Invoking Darkness (37 page)

The energy fell upon him, burned out of him. The ceiling would collapse, concealing his hiding place. Whether the rock-fall would crush him or suffocate him, he did not have time to learn. He could keep his eyes open no longer.

C
HAPTER 16

Anna lay on the tilted sleeping pallet aboard the Minbari ship, John on the pallet beside her. These new ships of the Minbari, the White Stars, incorporated elements of Vorlon technology. She had learned all about them from the Eye. Aside from the Vorlon ships, they were the greatest threat to her sisters. With the help of the telepaths John recruited, they killed many.

Like the Vorlon ships, these White Stars carried a sad echo of life. They weren't truly alive, as she and her sisters were. They had no will of their own; they had no freedom. They were forced to follow orders.

John Sheridan gave those orders. John, though, was falling further and further under her control. She had passed all his tests. She had said what Justin had told her, had demonstrated her knowledge of Sheridan's past. She had touched him when there was opportunity. She had used the indirect methods of Humans to convince the nexus to come with her to Z'ha'dum.

She had succeeded in the first part of her assignment. Yet her control of him remained incomplete. He had brought a powerful warship because he still did not trust what she said. She had convinced him, however, to leave the ship in orbit and take only a shuttle to the surface. She had told him the aliens were afraid of Vorlon technology. Without his ship and its weapons, he would further succumb to her control.

She studied his sleeping face. His lips were slightly parted. The air made a soft sound as it passed in and out. The frown that had been so common since they'd been together had relaxed in sleep. Humans were vulnerable in sleep. It would be easy to kill him now. But that was not what they wanted. And it would not bring her the Eye. She had to perfect her control of him so that, with the help of Justin and Morden, she could convince him to join the cause of chaos. Physical contact increased her power.

She leaned over, rested her head on his chest. He jerked awake with a low sound. After a moment, he lay back.

"Anna."

His chest rumbled as he spoke. It was a pleasurable sensation. He rested his hand on her shoulder.

"I didn't mean to wake you," she said.

"It's all right," he said, and the rumbling spread through her.

The contact somehow reminded her of the soft black embrace of the machine. She imagined herself sinking into his body, becoming one with him as Morden had said Human men and women could, controlling him as she had controlled the machine. She realized how much she had missed the sensation, how much she longed for it. This was but a poor imitation.

The ship's signal bell chimed. They had reached the end of their hyperspace route.

"Looks like we're here," John said, lifting his arm to allow her to rise.

At first, she didn't want to move. Then she realized how close she was to gaining all that she desired. For they had reached Z'ha'dum.

* * *

Galen jerked awake, his forehead slamming into something, hard. Rock. The tunnels. Z'ha'dum.

He lay back a moment in the close darkness, working to slow his breathing. The fire had gone from his body, leaving the side of his neck a great throbbing mass of pain. He felt dizzy and hungry and sick all at once. He brought his hand to the wound. Skin covered a hemispherical depression. Dried streams of blood crusted his neck and back.

The organelles had been at work while he slept, saving him from bleeding to death. The Shadows had designed their agents well. But it would take more time to reconstruct the muscle and tissue he had destroyed.

He found that he had received a series of messages, all from Elizar.

Galen. Galen. I know you're receiving my messages, so I know you're still alive. We could spend weeks playing hide-and-seek in these tunnels. Why bother, when we both want the same thing? Meet me at the opening of the Eye, and we can be done with each other.

Galen began a mind focusing exercise, slowly hunched into a sitting position. Instant headache. He checked the time. Checked again. He had lost an entire day. With growing anxiety, he accessed John's probe.

"We only need breathers on the surface," Anna said, fitting one of the clear masks over her face.

John did the same.

They entered an air lock, and in a few moments the outer door opened to reveal the dust-swept surface of Z'ha'dum.

He had lost his chance to warn John away. They climbed down some steps, and Galen noticed the vessel they came from was not the White Star. As he'd expected, it was a small shuttle. John's plan was ruined, though he did not know it.

Galen conjured a fireball, studied the small space in which he was entombed. There was a gap between the ceiling and the rocks on one side. He could squeeze through, which would be the quietest way to proceed. He stood, crouching, and stumbled over the rocks, his balance unsure.

He would reach John, get John to his ship, program its course for Babylon 5. With luck, the Eye would allow his ship to pass. His ship. Before he even tried to associate with it, he knew it was gone. He felt the absence, a thin sliver of pain behind his forehead, barely perceptible among the rest.

He had directed it to destroy itself if it did not hear from him in twenty-four hours. He cast the spell. There was no echo from the tech, no echo from the ship.

John's shuttle would have no chance of getting past the Eye. The other ships he'd seen were either the short-range shuttles of visitors, or Shadow ships that would obey only the Eye.

He pushed through the narrow opening, his head and neck throbbing. The rocks on the far side were unstable; as they shifted he slid down, skidded to the tunnel floor.

There was no way off the planet for John, or for anyone. He climbed to his feet, but he had no direction. He simply stood in the close, dark tunnel, the sound of his breaths echoing back to him. He could not lose control; he could not. Would he hold to his task, though, while the Shadows killed John and continued their atrocities and their war?

He had told Morden that perhaps he could save those enslaved on Z'ha'dum. Both Morden and Anna had proven, though, that those under the Shadows' control could not be freed, except in death. Of those prisoners who had not yet received the Shadows' gifts, they were as trapped in this place as John was. Galen could not save them.

If he could help John bring his plan to fruition, though, perhaps he could prevent any more from becoming the Shadows' slaves. If Z'ha'dum was destroyed, perhaps the Shadows would end this war, or at least be sufficiently weakened that the alliance, in John's absence, could defeat them.

The two bombs on the White Star could lay waste to five thousand times the area Galen had razed on Thenothk. Within the confines of the caverns, the effects would even be amplified. If he could destroy the Eye, John could bring the White Star down.

He would find this "opening of the Eye" Elizar mentioned. If Elizar and Razeel were there to oppose him, he would kill them. Then, if he could, he would crush the Eye. He would maintain control. The White Star would take care of the rest.

Once again, it would not be his place to do good. But he had always found more success in destruction. The agitating energy rose up, echoing his eagerness.

He conjured a platform, sped through the tunnel, searching ahead with his sensors. He did not have long. The Shadows would spend some time in their effort to turn John, and John would respond carefully, trying to learn all he could. Once the Shadows realized John would not join them, though, they would move against him. John would wait until he was sure he had no other option; then he would order the White Star down. If the Eye was still operating, it would destroy the ship before it came close enough to the planet to do any damage.

The pulsing concentration of energy he'd sensed earlier was clearer now, since he was closer to it. It radiated from a location some three hundred feet to the west and fifty feet below. If his instinct was right, it would be the Eye. As he drew closer to it, the tunnels became wider once again, and he came into a vast, dim chamber. A huge black machine with many moving parts operated in complete silence. It was so large, he could not see the end of it.

This was not the Eye; at least he didn't think so. That energy was still ahead. This machine generated minimal energy, and its parts moved in an odd, fluid manner. As he glided past it, he scanned down to the infrared band, trying to get a better view. In his mind's eye, the machine popped into brilliant red relief, each piece gaining definition.

What he saw was not a machine at all. They were living beings, moving mechanically in concert, working as if they were one single device. He could not find their faces, or even distinguish their species. They were each completely covered with something, some sort of skin that glowed red with warmth. Over its surface, areas of varying temperatures shifted and flowed, arranging themselves into evolving patterns.

The Shadow skin was not the same as that covering the ships; it appeared much, much weaker, more like the membranes he'd encountered. Yet the readings he received from it were different even from the membranes. This skin seemed more like an energy shield than any physical construct. It was another variation on the basic tech of the Shadows.

The platform took Galen from the chamber, and he found himself in a wide tunnel, passing among ranks of these machine people, hundreds of them, standing motionless, the ultimate testament to the Shadows' desire for control. They were kin, more closely controlled even than Anna and the Shadow ships, trapped on that same spectrum of chaos and death as the mages.

Down a side passage he saw a cluster of them. Sustained red beams of plasma shot from their palms, blasting into the rock. They were excavating. Ahead, light bled into the tunnel from some larger space.

When he reached the threshold, he stopped, looking out onto a vast cavern, far larger than any he had yet encountered. He was at one end of this great hollow in the rock. Directly ahead was the source of the high, pulsing energy. It was some kind of circular pool, about thirty feet across, filled with a churning black liquid.

He dissolved the platform, took a few halting steps toward it. The cavern stretched miles across, and perhaps a mile high.

On the great stone plain before him, thousands of machine people stood in regimented columns. Beyond them, centered within the cavern, stretched a great abyss perhaps a half mile wide. And on its far side, a sprawl of towering structures gleaming with lights formed a city within the city. The walls of the cavern stretched high above, with rows of parapets and rumps linking various levels. The walls themselves were carved with runes, covered with them. At the center of the rocky ceiling, dull light streamed in through an expansive skylight that gave a view of the sand-filled sky of Z'ha'dum.

The vaulted space and ornate, carved surfaces reminded Galen of a temple, though this was a temple devoted to darkness, not light. Here was the heart of the Shadows' complex. He turned his attention to the black pool from which the energy emanated. He scanned it more closely and found it was deep, a shaft that penetrated as far into the planet as he could detect. This must be the machine to which all the stone fingers were connected, the Shadows' place of power. This pool was the access point, the opening of the Eye.

As he studied it, though, he realized that the churning black liquid was no liquid at all. The shaft was filled with machine people, their limbs intertwining, their bodies writhing like worms. They were the components of the Eye. He would crush them, and free them.

Movement from beyond the ranks of machine people caught his attention. A group of Drazi was stumbling out of a tunnel in the left wall, spreading out before the glittering, stationary figures.

Galen used his sensors to gain a magnified view in his mind's eye, saw with surprise that the Drazi were armed with high-powered plasma rifles, missile launchers. Was this some kind of invasion? How could they possibly have gotten so far? The last of the Drazi emerged from the tunnel. Behind them came a row of machine people. The black, faceless figures stopped at the opening of the tunnel, blocking the Drazi's escape. The Drazi were trapped between the assembled machine people and the great abyss. They took what shelter they could behind a few scattered boulders, set up the missile launchers. This was no invasion. It was target practice.

The Drazi fired a few scattered shots. The plasma blasts seemed to have no effect on the skin-shielded figures. As one, the front rank of machine people raised their palms. For a moment they simply stood, immobile. Then, in unison, their palms blasted beams of red plasma. Rock erupted in sprays of shrapnel. Smoke billowed across the area. After a few furious seconds of fire, their beams stopped. Their arms returned to their sides.

As the smoke cleared, Galen saw that they had obliterated the boulders, and the missile launchers had been melted into pools of slag. Most of the Drazi, however, remained standing. He looked more closely at one, clearly visible between columns of machine people. Her rifle was gone. The gray, scaled hand that had been holding it was gone as well, leaving a blackened stump. She swayed, staring at the black soldiers in terror. She and the others had been spared, to serve some further use. Here was the new army.

Here was the darkness of which Kosh had spoken. One of the Drazi broke away, ran for the wall, began rapidly climbing toward the lowest balcony. A strange ripple ran through the cavern – a shift... in something, Galen couldn't say what. And then he saw. A spherical area around the escaping Drazi began to redden and darken. Elizar.

A hard shiver ran through Galen as the tech surged. At last it was time to kill. In the distorted space-time of the spell of destruction, the Drazi's head twisted around in alarm, the gray scales of his face undulating in waves. Below, the glittering black ranks snaked from side to side.