PROLOGUE

Captain Susan Ivanova felt the vibration shudder through the deckplates of the Titans. The screen ahead of her displayed the green and red symbols that differentiated friendly ships from foes. A mass of red swarmed around the large green circle that represented her ship, like ants flowing out of a colony that had been unwittingly disturbed.

Red lights blinked out as enemy vessels were torn from stem to stern by the Titans’ Heavy Particle Beam Cannons, or blown apart by the continued salvos from the missile batteries. On the array of monitors the emptiness of space was a barely visible backdrop to the fiery criss-crossing of plasma weapon burst. Even with the tiny green specks that denoted the Starfury squadrons, the numbers still did not add up and it was obvious that they were outnumbered.

She grabbed the armrests of her chair as the ship was buffeted again.

“Direct hit amidships,” Commander William Berensen announced calmly as sparks showered down across his console. An acrid smell drifted across the bridge and the exchange of small arms fire that echoed down the corridor and into the bridge seemed to be getting louder.

Relay systems in the walls ruptured behind her and Ivanova turned to see her navigator, Lieutenant John Maddison, throw his hands up in front of his face as his console overloaded.

“Damage to the navigational system, unable to take evasive action!” Maddison called out as he managed to avoid the full brunt of the explosion. He tilted his head back, keeping his left eye shut as blood ran down the side of his temple, pooled around the eye socket and continued down his cheek. It was impossible now to make a tactical withdrawal, Ivanova realised. All they could do was stand their ground and fight.

“Full power to the forward batteries. Punch a hole through their hearts!” Ivanova ordered.

“Particle beams, retargeting,” Berensen said. “Firing!”

The monitor flared white as the full force of the particle beams ripped through the enemy ship.

“Narn heavy cruiser disabled,” Lieutenant Commander Amelia Graydon announced, grabbing on to the railing in front of her station as the ship was rocked again by incoming fire.

“Jump points opening!” she called out.

“Where?” Ivanova asked, unable to see anything on the monitors.

“Directly behind them,” Graydon said, her voice wavering.

“It looks like reinforcements.”

BABYLON 5

ONE

She stretched out almost the full length of the station. Babylon 5. The last of the Babylon stations. Home to a quarter of a million humans and aliens wrapped in its two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal. For once there was so sense of urgency. She could drift at her leisure. The waves of her long brown hair spread out around her as she curled herself around the warm glow of the fusion reactors. She felt the comforting pulse of its power spark through her like a heartbeat as her fingers traced lines through the miles of conduits that zig-zagged around the station bringing light and warmth and energy.

She wrapped herself around the central core, turning gently with the station, as she floated down through Brown Sector, Green Sector, Red Sector and Blue Sector. She entered the lives of the Lurkers who had coming chasing a dream that had failed to materialise, the Dockers unloading the precious cargos from the multitude of transports filling the docking bays, and the alien ambassadors debating in the council chamber. On and on she moved, through businessmen hammering out deals and traders selling their wares in the Zocalo. They drank in the bars and ate in the restaurants. When the hustle and bustle got too much, they stood in quiet contemplation in the Zen Garden. She saw all this as she spiralled around toward Command and Control at the very front of the station. Few believed Babylon 5

would succeed. It had united league nations and, at a cost, brought peace. For a while she had been part of it, but not any more. She wasn’t needed here. She wasn’t needed now. Just then, in that final instant, as it was time to turn her back after the final goodbyes, her diaphragm went into spasm as it inflated her lungs. As her back arched and the air was expelled in a rush, she felt not the station spread out around her but the soft cushion of the MedLab bed she was laid out on.

She felt the tingle of her nerve endings, the rhythmic thump of her heart and the deep roaring in her ears as blood rushed to her brain. The muffled shouts that had been nothing more than distant echoes rose suddenly into an urgent din of voices.

A blur of colour swum in front of her as she opened her eyes. She blinked, focused, and as the colours separated and shapes took form, her eyes jerked in their sockets she jumped from one orderly to the next as they swarmed around the bed, registering their looks of astonishment and fear. She tried to turn her head but it was locked, rigid in a metal brace that encompassed her.

Her right arm felt numb and too heavy to move, but she found her left arm was free and, raising it, she clawed to free

herself while nurses endeavoured to hold her down. Only then did she notice the body slumped on the mattress. It lay face down but she recognized the black hair and the dark robes of the Anla’shok. As the nurses lifted the prone figure up, and she recognised the bearded face that lolled back in their arms, Susan Ivanova screamed and screamed until her lungs burned and her throat felt raw.

Susan Ivanova sat on the corner of the sofa with her knees pulled up to her chest. Her robe hung loosely over the medical gown and her hair was a mass of tangles. The lighting in her quarters was dimmed, except above the small, circular table where Doctor Stephen Franklin sat with her medical file spread out in front of him.

He had brought her something to eat but the meal remained untouched on the low table beside her as Ivanova stared blankly into the darkness. Rather than force her to have something, Franklin had left it until she was ready, and stayed to review the results of the recent tests he had performed on her. Leafing through the pages, he stopped and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He felt tired after the long journey from Mars to Babylon 5. Worse was the feeling of guilt from having failed to get back before it was too late.

When he finally arrived, Franklin had found the medical staff congregated in the corridor outside the MedLab, fearful of going back inside. The facility looked like it had been turned over. He had found Ivanova curled up on the floor, wracked with guilt, broken by the pain.

“What was that, the machine he used?” Ivanova asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

When she had come round, Ivanova had found a bracelet strapped around her wrist that was attached to a similar bracelet strapped to Marcus. She had reached out for him, grabbed his hand in hers and was shocked to feel the coldness in his dry skin. As Ivanova looked over to Franklin for an answer she absently rubbed her wrist where she had been connected to the alien device. They had talked about it already in MedLab, but Franklin had noticed the circular nature of her conversation and was happy to accommodate her.

“Remember that free clinic I set up in DownBelow for people who either didn’t have the credits for medication or just didn’t want to visit MedLab for treatment?” Franklin explained. “Well, one day the patients started to dry up. I discovered that instead of coming to me they were going to this woman, Laura Rosen.

“I assumed she was just some quack faith healer. But she actually was treating them. Not with any more of medication but with this machine she had bought from an alien trader. Obviously it didn’t come with a handbook of any kind but she had got it to work nevertheless. Except, it did so by transferring the life energy from one person to another.”

He took a breath and sat back in the chair.

“It came into my custody. I still didn’t know very much about it or even where it had come from. I wasn’t planning to

have anything to do with it, but when Garibaldi was shot in the back we used it to heal him. Sheridan hooked himself up while I monitored the transfer to make sure it was within acceptable limits. After that it was locked away. Sheridan and I knew about it but nobody else.”

“So how did he find out?” Ivanova asked.

“It appears he hacked into my personal records where I had made some mention of it,” Franklin said. “Nurse Jola said that when Marcus came in to MedLab with you he started shouting ‘Where is it?’ When they couldn’t help him, he locked them out and...”

His voice trailed off. He shrugged. Nobody had been there to monitor. Ivanova knew that would not have mattered. The Minbari physicians aboard the White Star had practically pronounced her dead. It had to be a life for a life.

“He never did anything by half,” Ivanova said, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “That stupid man. Every since he came to the station he did things his way. Sheridan and Delenn might have been in charge all this time, but somehow he always got his way.”

“And the singing!” Franklin added.

“He sang?”

“Incessantly. And badly. Days stuck in a cramped cargo hold with him on the way to Mars, listening to him massacre these operettas. It was like someone was repeatedly stamping on a cat’s tail.”

It had been a tortuous journey, but thinking back Franklin could not help but smile. He sat down on the edge of the sofa and turned to Ivanova.

“The first time I saw him he had been admitted to MedLab,”

Franklin said. “He was dehydrated, suffering from exhaustion and oxygen depravation. I turned my back on him for one moment and he was up and gone.”

“He was the first of the Rangers I was officially introduced to.” Ivanova laughed. “John did this big introduction in his office, apologising for having kept me out of the loop.”

She had explained to Sheridan, in no uncertain terms, that Marcus Cole was one of the Rangers, that in this sector they were under the joint control of him and Delenn, with Garibaldi acting has liaison.

“He was keen to show me his Ranger’s pin, the symbol of his faith to the Anla’shok,” she said, remembering the brooch that was always pinned to his lapel. “The gold he had to mine himself. To get the silver he had to convince one of the worker caste to mine it for him as a lesson in co-operation and communication, he said.

“The metals were forged in the white hot flames in Tuzanor using tools said to be handed down by Valen. Then they were cooled in three different bowls. The first was filled with holy water from Minbar, the second his Minbari inspector’s blood, and the last his blood. The blue stone was an Isil’Zha which were used by the Minbari religious caste in their icons.”

Ivanova wiped away the tears that glistened on her cheeks.

“He didn’t say it but I could tell he was so pleased and proud to have found somewhere where he could finally belong.”

She tried to smile but her face twisted in pain and she dropped her head in her hands.

Franklin leant forward and gently stroked the back of her head. Ivanova wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and shook her head.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Please.”

Franklin stood up, understanding that finally she wanted to be alone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny bottle. Unscrewing the cap, he tapped out two pills and set them down on the table in plain sight of Ivanova.

“Take these,” Franklin said, “they’ll help you sleep.”

Ivanova shook her head.

“I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”

“Where is he?” Ivanova asked as he gathered the pages together and closed the file.

Franklin hung his head, is face hidden in the shadows.

“Its been taken care of,” her said.

The medical staff had laid the Ranger out on one of the beds while Ivanova struggled to wrench herself free of the neck brace. Knowing what he had done, Franklin didn’t have to examine Marcus to know that he was dead, but for Ivanova’s sake he had gone through the procedure of having him put in cryogenic suspension.

“Have you heard anything about what’s happened with John?”

she asked as Franklin turned to go.

“Nothing yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”

He opened the door. Ivanova turned her face away from the light from the corridor.

“Take the pills. Get some sleep. Doctor’s orders,” Franklin instructed.

Alone in the room Ivanova looked at the pills. She leant her head against the back of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

“Lights out,” she said and the room was plunged into darkness.

TWO

Arms folded, Franklin stood and watched Ivanova eat.

“I can cut it up for you, if that helps,” he said as she unenthusiastically pushed the food around the plate, creating a multicoloured smear before bringing a forkful up to her mouth.

“If you don’t want to eat, you can pick out a bed in MedLab and get all the vitamins and nutrients you need there, through a tube,” he told her.

“You’re enjoying this,” Ivanova said, chewing glumly. Years before Franklin had put the whole command staff on a restricted diet and loved every minute of their suffering. Now, dressed in the black uniform Delenn had had specially made for each of them after Babylon 5 declared independence from Earth, there was a

certain sly grin on his face that Franklin was not even attempting to mask.

“Eat up, you’ll feel better,” he instructed. “There’s good news and bad news.”

“What is it?” Ivanova asked, lowering the fork. Franklin waved his finger at her to keep eating and waited until she had swallowed the food before answering.

“Sheridan’s out of EarthForce. They forced him to go,” he finally said.

“When did this happen? What did he say?”

“He hasn’t told me anything. It’s all over ISN. You’d know if you actually turned on your monitor and watched.”

“So what happens to us now?” she asked dropping the fork back on to the plate. “Gulag, for the rest of our lives.”

“He got us an amnesty. In writing. Which he gave straight to the press. We’re home free. And we’re heroes again,” Franklin told her. “Oh, and he promoted you to Captain before they showed him the door,” he mumbled as an aside in the hope that she would miss it.

“So we dodged another bullet. The amnesty is for the everyone?”

“Everyone on the station. Zack Allen, Corwin and everyone in C&C. All the Starfury pilots. Even that snotty maitre d’ in the Fresh Air Restaurant.”

“And nobody likes him,” Ivanova smiled. “So what’s John going to do, become a citizen?”

“Well, in other news The League of Non-Aligned Worlds has been dissolved,” Franklin said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“What the hell’s going on back there?”

“If you watched the news, you’d know this. It’s now the Interstellar Alliance and they’ve even got Earth to sign on. G’Kar gave quite a moving speech. He, Londo and Delenn are the new advisory council. And they’ve elected John the President.”

“John Sheridan’s the President of the Interstellar Alliance?”

“He’s President. You’re a Captain. And I’m still just a plain old Doctor,” Franklin said.

“I’m a Captain?” Ivanova said, her brows knitted.

“I thought I mentioned that. As his last act as an EarthForce Officer, John promoted you to Captain.”

“Captain...” Ivanova whispered to herself.

“Captain Susan Ivanova,” Franklin declared. He gestured to the room around her. “So all this is yours now. Not just this room but the whole station.”

The smile gradually slipped from Ivanova’s face as she looked around her.

After Franklin left her quarters, Ivanova washed and dressed and made the call that she knew would affect the rest of her life. It was a mistake to think of it in those terms. This was her new life now. She had changed. The universe had changed. Babylon 5 would change. And she knew that she couldn’t be a part of it.

When she made the call, the General had been pleased to hear from her and surprised by her request, but he had taken it in his stride and promised a quick reply. They may not want you, she had thought to herself as she paced her quarters, Then what do you do?

Nervously she waited for their response. Pacing the room, she turned on the news to watch events unfold on ISN. She heard talk of purges and reprisals, but found it difficult to concentrate otherwise.

“Right now we need all the good officers we can get,” the General had said and she clung on to those words. Two hours stretched out to an eternity. By the third hour she was beginning to wonder what other options she could take if they turned her down. Garibaldi was on his way from Mars, she had been informed. Sheridan and Delenn, aboard the White Star were less than a day out. She wanted the decision to be hers alone, not swayed by friendship or influenced by the guilt of responsibility.

Ivanova changed into the EarthForce uniform that had hung, neglected, in the back of the closet for the last year and a half. Deep blue with rich brown leather cuffs and a wide strip that ran down the front of the jacket, concealing the fasteners, Ivanova had brushed the fabric down, polished the EarthForce badge and gold duty stripe that ran across the left breast, and the rank insignia. The trousers felt loose at the waist and the jacket needed to be pulled in, but Ivanova was surprised at how comfortable she felt putting the clothes back on. She was relieved when the General eventually reappeared on the BabCom screen. There was no time for small talk as before. This time he was officious, respecting her rank but still addressing her as a subordinate. The assignment was being drawn up. Transit papers were being arranged. She would receive them in due course. It was certainly not what Ivanova expected and she tried to hide her shock. When she saluted, Ivanova could tell that he was pleased to have her back, and, oddly enough, she actually felt pleased to be back.

It took less time that she expected for Franklin to be back at her door.

“I just stopped by to make sure I didn’t leave any mindaltering medication lying around the last time I was here,” he said, surveying her quarters. “You’re transferring out?”

“Where did you hear that?” Ivanova asked.

“It’s on ISN already.”

“Then it must be true.”

“You couldn’t have waited and talked to us about it.”

“Stephen,” Ivanova said, “this was a decision I had to make for myself.

The bell chimed and she opened the door. Two workmen from the Dockers Guild entered pulling a narrow palette loaded with long-haul personal storage containers. They stacked them beside the sofa and handed Ivanova a clear plastic pouch filled with

EarthForce-stamped identity labels, customs forms and barcode strips.

Franklin looked around at the clothes laid out on the bed, the few books and personal effects piled up on the table.

“You can stay and help me pack if you’d like,” Ivanova said after she showed the dockers out. “There isn’t much, so it shouldn’t take long.”

“So it’s too late to try and talk you out of it?”

“Why would you want to do that?” Ivanova asked as she removed the lid of the first container and started to remove the small boxes arranged inside.

“Well, we’ll miss you for one thing,” Franklin said.

“You need to come up with a better answer than that.”

Franklin nodded.

“Michael’s back. He arrived a little while ago.”

Ivanova stopped sorting out the containers and stretched her back.

“You, me and Garibaldi. Dinner at the Fresh Air in three hours,” Ivanova said. She looked around at the meagre amount of possessions she had either brought with her when she was first posted to Babylon 5 or picked up over the years onboard the station. “Make that two hours. This won’t take long.”

Michael Garibaldi stood up from the table and smiled as Ivanova worked her way through the restaurant. He looked healthier than when she had last seen him, but the smile still worried her. It usually meant he had some foolish plan up his sleeve that would end up with someone getting into trouble.

“I hear you gave the order to have me shot on sight,” he said as they sat down.

“I did, didn’t I?” Ivanova remembered. “But only if you came back here to the station. How’s that working out?”

“So far, so good,” he replied.

It had been a tough year for all of them, but Garibaldi had possibly had it worse than others. Abducted by the Shadows who swarmed around the station, only retreating after Sheridan plunged a White Star armed with Gaim thermo-nuclear missiles into the heart of their homeworld, Z’Ha’Dum, Garibaldi had been turned over to the Psi Cops and reconditioned. First he had surrendered his position as Head of Security on Babylon 5. Back on Mars, he lured Sheridan into a trap and turned him over to EarthForce officials. That was the point at which an enraged Ivanova made him a marked man.

“My head became the official playground for telepaths,” he told her as they ordered from the menu.

Garibaldi Explained how, once he was of no further use to them, Psi Cop Al Bester had taken fiendish pleasure in showing him the lengths they had taken to screw up his life and turn him into their puppet. Trying to make amends, Garibaldi had been captured by the Mars resistance. They were ready to execute him until Garibaldi convinced Franklin to let Lyta Alexander get inside his head and prove he was telling the truth.

“That must have left you with one hell of a headache,”

Ivanova said over the entrée, shuddering at the thought of having a telepath rooting around inside her mind.

“Well the Mars guys did a good job of redirecting the pain away first,” Garibaldi said, rubbing his jaw at the memory. “And it’s better to have a scrambled head than a bullet through the brainpan any day of the week.”

He ran his hand up over his forehead and over the top of his bald head.

“If I had any hair left it would have gone white with shock. But we got Sheridan out, which was what mattered.”

“And he got himself stabbed doing that,” Franklin said. Garibaldi waved it away as nothing.

“I hear you got yourself pretty banged up,” Garibaldi said to Ivanova. “And I was sorry to hear about Marcus.”

Ivanova wiped her mouth with the napkin, nodded her thanks.

“So, we have a plan, Steve and I, to try and convince you to stay,” Garibaldi announced to lighten the sombre mood.

“Let’s hear it,” Ivanova said, folding her arms. Garibaldi looked over at Franklin for support but the doctor’s look told him he was alone on this one.

“Susan,” Garibaldi said with all sincerity, “pretty please stay here on Babylon 5 with us.”

Ivanova almost pitched forward laughing so hard. Even Franklin could not help but smile. Only Garibaldi remained straight-faced, confused that his gambit had not worked.

“That’s the best you can come up with?” Ivanova spluttered, choking back the laughter.

“Well, you didn’t give us much time,” Garibaldi admitted.

“You said that would work?” he told Franklin.

“I’m going to miss you guys,” Ivanova said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

“There, you see?” Garibaldi said to Franklin. The doctor simply closed his eyes and shook his head. Garibaldi shrugged and sat back in his chair. As if on cue, the waiters arrived with their main course. They spent the rest of the meal reliving old times.

Garibaldi reminded them of the Centauri’s Celebration of Life, staged during a week of religious ceremonies when the major races where encouraged to share their dominant beliefs.

“All those banging of gongs and the exotic dancers,”

Ivanova laughed.

“I mean, it was supposed to commemorate a victory over their war with the Xon, but it seemed to have evolved into an excuse to get hammered.”

“I can’t believe I missed that,” Franklin said. “Didn’t you once tell me he kissed the butt of some statue before he passed out?”

“Right on the table in front of Delenn. Right after he told her she was cute for a Minbari, bang, out he went.” Garibaldi said, laughing so much he almost tipped out of his chair.

“And then Vir triumphantly declared he had become one with his inner self,” Ivanova spluttered.

“And then there was the Minbari Rebirth Ceremony,”

Garibaldi added.

“With all those bells and the little pieces of red fruit,”

Ivanova said.

“Except of course what they don’t tell us was it can also double as a marriage ceremony,” Garibaldi told Franklin. “So it was possible that Jeff and Delenn got married. Depending, of course, on how serious the exchange of looks were.”

“I never get invited anywhere,” Franklin complained.

“Do you think John knows about that?” Garibaldi asked Ivanova.

They ate, drank, talked and laughed until Franklin eventually asked, “What are you going to tell Sheridan?”

“Pretty much the same thing I told you,” Ivanova had said as she gave the waiter her credit chit, after refusing to let either of them pay.