creaks and flaps came from the walls where they were unsteady, with weak welds.
In the movies, the heroes usually closed their eyes when they were concentrating and "using all their senses."
That was a mistake, using all your senses meant all your senses, not just one or two of them while leaving out the strongest. Though she had to admit,that when she'd started that with her father back as a kid, closing her eyes made it easier to focus on the others. But once you mastered it, really mastered it, it wasn't something you turned on or off.
It was just something you did.
Which was why she knew that the Minbari was not aware of the others.
"Sordid, complicated, messy and psychotic," Rally said idly. "Yeah, my life sucks."
She reached out with the PPG and fired it into one of those creaks indicated a weak weld at ten and one o'clock before twisting about and doing the same at the base of the converted shelving unit she was sustaining cover behind, melting the legs that held it up.
Rally twisted about to the other side of her now falling cover, fired out twice with the CZ 75 into the hard metal of the wall outside the small lurker-made room. The first bullet smacked into the wall and bounced left, the second bounced right with accompanying cries of pain.
The wall she had been sheltering behind was collapsing over as the legs that had held up the overburdened unit. Then she stepped up onto the falling wall, quickstepping over it backwards, her own weight adding to its momentum.
The minbari slipped out of his cover bearing his fighting pike and charging forward as Rally fired again with her PPG and another section of wall fell downward on top of him.
Rally's perch slammed into the nearest wall and the welds weakened by the bounty hunter's first shots gave way with a wrenching noise as someone behind the wall cried out in shock and fear, punctuated by randomly fired PPG shots that had no hope of hitting anything.
The bounty hunter showed that she hadn't slowed down, not even deep into her thirties, as she rolled with the impact out into the hallway concealing the forces surrounding the little room.
A man in dirty clothes stared at her vacantly and charged in with a piece of pipe until one of his knees exploded sending him stumbling down into the hallway as Rally passed by him, walking backwards and shot behind her.
One of the men had pointed a PPG at her and lost a thumb before he could depress a trigger. Another man's shoulder was burned through with a PPG blast as he tumbled backward.
Steps, quick now rushing, a couple limping. The Minbari was pushing the shelves off and trying to get into the fight again, or at all.
Rally twisted to face the way she was walking and fired, two bullets lashing out to strike one of the men as they came around the corner at her, shoulder and wrist. Another man with the same drugged out look dodged around his partner running at the walking bounty hunter with a war scream that turned into a high pitched shriek after she shifted aside simply and gave him a bit of a boost with a foot delivered somewhere south of his center of gravity.
A limping man clutched to the wall as she came around, leveled a gun at her and was smacked unconscious with the hilt of her CZ as the PPG fired again and into the knee of the second man who she'd struck with a ricochet earlier.
The Minbari leaped out of the room as she came to the entrance she'd originally taken into it. He wasn't totally untrained given how he'd just managed to surprise her.
However, the way he took advantage of it was less wise. He slammed the fighting pike horizontally into her, pushing her back away into corridors away from the battlefield and presenting his back to any of her attackers that still remained standing and simultaneously giving her distance away from him.
She landed on her back and couldn't completely roll off the impact, but came up to her knees quickly enough, the CZ 75 barking out three more times as the Minbari came at her.
The bullets passed by the young, oblivious warrior. Then he was swinging his pike down at her cursing bitterly as she rolled off to the side and back to her feet, nursing the left shoulder slightly as she danced away.
"The great Stalking Cat a little rattled?" he asked. "Can't you fire straight?"
Rally ducked under his next swing, reached out with the PPG and firing again. The sound of a cry behind the Minbari distracted him long enough that he failed to correct his overbalanced stance. The next thing he knew he was flying through the air, head downward before slamming painfully back into the ground.
"That's about all the small fry," Rally called out loudly. "Where's the big fish?"
Yelling out loudly, the Minbari stumbled to his feet and swung out at Rally who dodged back away.
"Face me, Vincent," he shouted angrily as he tried to catch up with her evading form and enraged at her grimacing face, irritated that she seemed to only be half looking at him.
"Get out of the way or you're going to ge..." Rally stopped mid sentence and dashed forward.
The bounty hunter twisted aside under the pike's strike and kicked a short hook into the back of his knee and pushing him aside behind her, his pike scattering along the hallway. The pistol came up firing twice just moments before a PPG burst slammed into her already injured shoulder.
The PPG fell out of her hand as she grunted and stumbled backwards.
The pistol was put back into her belt and she reached down with her right hand to grab the Minbari by the back of the collar and haul him up to his feet and around a corner, pushing the confused Minbari aside and redrawing her pistol.
"What is your game?" the Minbari asked.
"Survival," Rally said, checking her shoulder and flexing her left hand. "In case you haven't noticed, you've blundered into a trap."
"You admi..."
"A trap for me you idiot, or did you think I was just randomly shooting people," Rally said, looking around the corner. "You managed a hit, Jack. What's my score?"
"Damn you, Vincent!" came the response followed by a thump.
"Walking without knees," Vincent said. "That'll be a neat trick if you can learn it."
"I'm going to kill you, Vincent," he shouted. "I have to kill you."
"Uh huh," Rally said. "And who told you that?"
The Minbari started to stand and Rally casually pointed her pistol in his face, freezing his eyes on its large barrel.
"You're in the way," Jack said with effort, the sound of him trying to crawl toward where Rally stood clear among the various groans of drugged out thugs. "If you die everything is the way it should be. Everything goes right."
"What goes right, Jack?" the bounty hunter asked.
"The New World Order," Jack said. "Earth clean and pure and free of alien influence. Free to make things the way they should be. Don't you hate them? Vincent, didn't they kill Misty Brown? Shouldn't you want them all dead for your little lesbian who..."
Rally turned about the corner, ignoring the young Minbari she'd been covering. She fired at the prostate form of Jack, destroying his right hand and the PPG in it. He cried out in pain as she resolutely strode up to him and slammed a foot into his face.
"Part of me says this is kerasine talking," Rally said as she stepped on the man's hand. "But the rest of me knows that's because someone's dredged up your fantasy world to turn you against me. Either way, one more word about Misty and and I stop going easy on you."
"You can't hurt me, I can't be stopped," he shouted. "I have friends and backers and..."
Rally kicked down into his face again, knocking him unconscious.
"The black knight always wins," she muttered and snapped her gun up toward the Minbari again.
The Minbari opened his mouth and looked past Rally to the struggling bodies of the various thugs and devastation that she'd left behind her without much issue out at all.
"I don't know your name," Rally said sharply, "but last time I saw that particular pike in a fight, its wielder treated it with enough respect not to drag it along the ground or let it sit like a piece of debris."
Closing his mouth, the Minbari stepped over and picked up the pike quickly turning it towards Rally and getting into stance.
"Are you going to face me now?" he demanded.
"Go get security," Rally said simply.
The Minbari frowned and looked about at the incapacitated, but still living thugs.
"Are you presuming to ord..."
"Are you still here?"
This is going to be a problem," Rally said.
"I hate to say it," Garibaldi noted, looking around the scene. "But given you didn't kill anyone, and they're lurkers, it might go overlooked."
"My girls are going to hear about this," the bounty hunter said with a frown. "This was supposed to be an easy recovery job. But looks like someone took advantage of the fact I'm the only investigator on station."
"You think this was about you," Garibaldi concluded. "Any particular reason?"
"I've seen this brand of evil before," the woman said quietly.
"Yeah, but Goldie Musou is dead," Garibaldi noted, idly revealing how much he knew of Rally's past.
"Hey!" Garibaldi called out as he came about a corner at a fast pace. "All I did was tie my shoes and you're half way to the next section, you'd think I was the injured one."
"Your uniform boots don't have shoe laces," Rally noted with a raised eyebrow.
Garibaldi looked down as he walked and shrugged.
"Well, I guess not," he said. "That might explain why it was so hard to tie them."
"Not going to go with your guy?" Rally asked, changing the subjects with a roll of the eyes.
"He's unconscious and in danger of bleeding to death," Garibaldi noted. "Much I'd like to interrogate him, I'd like him to love long enough for me to get anything useful out of him."
"Yeah, but you could wait for him to get out of medlab," Rally noted.
"Well," Garibaldi noted. "I'd kind of like to get what you have to say about this somewhere more private."
He paused for a moment.
"And there's the matter of my grandmother's gun," Garibaldi noted. "I got a message that it was ready."
"Yeah, yeah," Rally said. "I got it ready."
She held her injured arm with her good one, but didn't mention the obvious injury as she walked through the hallways. Garibaldi didn't bring it up, she'd refused to go to medlab a few times already until she was certain her daughters were safe.
At the moment, the injury was hidden by a borrowed security jacket so that not too much attention would be drawn to them as they walked through the passages. Rally was clearly eyeing things and taking corners in what looked a casual manner but minimized the chance of someone seeing her before she got a good look at what was coming.
"You play things close to the chest," he said.
"Not all of us can be as trusting as you," Rally quipped with narrowed eyes as she glanced toward his shoes and his link.
It was about ten minutes later that they appeared in the passages of the red sector that led toward Rally's shop.
Rally started to search the faces in the open area her shop sat in but was distracted by the sounds she was hearing.
"Of all the incorrigible..." a sharp, Centauri accented voice called out. "You there, girl, this is a weapons shop is it not? Quick, give me a weapon!"
"I can't..." Vivian's voice started to say.
"I'm not going to let you hurt Mr. G'Kar," Shanti called out angrily.
"Oh crap," Rally muttered, stepping up her pace and only barely catching a shift of movement that implied someone leaving the area quickly enough to disturb other people near by.
"Calm yourself, Child," G'Kar's voice came. "I doubt your foster mother would appreciate you dirtying your hands this way."
"Shanti, calm down," Vivian called out.
Rally turned around the corner to come into her shop with a very clear expression as Garibaldi sighed and followed her.
Rally's appearance combined with the fact that both Vivian and G'Kar had moved between Shanti and Londo allowed the more reactive twin enough distraction to calm down and back off.
"What is the meaning of this?" Londo asked indicating the impromptu human wall.
"That's my question," Rally said coldly.
She looked from G'Kar to Londo and then toward Vivian and Shanti.
"Kitten," she said in a soothing tone. "Can you go get Mr. Garibaldi's revolver for him?"
"Umm, sure," she said blinking and leaving the room.
"Madam," Londo said. "I would like to ask what you think..."
"Little Girl," she said dryly. "Why do I have Narn-Centauri politics in miniature in my shop?"
"They both came to talk to you," Vivi explained. "And then started arguing. Uh, Rally, what's wrong with your arm?"
"I see," Rally said, grimacing and pinching the bridge between her nose. "Anything else weird going on?"
"No, but...shouldn't you see a doctor?" Vivian asked, worriedly.
"I will," she said.
"Ms Vincent," G'Kar said. "I do apologize for this unseemly display. I merely came to discuss a matter of potential work when Mollari decided to stick his big belly into matters."
"My big what?" Londo snapped. "Are you descending to personal attacks then? That is always the last resort of someone with no good ideas."
"That explains why you start off there," G'Kar noted idly.
"Do you mean..." Londo started to say.
"Out of my shop," Rally snapped suddenly, pointing sharply with her injured arm without thinking about it.
She hissed in pain but didn't let herself wince...or move to catch the jacket as it fell off to reveal the charred hole in the clothes underneath, down to the clear PPG injury.
Vivian gasped at the sight and stepped over toward Rally's side.
"You need to go to medlab!" she said insistently.
"Madam, I think your daughter is right," Londo said. "That is a dreadful woun..."
Rally grimaced as she turned to face the man.
"Out."
Garibaldi shook his head and moved towards Londo patting him on the back cautiously and shaking his head.
"I think this is a matter for discretion," he said with a smirk, directing the Centauri out of the building.
"What is with these people?" Londo asked irritably. "First they're acting as if I need protection from a veritable child and the other doesn't seem to understand when a business opportunity has been presented."
"Londo," Garibaldi said under his breath. "There might be a video you need to see."
G'Kar waited a moment for Londo to leave and lingered to speak to Rally.
"I do seriously apologize for this display," he said. "I suppose I wasn't thinking clearly when Mollari appeared."
"If you want a sensible discussion, leave, call for an appointment and come back when I tell you," Rally said coldly.
"Yes, of course," he said, leaving himself.
Garibaldi came back in the door a few seconds later as G'Kar left and shook his head.
"Those two are always at each others' throats," he said. "One of these days it's going to be the death of one or both."
Shanti came in then, bearing the gun case with a smile as she walked up to Garibaldi.
"Can I see..." she stopped as she saw Rally's injury, dropping the gun case and only just recovering it before it hit the ground. "What happened?"
"I had a bit of trouble down below," Rally said comfortingly. "It's handled."
"You should have come right here," Dr. Franklin said with a lecturing tone as he glanced toward Shanti and Vivian watching from another part of the medlab. "Running around with a great bloody hole in your shoulder. All right, take the jackets off and your weapons, please."
"Right," Rally said, shaking her head as she sat the heavy pistol that had caught Franklin's eye on the table.
"All right, now that that monstrosity is out of..." he paused.
"Wait a minute," Rally said.
With a flick of her left hand, accompanying a wince, a spring-loaded brace pushed out holding a PPG.
"A back up weapon," Garibaldi said in an approving tone from nearby.
"Yeah, you never know," Rally said as she set that on the table next to the pistol.
"Yeah, it's always nice to have a reserve way to deal death and..." Franklin stopped as Rally reached around behind her back and produced another PPG. "Dismemberment."
She reached into her jacket then and drew out a kabar which joined the other weapons on the table.
"Okay, this is getting a little..." Garibaldi paused as Rally laboriously took off her jacket and revealed two belts around her waist holding an exhaustive number of power caps.
"Are you planning on starting a war?" Franklin asked.
"Doctor Franklin," Rally said, wincing as she tried to take the belts off. "If I were geared for war, you'd know it."
"So, is that all the weapons then?" Garibaldi asked.
"That would get in the way of treating my shoulder," Rally confirmed.
Morann ra Fe'enduma frowned as he followed the soft-spoken religious caste man to the quarters of the...person who had tainted her blood with human genetics. The humans had questioned him endlessly about what he was doing in that place and what had happened.
His frown deepened when he entered the Ambassador's quarters and heard her speaking to someone.
The person in the other chair stood up and turned to face the door.
"What is she doing here?" he snapped, pointing toward the human with her arm in a sling.
"Miss Vincent asked to speak with you," Delenn said.
"And of course you had to let her see me," he said. "I'll bet she's armed to the teeth right now and ready to kill all three of us."
"Actually, she surrendered her weapons while waiting," Delenn noted, gesturing toward a small pile of firearms sitting on a counter across the room.
"We need to talk before someone makes a mistake," Rally said seriously as she stood up. "Before there's another fight."
"Afraid I might finally get justice for my family?" he asked with a sneer.
Rally sighed and shook her head.
"Please, sit," Delenn said. "Lennier and I will grant you some privacy."
"We shall just be in the next room," Lennier said with emphasis as he collected Rally's weapons and moved into Delenn's personal quarters.
Morann watched them leave and moved resignedly to sit across from Rally as she sat back down. He watched as she took out a pair of photographs that held the images of two young human girls and placed them respectfully on the table.
"What is this?" he asked grimly.
"These are my daughters," Rally said. "I've raised them since they were left in my care, taught them, made sure they were protected..."
"And when you die, they will come after me," Morann said dismissively. "This is a cowardly attempt at intimidation, Stalking Cat, such a response is obvious."
"I'm not having those girls stained with pointless killing," Rally said coldly.
He looked down at the pictures then and up again, confused.
"Then..." he started to say.
"They've both come a long way," she said. "But they're not ready to protect themselves yet. Which means, I can't die yet. Not for something trivial."
"You call my brothers' vengeance trivial?" Morann demanded.
"The whole damn war was trivial," Rally said quietly. "Millions of people dead over two bad assumptions. Hundreds of thousands more bathed in blood for no good reason. Nobody really won."
"Only because our leaders betrayed us," the young warrior said.
"You were going to destroy the earth," Rally said. "Eliminate every man, woman and child of us. Civilians and military alike. Is xenocide something the Minbari would want in their history?"
The warrior fumed at that question.
"In the war, some of my people were heroes," she said. "They fought with everything at their disposal to protect our people."
She hung her head quietly.
"That's not why I fought," Rally explained. "I fought because some I loved was killed for no better reason than she was one human among thousands at a civilian, unarmed colony. I fought to kill and avenge."
"Then your kind should have thought before killing our greatest leader," Morann snapped.
"I like how you think you're more honorable because you were better at killing than we were," Rally said.
"What do you know about honor?" Morann asked. "You're an assassin, a stalker in the shadows, attacking from hiding."
"I know I've seen honor before," Rally said. "A man who faced off against an adversary, keeping them busy and neutralized for three days and forcing the failure of the enemy's current mission. All at the cost of his own life."
"I assume this was a relative of some sort," Morann said, bored.
"Yours," Rally commented. "And it is my shame that he died at my hands."
She took a deep breath and steadied herself.
"Before that war, I was a hero," she said. "I had fought real evil. I knew what it looked like, what it smelled like. I'd seen it destroy minds and I'd had it stick its fingers into my head."
She shook her head.
"I went to war for the wrong reasons," she added. "I went to kill. I didn't go to protect. There are questions we ask ourselves when we do something. Going into war, the questions are usually either 'what are we killing?' or 'what are we keeping alive?'."
"And which did you ask?" Morann wondered.
"The first one, the wrong one," Rally said. "And that means I'm a murderer. I have to live with that."
"Or I can kill you and you don't have to worry about it," Morann said.
"If that happens," Rally said, "and it won't because you're not good enough, then the aftermath doesn't give you anything. It just tears that hole in your heart bigger. And then you have become like me, a murderer."
"So all that talk about not killing is just talk then," Morann determined. "You'd kill me anyway."
"To protect my children, yes," Rally said.
"I'm not trying to kill your children, idiot," Morann said.
"If you destroy a wall," the bounty hunter said. "It isn't just destroyed for you. Anybody and anything else can wander in too."
They were quiet for a moment.
"I can't protect my girls from anything if you've killed me," Rally made clear. "I don't know if I'm getting through to you at all, but that's all I have to say. And to ask, 'what's your question?'"
She stood up and moved toward the thin wall separating the front room from Delenn's quarters as she let the young warrior stew. He wasn't attacking her at least.
That was something.
Garibaldi watched the security footage of the area around Gunsmith Cats for the second time and hit pause as an image came on the screen. That of a woman a bit younger than Rally turning about and leaving the area as soon as she saw the bounty hunter.
He had a face now at least.
