Гэрет Уильямс - Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5 : Средь звезд, подобно гигантам
But still he lived, and still he served the Dark Masters with every movement. That was why he was here, commanding a Drakh starship, working with aliens, working with pirates and bandits and scum. They sought only glory and profit and power. Moreil sought only chaos, to serve the Dark Masters' memory.
They had many names, this motley little group of theirs. The Narn captain referred to them as the 'Brotherhood Without Banners', in reference to some group of heroes from his past. To the Drazi they were the 'Sword of Droshalla'. A strange human called them the 'Order of the Wolf'. The outcast Centauri lordling used the name 'Assassins'. Most, including Moreil himself, did not care. They all knew what they were.
They were the lost, the damned, the forgotten. The Dark Crusade, that some called the Shadow War, had left the galaxy in turmoil and chaos. Many had been displaced. Some, guilty of what would in more ordered days have been called 'crimes', had escaped and fled.
And people like that eventually came here.
There were many like them. Bandits. Outcasts. Raiders. Most of them had been destroyed by the Alliance. Only the Brotherhood Without Banners (or whatever you called them) had survived, and they had done that by hiding and building and gaining strength. Between them they had criminal contacts across the galaxy. Between them they had enough ships to comprise a small army. Between them they were capable of carving a small empire out of the galaxy.
And once they had done so, Moreil knew, they would descend on each other like the wolves the human had named them to be, and destroy whatever they had built. Such was the nature of chaos.
They did not even have a leader, although there was a loose council of sorts. Moreil attended its meetings when he could be bothered. Most of them feared him. There were a few other members of the vassal races here, but no other Z'shailyl. A Zener scientist and a few of his staff, easily cowed. A flight of Zarqheba, howling their mindless cries into the silent sky, easily directed when there were beings to kill and warm flesh to eat. A group of Wykhheran, who formed Moreil's personal honour guard.
To all of them, he was as a Dark Master. He had gathered them all and brought them here. They might be exiles, they might be masterless, they might be outcasts.
But they would bring chaos.
The Alliance would catch them eventually, of course. Moreil had no illusions about that. They and their Vorlon masters had bested the Dark Masters, so they would catch the Brotherhood sooner or later. The only challenge was to spread as much chaos as they could before that happened.
He turned, his long wings rising as he heard the Wykhheran shimmer into view, whispering darkly. Most lesser beings could see only faint outlines of the dread Shadow Warriors, but Moreil could see them in all their terrible glory. Forged in the black pits at Thrakandar, now forever silent, the Wykhheran were perhaps the Dark Masters' most awesome creation.
It was the Centauri, the one who styled himself a lord. That, to Moreil, was foolishness. They were all exiles here, what matter a meaningless title in front of your name? But to Rem Lanas, titles did matter. His clothes were shabby and torn. His face was scarred and ugly. His voice was raspy and hoarse.
But as long as he could call himself a lord, he was content.
Moreil did not understand, but he could at least tolerate it.
"Call off your hounds," Lanas said. "We are there."
"This I know," Moreil replied. He had studied this place carefully. Gorash 7. The agricultural centre of the Centauri Republic. One of their richest worlds. The Narns had almost taken it during their first war, and it had fallen during the second following a wave of peasant uprisings. It had been returned to the Centauri in the Kazomi Treaty that had ended the second war. Emperor Mollari II had worked hard at restoring the planet to its former glory. Centauri Prime was in ashes, and there was rumoured to be famine and starvation. The Republic desperately needed its breadbasket.
What better place to attack? Emperor Mollari had sent many of his most prominent officials here to oversee the restoration of the world. There would be fine ransoms to be had. There were Alliance officers here as well. There would not be riches, but there would be some plunder. The Republic was also the weakest of the major powers. It was not even capable of defending its own worlds.
A perfect place to begin the spreading of chaos.
Lanas looked eager to begin. He did not like the Drakh starship that Moreil had appropriated for his own purposes, he did not like the Zarqheba, the Zener, or the Wykhheran, and he did not even seem to like Moreil himself. It was a mystery, then, why the lordling insisted on this ship. He was no combatant, but his knowledge of Centauri power structures made him invaluable.
Moreil did not know why Lanas was with them at all. He did not know why Lanas was so willing to be a part of the sacking of one of his own race's worlds. He did not know why Lanas insisted on serving on this ship.
He did not care. None of that mattered.
All that mattered was the spreading of chaos, and the service of the Dark Masters.
* * *The sun was rising. Once it had brought with it light and beauty, a million rays of colour shining from crystal statues and mirror-clear lakes. Now there was only mud and dirt, and the sky was a dull brown.
That was me. I did this.
David Corwin, once captain of the Dark Star 3, the Agamemnon, watched the sun rise over the horizon outside the city of Yedor, and he thought the same thoughts he had every morning he had been here.
I did this.
He had not really bothered keeping track of time since he had left Kazomi 7, but he supposed it must have been at least a year by now. No matter how many different worlds and different systems he travelled to, he still always based time on the old Earth Standard, and he reckoned by that token it would have been more or less a year.
He had left Kazomi 7 in the second week of 2262, twenty days exactly after the Agamemnon had been destroyed.
He did not know exactly what date it was, but he supposed it must have been at least a year. When had New Year's Eve been? Whenever it had been, he must surely have spent it here, on Minbar. He had been here for several months now and every day he woke up to watch the dawn, and every day he tried to forget the dreams that echoed in his memory, and every day he thought the same thoughts.
I did this.
He wished he could have seen Minbar before the bombardment. He had overheard some of the Minbari talking about it, and the wonder in their voices. He had heard the exact same tone among his own people as adults explained to their children what Earth had been like.
He could speak Minbari fluently, of course. Or two dialects of it anyway. He had learnt the warrior caste dialect during the war, to be better able to communicate with prisoners. The worker caste dialect he had picked up here. It was not all that difficult.
He turned away from the risen sun and walked down towards the city. Yedor, the Minbari called it, the capital of their civilisation. It was a city older than any on Earth, a city built when humans had still not even fully comprehended their own world, let alone the mastery of space, a city of wonder and intrigue and ancient mystery.
And the human and Drakh fleets had all but annihilated it in a single day.
Not all of the city, admittedly. The Temple of Varenni had survived, and a few other buildings.
And now there were more.
Someone had built Yedor after all, those countless years ago. Who was to say they were not rebuilding over the ruins of an even older city? Everything had to begin somewhere.
For over a year David Corwin had been a pilgrim, seeking some sort of peace with the galaxy. He had not found it, not on Proxima, not during the Brakiri Day of the Dead, not in the vastness of space.
He had not found it here on Minbar either, but he felt he was getting close.
* * *He took the same path he had before, several times over the past year. It was not the most direct, nor the safest, certainly not the quickest, but there was one reason and one reason alone that Senator Dexter Smith took this route from his office to the Pit Trap.
It brought him past a certain nondescript alley, one just like countless others here in Sector 301, aptly dubbed 'the Pit' until something had happened here that had changed everything.
This was where the Blessed Delenn had died and risen again.
The shrine had grown quite a bit since he had last been here. His duties in the Senate had kept him busy, and this was the first night he had had off in months. His first chance to come back here.
The shrine took up almost the whole alley now. There were pictures and drawings and poems and scribblings. There were quite a few other people here. There always were. The homeless — and Sector 301 still had plenty of them, although fewer than previously — slept here, claiming her presence gave them protection. Perhaps it did.
He paused, as he always did, and remembered this place the way it had been. He remembered the feel of the PPG in his hands, and the look in her eyes.
Then he remembered her beautiful green eyes filling with blood as her body fell.
I killed her. She had told him to. The crowd — many of whom now worshipped here — would have torn them both apart if he had not. But he had still killed her, and nothing could undo that.
He sighed, and turned to leave. As he did so, he caught sight of a picture of himself pinned to the wall. He vaguely recalled that picture being taken. It had been for an interview with Humanity magazine.
Someone had scrawled the word 'Murderer' over it.
He left.
It was not a long walk from the shrine to the Pit Trap, and he made it in about ten minutes. It was busier than he remembered, and he wondered how much of that was due to the very public knowledge that he drank there. Celebrity was not something he liked. He had not liked it when he had been captain of the Babylon and he did not like it now, but he could not blame Bo for taking advantage, he supposed.
"Senator," said Jinxo, the barman. It was a sign of how much things had changed that Bo could actually afford to hire more staff. "They're waiting for you."
"I know, I know, I'm late." There was a bottle of Pit Bull on the bar almost instantly. As he always did, Smith offered to pay, and as always, Jinxo wouldn't take the money. Smiling as he swigged from the bottle, Smith walked past the bar into the back room, the one marked 'Private'.
"Hey, here you are at last," said a familiar voice. "Don't they have clocks in that posh part of town?"
"You and the horse you rode in on, Allan," Smith replied genially. He took the seat that had been set aside for him and leaned back in the chair, looking around the table.
Security Chief Zack Allan, his assistant Jack, and Bo himself. A pack of playing cards was placed beside Bo, as was a pile of counters. Everyone had a drink of some kind in front of them. "Prepare to lose all that you own," Zack said. "For tonight is poker night at the Pit Trap."
"I dunno," Jack said. "I think I've already lost all I own."
"The way you play I'm not surprised." Zack looked up at Dexter. "So?"
"So what? Bo's the dealer for the first hand. You know that."
Zack rolled his eyes. "Not that. The other thing."
"Uh…. what other thing?"
"Oh, for the love of…. Here, give a minute." Zack bent down and picked up a newspaper from the floor at his feet. It was the Proxima Yesterday. Dexter caught the front page headline, and immediately wished he hadn't.
"Here we are," Zack said. "'War hero Senator Dexter Smith was spotted leaving the Dome One-o-five apartment of Captain Bethany Tikopai late last Wednesday night, fuelling rumours of a romance between the two. We've been unable to get in touch with either to comment, but friends of Senator Smith, who wished to remain anonymous, stated that he was 'head over heels' with the Earthforce Captain. There have been rumours linking Smith, who was voted the seventh sexiest man alive in a survey by For Her magazine four years ago and is expected to rank even higher in this year's survey, with a number of women over the last year, but nothing has developed into anything permanent. Could this be love at last for the high-profile Senator? We'll have to see his reaction when Captain Tikopai returns from her tour of duty at Kazomi Seven next month. And if he's feeling lonely in the meantime, we know several woman who will only be too happy to keep him company.'"
"Give me that!" Dexter snapped, snatching the paper from Zack. It was open at the gossip page, unsurprisingly. "Oh, for the love of Gandhi. Mental note: Get that Media Bill passed as soon as possible."
"So?" Bo asked.
"So what?"
"Is it true?"
"No, it's not true. We're just friends, that's all. We had dinner together."
"Oh," Zack said. "I see. Just dinner. Right." He started nodding, knowingly.
"She's not bad looking," Jack said. "I hear Ladded asked her for a photo-shoot and she turned them down."
"Did you see that picture of her in Humanity when the new uniforms came out last year?" Bo asked.
"Oh, did I ever?" Jack added. "Mamma mia! I wonder if I can get the missus a uniform like that?"
"Uh, did we come here to play cards, or to talk about my non-existent love life?" Dexter asked. "'Cause I can hear all the gossip I like in the Senate."
"No, we want the juicy details," Zack said. "Come in, indulge all us poor working-class plebs here. We don't get to move in the celebrity circuits like you do."
"Zack, we start playing now, or I tell everyone about you and that doctor from the underground clinic. What was her name again? Something Rosen?"
Zack coughed. "Ahem. Come on, Bo. Get dealing."
The chips were soon piled up and counted, while Bo began to shuffle. "So," Jack said. "Explain that dealer chip again?"
Everyone groaned. "Jack, that joke stopped being funny two hundred and sixty-four years ago," Zack said.
"No, it was funny then."
"No, it really wasn't."
Half an hour later everyone had gone through several bottles of beer, Jack had gone through half his chips, Bo three-quarters of his, and Dexter three full houses and a straight flush. He had always been good at poker, but he largely played it because it was a break from everything else in his life. No squabbling Senators. No watching Alliance advisors. No gossip columns. No kiss-and-tell revelations from women he had dated fifteen years ago.
Slowly he fanned his cards out, and listened to Jack raving about how wonderful his hand was, which meant it was the biggest pile of rubbish since Sector 301 after the refuse collectors strike of 2251. Jack had never managed a good poker face.
