See Prologue for Disclaimer and Author's Notes.
Chapter 4 - Voices of Authority
"Just a reminder, I'll be out late tonight – poker game at Sergeant Allan's."
"Mmmhmm."
Marcus Cole's mouth turned down as he watched his lover absently fill her morning coffee mug and wander into the breakfast nook, eyes scanning the front page of the morning's paper. He followed her and tried again. "Right. So it's Tuesday, so don't forget to put the trash out at the curb." Another non-committal grunt was the only response. "Have I mentioned that my nose is on fire, and that I have 15 wild badgers living in my trousers?"
Now, finally, Susan set down the paper and looked up, giving him a look of complete incredulousness. "What?"
"I'm sorry, would you prefer ferrets?"
Susan's glare burned him, and Marcus wondered if maybe he'd pushed too far. "What I'd prefer is for you to—" She stopped, shook her head, picked the paper back up.
"To what?" Now he softened and approached her, arms coming around her from behind. When he spoke again, it was a soft whisper. "I know you're worried about him."
Susan shook her head stubbornly. "I am not."
"Yes, you are. It's been three weeks now since you last heard from Sheridan, and I don't care how much you insist he can take care of himself, and you don't like him anyway, and if he gets killed it's his own bloody fault—" He came around and crouched in front of her, gently taking the paper from her hands and laying it aside. "He's an officer under your command, and he might be in trouble, and you're worried about him."
She gave him a resigned smile. "Maybe."
"And that's OK."
"If anything happens to him – it's my fault."
"It's part of your job," Marcus offered, tone still soft but matter-of-fact. "The fact that you care just proves that you're human."
Susan shook her head angrily. "I knew he was trouble from the moment he showed up." She blinked back tears. Marcus saw them but knew enough to shut his yap about it. As far as he and the rest of the world were concerned, Susan Ivanova did not cry. "I should never have approved this, not after—" she cut herself short of the name.
"After Jeff?" He offered. "Susan. That wasn't your fault."
"No? Then whose goddamn fault was it?" She was crying openly now, angrily brushing away the tears. "Jeffrey Sinclair was a good man. He didn't deserve to die like that."
"No one does."
"And I sent him in there. And now, like a fool, I've let Sheridan do the exact same thing."
Marcus looked down and was silent for a long moment. He'd known Susan and Jeffrey Sinclair had been close; that they may have even been lovers for a time, before Marcus had come into the picture and Sinclair reunited with an old flame. Not only did Ivanova feel she had failed in respect to her job; a personal tie had been severed as well. "You swore to the people of Babylon that you would stop this turf war and bring down the Shadows," he said at last. "Both Sheridan and Sinclair have been instrumental in reaching that goal. It's only been six weeks since Sheridan's first contact, and you already have more than you did after six months with Sinclair. Sheridan got inside, deep inside – something Sinclair could never do." She met his eyes now, and the look there told him he was speaking to her heart. "Jeffrey Sinclair died in service to the people of this city. There is no more honorable way to die."
"And now Sheridan might have gone the same way." She sniffled and opened her mouth to say more but was cut short by the police scanner, blaring an alert from the adjacent den.
"Attention all units, please respond – 10-71 in progress at Proxima Park, repeat, 10-71 in progress. Please respond, Code 2."
"Shooting," Ivanova grumbled as she got to her feet, roughly pulling on her uniform jacket. "Used to be we'd get maybe two a year. Now… it feels like every day." She kissed Marcus's cheek. "Hey."
"Hey yourself." He gave her the bravest smile he could manage.
"I love you."
"Be careful."
"Always." She downed the rest of her coffee and darted out the door.
With her lights flashing and siren blasting, the drive to the park took less than two minutes, and when she arrived, the bullets were still flying. A quick survey, and she blessedly counted no innocents – but blue colors flashed on her right, yellow on her left, and there were at least two bodies on the ground. "Fuck." She ducked back into her cruiser and hastily called for backup.
Sergeant Allan and his partner, quickly followed by three more cruisers, pulled up within seconds, no doubt heeding both the initial call and hers, and the shooting came to an abrupt end on the firing of a final bullet. The yellow colors fled immediately, leaving only the blue of the Shadows behind to disrupt the green-brown ground of the park. Ivanova cocked her gun in their general direction. "Freeze! Drop your weapons!" No response. She edged toward them, weapon held at the ready. "You're all under arrest. Come out with your hands up."
"Now," Allan chipped in, coming up beside her and cautiously flanking out to the left. Still no response, and he fired a warning shot at the wall adjacent to their hiding spot. "We have you surrounded. Give it up. There's no way out."
"Says you!" And then Sergeant Allan was on the ground, blood blooming from a single hit to his right shoulder, and three Shadows turned and fled the scene.
Ivanova took off after them on instinct, not thinking, just reacting, and it was rage and adrenaline that had her pulling down a man larger than herself, tackling him into a submissive position, spread eagle and face down on the ground, hands quickly cuffed behind his head. "You have the right - to remain - silent," she quoted haltingly as her catch stopped squirming. "Anything you say can and most definitely will be used against your sorry ass in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, though I doubt it will do you much good, and if you cannot afford one, we will appoint one who will give you all the attention your money is worth. Do you fucking understand these rights –" She had been perched comfortably on the perp's back, and now she got off him and rolled him over, for the first time getting a look at his face. It took her a moment to recognize him. Beneath a scruffy beard, healing scrapes and bruises, and a pretty impressive black eye, was the unmistakable pretty-boy face of Captain John Sheridan.
"Actually," he responded with a swallow and a lick of his lips, and she could feel him trying to get control of his breathing while he smiled to make the joke, "I have some questions."
"…And now you have to let me go," John finished, giving her a pointed look via the rearview mirror of her cruiser. "Because if you don't, if you hold me for any length of time and then release me, they'll get suspicious. They're smart. They know how the system works and if you hold me too long and just up and let me go, they'll think I squealed and they will kill me. So you have two choices. Either you lock me up for a believable length of time before you let me make my one phone call, and somebody pays my bail, or you let me go right now."
Ivanova considered the story she'd just been told. He'd spent the better part of two weeks recovering from his jump – successful, she supposed, as he was still alive, but she asked him to spare the details as she considered that he'd said he'd known what he was in for. What kind of psychopath voluntarily gives himself over for a beating? The pretty-faced kind, apparently. Eight days ago, he'd pronounced himself healthy enough to walk and was handed his gun and given a target to take out. Rather than execute the hit, he'd clubbed the poor fellow over the head but good and then called 9-1-1; fired his gun at a dumpster for the "recently fired" effect and swiped the young man's yellow bandana as proof. The day after that, he'd met the Shadow Cabinet for the first time. And now he was here, and she was fucking it up, he said, because this was his audition for a Board position, and he was failing it, big time. "I can't let you go, not yet." She pulled into the station parking lot and parked the cruiser. "You got anything else on the war effort?"
"Nothing. That's why you have to let me go."
She narrowed her eyes and took note of the captain's general demeanor. "You're drunk."
"I'm hung over. There's a difference."
"God-fucking-dammit, Sheridan! You are going to drink yourself right to death over there, literally and-or figuratively, if you don't fucking knock this shit off right now."
He didn't respond.
"I mean it. Lay off the alcohol and – for God's sakes, are you doing anything else?"
"Don't. Ask."
She muttered several expletives under her breath.
"Let me go."
"Give me something. Names. Offenses. Anything."
He sighed heavily, lolled his head around. "Bester," he said finally. "Last name. First name Al, probably Alfred. Real stone-cold son of a bitch."
Ivanova wrote that down. "I'll run it through the system, see what comes up. You got a headcount? What can you tell me about the structure?"
"I've counted at least 50 unique faces, though most of them are small-time – runners, lookouts, street soldiers. They'll be on the front lines if this comes to a head. Aside from our Shadow Man Morden, the advisory board has four positions of which three are currently occupied – Garibaldi, this Bester guy and Wade… somebody. I don't have a last name, but cross reference with the others, maybe you'll get something. The open position is the Chief Enforcer – the Warlord. They want me for that. Or they did, until today. I don't know if…" He'd been speaking fairly quickly; now he slowed down a bit, let his voice trail off.
"What's that entail, exactly?"
Sheridan bit his lip, hesitating on his response. "Strategic coordination. Tactical planning. And if I don't get out in time, they'll be looking at me to hold our territory and coordinate the big fight."
"That could be to our advantage, don't you think?"
"I do think. But that's if I can manage to orchestrate it as such that they won't know I'm setting them up. I… haven't figured out how to do that yet."
She softened at his admission. "What's it like down there?"
He was quiet again for a long moment, and she sensed him softening as well. "Dark," he said finally. "A little bit like hell, a little bit like…" He shrugged. "Weird, too. There are other things going on, other things I guess I'm not worthy of yet. I don't know. I don't like it. There's these… girls…"
"Innocents?"
"I don't know. I just don't know. Two of them took care of me while I was hurt. They looked OK, well cared for, not badly bruised or malnourished, but… young. And there's another one. I've seen her, but she's different from the others. I can't explain it. She seems almost… afraid of her own shadow."
"Interesting choice of words."
Sheridan nodded. "And now you have to let me go."
Ivanova paused, making eye contact with him in the mirror again. "Fine. But –" she raised pointed eyebrows at him – "Now that I know you're alive, no more of this dropping-off-the-planet bullshit. I want message drops at least once a week. And lay off the drinking and—whatever else."
"Fine."
"Fine." She exited her driver's side door and came around to the back, where she opened the door for him and used a key to release his handcuffs.
Freed, he rubbed at his wrists. "Those things hurt, you know."
"Sorry. Next time out I'll be sure to bring my pink fuzzy ones from home."
"Ugh. Too much."
"You asked for it." She looked him in the eyes one last time and couldn't help thinking it – he certainly looked the part. This was going too well to be true.
"Oh. I almost forgot."
"Hmm?"
"They'll ask how I got away. Sorry." And he brought his hands together and clubbed her with two fists at the back of her skull, bringing her down in an unconscious heap. "Really sorry," he said again, and then took off in a jog away from the station, knowing she'd be safe in the shade of her cruiser until someone else came outside.
The return to Z'ha'dum was anything but a hero's welcome. He was grilled for two hours as Morden paced in front of him, seething, clutching his baby glock, and Sheridan knew if he said one wrong word, he'd find out exactly what that glock felt like pressed against his temple – about two seconds before he ceased to feel anything at all, ever again. "How did this happen?"
"It was an open park. BPD is not run by idiots. They were bound to send in the troops when we endangered innocents."
"I wasn't asking you, you fuck." More pacing accompanied this growl. Sheridan swallowed hard, mind racing, and found himself wishing like hell he hadn't snorted that line with Garibaldi before the job this morning. "And you're wrong. We control the perimeter at Proxima Park. It's not open. It's ours."
Maps say differently, John thought, but he wisely kept this opinion to himself.
"Tell me again. They cuffed you, read you your rights, and took you to the station."
"Yes."
"And then you just got away? Just like that?"
"A club to the back of the head." He clasped his fists and demonstrated on the thin air. "And a lock pick." He unearthed a lock pick from the pocket of his jeans. "It's not rocket science."
"Who was the arresting officer?"
Sheridan hesitated. He did not want to drop names. This could end very, very badly if he dropped names. But Ivanova was too prominent in Babylon for him not to recognize her on sight. And he knew, he just knew, that if he said he didn't know, Morden would know he was lying. He sighed. "Commander Ivanova."
"That bitch," Morden spat. "You know, I think I'd like to see her come down a peg. Or two. Or as many pegs as it takes to get her on her knees, gagging on my cock. You get what I'm saying, Sheridan?" Morden considered this for a moment. "You probably haven't had any in awhile, have you?"
"I do OK."
Morden shook his head. "But not since you came here." He considered this some more. "Tell you what. As much as that fantasy appeals to me, I'd much rather have her gone. She's been a thorn in my side long enough, and this bullshit today is the last straw. So! You, my friend, are very lucky. You've just earned yourself a chance at redemption." He twirled the gun he held now, spinning it absently on one finger, and then handed it to Sheridan with a pointed look. "Take her out, and I will reward you quite handsomely. Fail…" He took the glock back and pressed it less-than-gently square between Sheridan's eyes. "And you die instead. Either way, there will be blood shed by the time the sun sets in three days. Understood?"
"Yes," he breathed, and the gun was gone from his forehead. He couldn't help but let out a small exhale in relief.
"Good." There was a shuffle past the door to the small, nondescript room in which this conversation had taken place. Both men looked up. Sheridan saw a passing Shadow; Morden saw more. "Ah. Speaking of handsome rewards." He strode to the door in two large steps and reached out with one hand, pulling someone – a young woman – in front of him.
Sheridan's eyes focused on her and he tried with all his might to keep a cold look about him as he took her in, but he wasn't sure if he was succeeding. This was the other girl, the one he'd told Ivanova about. He hadn't gotten a good look at her until now. She was barely clothed, wearing a thin white shift. The outline of her body was easily visible through the fabric, and he suspected this was no accident. In some respects she looked well cared for, but he'd been a cop long enough to know an abuse victim when he saw one, and right now the sirens were blaring in his head.
There was no denying one thing, though: She was Morden's prize possession, and he made sure she presented as such. She was beautiful.
"This is Delenn. She's… my… pet," Morden finally pronounced, settling on this as a valid descriptor of their relationship. Delenn flinched as the Shadow Man's hand snaked around her back to her hip and clamped down hard. "Delenn, this is Sheridan. Say hello, Delenn."
Hesitantly, she lifted her eyes to meet his. When they finally met, he thought just for a second that he saw a flicker of a smile on her face. "Hello." And although they'd never met before, her grey eyes sparkled at him and he felt a tug at his heart, a flicker of an emotion he hadn't felt in years, something he'd sworn he would never feel again. It was as if he had no control; as if his emotions were acting without his knowledge or say-so. He bit back a smile; no, this was not the right time for the kind of smile he wanted to give.
But Morden caught it; Morden was among the most perceptive men John had ever met. He laughed from deep in his throat and pulled Delenn tighter to him. "Your reward," he said simply, reaching with his free hand to brush a stray lock of hair off of Delenn's face. Goddamn if that didn't make her more beautiful still. He turned and began to lead Delenn out of the room, but on the threshold they paused just a moment, and Morden looked back over his shoulder. "But not without proof." And then they were gone, and John was left dumbstruck, betrayed by his own emotions, and his mind racing – this woman was… she was…
She was an innocent, he reminded himself, and he would do nothing to her that she did not wish to do. Besides, there were more pressing matters at hand; namely, what to do about Ivanova, and how to get Morden to give him information on Anna's killer, and most importantly, how to get down off this high so that he could do something about all of the shit that had just fallen from the heavens onto his loudly pounding head.