Voices b5-1

by John Vornholt

  Apparently, she was a better subterfuge than any of them had imagined. This was what she got for being ambitious and wanting to play with the big boys. She got used. Even now it seemed as if nobody—not her colleagues in the Corps or her neighbors on B5—really wanted to help her. They had their physical evidence and to hell with her! Somebody had to hang for this.

  Talia had to flee from Babylon 5, she decided that moment, and find out who really did this.

  “All right, it’s agreed,” said Garibaldi. “We’ll have to arrest you, Ms. Winters. But we’ll keep looking. I want to find that detonator, I want to know who’s on the station from Mars, and I need to talk to all my people who were doing security on Green-12. Maybe you did have an accomplice, even if you didn’t know about it.”

  He looked around her crowded quarters. “Sorry, but we can’t leave you here, under house arrest. Bester’s people are irate about it, plus all they’re doing in the corridor is drawing flies. We’ll have to take you to the brig, where we have better control over the situation. I’ll give you five minutes to get dressed and pack a few things.”

  “She’ll need a hearing before the ombuds to keep her in the brig,” said Ivanova.

  “I’ll arrange it,” answered Sheridan. “You sound like her counsel.”

  Ivanova nodded. “I am. Until I find her somebody better.” Sheridan rolled his eyes toward the heavens. “If you want me to say I was dead wrong about allowing the conference here, I will. I was dead wrong. Dumbest thing I ever did.”

  Ivanova glanced at Garibaldi and said, “We know that. I’m still her counsel.”

  The captain looked at the blond woman. “Is that all right with you?”

  Talia nodded numbly.

  “Come on, Ivanova,” said the captain, “and let’s get the paperwork started.”

  They opened the door, and Sheridan and Ivanova battled their way into an angry crowd, filled with floating video recorders. Garibaldi stared at them until the door closed, and the muscles around his neck tightened.

  “Oh, brother,” he moaned, “now the press has found us. Talia, what is this mess about? What happened?”

  She shrugged and wearily shook her head.

  “Who did you screw with?” he asked.

  “Go away,” she said in a husky voice. “I don’t trust any of you. You know I didn’t do this, but you’re going to put me on trial!”

  “That’s to keep you on the station, until we find out who did it!”

  She sniffed and untied her robe. “Right, you can tell me that when I’m convicted of five murders. Or tell me that when you turn me over to Bester. Or maybe you think I want to spend the rest of my life as the most famous prisoner in the brig of Babylon 5. You can sell tickets—there she is, the Psi Cop Bomber.”

  Garibaldi pointed at her and promised, “I’m going to find out who did this. You can bank on it.”

  “Get the hell out of here and let me find my clothes.” The blond woman stood up and started to take off her robe, and Garibaldi hurried out.

  “Doctor!” screamed a little man lying in the recovery room of a busy medlab. He started to thrash around in his bed, and then he winced and gasped from the pain.

  “Doctor!” he cried through clenched teeth.

  Dozing in the corner, Mr. Gray bolted to his feet and was the first one to the man’s side. “Please be calm, Mr. Bester. It’s wonderful to see you looking so … so awake, but you must remember your injuries.” He rearranged some of the tubes and sheets that covered Mr. Bester.

  The Psi Cop slumped back onto the bed, grumbling.

  “Yes,” said Gray, “your buttocks area was apparently very badly mangled, and the burns on your leg and arm—most unfortunate. Altogether, you were lucky.”

  “I don’t feel so lucky,” muttered Bester.

  Gray swallowed. “Yes, but look at the alternatives.”

  Bester laughed sourly. “They can’t get me so easily. Have they arrested Talia Winters yet?”

  “Yes,” answered Gray, “the last I heard, they were taking her to the brig. You know, she never struck me as being the violent type. I would have thought she was on a career track. I wonder if she really …”

  “Don’t wonder,” said Bester, followed by a coughing fit. “She brought that bomb into the room, I know it! It was no accident that she ran out when she did. But who put her up to it? I don’t know that.”

  “The Free Phobos group is claiming responsibility.”

  “I know,” growled Beater, “but who are they?”

  Gray looked down apologetically. “The conference has officially disbanded. Transports are taking most of the attendees out tonight.”

  “Damn,” muttered Bester. “They’ll get away.”

  “Who will get away?”

  “Whoever put Ms. Winters up to it!” snapped the Psi Cop. “She couldn’t have managed this by herself. Who is Free Phobos, and why do they want me out of the way?”

  Gray cleared his throat. He wasn’t about to say what he was thinking, that the number of people who wanted Bester out of the way was too numerous to investigate.

  “You’ve never heard of Free Phobos?” asked the young telepath.

  “Not before the first bombing. And not again until this second one. I’ve had plenty of people looking for them, too.”

  Bester grimaced in pain and tried to get comfortable in his hospital bed.

  “Can I get anything for you, sir?” asked Gray with concern.

  Through clenched teeth, Bester grunted, “Yes! Catch the bastards who did this to me! The ones who killed our people. You’re still attached to my office—that’s a direct order.”

  “Sir,” said Gray, taken aback, “what about your own Psi Cops?”

  Bester smiled with satisfaction. “We have Ms. Winters, or soon will have her. She’s our dirty laundry, and we will wash it ourselves. We’ll find out as much as there is to know from her, but there may be other leads. Follow them, Gray. Get to the bottom of it.”

  The young telepath felt a grip on his forearm, and he looked down to see burnt fingers wrapped in bandages, smearing blood on his sleeve.

  “Promise me,” rasped Bester.

  “I’ll find them,” said Gray, removing his arm.

  Garibaldi pulled open the door in slow motion, but the lights and the voices struck her in high-speed, strobelike bursts. Garibaldi grabbed her arm and dragged her out of her quarters, because she couldn’t make herself move. Talia felt like she was staring at an oncoming train, the rush of people was so intense. The lights blinded her, the hands pushed in, while Garibaldi’s security people pushed out. The black-suited ones stood on their tiptoes and shook their fists, shouting:

  “Murderer!”

  “Traitor!”

  “Back!” snapped Garibaldi, like a lion tamer.

  She could see a wedge of gray-suited backs forming before her and leading the way down the corridor. Garibaldi wrapped his arms around her like armor and steered her behind the wedge. People stood in doorways and clung like flies to the wall to get a look at her. The same people would have only given her a glance the day before.

  The flying wedge swept through a bulkhead and down a ramp, and the crowd of people vanished. She was surprised to see only Garibaldi and his gray-suited security people. As they weren’t needed to spearhead the charge anymore, the officers fell back to rear-guard positions. Soon it was just her and Garibaldi, followed by a man holding a PPG rifle.

  Irrationally, she thought for a split second, Can I get that rifle away from him? But where would she go? How would she get off the station? Talia had to think about it—she just had to think.

  Her inner voice was telling her to escape. It wasn’t right or wrong, or even logical, but she had to listen. There was only one thing Talia Winters knew for sure—she had to get off Babylon 5 and exit from this nightmare!

  Chapter 11

  Garibaldi pounded his knuckles together and looked at the bulk of his security staff, most of whom had been on duty the mor
ning before in Green-12. He prowled around the briefing room, peering at their dour expressions.

  “I know we’re pretty down now,” said Garibaldi, “but that assignment is over. Let’s move on to the next one, which is to find out who had anything to do with that bombing. Now, who inspected Ms. Winters when she entered Green-12 that morning?”

  “I did, sir,” said Molly Tunder, a young woman who looked mostly Asian.

  “What did you find in her bag?”

  Tunder shrugged. “Nothing that struck me as odd. Cards, a conference program, notes on a transparency.”

  “And a data crystal,” Garibaldi put in.

  The young officer shook her head. “No, sir, I don’t recall a data crystal.”

  “But she told me she had one,” the chief insisted.

  “I suppose,” said the officer, “she could’ve been holding it in her hand.”

  “How did she appear to you?” asked Garibaldi.

  “Out of sorts, distracted. But then, it was a stressful situation—the searches and pat-downs. And I couldn’t spend much time with her.”

  Garibaldi knew the feeling. He would rather be down in the brig now talking to Talia, but he couldn’t hold her hand and find the real culprits at the same time. There were a million things he wanted to do at once, but he had to calmly step through them.

  “Detail one, you’re at the beginning of your shift,” he said. “As soon as we’re finished here, you head Down Below and shake the trees. See if anybody knows anything about anything. And see if you can find Deuce, although I suspect he’s already left the station. Deuce has the good sense not to get caught in a bombing.”

  His link buzzed, and the chief answered curtly, “Garibaldi.”

  “This is Rupel in the brig. Ms. Winters has a visitor, and she’s demanding to see him.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Ambassador Kosh,” came the answer.

  “Kosh,” muttered Garibaldi. Relationships between humans and aliens were hard to explain, but he knew there was one between Talia and Kosh. Maybe the ambassador could help her get good legal counsel. On the other hand, the Vorlon often lived by his own rules, and who knew what they were?

  “It’s okay,” he said. “But have someone present. I’m going to be down there in a few minutes to talk to Ms. Winters. Out.”

  He turned off his link and looked at the expectant faces. “I’ve already got Jenkins’s report about finding Ms. Winters in the corridor after the blast. Did anybody else see anything?”

  There were several seconds of uncomfortable silence before Garibaldi realized that even the professional observers hadn’t seen anything. They were as mystified, sickened, guilt-ridden, and angry as he was.

  “All right,” he concluded, “you’ve got your assignments. We’re looking for Martians, the forensic team is at the scene, and some of us are going Down Below. The good news is that all the telepaths are either gone or on their way off the station, except for the Psi Cops. There are still about fifty of them on B5, so stay away from them. Don’t argue legalities with them. If they try to provoke anything, send them to me or Captain Sheridan.”

  Garibaldi nodded grimly to each of them in turn. “Dismissed.”

  The word “brig,” decided Talia Winters, must have been a euphemism for a kennel. That was the way it felt to her—an airy, roomy, and bare cage for a person, with as much personality as a slab of concrete. She had lots of privacy due to the fact that there was nobody else in B5’s neglected brig. Had the place been crowded and the dozen-or-so cells full—she didn’t want to think of the bedlam.

  Talia prowled her cell like a panther, ever moving, watchful, and ready to spring. At what? The cells were protected by a double cardkey system—first mechanical locks on each individual cell, then a barred doorway operated by cardkey. She didn’t know how many guards waited outside the barred door, but she had seen several already.

  Suddenly the door opened, and a massive figure filled it. Talia’s heart pounded with hope, although this figure was a very strange savior. A bundle of exotic fabrics and armor as smooth as porcelain, Ambassador Kosh glided into the room and stopped a few meters in front of her cell. The head-gear nodded, and little tubes and orifices sniffed the air.

  “It is the Hour of Longing,” said Kosh in his twinkling, synthesized voice.

  Talia snorted a derisive laugh. “You’ve got that right, Ambassador Kosh.” She shook her head in amazement. “Everything going fine, and somebody lowers the boom on you. But I’m glad to see you. I’ve been thinking a lot about you, including a time just before the bomb went off.”

  She could see the guard edging closer to overhear them.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “can we have some privacy?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the guard answered politely. “Mr. Garibaldi’s orders.”

  “Oh, is that right?” she seethed. “Bless Mr. Garibaldi for keeping the deranged terrorist under a close watch!”

  “Anger is a blue sea,” said Kosh.

  Talia blinked at him, suddenly realizing that she could try to talk to Kosh in that cryptic language of allusions that he often employed. If only she understood it. Well, there was no time like the present to give it a try.

  “This pickled herring would join the other ones,” she said.

  Kosh’s bulk leaned forward. “The wings fly at midnight.”

  “I want to see the World Series,” Talia remarked.

  The guard squinted at both of them and leaned forward curiously.

  “Apple pie,” said Kosh, “and hush puppies.”

  “Inna Babylon, do you know Babylon?” she asked in a Jamaican accent.

  “Gone, like the pickled herring.”

  “The eagle flies on Friday.”

  “Invisible Isabel,” answered Kosh. He turned to the guard and bowed. “Our business is concluded.”

  The guard stopped scratching his head long enough to go back and open the door to the outer chamber. Ambassador Kosh swept out with grandeur, even in this place.

  The guard gave Talia a quizzical look and said, “I don’t know what happened there, but Garibaldi is on his way down. He wants to talk to you.”

  “I refuse to see him,” she declared.

  “I’ll let you tell him that,” said the guard.

  “Tell me what?” asked Garibaldi, sweeping into the detention center.

  “I refuse to talk to you without my counsel present,” Talia claimed.

  “Not even if it’s to clear your name?” he asked incredulously.

  She crossed her arms and regarded him warily. “If it’s not, I’m going to clam up. I’m tired of talking, because nobody listens. What is it?”

  “You told me you had a data crystal in your bag. Is that correct?”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Was it a real crystal, one you had accessed before?”

  “Yes, it was,” answered Talia. “It had statistics for the meeting, and I was studying it the day before.”

  Garibaldi frowned, as if he didn’t want to hear that. He continued, “The officer who checked you in didn’t find a data crystal in your bag. Did you have it in your hand, or a pocket that we might have missed?”

  Talia frowned, trying to remember bits and pieces of that terrible morning. “Oh, yes,” she answered slowly. “Somebody had borrowed it and then given it back to me.”

  Garibaldi leaned forward. “Who?”

  Talia started to speak but paused. After what she had gone through, she was reluctant to give out Emily Crane’s name and put the poor woman through the same thing. Besides, she was certain that Emily Crane wasn’t a terrorist bomber. In fact, the blast had nearly killed her beloved Arthur Malten, and that let Emily out of the equation completely.

  “I’ll remind you,” said Garibaldi, “whoever put that bomb in your bag meant for you to die, too.”

  Talia screwed her eyes shut and tried to keep from losing it. “Are you sure the data crystal was a bomb?” she asked.

  “No
,” admitted the chief. “But it’s an object that we know somebody else gave you. Since that’s what you say happened …”

  “It is what happened,” she insisted.

  “Okay, then,” said Garibaldi, “this is information you need, for your defense.”

  “Listen,” said Talia, “I don’t want to unleash Bester and his people, plus all of Earthforce on this poor woman. I really believe she couldn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Maybe,” conceded Garibaldi. “We think the same way about you, but …” He didn’t finish the thought.

  Talia nodded bitterly. “That’s why I’m not going to put this woman through what I’m going through.”

  “Come on,” begged Garibaldi. “I promise, I’ll check her out personally. Listen, you’ll need to talk to her, anyway, for your own defense. I won’t give her name out until I’ve checked her out first.”

  “You really promise that?” asked Talia. “Because if I see her in this cell next door, and we’re both innocent, I’m coming after you.

  “I promise,” said Garibaldi with a lopsided smile.

  Hoarsely, the blond woman said, “Her name is Emily Crane. All I know about her is that she works in the Mix with Mr. Malten.”

  Garibaldi pressed his link. “Ivanova, it’s me. Can you tell me if Emily Crane has left the station? She was one of our recent guests, a commercial telepath.”

  “Hang on,” said the second-in-command. Several long seconds ticked off before Ivanova reported, “She left in the first transport out. Her boss, Malten, was shaken up, and she was taking him home.”

  “And where might home be?” asked Garibaldi.

  “The destination of the transport is Earth. That’s as specific as it gets. They should be there in a day or so.”

  “Thanks. Out.” Garibaldi shook his head. “Earth. Not much chance of me going there real soon.”

  Talia laughed nervously. “Me either.”

  “I’ll look up her branch office,” said Garibaldi. He leaned against the bars of her cell, looking like a sad basset hound. “I’d love to get you out of here, but we’re in enough hot water already. Besides, you’re safe here. So, is there anything I can get for you?”