Dalshon
Chapter 11
It was another bleak morning on Minbar. Morning sun ought to be yellow and warm, comforting, Sheridan thought, not this blue-white clarity. Delenn had already gotten up and gone somewhere. She was a morning person. He had not realized that on Babylon 5, where it was never really morning.
When he got dressed for the day and left the suite of rooms he shared with Delenn to go to breakfast, he found a nervous-looking human in a Ranger uniform waiting for him outside the door.
"Morning, sir. I have a message for you." He held out a data crystal. "I was told to be sure you watch it right away, and alone."
"Alright," Sheridan said, taking the crystal. He went back inside, and the unfamiliar human trailed him. He put the crystal in the reader.
Lennier's image popped up on the screen. "Starkiller."
Sheridan tried to turn off the recording before he heard any more. But the human behind him stuck a PPG in his back. "Cor! Nuh-uh."
Lennier continued, "Kill the Earth president. Speak of this to no one until the mission is complete." There was a pause, and Lennier continued, "Make no records of this, written, electronic or otherwise. Do not kill the messenger, nor detain him nor hinder him in any way. Destroy this message immediately."
Under the terrible compulsion of the loribond, Sheridan took the crystal out of the reader, dropped it on the floor, and ground it under his shoe, all while the man behind him was still poking a gun into his spine.
"Blimey, it works," said the human, putting the PPG away.
"Who are you?" Sheridan asked. "Who are you working for?"
"Sorry I can't stay to chitchat. The old boy's expecting his uniform back, despite the mothballs. Really got to run." The man simply strolled out.
Sheridan tried to take a step after him and could not. He seethed.
How could Lennier do this to him? What could he possibly want with this? To discredit Sheridan? That made no sense. To loribond someone was a great crime in Minbari law. Even if Sheridan kept his word to Delenn and never mentioned Lennier's attempt on his life, Lennier could still go to prison for life just for admitting that Sheridan was loribonded to him. This could not be about discrediting Sheridan.
Could it be as straightforward as it looked? Simply to kill the Earth president? Very few people could get into the Earth president's presence without being searched for weapons. The Interstellar Alliance president was one of them.
But why would Lennier want President Luchenko dead? That made even less sense.
Was he sure that was really Lennier? Not a computerized fake? He had heard about Whitestar 97 finding Lennier on Untika, catching him, and then losing him. The conversation between Carla and Firuun in the corridor, about Sheridan being loribonded to Lennier, had been broadcast on ISN last night.
Even in a very fast courier ship, someone could not have gotten from Untika to Minbar in one day. Unless… unless they took a short cut. An off the beacon shortcut. The kind of shortcut that only spiderdrive vessels could use.
"Them again," Sheridan groaned. Now it all made sense. It was the Drakh. Create a scandal around Sheridan, kill the Earth president, drive a wedge between Earth and the Alliance, stir up chaos and trouble. That was certainly their style.
How Lennier had gotten mixed up in it, Sheridan could not guess. But he was sure it was Lennier. The background in the recording was a hollowed out starship hull, the material from which Untika had been made. And there was a look in Lennier's eyes, a look that said he had nothing more to lose. The sort of thing he might be thinking right after finding himself branded a war criminal on the galactic news.
Well. He simply had to find a way to let Delenn know what was going on. Some indirect way, that did not go against the unfortunately thorough loribond command. Perhaps he should begin acting strange.
More strange. Delenn already thought he was a little odd, with his quirk of washing his socks by hand, and a tendency to make comments of startling violence to reporters and other irritating people.
He went to the communications panel near the desk and called up his office. One of the English-speaking Minbari answered. "How may I help you, Mr. President?"
How should he start his campaign of weirdness? Order the presidential palace painted red and black? Decree tomorrow a day of remembrance for Emperor Claudius, Karl Marx, and Lucy Lui? Send out for pizza and dancing girls?
"I need a meeting with the Earth president," Sheridan said.
"What is to be the agenda?" asked the Minbari aide.
"Anything. Goodwill visit. Doesn't matter. Just get me a photo op so I can show the truth about this scandal."
Oh, and it would certainly do that. Sheridan pictured pulling out a PPG and shooting Luchenko, and then saying, 'It wasn't my fault. It was a loribond command. I was under alien influence.'
"As you wish. Do you require anything else?"
"Yes. Get me Lyta."
"Lyta?"
"Lyta Alexander. No, never mind. You'll never find her in time, she's still out in uncharted territory with G'Kar. Just send me a telepath."
Now there was a hopeful idea. Maybe he would not have to convince Delenn he was crazy after all. Just get somebody to scan him. Could he ask someone to scan him? Would the command not to speak of this stretch that way? Well, he could certainly try.
"It will be done."
In case it didn't work, though, he ought to get started right away on acting strange. "Oh, and a, um, hockey puck. No, wait. Yes. Get me one of those. No, a case of self sealing stem bolts. Right. And some yak hair."
"It will be done," the assistant said again. His bewildered look was so priceless that as soon as Sheridan cut the comm., he started laughing. Until he remembered why he was doing this.
He kept up his normal appointments. None of the people he dealt with that day knew him well enough for him to bother trying to 'act weird' for. He wished that if this had to happen, it had happened back on Babylon 5, in the days when Ivanova and Garibaldi were around. With Garibaldi's suspicious nature, it would not take long for the campaign of weirdness to be noticed.
Even most of the alien ambassadors knew him well enough to notice if he started acting differently. But here on Minbar, the only person who knew him very well was Delenn. Well, he did not have to sit around feeling lonely.
He placed a stellarcom call to Garibaldi. He was out. Sheridan left a message that was sure to get the wind up Garibaldi. "Michael, hi, bad timing with this latest thing on ISN, I was planning to announce the formation of the IA interracial telepath corps. Now I'll have to put that off a few weeks until this all dies down. I have a short list of possible directors I'd like you to investigate, just make sure there aren't any documentable skeletons in the closet, nothing that will look bad in the media, you know, that sort of thing."
Between two appointments with various Minbari officials, his requested telepath showed up. She was a small, mousy Minbari. Sheridan tried to ask her to look into his mind, but he found that his fears about what the command would allow him to do proved right: he could not come right out and say it.
That was probably a self-fulfilling prophesy, since it was his own interpretation of the orders that made it impossible to ask her. If he could only convince himself it was allowed, then he could. If he could only convince himself that message had not really come from Lennier, it would have no power over him at all. But Sheridan could not turn his thoughts on and off like that.
'Help me', Sheridan thought at her. She did not hear.
Then his next appointment arrived, and she left, probably wondering if she were being considered for some assignment.
When Delenn finally arrived home at the end of the day, Sheridan was not just putting on a show of being crazy. He actually felt crazy.
He had the hockey puck and the self sealing stem bolts arrayed on the table, in a geometric pattern. Delenn was looking at it when the aide came to the door again, with a box.
"My yak hair arrived!" Sheridan chortled, taking the box and setting it down by the table.
'Help me', he thought at Delenn. Of course, she did not hear him either.
End of chapter 11
