Gareth Williams - A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 - Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 1 - Learning How to Live

Smith was not surprised to be ushered through the lower levels and directed to the old man's private offices on the top floor. He was even less surprised to reach the new reception area, looking an awful lot like the old one, and find the secretary Lise Hampton there, still working despite the time of night.

He was not surprised in the slightest when she said, "Good evening, Senator Smith. Go right in. Mr. Edgars is expecting you."

The most powerful man in the galaxy closed his eyes and imagined the rain falling on the roof above his head. The gentle pitter-patter sound existed only in his mind, a reminder of long years gone and a life now consigned only to memory.

He was having trouble sleeping. That happened quite often these days, whenever he was apart from Delenn. With her beside him he felt safe and happy and content and reassured that everything he was doing was right. When she was far away, all the old doubts came creeping back.

And he was very far away from her. He was in a part of the galaxy he had never even seen before, following a trail of whispers and rumours and hearsay. He might as well have been seeking King Solomon's Mines, or the source of the Nile, or the Holy Grail.

That was what had first attracted him to space — the sheer vast emptiness of it, the feel that there could be anything out there, anything at all. Uncharted systems, ancient worlds, wonders never seen by human eyes, and he could be a part of it all.

This mission should have been perfect for him. Travelling distant and uncharted courses in search of ships of immense power glimpsed only in shadows and flickers and dead men's eyes.

But something nagged at him, something he could not explain. It was not just the potential risk of one lone ship seeking what might well turn out to be a legacy of the Shadows. It was not even the pain of being apart from Delenn.

It was just that it all seemed so easy.

The rumours had been circulating for years of powerful, ancient ships out there somewhere. The words formed capital letters in his mind. Out There. Not here, not somewhere safe and understood and predictable, no. Out There. In the wilderness, past the frontier, in unexplored territory.

There had always been rumours, but over the last year they had grown. So much so that he had elected to send Dark Star s to investigate. Most had come back with nothing. Some had not come back at all. There was nothing particularly unusual in that. Space was full of dangers after all, both mundane and rare.

But instinct was warning him of something, and his instinct was rarely wrong. Once it had been terribly wrong and he had never trusted it as much since then, but still....

This all seemed too easy. He had taken his ship to some of the most recent recorded sightings and scanned for anything out of the ordinary. At about the third location they had detected a rare radiation trace which led into hyperspace, and they had followed it. The trace remained strong enough to follow even through the swirling eddies and currents of hyperspace, and although it led them far from the beacons the Dark Star could navigate easily enough. It was a ship built almost entirely by the Vorlons after all, and there was little they did not know about hyperspace.

But still, this all seemed too easy. Why had the other captains not seen this? It was tempting to think that they were not as skilled as he was. He was the Shadowkiller after all. He had been the first human captain to destroy a Minbari warship in open battle. He had done more in one lifetime than most could do in three or four.

But he was careful not to believe that. Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make proud.

He supposed it could be that he had a bond with his ship. Many Dark Star captains disliked spending too much time on their ships, but he was quite the opposite. He had spent so much time here he felt he knew it almost as well as he had known the Babylon . Sometimes he even thought the ship was alive.

Pure conceit of course. Humans had always ascribed human feelings to their vessels, going back to the earliest boats of wood and twine. Their ship was the greatest protection the old explorers had had against the elements, and so they spoke to it, named it, saw it as a shield and even as a friend. Time and technology had changed many things, but not that. If his ship failed him, a man was just as dead in the vacuum of space as he would be in the middle of the Atlantic.

But sometimes he thought there was more than that. A real presence here, a voice, almost a spirit.

"Are you here?" he asked the silence of his room. There was no reply. There never was. But still he wondered.

David had certainly seemed to think so. His reaction when he learned that the Dark Star 3 had had to be scuttled was almost as if he had lost a friend.

He paused. Why the need to scuttle it? It had seemed obvious at the time, but now he couldn't remember. Surely it could have been repaired?

He frowned. There must have been a good reason.

"General Sheridan?" came a voice through his link, and he sat up, opening his eyes.

"Yes?"

"We've found something. You're going to want to have a look at this."

He was alive. She had always known that, somehow, but to have it confirmed like that.... It was as if a shining light had fallen on her, refreshing and enlightening and lifting her spirits. Talia wrapped herself tightly as a barrier against the cold and lost herself within her thoughts.

He was alive. She had seen him, spoken to him. She had always known it, but now....

They had not been able to talk for very long, although time meant little within the network. The constant roaring and rushing and screaming still haunted her. That was what truly horrified her about the network — the constant noise.

She was used to noise, used to the voices. She was a telepath and lived always with a perpetual conversation going on in the next room, but the network was not just a muted conversation nearby. It was a million voices all yammering away in terror and anguish. So many people taking and no one listening.

He did not know where he was, where he had been imprisoned. Talia did not think he was inside a Dark Star . From what she had learned the less powerful telepaths were placed in external nodes like the Dark Star s, or relay points, funnels to the more powerful nodes. A psychic as trained and disciplined as Al would be in one of the central nodes, funnelling countless messages through himself to the rest of the network.

She wondered how long it would take for his escape to be noticed. There was so much she did not know about the network, but she did know it was patrolled. The Vorlons scanned it constantly, knowing that so much of their power was based in there. She had been lucky in skipping past them so far, but luck would not carry her forever. Nor would the artefact.

A sudden burst of pain twinged in her mind and she winced. The headaches were lasting longer these days, and usually when she was away from the artefact. She supposed she had been using it too much, but what other choice did she have? She had to use every weapon she had.

And that was why she was travelling hidden in the freezing cargo hold of this ship. There was a weapon — and if she was being honest to herself, a little more than just a weapon — she had not used. She had not wanted to use.

But things were getting desperate, time was growing short, and she did not dare let personal concerns distract her from her mission.

The shuttle continued towards Proxima 3.

I wonder how Dexter is doing these days? she thought to herself, and felt a tiny pang of guilt when her heart fluttered slightly at the thought of his name.