The Kaikeen defense platforms fired at the ships, but their blasts had no effect. Only a handful of Kaikeen ships were in the air, and those were quickly being sliced apart. The Kaikeen had been taken by surprise. From high in the atmosphere, the Shadow ships released bombs, just as they had done on Soom.
Far below, great clouds of destruction spread over the land. Ten billion lived there. Here he was, with his tunnel vision, on his narrow-minded mission to kill three people, when the entire galaxy was in flames. Was he supposed to ignore that?
Perhaps John Sheridan had found a weapon against the Shadows; perhaps he could win a battle or two. But he did not have the power to defeat them. With Galen's help, though, maybe he would. With Galen's power on his side, at least John would have a chance. Galen could go to the Kaikeen capital planet right now. All he need do was select a course change on the menu of options before him. He could be there within an hour – perhaps not in time to save its inhabitants, but in time to catch the Shadow ships, in time to engage them.
When the Shadows struck at the center of the shell-shaped region, Galen could be there alongside John Sheridan and the rest, waiting for them. Elizar and Razeel would certainly come with the Shadows, eager to show off their new weapon in this major attack.
Galen could find them, kill them. He could seize ship after ship in a boiling rush of spheres, could crush chaos once and for all, so that it could never hurt anyone else again. And after that, after he had given himself so completely to destruction, after the great rush of energy had possessed him, seized him, filled him with its brilliant incandescence – after he had become exactly what the Shadows had intended – could he really stop himself, as he had sworn? Would he really want to?
Blaylock was right: The temptations were great. He could not allow himself to lose sight of the narrow task he had set for himself. He could conjure destruction perhaps a handful of times without risking loss of control. He must not begin until he was ready to end. He was not fit to be a major force for good in this war. If he was to play any role, it must be a minor one.
He couldn't go near the Shadows' upcoming attack; he had to find Elizar and Razeel before then. But if they didn't stumble into view of one of his probes, or reveal themselves through some incident on the news-feeds, he had only one idea of how he might find them before the attack. He didn't even know if it was possible. He had to make it work, though, had to stop them before they used his spell. In the attempt, at least, he would kill Morden.
Continuing their bombing, the Shadow ships wheeled over the Kaikeen planet, its main continent lost now in a great cloud of dust. Resistance had been wiped out, but the ships would continue until they had annihilated their appointed targets.
Anna had been taught never to break off, not until the enemy was utterly destroyed.
Galen crossed his arms over his chest. He must not go. He must not go. He broke the connection, turned his mind away.
His ship activated its jump engines once again. Following the instructions Blaylock and Herazade had left, it opened a jump point amidst the roiling red currents. With a great rush of speed he was sucked into it. For a moment the ship's sensors went blank, and he lost all sense of direction or movement. Then the calm blackness of normal space surrounded him. After a moment's thought, he recorded his coordinates as directed, though he had no expectation of returning to this place.
Now he had a decision to make. He had information that might save lives. Perhaps he could do some small good as he completed this final task, if the idea was not ludicrous. Two people needed to receive the information he possessed.
Galen would rather have kept to himself, which best helped him retain his equilibrium. One of the two, he knew, would be an unsettling force. Nonetheless, he would make the contact. He composed the message.
We need to meet.
The FTL relay aboard his ship quickly routed the message to the relay nearest the recipient, and then to Alwyn himself. In a few seconds, the reply came.
And I should trust that this is you because...?
Because I still tell you that your golden dragon is brilliant.
But it IS brilliant,
Alwyn wrote.
And when have you ever said that?
Your golden dragon is brilliant.
Hell, it's great to hear from you. I knew you'd come to your senses eventually. We've got to have a party. Get stinking drunk and have some fun. Reminisce about old times. Catch up on things. Where shall this debauchery occur?
Galen smiled slightly. Alwyn hadn't changed at all.
A place you visited three months ago. Meet you there.
* * *
As they entered her, Anna watched with mixed wonder and terror. One was a liberator, with rows of brilliant pinpoint eyes, shining black skin. Its six legs, tapering at their bases to points, reminded her of her own beautiful limbs.
She had carried liberators inside her only once before, soon after she'd made her first kill. It was a great honor, and a great responsibility. The liberators had to be protected against any harm. With their ancient knowledge they made everything possible. They had begotten her and all the machines. They had developed the First Principles: chaos through warfare; evolution through bloodshed; perfection through victory.
From them issued the joy of the Great War. Yet she had another memory of them – disjointed and dazzling and filled with a shredding screaming brilliant agony: the liberators had taught her obedience.
With the liberator was the Human Justin. The other two were technicians, tall and slim, with grayish skin, bulbous heads, large black eyes, and narrow mouths.
Anna and her sisters hated and feared the technicians. They were necessary, on the rare occasions when the machine could not maintain itself, for repair. Wherever they went, pain followed. They moved within her, silent, approaching her core.
They had brought with them some sort of floating table. Anna did not like the look of it.
Why are they here?
Anna asked the Eye.
Your cooperation is critical for victory,
the Eye said.
Remain calm.
The greatest joy is the ecstasy of victory.
The liberator and the others gathered around her central processing unit: her brain, her heart. It was a structure marvelous in its simplicity, a rectangular-shaped receptacle filled with gelatinous black matter veined with silver. What did they want? Her interior held no weapons. Desperation filled her.
What are you doing?
she asked Justin.
Justin looked up at her brilliant, shifting skin.
"We need your help, Anna. In a different form than what you've become accustomed to."
He nodded to the technicians.
"Don't be afraid. We won't harm you."
The two technicians leaned forward, plunging their arms into her brain. Then they were pulling something up out of the black matter. As the vague shape rose from the darkness, suddenly the connections inside her were failing. One after another they broke, interrupting her access to different parts of her body. Frantically she re-formed them, but they broke again just as quickly.
The machine's beat raced. All of her orifices opened. She was losing control. Her link to the Eye was severed.
Stop!
she told Justin.
Stop them!
she cried to the liberator.
She extended the skin of the chamber's wall, reached out for the closest technician. But as her glistening black skin wrapped around him, she could not feel his puny body; she had lost sensation. Then she could no longer see, or hear. She was trapped in silent blackness, disoriented, the march of her beat stumbling, erratic.
She tightened her grip, hoping she crushed the technician. Connections were slipping away. The processes of cleansing and circulation fell out of her reach. The great balls of destruction, the fierce mouth that shrieked the red rapture – she could no longer feel them. One after another, pieces of her self dropped away into blackness.
Pain seized her partial body, shot out with astonishing intensity along her arms – a massive systems failure. They were pulling her brain, her heart from her body. They were ripping her apart. The tireless, invulnerable machine was failing. She screamed.
After a few moments, the pain faded, withdrew. The systems fell silent. The machine could not live without its heart. Without its heart, the beat slowed. Stilled. She searched for her connection to the machine. She could not sense it at all. But she could not continue without it; it was impossible. She and the machine were one. The machine was so beautiful, so elegant. It had its needs, and she fulfilled them. Without its needs, what would she do? Without the machine, what was she?
She was choking, suffocating. She spasmed with an odd expulsion of air, and then she could breathe, differently than she had before, executing a strange, laborious movement.
She remembered now a time, long ago, when she had been separated from the machine. The machine had been destroyed, and they had removed her from its corpse, had joined her to another machine. That must be what they intended. Yet she had sensed nothing wrong with the machine, no reason for them to take her from it.
Still, she reassured herself that she and the machine would soon be one. Only in fulfilling the needs of the machine, only in carrying out the instructions of the Eye did her life have meaning. Only when she was whole could she know the thrill of battle, the ecstasy of victory. Restoring her must be their plan, for what other goal could they have?
DECEMBER 2260
C
HAPTER 9
Through the small window of the single-occupant trading vessel, Galen watched as Babylon 5 drew closer. He had left his mage ship in a backwater, taken a transport to the next system, and rented the trading vessel there.
Though his visit to the station would be short, he wanted to minimize any chance that the Shadows would discover his identity before he desired it.
The station's five-mile length was shrouded in the shadow of the nearby planet. The lights lining the cylindrical structure seemed little more than pinpoints in the darkness. He had visited Babylon 5 many times through the relay and probes the mages had left behind. Like a ghost, he had invaded the station's systems, had peered out from its security cameras. He would no longer be watching from that detached perspective.
The station's Command and Control sent him an approach vector, and with the clumsy controls he altered the ship's course, and passed down the dark cylinder to its end.
Now that he had finally reached the station, he felt hesitant to enter. He didn't belong here, at this source of light, where Sheridan and the only chance of fighting the Shadows survived. If he lost control here, he could destroy all hope.
Facing the end of the cylinder, he matched rotation with the station. Command and Control sent final clearance, and he directed his ship forward toward the Main Axis Port, the lights from within glowing like the grimacing mouth of a jacks-o'-lantern. The personnel in C&C did not know what they were admitting. He carried the contagion of chaos.
The ship passed through the Port's dark maw and into the huge lighted passage. Around him moved other ships, filled with other beings. Of all those here, he must kill only one. Whether he was successful or not, he dared stay no longer than a day. The dangers were too great.
He followed the docking procedures. The ship settled into its private bay, the doors above closing, and he shut down the engines, went to the side air lock. He had taken the identity of a self-employed trader.
As he waited for the docking bay to pressurize, he straightened his jacket. He had no mirror; he dipped his finger into a packet of probes in his pocket, stuck several of the dustlike grains on the wall beside the air lock. Through them, he checked his appearance. He would not use a full-body illusion; the energy could well draw the Shadows to him.
Fed had done well. The shoulder-length wavy wig, while not something Galen would have chosen, radically changed his appearance. The dirty-blond hair was styled with a ragged line of bangs that ran just above his eyes. Galen had allowed his beard to grow for a few days, so a dark stubble covered his cheeks. Fed's clothing selections were uniformly outrageous. Galen wore a golden suit with a ruffled lavender shirt and a thick golden necklace.
He looked like a stim dealer or – he didn't know what. Most certainly he did not look like himself. He would have preferred a disguise more compatible with his own personality, as he had used in the past, but he and Morden had met twice before; Galen could not risk being recognized. He wondered if even Alwyn would know him. But Alwyn would have studied the scheduled arrivals, would have deduced which ship was his, and would be expecting him in disguise.
Galen had done the same to learn under which identity Alwyn was traveling. He had arrived in a sleek cruiser the day before, as Thomas Alecto. He, too, avoided using his mage ship for most of his travels. As the Shadows' presence had spread, he'd become more and more careful to conceal his identity as a mage.
Galen accessed the probe on G'Leel's shoulder, found that she was standing in the busy customs area with Alwyn, awaiting his arrival. Though Alwyn was in disguise, Galen recognized him instantly by the sagging skin beneath his eyes. Those bags had always suggested a softness in his personality, one that Alwyn could often display, yet one that could vanish instantly when his anger was aroused.
His receding silvery hair was covered with his own wig, black hair short and slicked back. He had darkened his eyebrows as well, giving himself a more severe and dramatic look. Prosthetics gave him a sharper nose, squarer chin.
He wore a subdued brown business suit, which snugged around his middle. Alwyn looked toward the security checkpoint where passengers entered the station, and an expectant half smile lit his face. Galen broke the contact.