Out of the Darkness

chapter 30

“Do you want me to sleep with you tonight?” Senna asked.

Vir considered it a moment, but then shook his head. “The time… isn’t right.” He sighed. “I don’t… I can’t… I…”

She put a finger to his lips and hushed him. “When the time is right, then.” Her lips brushed lightly against his. “Good night then, Vir.”

“Good night.”

He went to his quarters then. He had selected something simple for himself, nothing ostentatious. He couldn’t bring himself to take over the private quarters that had once belonged to Londo. Too many ghosts that had not been laid to rest, and quite possibly never would be.

As the door slid shut behind him, he glanced around the room approvingly. The things he’d transported from Minbar had been brought there and set up just as he had specified. There was the desk, and the chairs. And the wardrobe, polished and ornate, big as a man and twice as wide.

It was late; he’d had a long day, and he had a series of meetings scheduled for tomorrow that were going to be pivotal in his decisions as to what direction Centauri Prime should go. Yet with all that, he could not bring himself to sleep. Instead he sat down at a computer and recorded another entry in his chronicles. There were many ways in which he had no intention of following Londo’s example, but the concept of keeping a journal was a good idea. For an emperor owed it to more than himself to try to keep his thoughts orderly, try to maintain a record of his achievements, or lack thereof. An emperor owed it to whoever followed him in the office. A blueprint, a template, for what to do right… and what to avoid.

“I felt a frost upon my spine, feeling as if a shadow had touched me, and held Senna closer as the night chill began to fill the air,” he said, and was about to continue when another chill struck him. That was odd, however, because when he’d been with Senna, they’d been standing on a balcony. Here, however, he was in a room that had been warm only moments before.

The room also seemed darker somehow, and the shadows were impossibly-starting to lengthen.

Slowly Vir rose from his chair. He appeared for all the world as if he wanted to cry out, but he could not.

A form separated itself from the shadows and stood facing him in the middle of the room.

“Shiv’kala,” Vir managed to say. “You’re… not dead.”

“In that ambush? No.” When he’d encountered Shiv’kala in the past, he’d always been struck by the calm, level tone of the Drakh. Now, however, Shiv’kala sounded as if every word from his mouth was laced with rage. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if Shiv’kala was actually trembling. “No, I was able to make my escape… for all the good it did me.”

“Good?”

“I,” the Drakh growled, “have been shunned. Shunned by the Drakh Entire. Because of Londo. Because of you.”

“I… don’t understand…”

“Of course you do not,” he snarled. “You cannotunderstand. Cannot know what it was to commune with the Entire. But our hold on Centauri Prime has disintegrated, my people are in retreat. The mighty fleet we helped construct now seeks us out to destroy us… and they blame it on me. They say I did not treat Londo harshly enough. I attempted to educate him, you see.” He was circling Vir, exuding anger. Vir was rooted to the spot. “Tried to teach him our purpose. Our reason for existence. Tried to get him to understand the Tightness of our cause. Instead he mistook compassion for weakness, and betrayed us in a way that he never would have if I had treated him appropriately. I did not break him sufficiently. I will not make that mistake again.

“My people have abandoned me along with this world… but I will get them to understand. I will show them just what I am capable of. I will bend this world to the way of the Shadows, single—handedly if I must. And the Drakh will see my accomplishment, and return. If it takes a century, it will not matter, for legions of fire we have nothing but time, despite all your ships’ pathetic attempts to track us down and annihilate us. But it will start with you, Vir Cotto.”

“You mean… you…” Vir gulped. “You’re going to try to break me the way you didn’t with Londo?”

“No,” the Drakh said, speaking so softly that Vir could barely hear him. “You… I am simply going to kill. I will deal with whoever follows you… but you I will not suffer to live.”

Vir licked his lips, seeming to summon his courage. “No. You won’t kill me. Instead… you’re going to tell me where I can find the Drakh that spawned the keeper on David Sheridan.”

It was hard to believe that a Drakh could look surprised, much less as surprised as Shiv’kala did just then. “I had thought,” he said slowly, “that you simply acted the fool, in order to throw suspicion from yourself. But I was wrong. You truly are a fool.”

“Tell me,” Vir said, as if somehow he had the upper hand.

“You want the Drakh who produced David Sheridan’s keeper?” He spread his arms wide. “He stands before you.” And then his hands came together, and he advanced on Vir.

Vir didn’t budge. “Thank you. I figured as much. And it’s all I wanted to know.”

Shiv’kala had taken only two steps toward Vir when the door of the Minbari wardrobe cabinet banged open. He spun, staring in confusion.

Standing inside the cabinet, a PPG clenched securely in both hands, was Michael Garibaldi. There was a lopsided, wolfish grin on his face and a glitter of death in his eyes.

“What’s up, Drakh?” he asked.

Shiv’kala let out the howl of a damned soul, and his arm moved with a blur. But Garibaldi didn’t give him any time. He squeezed off two quick shots, and both struck home, one in the Drakh’s stomach, the second in his chest. The impact lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the far wall, even as a pointed steel rod flew from Shiv’kala’s sleeve. It thunked into the wood six inches to the right of Garibaldi’s head. He didn’t even flinch, or seem to notice.

Shiv’kala flopped about on the floor like a beached whale. The only sound issuing from his mouth was a sort of incoherent grunting, and his chest made a wheezing, sucking noise that Garibaldi knew all too well. The floor beneath him became dark and stained with the awful liquid that passed for the creature’s blood.

Garibaldi stood over him, aiming the PPG squarely between Shiv’kala’s eyes. “The first one was for David… and the second was for Lou Welch. And this…”

“Mr. Garibaldi,” Vir said sharply. Garibaldi looked to him, and Vir extended his hand, a stern expression on his face. “I can’t let you do that. Give it here. Now.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Garibaldi handed it over. Vir held it delicately, hefted the weight, clearly impressed by the lightness of it. Then he looked down at the fallen Drakh. “In the end… Londo had you pegged,” he told the Drakh. “He said you were predictable. And you were. Your ego had to bring you back here, make you vulnerable. To get away, all you had to do was leave. We’d probably never have found you. But you had to stay around, to have your vengeance. You refused to admit that the time of the Drakh on Centauri Prime is over. A lot of creatures that walked or swam or flew this world’s surface didn’t realize when their moment passed. But it’s strange: Nature doesn’t care whether they knew it or not. Nature just got rid of them. Turned them extinct. Oh… and by the way,” he added, almost as an after thought, “… this is for Londo and G’Kar.” And with that, he blew Shiv’kala’s head off.

David Sheridan’s shriek was so loud that many Minbari within a mile radius claimed to have been able to hear it.

Sheridan and Delenn were there in seconds, neither of them having even bothered to pull on robes. They had no idea what they were going to find when they entered the room, although neither of them would have been surprised to discover their son’s corpse.

Even faster on the scene, amazingly, had been Stephen Franklin, who had opted to stay on Minbar for a time, to monitor the boy’s condition as best he could. He wasalready there when Sheridan and Delenn arrived, and his body blocked their view of their son. “Stephen!” Sheridan cried out. “David! What’s wrong with David?”

Franklin turned around, and said with an absolutely unreadable expression, “Wrong?” Then he stepped aside.

They saw with astonishment that Franklin had just finished unstrapping the teen, who wore a pale and wan expression. Sheridan immediately looked to the keeper… except it was no longer there. There was a severe reddish mark indicating where the creature had been, but it was gone. Instead he saw Franklin crouching and picking it up with a pair of forceps. Its tendrils were hanging limply. Its eye lay wide open, but was glassily blind. It seemed about as threatening as a clump of seaweed. Clearly the creature was dead or dying. Franklin opened a large specimen jar and dropped the thing in, and it landed with a sickening little plop. Delenn and Sheridan moved instantly to their son’s side. Delenn was running her fingers over the area where the keeper had been, shaking her head in wonderment.

“Lemme guess,” David said, in a voice that was hoarse and croaking. “Uncle Mikey?”

“I suspect so,” Sheridan told him. “He volunteered to go on ‘stakeout,’ as he called it, on Centauri Prime. Something tells me he hit pay dirt far more quickly than we could have hoped.”

“Oh, David,” Delenn said, stroking his face repeatedly as if unable to believe it was him.

“It’s okay, Ma… really. I just… I’d like to know one thing…”

“Anything, son. Just name it,” Sheridan said. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Can I have that second piece of birthday cake now?”

Sheridan and Delenn looked at each other, then burst into joyous laughter, holding their son tight.

“More than that, David,” Sheridan said fiercely. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that hiding you here can’t protect you from the galaxy. So we might as well go out there and take it on. When you recover, I’m taking a break from the presidency… Michael goes on vacation from his business… and Michael and I are going to take you on a tour of known space. Hitch some rides, grab some freighters, go down and dirty—the real worm’s-eye view. Just us guys.”

“Really?” David looked in amazement at Delenn. “Mom… that’s… that’s okay with you? You won’t feel left out or—”

She laughed. “Someone has to run things while your father and godfather are gallivanting about in the throes of their second childhood.”

He embraced both of them, and as he did, Delenn breathed silent prayers of thanks to Vir, to Garibaldi, to Valen, to Lorien. To whoever and whatever beings, real, spiritual, or imagined, had given her back her son. She would never again bewail the dwindling amount of time she had left with her husband, because at least they would all be able to enjoy it.

“So… Vir… well done,” Londo’s voice growled in my ear. “Look where you’ve come, eh? Who would have thought?”

We sat drinking together on a beach, the wave washing up along the shore. The sun shone down upon us, bathing me in a pleasant warmth. I had read in his final memoirs how he would have given anything to walk upon a beach for a brief time… and here it appeared he was going to have an eternity of time to do so. He looked just as I remembered him when we first met. I never realized how young he was. Great Maker, how young we all were. “Who would have thought,” I echoed.

“Look at you. Remember the days when you would get drunk on one glass alone?” He chortled at the thought. “I’ll be honest with you, Vir. When you first came to Babylon 5, I gave you three months. Six months at the outside. I didn’t think you’d last. Who could know that you would last… and I wouldn’t?”

“You lasted a good long time, Londo,” I assured him. “You had a good run.”

“Did I?” He laughed softly. “I suppose I did. A low—levelambassador assigned to a space station that was considered a joke. They called it ‘Sinclair’s Folly,’ you know. It wasn’t exactly a stepping—stone to greatness. It was considered more a dead end. Who knew that it would lead to the throne.”

“It didn’t lead there, Londo. The path was very crooked, and you cut it yourself.”

“I was led,” Londo said firmly. “The Shadows and their agents, and their agents’ agents, led me. But make no mistake. I’m not tossing aside responsibility. It was I who walked that path, and walked it willingly. Perhaps… perhaps at the end, that was what mattered. I took that final responsibility… and preserved a future that didn’t include me. Does that make sense?”

“I suppose it does.” I looked around. “Too bad G’Karcouldn’t join us.”

“He had another engagement in NaToth’s dream. Even he can’t be everywhere. On the other hand, there are always unwelcome visitors. Hold on a moment, please…”

Suddenly there was a sword in his hand. I flinched automatically, but he turned away from me and, in one smooth motion, threw the blade with unerring accuracy. It thudded into a grove of bushes nearby. There was a grunt, and then the impaled body of a Drakh fell from darkness into the red—tinted sunlight that was just filtering through from the sun on the horizon. The moment the rays struck it, it evaporated into dust.

“If he had been expecting that,” Londo said mildly, “he could have stopped it. That’s what you always have to do with forces of darkness, Vir. You have to catch them by surprise. Emissaries of evil tend to think very far, and very deep, but not very fast. Are you writing this down, Vir? That was a good one. You should remember that.”

“I will.”

“And never stop watching the shadows. You never know.”

“But the Drakh are gone from Centauri Prime, Londo. In full retreat. Our people are safe, they—”

“Vir,” he said patiently. “You started out as an aide to a low—level ambassador and you wound up emperor. What does that say to you?”

“You never know.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll watch the shadows, Londo, just in case they decide to watch me back.”

“That is good. That is very good.” He took a deep, finaldrink. “I think, Vir, it is time for deep, thoughtful, and profound words of wisdom that will explain the entire purpose of the universe and guarantee a life of accomplishment and prosperity.”

“And they would be…?”

Londo rose and walked across the sands. Standing there was Adira, smiling, her arms open to meet him.

Then I heard a steady, measured tread, a “splish splish.” And there came Timov… walking across the surface of the water. “Londo!” she called sternly with a smile. “Ift getting late.”

Londo saw her, rolled his eyes, and, inclining his head, said, “She always has to show off.”

She stepped out of the surf and they regarded me warmly, although Timov was watching Londo with the patient air of someone who had evaluated all of Londo’s flaws and simply decided to find them charming.

“The words of wisdom, Londo?” I prompted.

“Oh, yes. Of course.” And in a booming voice, Londo said, “Make love as often as possible.” And with that, Londo and his women, one of passion, one of conscience, walked away, leaving no prints on the sand. His deep laughter echoed down the palace halls and carried me into wakefulness.

The sunlight of the new morning beamed through the window at me. I glanced at the corners of the room, but the light was thorough and revealed nothing of any threat hiding there.

I shrugged on my robe and left my quarters to find Senna and heed Londo’s advice. I think he would have wanted it that way.