“My apologies, Lennann. I was merely… distracted. There was such hatred in his voice.” He was looking directly at her now, but she stood firm before the steely hate in his eyes. “Such hatred.”
“He is a primitive barbarian,” Sinoval said. “His language is proof enough of that. I was not aware you spoke it, Delenn.”
“I have learned bits and pieces,” she said hesitantly. Valen’s name, what if what I suspect is true? It is too… too obscene to consider. “I hope that he will be held until we can decide his fate.”
“What is there to decide? He is the Starkiller! The blood of many is on his hands, including two who once stood here. Simply execute him and have done with it.”
“That would be premature,” Delenn said. “He may have information that would be of use to us. We must discover what he knows.” And I must test what I suspect. Valen help me be wrong.
“I agree with Delenn,” Hedronn said. “If, as you keep requesting, Sinoval, we do attack the rest of the Earther civilisation, we will need his knowledge.”
“Very well,” Sinoval acknowledged. “I do not want a mongrel human kept in this place, though. This ship is for us alone. Hold him on the surface.”
“That would be… wise,” Delenn agreed. She looked at Sheridan as he was led out by two acolytes. He flashed her a stare and she met it firmly. His hatred was almost tangible. Valen’s name, how could anyone hate so much?
And then a memory, Dukhat lying in her arms, the humans who had done this still nearby. A question posed to her. A question… and an answer. ‘Kill them! Kill them all!’
“And now,” Hedronn was saying. “The position of Entil’zha…”
My name is John J. Sheridan. Rank: Captain, Earthforce. My serial number… Yeah, keep saying that, Johnny. Maybe it’ll let you keep your sanity until they decide to kill you.
His first memory after being knocked senseless on Vega 7 was of waking in a small room. Everything smelled Minbari, an infuriating scent, like clove oil and steel. He did not know how long he had been there, but he remembered being taken before the circle of the Nine – the fabled Grey Council, no less – and then from there to here, a cold, dark, small cell somewhere on the surface. He had tried pacing up and down – three paces long, two wide – but when that did little to relieve his boredom, he tried visualising Anna – not as she was now, but as she had been when they had first met, introduced by his sister Elizabeth. When that did not kill the time, he turned to his daughter, also called Elizabeth, and the last time he had seen her, buried under a ton of falling rock as the Minbari bombed Orion 7. He hadn’t even been able to find her body.
Not just his daughter died that day. His wife had as well, at least inside, erecting a wall around everything that she was and ever would be, only breaking through the wall by drink. He supposed that he had died that day as well, and his wall was similar to hers, but his was only ever broken by battle. The last charge at Sector 14 against the Centauri. The suicide run on the Grey Council ship over Mars. The liberation of General Hague from Orion.
In his heart, Captain John J. Sheridan was dead, but then so was humanity, so it made little difference.
He started at the sound of the door opening. There was a brief flash of light as someone stepped inside, and then darkness again. Darkness and a smell. Orange blossom. It was impossible, but it was orange blossom, just like in his father’s garden when he was a child.
And then there was light, and the thirty-year-old memory faded. A Minbari was in front of him. He had seen her arguing in the Hall.
“Greetings,” she said softly, in English. “I am called…”
“Satai Delenn,” he finished for her, studying her closely. She looked almost… frail, but a fire burned in her eyes, just beneath the surface. She seemed to be studying him. “I heard your name spoken in Council. You’re the one who wanted me sent here.”
“You speak our language?” She did not sound surprised.
“You aren’t the only one to have picked up bits and pieces of someone else’s language. What is to stop me from tearing you apart here and now?”
“You could try, but you would fail.”
“You can only kill me once. What have I got to lose?”
She inclined her head slowly. “Surely you have something to live for?”
“Yes. I do. The hope that I can kill a few more of you monsters before I die!”
She seemed surprised. “Such hatred,” she whispered in her native tongue, and then something about Valen. “How can you live with such hatred?”
“Simple enough when it’s all you’ve had for ten years. You took my life, my home, parents, sister, daughter… you took everything away from me until hatred is all I have left.”
“And all you deserve?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t care any more.”
“Then I have a question. Why have you not attacked me? I am Satai. I am the embodiment of everything you hate. Why have you not tried to kill me?”
“Because you’d be expecting that, and I didn’t become the Starkiller by doing what people expect of me.”
“You seem almost proud of that title.”
“Earned in battle, granted me by my enemies. Damn straight I am.”
“I am equally as proud of my title. Satai. Perhaps you understand, Captain?”
“Whatever. I take it you’re here to question me?”
“No. I simply wanted to talk.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“No,” she said softly. She then doused her light and left, leaving Sheridan to stare after her, only the lingering trace of orange blossom to mark her presence.
“Interesting, wasn’t she?” said another voice. A female voice. Speaking English.
“Who? Where are you?”
“Right here, Captain. Oh, a little light, perhaps?” A brief and dull light illuminated the face of a woman in the corner of the cell. “I entered when she did, and hid here. She didn’t see me. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I didn’t see you either. What are you doing here, and how did you get in? Minbar isn’t exactly full of humans.”
“I have a few… friends, here and there. Don’t worry, Captain, I just came in to see you. To… talk. After we’re done, we’ll both leave together.”
“Oh, just like that? Walk out the door?”
“Exactly.”
“Just my luck. Stuck in a Minbari cell with either a madwoman or a hallucination.”
“Hardly mad, Captain, and very real. By the way, my name is Susan Ivanova, and I have one question to ask you. A simple enough question, really.
“Captain, what do you want?”
Chapter 3
Captain John J. Sheridan must have died and gone to Hell. Maybe that Minbari pike had done more than merely knock him unconscious for a few hours. Maybe it had caved his skull in and his body was now lying in some unmarked hole on Vega 7, unadorned and unremembered, while his soul was in whatever particular level of Hades the Devil reserved for people like him. For people with more blood on their hands than could be found on entire planets.
List of charges: The destruction of the Black Star. Guilty as charged, and damn proud of it. A foolish attack on the Grey Council and the death of two of its members. As stated. Countless Minbari and Centauri over the course of a fourteen-year war. No defence. His daughter, left alone for a matter of minutes, but just long enough for a Minbari bomb to blow her apart. Negligence? Guilty. Of allowing his wife to become a drunken, sodden shadow of her former self? Guilty. Of giving hope where there could be none to people fighting an unwinnable war? Guilty.
A long enough list of charges, and surely enough to guarantee his eternal damnation. John Sheridan had never been an especially religious man, but he believed in Hell. He had seen it when he had returned to the ruins of his homeworld. If that had been Hell, then maybe so was this.