But first there would be an opportunity for revenge, to even the score.... and perhaps one last chance at victory. It would be a risk, but win or lose, there would be chaos, and that would be a victory of a sort.
There was a dull tapping in his mind, a noise it took him a while to realise was the sound of his blood hitting the floor.
It was strange. He had expected pain. It certainly should hurt, from the size of the knife wound in his stomach, but.... somehow, it didn't. There was no feeling at all, nothing except a final peace.
It was over. At last, it was over.
General Edward Ryan blinked as he tried to look up at his murderer. The man was writing something on the wall, writing in Ryan's own blood. The lines formed letters, which formed words, but Ryan could not make sense of them. They all.... blurred into one another.
Words came to him, rising over the sound of his blood dripping to the floor.
Some of us are planning an escape, General. We believe there is a place we can hide, build up slowly again. There are rumours Captain Smith and the Marten survived Beta Durani and are hiding out somewhere. If we can find them....
Why are you telling me this?
Ryan blinked as a red gauze filtered across his vision. Where were those words coming from? They seemed to make sense.
Come with us, General. They'll flock to you. It'll take time, yes.... but we're used to that, aren't we?
No, Captain. No.
Why not? How is this different from fighting the Minbari, General? We need you.
The war is over now.
No. The war will never be over. Sheridan has betrayed us.... handed us over to aliens. He led a war against his own people, General. Surely you can see that!
That is treason you speak, soldier.
It's the truth I speak!
Yes. Now he remembered. An argument with Captain Barns.... when? A few weeks ago, perhaps less. The echoes of the anger and the sorrow seemed etched into the walls.
Words on the wall. They were starting to become clear now. He could almost see them. The man was just finishing.
Listen to me, Captain. The war is over. We have a chance to build a new Proxima here.... finally to be rid of everything that's hit us for all these years. Please try to understand that.
General Hague would have understood.
General Hague is dead! And if you try to leave this planet, Captain, you will be arrested and court–martialled. Surely you see that!
I see nothing, General. Not a single thing.
Ryan blinked, wondering why he wasn't dead yet. Almost three years ago, General Hague had blown his brains out with a PPG, unable to accept the cost of the war. Ryan would have done the same, had he but the courage.
But he had never had the courage. Not to end his life, not to continue fighting, not to do anything but meekly accept what had been thrown at him. He should have agreed with Barns, he should have gone with him. It was the right thing to do, but....
But he had been too afraid. All his adult life he had seen his people engaged in one terrible war after another. Surely this new life, this new peace, whatever it cost, was better than another sixteen years of war.
The man turned from the wall, his work done. Ryan blinked and looked up at it. It was a message, as he had expected.
Proxima Will Be Free.
General Edward Ryan sighed, closed his eyes, and died.
Some stories have not been told yet.
The day Ryan died, Captain David Corwin was on a routine patrol around the Greater Krindar shipyards, supervising the repairs and defences of the Dark Star fleet. There had been a particularly bloody battle at Lukantha. The Shadows had eventually been driven back, but at great cost. Five Dark Stars had been destroyed, and another seven damaged. They were in for repairs.
Five telepaths, sealed forever in space, in an eternity of agony nothing could end, linked forever to their accursed network.
And another seven alive, but in pain. Carolyn magnified their pain through to him. Phantom pain. He had awoken in the middle of the night, reaching frantically for his left arm, convinced it had been blown away.
How many more? How many more lives were the Vorlons going to throw away in this vendetta of theirs? How many more lives was he going to let them throw away before he did something, anything?
Wait, Lyta had said. Wait. Be patient. The time will come.
When?
Something hummed in the back of his mind and he sat upright in his chair, realising it was Carolyn. That had been happening a lot the longer he spent on this ship. Some of the other captains were reporting similar symptoms, an almost symbiotic link with the ship, as if it were becoming a part of them.
They did not know about the telepaths, of course. Corwin shuddered to think of the implications.
Still, he knew better than to ignore such a warning.
"Scan for anything unusual," he said, cautiously. "Anything...." He wasn't sure, but Carolyn could sense something.
Wait.... telepathic powers were heightened in hyperspace, weren't they? Wasn't that the whole point of this network, how it operated? And the Shadows could move through hyperspace effortlessly. They even lived there to some extent.
"Scan into hyperspace," he said. The Dark Stars could do that. The Vorlons were every bit as adept at travelling through hyperspace as the Shadows.
"Captain," barked out the technician. "Jump gates."
"Gates?" The Shadows didn't use jump gates. They just slipped between dimensions as easily as walking from one room to another. "Who?"
Ships appeared, and immediately began to fire.
"That's insane," whispered Corwin, knowing he should give orders, but unable to assimilate the absurdity of this. This did not make sense. Even considering everything that had happened recently, this did not make any sense.
"Why would the Minbari attack us?"
John Clemens was a man who did not make friends easily. He was, however, very skilled at what he did, and what he did was catch people. He was an investigator, a detective, a cold, harsh man who lived only to regulate and control society.
For years he had been languishing in a thankless, forsaken post. A prison Governor in the far northern Dome, a maximum security area where aliens were kept, as well as the worst human criminals. His skills should have placed him far higher, but he did not rage at his lack of recognition, content to wait. In some strange way he suspected the truth.
He had met Mr. Welles on only a few occasions, but Welles had been his superior for years. Somewhere, in the icy caverns of his mind, Clemens recognised that Welles respected him and wanted him somewhere safe. He wanted a skilled man to take over should anything.... happen. A man untouched and untainted by political rivalries.
A man who would do his job and no more.
"Well, Mr. Clemens?" said the man beside him. "What precautions have you taken?"
"We've sealed all the spaceports, of course," Clemens said in his typically clipped manner. He had very little patience, but was singularly adept at hiding this from others. "This is being treated as a Code Perfect crime - one of maximum importance."
"A holdover from the Wartime Emergency Provisions."
"One that has never been repealed. General Ryan held a position expressly mentioned in the relevant sections and any crime against him should be treated as a Code Perfect."