"This is the USS Copernicus," a woman's voice repeated mechanically. "We come in peace. This is the USS Copernicus. We come in piece."
The hundred year old ship continued to drift through the dark, empty spaces carrying its passengers, the living and the dead.
Garibaldi frowned as he stared into the monitor, watching Jack rock back and forth and muttering to himself.
"Has he said anything useful?" Sheridan asked, coming into the room.
"No, everything is just the same repetition of New World Order and having to kill Rally Vincent," Garibaldi said.
"What happened to him?" Sheridan asked. "He's been gone for two weeks after that escape of his and he comes back like this?"
"Kerosine," Garibaldi said.
"That isn't something you can find just anywhere these days," Sheridan said.
"I know," the security chief said. "I was hoping that he'd start to come down after the drug started coming out of his system. But it doesn't just come out of your system, you have to clean it out of your system according to Vincent."
"She knows a lot about this sort of thing," Sheridan noted.
"I looked into it back when I realized who she was," Garibaldi said. "There's a Chicago police file, she was kidnapped, forcefully dosed with kerasine and brainwashed herself. Someone wanted to send her to kill a cop friend of hers. She resisted, managed to only wound him. Nobody is really sure exactly how."
"Does she know how to clean it out?" Sheridan asked.
"She gave me the name of a scientist to look for," the chief said, shrugging, we're looking into it. "Until then, I'm keeping his presence here quiet. Protective custody, danger to himself and others, that kind of thing."
"That playing a bit of a bluff," Sheridan said. "But I have to admit that he's not in a condition to take care of himself. And we know he's connected to the assassination of the president."
He sighed and shook his head before turning away from the monitors.
"Just be careful, Mr Garibaldi," Sheridan said as he left the room. "I have to look into that ship drifting out of deep space."
Soon after he left, a call came in. Some lurker shouting about the end of the world.
"This is from Earth?" Susan said, regarding the ship in the view screens. "I've never seen anything like it."
"Check your history books," Sheridan said. "That's a sleeper ship, from before we had contact with the Centauri."
"What's it doing out here?" Susan asked.
"Well, maybe something misfired," the captain suggested. "Or maybe it's supposed to be out here...who knows."
"We could always asked the pilot," Ivanova said, indicating the life signs.
"What did you want to talk to me about, Ambassador?" Rally asked G'Kar, who sat across from her counter at the moment.
"It has come to my attention just what part you played in the Earth-Minbari War," he said.
"You want to hire me to kill people?" she asked dryly with narrowed eyes.
"Well, certainly not in your current condition," G'Kar said, noting the sling.
"I don't do that," the bounty hunter said. "I'm a bounty hunter, private investigator and gunsmith. I've had enough of killing."
G'Kar nodded reluctantly and stood up.
"I can respect that, I suppose," he said.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't encourage my daughter in thinking war is glorious," Rally said.
"Ms Vincent," G'Kar said. "If you want her to appreciate the truth of war. Then maybe you should tell her about it rather than sheltering her."
He hadn't left yet when Vivian came into the shop at a run.
"Rally," she gasped. "You've gotta come quick."
"What is it now?" Rally asked.
"I told you both," Garibaldi said. "If she can't keep it under control, I'll have to do something about it."
Rally's hand was over her face as she shook her head in a bit of frustration.
"I thought it might be one of the people that attacked Rally," Shanti said quietly.
"I'm going to grant you this," Garibaldi said. "The man jumped out at her and was ranting about soldiers of darkness. And she stopped herself after one punch, but she still broke the man's nose."
"He was stinky and crazy," Shanti noted.
"What are you thinking of, Garibaldi?" Rally asked quietly.
"Community service, I think," the security chief said.
"Where?" Rally asked cautiously.
"I believe you know the Doc's free clinic?" Garibaldi said.
"But it's dirty down there," Shanti said quietly.
"I can agree with that," Rally said, leaning back and calming down. "She could use a bit of refresher on first aid anyway."
"One hundred hours sound good?" Garibaldi asked.
"But that's forever!" Shanti protested. "Can't I just apologize?"
"If the man you punched out wakes up coherent," the security chief said. "You can expect to do that too."
"Huh?" Shanti said. "I didn't hit him that hard."
Amis moaned as he woke up, thinking clearly as consciousness came back in. The memories were a bit fuzzy as usual, and there were some aches and pains as usual, felt like his nose was broken.
"What hit me?" he wondered.
"Well, to answer that," a voice said. "I've set up a visual aide."
The lurker looked up toward the voice and saw a man with a receding hairline directing attention toward a monitor on the wall.
"Is that a little girl beating up a drazi?" Amis asked.
"I never get tired of that," Garibaldi said, shaking his head. "Anyway, how are you feeling?"
"Like I was laid out by a hundred pound girl," Amis said.
"Said little girl has a one hundred days of community service to pay for it," Garibaldi noted. "She'll also be coming here to apologize."
"I find life is much more enjoyable if I don't remember most of the things I do," the man said.
"You were saying judgment day was coming," the security chief said.
"Did it?" Amis asked.
"Not yet, but I might have missed a meeting," Garibaldi said.
Meanwhile, a woman was being transferred from the Copernicus to the medlab at a rush and something darker slipped onto the station ahead of her.
"Does your daughter have any medical training?" the woman at the clinic asked Rally as Shanti sat aside with her arms crossed and looking rather contrite.
"First aid," Rally said. "So far she hasn't had much call to use it."
"That's...good," the woman said before leaning over and looking toward Shanti. "But I think you'll be out here mostly. Can you work as a receptionist?"
"I do that for Rally a lot," Shanti said. "Name, contact information, weapons license number, ID number, model, what work needs to be done..."
"Pardon me?" the woman asked.
"I'm a gunsmith," Rally said. "I do custom work for sport-shooters and law enforcement mostly."
"Oh, I see," the woman said vaguely. "Well, we won't have that much paperwork here. A lot of the patients don't have contact information, some don't have IDs. So the list of questions will be a bit different. But it's good that you have experience in this sort of thing."
Rally looked out of the clinic at the area of Down Below it was set in and noted that most of the people she was seeing were desperate and down on their luck, but didn't look violent. Still, Shanti had been told not to wander out of the clinic and to wait to be picked up before leaving.
Shanti could handle herself against one or two of most of the common thugs out there, but really, Rally didn't want her to have to handle herself. Especially given the temptation that was proving for her more...reactive nature.
"Where's Doctor Franklin?" Rally wondered.
"He's up in medlab," the woman said. "Can't be down here all the time, after all."
As far as Mariah was concerned, she'd gone to bed only the day before and now it was a hundred years later and her husband had died in the cryonic tube next to her in some strange, mysterious way.
She walked alongside the Doctor as he started moving out of the clean, shiny parts of the station.
"Are you sure you want to come down here?" he said. "This isn't exactly the best place in the world to get a bit of relaxation in."
"It's rather sad that we haven't escaped this sort of thing in the last hundred years, either," Mariah said cheerfully, putting aside her own discomfort.
"There's always going to be people that have and people that don't have," Franklin said cynically. "It's like seeking perfection, we're never going to reach it, but doesn't mean we should stop trying."
"I guess that's so," the woman said doubtfully. "You run a clinic down here?"
"Right," Franklin said. "And I've got a teenager starting community service here in a bit and I want to be on hand for her first day...just in case."
"There are kids here?" Mariah said. "I hadn't noticed that many."
"There are a handful," Franklin said, thinking about the bunch that Garibaldi set to clean the garbage reclaimers for running a pickpocketing ring. "And from what I can tell, this one in particular is a handful on her own."
"Oh, so she's not a volunteer then," Mariah said.
"No, in the past two months," the doctor said. "She's caused a broken arm, a concussion and a broken nose. All in self-defense."
"Must be a real tough girl," the woman out of time said, shaking her head.
And then they were walking into the area of Stephen's clinic and she was faced with the image of a small, Indian girl wearing a green dress and a tasteful display of makeup as she hummed prettily and attacked the almost uniformly charred and dirty walls of the Down Below room.
"Hello, Doctor," Shanti said politely, waving with her cloth.
Jack stood up and listened carefully at the door, still fixated on the thought of getting out and seeking out Rally Vincent. Part of his mind insisted that the thought was ludicrous, that the bounty hunter had nothing to do with the people he represented and wasn't important at all.
But it was impossible to pay much attention to that thought.
No, he had to find a way to escape and seek her out. And while he did that, he had to keep up appearances make them think he was insane.
Was he? He saw strange things sometimes.
Monsters and ghosts. Things that couldn't be real.
Goldie's followers were nowhere near as skilled as she was at breaking a person and it showed in Jack and the way that he was losing his ability to tell apart reality from kerasine induced hallucinations.
"Things are starting to get creepy over here Rally," Becky said quietly. "We had an...incident over here recently and Roy's almost positive he caught a glimpse of Mary Anne, or someone that could have been her."
"How long ago was that?" Rally asked.
"Friday before last," Becky said. "So couldn't be the one behind your problem."
"Great," Rally said, shaking her head. "What suddenly brought them out of the woodwork?"
"If I had to guess," Becky said. "They're running short of kerasine. I mean, Goldie pretty much took the formula with her, so there's nothing new being made. I'll bet she had stockpiles around the Alliance colonies and they're starting to run dry."
"Which means they're getting desperate," Rally said bitterly. "And maybe think it's their last chance to fulfill their mistress's desires."
"How the hell are they going to make you Goldie's slave if she's dead?" Becky asked.
"Do you really think they're that rational?" Rally wondered.
"I guess not," the hacker said. "By the way, Rally, I'm going to be taking up stakes soon. You'll get word about how to contact me, but it ain't going to be easy."
"What's up?" Rally asked.
"I said things were getting creepy, I wasn't just talking about our personal problems," the information broker said. "We're starting to get something called 'Night Watch' over here that's very much shades of Orwell."
"Wouldn't you be Orwell?" Rally asked.
"What?" Becky asked. "Oh, right, not the fictional 21st century Hacker, the 20th century novelist. You know, Big Brother is watching you...1984?"
"Right, got it," the Gunsmith said, shaking her head.
"It's a good thing you think you can trust these people," Becky said. "The outer colonies and places like Babylon 5 are probably the safest place for you right now. I'm signing out."
"See you later," Rally said.
She signed off and then twisted about, drawing her PPG to aim in the direction of a faint sound. Slowly, she calmed down and sheathed the weapon again as she kept her eyes open and headed back to the service tunnels to head for her quarters.
"Getting jumpy," she muttered.
"Janos is going to win this race," Keffler said confidentaly as the old-style stock car racers started to line up on the track. "He's got this track nailed."
"I'm looking at Waschowski," one of the other officers watching the race said.
"You're just saying that because that's the name everybody knows," Keffler noted. "Don't you pay attention to the races at all? There's no way that Waschowski is going to win this race, he's barely recovered from that broken collarbone when he wiped out a while back."
"And Janos is going to do better?" the other officer asked.
"Care to make a wager on it?" Keffler asked.
"I wouldn't mind," a young voice declared.
The two officers turned to look at the speaker and found a fifteen year-old girl with short brown hair and wearing a tight pair of jeans along with a practical t-shirt and biker-style faux leather jacket. They'd seen her around the Dugout the last month or so, but they hadn't found any interest in talking to her yet.
"And who would you bet on?" Keffler asked.
Vivi looked up toward the race screen and thought for a moment.
"Well, this stuff is usually up in the air," she said idly, "but I'll bet that Takano is going to better than either Janos or Waschowski."
"And what do you have to bet?" the other officer asked with a snicker.
"Vouchers for a custom weapon modification at Gunsmith Cats," Vivian said with a guilty shifty eyed expression.
"Well, that's interesting," Keffler said, nodding. "And what do you want?"
"I want permission to go into Earhart's," Vivian said instantly.
"Earhart's for officers," Keffler said.
"I like swing music," Vivian explained simply. "And Rally, my foster mother, doesn't want me hanging around outside the restaurant doors. So, if I want to listen or dance, I have to get in the restaurant."
"All right," Keffler said with a smile. "Looks like we have a deal."
As the pack of cars got started, Vivian watched eagerly for the direction the race was going.
Thirty minutes later, she was walking towards the door of Earhart's with a pair of handwritten notes securely in her pockets.
In just a moment, she was going to be stepping inside the room for the first time ev...
"We're all going to die!" a shout came out of the blue just before someone grabbed her and twisted her about to face him. "There's a soldier of darkness here! It came off that ship from the past..."
Amis did not carry many objects with him, from the past or otherwise, but the scarf around his neck was one item that he had for a long period of time and as Vivian reached up to push him away, she pushed her hand against the scarf.
A series of disjointed images flooded into her mind of monsters and demons out of the darkness.
She released the scarf quickly and stepped back with a sharply drawn in breath before stumbling over her feet to the floor.
"Man, you love living dangerously," Garibaldi said, coming by to grab Amis's arm and start to pull him aside. "Are you all right? Vivian?"
"I...I think I need to talk to you in a bit," Vivian said quietly.
"I'm not crazy this time, it did come," Amis said. "It came off that ship from the past."
"What did?" Garibaldi demanded.
"A monster," Vivian said quietly.
"You saw it too?" Amis asked eagerly.
"All right, let's go talk this over," Garibaldi said.
A wandering lurker, one of the few non-human lurkers, shambled around a corner and saw a great form towering over him.
Intently but casually, the lurker shuffled forward and reached out his hands as if asking for a little money.
And then the figure he was appealing to reached down and grabbed him.
The screams reverbrated through that section of Down Below.
Rally sighed and shook her head. Security was becoming something of a common place for her to be it seemed. Which shouldn't have surprised her given her line of work and the fact that she was now depending on the chief of security and certain of the command staff for anonymity.
But, in the past couple of months, she'd had Shanti called in by security three times. She herself had had to consult with security several times on bureaucratic terms and then that ambush that Goldie's little disciples had set for her. And now Vivian had "witnessed" something and she needed to be present in order for Garibaldi to get her side of things.
"I should just transfer quarters up to Red Sector," Rally said under her breath. "And maybe then Shanti will cause Garibaldi less headaches than I caused Roy."
She checked her phone for any responses from Shanti to her message, but there was only a read confirmation.
"She'd better stay there," Rally muttered.
Then she walked into the security office and nodded at Zack.
"She's over there, Garibaldi's talking to this lurker about something," Zack said. "I notice this one came in without someone visiting medlab or missing limbs."
"I can fix that, Mr. Allen," Rally said, arching an eyebrow.
"Ahh, right," Zack said. "Anyway, it shouldn't be too long."
Rally shook her head and walked over toward where her daughter was sitting in Garibaldi's office drinking a cup of something that steamed and that Rally fervently hoped wasn't coffee.
"Hey, Little Girl," Rally said.
Immediately, Vivian was up and moving across the room to hug the bounty hunter.
"Whoa, hey," Rally said. "What's wrong?"
"I saw...something..." she said. "I don't know what it was...a ball of lightning...I don't know."
Rally rubbed her back and patted her on the head comfortingly.
"Maybe it was a nightmare you saw?" Rally said possibly.
"It wasn't just one person's memories," Vivi said.
Shanti waved out toward the clinic staff as she headed out into the hallways looking to head up toward Brown Sector and home...or the Zocalo and the arcade.
There was a message on her phone that Rally was going to be late, and she'd judiciously stopped reading at that point, because all that would follow would be "stay there, I'll pick you up later."
Rally would be upset, but Shanti could take care of herself just fine.
The girl was looking about in an apparently idle manner as she walked along. Just in case someone decided that she was ripe for targeting, and to make sure she wasn't getting lost. She was looking down one corridor when she saw the withered form of some alien drop to the ground surrounded by a nimbus of light.
"Hey!" Shanti shouted, moving forward. "Are you okay?"
At first she'd thought it was some sort of shock or energy discharge from the station, but then the nimbus of lights seemed to coalesce into a rough humanoid form fifteen feet tall at the least and it reached out toward Shanti.
She didn't have any more clear image of the thing than that, but it was enough to trigger her to action, her hand slipping toward the mace canister in her pocket and well aware that wasn't near enough.
"STAY BACK!" she shouted in a near shriek as white shriek as the adrenaline in her system flared more than it had ever before.
The small white sparks appeared an inch or so ahead of her eyes as usual and quickly erupted into small suns with the intensity of her instinctual response to the unknown danger.
The first fire erupted out of the air, sparking the multitude of dust before heat to the point where various gasses normally inert also burst into flame. The creature hesitated and backed off just in time to avoid the white hot burning explosion that erupted throughout the hallway and leaving behind a line of melted metal along either side of the corridor five feet above the floor and pushing outward for another ten feet down the corridor.
And then Shanti full forward only a few yards away from the corpse of the alien that the soldier of darkness had just fed on.
It was a few hours later that Shanti woke up in medlab with her sister sitting next to her and Rally visible through the window talking to Garibaldi, Franklin and Sheridan in another room sealed off nearby.
"Vivi?" Shanti asked.
"Shanti! You're awake!" Vivian said.
"Yeah," the other sister said. "Did I kill it?"
"Kill...you saw the monster?" Vivi said.
"I saw...something," Shanti said sitting up.
"Don't be stupid," Vivi said, handing Shanti a bottle of water. "You were almost dehydrated to death when you came in here."
"I feel cold," Shanti complained, rubbing her arms and then taking the bottle of water.
"Your body temperature is at ninety-eight," her sister explained, pointing toward the monitors.
"You mean this is the way you and Rally feel all the time?" Shanti asked. "Why don't you wear more clothes?"
"Don't worry about it," Vivian said. "I'm sure you'll be back to normal as soon as you can."
"What's going on?" Shanti asked.
"I think they're talking about the monster," Vivian said.
"The dead alien died just like the man in the Copernicus," Franklin said. "Lucky the body wasn't caught in that explosion or wouldn't be able to confirm it."
"Amis said this thing walked through walls and killed pretty much on a whim," Garibaldi said. "Your daughter caught glimpses from that scarf but she can't say exactly what it looked like either, just a ball of lightning or something."
"Whatever it was scared Shanti a lot," Rally said.
"This just about proves that something is here and it is lethal," Sheridan said. "We can't assume it's dead because there are no remains, so we're going to act like its here. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds has hard about the situation and they're asking for a meeting to discuss things."
"I'll talk to Mariah to see if she can remember anything," Franklin said.
"Assuming she is who she says she is," Garibaldi noted.
"You think it's her?" the doctor said. "It couldn't have been, she had a complete rundown, no abnormalities."
"She was with the people that found Shanti, too," Rally noted. "And not the first. I talked to her and she feels scared and confused, not deceptive."
"So, how do we track it down?" Sheridan asked.
Rally uncomfortably looked over her shoulder and flexed the fingers of her left hand where it rested in the sling.
"We're not putting a fifteen year old girl on the track of a man-eating monster, no matter what she can do," Sheridan assured her. "Didn't Amis say he thought he could feel it?"
"He did," Garibaldi said. "I had something of the same idea."
"Get on it," Sheridan said. "I've got to talk to the League in the next few minutes. Miss Vincent, if you will?"
"Yeah," Rally said, expecting what was coming.
The walked to the side out of the way.
"She caused that explosion," Sheridan said. "That wave of white fire that some of the lurkers talked about. Didn't she?"
"Might be," Rally said reluctantly.
"Has anything like this ever happened before?" Sheridan asked.
"Are you talking about the scale?" Rally asked. "No, hell no. If it had, I probably wouldn't have even thought about taking her on to a space station for an extended stay."
"But this has happened on smaller scale then?" Sheridan said.
"She's burned people that threatened her," Rally said. "But nothing like this. Until now, anytime she's tried to cut metal has taken a lot of effort and a lot of time. I'm beginning to think she has an easier time if she's emotional."
"Like you said, something really scared her," Sheridan said grimly. "But we can't risk her being 'really scared' near the hull. And there's no one really who can teach her to control this kind of thing."
He paused and thought for a moment.
"Maybe the Vorlons..."
"No," Rally said sharply. "Just plain no."
The soldier of darkness found a dark space to regroup and consider it's situation and that little organic thing that had attacked it with mind fire.
Then it heard the voices of its masters, coming along with another of those tasty organic things standing between them.
"This one's a little out of his way," Morden said with a smile. "And this might be the answer to a little rumor I've heard recently."
"We want you to remove this woman from the station," the Markab ambassador said as he walked in front of the general seating of the ambassadors to address the five-party table of the security council.
"On what grounds?" Sheridan asked.
"She has brought something with her from that ship from the past," the Markab ambassador said.
"Oh, that's a good one," Londo said. "Always appreciate a good ghost story eh?"
"Let him speak, I'm interested in what he has to say," G'Kar commented in an aside.
"Of course you would be," Londo said with irritation.
"The forces of darkness do not move openly," the Markab ambassador said. "They work through others. A thousand years ago, when they were driven away, these forces went to ground in secret places and their servants did likewise. But now, they are coming again, moving again and the darkness is calling to its soldiers to gather."
"And you think this woman is one of these soldiers?" Sheridan asked.
"Sometimes evil can wear a pretty face, Captain," the Markab said.
"Are you sure about this?" Vivian asked, checking the weapon in her hand.
"Rally's only got one arm," Shanti said, checking her own weapons.
"And you're supposed to be resting," Vivian noted. "We've got PPGs, the shotgun some pistols. And I saw what people were using against thing and it was ignoring."
"So are we just going to sit around while this monster kills people?" Shanti asked.
"That's exactly what you're going to do," Rally said, coming into the room with almost no extra noise.
"Rally, it's..." Shanti started to say.
"When you're old enough," Rally said. "I won't be surprised if you get into this line of work. After all, that's what the skills are for, but right now you are children, under my care."
Rally leaned down and picked up the shotgun.
"Let's wait this out in security," she said. "If they need something from you, you'll be on hand."
"And it's the safest place in the station," Vivian noted.
"At least we'll be able to practice at the firing range," Shanti muttered.
Jack shook his head as another hallucination started to form.
He was starting to be able fight clear of those, clear enough to form more coherent thoughts and sometimes speak them. Of course those moments of coherence were still only occasional.
"Did he actually say something that made some sense?" Zack Allen asked casually.
"What was that?" Rally asked.
"Oh, Jack," the officer said with a tone of disgust. "Garibaldi's been recording his cell in case he says anything useful about why he shot Garibaldi in the back. Anyway, let me log you and your girls in for the shooting range."
"Any word on using slugthrowers?" Rally asked.
"Not yet," Zack said. "And I know it's been a while since you asked, but with everything..."
Vivian leaned over against the wall as she bent over to check her socks and froze as a tingle of something vicious worked its way through the wall into her.
"Vivi?" Shanti asked, drawing Rally's attention.
"Something wrong?" Rally asked cautiously.
"It went through this wall," Vivian said quietly.
"It was down here," Amis told Garibaldi. "Trust me, I felt it down here, hiding. But now it's gone somewhere else. I'm not crazy."
Garibaldi nodded and sat down quietly, holstering his weapon as he did.
"There was this guy in my first unit during the war," he said. "Kept telling us that our perimeter was weak. And we all laughed because we hadn't seen any action and every time we checked it, the perimeter was just fine. We checked it again and again and again. The perimeter was strong. And then the Minbari came, tore through that perimeter like it was paper, and he was one of the first to die. He was nuts, but he was right. So yeah, I do believe you."
"At least you're one person who believes me," Amis said. "I don't understand it, it doesn't feel like the thing is anywhere around here. I can feel it on the station, but it feels several sectors away."
"So it moved," Garibaldi said. "Maybe we should head toward that feeling."
Garibaldi's link beeped not three steps later.
"Garibaldi," he said.
"Chief!" Zack yelled into the link. "That thing is here!"
"What?" Garibaldi shouted just before Amis ran off ahead of him. "Damn it! I'm on the way!"
Ivanova caught Sheridan outside the council chambers.
"The creature's attacked security," she said.
"Damn it!" Sheridan said. "Get as many people there as you can. I want that thing put down before it can get out."
He glanced over his shoulder toward the various diplomats and then moved into the hallways at a rush.
Several people noted the action, but most dismissed it as Sheridan's typical impatience. But at least one of the ambassadors seemed fairly interested.
"There it is again!" Zack shouted.
The present security personnel in the lobby rose out of cover and started firing. Rally herself aimed and fired several times, trying to get a sense for her enemy's anatomy so that she could try place better shots.
Vivian and Shanti were both similar in trying to place shots, save a few differences. Shanti quickly lost her patience and just fired, thinking about trying to use her powers again, despite the fact that she hadn't really recovered from the last time yet. Vivian on the other hand, ended up waiting too long to find a good shot that she didn't take any.
"It doesn't do anything if you don't fire it, Little Girl," Rally said calmly. "Or if you shoot away all its power, Kitten."
Both girls winced slightly.
Quickly the thing retreated again.
"What the hell is going on?" Zack wondered. "This thing can walk through wall and it just keeps coming at us?"
As he spoke a dirty little man jumped in past the security officers under cover and started shouting out.
"Are you still here?" Amis demanded. "Well, I'm here too, and I'm ready to finish this."
"What the hell?" Rally wondered.
"That's the guy that I punched in the nose," Shanti offered.
"I recognized him," Rally said. "But what's he doing."
Sheridan, Ivanova and Garibaldi came in not long after with a small army of security officers drawn from patrols all over the station.
"What's the situation?" Garibaldi asked before reaching out and pulling Amis back into cover. "Get over here."
"It keeps coming and going," Zack said. "Killed a prisoner, and started attacking us."
"It goes invisible," Rally called out. "I don't think it's ever been complete visible actually. Can't tell if there are any real vulnerable points."
Rally glimpsed back at Shanti briefly, but didn't add anything.
"I don't think we're really hurting it at all," another officer said. "Just annoying it. Like a bee sting."
"Well, one bee-sting is an annoyance," Sheridan said. "A thousand can kill you. Next time it shows up, everybody fire away."
Rally nodded and glanced toward her kids to see if they were ready.
The various officers waited for the thing to show itself, but it stayed quiet.
"What's taking it so long?" Sheridan muttered.
"It can smell an ambush," Amis said. "You need to give it what it wants so it will come out."
"Stay down, Shanti," Rally whispered, pointing with her good arm out toward the general area where the creature had been appearing.
The lurker ran out of cover again and into the open shouting for the monster to come at him.
And it did, a huge crackling blue form of a thing reaching out to lift him up.
"Take it down!" Sheridan shouted as almost twenty men and women unleashed a hail of PPG fire on the creature which dropped the lurker.
The creature seemed to stagger backwards as if it was running away.
Up until the PPG bolts seemed to come together into a sheer white cage of burning fire which closed in on the monster before it vanished with a hideous cry.
Shanti leaned forward then panting as Garibaldi ran over toward where Amis had been dropped.
Rally glanced back at her daughter and frowned slightly before exchanging a pair of looks with Ivanova and Sheridan.
"Call medlab," Sheridan said with determination but calm.
"You wanted to talk to me?" Sheridan said.
"Yeah," Garibaldi said. "The prisoner that creature killed?"
"What about it?" Sheridan asked.
"It was Jack," the Chief said. "Now I know this is going to sound paranoid, but I don't believe in convenient coincidences."
"Susan says the Copernicus was reprogrammed to head on a specific path," Sheridan noted darkly. "This thing was more intelligent than just a beast."
"Rally has cheery news herself," Garibaldi said. "She's got word from her friends on Earth about something called 'Night Watch'. Now, there's nothing in that that I think is connected to this monster here, but still lots of weird stuff is going on."
Sheridan nodded and shook his head.
"Speaking of weird stuff," Garibaldi said. "Anything on the little firestarter?"
"Was back in the medlab after that fight," Sheridan said. "But we think we found a solution for getting her help controlling herself."
"Eh?" Garibaldi said. "The closest thing to what she is would be a telepath and last I heard, they're still avoiding dealing with telepaths."
"Human telepaths, yes," Sheridan said.
"I am here because Ambassador Delenn requested it," the Minbari in front of Rally said, staring down at the bounty hunter past her nose.
"You don't sound like you like her," Rally said.
"I find her judgment...questionable," the Minbari said. "More questionable by the moment. Not that yours is much better."
"Let me ask you a question," Rally said.
"What might that be?" the Minbari asked.
"Are you going to sabotage my girls?" the bounty hunter said. "Manipulate them, influence them, play in their minds?"
The Minbari man's expression was then filled with disgust.
"That would be a betrayal of a sacred gift," he said instantly. "Of course I would do no such thing."
Rally nodded and shrugged.
"And it doesn't matter what you think of me," Rally said as if that was explanation enough.
"You don't trust your own people?" the Minbari asked.
"In your history, ever have a situation where a bad leader brings everyone else to tragedy because they don't think to disobey?" Rally asked.
"On occasion," the Minbari said.
"That's Earth right now," the bounty hunter noted. "Curious, why not just check my head?"
"Because I do not know human minds well enough to risk entering the mind of one who is so controlled as to be silent," the Minbari said.
