Thirdspace, p.22
Thirdspace, page 22
"Control to assault fleet," continued Ivanova's voice. "Everybody who has a clear shot at that energy field... take it. Now."
The word "fleet" seemed overly generous to Sheridan at that moment. Just before he had moved behind the artifact, out of visual range, he had cast a glance behind him and witnessed a field littered with broken ships. The vast majority of them had been from Babylon 5. The devastation had been nearly beyond imagining.
For a moment Sheridan flashed on himself, back in his quarters, looking eagerly at the artifact hanging in space and saying smugly, "Besides, it is mine." Yes, indeed, all his. This nightmare. This utter debacle. The search for knowledge and his eagerness for fiddling with something beyond their understanding, resulting in a calamity that could border on biblical proportions if what the Vorlon-inhabited Lyta had told him had been at all accurate. Yes, indeed, all Sheridan's.
Ironic that his main goal had become to ensure that he would have time later on-time to mourn the results of his overwhelming hubris.
Then he saw flashes of light flaring from the other side of the artifact. Whatever ships remained in the fleet were firing on the artifact, hitting it with everything they had. It was a last-ditch effort, and as the artifact was pummeled, all the main energy of the force field rushed to the front to shore it up against the intensity of the assault.
Sheridan studied the rear of the field desperately. There wasn't anything. No weakness whatsoever. He realized he was going to have to throw himself against the field in what might be a suicidal move, but maybe he'd be pleasantly surprised. Maybe it had weakened enough to ...
Then he paused, his eyes widening. There was a spot, just ahead of him, a small opening that quite probably corresponded exactly to a point in the front where additional energy was being drawn. But energy flickered around the spot, starting to move in again to close it up.
Sheridan opened the throttle wide on his airpack, and he hurtled toward the opening. He was moving too quickly at that point to slow down or change his mind. If the field reintegrated before he got there, he was going to ricochet right off it... or worse.
He saw it closing and he knew there was absolutely no way he was going to make it through, no way, and he closed his eyes against the inevitable impact, counting down in his mind. Four... three ... two ... one ...
He sensed the energy all around him, and suddenly he realized he was through. He opened his eyes and there was the artifact, looming directly in front of him. He slammed on the reverse thrust from his airpack, and the burst sent him spinning completely around. As he twirled in place, he caught a brief glimpse of the hole through which he had just passed, sealing up completely. He'd made it through with barely a second to spare.
With an effort he tried to steady his breathing, slow the pounding of his heart, and finally, stop his outer-space pirouette. Once he'd brought himself to a halt, he studied the grotesque exterior of the artifact and then jetted up toward something that he thought might be an access panel.
He tried to tell himself that the most difficult part was behind him. Unfortunately, John Sheridan was known for having an extremely low tolerance factor when it came to bullshit, and that included when it came from himself. For truthfully, he wasn't able to shake the disturbing feeling that everything up until that point, as harrowing as it had been, had been a snap compared to what lay ahead.
Sheridan's opinion was shared by Ivanova. From her vantage point, she had barely managed to see Sheridan make his way through the force field, although her breath had caught at the narrowness of his success. The moment he was through, she barked over the comlink, "Control to Delenn ... he's in."
"Yes?" came Delenn's reply. She sounded nervous. Ivanova couldn't blame her. Up until the point that Sheridan had made his way in, they had been dealing with known quantities. Now all of the jc-factors began to enter the equation, and if there was one thing that Ivanova detested, it was the unknown. Which, she admitted, was an odd attitude for someone whose profession was space exploration. But somehow, whatever her perceptions or beliefs had been of what she would encounter, she had never counted on something like this.
But reality intruded on her brief musings. Ivanova's attention turned away from Sheridan as she suddenly realized what her next big trick was going to be. She had to stay alive if she was going to find out whether Sheridan would succeed. It gave her new incentive. Susan Ivanova wasn't afraid of death. She was, however, afraid of dying before she got to the end of the story. That was, to her, simply unacceptable.
Maybe it was a Russian thing. That's why their books were so damned long: so they'd have something to live for.
"Bring us around," she snapped as she saw two more alien vessels angling toward them. "Let's buy some time."
Chapter 18
The door had not slid right open when Lennier had walked up to it. This he found mildly irritating, but there was no reason to be frustrated over the technical problems that Babylon 5 was displaying. Certainly there were other things to worry about. Lennier stepped up to the door and noticed that it was open, but fairly narrowly, just enough to get one hand in. He slid in a hand and shoved, and the door slid open under the pressure he exerted. He took a step in, the darkness of the room even greater than that in the hallway.
He noticed a quick movement in the air, but couldn't make out what it was. And then he felt a sharp pain in his upper left leg. He clutched at his thigh, his only acknowledgment of the pain being a brief gasp, as he sank to his right knee. He realized that a dagger had buried itself in his leg, halfway up the length of its blade. Had there been any light in the room, he would have been able to knock the projectile aside with ease. But the darkness had worked most decidedly against him.
Someone came toward him very quickly, grabbed the knife, and twisted it. Lennier lunged at his assailant, but the pain was too much and he once again hit the floor. His assailant yanked the knife out with a smooth maneuver and Lennier lay prone. Even in his agony, he retained sufficient presence of mind to staunch the bleeding by applying pressure. "I know you," came a voice that spoke in a demented whisper. "The Minbari from before. Are you in love with her too?"
"W-what?" Lennier managed to say. Thanks to the overall dimness of the station, it didn't take long for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. There was the one known as Leo, standing several feet away, tossing the knife from one hand to the other, speaking in a tone of voice that sounded frighten-ingly playful, as if this entire thing were one big joke to him. The woman, Sheila, lay on the floor nearby, whimpering, her mind clearly on the verge of shutting down completely. And Lennier was able to make out one other body, lying on the floor, not moving at all. He wondered if that was a corpse. For that matter, Lennier wondered if he was going to be a corpse himself in short order.
"Are you in love with Sheila?" demanded Leo.
"No. I am not," Lennier said, forcing himself to keep an even tone. Inwardly, he was chiding himself. He had come after this man while allowing his fury to cloud his mind, and now he had paid for it. It wasn't as if he was enjoying the pain in particular, but he couldn't help but feel it wasn't entirely undeserved.
"You're lying!" Leo snarled.
"Minbari do not lie," Lennier told him, sounding surprisingly reasonable considering he was working on maintaining some degree of sensation in his leg.
"First her," Leo said, gesturing toward Sheila with his knife. "First her, and then you."
"You are not going to kill anyone," Lennier warned him.
"Don't tell me what to do," Leo told him. He waved the knife threateningly. "Don't tell me what to do!"
"What is to be served ... by killing her?" Lennier asked.
"She destroyed my life. She was in love with Alex. And then she lied about it. And so did he. And they laughed behind my back about it, turned my entire family against me."
"We didn't," Sheila said for what seemed the umpteenth time. From her place on the floor, she angled herself around to look up at Lennier. Despite the agony, she managed to repeat, "We didn't. He's ... he's crazy. He's always been crazy. I... thought he changed...."
"No. I never did. Because I always cared about the truth," Leo told her.
"It was always in your mind..."
And he thundered, " You know nothing of my mind! And you..." and he spun to face Lennier "-do you have any idea what it is to love someone ... love them with all your heart, with your soul, with everything you have to give ... and know that she loves another and can never really be yours, not ever?"
"Yes."
Both Lennier and Leo were startled by the succinctness and sincerity of his reply.
Leo stared at him as if truly seeing him for the first time. He took a step toward him, the knife still extended, his head cocked at an angle. "Tell me about her," Leo said.
"No."
"Tell me about her!"
"No," Lennier said again. "You may continue to ask if you wish, but I will speak no more of it. It's not for you to hear."
And a slow smile spread across Leo's face. "But it's for the One, isn't it. Yes. Yes, I see that the One Who Dwells in Darkness has touched you, ever so gently. He loves me most of all, but there is room in his heart for you as well. His heart is infinite."
"His heart is infinitely dark and loathsome," Lennier said, "and he will be stopped." The throbbing was beginning to ease in his leg as clotting began to staunch the flow of blood He flexed his toes and felt no numbness. Nonetheless, he stayed where he was. There was no reason to let on that he was feeling capable of making a fight of it, unless he had to.
"By those ships outside?" sneered Leo. "They have no prayer."
"If the One were truly confident, he would not need mindless dupes such as you to send matters into disarray."
"The One will triumph," Leo said firmly. "And I am not a mindless dupe."
"You wallow in hatred. You embrace your self-proclaimed victimhood. 'Mindless' seems a most appropriate description. If ..." He paused and then he said, not unkindly, "If a woman does not love you ... or if she is meant for someone else ... then you must accept it and deal with it as best as your soul will allow. This I know."
Leo looked at him for a long while, and for a moment Len-nier thought that he was getting through.
"Then you know nothing^ shouted Leo, and even as he shouted at Lennier, he lunged toward Sheila, driving the dagger down toward her heart.
There was no gravity inside the artifact, so all things considered, Sheridan was making excellent time. He forced himself to stay focused, because if he gave the artifact any sort of lengthy consideration, there was every possibility that he might go completely insane.
His surroundings had a bio-organic look to them, but it was like a fun-house-mirror perversion of Vorlon technology. Levels and walls seemed to come together with neither rhyme nor reason, but rather were laid out in a fashion that could only be considered chaotic. It seemed an impossibility that it would all join together, and yet it did in ways that Sheridan could not even begin to guess. He couldn't imagine the sort of minds that would conceive such a layout.
Then he realized that he could. He thought of Bedlam, of old-style madhouses, with insane and depraved minds, possessed by men who crawled and writhed about, stinking of their own filth and vomit, and he thought of the perverted designs that might have come crawling out of their minds.
That's what the artifact, ultimately, was: a mad dream given form.
He made his way deeper into the artifact, knowing that-no matter how fast he was going-he had to hurry even more. His instincts were accurate. Outside, the fight was going badly as more and more ships were falling in battle. A White Star, trying to outmaneuver one of the alien vessels, hurtled into a crossfire between two more foes. Pummeled from all sides, the White Star was pounded into oblivion, erupting into flame which was just as quickly snuffed out into nothingness in the airlessness of space. The alien craft continued, flying through the floating remains of the White Star, searching for more prey.
Meantime Sheridan moved farther, faster, down around one corner, toning another... and suddenly, just like that, he found himself at the core of the artifact.
He couldn't believe it.
"Holy..." he whispered, but there was nothing holy about it.
Even though, intellectually, he knew the size of the artifact, nevertheless it seemed to him as if the core went up forever. It crackled with energy along its length, so much so that Sheridan reflexively shielded his eyes to protect himself. From behind his visor, through squinting eyes, he was able to make out some sort of grey and pulsating energy field at one end. Even though he didn't have any instruments with him to use for analysis, he knew it was a different sort of energy. It...
... it frightened him.
He pushed aside his trepidation and moved toward a corner area, but he couldn't take his eyes off that far end. Because he had the strangest feeling that there was something just beyond it. Something that was gathering its breath, preparing for the push through, like some sort of ancient and evil child waiting to be reborn.
Stephen Franklin jabbed with the shock stick, catching one of his attackers around the knee. The charge sizzled through his assailant, who let out a howl, his knee collapsing. But he fell right toward Franklin, and only a quick right cross from Franklin managed to knock him back.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Zack Allan fighting with greater intensity and ferocity than Franklin had ever seen from anyone in battle. His hair askew, his face battered, Zack didn't back down. Incredibly, the more he fought, the more energized he seemed. "You want some more?" howled Zack. "Come on! Come on!" He lashed out at a second opponent, flattened him, swung on a third and then a fourth. They converged on him, trying to bear him to the ground, and then Franklin lunged forward with the shock stick, knocking aside the ones on the outer edge of the pile. They fell away, howling, glaring at Franklin with inhuman fury in their eyes. Franklin cast a quick glance back at the fallen woman and couldn't help but wonder whether she was lying there dying, even as the helpless doctor stood a few feet away, inflicting injury, fighting for their mutual survival.
Sheridan worked quickly and briskly. He attached his "present" to the wall and punched an activation code into it. He couldn't hear the computer as it said, "Thermonuclear detonation sequence armed. Detonation sequence starts in five minutes." However, he saw the lights come on in the proper combination and knew that the device was armed and ready to go.
His attention was once more drawn to the energy-filled screen high above him. Slowly he began to sense what it was that he was looking at. It was the transition point; the actual gate between their own universe and the alien vista, and there was something pulsing on the other side, preparing to come through.
As Sheridan moved closer to the grey screen, drawn toward it, propelled by morbid curiosity, he didn't realize that something had already come through. Something huge.
Something hungry.
Something that had just noticed him....
As Leo plunged the knife down toward Sheila, Lennier grabbed a nearby chair and half lunged, half lurched as he threw it the length of the room. The chair crashed into Leo, staggering him, but he held firmly onto the knife.
This provided enough time, however, for Lennier to get unsteadily to his feet. "Is the One only a believer in attacking helpless women? I call the One a coward!" Lennier said forcefully.
With a howl of fury, Leo turned and charged him. He swung the knife in and Lennier quickly, effortlessly, blocked the thrust. He twisted Leo's arm in a move pitting bone against muscle, a move which should have forced Leo's hand to spring open and drop the knife.
It didn't work. Instead Leo clung to the knife with a determination that bordered on the supernatural. For a moment they struggled against each other, shoving, grunting, and then Len-nier's leg betrayed him. He stumbled back to the floor, but clung on to Leo, who tumbled down atop him. They fought in silent fury, jockeying for position, the knife wavering between them.
Sheridan drew closer to the grey screen, and then for just a moment, the mists seemed to part. It was impossible to tell whether they did so naturally, or out of some sort of bizarre unearthly confidence in which the enemy revealed to Sheridan the face of Humanity's final defeat.
The armada was coming, and it was huge beyond imagining. The ships literally seemed without number, as infinite as the stars. They seemed to radiate evil, and they surrounded ...
... the mother ship, my God, look at it, Sheridan muttered with utter revulsion. It moved like a living, breathing mass, with extended tentacles and eyes, and it was impossible to know if it was really a ship or else a gigantic living being, or perhaps some of both. No, it wasn't simply a ship. It was a living incarnation of every nightmare that Humankind had ever experienced as a race. Every shadow that had ever danced in the corner of darkened rooms, causing children to cry out in terror, had been cast by this thing. And it was seconds away from emerging through the artifact.
Sheridan couldn't help himself; he felt numbing terror at a primal level. Later, he wouldn't even remember speaking his next words-"Flight system ... retrace path, automatic navigation, top speed"-because by that time he was operating entirely on instinct and training.
He was unaware that he was being watched-until it was too late.
The artifact began to crackle with interdimensional energy, and a rippling jumpgate-styled path, leading into the void, opened up. Slowly, ponderously, yet seemingly with inexorable confidence, the mother ship began to move through the hole into our universe.
Delenn, aboard the Minbari cruiser, saw it first. She felt fear clutching at her heart as she spotted the monstrosity beginning to emerge. "In Valen's name ..." she whispered, and then activated the com system. "Delenn to Ivanova ... can you hear me?"
On the bridge of her White Star, Ivanova had certainly seen better days. She was battered and bruised, her jacket hanging open, and a thick haze of smoke seemed to be everywhere around her. "Yeah ... yeah, we hear you," she said with ill-concealed impatience. "What is it?"
