CHAPTER THREE

The bridge was silent, save for the few chirps as Ryell and Dulann worked the crystals. The Minbari didn't really suffer awkward silences the way Human did. Their species was typically reserved in nature and this led to long silences; but right now Dulann and Ryell were starting to understand what an awkward silence was really about. David was still itching that scar. This movement didn't escape Dulann's attention. He knew of David's past, of the Drakh keeper that had plagued the young man.

"David have you heard the story of Hadann and the Ben'nak fish?" it was Dulann breaking the silence, he left his workstation and crossed directly into David's field of vision.

David stopped the itching and lent forward, elbows on knees. "I have not," he said, exhaling and glad of the distraction. Was he seeking forgiveness from his mentor figure? Did he know he'd stepped too far?

"The Ben'nak is a very small fish that lives in the ice water on my homeworld. It enters the body of another and lives within it, surviving off the food that the host consumes."

"Like a tape worm," said David, more as a question of clarification than a statement of certainty. Despite being Human, the boy had spent most of his life on either Minbar or Centauri Prime.

"The Ben'nak would slowly drive it's host insane. It was said to cause the victim to hear voices or see hallucinations. Hadann was of the Worker Caste, a bridge builder, and was infected with the Ben'nak fish. At first he did not realize but eventually it began to change him, he no longer knew right from wrong. Or eventually even night from day." Dulann paused, as if for effect. "Fortunately for him a procedure had been pioneered that would find and remove the Ben'nak fish from the host."

Dulann was speaking with his hands, and pacing the bridge as he told his story, his words deliberate and articulated potently. "The Ben'nak fish was removed, and his sanity returned. But for ever after Hadann would remember all of the things he did when infected and he would still hear those voices."

As David listened and realized the direction the story was going he instinctively reached back to the scar.

"But even though," Dulann continued, "the procedure was successful Hadann would forever hear those voices, even if only softly on the wind."

Dulann stopped pacing now and stood in front of David, holding the young man's eye contact, "For many years he could ignore the voices, but as he grew older the voices got louder until eventually he could hear nothing but them."

He paused for dramatic effect, "Hadann would go on to murder a family of 4 who lived nearby. All to try and silence the voices."

Ryell knew the story, although a few centuries had past since it was current events it was used as a story often told about the dangers of the rivers of Minbar to youngsters. She had been nodding along, understanding the parallels from that situation and David's. She would've liked to have said she understood what David was going through, what he must have gone through. But she owed him honesty, if nothing else, and whilst she could emphasize she couldn't truly understand.

"We are here for you David and we will follow your orders," she said in her softest tones. "But please consider what you are saying."

Dulann took the baton in the proverbial relay race; "David you are our Captain and of course we are Rangers, we will follow your orders. But I must warn against any rash actions. We have a mission plan, a list of planets to visit from the Anla'shok'Na and – "

David's scar had stopped itching, instead it ached; like a returning repetitive strain both in ferocity and familiarity. He held the spot with his hand as Dulann delivered his story. He was battling to control his emotions. He had, as a child, been very even tempered. He had even allowed his parent's a considerable amount of peace and quiet throughout the "terrible twos" so his tone, and words of only a few moments ago seemed a shock to him.

It hadn't been one of those out of body experiences where you are helplessly watching yourself, but the words, attitude, tone and spirit had seemed like he'd been running on auto pilot. The closest 20th Century analogy would be some driving to work and then not remembering they'd done so, maybe remembering a few songs that had played on the radio but nothing more.

Still, he had his father's stubbornness and his mother's tenacity. The decision to, at least, try and contact the First Ones was one he'd been mulling over for a considerable amount of time and whilst regrettable, this period of "autopilot" had seen the decision made verbally and he was prepared to follow it through.

He'd listened to Dulann's story and he understood the context and how it was applying to his situation. But he wasn't hearing voices, was he?

" – Thank you Dulann," David said interrupting as politely as possible. The sharpness has dropped from his voice, he was speaking with friends once again. "And Ryell for your support. But my mind is made up we must contact the First Ones.".

Dulann nodded and returned to his station, partly for the sake of duty, partly because he was disappointed. Disappointed not in David, the young man had been through a lot and he was out here trying to save his father's life, but in himself; he didn't think he was getting through to him.

"Course is laid in," Dulann reported.

"Jump," David ordered and stood up, the ache from that scar wasn't subsiding and he'd need to take something; anything to lull it back to sleep. The pain was getting worse, he had to leave the bridge. RIGHT NOW.

David turned toward the exit and asked Dulann to take the bridge. When out of the sight of his shipmates he let the true extent of the ache show. Whilst still moving forward, eager to get to whatever clever Minbari device would reveal his pain, he slumped against the wall feebly clasping at his scar.

He could feel the pain spreading through his body, down his legs to the tips of his toes and up through his body to eventually press against his forehead.

In space no-one can hear you scream, but aboard the Bluestar you most certainly could so although it took his full might David managed to make it to, what passed as a, Medlab without crying out.

The Bluestar's medlab was a small compartment, think a single bedroom, with an adjustable bed in the middle and equipment mounted along the wall opposite the entrance. David threw himself against the bed when he arrived, fumbling for the necessary equipment to dull the pain. His scar had hurt him before, but never like this. A powerful Minbari pain killer; umuthi, was his go to. It wasn't a drug that was normally kept aboard Ranger vessel but David had a little sway with the quartermaster responsible for stocking this particular vessel and had made sure there was a healthy amount of doses aboard.

There was a chime at the door. David jolted awake, falling to the floor and bringing down the equipment he'd been using with him. Without waiting for a response the door's opened and Ryell was stood at the entrance way. "David, sorry… I heard a crash. I wanted to make sure you were alright." Bashful Ryell was apologetic for the intrusion.

David had fallen asleep slumped across the medical bed, several vials of umuthi once neatly packed were now strewn across the floor; sent crashing when David had been startled.

He blinked himself awake: the pain was gone. "Sorry, I…"David started as he stood up and casually brushed himself down. "This is an open part of the ship Ryell," he was trying on his best smile. "You don't have to knock."

David was picking up the various pieces of equipment he had knocked off. He reached down and picked up the individual vials of umuthi carefully and ceremoniously placed them back inside their container. When he stood back up, brandishing the distinctively colored drug he paused.

Ryell's mouth dropped open just slightly, "Umuthi?" she asked. It wasn't a painkiller that was illegal on Minbar, but it's usage was considered a social taboo; one an offworlder wouldn't really understand. Think chop-stick etiquette in Japan.

David didn't say anything, he only used it when the pain was really bad and he only used umuthi because it was strong enough that he didn't need to repeatedly use it. A shot would normally see him through a few days, well maybe a couple days, well actually he'd been using it daily recently but that was only to get him through this week…

He put the umuthi away and finished tidying up the other equipment. When he was done the Medlab was returned to it's zen-like tranquility. He finally had no other option but to turn and face Ryell. She had been silently watching him. David had expected a face of shock and awe, maybe disapproval, he was ready to tackle that, but when he turned to face Ryell she was upset. Minbari didn't really cry, and this was as close as he'd ever seen one.

David reached out a hand, intending to comfort, but she pulled away.

"Ryell…" he said, not really sure what to say. He knew the umuthi wasn't a problem, he knew his scar pain wasn't a problem. But she was obviously worried and now that the pain was gone he could finally think straight. He wanted to console her, tell her it was okay.

"David, I'm worried about you."

David frowned, "I have residual pain from… well you know where from. The Doctor's said I could have this pain for the rest of my life. I just take a normal pain killer to kill normal pain. Thousands of people suffer from migraines and take Tylenol and it doesn't upset people!" He stopped himself, he caught himself getting worked up. He didn't need to defend his action, he was doing nothing wrong.

"You have changed," Ryell said her strength returning. "And are still changing."

"I'm sorry if our important mission," David's tone had shifted from defensive to borderline patronizing, with a sarcastic undertone, "A mission to save my father! Is more difficult when I'm in pain!" His youth on full display now.

"David," Ryell turned. She didn't turn her back on him, but she was stood at 90 degrees. She stared down at the ground and spoke softly but with a firm conviction. "I will always be there for you. What we've shared, those are memories I will always treasure." She paused, on screen it would've played like a dramatic pause but in reality it was just a moment to think. "I will help you complete this mission. You are right, it is an important one. One that could mean the life of your father. And I understand that during that mission you may undertake risky, or even reprehensible actions." Another brief pause. "But you have begun to walk down a path that… that I cannot walk with you."

She finally turned back to him now, his eyes full of tears, "But any feelings that I may have had that one day we could be more. More than fr… more than friends. Those feelings are gone now."

David stood and took it. Like a remorseful man awaiting execution.

Ryell turned and left. The Medlab doors slide shut behind her.

Later on the three of them shared a meal in silence as the auto pilot precisely navigated the eddies and currents of hyperspace. It wasn't an awkward silence that you'd normally associated with the aftermath of a lover's quarrel, it was more tangible than that. David's sheepish expression said it all. He was a crazy mixture of embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, and probably more angsty emotions mixed in. It made for a hell of a cocktail that the young man didn't know how quite to weather.

As Dulann, always finishing last as he was a slow and deliberate eater, set his utensils down there was a slight shudder through the ship. It wasn't uncommon to feel the occasional vibration when travelling through hyperspace, particularly in a ship with the Bluestar's diminutive construction but this one felt bigger.

Then there was another, slightly harder than the last. As a third rattled them, they all instinctively held onto their crockery to save it from spilling to the floor.

"We must get to the bridge," David adorning the hat of Captain Obvious for a moment. Dulann and Ryell nodded in agreement. The three flowed out of the crew quarters, discarded their leftovers and plates into a nearby receptacle.

A fourth, significantly, harder shudder coursed through the Bluestar as our intrepid trio attempted to plot a course amidst the now constantly swaying of the ship as the inertial dampeners struggled to compensate.

Upon reaching the bridge their muscle memory took them to their stations. Dulann was the first to ascertain the cause of their predicament. "We are enduring some sort of plasma storm," he reported working the controls.

"In Hyperspace?" David queried.

"It is not unheard of, but rare," Ryell confirmed. She manipulated the crystals in front of her and the view screen descended showing the reddish hell outside. Contrasting against the red and black were bolts of orange-and-yellow pseudo-lightning. Some closer than others.

"How did our sensors not detect this?" David was asking..

"Even Vorlon scanners cannot be tuned to detect all cosmic phenomenon," Dulann's pitch undulated as he spoke as he clasped tightly to the edge of his console in an attempt to steady himself as the ship made another severe lerch.

For the next few moments the three of them run on their own auto pilots, checking systems, running diagnostics, sharing information as they received it.

"Checking cartography," David said. "What…." He trailed off. A bump, not that they'd endured enough of these bumps to officially classify them, and this particular one was a medium bump, punctuated the beat between David's expression shifting from puzzlement to fear.

"We've lost scanner lock on the jump point beacon," he reported.

"Running a scan with secondaries," Ryell was locked into problem solving mode. "Secondaries unable to lock in."

Dulann confirmed this using a quickly improvised workaround by scanning the vicinity with the cannon's targeting scanners.

Countless stories, mostly wives' tales but still enough to make you think that at least some had to be real, made up the interstellar community's common zeitgeist. Tales of ghost ships lost in hyperspace reappearing years later with their crew's vanished, tales of ships exiting hyperspace at the wrong point and finding themselves on the wrong side of the galaxy, not to mention the whole Thirdspace debacle…

These are the things that came to the minds of this trio. They were well outside normally shipping lanes, plotting a course toward the rim that maybe only a dozen ships before them had forged, and now with their scanner lock gone they were adrift.

David's scar was itching again. But it wasn't this that was distracting him now, when he needed his head clearest; it was the voice… the voice inside his head. A voice he hadn't heard in years. This wasn't a kind and nurturing voice. This wasn't the voice of his mother or father giving him advice in his hour of need. No this was a cruel, twisted voice; but one that was all too familiar.

At first it was a whisper, but as the dread inside him rose, the whisper grew. It was repeating "Jump now", "Jump now". David fought to suppress what he was hearing, grasping weakly at his scar hoping to somehow silence it. He wanted to try and concentrate, to work with his shipmates, his friends, his team, to try and .fathom a way out of their predicament. He didn't need this distract –

"Jump now," it said again, more insistently. The voice had grown louder, and it's tone had changed slightly. Before it was a conspiratorial whisper, with all the negative connotations associated with that; but now it was the voice of an elderly school matron. She didn't really care about you, but she did want you to stop acting out and pay attention in school because it would be of benefit to you in the future, and selfishly to her as well. That is how this voice spoke now.

David was torn, as any child being scolded by the teacher but at the same time being egged on by his peers. Who was right? Who was wrong? To what advice should he listen?

"Jump now!" this time David found the words being formed in his own mouth, being spoken by his own tongue. "If we jump now we can –"

"David if we do that we could be anywhere! The other side of the galaxy! A different galaxy!" Ryell exclaimed, the cool Minbari exterior showing signs of cracking. He eyes were darting wildly back and forth from the viewscreen to her console and back to David.

"Another galaxy isn't a reasonable assumption," Dulann cut in, but stopped realized now most likely wasn't the time to mention that they had travelled nowhere near far enough and that hyperspace was developed by the Vorlons, a race not known for their intergalactic travel.

"Jump now!" David repeated, this time turning to look at Ryell. Her controls, just like Dulann's could control the Bluestar's course. Heck David could even order the ship's AI to do it. But it came to this; David was requesting Ryell do it. Maybe it was a test of faith, maybe David didn't quite think it was the right idea and wanted his plan validated by another. Maybe he just didn't want to hear "I told you so".

"Please Ryell. Jump now!"

She closed her eyes exhaled and just as the ship was taking another pitch and rumble she worked her controls. Opening a jump point in the red mist in front of them.

The Bluestar eagerly disappeared into the welcoming embrace of potential sanctuary, her crew saying more than a few prayers.

With a burst of immense energy the cold dark vacuum's quiet was interrupted by a dazzling blue of an exiting jump point. The Bluestar came barreling out, it's flight path a little shaky as the hyperspace storm that prompted their hastily arranged exit hit it with a few farewell salvos.

The crew were braced but still lurched as the ship exited and the gravitational flux behind them as the jump point closed shook them.

"Where are we?!" David cried, he almost fallen to the floor during their exit. The voice was silent now, had he made it happy? Was that why it was silent?

"Checking," Dulann reported, doing the Minbari equivalent of crossing his fingers, that the scanners, who couldn't find their beacon, were still functional enough on this side of the vortex to lock down their location.

"Calibrating for unknown constellations," he reported in a moment later, when he realized this would take longer than originally thought.

David grimaced, Dulann's report was not sounding hopeful. What was that voice? Has it steered us wrong? Has it steered me wrong? Have I doomed us all?

"We are approximately 450 lightyears from the nearest solar body, beyond the edge of our Milkyway Galaxy," he finally concluded, having double checked his readings.

Ryell was still working, trying to confirm that using a secondary source.

"The Rim…" David said, youthful starry-eyed wonderment in his voice.

"Beyond the Rim to be precise," Dulann confirmed.

"It was right," David said, he'd meant to say it under his breath but sensed Dulann and Ryell's expressions that were giving him a non-verbal "Huh?". "I was right," David countered, "About jumping, we're where we were meant to be."

"Perhaps," Dulann conceded. "But our return to known space will possibly be… difficult." To say the least, stories about ships getting lost beyond the rim were almost as numerous as those about ships getting lost in hyperspace. BUT you had to consider that "Rim" was usually a word interchangeable with "Frontier", simply meaning the limits of the Alliance's mapping, rather than the actual "Galactic Rim".

"David what do we do now?" Ryell asked, she'd been skeptical of this plan all along and was acutely aware that their medium-range vessel was not equip for a journey such as this.

"We contact the First Ones," David said, the wonderment still in his voice. "That is what we're hear to do. To speak with them, so that they will cure my father."

"And how do we – " Ryell began to ask before she was distracted by the view screen.

David and Dulann followed her gaze and shared an equal level of awe toward the view screen. The settings hadn't been changed since they had used it to help visual their surroundings in hyperspace. It still displayed what was directly in front of the ship.

All three had stolen brief glances at it between running scans when they had first burst out into normal space and they had seen nothing extraordinary that had warranted further attention; just the usual star scape, albeit with various never seen before constellations. But now… now it was different.

Three glowing lights, each a slightly different shade of orange, hovered there; suspended in space. Then a fourth appeared from over the top of the view. Then a fifth and a sixth. These lights were spherical in nature and gave a hazy light; like someone with glasses would seen headlights of oncoming traffic. The six of them hung there suspended in space for a moment the began to fly around in no decipherable pattern, then they stopped again and vibrating towards each other; as if… somehow conversing.

Then all six flew away, out of the viewscreens range.

"What were – " David was cut off. Three more lights appeared. This time blue in color, this time much larger but still spherical.

"I believe we may have found them," David said, allowing the first smile in quite some time to tug at the corners of his mouth.