Songs of Travellers in the Night
Chapter 3

Steven Franklin watched the strange Doctor play with his salad. He obviously wasn't hungry anymore. Steven didn't think anyone at the table was. 'Shouldn't we be doing something about them?' Martha asked urgently.

'Like what?' The Doctor answered. 'Their ship doesn't come until tomorrow. If we do anything to tip them off we'll never stop them. They might not come here but that doesn't help the next planet they come across.'

Garibaldi's communicator bleeped. 'Michael I need to see you and the Doctor in my office.'

'Good plan Jeff. A problem has come up.'

The Commander's voice paused for a second. 'Big?'

'The Doctor has some information on our other new friends. Don't know if we can trust it but you should listen.'

'Michael; Kosh has vouched for him.' Steven watched as Garibaldi's head snapped up, he felt much the same way. The Vorlon almost never took a hand in anyone's affairs, when he did...

'Ahh Kosh. How is the old pirate?' The Doctor asked conversationally.

'Mind if we talk about that in person?' The Commander asked over the communicator.

'Not at all.' the Doctor grinned. Standing up, in a flash the coat was back on and he was almost out of the restaurant. Suddenly he stopped and spun 'You wouldn't happen to know the way to the commanders office would you?'

Morden did have another name once, the thing about working for his associates is some times you forget the little things that aren't important anymore. Those that followed with him couldn't pronounce his name anymore than he could theirs. Simply calling him Human, or "Young Thing" if you wanted the precise translation.

Another thing you lost the longer you spent with them was that shiver. He could still remember it but that's all it was now, catching them out of the corner of your eye. When you saw how truly alien they really were, their fourteen burning eyes never missing a thing. Only now their invisibility counted for nothing.

Morden didn't know why, or what it was, but his associates had given him precise instructions as always and then, strangely, fled into the deepest recesses of the station. It all happened when they saw the new arrival. The odd, tall, man in a brown coat. The man they had told him to follow.

'Pirate?' Stephen asked as they got in the lift.

'What?' The Doctor didn't follow, but only for a second. 'Oh Kosh! I met him years ago, he was flare surfing off one of the ringed suns in the nex'vers sectors. He missed a turn and blew nine of his ten thruster controls. He was lucky to survive. Kosh disabled a passing ship and stole it's backup drive to get home.

'There was the little problem that it was a prison ship carrying one of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy at the time. He got out on an escape pod, I gave them a hand and dropped the the guy off on a old mining asteroid and sealed it up. The funny thing is people think Kosh was trying to brake the other guy out, he's still got a warrant out for his arrest in that cluster.'

Garibaldi, being who he was, had to ask; 'What was he doing in the first place?'

The strange alien coughed uncomfortably. 'He had a couple of girls with him at the time, I think they were very impressed with him actually. They were still impressed when I dropped in to have a quick word a few months later.'

'Ohh.' both Stephen and Garibaldi looked at each other. That didn't sound like the ambassador Kosh they knew but Stephen was suddenly shocked at just how little they really knew about the Vorlon.

The lift doors opened and Stephen almost walked into someone.

'Hey its a walking jukebox!' The Doctor grinned and the very Vorlon they were talking about slid backwards in what looked like shock.

There was that short musical burst 'Doctor...?'

'No no... don't tell me. Only one race in the cosmos would be arrogant enough to wear that and only one of them brave enough to wear it in public. Hi Kosh, it's been a while.'

'Almost six years and a thousand more.'

'Five hundred and ninety-three years, four months, nine minutes and ten seconds for me. How's your brother Ulkesh, still preaching the subjugation of the younger races? Or had he finally grown a brain to match his ego.'

'The gravity of such a mass would be inescapable.' Kosh responded. A sense of humour? From a Vorlon? From Kosh?

'So you do know each other.' Martha said. 'The Doctor has been telling us some stories, like how you two first met.'

'Truth is a three edged sword. My trip to his homeworld was no less eventful.'

'Now come on. I just stepped on her foot. By accident. You were the one trying to chat up the daughter of an Order Leader, that wasn't from my Order!' The Doctor was obviously trying not to laugh but turned to Stephen. 'We spent three days hiding in the catacombs under the capitol city. Three days.'

'Your actions, at the time, were not above reproach Doctor!' Kosh blurted out, leaning in before stopping and looking around. 'Why are you here?' the Ambassador asked in his normal tone of voice.

The Doctor simply whistled back. He sounded exactly like the musical bursts that preceded Kosh. The Doctor was talking in Vorlon.

'Truth?' Kosh asked.

'If you want it to be old boy. Like it or not you guys are still part of this universe. No matter how evolved you get or how powerful your minds become. You have always been here, and if you don't buck up soon what happens next is your fault.'

'How long?'

Something strange had happened, the Doctor, in one speech, switched roles with Kosh. The Vorlon Ambassador was usually the wise father figure that refused to take part in what he saw as his children's games. Now he looked to the Doctor like he was the child. The Doctor smiled wryly:- 'Three years my old friend. And you won't be able to stop it.' With that the Doctor walked past them.

Kosh slid back, shaking his head. 'Ambassador?'

'Follow him.' The Vorlon ordered and glided in front of them.

The Time Lord came in to the Commander's office and Delenn watched G'Kar clutch both fists to his chest and bow. 'Oh Ambassador G'Kar! Narn, third circle isn't it?'

'Yes. Time Lord.' The Narn ambassador was at full salute staring at his fists.

'This is why I always keep a low profile. This is embarrassing, look at me when your talking to me. Either of you know what I'm talking about?'

Delenn nodded. 'Lennier, my aid. I could not hope for a more able friend...

'But he keeps walking into things. Ahh well better than tripping up on your own shoelaces.' The Doctor finished for her. As he did Kosh, Mr Garibaldi, Dr Franklin and the Doctor's friend came into the office.

'Right to business. Your other visitors aren't exactly your best house guests.' The Doctor took off his coat, threw it over the seats and sat down. 'The Wyoldin. Great people, one of the few races in the universe with more religious diversity than Earth and one of the only that lived peacefully with it. Here's how it went, they had a council of religious leaders spent most of their time in harmless debate. Everyone agreed to a live and let live philosophy, nice people. Until the same old story, the most extreme got the most power.

'They believed in the coming of the two eyed god Loaki, then along came a two eyed mutant. Ironically the brightest scientists and physicists were all part of this group and they came up with the "Perfect Doorway".'

'The perfect doorway?' The commander asked

'They invented a trans-phase rip device. This weapon is one of the most devastating you can imagine. They destroyed own world with it, the device rips space in half. Objects inside the rip fall into hyperspace, the stress tears them apart, a single device has the effective radius of a small world. I thought they had killed themselves off when they first used the device and all knowledge on how to build it was lost.'

'Is this sort of thing even possible' Mr Garibaldi said

A short musical burst from Kosh as he answered; 'Yes.'

'Given time you could do it with any hyperspace engine. Crank up the power, disable the safety programs and destroy the stabiliser. Boom.' The Doctor beamed a sarcastic smile. While not used to that tone her time with Mr Garibaldi had taught Delenn much about it.

'So you think they are here to destroy us. Why?' she asked

He shrugged:- Don't know. I never put it together before but they must be responsible for the destruction of at least four races. The Zvvit, Akika, Galact and the Dawanph. We always thought they were lost due to failed hyperspace experiments but the timing and location fits They wiped the planets from existence like they never were.'

The Commander sat down; 'Let me guess, not one of them war like or a threat to anyone else.'

'The Akika and Galact were at war. They were only a threat to each other and confined to their own solar system. Only the Dawanph and Zvvit were hyperspace capable, Dawanph had already wiped out three other civilisations.'

'And the Zvvit?' Dr Franklin asked.

Kosh turned away to look out over the central core. 'Galactic healers. Medics of the highest order. I saw it happen.' The Vorlon stopped there, just looking out over the gardens and Delenn got the cold feeling he would say no more.

'They didn't care?' Dr Franklin asked

'He's right. I've talked to them, they are extremely religious. More interested in their own religion than anything else.' the Commander said

'and did they say what their religion entailed?' The Doctor countered 'As I recall there were a group of deeply religious people on your planet. They thought they were doing the right thing, do the Crusades ring a bell?'

'I hardly think this is the same thing...' the Commander started

'Militant religious orders following the orders of leaders with dubious intentions and little or no moral reason. It's an old story just the players change.'

'Jeff, I don't know what Kosh did to convince you about this guy but I think he's dangerous.' Mr Garibaldi blurted out. 'No offence but I wasn't here then and I saw what you did to Ms Winters.'

'Michael, The ambassador showed us just how old his people are. They are probably the oldest race in the galaxy.'

'Actually,' the Doctor interrupted, 'There is a debate about that. We think we were the first, the Eternals say they are and they are the oldest, in the right sense of the word. It's possible they can't die of old age.'

This confused Delenn, she had never heard of these "Eternals" and said as much.

'Right let's go over this now but when I've finished we really need to save the quarter million lives on this station and not argue ancient history. Now Lorien, the leader of the Eternals, would have his own version but we won the war so I don't care.

'We of Gallifrey became the first civilisation, at the dawn of the dark times. The dawn of Time itself. The big bang created chaos, matter without order. Vast semi-sentient energy clouds floated across the compact universe creating life with no rules.

'My people decided that a universe without order was doomed and wove the web of time. Basically we made today now and not a couple of weeks ago. Of all the different living... things out there back then only the Eternals could be called intelligent life. Claiming to be the first they went out into space and explored, we were still busy... They, my people, were all still busy trying to tie up all the lose ends in the web of time so there was a bit of friction and the Eternals argued we were going against the natural laws and that the fourth dimension shouldn't be played about by ignorant children.'

'Hang on.' Mr Garibaldi interrupted again. ' "Wove the web of time"? You created time travel?'

'No Michael' the Commander corrected. 'They created time.'

The Doctor scoffed at that. 'Don't be silly we didn't create Time. Time is the fourth dimension, created by the interaction of the other three dimensions on this plain of existence. We just put it in order, sort of. Like shuffling a stack of cards back into the right suits.

'Anyway, long story short. The Eternals said that we were to stop our work with time. We told them to stuff it. They declared war. So I... Someone made it rain on their homeworld, in their past. Whenever they tried to discover fire.'

'What?' several voices asked at once.

'We stopped them from discovering fire. Quite literally sending them back to the stone age. No fire, no wheel, no technology. Whatsoever. For two hundred and ten years, we made our point and lived in peace. Even if we never liked each other that much.

'When the time war heated up they left for the fast empty tracks beyond the galaxies. Their still there as far as I know, with most of the elder races. They've chosen not to be involved with the universe anymore.' The Doctor finished.

Delenn stood in front of him. 'What version do the Eternals tell?'

He winced, looking like he was swallowing something foul tasting. 'They say that they were the first, the beginning of all life and that the universe found order itself and they were the pinnacle of that order. They believe that my people were much like the humans, or at best yourselves. That our discovery of time travel let us cheat. as they call it. According to them we were the younger race and should have looked to them for guidance.'

The Commander coughed loudly. 'So your people did cheat and denied them technology for centuries. Why can't you just do that with our problem now? Stop these people ever discovering this weapon of theirs, save those planets you talked about.'

'Believe me Commander you would not understand. Just take it as read that I can't change something that has already happened to me because in my time line it has happened.'

The Doctor stood up, walked around Delenn and stood up to the Commander's desk. 'Now to business. What are we going to do about the Wyoldin?'

End Chapter 3