1-The Long Night of Centauri Prime

by Peter David

  “For what it is worth,” Kane said softly, looking genuinely contrite, “I am sorry.”

  “It isn’t worth a damned thing,” Vir said.

  “Then perhaps this will be worth something: Mariel is not the problem. She’s merely the pawn of others. Even those who appear to guide Mariel are themselves guided. There is a great darkness residing on Centauri Prime.”

  “A great darkness.” Vir echoed the words without putting much inflection to them. “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “And is that supposed to make me feel better, somehow? Less used? Less foolish?”

  “No.” Kane approached him and came uncomfortably close. Vir’s instinct was to take a step back, but filled with a newfound stubbornness, he held his ground. Kane didn’t appear to notice. “What it is supposed to do is fill you with a deep burning rage. It’s supposed to make you realize that there is more at stake than your ego, you, Vir Cotto, have a destiny . And you must -you must -rise to the level of the man that you can be, in order to fulfill it.”

  “I see. And is it your job to help bring me to that destiny? To help me rise up and become all that I am capable of becoming ?” asked Vir sarcastically.

  “Well … no,” admitted Kane. “In point of fact, I should be keeping out of it entirely. My job is simply to relay information to others, but otherwise stay completely out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, I find that I can’t. I can’t simply stand by and allow the Drakh to-“

  “The who?”

  “The Drakh,” Kane said with an air of portentousness. “Servants of the Shadows.”

  “The Shadows are gone.”

  “But the servants remain,” insisted Kane. “And their darksome influence is all throughout Centauri Prime. Ultimately, it is their hand behind Mariel’s involvement. They also control Londo Mollari.”

  “And you know this for a certainty.”

  “For a time, I only suspected. So I took steps to make sure. It took some time, I admit. I stayed outside the palace and waited for Londo to emerge, since I didn’t want to chance setting foot into the palace itself.”

  “Afraid?” Vir said challengingly.

  Kane did not hesitate. “Absolutely,” he said.

  That, more than anything, Vir found absolutely chilling. If an initiate of the techno-mages was afraid, then Vir should by rights be bordering on total panic. He gulped and tried to appear undaunted.

  “My patience was eventually rewarded as Londo finally emerged, dressed in fairly informal garb, and headed into a section of Centauri Prime which I believe is called Ghehana.”

  “Ghehana? Why would he go there?”

  “He was seeking a young woman who had been residing at the palace, apparently. While Londo was there, I came into close enough contact with him that I was able to place a recording device upon him. As I feared, the Drakh detected it before long. It may have put them even more on their guard, but at least I was able to confirm for myself their presence.”

  Before Vir could say anything further, Kane stretched out his hand and a holographic image appeared on it. “It recorded everything within the room,” Kane said, “for a few moments, until it was discovered. I thought you might want to see.”

  There appeared a small image of Londo, flickering ever so gently in Kane’s hand. And he was talking to …

  Vir gasped. Not since the last time he had seen Morden had he felt that he was looking upon the face of pure evil. The creature he saw Londo speaking to … even without all the warnings that Kane had voiced, Vir would nonetheless have trembled just to see it.

  The Drakh was speaking to Londo about something … Vir caught the word “dig” and a designation … K0643, although he had no idea what that referred to … and then the Drakh appeared to react to something. He stretched out a hand and the picture fritzed out of existence.

  “He was a bit more perceptive than I anticipated,” Kane admitted with a touch of regret. “After going to all that effort, all I managed to get was that small bit. Still … at least it should be enough to convince you.”

  “To convince me of what?”

  “That,” Kane said cryptically, “you shall have to determine for yourself.”

  “No, no, no,” Vir snapped, biting off each word. “Don’t start going enigmatic on me. I’m having a rough enough night as it is. What are you expecting me to do with this … this information you’ve tossed in my lap? For that matter, how do I know that this, above all else, isn’t some sort of trick?”

  “If your interest has been piqued, then I suggest you get together with Londo, and get him quite intoxicated, if that is possible. Once he is sufficiently inebriated, say to him the word, `Shiv’kala.’ Watch him carefully to see his reaction. But only say it to him when he is truly drunk, because I suspect that if you speak the word while he is sober, then you will surely die before much time has passed.

  “As for what I’m expecting you to do, Vir, I’m only asking whatever it is that you are personally capable of. No more, and no less, than that.”

  He bowed slightly and headed for the door.

  “Wait a minute!” Vir called, but the door slid shut behind the initiate. He headed after him-the door opened mere seconds after Kane had passed through it … and Vir wasn’t, for some reason, even remotely surprised to find that Kane was gone.

  At that moment, Vir wasn’t sure who it was he hated more: Kane, Mariel, the Drakh, or himself.

  He turned back into his quarters and sat down on the bed. Thought of the press of her warm flesh against his. Had there been any of it that she had truly enjoyed? Had it all been a sham? Did she ever feel the slightest twinge of regret over the true motives behind what she was doing? What would he say to her when she returned? Shed show up, expecting that things were going to be exactly as she had left them, unaware that anything had changed. If he said anything to her, shed likely deny it. Perhaps she would deny it because none of it was true. Perhaps …

  No. No, it was true. Because as far as Vir was concerned, it all made so much more sense than the notion that a woman like that could become besotted with a man like him.

  Vir had absolutely no idea what to do. He desperately felt as if he needed someone to talk to about the matter, but he couldn’t think of anyone. Everyone he might vaguely have trusted was gone.

  He didn’t fall asleep that night, which wasn’t surprising. He dressed the next morning as if in a fog. Stepping out into the corridor, he encountered two ambassadors who solicitously asked after Mariel and looked at him in a way that he would have once seen as genuine smiles, but now saw only as smirks. He turned right around and headed back to his quarters.

  He sat on the couch, trembling with fury and indignation, and then he began to cry. It was unmanly, it was undignified, but he was alone and he didn’t care. He grabbed a pillow and sobbed into it, felt as if his soul was emptying out into that pillow. He would expend all his strength into expelling all his misery and loneliness-and just when he thought he had no more strength to continue, a new fit of weeping would seize him and he would collapse all over again.

  When he had finally gotten all of the misery and self-pity out of his system, he found that most of the day was already gone. What was left within him was a cold, burning desire for revenge . Revenge against the shadowy forces that had twisted and turned his life back on itself for years and years now He had stood helpless before the advent of the Shadow ships that swarmed across the skies of Centauri Prime. He had watched Londo’s slow descent into a darkness from which he could never return, and he had been unable to prevent it. He had experienced his own personal hell as he had found the blood of an emperor on his hands.

  Once more he thought of Mariel, and the merest passing thought of her was enough to enrage him. Ordinarily, he would have been quick to let such feelings go. Life, he had always felt, was too short to let it be caught up in fantasies of vengeance. Not this time, though. This time the hurt had been too personal, the cut too deep. This time someone,
or something , was going to suffer consequences for what they had done to him.

  Perhaps what drove Vir the most was that, for the first time in his life, he didn’t care about himself. At least that much of the self-pity remained with him, but it had been forged into something else. It wasn’t as if he was despondent. Instead, he was taking that lack of concern for his own well-being, and crafting it into an attitude that he sensed would serve him in the months-perhaps years-ahead. He was not particularly anxious to die, but the notion of life wasn’t holding any exceptional allure for him either. Vengeance was beginning to ascend over concerns for his personal safety.

  He picked himself up and turned his attention to the computer terminal, checked the schedules and saw that there was a transport bound for Centauri Prime the very next morning. He told himself that the serendipity of the timing provided yet another sign that he was embarking upon the right course.

  He lay upon his bed that evening, quite convinced that he would never be able to so much as close his eyes. To his subsequent surprise, he fell immediately asleep.

  The next morning he headed straight over to the departures area, walking as if he had blinders on, looking neither right nor left, barely acknowledging anyone he passed, even if they greeted him. He purchased a one-way ticket to Centauri Prime, wondered whether he would ever again set foot on Babylon 5, and came to the realization that he didn’t care.

  As Vir departed B5, he didn’t notice Kane watching him go, nor did he see two other similarly robed figures who were standing beside Kane, one male, one female.

  “You play a dangerous game,” said the female, “as does Vir. He has no true idea of what he faces.”

  “Neither do we,” replied Kane.

  “But we, at least, have an inkling. He has nothing except what small pieces of information you have been dropping upon him.”

  “That will have to do.”

  “I mislike it,” the woman said firmly.

  The man standing next to her chuckled. “You mislike everything, Gwynn. At least Kane is stirring things up.”

  “Perhaps. Let us simply hope,” said the woman known as Gwynn, “that we do not get caught up cooking in the stew being stirred.”

  Usually for Vir, the time spent in space travel seemed positively endless. He didn’t particularly like such journeys, and usually spent them on the edge of his seat, waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for the bulkhead to buckle or the oxygen to leak or the engines to go dead or some other catastrophe to hit. For Vir was always all-too-aware of the fact that a very unforgiving vacuum surrounded them, and only the relatively thin ship’s hull stood between him and a violent death. On this voyage, however, he gave it no thought at all. His thoughts were focused entirely upon Centauri Prime and what he would do once he arrived there.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t really know. He wasn’t sure how he would approach Londo, or what he would do about the Drakh, or what he could do. These and any number of other considerations tumbled about in his mind.

  No one was there to meet him when he arrived at the Centauri Prime spaceport, which was fine. He hadn’t told anyone he was coming. He wanted his arrival at the palace to come as a total surprise. Somehow he sensed that the only thing he really had going for him was surprise. He wanted to make his movements and actions as unpredictable as possible.

  The bottom line was, the only person he trusted anymore was himself. As much as he wanted to trust Londo, he had seen far too much for him to be able to place any real confidence in the emperor.

  Nor did he trust the techno-mage initiate. His first encounter with techno-mages, on Babylon 5, during their great migration, had led him to think of them as tricksters. The terrifying illusion they had cast, of a monstrous creature threatening to rend Vir limb from limb, still occasionally haunted his dreams.

  Techno-mages, as a group, had their own motivations, their own agendas. There was still the very distinct possibility that Kane had fabricated this entire thing. That there was no such thing as a “Drakh.” What he had shown Vir had been so short, so conveniently minimal, that it was impossible for Vir to know for certain just how forthcoming Kane was being. He might have fabricated the entire thing from whole cloth, as a means of undercutting Vir’s support for Centauri Prime-and that for reasons Vir could only guess. Which might have meant that the business with Mariel was also fabrication …

  But no. No, Vir was positive that wasn’t the case. The farther he was away from Babylon 5, the longer he was away from that arena that they had shared, the more clear it became to him.

  Vir arrived at the palace and was greeted with polite surprise by Londo’s personal guard. He was escorted to a waiting room, there to wait until there was a hole in the emperor ‘s schedule that would allow him to meet with Vir. “Had we only been expecting you, we would have accommodated you with far greater efficiency,” Vir was told. He shrugged. It made little difference to him.

  And as he sat in the waiting room, he couldn’t wipe the vision of Mariel from his mind. But he was determined that that was exactly what he had to do. He pictured her face, lathered with contempt, and mentally he started to disassemble it, feature by feature. Plucked out the eyes, removed the nose, the teeth, the tongue, all of it, until there was only a blank space where a woman had occupied so much of his attention.

  And when she was gone-or at least, when he believed her to be gone-he knew one thing for certain. He knew that if he never, ever, saw a wife of Londo Mollari again, it would be too soon.

  The door to the waiting room slid open and Vir automatically started to stand. He rose halfway and froze in position.

  It wasn’t Londo standing there in the doorway. Instead it was a diminutive Centauri woman, her face round, her eyes cool and scornful, her lips frozen in a perpetual pucker of disapproval , her demeanor glacial.

  “You’ve lost weight, Vir. You look emaciated. You should eat something,” said Timov, daughter of Algul, wife of Londo Mollari.

  At that moment, Vir seriously considered gnawing his leg off at the knee just so he could escape.

  Rumors had begun to falter through the dig.

  There had been the reputation, of course. Everyone knew the stories. But no one had taken it seriously, not really seriously . There had been discussions of it in the evening hours, but in the early days of the dig, the chats had been like the laughter of children camping out.

  But months had passed, and there was a sense that they were getting close to something. Nobody knew what that something was, but there was a general and unmistakeable air of foreboding, even among people who were of such a sober-minded nature that they would never have bought into a concept as quaint as a place being “haunted.”

  Then, there was the question of the disappearing diggers.

  When one had vanished, no one had thought anything of it. But over the long months, several more had disappeared. At first this had been chalked off to simple desertion, but several of the men who had disappeared had been workers who had absolutely no reason to depart. In fact one of them, a fellow named Nol, just before he had gone missing, was talking about how the dig was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It had gotten him away from a wife he could not stand, children whom he didn’t comprehend, and a life that had done nothing but go sour for him. So when Nol had disappeared , that really got eyebrows lifted and tongues wagging.

  In short, no one knew what was going on. There was some brief discussion of a mass desertion, but representatives of the Ministry of Internal Security had caught wind of it and come in short order to calm the agitation of the workers. Still, to play it safe, workers had started traveling in groups of three or more at all times, never wandering off on their own, never searching around in areas that were considered off limits.

  They also started spending more time in town. Ironically, there had been no town there before. But, in a case of form following function, a small trading community had arisen primarily to accommodate the workers. The odd traveler passed thro
ugh from time to time, but for the most part it was a tight-knit, normal community. Or at least, as normal as could be expected with the aforementioned air of foreboding hanging over it.

  Meantime, the digging drew closer and closer to that which had been hidden and forgotten for millennia …

  - chapter 19 -

  Two years before Vir Cotto found himself in Timov’s presence , Londo Mollari had looked at the expression on the face of his aide, Dunseny, who had just bustled into the throne room, and had known instantly.

  “She’s here, isn’t she,” was all Londo had said.

  Dunseny managed to nod, but that was about all. This was an individual who had served Londo’s assorted needs for years, and he had never seemed daunted by anything that Londo had thrown at him, or any duty that had been required of him. But now he wore a look of total befuddlement, bordering on intimidation, and that signaled to Londo the arrival of the diminutive terror known as Timov.

  Londo sighed heavily. He’d had a feeling that the time would come. He just hadn’t known when.

  It was somewhat like death in that regard. Although maybe not; he actually had a fairly clear idea of what that felt like, and of when his own mortality would finally catch up with him. This led him to realize that Timov was even more fearsome and unpredictable than death. She probably would be rather taken with that notion, he mused.