Energy crackled around the gargantuan structure. There appeared to be three of the black ships, although they were so huge that Vir had no idea of what the crew complement might be. They hung above the jumpgate, just hovering there, as if they were communing with it somehow.
Then the power of the jumpgate flared, greater than before. And Vir fancied that, somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear something cry out, and the cry was in turn answered. Never in his life had he heard-and not heard-anything quite as eerie. The energy in the gate grew greater still, and the ships began to tremble in sympathy with it. It was as if, in some bizarrely perverse manner, they were making love to one another, energy building upon energy until a release would be achieved.
What a time to think of sex, Vir’s mind scolded him. In a sick sort of way, he might actually have found it mildly amusing.
That was the moment when Vir was yanked off his feet.
The gate let out a roar then, like a great pouncing beast, and Vir wondered if he were about to witness another unleashing of the gate’s power and energy. He considered two things, rather belatedly. First, if that was genuinely what was going to happen, then Vir had put himself squarely on the firing line, and might well be incinerated within seconds. And second, he remembered the predictions of Lady Morella, which stated that Vir would rule after Londo. Londo himself had said that the predictions as much as made Vir invulnerable . Vir, however, wasn’t feeling especially invulnerable at the moment.
He began to tumble toward the gate, rock and debris being pulled all around him. There was a twisted girder sticking up from the ground, and it seemed fairly well embedded. In any event, Vir certainly wasn’t in a position to be fussy. He threw his arms around the girder, held on for dear life as the newly opened gate continued to roar with animal fury. Beyond the coruscating energies that the gate was unleashing, Vir thought he could see … hyperspace? Or something else? Yes, yes, definitely something else. He had gone through jumpgates enough times, and knew what to expect. This was like nothing he had ever seen.
The incredible draw of the gate started to lift Vir’s feet clear off the ground, yanking him horizontal. His legs thrashed about, seeking purchase, and he managed to snag the toe of one boot around the girder. With all his strength he pulled himself to a vertical position, wrapping his legs around his anchor.
There were more ships than just the three he had seen before, more and more descending every moment. Five, six, ten … he lost count. They entered the giant, crackling energy gate, and with each passing, he once again heard that uncanny, frightening cry in his head, as if something within the gate was welcoming home the ships that were passing through it.
The ground around him was littered with bodies. On the other side of the gate was something so dark, so evil … Great Maker, how could he have thought, for even a moment, that he was too tired to be afraid?
He knew that the definition of a brave man was one who did what needed to be done, despite his fears. But he had no definition for a man who was not only paralyzed with fear, but also in fact had no idea what to do at all. The only term he could come up with was “out of one’s league.”
In his fevered imagination, he thought he could hear the voices deep within the gate actually speaking to him. They were laughing, laughter mixed in with the words, and they were crying out their contempt for his ambitions as if to say, “Pathetic little creature … thinking that you-you of all people-could save the galaxy? What makes you more worthy of living than all those around you, who died in witnessing the power before you?”
“Nothing. Nothing makes me more worthy,” said Vir, and he knew it to be true.
And with that admission, the planet seemed to give up on him. The gate suddenly appeared to increase its efforts, determined that Vir would no longer defy it. The bits and pieces of body parts that lay strewn about the area were sucked in. The girder was torn loose from its moorings, and the jolt dislodged Vir’s grip … not that holding onto the no-longer-anchored girder would have done him a bit of good. Vir tumbled over and over, limbs flailing, and the roaring of the gate reached out to him in triumph.
When suddenly there was another, smaller hole, directly in front of him.
He realized at the last moment that it was a small ship, and the exterior hatch was irised open, hanging squarely in his path. Tumbling end-over-end as he was, he was unable to see anything clearly, although he thought he caught just the briefest glimpse of Finian, standing just inside the hatch. Then he was in the ship, his forward momentum carrying him to the far bulkhead, and he slammed against it.
For a long moment he couldn’t move. He lay there in a tangle of arms and legs, twisted like a contortionist. And sure enough, there was Finian, except he wasn’t taking the time to determine how Vir was holding up. Instead he was dashing toward the front of the ship, shouting, “Kane! He’s in! We’ve got him! Let’s go!”
Kane said something Vir couldn’t make out, and he heard both Finian and Gwynn exclaim in shock, “What?!” Suddenly the ship lurched once more. As tossed around as Vir was, he knew with utter certainty which way they were going: toward the gate.
It was obvious that Gwynn and Finian were also aware of that, as Vir stumbled into the front section of the ship. They were standing on either side of Kane, who was calmly manning the controls. At least, that’s what Vir thought he was doing, but he couldn’t be quite sure because the controls were unlike anything that Vir had ever seen. Everything was utterly smooth, with simple, glistening, black panels. He couldn’t see any separation between anything. He wouldn’t have had a clue as to what to touch where, but Kane was operating with apparent sure-handedness.
“This is an information-gathering mission, Kane!” Gwynn said for what sounded like the hundredth time. “We’re not supposed to be heroes!”
“Or martyrs,” added Finian. His customary defense of Kane seemed to have been abandoned.
“I’ve no wish to be either one … but I’m doing what I must,” said Kane.
Gwynn drew back her fist, looking ready to do something rather unmagical with it, such as caving in Kane’s head. If that, however, was what she was going to do, she waited too long. Because then the gate was right there, right in front of them, and there was simply no way to avoid it.
The ship spiraled through, elongating, and then collapsing back on itself, as Vir heard the voices laughing at him ….
* * *
A deathly silence fell over the dig site of K0643, broken only by the occasional howling of a less active wind, and the distant sobbing of one legless Centauri who was watching the blood seep out of himself. Miraculously, he had not been hauled away by the force of the gate, having been wedged against an outcropping and unexpectedly held there by the natural formation of the rock.
His name was Ciril, and he had looked forward to being able to defy Death, punch him in the guts.
His enthusiasm for that meeting waned, along with his life. And when his crying finally stopped, only the wind was left.
- CHAPTER 3 -
Vir knew perfectly well what a trip through hyperspace was supposed to be like, and this wasn’t it.
There were great similarities in the look and the feel. But even to Vir, who wasn’t exactly a battle-hardened veteran space jockey, it felt different. As opposed to a journey through hyperspace in which one guided oneself via the use of carefully mapped pathways, this voyage felt as if the ship was somehow being propelled in a specific direction. If they had been in a planetary atmosphere, he would have said that they had a strong tailwind.
“Where are we going?” Vir said.
Gwynn didn’t even bother to look at him, but Finian cast a glance and muttered, “Not just where. Why?”
“Because we’re supposed to,” Kane said. He sounded rather detached from the entire matter, even though he was nominally guiding the ship.
“We’re supposed to?” Gwynn looked to Finian in obvious hope of some sort of explanation, but his helpless shrug indicated
that he was as in the dark as she. “Are you saying you’ve been given some sort of… of separate instructions?”
Not for the first time, Vir was struck by the difference between these cloisters and the techno-mages he and Londo had encountered in the past. His current companions didn’t maintain the constant air of superiority, the portentousness that usually accompanied a techno-mage’s every word.
Of the three of them, Vir suspected Gwynn was the closest to having the requisite arrogance down pat. But her inexperience was allowing her obvious frustration to bubble over, most likely due to the unusual circumstances into which they had been thrust.
“Well?” she prompted when she decided Kane hadn’t replied quickly enough.
Kane turned and looked at her then, and there was something in his eyes. His voice sounded as if it were coming from another time and place, perhaps even another dimension, as he said, “I have seen it.”
At that moment, Vir was reminded of what Kane had once said to him, after one particularly nebulous comment: “I was going for cryptic.”
“You succeeded,” Vir had said to him. Now, after all this time had passed, he couldn’t help but feel that Kane had succeeded once more. For once again, Vir had no idea what he was talking about.
Of significance, however, were the reactions he prompted from Gwynn and Finian. The comment obviously had meaning to them. It truncated all discussion, brought the entire disagreement to a screaming halt. Instead, all Gwynn asked-sounding not unimpressed-was “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.” It struck Vir as a bit amusing; Gwynn was acting as if she was giving permission for something in which she had no actual say. Or perhaps … perhaps she was just saying to Kane that she understood a bit more what had led him to propel them into the jumpgate, rather than attempting to get safely away.
Finian likewise was nodding. Vir just wished that he could be as sanguine. He wanted to ask just precisely what it was that Kane had seen, but he had the distinct impression that any such inquiries wouldn’t be welcomed.
Suddenly, the ship lurched, and for a moment Vir was certain that they had been struck by some sort of blast attack. But Kane said with confidence, “We’re coming out of the funnel.”
“Funnel? What funnel? I never heard of a funnel,” said Vir.
“You wouldn’t have. It’s theoretical,” Kane told him.
“Ah. Of course.” Vir didn’t have a clue to what Kane was talking about.
Finian, however, saw fit to take pity on him. “It’s Shadow tech,” he explained. “Think of it as a sort of wormhole within hyperspace. A subsystem or subroutine, if you will. One beginning point, one end point, no detours. When you use a funnel , it renders you undetectable to any other ships that might be traveling through hyperspace at the time. Limited utility, but handy if you want to build a fast path to somewhere.”
“And where would the somewhere be? At this moment, I mean?” said Vir.
“I don’t know,” Kane admitted. “It will take a few minutes to determ-“
His voice trailed off. He was looking ahead through the main viewing port, and Finian and Gwynn were doing likewise . Vir turned to see just what it was that had grabbed everyone’s full attention. He had no idea what he was supposed to see, but considering the reactions of the mages -what he did see certainly wasn’t at all what he would have expected.
“Nothing,” he said. “I … don’t see anything.”
And indeed he did not. They had dropped into normal space, but there was absolutely nothing ahead of them. A good deal of nothing, in fact.
“Nothing is what you’re supposed to see,” Gwynn informed him.
“Ah. Good. Then I’m right on top of things, I guess.”
“Take us in slowly, Kane,” Gwynn continued, as if Vir hadn’t spoken, and indeed for all Vir knew, she hadn’t even heard him. “We’re a relatively small ship, and it’s not as if they’re expecting us. With any luck, we can escape detection entirely.”
“And without any luck?” Vir asked.
The look they shot his way was all the response he required . Unfortunately, he still didn’t know what was going on. Clearly there was some sort of imminent threat, some immediate danger … but he wasn’t seeing it at all. Furthermore , the dark vessels that had preceded them had vanished entirely. Where could they have gone? And what was this threat? Nothing seemed to be presenting-
Then, after a moment, he looked again … and he saw it. Or rather, he didn’t see it.
The stars were there … but they weren’t.
The area of space ahead of them was-there was no other way to express it interrupted. It was broken by a patch miles across, where the stars didn’t appear to be shining. There was, indeed, nothing ahead of them, but it was a nothing that was most definitely something. It didn’t have any sort of geometric shape to it. It was so large, so irregular, that even though he could detect the outline with his unaided eyes, he still couldn’t get any sort of mental image as to what it actually looked like. But at least he knew it looked like something . Or nothing.
His head was starting to hurt.
“You see it now,” Finian said with faint approval. Vir might have been imagining it, but he felt as if Finian was actually rooting for him in a way.
“What is it? Or maybe that should be, What isn’t it?”
“It’s a null field,” Finian replied. “Think of it as almost a sort of portable black hole … except you can go in and out. It absorbs all light and all manner of sensory or energy probes. It can utterly convince instrumentation that it’s not there. And people who encounter it won’t bother to see with their own eyes, because they’ve become so heavily dependent on technology…”
“So says the techno-mage,” Vir commented.
There was silence for a moment, then Finian said with a small smile, “Touche.”
“So do we go in?” Gwynn asked Kane. Vir was mildly surprised; until that point everything from Gwynn’s attitude had given him the impression that she felt she should be in charge. Yet now she seemed to be deferring, however nominally, to Kane.
Kane simply nodded.
Vir wished at that point that he had a weapon.
“Here.”
As if reading Vir’s mind, Kane reached into the folds of his cloak and extracted something solid and round, about the size of Vir’s fist. Vir turned it over and over, trying to discern some hidden meaning. Nothing immediately presented itself.
“It’s a rock,” Vir said.
“That is correct.”
“Is there any particular reason you’ve given me this?”
“I thought you might need a weapon. I suspect you did, as well.”
“Yes, but I…” He stared at it in confusion. “A rock? Why a rock?”
“Nature’s weapon. Really, the only weapon that nature intended humankind to have,” said Kane. “You will do well with it.”
“Thanks. And here I didn’t get you anything,” muttered Vir, shoving the rock into his coat pocket and reminding himself , not for the first time, that hooking up with the techno-mages might not have been the brightest idea he’d ever had.
There was silence as they approached the null field. The techno-mages didn’t appear to be especially concerned, but Vir was reasonably certain that it was simply a facade they had adopted. They simply had no intention of coming across as apprehensive when an outside observer such as Vir was present.
“Time to null field … eleven seconds,” Kane announced. Vir glanced around the control board and saw no sign of a chronometer. Yet somehow he didn’t doubt the accuracy of Kane’s time estimate. “Ten … nine … eight…”
Vir steadied himself and, for a moment, thought about requesting that they turn the damned ship right around and head back to the excavation world. They had discovered something hidden by the Shadows; something that would likely have serious consequences once the technology therein was employed. Rather than risking their necks, perhaps the intelligent thing
to do was get out safely and alert …
Who?
Alert Londo? But Londo had evicted him from Centauri Prime. It was possible that, after a period of time, tempers would cool and relationships could be normalized, but that time certainly wasn’t when Vir was still dusting off dirt left over from his stay in a Centauri dungeon.
Tell Sheridan? The Alliance? This Shadow technology had been unearthed as a result of a Centauri dig. Vir knew exactly what the perceptions would be: that he, Vir, was acting as an informant against his people. And that the Centauri themselves-particularly the government-had, in fact, allied themselves with fearsome creatures who had served even more fearsome masters. The problem was that all of that might very well be true. But Centauri Prime certainly didn’t need that information getting out, causing even further deterioration of their relationships with every other sentient race in the Alliance.
No, the Shadow influence, whatever it was, had to be expunged quietly, from the inside. If the Alliance even suspected that the Centauri were in league with servants of the Shadows, they might show up to bomb Centauri Prime once more, and this time they might not cease their efforts until the Centauri Homeworld was nothing but uninhabited rock.
Centauri Prime had to be kept clear of this situation. Vir could take no chance that this … this whatever-it-was might be linked to the Centauri Republic. The consequences might be fatal and he, Vir, would be responsible.
But neither could he simply turn away and ignore what he was now a party to. If this was Shadow technology, about to be employed against other races, how could anyone of conscience stand by and do nothing? And, he realized with a shudder, there was no guarantee that this technology wasn’t going to be used against Centauri Prime itself.
He muttered something and Gwynn glanced at him, even as Kane continued the countdown. “What did you say?” she asked.
“Something my mother used to say,” Vir told her. “An old saying: `One choice is no choice.’”