‘No clues then?’ he asked.
‘Well, there may be plenty, but damned if I can tell what they are. With the equipment stripped out, no doubt by the attackers, all I am left with is this energy signature. I am getting readings from the walls, ceiling and floor, and only in this room. We can only presume it’s some sort of leakage or by-product from whatever they were working on. The analysts on Tuzanor will make more of it than I can.’ She adjusted her array, took a few more readings and then said, ‘Come on, I think we have all we need. Let’s get out of here.’
‘So what do you think hap--’ Shaw’s question was cut off by the simultaneous chimes of their comlinks. He reached down to his belt and activated it. ‘Shaw, report.’
‘Contact, low orbit, approaching fast,’ came the reply from the Minbari on sensor duty.
‘Come on,’ said Badeau, buckling on her filter mask. They pounded down the corridor and hit the release for the airlock. Not having time to override the system’s standard safety protocols, the Rangers spent an impatient half-minute waiting for the air system to cycle. Badeau interrogated the
Intrepide
’s crew for more information on the contact but, struggling to get a clear reading of a fast-moving object so close to the horizon, they had yet to ascertain its signature. As soon as the airlock’s outer hatch hissed open, Badeau and Shaw sprinted across dusty wasteland toward the White Star, its gravitic drive whining into full power
Badeau shouted through the ships internal communications system the order to take off as they ran up the boarding ramp, and it began to close even before Shaw left its gridded surface. By the time they entered the bridge, the
Intrepide
had already left the planet’s surface, and the viewport was full of empty orange sky as they rocketed toward space. Their course was taking them directly away from the contact, and as Badeau took her Captain’s chair, a Minbari crewman reported that the signature had been identified.
‘Show me,’ ordered Badeau, and the holographic display shimmered in front of them once more, this time showing a Centauri warship skimming the atmosphere of the planet as it sped toward their position, its purple and gold livery glinting in the light of the system’s star as it moved out of eclipse. Shaw instantly recognised its distinctive cross-shaped silhouette and wide fins.
‘Vorchan!’
‘This is not good,’ said Badeau. ‘Vorchans operate in squadrons, never alone. Scanners ahead, I don’t want to walk into a trap.’
‘Contact, two, Vorchan-class!’ came the immediate response. The holographic display changed to a three-dimensional tactical view. The Rangers could see their current position above the planet with the first Vorchan closing range behind them. Two more were just clearing the horizon of the planet in front of them.
‘Yup, there it is,’ Sabine nodded, and Shaw noted how calm her voice was, a trait he knew White Star captains were required to possess. Panic spread quickly on a ship if the captain appeared jumpy.
‘High energy turn,’ she ordered the helmsmen. ‘Reverse course, make an oblique pass on the single Vorchan. All power to engines!’ She turned her head to Shaw. ‘Heat up the weapons. If he so much as twitches, take him out. His plasma accelerator we can likely dodge, but those bastards carry a very heavy particle battery that could cause us some serious problems.’
Shaw called up a tactical display on his own station, prepping the molecular disruptors in the
Intrepide
’s wings and the devastating neutron laser in its nose. All displayed green and ready. He paid a brief thought to Tilanna and her maintenance work on the weapons earlier and knew he was in good hands. Now all he had to do was shoot straight if the Centauri warship proved hostile.
‘Standby,’ said Badeau. ‘We can’t fight all three so we mustn’t get bogged down by this one. They are nearly as fast as us so let’s not get into a running battle. Shaw--you have discretion to fire only if they provoke us. You’ll only get one salvo at this rate of closure, so make it a good one. ‘
The range counter on the tactical display rapidly counted down as the White Star and Vorchan skimmed the atmosphere toward one another. Through the translucent display in front of the viewport, Shaw caught a speck of a white light low to the horizon, rapidly growing in size and definition. He returned his attention to his own station, aligning the weapons on the target, leading slightly with the molecular disruptors. All around him, the Minbari crew went about their duties with a calm and quiet efficiency. Aside from various alerts emitted by the ship’s computer, the bridge was nearly silent--until shattered by the Minbari monitoring the
Intrepide
’s sensors.
‘Energy spike!’
Already reacting before Badeau gave the order to fire, Shaw activated the neutron laser and a thick beam of pulsing green light streamed from the nose of the
Intrepide
, across space, to make contact with the Vorchan. Making a mockery of the Centauri warship’s armour, the beam sliced cleanly through the Vorchan’s top fin and continued downwards to cut through its port weapon batteries. The ship immediately began to list amid a blinding array of secondary explosions that pummelled it further. Shaw then unleashed multiple blasts from his molecular pulsars. The fast-moving white bolts of energy smashed into the main hull of the Vorchan, but the salvo was cut short as the helmsmen jerked the White Star upwards. The Vorchan’s powerful plasma accelerator, mounted on the hull in front of the trademark fins, tracked the
Intrepide
and opened fire once in range.
Combining the dodge with an axial spin to throw off the Vorchan’s aspect trackers, the Minbari helmsmen jinked the White Star as globs of thick yellow energy poured past the ship. One, by luck as much as anything else, found its mark just behind the bridge of the
Intrepide
, and the force of this blast rolled the ship onto its back and sent some crew on the bridge sprawling. Fortunately, the adaptive armour held, and the
Intrepide
blasted past the crippled Vorchan as the helmsmen regained control.
Unable to reverse course quickly enough to chase the White Star, the first Vorchan was effectively out of the fight, but the other two, using the gravity well of the planet to slingshot themselves into position, continued to chase the Ranger ship. Seconds later, a Minbari reported that the Vorchans were out of range.
Badeau breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Scan the area ahead. I don’t want to get caught like that again. Damage report?’
‘The armour dissipated most of the energy of the blast,’ volunteered a Minbari crewman. ‘Self-repair systems already engaged.’
‘Good,’ answered Badeau. ‘Initiate jump engines once we are clear of the gravity well. Set course for Babylon 5 and open a channel to headquarters when we are in hyperspace. I believe we have a potential diplomatic crisis to report. Oh, and Michael?’
‘Yes, Captain?’ ‘Good shooting.’
July 3rd 2263, Babylon 5, Epsilon Eridani
Human smugglers cautiously took delivery of the innocuous container carrying the deadly Dilgar artefact as planned, the abundance of credits received ensuring their curiosity would not get the best of them. Inside the container, Centauri-made electronics clicked automatically, calculating and verifying each jump into hyperspace as the pre-planned route was followed. By the time it officially passed through a Narn checkpoint in Quadrant 14, forged documentation proved its origin on the Regime’s Homeworld--one of several similar containers bound for the European continent on Earth. In the past three years, the Narn made great inroads with certain industries in the Earth Alliance, typically in sectors that required hard-wearing machinery whose owners looked for durability above all else. Few races could compete with Narn durability in any field, as the Centauri had found to their great cost.
From Quadrant 14, a simple and very well-travelled route led to Epsilon Eridani, a system in neutral space between the Narn Regime, Earth Alliance, Centauri Republic and Minbari Federation--most notable for being the site of Babylon 5, the infamous station credited with having changed the destiny of the entire galaxy. While historians might later say people not places influenced the future, few could deny that even though the ISA had now moved its headquarters to Minbar, its cradle was Babylon 5.
Nothing suspicious was noted as the container passed through Babylon 5’s customs along with other, similar containers from the same free trader. The Earth Alliance knew the station’s security around its docking bays was a little more lax than desirable due to an overworking of the dockers, a problem that had plagued Babylon 5 since it first went online in 2257. A reduction in hours staved off any more strikes but little was done to enhance efficiency in security scans. Veneta Kaado’s conspiracy could have been far less thorough in its misdirection and the container would still have rattled through Babylon 5 unmolested.
Spending no more than a few hours on Babylon 5, the container was soon loaded on a fast transport that would take a large haul straight past Sector 49 and, stopping briefly at Proxima 3 for refuelling, continue to Sol, humanity’s birthplace. Most merchant traffic in Earth’s system funnelled through the transfer point off Io, though a small but increasing percentage flowed through the newly independent Mars colony. Customs sweeps and general security on Io was regarded as being second only to that of Earth itself, but by this time the container had amassed a veritable galactic atlas in its tracking records, and the customs officer scanning its manifest codes saw nothing to arouse suspicion of anything other than legitimate cargo from the Narn Homeworld. Signing off on the container, he watched it and several others transferred from his care into a short-ranged transit shuttle. The shuttle’s captain had just one destination on his flight plan for his entire load of cargo--EarthDome, Geneva.
July 3rd 2263, Tuzanor, Minbar
Tuthenn received the anomalous scans taken from the outpost on Coutar by the crew of White Star 31 as a matter of course. The information came from a source he instigated, and he was permitted to share in its fruits on the chance it might lead to a breakthrough in intelligence. He reviewed the data dutifully, but he was no scientist and nothing aroused his suspicions. Leaving it to Rangers and civilians better skilled in the area, Tuthenn continued his investigations. If nothing else, the machinations of the Centauri Republic kept him gainfully employed.
When he received the full analytical report of the scans, verified and confirmed by the ISA’s own system of checks and balances, he gave it his full attention. Memorising the salient facts, he integrated them into his own intelligence analysis to make something meaningful of the information.
The first striking fact was that the origin of the energy signature was Dilgar. The emissions were the suspected by-product of certain minerals only found on Omelos, the Dilgar’s homeworld, and so far believed to be impossible to reproduce elsewhere in the galaxy. As it was, these minerals were only theoretical, as no one had taken samples before its star went nova. Little exploration took place in the years since, as commercial ventures had little interest in a world so far from the hub of the galaxy that had been blasted by its sun. No known Dilgar weapon had employed them, and so the only information the ISA’s scientists had were the scanning records from ships present during the last assault on the Dilgar at the end of the war.
This made everything too circumstantial for Tuthenn’s liking. To provide a complete analysis, he needed firm data, not supposition. Only the sheer strength of the energy signature detected by the Rangers of White Star 31 made the report credible. The best chemists and physicists from the Minbari Worker Caste had tackled this problem and concluded that only a massive quantity of materials could generate enough energy to leave these residual traces, given the likely time frame between the Centauri’s work and the arrival of the Rangers.
Their report spoke of energy that could hurl the largest warship through space at unheard of speeds--or of a weapon capable of demolishing entire nations. Given the Centauri’s interest in this type of energy and their obvious attempts to hide it from both the ISA and, likely, their own government, Tuthenn received orders of the highest priority to locate the source of this signature and discover what the Centauri intended to do with it.
The Centauri had possibly learned to shield this energy source from detection, but Tuthenn nevertheless initiated a search of records that would reference scans made throughout the galaxy in the past month. This would require a massive amount of computer resources, but his priority orders gave Tuthenn the authorisation he needed to start an automated process that would check scan records made during reconnaissance sweeps, boarding reviews, customs inspections, trade negotiations, technology transfers and many others. He concentrated the search on records made in the Centauri Republic and neighbouring worlds, but even this encompassed more than two-dozen inhabited systems, and the search might have to be widened if nothing conclusive was found. Precious hours would be wasted as representatives of the ISA negotiated with governments such as the Narn, Lumati and Golians for free access to their security records, and their co-operation was not assured. Already, too many variables existed in a potentially catastrophic situation. This was not Tuthenn’s first high-priority assignment, and the importance and urgency of his mission focussed and narrowed his mind every time.
While waiting for the results of his interstellar search, Tuthenn concentrated on reviewing his information about the Centauri Republic and House Kaado, and he began to synthesise potential scenarios. Since the reconnaissance run on Coutar, Tuthenn learned more about House Kaado, but many questions remained unanswered. Veneta Kaado was entertaining and meeting with many influential nobles, particularly on Centauri Prime, the centre of political activity in the Republic. However, Tuthenn had yet to project exactly what Kaado’s aims were. Taking into account recent developments, Tutheen tried to approach the problem another way.