"And G'Kar?"
"Likewise."
"Is there no communication with the entire system?"
"None at all."
Fear gripped her, but she sought to calm it. The beating in her ears grew louder and louder. "Send a squadron of Dark Stars to each jump gate adjacent to the Narn system. Keep trying to open a jump point into the system itself. Take at least one science vessel in each group. See if you can contact the Vorlon Ambassador. They know a great deal more about hyperspace and jump gates than we do. And put every Alliance base in the sector on full alert."
"All done," he said carefully. Delenn looked at him. He was holding something back. Kulomani was a very accomplished liar when he wanted to be, and she was only just beginning to realise. "I was wondering if we should try to contact General Sheridan."
"No," she said firmly.
"But…."
"No," she interrupted, just as firmly. "He is…. resting. I will contact him when I am convinced we need him."
"As you command. I will contact you when we learn something new."
The comm screen went blank and Delenn sat back, her mind racing. It was several moments before it occurred to her that she had not asked him what the Vorlon Ambassador had said.
* * *
Sinoval the Accursed, Chaos Bringer and Legacy of the Dark Masters, looked down at the Tuchanq kneeling before him and resisted the urge to shout at them.
Moreil's fanaticism had irritated him, but not excessively. Moreil would provide him with a mini-army of his own. Sinoval trusted the Z'shailyl. Devotion such as that could not be a deception. He remembered the last message the Shadows had left him, a plea for hatred and revenge. He disliked being used in that way, but he would take whatever resources he was given. As for some of Moreil's…. intentions for the future, they could wait.
No, he had a nagging feeling the Tuchanq would prove to be the more serious problem. Although in an entirely different way.
"Who is your leader?" he asked.
One of them rose. He thought it was female, although as thin as they were it was sometimes hard to tell. Her soul was a mass of conflicting colours and images. He could see the fading signs of long-standing madness, now replaced by a slowly-growing serenity.
He was thankful for the two Tuchanq within the Well of Souls. They had known a song that had undone the madness.
"This one was once called nuViel Roon, and once led, before the songlessness and the long dark fell upon us." Her voice had a remarkable rhythmic quality, a lilt and rise to the words. Each syllable seemed to be sung with its own unique voice, a cry of joy to the galaxy. "This one may still be the leader, saviour, until such time as another may be chosen."
Sinoval nodded. "You know who I am?"
"You are our saviour, our singer, our blessed restorer of what once was. What else do we need to know?"
"I am a warrior, and a leader of warriors. I am going to war with an ancient and powerful race. You may think of them as Gods. I need allies and I need an army."
"You have restored to us the Song. Command us, Saviour, and we shall obey."
And that would be useful, he thought acidly, if he needed a massed horde of cannon fodder. "There are things I must know first. Why were you allied with these reivers?"
"It was the long dark, Saviour," nuViel Roon said, after a long pause. "Some years ago, one of our number, noMir Ru, fell under the long dark. She was driven out into the wilderness. We tried to hunt her, but she had grown wise and stealthy during the war, and she hid, taking more of us with each passing day. The long dark claimed more and more of us until there was anarchy. Our skies, already filled with the smoke and ash of our war with the Narn, began to be filled with the d?bris of our war with each other. The Song died everywhere across our world. When the last of us fell to the long dark, the Song died."
Some of the Tuchanq, still kneeling behind her, began to croon mournfully.
"noMir Ru ruled us throughout the long dark. The Narn came to us and spoke with her at length. She was convinced that the Centauri were to blame for our situation. noMir Ru gathered our army, using ships and weapons we could cannibalise or steal, and we went to the stars to seek our revenge. We allied ourselves to the Brotherhood for that purpose."
"And where is this noMir Ru now?"
A mournful hymn ran as an undercurrent in nuViel Roon's voice, a melody taken up and supported by the others. "Dead. She fell during the battle. She died lost and insane and consumed by the long dark."
"Ah," Sinoval said. A pity. This noMir Ru might have been a useful subordinate, if her madness could have been controlled. What he had seen of her strategy for the attack on Centauri Prime demonstrated a ruthlessness he could have used. "Is this all of your people?"
"No, Saviour. Many others remain on our world. Some were too touched by the long dark to follow any commands, and they remain lost. Others could not fight, and remained to build more ships and weapons. They are still Songless, as we were before your touch. The Land is still Songless."
"Where is your world? You will take me there. I wish to see your dead world for myself."
"And then, Saviour? Do you desire that we go to war alongside you?"
"We shall see," Sinoval mused. "We shall see."
* * *
They moved quickly, as quickly as they could, carrying boxes and bundles of their valuables. Many did not want to believe, but the words of their Prophet had convinced them. The death of their world was at hand.
Every ship available had been press-ganged to this service. Cargo was emptied from merchant ships. Weapon storage was stripped from military vessels. Short-range flyers were commandeered. Everything was cannibalised.
All that mattered was that as many people as possible were removed from the dying Narn world.
Ha'Cormar'ah G'Kar looked at the figures again, privately despairing. His own death he could tolerate, but the deaths of so many of his people through his own blindness was too much to bear. They could not evacuate enough. They would never be able to evacuate enough. The children and their mothers were first of course. Any women expecting children. The race must continue.
Any with essential skills. Starship maintenance engineers and pilots. Diplomats. Some of the military. Astro-navigators. Survival experts.
But there were so many people, and so few places. They had tried to break through the communications barrier the Vorlons had placed around their system, but to no avail. There would be no help from elsewhere.
With every second that passed, ticking in his mind, another failed chance for salvation passed and died unborn.
The others reacted with varying degrees of responsibility. Some, like H'Klo, refused to believe that the Vorlons would destroy the world and declared that this was all a trick. He was determined to let them descend upon Narn and then fight them with every resource he had. Others in the Kha'Ri had killed themselves.
Da'Kal, for her part, had worked as tirelessly as he had, but she had not said a single word to him since he had spoken to the Kha'Ri.
He was tired, and weary, and sick to his stomach, but he had no time to rest.
Another second passed.
* * *
Susan found him, not entirely unexpectedly, standing on the pinnacle, looking down at the array of ships massed before him. He was silent and grim-faced, and specks of blood stained the golden hem of his robe.
"You have your fleet," she said. "Things are getting somewhere at last."
"Are they?" he replied. "I have seen them all and spoken to them all. I am not sure if I am supposed to be disappointed or elated or some strange mixture of both."
"What do you mean?" He seemed very cold as she stepped up beside him. There was no heat coming from him, no warmth, nothing. Not for the first time, she felt she was looking at a dead man walking.
"I have spoken to Moreil, the Z'shailyl — the Shadowspawn. His kind revere me. To them, I am some prophesied saviour who will return them to the days of their Dark Masters and their immortal chaos. He has offered his whole race to me, and they will come and they will flock to my banner."
Susan said nothing to interrupt. She knew a monologue when she heard one.
"I have spoken to Marrago. He is broken, and I fear there is nothing left to sustain him. A man needs a purpose for which to fight, and he has lost almost all of his purpose. Nothing remains but vengeance, and that will wither and die in time, perhaps taking him with it."
Yes, she thought, everyone needs a purpose to fight. But it has to be the right purpose. Have you not learned anything?
"I have spoken to the human, the Sniper. He was a worthless, pathetic creature, a madman driven by desire for pain. A dangerous liability, and a monster which this galaxy does not deserve. I killed him. A simple act, with no thought or consequence."
Susan looked at the blood on his robe, and then at his blade. There was blood there also. He had not bothered to clean it off.
"I have spoken to the Narn, G'Lorn. He maintains that everything he has done has been for the good of his people. His associate, whom Moreil murdered, worked directly for their Government. This was all a ploy to serve their own purposes. Never mind the thousands who died. What were they but pawns and toys for the powerful?"
You are powerful, remember. A great deal more powerful than the Kha'Ri ever were.
"I have spoken to the Drazi. They at least have good news for me. They will serve and obey and fight for my cause. But they will do so out of vengeance and anger, and they will not work with the aliens they say betrayed them. I am trying to create a unified army, but all I have is disintegration."
No, you aren't, she wanted to scream at him. Everything is split apart. You have too many agents spread out all over the place, and none of them knows what the others are doing.
"I have spoken to the Tuchanq. I did something so simple and so profound for them, and they worship me for it. They worship me for saving a handful of their people when countless others remain insane and trapped on a dead world, a world rendered barren by hatred and greed. What remains for them but more war under my command?"
The monologue stopped, and Susan looked at him. "So," she said. "What are you going to do now?"
"What I must," he said darkly. "I will do what I must."
"It's going to start soon, isn't it? Whatever's going to happen, it'll start soon."
"Yes," he replied. "Very soon. Indeed, it is already starting."
* * *
The exodus of his people fleeing his home brought G'Kar nearer to despair than he had ever been. Not even during the worst moments of the Occupation, not even when the war with the Shadows was at its bleakest had he felt like this.
Because he felt something he had never felt before.
Guilt.
This was his fault. All of this. Had he been only a little more observant, had he focussed more of his attention on his world instead of on aliens, had he interfered less, always trying to change the views of his people….
Had he done or not done any one of a number of things, this fate might never have happened. The deaths of his people, of his world, were on his shoulders.
"I know that look," remarked Da'Kal dryly. He looked up to see her standing nearby, arms folded. "I know that look."
"What?"
"You are not to blame. Do not even dare to lay the blame for this on yourself. How could any of us know that the Vorlons would do this? If you had not arranged for them to find out, then they would have managed it another way."
"You do not understand. It is not that I informed them, however unwittingly. It is that I should have stopped this from ever happening. I should have…."
"G'Kar, stop it!" she cried. "How should you have seen this? What is it that gives you the blame for this?"
"Responsibility," he said simply. "I took responsibility for our people, and thus I must share the blame."
She looked at him silently for a few moments, and then, suddenly, she began to laugh. It was a sound he remembered from when they were younger; a girlish, mocking laugh that spoke of humour in the simplest of things combined with wonder at beauty in so many hidden places. It was the laugh that had made him fall in love with her.
"You have not changed," she said. "Not in a single way. You are still the same." She walked over to him and laid her hands on the side of his head. Her hands were warm and soft. "I am sorry," she whispered, kissing the empty shell where his eye had once been. "That is hard for me to say."
"Do not be sorry," he said softly. "In these last hours of my life, I have seen more clearly with one eye than I ever did with two."
"Always the philosopher," she breathed, her breath so very hot.
There was a long silence, constructed from shared memories of good and bad, of joys and grief and separated paths. The years they had spent apart evaporated as water into air and they were young again, lying naked side by side beneath the moon, joyous in victory, weeping in defeat. She had been the last thing he had seen before the white liquid that dripped into his eyes had temporarily taken his sight. She had been his talisman during those terrible months of interrogation in the village.
"I never forgot you," he said.
"Sweet liar," she replied.
It was not the first time he had lied to her. They had lied countless times during the war, lies of certain victory, that they would return, that all would be well. This was the first time he had hated himself for it.
"You made me a promise once. Do you remember?"
"I made you many promises," he replied. "Which one are you referring to?"
"After Mu'Addibar. The night after the battle, in your chambers. Do you remember?"
"Yes," he said, with a heavy heart. "I remember."
"I was so afraid that day. I could never forget the lord's hands on my body. My heart was beating so loudly that I was afraid it would burst free from my chest. I could not let them do that to me again. Never." She touched his hand and gently guided it to her breast. "Feel my heart."
It was pounding, beating against her rib cage with a fast and passionate and terrified fury.
"You know what to do."
"I do," he said sorrowfully. He pulled back from her, and looked towards the corner of the room. The sword lay there. Not his, of course, but a sword all the same. He had never approved of paying undue reverence to a weapon. He had never believed in naming them, or treating them as if they were alive.
All a weapon ever was, truthfully, was a tool to end lives.
Da'Kal had dropped to her knees, head bowed, eyes closed. "I am sorry for what I did to you, beloved. But I am not sorry for what I did to the Centauri. They deserved to feel fear. They deserved to feel pain. They deserved so much more than I could ever give them."
