From: "Stephen J. Barringer" Subject: WANDERING STAR 29/?? Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 01:55:17 -0500 It took a while, but I've finally got another one out... and you thought February was gonna go by without another chapter in the How Can I Abuse Ivanova This Month? series.... *****************DISCLAIMER***************** Susan Ivanova and all BABYLON 5 characters and situations are the creations and copyrighted property of J. Michael Straczynski and Babylonian Productions, and are used here without permission strictly for the purposes of non-profit entertainment. Other characters and situations are copyright of the author, but permission is hereby granted for free, non-profit use by other fanfic authors. (Though it would be nice if you asked anyway.) WARNING: A very little spicy language in this one. Kiddies, ne read pas. ************************************************** < < W A N D E R I N G S T A R > > PART II: SCAVENGER HUNT - 24 - 21:49 EST The Drazi gathered, poised on the rim of the borewall like wolves on a mountain ridge. Khovrath tested the cable against his huntknife and nodded when, despite its thinness, the cable only showed the slightest mark of the keen blade. As he'd suspected. This was one of the Earthers' advanced polymer constructs, not merely a bundle of woven fibres. A monofilament edge, or a magnoblade with a field tuned to a particular molecular key in the cable's composition, would probably be required to cut it easily. The Hunt had neither. Still, that might be as well. "What think you?" rasped Mazrakh. The other draz was as tall as Khovrath, but slimmer and ridiculously handsome; he had somehow managed to avoid garnering the scars Khovrath had. It annoyed Khovrath immensely that he couldn't quite attribute this to cowardice. But Mavrakh knew his work in the Hunt, and with Sakkorav's death his position as Hunt-second was undisputable. Khovrath just wished Mazrakh wasn't so *smug* about it. They had been on opposite sides in the last Game of Power, some three cycles ago. By tradition, Huntforces drew from the Banners of Fate as a unit, rather than as individuals; as Huntleader to the Silent Shadows, Khovrath had drawn green. Mazrakh had been a newcomer to the Glorious Teeth, whose Huntleader had drawn purple. They had faced each other frequently in their battles. Finally the Coalition had settled into its new shape for the next Passage, and the Glorious Teeth and the Silent Shadows had allowed their enmity to lapse to its former quiescent malice. Then the Centauri had reawakened. And behind them, the Great Enemy had come again. Over the course of various battles against the Centauri, the Shadows and the Vorlons, the Glorious Teeths' luck had finally run out. They had died almost to a draz, defending an outlying colony from mysterious Shadow-creatures that raged and killed and moved with a ferocity and silence far surpassing the most feral Drazi's. Only a few were left. The Coalition, rather than attempting to rebuild a Huntforce laden with the memory of failure and horror, dispersed the survivors. And Mazrakh had wound up in Khovrath's Hunt. Khovrath had his own suspicions. Drazi did not accuse each other of cowardice without overwhelming proof at hand. But Mazrakh had never seemed to suffer the nightmares of other survivors of that world. And he had very few scars, for a Hunter as adept as he. And there were no other witnesses alive from the Glorious Teeth, and few from that world, to testify to Mazrakh's behaviour in the courts of honour. Had Mazrakh chosen to flee a battle or two, it would be very very difficult to prove. "What I think," Khovrath said at length, as much to his own thoughts as to Mazrakh's somewhat impertinent question, "is that we cannot use these cables without equipment we do not possess." Mazrakh shrugged. "Then shall we spread out and search for - " "*However,*" Khovrath interrupted. A secret glee chased down his nerves as he noted the disgruntled, humiliated scowl in Mazrakh's eyes. "Such equipment *will* be possessed by the slain Earthers." He signalled to three of the Drazi. "You - Xonarras, Zhamarok, Ilvridas - search the Earther corpses. If they have equipment for using these cables, bring it." The three named nodded and fell out, loping towards the building the Earthers had used for shelter. Khovrath turned to the others. "The rest of you, encircle and guard. If there are other Earthers remaining above, we will not be surprised the way they surprised them." "Will we not?" Mazrakh growled, but softly, so only Khovrath heard him. The Huntleader restrained the urge to rip out the Second's throat. The Silent Shadows, moving like their namesakes, scrambled down from the ridge and filtered out into guard positions around the bore, each disappearing into the darkness. Soon only he and Mazrakh were left on the ridge. Despite the rain and the stench, their stealth and speed were unhindered. Khovrath felt a glow of pride. "I saw a Vorlon once," remarked Mazrakh, almost idly. "When?" "At Babylon 5. I was there briefly, during the last Game of Power, when those of the Green came to serve the Human commander. Ivanova." Mazrakh's face was impassive, but the sneer lay under his voice like a layer of poison. Khovrath shuddered with the effort to hold himself back. The Game was over. "Before she made all those there of the Purple, and so brought that part of the Game to a close, I was in their marketplace, their Zoh-kall-oh. I saw the Ambassador, Kosh. "Tall he was, and massive in his garb. He moved like a statue of steel and stone, come to life. And he spoke to me." "Did he now." Khovrath's voice was heavy with disbelief. "What did he say?" Mazrakh didn't seem to notice. "He said - " The draz paused for an almost agonizingly long moment. "He said, 'One does not use chaos. One becomes chaos.'" Khovrath scowled. "And *that* means -- ?" "That we should not think to understand the tools of the Vorlons any more than their words." Mazrakh glared around at the city. "We should burn it. Burn it all." "The Commander-First has spoken," Khovrath growled. "What we find, we bring back. Let the scientists and scholars decipher it. Our business is to find the treasures and recover them." "And survive the traps in the process while letting no one find out," said Mazrakh. "Zarabakh should have abandoned this course of action the moment we knew the Earthers were here." "Afraid?" said Khovrath. There was a moment of silence. Mazrakh did not move, outwardly, but every muscle in his long, lean, green-scaled body had become taut. With agonizing slowness, the other draz relaxed. But the murderous glare Mazrakh shot him showed that the barb had struck home. Khovrath knew well that had they not been on Hunt, Mazrakh would have Challenged him instantly. But they *were* on Hunt. And all other concerns gave way to that imperative. "Huntleader!" Ilvridas led the others in their sprint back to the bore. "We've found it; look - " She demonstrated the belt-worn units through which the black cable threaded. Though the principles on which it was designed might still be beyond Drazi science, the technology itself was idiotically simple to use. Khovrath grinned, letting his fangs show. Now *this* was more like it. Five units. Harrrrrr. He would lead, of course. Which four to take... ah. "Ilvridas, you are Huntleader-Third until Mazrakh and I return. Zhamarok, Vrysh, Uzbek - you are the other three." He strapped himself into the grapple-harness, adjusting the straps to their maximum size. Even so, it only barely fit his frame. The Earthers were so *puny*. "What we find and can carry, we will bring up. What we cannot carry, we will tag with marker beacons - " he produced a tiny broadcasting unit from his belt - "and come back to dig out." He opened the grabline channel, slid the cable through it and closed it. "Be ready for anything." He lifted his hand, clawed nails spread, and slashed it across the air in a straight line at face level. The Silent Shadows returned the salute. Khovrath gave them his wildest grin, deliberately set the grapple to zero-strength, turned, and leapt into the abyss. 21:53 EST She hadn't meant to. She knew it was possibly the most dangerous thing that could have happened. But once Ivanova found herself - purely by accident - in the ruins of a park that lay right on the edge of the blast zone, it was impossible to tear herself away from staring at it. Her sodden hair straggled down past her face, limp and dripping, steam rising from it as the heat waves played against it. Stretching away for a diameter of what must easily have been four or five kilometres, the molten matter in the blast area seethed and bubbled like lava, with the same scorching, curiously dry heat. Red-gold light shimmered upwards in fiery waves of dim illumination that only partly banished the night. But in the waves of molten eddies flared bursts of colour, reactions half chemical, half electromagnetic: sparks of blue, crackles of green, spurts of livid purple. The coloured flares lent a sick, almost oily sheen to the red-gold lake. Through the steam that constantly billowed and hissed as rain struck the blast zone and vanished, the light became more than alien: it became unholy. Obscene. Sheridan had told her once what Anna - not the real Anna, but the reanimated drone pulled from the heart of a Shadow ship - had told him about Z'ha'dum. The Shadows had believed that if anything Vorlon touched their homeworld, they would die. Indeed, it had, in the end, been the touch of a Vorlon-created telepath that had destroyed the planet. And now something of the Shadows had touched a Vorlon world, and only death and chaos had resulted. *"Captain!"* She spun, PPG rifle coming up, then sighed and fell out of her combat pose as Waverly and three of his guards sprinted up to her. Waverly saluted as he staggered to a stop. "Jeez, there you are, sir! It took us fragging forever to find you, have you seen anyone else?" His own hair was plastered flat by the rain, but his grey-green eyes were as keen as ever. "Negative." Ivanova shook her head curtly, annoyed with herself. "We have to move, this area isn't safe." Her belt radmeter had stayed in the safe zone for the moment, but it could flare to danger levels at any second, drop back again just as quickly or sustain killing amounts of radiation. "Come on." She clapped him on the shoulder and loped away from the park. Waverly fell into easy pace beside her, PPG rifle held at the ready. "Chief," said Northrup, a stodgy-looking fellow with strong shoulders, a jowly face and the faintest hint of a Cockney accent. "I think the site's a klick or two north past that spike, it is." He pointed to a splintered, fallen pillar of what looked like pinkish marble, threaded with veins of vivid scarlet and blue. "I remember that from the maps Lieutenant Corelli's tacnet brewed up." "Oh?" said Ivanova. "Aye, Captain; the gropo who caught it made a note it looked like a broken-off - uh - " Abruptly Northrup flushed brick-red. "Er, well, it was a colourful turn of phrase, is all." Ivanova snorted, mouth quirking. "Yes, I imagine it was." She paused to try her link again. "Ivanova to ground force! Someone! Anyone! Come in!" For a moment only the now-wearily-familiar static answered. But then a trill broke through, and a sound like a muffled voice. Ivanova froze, as did the rest of them. The signal struggled, gained strength, and burst into momentary clarity. " - uttle One, Ens - rgan - ptain, acknowl---ge!" Heedless of whether it was protocol or not, Ivanova broke into a run, moving towards the broken pillar and the clarity of open ground. "Ensign Morgan! Thomas! Where are you!" She was aware of the others following. "Respond!" "-hopper Flight - down at landi - no links from the city team, sir!" As she, Waverly and the others got into open ground the signal strengthened. "We got an uplink from -- *-Germain*, they warned us ab-your drop! Location, sir?" "Grid square - " she checked her map - "B-2. About ten minutes from the bore-site, if I'm reading this right." "Do you want us - ocate a new landing site and m--- you, sir?" "Negative, Ensign, I say again, that's a *negative*! You are *not* going into this atmosphere until we get our people and bring them back." For a moment, she wondered at the urgency of making this point. Then she shook her head. It was dangerous to send them into the air, that was all. "Warn Lieutenants Takayama and Yves that they'll have extra passengers and just keep yourselves ready to fly!" "Sir, that was pr--- much a given!" How in the name of God Morgan managed to shout through a horrible signal like this one and still sound sardonically dry, Ivanova had no idea. She found herself wanting to laugh. "Understood. Ivanova out." She cut the link, only giving herself half a heartbeat to wonder why she was reluctant to do so, and turned to Waverly. "Okay, Matt, I want you to make one last circle to pick up any stragglers you can find and then we rendezvous with - " She corrected herself at the last moment. " - we move in on the boresite." "Gotcha. I've been accessing what's left of the tacnet, I think I' ve got a couple more people - " They staggered, voices lost in a sudden howl of wind that physically pushed them off balance. Ivanova shook the hair out of her eyes: it cost more than the effort was worth, for it served only to loosen the last shreds of her braid and tear the whole sodden mane free. She spluttered as the wet mass caught on her face and mouth. Waverly wiped his hair back from his face with both hands. "Yeow!" he shouted. "What a fraggin' *mess*!" Absurdly, he sounded delighted rather than annoyed. "So glad you're enjoying yourself! Go!" "I'm gone!" He didn't actually leave, of course; that would have been lunacy. Instead, he staggered cheerfully off to the broken spike and sent two of the guards off on a looping search-pattern, watching them go on a portable version of the same unit van der Rhies had used to establish his tacnet. Ivanova used the pause to check over her PPG rifle. It was still in perfect working order. She had an awful sinking feeling that she would need it. She had meant to say, But that same sinking feeling had told her they were too late for that. She didn't often get such hunches, and they weren't always right - but in general, the more unpleasant they were, the more often, in her experience, they tended to be true. Was that paranoia, cynicism, some offshoot of the telepathy which might have just become marginally more sensitive in this city of the talent' s creators, or something else entirely? A thought came to her -- from where, she couldn't remember - somehow complete in itself. It was not quite an answer, but somehow it was equally capable of dispensing with the question. It might not be *the* truth. But it was true enough for the here and now. 22:03 EST ORBIT VECTOR X22-Y03-Z300 "Alpha Leader, this is Beta Leader, I got signals." "Alpha to Beta, I copy, Lieutenant Swann, from where?" DeClercq glanced at his 360 display, on which one of the blue dots that represented the other Starfuries was flashing. "Straight ahead, they ain't comm signals, I think we're lookin' at scan beams." The drawl was a light Southern alto. Cal Swann (never, *ever* the "Calpurnia" her parents had cursed her with) might sound like a walking stereotype, but the mind and the piloting skills behind that drawl were as sharp as Ivanova's tongue. "No way they're Earthforce, either." "I see them." The display was filling in, now, with red dots as the Starfury's flight computer targeted the source of the emissions. PROFILE UNKNOWN flashed beside each of them, but there looked to be at least - six, seven - eight of them. Closer odds than DeClercq liked, if it came to combat. "What do you figure for range, Lieutenant?" "Easy ten thousand klicks yet, but they're movin' fast. Could close within minutes if we both go to full burn." "Heat 'em up, Lieutenant?" came the voice of one of the other pilots. DeClercq's mouth tightened. The question seemed innocuous enough... but it had come from a pilot in Alpha Squad. *His* wing. It might just have been habit. He was not, after all, Flight Ops; Swann was. But he did not want to go into battle with even one pilot who didn't want to listen to his orders. Then he blinked. This was nothing new. But he hadn't been this angry about it in a long time. What was happening to him? Whatever her unprofessionalism in other areas, Swann at least knew enough to slap down on it here. "That's a question for the Commander, Hughes," she snapped, her accent fading notably. "Alpha Leader? Your orders?" DeClercq opened his mouth - then in a moment changed what he had been about to say as the red dots suddenly accelerated. The figures next to them shot skyward, energy emissions soaring, and the numbers showing range began to plummet with alarming rapidity. DeClercq's stomach knotted. But his voice was steady, only a beat's hesitation showing his alarm. "Go to full burn!" he ordered. "Weapons hot! Targeting online, but do *not* fire until I order it or until they fire first! All Starfuries, flank speed now!" He obeyed his own order and punched the throttle. The engines' vibration through the chassis of the fighter swelled to a thunder, and almost six gravities of weight bore down on him in agony. His lungs rasped stertorously, clawing at the extra oxygen flooding into the chamber as the lifesupport compensated. The red dots drew closer. All around him the Starfuries shot towards the targets. The rolling of the planet below suddenly brightened. The sun burst over the edge of the world with a blaze like a hole into the heart of God. And in that sudden light, enough to make DeClercq squint, he could just barely see tiny dark-green specks, hurtling towards them. With a plunging gut of fear, instinct took over a second before the energy spikes on the computer confirmed it. A shrill of alarms was the final signal. Swann's voice was high, sharp and not quite panicked. "Target lock! They're locking!" "All 'Furies, open fire, I say again fire at will, *fire at will!*" DeClercq threw the fighter into a barrel-roll just as whitish-green energy blazed past him. His finger clenched on the firing stud. With the fury of miniature stars, the Starfury's twin pulse cannon opened up. "Alpha Leader to *Saint-Germain*, Alpha Leader to *Saint-Germain*, we have hostiles, I repeat, *we have hostiles!* The balloon's gone up, Philip! This is it!" 22:07 EST EAS *SAINT-GERMAIN* DeClercq's desperate shouts filled the bridge. At the helm, Ensign Koderres spun to see Ramirez' lips lifting back from his teeth in a snarl. One fist smashed down on the arm of the command seat. "That's it." His Hispanic accent was thick. "No more fucking around. It's time to take names and kick ass." TO BE CONTINUED