Note: In this story Clark become the President earlier then in the show, Earth force 1 exploded in 2257.
Part 3 "Deathwalker"
"Yes brother it is me"replied Jha'dur
Her brother was still in shock it took him almost half hour to come to itself before he ask
"But how, you were killed by the Vorlon ship near Babylon 5 almost 18 years ago?"
"Yes and no, do you want to hear entire story it is relatively a short one but I think you will enjoy it?" she ask while laughing
"Of course I want to hear it"
"Alright, I will tell you. After the battle of Balos in which you were badly wounded, I ordered you to be transported on one of exodus fleet ships..."
"Yes that part I know" Dha'ur interrupted
"Well during the last siege of Omelos itself my ship was destroyed by a large Earth ship, a ship that I have not seen before, probably a prototype. I escape in a shuttle into hyperspace. I was lucky that I reached a jump gate. Sometime after a strange shark like ship intercepted me and took me on board. I found out that they call themselves the Minbari."
"Minbari? The humans were almost destroyed by the Minbari during their war"Dha'ur interrupted again
"Yes, the Minbari sheltered me for many years, and I had more than enough time to finish my serum, the serum of immortality. I came to Babylon 5, to present it to humans, of course even the humans can be greedy for immortality, their President Clark wanted the serum, so he promise me whatever I wanted. But the Ambassadors from the League found out that I was on board, and wanted the Earth Alliance to turn me over to their custody to judge me for my crimes. They even sent warships to B5 to prevent me from leaving. But somehow the humans dealt with them on a diplomatic level, and it was a pity they didn't use force, but they managed to calm the League with false promise that once Earth is finish with me, they will deliver me to them. Of course humans did not have a plan to let me go.
However, fearing that some of the league will not respond well on that, the Commander of the station Jeffrey Sinclair make a plan how to secretly move me from the station, without anyone knowing. The plan was to use my ship as bait, they put a beacon with false life reading on board my shuttle and using autopilot they set it direct course for Earth. I was supposed to go one or two days after that in a unmarked military transport back to Earth.
My shuttle was already near the jump gate and preparing to activate them when jump gate activate from inside of hyperspace, and a ship came through the vortex, a Vorlon ship, and it fired on my shuttle destroying it.
I realized that Commander Sinclair didn't even think that the Vorlons would destroy my ship, he believed that somebody from league will try, and his decision save my life. Touching isn't.
The Commander later told me that when he ask the Vorlon Ambassador why? He only said that they are not ready for immortality.
They wanted to trick the league but instead they tricked the Vorlons. Two days later I was transported to Earth in a military transport ship. I was given all of the materials that I needed to conduct my research, even a few bodies to conduct experiments on them.
In my opinion the humans are changed since our war with them, and with leadership from Clark they slowly were becoming brutal and sadistic as they had been in their history past.
But everything good always last for a short time. Soon after that, a new Commander was appointed to lead Babylon 5, John J. Sheridan..."
"I know of one Sheridan, he was an Ambassador for Earth during the war"said Dha'ur
"Yes that was his father of this Sheridan. He take a position as the Commander of Babylon 5, one of Clark's decisions after Sinclair was transferred to Minbar as the first Earth Ambassador there. Clark didn't even dream that Sheridan will be the person who will make his life very painful. Clark took Earth into a civil war, something that was well known to us, constant battles between each other. He turned the Earth Alliance into totalized Empire. But it lasted for only two years. Their civil war started, with one side lead by Clark, and from the other side was lead by Sheridan. In the end Sheridan won the war, and Clark cowardly killed himself.
After that their special division called EFNI closed my lab, and put me in a well armed and protected prison on one of their colony at Alpha Centauri. I was there for 15 years, 15 years imprisoned, and waiting. Earth was soon attacked by the Drakh. I almost forgot about them. Since we also had dealings with them in the past. I personally killed one of them at Sinasar. Well, after all, they are responsible for merging all technology we take from league into one ship, and creation of Sehkmet Heavy Cruiser itself. But they are simply too arrogant, and in the long term the Dilgar would never be free if they start giving orders. But to get back on story. The Drakh are servants to the Shadows, infiltrating several words, including Earth, and Earth under Clark becomes an ally to the shadows and Drakh. So the Drakh helped them by improving some of their ships as they do with us. But instead of new design they use already ship that was in existence. The greatest numerical ship in Earth fleet, were the Omega class destroyer. They mount advanced weapons and defenses on those ships to help Clark forces against renegade forces.
But Clark was overthrown, and Earth once again became a peaceful planet. And after the Shadows, and Vorlons and other first ones leave the galaxy. The Earth Alliance lost the support of the Drakh. You see the Drakh blame the humans for the departure of their masters. Five years later they attacked Earth with a virus created by the Shadows. The Humans however once again escape extinction, as a cure was found and war against Drakh declared"
"Yes sister I already know this, we've been shadowing the Earth Alliance for the last two decades and we know everything!"
"That's nice can I finish please? Yes I know you know, but you don't know everything? I know even more then you do about the humans as I've been with them for all of these years. The Humans chased the Drakh without mercy, every outpost, base and fleet unit. They attack and destroy even now, when the war is over. You see they are still hunting the Drakh. They did to the Drakh, what Minbari try to do them. It was the total destruction of everything Drakh. The Humans know how that the Drakh were playing the game, and that they wanted to become the masters themselves. Having been in the shadow of the Shadows for thousands of years, they finally want be the masters. But in the same time they are in a rage, that the humans were guilty for their masters the Shadow being banned from this galaxy.
And at the end they lost, at the hand of the humans as we did fifty years ago. The Humans are not weak or stupid, as they know the game of war very well as you would know if you had a chance as I have had to read their history and to learn about their culture. I told the ruling council that many time during the last war. But almost nobody listen, the council ignored me and we paid for it with the destruction of our world.
And even when the Shadows left at that point the Humans still have in their possession a lot of Shadow technology. One of those pieces are shadow slicer beam. It was intended for a new class of ships called the Warlocks. They were never installed on those ships, but the humans still have that technology. My services they said were not needed and I got dumped, into coldest and darkest cell in Alpha Centauri prison.
The new Administration didn't want to do anything with me. They didn't want to turn me in to the league, because if they reveal that they keep me for all those years for their own benefit, it could break the Interstellar Alliance. So they keep me a very quiet secret.
But they as all jailers eventually do they became reckless. And after almost 18 years they didn't find me dangerous anymore. So I decided to use this. I told them that I was still willing to cooperate with the development of my serum if they let me, and I also promise that I would turn myself into the league when I finished. And they surprised me and took the bait.
They transported me to the spaceport where a shuttle was ready to carry me to Earth, with a minimal crew, two guards and two pilots. Before we got ready to go I took a fork, a simple fork, and hide it. Nobody even search me, they become too confident. I surprised the guard and kill them, and then I also take care of the pilots and when I reached orbit I dumped them into space as I left the system.
I set course for the Cours system. After we invaded the Markab territory, a small outpost was built on the sandy planet in the Cours system. It was support to be a supply base, but instead of that I take it for my research station. And when the Earth Alliance entered the war, the Station was abandoned. But a scout ship was left there buried beneath the sand with all my equipment and supplies that I would need later to restart my work.
I knew that the exodus fleet survived, and that it had gone beyond the reach of Earth Alliance or that of the League. And I knew the general location of this planet as well."
"But how? How did you know?" ask Dha'ur
"Simple, I created this plan in the first place, you should have remembered that is was I who send the scout ships into this part of the galaxy, right up to the very edge of it, until one of the ships did find this nebula and this system. It was filled with the resources and materials that we would need to rebuild our civilization. So of course I would know the coordinates. But with only the human shuttle and no supplies I would never get this far. So I made for the one of scouts ship that I hide inside the base in the Cours system."
"Clever, and now that you are here, would you server you people once again, Warmaster Jha'dur?"
"I except but only if you will accept my council and we follow my plans this time Supreme Warmaster"Jha'dur said with a predatory smile on her face.
"Knowing you, there is definitely a plan involving the Earth Alliance and the former League worlds."
"Yes, I will show you my plan, the fleet and everything that we have accomplished while you were away." promise Dha'ur
...
Minbar, Minbari Federation
Tuzanor - Presidential Office
President Sheridan was hard at work signing some papers when his aid Mark Thazen knocked on the doors before he enters.
"Mr. President you have a visitors, Ambassador Karven of the Earth Alliance and Paul Walker head of Research and Development Bureau." said Thazen
"Let them in" replies President Sheridan
Two men entered the room and sit in the indicated chairs the President showed to them
"Earth Dome say it was something quite urgent for you to meet with me, that and you also requested that Ambassador Daleen to be here for this?" ask the President
"Yes Mr. President, you will see soon that it is very a urgent situation." replies Mr. Walker
At this moment the doors open again and Ambassador Daleen enters. Both man stands up and greetings the Ambassador and she replies in kind.
"Now that we are all here I can start the briefing Sir" said Paul Walker.
"There is something Mr. President and Madam Ambassador that you don't know, something that stayed a secret for almost 18 years now."
" So maybe I should start from the beginning, 18 years ago, a woman came to Babylon 5, it was soon uncovered that this woman was a Dilgar, and a most notorious one at that, you see the Warmaster Jha'dur also known as "Deathwalker". Jha'dur was hidden by the Minbari warrior cast after the end of the Dilgar War. She came to present her serum of immortality to Earth. It was also known that the Ambassadors from a dozen worlds in the League wanted her dead, or at least to take her to trial for the many crimes she committed against their people.
Eventually she left the station for Earth, but her ship was destroyed by the Vorlon ship and she was killed..."
"Mr. Walker I know all about that, she wanted the Earth enjoy in her work, made on the behalf of the millions she killed, and you knew that Earth would never sign with her." said President Sheridan
"Well you would be wrong Mr. President; you see it was not all as it says in the reports. Commander Sinclair was forced by Earth Dome and President Clark himself to keep her on the Earths side and transport her back to Earth. Now it comes to the interesting part. You see Sinclair knows that the Ambassadors from the League were in a rage, and he believed that some of them will actually fire on her shuttle if she was released. So he created a deal and after he convinces her, he put a plan in motion. She was to stay on Babylon 5 for a day or two before an Earth Military transport ship arrived to pick her up and send her back to Earth.
Her shuttle was sent on automatic course to Earth, and false life sign in the form of a probe was placed inside the shuttle so that people would actually believe she is in the shuttle. The shuttle was a few second from commencing the jump sequenced when something initiate jump gate sequence from hyperspace, and of course you know the rest, a Vorlon ship exit and destroyed the shuttle. And everyone on board believed that she was dead. But she didn't, she was transported to Earth two days later in a transport as planned. The plan to deceive the League in fact becomes a plan to deceive the Vorlons.
Ambassador Kosh said to all in the observation lounge that humanity or anyone else for that fact were not ready for immortality. And since the Vorlons actually believed that they destroyed the shuttle and kill Jha'dur it was at a end.
Jha'dur was given resources and even prisoners of war, your own peoples to do experiments on them, to finish her serum. It was already known that the serum works or at least partially so, Jha'dur used the serum on herself, and it work, slowing her aging process from about fifty to sixty percent. But after your defeat of Clark, and his death she lost support. The new government had her thrown into prison on Alpha Centauri where she stayed for the next fifteen years. And now she has escaped."
"How did she escaped from one of most heavily guarded prison in all the Earth Alliance" asked President Sheridan
"Actually she offered her services to the newest Administration. In the beginning the Administration didn't want to have anything to do with her, and they wanted to present her as a gift to the all the worlds that had suffer from her destruction during the war. But as with any plan they is always "Murphy's Law" She managed to escape killing two guards and two pilots. She jump to hyperspace before the patrol ships on Alpha Centauri could respond"answered Mr. Walkers
"And now one of the worst war criminals in this galaxy is free and we do not know where she is or what she is doing." pointed out Ambassador Daleen
"Yes Madam Ambassador, unfortunately that is true, but we are doing everything we can to find her." said Ambassador Karven
"She can be anywhere, and by now who knows where she is. You came about week after she escape to report this?"
"Mr. President we know that she can be anywhere in the galaxy, but we were under orders not to tell anyone, Earth Dome believed that it can handle this, and that we will find her fast, but we didn't. And that is not all, by now you know about the Dilgar ship seen at the edge of Earth Alliance space, we confirm that is was Omelos class Light Cruiser one of the many classes that the Dilgar used during the war. They were light, poorly armed but extremely fast."
There is also one more thing Sir, we may have found a link to this ship. You see we found some rare documents, deep beneath Balos. And it appears that the Dilgar created a "B plan" in case their invasion of the League words failed. Operation Exodus was its name. There are not many details, but I believe it was some kind of evacuation after the battle of Omelos. There is no location, or size of this plan, only the name. Of more interested you see Warmaster Jha'dur was the person that created this plan."
"So you believed that Jha'dur created a plan of evacuation for her world, and that she might know where it is."
"Yes Sir, and if this is true, god help us because if there is a Dilgar world somewhere out there we can have a bigger problem than just an escaped prisoner."
"But even if this is true what can the Dilgar do at this point? The Earth is powerful, they must know if one member of ISA is attacked all the other members will respond?" asked Ambassador Daleen
"Yes the Alliance would respond, but they have had 50 years since the last war. Our intelligence branch sat down and did a little speculative thinking and we came up with a few worst case scenarios, the first is that they have had enough time to rebuild a powerful fleet, and we base this on the two facts and the first is that they were so driven in the last war and the second is the fact that they planned far enough in advance to evacuate a percentage of their population and a as yet unknown number of warships How many of them survived is unknown, but it is known, that any survivors and their children will want revenge for the loss of their home world, and their Empire."
We believe that if they planned for a evacuation then they would have picked one with abundance of natural resources. The second thing they probable would have done is look for a work force. And third they would have looked for a way to improve their technologies to better fight all of the different races they will face this time. We believe that the first race that will be on target is the Earth Alliance and the former League words and that is a fact. We should also take a look at the fact that we have seen at least one Dilgar Light Cruiser near our systems on what we think was a fact finding mission, which is not good as it give us a indicator that they may be getting close to launching what ever plan they have and we should step up our patrols and quietly get our defenses in order."
This was something that President Sheridan didn't expect to be hearing. Everyone told him that Jha'dur was the last Dilgar and that nobody survived when their system is destroyed by a supernova. And nobody believed that the Dilgar would create desperate plan to escape the destruction of the last war.
"Alright we will keep this for ourselves, but we can't hide it forever. We will need to commit Whitestars to patrol around the Earth and LONOW territories and to engage any Dilgar ship we find, in case this is true and there is more of their ships out there, and we will have to take a hard look at our fleet deployments as we have ships in the Minbari Federation while they rebuild their navy. Ant there is the fact that we have a lot of ships protecting the Narn and Drazi from the Centauri until the treaty can be signed and they rebuild their forces. So at this point even with all of our force we are starting to get stretched very thin."
"Thank you Mr. President, we will inform you if we find more information."
...
2 days later Xenith Nebula, New Omelos
Jha'dur received a report about the fleet buildup and about the different classes of ships in the fleet, and then there is the plan that her brother created to consider and improve.
"So what do you think sister, is my plan for navy buildup a good one?" asks Dha'ur
"Yes, but I can see that there are only a few flaws in the fleet rebuilding program but there are a lot of problems in your attack plans for Earth." replies Jha'dur with a smile.
"What flaws? There are no flaws and it will work perfectly" Dha'ur protested
"No it will not! If you send this ships to attack Earth you will lost everything. First there are your active classes of ships. I noticed that almost all of them are designs from the last war. So the question raised is why are you using the old designs again? They didn't work very well the last time, and by now you must know that the Earth have stronger ships then it had in the war."
"Yes but all of our designs are relative easy to upgrade and it was much cheaper than the designing of a newer class of warships, it could take decades and it still not prove to work any better than the old ships."
"Well the numbers of Sehkmet Heavy Cruisers are really impressive. We had only had about twenty or so of them during the war. But it would be better if you build hundreds of upgraded Mishakur Dreadnoughts and Ochalvita Destroyers then so many Sehkmets. And those smaller ships like the Omelos and Jashakar class ships, they are useless even with the upgrades you have given to them."
"They can be good as a sacrifice and to allow our bigger units to take control of the battles. But that is not all my sister. From my specters on the Drazi home world we received some shadow tech. A small piece of Shadow technology, the Centauri has been using to control their ships. Control nodes, made by the Shadows. We bought hundreds of these, and we also made more on our own. So the main fleet will be used for our major attack on Earth or which target we decided, our secondary fleet that we have been building will be without a crew as it is fully operated by control nodes."
"And how many ships are you building?" asks Jha'dur
"Well with almost 2,800 first rate ships or should I say manned ships that make up the main fleet, and the secondary fleet will consist of 1,000 ships with 500 Omelos class Light Cruisers and 500 Tikrit class Heavy Cruisers which all will have control nodes. And all these will also be fitted with AI fighters."
"AI fighters?" It was clearly that Jha'dur didn't understand what her brother was telling her
"Yes, I can see the confusion on your face so let me explain, we have about 36,240 fighters in the fleet, and that is how many fighter pilots we have. So we have two main fighters. The 200 standard Thorun Mk II are stationed on New Omelos and they will not participate in our attack. We have 12,500 Thorun Mk III that are stationed in the fleet plus 5,500 Thorun Mk IV, which are the newest Thorun version is also being used in the fleet. The remaining 18,040 fighters are a completely new fighter of the Kron class heavy fighters because of their heavy armaments. The Kron like the Thorun IV are an even match for the newest Earth, Narn, Centauri or even the Minbari fighters. But that is not all.
Since your point is clear. We don't have replacement pilots except those few that protect New Omelos. We used something new. We upgraded many of the Mk II and even Mk III Thoruns with Artificial Intelligent cores. A majority of them are stationed on board our former Kir'rnau Carriers, which can now be classified as Drone Carriers. Since AI fighters are drones the name suits them well. Also each carrier will have a group of Ashu bombers, we have special version for pilots but only 50 have been build and they are also stationed on New Omelos.
So each carrier can hold about 80 AI fighters and 80 AI bombers, or simply 160 fighters or 160 bombers.
We also add hundreds of additional AI or how we call them now drone fighters on each ship hull. When ships jump into battle, normal fighters with pilots are launched and drone fighters detach and engage enemy. First wave full of drone fighters will first engage enemy. And loses will be much smaller in numbers then our real fighters with pilots.
We are also working on adding control nods to each fighter eliminating the original AI core that we developed. But we will be using some of them to control some of the Kron fighters. It would take about 6 months but our first ships with control nods will be ready for testing. And we will test it in some of worlds on the very edge of Earth Alliance space."
"Yes, I must say that I'm impressed, all this was really impressive. Well I maybe have something for you to brother. This is a very big gift from me to you. Seeing as we have a very real possibility to strike once again at our enemies. Now I will give you one gift, my serum, I have it in my head and I will start making a new one and once it is done you will lost some of your years, and become young again. So what do you say to that"
"I'd say I can't wait."
"But understand this brother, you have made our people proud with what you accomplished here but you know that there is no place for errors. Once we start this war? Once we start moving our fleet toward our revenge there is no turning back. And every ship that we lost we can't replace."
"Ship with crew no, ship without it yes. I was wondering, do you still have your cloning notes in your head Jha'dur. ?"
"Cloning, you succeed in improving our ships, armor, engines, weapons, sensors and many other things but you didn't succeed in cloning?"
"It was said that the first test will be possible in 10 to 20 years from now. That's why we used alternatives, like the control nods and AI's."
"Well I will not promise anything, but I will see that those scientists of yours start doing some real work, or they will be my guests in my new lab."
"And one more thing, since I as Supreme Warmaster will take the Deathwalker II you should get a new ship and she is a prototype currently under construction. She will be the biggest ship ever built by the Dilgar and the most powerful of all."
Later that day...
Jha'dur thought a lot about the past, about the invasion of the LONAW, and the destruction and deaths of billions. But she didn't blink an eye for all those who died by her hand. She did what she must to save her people and still 99% of the Dilgar race was killed when the Omelos sun finally went nova.
She also remembers the words of Sinasar, and of the Drakh that told her that her world faces consequences if she didn't listen to him. That he was her only way to save her people. She didn't realize that the Drakh Masters had their fingers in triggering Omelos sun to nova. They saw a great war potential in the Dilgar. But the Dilgar fought among themselves, and with only a few skirmishes with other races like the Drazi.
So the Shadows interfered with only a small push, to see how the Dilgar would react if their home world was under the threat of extinction. And they reacted just as the Shadows predicted. But the Shadows are not the one who pull the trigger on Omelos sun, you see the Drakh were, doing what the Shadows told them to do and the Dilgar sun to went nova before its time.
There is no doubt that if Jha'dur knew this, she would have killed Sinasar the first time she saw him. But he and the other Drakh have been on Omelos for decades by the time she meet them. Slowly preparing and turning the Dilgar into even more ruthless monsters then they already were.
The entire war, all those deaths and destruction were created by the Shadows. And it was just a prelude into the second Shadow war. To see what races will still stand after this and what races will be ready for a real fight.
Shadows might see all this as a game, granted a game of destruction and of power. But for the Dilgar the biggest hope and possible biggest ally in their next war was lead with such a great person. So much potential in did the Warmaster Jha'dur have that she become death itself, Deathbringer, Deathwalker, and many more names that she got during this crusade of darkness.
Her atrocities and for those that died because of her, and now she had new chance, a new chance to make everything right again. Even with the bulk of her race gone, she still believes that after all these years, after spending many years on Minbar, and many more years in a Earth prisons she now can make her people proud and powerful again. Or she can doom them and destroy them once and for all.
There was one more trick up her sleeve. Something she really wanted to use if everything else failed to achieve victory.