Visions of Peace

by Matthew Sprange

  ‘White Star fleet, you are violating Centauri territory,’ he said with a conviction born of years surrounded by sycophants and yes men. ‘Withdraw or be destroyed.’

  Well, that is a good start, thought Sosa. ‘Minister, I bring the respectful greetings of President Sheridan. He regrets the matter has gone this far and seeks a solution that protects the sovereign territory of the great Centauri Republic without bloodshed.’

  The Centauri minister blinked at Sosa’s words, encouraging the Ranger to continue. He knew from past experience that humility and flattery could go a long way when dealing with the Centauri.

  ‘I respectfully ask that you cease hostilities with the Earth fleet in this system and allow me to come aboard to discuss this further. I will be alone and unarmed.’

  When the minister smirked at Sosa’s words, the Ranger knew he had failed.

  ‘White Star, it is my intention to close with the Earth fleet and blast them from our sky. If you intervene, we will open fire on your ships. Persuade your fellow humans to leave our territory, if that is your wish, but we consider any non-Centauri ship in our territory an enemy. We will allow you to leave unmolested, if you do so now.’

  With that, the display went blank as the Minister cut the link.

  Sosa closed his eyes and sighed.

  ‘It is as if they both desire battle,’ said one of his Minbari crew.

  ‘Patch me through to the Admiral again,’ said Sosa. If diplomacy and flattery would not work with either fleet, perhaps a threat would at least buy time.

  Admiral, I insist you withdraw from Beta III at once and leave Centauri space,’ he said when Ward’s image appeared once more before him.

  ‘You know we cannot do that.’

  Admiral, see reason. You are outnumbered and outgunned. This is a fool’s errand you are on and it will gain Earth nothing.’

  ‘I disagree. We already have reinforcements on the way and are more than capable of holding off the Centauri attack until they arrive. I will ask you again, however, to join us against the Centauri. Your ships are powerful enough to tip the balance and will save many lives.’

  Sosa shook his head. ‘Neither the ISA nor the Anla’Shok differentiates between Centauri and human life, Admiral. If you continue to engage the Centauri, you do so without the permission or direction of the ISA and risk retaliation from the Rangers in the interests of continued galactic peace.’

  Admiral Ward looked surprised. ‘Are you saying you will defend the Centauri and attack us?’

  ‘Admiral, the Centauri are the injured party here. You have violated their territory, attacked their colony and now refuse to leave.’

  Ward fell silent for a few seconds then looked back at Sosa. ‘I have my orders,’ he said and, once again, the display went blank.

  Silence fell across the bridge of the White Star until a Minbari spoke over Sosa’s shoulder. ‘What are your orders?’

  ‘Get me Sheridan, now,’ he said. ‘Get him dragged out of the Council if you need to--we have less than six minutes before all hell breaks loose here.’

  Chapter Twelve

  July 9th 2263, Mars Dome One, Sol

  Shutting down the communications link to Tuzanor, Shaw leaned back from his station, sighing. Tilanna worked hard on the other console, with an occasional sharp but quiet intake of breath that Shaw attributed to momentary frustration. He looked at her petite form, her slender neck rising above grey robes beneath the hard bone crest that bracketed the rear of her entire skull.

  ‘The White Star fleet has been sent to Beta III,’ he said. ‘It seems EarthForce and the Centauri are going to kick off hostilities there, though they are expecting repeats all along the border.’

  When Tilanna did not answer, he tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Please tell me you have gotten somewhere. Once those White Stars reach Beta III it could all be over.’

  ‘Mmm, yes,’ she said at first, continuing after a pause. ‘I have managed to get through the security protocols on those customs records. I don’t think I triggered any alarms doing so.’

  ‘You broke them?’ Shaw asked in surprise. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Tilanna turned to face him, blinking in surprise of her own. ‘I had no time to analyse the information within--thus I had nothing to tell you.’

  Shaw stared at her then grinned, rubbing his brow. He could not deny it made some logical sense. If you were a Minbari, perhaps.

  ‘Okay, forget that,’ he said, standing up to look over her shoulder at the console. ‘What have you found? Anything we can use?’

  ‘Perhaps. Look here,’ she indicated a set of files at the fore of the screen. ‘The covering and classification of this record was not skilfully done. It seems as if someone has simply grabbed the data they were looking for and were not concerned if they also took anything else nearby. This made the anomaly easier to spot but, consequently, there has been more information to work through now that we have it.’

  ‘And?’ Shaw asked, waiting to hear what the diligent Minbari had uncovered.

  ‘The energy signature of the Dilgar device is what allowed us to track it all the way from the Centauri Republic to Earth. However, it seems as if someone were covering their tracks. We have to ask ourselves, how did it get into the Centauri Republic in the first place?’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Shaw. ‘We already know the Centauri fitted their own fuse to the device. And, however you look at it, if it is a Dilgar weapon, it had to originate from outside the Republic. But we don’t know how long they had it in their possession.’

  ‘We do now,’ said Tilanna. ‘A routine exterior sweep by a maintenance bot at Babylon 5 picked up the signature, on a free trader called the Freedom Flight that had a flight route logged for Quadrant 15. However, it did not take me long to ascertain that it never arrived.’

  ‘Did you find where exactly the ship went?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘At least not straight away. But let us make a leap of faith--look at the star charts. If the ship went off the regular jump routes, what Centauri system is very close to Quadrant 15?’

  Shaw peered at the star chart Tilanna called up and saw immediately what she was getting at. ‘Coutor!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘An interesting supposition, is it not?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘The scan was performed by accident. The maintenance bot was no doubt engaged in some mundane status checking of flight patterns in the vicinity of the Babylon 5 station. That does not matter. However, it picks up on the Dilgar device, logs what it finds--and then those logs are classified, ensuring they cannot be used to accurately track what happened prior to the attack on EarthDome. It goes unnoticed for this long because everyone is concentrating on the immediate events, not what happened a little earlier.’

  ‘Until a diligent Minbari starts looking into things.’

  Tilanna smiled slightly, the first hint of self-satisfaction Shaw saw in the Minbari. ‘Our analysts would have picked it up sooner than I,’ she said. ‘But I was the only one with direct access to Earth’s own records. The only one with an interest in not blaming the Republic as a whole, that is.’

  ‘So where is this ship now--what did you call it, the Freedom Flight?

  ‘It is registered to a man called Hans Shiritori, and I managed to track its progress as soon as it returned to Babylon 5, from Coutor we are presuming. You will find this interesting. After a brief stop at the station, it headed further into the Earth Alliance, landing at Mars Dome Two just three days ago. It departed . . . no, it will depart in two days. It is still here.’

  ‘Mars Dome Two,’ Shaw mused.

  ‘I know you come from Mars. Do you know Dome Two?’

  ‘I should do. I was born there.’

  ‘The perfect guide then,’ said Tilanna. ‘Mr. Shiritori is marked as currently residing in the habitation block on the North side of the Dome, apartment IIc’

  ‘The transport to Dome Two is a forty-minute ride. Come on,’ he said, glad of the chance for direct action. ‘We
don’t have much time.’

  ‘Mike, wait,’ she said, grabbing his arm to arrest his attention. ‘There is one more thing you should see.’

  Tilanna tapped a control on her console and pointed at the screen. ‘This. Who classified the report in the first place. This person, for whatever reason, be it an intentional cover up or a bid to avoid some embarrassment, deliberately hid information that might exonerate the Republic. And thus, perhaps, start a war.’

  Shaw stared at the screen grimly, remembering an Anla’Shok saying about enemies within as well as without.

  ‘Come on,’ he said quietly. ‘We need solid facts, now more than ever.’

  July 9th 2263, Mars Dome Two, Sol

  Sharing the transport tube to Mars Dome Two with other passengers, Shaw and Tilanna avoided discussing the conspiracy at hand, lapsing instead into their own silent thoughts. Shaw found himself thinking of Badeau as the red Martian landscape flickered past the window at hypersonic speeds. While he could take comfort at her care in Mars Dome One’s best medical facility, the last report he saw of her condition was still labelled as critical. Though he had known her briefly, it still pained him that a Ranger so capable could be brought down.

  She had neither failed nor made a mistake. They were all in the Intrepide when the shock wave sent it spiralling out of control into the mountains around Geneva. Why had Badeau seen the worst of it and not him? Sheer bad luck. Nothing else. Of course, there were many humans and Minbari who had perished in the crash, but Badeau was the one who should be here now, in his place. Shaw felt that, up to now, he was muddling through events, doing what seemed right rather than what he knew was right. A subtle distinction perhaps, but he could not shake the feeling that Badeau would have found the right connections and gotten to Mars Dome Two much quicker than he had. The one consolation was that, away from President Luchenko and her high-ranking EarthForce officers, away from the miles and miles of records that Tilanna had been gifted enough to sift through, here was a task he could be competent at. Breaking the head of some low-life and perhaps his even lower-life cronies to get information vital to the security of the galaxy? That was his idea of being a Ranger.

  The passengers were jolted to the side as the transport decelerated sharply in its vacuum tube. Shaw looked through the windows again, trying to pick up on some familiar landmark. Though it had been just over a year since he left Mars to join the Anla’Shok, he was surprised at the lack of ‘homecoming’ he felt now and, in truth, one sand-blasted and ultraviolet-fried plain on Mars was much the same as another. Perhaps he had come further than he had initially thought.

  Helping Tilanna to her feet, Shaw disembarked and, moving her swiftly through the checkpoint to the main transit avenue beyond, held up his hand to flag down one of the innumerable taxi cars that prowled the area. Stepping inside, they gave the driver the address of the North Habitation Block and sat back as they sped through the streets of Mars Dome Two.

  Tilanna looked outside at the people and buildings of Mars as they accelerated down the avenue. Joining her gaze, Shaw looked at the massive metal and glass dome that arced high above them, sealing this small city in its own self-contained environment, safe from the ravages of Mars. Aside from that, and the constant red sheen the light from outside the Dome spread everywhere, it could almost be a city on Earth or any other well-developed colony world. Green gardens sprang up on any spare piece of ground that was not dominated by multi-storey shopping centres, offices and homes, as much a human attempt to bend the planet Mars to their own vision of paradise as an aid to the giant atmospheric processors that Shaw knew worked hard day and night beneath the streets of the Dome.

  The journey lasted only minutes and, after paying the driver of the taxi with the credit chit issued to all Rangers, they approached the towering pale-blue habitation block. Designed to pack as many souls as possible into a tight space, the block was typical of several others in the Dome and was a common home for passing travellers who needed a permanent address on Mars or those who simply could not afford to live in one of the so-called suburbs, places marked by the lack of proximity neighbours had with one another. The North Habitation Block had, at least, a better reputation than some of the others, and so its population was dominated by off-worlders who found it convenient to keep a home on Mars.

  Are we just going to knock on his door?’ asked Tilanna as they mounted the steps to the block’s main entrance.

  ‘More or less,’ Shaw said. ‘It’s not as if he will be expecting us.

  ‘You seem more confident now, Mike.’

  Shaw smiled as he opened one of the glass doors for her. ‘This is my department.’

  Taking the lift to the second floor, they found themselves at the corner of a carpeted L-shaped corridor with the doors of many apartments leading from it. The place was spartan but clean. Shaw indicated the corridor they should follow, and they were soon outside apartment IIc.

  ‘So you just knock?’ Tilanna asked, her voice subdued.

  ‘In my own special way,’ he said, gesturing for her to stand clear. He began tapping away at the key code next to the doorframe, its security giving way to his Anla’Shok infiltration training within seconds. Unhooking his Denn’Bok pike from his belt, Shaw looked up and down the corridor before giving it a shake, extending the weapon to its full five-foot length. One more tap on the key code sprang the lock, and he forced the door open with a swift kick, bounding inside with a roll that sprang him upright, pike at the ready for trouble.

  The living area was empty, and he quickly looked across into the kitchen before sliding the bathroom door open. Nothing.

  ‘All clear,’ he whispered. ‘Shut the door behind you. No sense calling attention to ourselves.’

  Tilanna did as asked, gliding in to look at her surroundings curiously. She located the apartment’s computer console mounted in the wall of the living area and started to move toward it.

  ‘Don’t,’ Shaw warned. ‘Not unless we have to. If this guy is a pro, he might have rigged it to tell him if it was accessed--even if switched on.’

  ‘So what are we looking for?’

  ‘Not sure. We’ll know it when we see it. Anything that points to what Shiritori is up to, where he might be or even if he is still on planet.’

  ‘The records of the Earth Alliance say he is still on Mars,’ Tilanna pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but Mars is a big place. And since it left the Alliance, records have become a little sketchy at times.’

  The smallest room of the apartment, the bathroom was ruled out as a place containing any information regarding what their target was up to, so they concentrated on the combined living area and kitchen. Minutes were spent rifling through a small bookshelf of century-old paper books, the contents of Shiritori’s larder and a collection of data crystals that mostly contained a selection of recent blockbuster features.

  ‘His taste is questionable,’ reported Tilanna after going through the latter.

  Shaw smiled. ‘I used to watch that stuff all the time. Funny how you don’t miss it.’ He sighed. ‘I have nothing. You?’

  ‘No. I believe the only useful information we may get is from his computer.’

  ‘I wanted to avoid that,’ said Shaw. Then something on a desk beneath the console caught his eye and he began to laugh. Tilanna looked up in puzzlement.

  ‘You can keep all the Anla’Shok training, the advanced infiltration techniques and even your Temple teaching restricted file access,’ he grinned. Walking over to the desk, he picked up the object that had caught his attention. ‘Me?’ he asked. ‘I’ll just stick with a copy of the Universe Today!’

  Tilanna shook her head, not following him. A paper edition of the Earth Alliance’s main newspaper was a common enough feature in any human home, even on Mars.

  ‘I am not understanding.’

  ‘It’s the Universe To day!’ he exclaimed. Seeing her confusion, he went on to explain. ‘This is today’s issue. That confirms he is still here. Not just o
n Mars but here, probably in Dome Two. Our searched just narrowed considerably.’

  ‘So ... we wait for him?’ Tilanna asked.

  ‘We could,’ said Shaw thoughtfully. ‘But we could end up spending hours here, and I don’t believe we have the time. Come on, I have an idea.’

  Sealing the door of the apartment behind him, Shaw led Tilanna out of the habitation block and onto the streets of Mars Dome Two. Here, at least, was something that no one but he could do. Perhaps the universe did conspire to put people where they were supposed to be, he mused. Something he would meditate on later.

  For ten minutes, they moved along the sidewalks of Mars Dome Two, steadily making their way to a familiar district, and one Shaw hoped had not changed too much in the past year. After noticing several long glances in Tilanna’s direction, he suggested she raise the hood of her robes. A monkish individual shrouded in a long and hooded robe would not exactly pass by unseen, but he knew it would create far less attention than a Minbari on Mars. Even in these days of interstellar co-operation, most residents of Mars would not have seen a Minbari if it were not on one of their news or film channels.

  They had walked to the outskirts of the main spaceport of the Dome, a sprawling affair that encompassed far more than just the landing area and the passenger terminal. A whole medley of businesses, shops and hotels sprang up to catch the immediate trade of visitors just entering the Dome, true to the way the people of Mars approached things, but these places tended to get less shiny and pristine the further one moved away from the spaceport. Here, entire avenues were filled with nightclubs, bars and other less wholesome establishments, a garish area of neon and perpetually drunken revellers, some of whom made these places the whole point of entire vacations. Shaw winced as he remembered some of the days he had woken up in a metaphorical gutter somewhere in this district.