The tension set in at the beginning of mainday, the first numb stirrings-forth by the refugees to the emergency kitchens set up on the dock, the first tentative efforts of those with papers and those without to meet with station representatives at the desks and to establish residency rights, the first awakening to the realities of quarantine.824Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnE09uAkT8c
"We should have pulled out last shift," Krebbs said, reviewing dawn's messages, "while it was all still quiet."
"Would now," Talia said, "but we can't risk Babylon 5. If they can't hold it down, we have to. Call station council and tell them I'm ready to meet with them now. I'll go to them. It's safer than bringing them out on the docks."
"Take a shuttle around the hull," Krebbs suggested, his broad face set in perpetual worry. "Don't risk your neck out there with less than a full squad. They're less controlled how. All it takes is something to set them off."
The proposal did have its merits. She considered how that timidity would look to Babylon 5, shook her head. She went back to her quarters and put on what passed for a dress uniform, the proper dark blue at least. When she went it was with Tigh Jantzen and a guard of six armored troopers, and they walked right across the dock to the quarantine checkpoint, a door and passage beside the huge intersection seals. Nobody tried to approach her, although there were some who looked as if they might want to attempt it, hesitating at the sight of the armed troops. She made the door unhindered and was passed through, up the ramp and to another guarded door, then down into the main part of the station.
After that it was as easy as taking a lift through the varied levels and into the administrative section, blue upper corridor. It was a sudden change of worlds, from the barren steel of the docks and the stripped quarantine area, into a hall tightly controlled by station security, into a glass-walled foyer with sound-deadening matting underfoot, where bizarre wooden sculptures met them with the aspect of a cluster of amazed citizenry. Art. Talia blinked and stared, bemused at this reminder of luxuries and civilizations. Forgotten things, rumored things. Leisure to make and create what had no function but itself, as man had done, but himself. She'd lived her whole life insulated from such things as this, only knowing at a distance that civilization existed, and that rich stations maintained luxury at their hidden hearts.
Only they were not human faces which stared out from curious squat globes, among wooden spires, but faces round-eyed and strange: Babylonian faces, patient work in wood. Humans would have used plastics or metal.
There were indeed more than humans here: that fact was evident in the neat braided matting, in the bright painting which marched in alien geometrics and overlays about the walls, more of the spires, more of the wooden globes with the faces and huge eyes all about them, faces repeated in the carved furniture and even in the doors, staring out from a gnarled and tiny detail, as if all those eyes were to remind humans that Babylon 4 was always with them.
It affected them all. Tigh swore softly before they walked up to the last doors and official civs let them in, walked with them into the council hall.
Human faces stared at them this time, in six tiers of chairs on a side, an oval table in the pit between, their expressions and those of the alien carvings remarkably alike in that first impression.
The white-haired man at the table's end stood up, made a gesture offering them the room into which they had already come. He was Alfredo Garibaldi. Others remained seated.
And beside the table were six chairs which were not part of the permanent arrangement; and six, male and female, who weren't, by their mode of dress, part of the station council or even of the Further.
Terradyne men. Talia might've dismissed the troops to the outer chamber in courtesy to the council, rid herself of the threat of rifles and the remainder of force. She stood where she was, unresponsive to Garibaldi smiles.
"This can be short," she said. "Your quarantine zone is set up and functioning, I'd advise you to guard it heavily. I'll warn you now that other freighters jumped without our clearance and made no part of our convoy. If you've smart, you'll follow the recommendations I made and board any incoming merchant king with security before letting it near you. You've had a look at Olympia's disaster here. I'll be pulling out in short order; it's your problem now."
There was a panicked muttering in the room. One of the Terradyne men stood up. "You've behaved very high-handedly, Captain Winters. Is that the custom out here?"
"The custom is, mister, that those who know a situation handle it and those who don't watch and learn, or get the hell out of the way."
The Terradyne man's thin face flushed visibly. "It seems we're constrained to bear with that kind of attitude----temporarily. We need transport up to whatever exists as a boarder. Australia is available."
She drew a sharp breath and drew herself up. "No, sir, you're not constrained, because Australia isn't available to civ passengers, and I'm not taking anyone. As for the border, the border is wherever the fleet sits at the moment, and nobody but the ships involved knows where that is. There aren't any borders. Hire a freighter."
There was a dead silence in the hall.
"Captain, as much as I dislike to use the word court martial....."
She laughed, a mere breath. "If you Terradyne people want to tour the war, I'm tempted to take you in. Maybe you'd learn something from the experience. Maybe you could widen Mother Earth's sight; maybe we could get a few more ships."
"You're in no position to make requisitions and we don't take them. We're not here to see only what it's determined we should see. We'll be looking at everything, captain, whether or not it suits you."
She set her hands on her hips and surveyed the lot of them. "What's your name, mister?"
"Elmer Bass, of the Security Council, Secretary 2nd class."
"Secretary 2nd class? Well, we'll see what space we come up with. No baggage beyond a duffle. Got that? Where Australia goes, you go. I don't take my orders from anyone but Hovarth."
"Captain," another put forth, "you cooperation is earnestly requested.
"You have what I'll give and not a step further."
Silence. Then, a slow murmuring from the tiers. The man Bass's face reddened further, his precise dignity that instinctively galled her now further and further ruffled. "You're an extension of Terradyne, captain, and you hold your commission from it. Have you forgotten that?"
"Third captain of the Fleet, Mr. Secretary, which is military and you're not. But if you intend to come, be ready in the hour."
"No, captain," Bass declared firmly. "We'll take your suggestion about freighter transport. It got us here from Sol. They'll go where they're hired to go."
"Within reason, I don't doubt." Good. That problem was shed. She could reckon Hovarth's consternation at that in the midst of them. She looked beyond Bass, at Alfredo Garibaldi. "I've done my service here. I'm leaving. Any message will be relayed."
"Captain," Alfredo Garibaldi left the head of the table and walked forward, offered his hand, an unusual courtesy and the stranger considering what she'd done to them, leaving the refugees. She took the firm handclasp, met the man's anxious eyes. They knew each other, remotely; had met in years past. Six generations a Furtherman, Alfredo Garibaldi; like the young man who had come down to help on the dock, a seventh. The Garibaldis had built Babylon 5; were scientists and miners, builders and holders. With this man and the others she felt a manner of bond, for all their other differences. This kind of man the Fleet had for its charge, the best of them.
"Good luck," she wished them, and turned and left, taking Tigh and the troopers with her.
She returned the way she'd come, through the beginning establishment of Q zone, and back into the familiar environs of Australia, among friends, where law was as she had it down and things were as she knew. There were a few final details to work out, a few matters still to be arranged, a few last gifts to bestow on station; her own security's dredgings---reports, recommendations, a live body, and what salvaged reports came with it.
She put Australia on ready then, and the siren went and what military presence Babylon 5 had for its protection slipped free and left them.
She went to follow a sequence of courses which was in her head, and of which Krebbs knew, her second. It was not the only evacuation in progress; Station Pan-Venice 21 was under Bass's management; Chao of Asia had moved on in Station Athens 12. By now other convoys were on their way toward Babylon 5, and she had only set up the framework.
The push was coming. Other stations had died, beyond their reach, beyond any salvage. They moved what they could, making Alliance work for what they took. But in her private estimate they were themselves doomed, and the present maneuver was one from which most of them wouldn't return. They were the remnant of a Fleet, against a widespread power which had inexhaustible lives, and supply, and worlds, and they didn't.
After so long a struggle---her generation, the last of the Fleet, the last of Terradyne power. She had watched it go; had fought to hold the two together, Earth and Alliance, humanity's past---and future. Still fought, with what she had, but no longer hoped. At times, she even thought of bolting the Fleet, of doing what a few ships had done and going over to Alliance. It was supreme irony that Alliance had become the pro-space side of this war and the founding Terradyne fought against; irony that they who most believed in the Further ended up fighting against what it was turning into, to die for cold-hearted, uncaring Terradyne. She was bitter; she had long ago stopped being politic in any discussion of Terradyne policies.
There had been a time, years ago, when she had looked differently on things, when she had looked as an outsider upon the great ships and the power of them, and when the dream of the old exploration ships had drawn her into this, a dream long revised to the realities the Terradyne captain's emblem had come to mean. Long ago she had realized there was no winning.
Maybe, she thought, Alfredo Garibaldi knew the odds too. Maybe he had taken her meaning, answered it, behind the gesture of saying farewell---offered support in the face of Terradyne pressure. For a moment it had seemed so. Maybe many of the stationers knew-----but that was too much to expect of stationers.
She had three feints to make, which would take time; a small operation, and a jump afterward to a rendezvous with Horvath, on a certain date. If enough of their ships survived the initial operation. If Alliance responded as they hoped. It was madness!824Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGTSy88QR4O
The Fleet went it alone, without merchant king or stationer support, as they had gone it alone for years before this.824Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ59wu7uZqH1
