June 22nd 2263, White Star Intrepide, Hyperspace
The flash of Tilanna’s bare white legs beneath her robe made Shaw glance instinctively upwards before more ... spiritual reflexes kicked in. He chuckled to himself and shook his head. For all his Anla’Shok training, for all the rituals of self-discipline, for all the time his tutors had forced him to think more and more like a Minbari, he felt a little proud that a strong trait of red-blooded humanity remained.
Keen on Shaw learning the inner workings of a White Star, Badeau assigned him to the company of Tilanna, a young female Minbari who led the maintenance crew of the
Intrepide
. All the maintenance crew were Religious Caste, but while Shaw had spent a great deal of time alongside this section of Minbari society in his training, he had never before found himself in this truly unique position. Conducting regular preventative maintenance on the ship’s molecular disruptors, Tilanna decreed they would replace the plasma conduits that formed the main power feed to the weapon system. Hence the two working in a narrow service tube that extended upward at a sharp angle. Balanced on rungs built into the surface of the tube, Tilanna worked on the conduits while Shaw remained just below her, passing tools and parts as required.
Tilanna called his name and handed down a spent flexible magnetic pipe. As she did not look down while doing this, her focus already on the next problem, Shaw allowed himself the luxury of a longer stare as he grabbed the pipe.
Well, if Minbari women were good enough for the President of the ISA, why not?
Sabine’s voice over the ship’s intercom broke into his meandering thoughts. ‘Michael, get up here. New orders.’
‘On my way,’ he called out. He rapped on the side of the service tube to get Tilanna’s attention. She scrambled down, then looked at him with the unflappable serenity that members of the Religious Caste seemed to be able to summon at will.
‘Captain’s orders, I have to go.’
‘Of course, Mr. Shaw,’ said Tilanna. ‘I can summon someone else to aid me here. However, I will postpone the next phase of preventative maintenance, allowing you to examine the deeper mysteries of the neutron laser when you return to my supervision.’
Shaw shaped his fingers into a triangle before his chest and bowed, a gesture that was instantly returned by Tilanna. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Despite any physical attraction he might feel towards this slightly built Minbari, he was genuinely interested in learning more about the White Star’s main weapon system, said to be more powerful than those fitted to Minbari Sharlin war cruisers, though shorter ranged. ‘I look forward to that.’
On the bridge, the holographic display shimmered with a planet Shaw did not immediately recognise, as orbital information scrolled alongside it. Sabine turned in her chair as he entered.
‘Ah, Michael, witness our next mission. We just received orders from Minbar. This is Coutor--know anything about it?’
A not-so-subtle test of his galactic knowledge, but Shaw rose to it. ‘Err, well, it’s a Centauri world, near Minbari space. I remember stories of an ancient alien race disappearing, leaving their technology behind. Which the Centauri promptly scavenged. Oh, and I remember a report on nomads living in the southern hemisphere, something about abandoned slaves.’
‘Good enough,’ Badeau nodded. ‘We are not interested in slaves today though. Our old friends in House Kaado have a few operations here, and Intelligence wants us to do a sweep of the planet to detect any new activity since our last reconnaissance of the system. If we see anything unusual, we are to get as much information as possible, landing planet-side if need be. We are to avoid contact with Centauri military forces. Then it is on to Babylon 5 to escort the new Ipsha ambassador to Minbar.’
‘All in a day’s work.’
‘Just so. We will be jumping in-system within three hours. Use that time to plot the optimum entry point and course to the second planet. Assume a full defensive spread of Centauri mines and a battlegroup within an hour’s reach of the planet.’
Shaw turned from the display to stare at her. ‘I didn’t know Coutor was heavily defended. I thought the Centauri had all but forgotten this world.’
‘They have,’ she said, smiling. ‘This is a test.’
Aye, Captain.’ Feeling slightly foolish, Shaw relieved the Minbari at his station and began integrating known data on Coutor with likely scenarios for an aggressive defence. Accounting for the gravity wells that existed in the system and the current orbital positions of the planets, Shaw soon worked up three likely entry points and ingress routes before spending the next two hours refining his plans to come up with the single optimum flight plan.
When he felt ready, Shaw presented his plans to Badeau, who insisted he forward it to the holographic screen. After answering a few pertinent questions without consulting his data, the Minbari helmsmen were ordered to make a few corrections and the flight plan programmed into the
Intrepide
’s computers. Badeau made no outward comment, but Shaw felt she was at least satisfied with his work.
A blue jump point blinked open in the Coutor system, and the
Intrepide
flew straight toward the second planet. While the White Stars lacked the full stealth suite of most Minbari warships, it was still difficult to detect, and Shaw’s flight plan did much to maximise their cover. This would only work up to a point though, and every crew member on the
Intrepide
knew that the Centauri would detect them sooner or later.
The sleek White Star crossed the gulf of space between the jump point and the second planet orbiting Coutor’s star in minutes. On the bridge, every crew member was alert as the planet grew in the viewport. A desolate place of reds and browns, patches of dark organic matter stained vast areas of the surface. As they closed, they witnessed volcanic eruptions concentrated around the equatorial region visible to the naked eye.
Badeau called to the Minbari working at the stations behind her. ‘Work quickly. We only want one pass. Scan for all structures in the northern hemisphere and compare it to our records. Highlight anything new and send it to the main display immediately. Michael, with me. Within seconds of any sites being displayed, we must determine if the
Intrepide
is to land or not. Any hesitation and we’ll be out of low orbit and have to make another pass.’
The holographic display shimmered down in front of the main viewport once more but remained blank for several minutes as the White Star began to decelerate and enter low orbit around the planet. Shaw was aware of a great deal of activity behind him and did not envy the Minbari who had to detect, record and process the scan in time to meet Sabine’s orders.
Then a list of inhabited sites began scrolling up the right-hand side of the display, all those that matched the previous reconnaissance flight into the system. They were colour-coded to denote whether they had expanded or contracted, but none had changed to a degree significant enough to gain their immediate interest. As the list began to reach the top of the display, new information started to appear on the left side, recording data from the scanners marking a new development. Shaw began to read the salient information aloud.
‘Outpost, 48 miles from magnetic pole, small, standard pre-fab design, pulse generator, no subterranean network detected, life signs. . . nil.’ Shaw frowned. ‘Captain, if this is a new site, why is nobody there?’
And 700 miles from the nearest settlement as well. I think we have it,’ said Badeau. ‘Scanners, any other sites on our horizon?’ Upon hearing a negative, she ordered the helmsmen, ‘Take us in.’
Not wanting to give any passive Centauri scan a chance to home in on their position, the helmsmen spared no thought to comfort as they changed course and plummeted towards the surface like a meteor. The White Star’s gravitic drive managed to flatten the worst of the atmospheric buffeting, but Shaw retreated to his station in order to have something solid to hold on to. Even Badeau held the arms of her chair tightly during the descent.
As the White Star neared the small outpost, the helmsmen bled off speed by pulling the nose of the ship upwards in a high-g manoeuvre that would have pulverised the crew of an Earth ship. Still shedding speed, they swung the
Intrepide
around, allowing other crew to scan the outpost and verify no obvious dangers before beginning the landing cycle. Though the hull of the White Star would have seared naked flesh as it dissipated the heat generated by atmospheric friction, the ship still settled on its landing gear with a grace few other vessels in the galaxy could match. Waving her hand to indicate Shaw should follow, Badeau leapt from her chair to make her way to the boarding ramp.
Though the atmosphere was unpleasantly breathable to Centauri, it contained traces of sulphur heavy enough to incapacitate a human within minutes, forcing the two Rangers to wear face-hugging filter masks. They walked cautiously, alert for any automated defence systems or guards hidden from their scans.
Shaw noticed a great deal of similarities between this outpost and the one on Quadrant 37, constructed from similar pre-fabricated sections. This one, however, was much smaller. Given the Centauri’s love of comfortable dwellings, he could not imagine any more than a dozen working here at any one time. They approached an entry port, and Badeau nodded to Shaw. He fished his datapad from within his robes and, sliding a maintenance port open, connected it to the outpost’s exterior security systems via a universal interface. He quickly deduced that if anything important occurred here recently, the Centauri relied on the outpost’s remote location rather than expensive security hardware to maintain secrecy. Within seconds, he cracked the code and sent a command to unlock the hatch. It slid open with a hiss, permitting entry. The two Rangers found themselves in a tiny airlock.
‘Good,’ said Badeau, a little muffled. ‘If everything is still working, we can pressurise this airlock and get rid of these damned masks.’
Shaw had no problem with his mask, reflecting that he endured far worse in recent training sessions, but he quickly hooked his datapad to the airlock’s systems and began the pressurising cycle. Checking the atmosphere beyond the second hatch as cool air swirled around him, he nodded at Badeau and removed his mask. Within a minute, they had the inner door open and stepped into the outpost proper.
The outpost’s systems were turned off or disabled, but emergency lighting gave an eerie feel to the place that was matched by the silence. The only sounds were the footsteps of the Rangers themselves. The spotlessly clean main access corridor terminated just thirty metres ahead. Shaw took a step forward, but Badeau caught his arm.
‘Take another look, ‘ she warned. ‘What do you see?’
Shaw felt a growing sense of unease, which Badeau’s words had done nothing to quell, and he studied the corridor once more. The grated floor allowed easy access to the distributed power and information networks that threaded the outpost, the ceiling bland and featureless aside from the emergency lighting fixtures interspersed between their more powerful but darkened neighbours. Nothing seemed out of place. Then his eyes focussed on a small patch of soot at the end of the corridor.
‘PPG blast!’ he exclaimed. ‘And another, there,’ pointing to a few metres away on the floor.
‘Stay alert,’ Badeau ordered. ‘We’ll sweep this place room by room. I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary.’
As Badeau took her datapad and connected a small sensor array to its top bracket, Shaw unclipped his Denn’Bok fighting pike but did not extend it. The heavy metal shaft felt comforting in his hand and did much to alleviate his nervousness. With a single shake of his hand, the four-inch cylinder would instantly expand into a five-foot staff--and he ranked highly in Denn’Bok lessons.
Sweeping the access corridor with the sensor array, Badeau noted they had missed another PPG blast on the inner airlock hatch when they entered. There were four exits from the corridor, two on each side, which they searched one at a time. Shaw entered first, senses alert while Sabine followed with a thorough scan. The first exit led to sleeping and living quarters, the second to kitchen and waste facilities. On the other side of the corridor, they found the power station and a small laboratory. They quickly noted that nothing valuable remained in the outpost. Throughout each tiny room, the Rangers found signs of combat, PPG blasts matched with the occasional spray of blood across a wall or fixture.
‘Must have been a hell of a fight,’ Shaw remarked as they left the kitchens to cross the access corridor once more.
Badeau shook her head. ‘This was no fight. It was a massacre.’ She paused to adjust the sensitivity of her datapad’s array. ‘The PPG blasts are mostly focussed away from the main entrance. Someone entered this place and opened fire. I am guessing the blast on the airlock either came from a defender who managed to get a single shot off or, more likely, someone trying to escape who got shot in the back as they ran.’
In his mind’s eye, Shaw tried to picture the scene as an unknown invader entered the outpost with murderous intent, slaughtering unarmed civilians. The Centauri had a bad reputation in the galaxy at the present time, but he was wise enough to know not all of them matched the stereotype. As they entered the laboratory, Badeau increased the intensity of her scans, guessing this was the chamber that governed the overall purpose of the outpost. For his part, Shaw began to consider the perpetrators of the massacre.
‘The Narn?’ he ventured. The Regime had always been enemies of the Centauri. The Narn had, after all, been among the last attack force to devastate huge regions of Centauri Prime.
‘I don’t think so,’ Badeau said, her mind obviously elsewhere as she studied her readings. ‘This is odd. . .’
‘Found something?’
‘Not sure. The datapad is reading ‘unidentified’. Some kind of residual emission in this room. It is marked as harmless--though that is relative, of course. Not sure I trust a computer telling me something is harmless when it cannot identify it. Still, I’m not a scientist.’