His every muscle burned, stretched beyond breaking–point. His bones shook and were shattered by the stress. His blood boiled. None of that mattered. His mind was all that was important, his body was just a vessel, and now that he had been welcomed into the network, the network itself would be a ready vessel.
Edgars and Morden watched this, the older man smiling, the younger marvelling.
"You know what to do," Edgars said.
Byron did not, but the network did.
A scream left his mouth, one too high for the humans to hear. But the Vorlons heard it. The Shadows heard it.
And the Shadows began to die.
It was the Shadow ship that had shattered the dome that felt the wave first. The Shadows had known about their vulnerability to telepaths for a long time and had tried various strategies to counteract this weakness. They had had limited success with some forms of shielding, but they had decided by far the best approach was caution and stealth, and to use force only when absolutely necessary.
The destruction of the Edgars Building had been absolutely necessary, but unfortunately for the Shadows, and indeed for all humanity, the shields and fortifications had held just long enough.
The Shadow ship screamed as the full force of the telepathic network tore through it. Its organic shielding was shattered before the sheer power of a million telepathic minds working as one. Every living thing on the ship was driven mad in one terrifying instant, and it fell from the sky.
Buildings were smashed to mere piles of rubble as the Shadow ship crashed through them. The Edgars Building was already all but destroyed, and as the ship crashed through it the remains were utterly ruined. Again, however, the bunkers held.
And the telepathic power expanded outwards, tearing up through the skies of Proxima, sensing and targeting the other vessels of the hated Enemy. Byron might have been the focal point for the network in this area, but there were a good number of lesser nodes, points of focus and direction.
The wave swept onwards, enhanced and directed and shaped.
And with it came madness and chaos and destruction....
.... and death.
Captain Bethany Tikopai of the De'Molay caught the feeling that something was very wrong the instant before her ship began to fall apart. There was a brief flicker of light flashing before her eyes, and she blinked, a nagging itch suddenly developing inside her brain.
She opened her mouth to say something, but was not sure what.
Then everything collapsed about her. There was a scream, coming from the walls around her, from the floor beneath her feet, from the ceiling above her head. It tore through her mind and her soul and she recoiled from the sheer pain carried within it.
A terminal mere feet from her exploded, throwing the technician backwards. His body was burned and charred by the time it hit the floor. The lights on the bridge shattered one by one, as more and more terminals tore apart. In the weapons bay all the crew died in one instant of shock, not even realising what was happening as the targeting systems exploded around them and the hull was ripped open as though it were paper.
The engines were blown apart. The transport tubes collapsed around each other. The navigation systems were filled with white noise and a golden light.
Captain Tikopai was thrown forward as the ship rocked beneath her. Her head struck the floor and she heard the ship screaming once more before she blacked out.
The De'Molay hung dead in space.
Her eyes were closed. She might have been sleeping, but it was clear to everyone that she wasn't. She was dead, she must be. Human or Minbari, no one could take a PPG shot at point–blank range to the chest and survive.
For a moment everyone was still and silent. This was not what any of them had expected. They had come here for revenge on the monster who had killed their families, their friends, their homeworld. They had found a woman who had spoken earnestly of forgiveness and peace and sorrow, and who had gone to her death willingly.
Smith looked up from Delenn's body, and the only thing he could see was Trace. He was standing back, his arms folded high on his chest, a smug smile on his face. He had won. He had proved his power. He had ended a life that meant nothing to him, and destroyed that of a person he hated.
"It's good being the hero, i'n't it?" he said. "This must be how you felt, before you threw it all over and decided to become the champion of the down–and–outs."
"Shut up," Smith hissed. "You don't know anything."
"No? I know more than you think. I know about power, and about pain, and how anyone will do anything you want of them, if you just push them right. They all wanted her dead, all these people here, and I'm the one who helped them with that.
"I'm their hero."
"Oh?" said Smith. "I don't think you know them as well as you think."
Trace prepared to say something, but then he stopped and looked up. There were no warning systems here in the Pit. Why should there be, when no one cared who lived or died here?
But there were certain instincts, ancient and primaeval, that spoke within all humanity - ancient genetic memories. They spoke of danger.
"Oh hell," Trace said softly, all the colour draining from his face.
A good many things happened at once. There were cries of terror from the crowd, angry panic from Trace, and a desperate scuffle to escape, to get away from here, away from the invaders who would surely seek revenge on those who had murdered their leader. There were pleas for forgiveness, prayers to Gods worshipped and Gods ignored.
The crowd surged forward, trying to move somewhere, anywhere. Smith threw himself on Delenn's body, desperate to protect her now as he had not before. A sharp pain exploded in his leg as someone trod on it. He tried to raise his arms to protect his head, but a foot slammed into the side of his skull, and he was thrown into a world where all he knew was his nightmares.
The Dark Stars had always been slightly.... unusual ships. They were of Vorlon design and manufacture of course, with their systems crafted to be useable by many of the younger races. There were some who were uncomfortable being in them, and some, such as Flight–lieutenant Neeoma Connally, who refused to set foot on one unless absolutely necessary.
Many however, were beginning to find an odd sense of peace on board a Dark Star. Captain John Sheridan hardly left his flagship at all these days.
A probable cause of this was the sheer effectiveness of the Dark Stars in combat against the previously superior Shadow ships. Advanced jamming and shielding techniques coupled with powerful weapons systems made the fight much more even.
But the Dark Stars still held mysteries, and they had certainly never done this before.
"What the hell?" whispered Corwin.
For one instant, a mere handful of seconds after Byron began to scream, a brilliant light filled every room of the Dark Star 3 - the Agamemnon. The entire ship was bathed in a pure and perfect rejection of the darkness, and somewhere, in a lost and forgotten place, another scream was added, a slight and almost imperceptible echo of Byron's own. And then another, and then another. But no one heard them.
The light soon faded, but Corwin's attention was quickly drawn away from the unusual phenomenon, as he mentally filed it at the top of a very long list of unusual phenomena.
"Captain," said the tech. "Something.... something's happened."