A Call to Arms (6 page)

The organization to which she belonged was clandestine, secret, illegal, but very far-ranging. They had branches everywhere, on all planets where civilized beings assembled. She was sure she’d find some sign of them here.

She moved at random through a howling metal wilderness of coiling and intersecting corridors running off at bewildering angles. Steam, leaking out of vents and loosened pipe fittings, furnished spooky effects, making the denizens of this place indistinct. They moved through the warm fog like ghosts of themselves.

The people she passed seemed to come from all corners of the universe. Only a few of them were Humans, and they were not the best-looking examples of that species. Many of them looked like they had been damaged in transit, or maybe they’d been malformed to begin with. And the aliens were no better. A great number were clad in cast-off bits of native costume--as was Dureena herself--but they carried it off less tastefully, she thought. She couldn’t identify most of the races. There were a few good-looking red-skinned ones, tall and with delicate features. They could almost be Human. But if so, why were they invariably in consort with a short, scaly bald species with long antennae on their foreheads? Symbiotes? Or sheer chance? There were mysteries here that would take a lot of time to clear up.

She went by several little food markets, the goods spread out on the sidewalk. Did people actually eat that stuff? A little farther on, she passed a fast-food stall selling a meat-filled bun that reminded her of klashpies, a delicacy of her native region--back when she’d had a native region. She was tempted to sample one, but decided to check it out later. There was no telling what they might put into those buns. And money was a problem, though, she hoped, not for long.

The sector was crowded, especially where several corridors intersected, forming open spaces where people could hang out and talk. In one of the open areas she saw two dancers, of a species she couldn’t immediately identify, dancing to the sounds of a drum and fife played by two vaguely Human-looking people. She stopped for a moment to watch, and felt someone come up behind her.

“Hello, little lady,” a voice said. She turned. It was a Dipsha, a species she’d rarely encountered. This one was leering at her. He was wearing a ridiculous purple velvet cap that she supposed was to make him attractive.

“What do you want?” Dureena asked doubtfully.

“Fun,” the Dipsha said. “Frolicsome fun. You and me together. In a place I know. I pay good.”

“Get lost,” Dureena said.

The Dipsha looked like he wanted to take offense at the remark, but, noting Dureena’s aggressive readiness, he controlled himself and moved away.

He was the first of the people on the make, but not the last. Several other men, or at least males of whatever species they were from, indicated that they’d be happy to make her acquaintance. Some of them seemed ready to force their attentions on her, but something about her look--the taut, well-conditioned look of a person accustomed to fighting--put them off, and they spared her their importunities. Dureena had a look that said, I am not to be taken lightly.

She continued walking, her gaze roving the surfaces of her new home, looking for a familiar sign. But when one came, she almost missed it.

She saw just the barest indication of a swirl of paint, half-hidden behind a decaying poster. Pushing it aside, Dureena saw an odd-shaped glyph painted on the wall in red and violet. It was circular, its circumference made up of short, curving lines that did not join. There was a twist on one side of the glyph. It looked like an afterthought, but Dureena knew it indicated a direction. She went the way it pointed, down another corridor, and then she climbed up a series of stanchions set into the wall.

Down Below was all eyes. Someone was watching Dureena’s moves. This time it wasn’t Vlast; for the moment, he had been left behind, baffled. The person watching her was named Rolf.

Rolf was a large, imposing man, wearing ragged clothes that might once upon a time have been rather fine. He was bald-headed, imperious in his movements, yet with a feline quality about him that let him dissolve into a crowd. He had a gift for being unobtrusive, almost invisible.

If Dureena had noticed him, which she did not, she would have envied his ability to appear not to be there. If there was one thing she was having trouble with on Babylon 5, it was blending in with the crowd. She was highly skilled at what she did, but her distinctly alien features and her clothing, which was splendid and barbaric, called far too much attention to her.

Rolf was observing all this, and he noted that the lady’s feisty quality was not a good trait in this place. Many fierce people had come to Down Below, and sooner or later they had all learned that there was always someone fiercer, stronger, more feral. It was a valuable lesson, if one could learn it and remain alive.

Dureena turned a comer and found another marker on a wall, the same design as before, only this time the pointer indicated a direction straight up. The only obvious way was through an open grate, too high to jump for. She found a couple of pipes set into the wall, climbed, then pulled herself into the grate.

She was in an air duct, a square pipe that sloped upward at a steep angle. Setting her feet, she made her way through it, finding handholds, slithering snakelike, around one bend and then another, until at last she came to an egress that dropped her in a wholly unfamiliar area.

Cautiously, she poked her head out. She was still in Down Below--that much was clear--in a place filled with battered garbage cans and discarded boxes. There seemed to be no one around. She pulled herself out. Then she looked around again--and froze.

Someone was pressing a gun to the back of her head.

Whoever could get behind her that way was good--very good. She was about to congratulate him on his stealth. But the man spoke first.

“Good night,” Rolf said. And he coldcocked her with the gun butt.

Coming out of unconsciousness was not what Dureena had expected. She was in a place that wasn’t at all like Babylon 5, didn’t seem to be in or on Babylon 5. She was lying on frozen ground, in a cold place plagued by high winds and swirling dust.

But how could that be? Down Below had been steamy, sweaty, pungent with the odorous effluvia of its many inhabitants.

Where was she?

Dureena opened her eyes, blinked, and scrambled to her feet.

She was on a gigantic tumbled landscape of bare, twisted rock and shining black solidified lava. She was near a cliff wall that rose high and sheer above her. Standing back, she could see broken walls and tumbled buildings where a city had once stood.

Clouds roiled in the nighttime sky, and flashes of forked lightning lit up the scene in sepulchral flashes.

It was a place she thought she remembered. “Oh, no!” Dureena gasped. “I can’t be back... I can’t...”

“Can’t you?” a voice asked. She turned. A tall man in a uniform was smiling at her. Sheridan! She had memorized his face; she would know him anywhere! The detested Earther, author of all her woes! Her reaction was immediate, lethal. She launched herself at him, prepared to maim, kill, destroy this hated enemy whom she had never met, but knew very well.

Her charge carried her right through him, and his image rippled as she came out the other side and rolled in the dirt.

It had been nothing but an image, with nothing substantial about it.

She turned to face it again, but now the image had changed. Instead of Sheridan, it was a Drakh, its hideous face grinning at her in a sneer of triumph.

She tensed herself to charge again. But the Drakh was holding something in his hand, stretching it out toward her. In his open hand was a tiny Milky Way galaxy.

As she watched, his fingers closed around it. The light from the galaxy briefly bled through his fingers, and then went dark.

And then the image of the Drakh was gone. And a voice was speaking to her.

“This is not your world, Dureena Nafeel. But it shared a common fate.”

She turned, and found a cloaked young man standing behind her.

“I am called Galen,” the man said. He held up his hand as she tensed, prepared to attack again. “When the time comes to choose your target, be sure to pick the right one. Because you will get only one shot.”

She stared at him, trying to make sense of his words, trying to grasp the situation. Then the land shook beneath her and she was knocked to the ground.

When she opened her eyes again, she was back on Babylon 5, in Down Below. Her hands were manacled. And there was a circle of faces around her.

Dureena took a moment to gather her wits about her, then slowly got to her feet. The circle moved back slightly to give her room. They looked like a hard-bitten bunch, clad in a great variety of gaudy and ragged clothes. Those present all seemed to be Humans, or of Human stock.

A little back from them, and seated on a raised platform, was an older man, in his mid-forties or fifties, with a tough, wised-up face. It didn’t take a lot of insight to realize that this was the leader of whatever she had gotten herself into. And it took no smarts at all to see that her wrists were cuffed in bright steel.

The man on the platform said, “I’m Bishop. I’m in charge of this chapter of the Thieves’ Guild. You were having a bad dream. And you have awakened to another. What’s your name?”

“Dureena. Dureena Nafeel.”

“Do you have the mark?”

Dureena nodded.

“Show us.”

Dureena raised her manacled hands. One sleeve fell back to reveal the glyph tattooed on her arm. When one of the women beside him whispered an affirmation to him, Dureena realized that Bishop was blind. An appropriate choice for justice among thieves.

“Who trained you?” Bishop asked. “Who brought you into the Thieves’ Guild and taught you our ways?”

“Mafeek, of Tripani 7,” Dureena replied.

“Mafeek is known to me. Who was his teacher?”

“Gant the Elder.”

“And how long have you been a thief?”

“Long enough to be good at what I do.”

Rolf, standing in the circle, smiled unpleasantly at her cockiness. “But not good enough to avoid being seen, captured, and restrained.”

Dureena stared him down. “I hardly made a secret of my desire to find you. I wanted to check in as soon as possible, and the best way to do that was to draw your attention. I was captured because I chose to be. But there was no reason to treat me this way. Had I known the level of your hospitality, you would have been the one on the floor, not me.”

Rolf said, “You talk pretty good for someone who’s chained up.”

Dureena looked at him, wide-eyed and mocking.

“What chains?”

As the result of a movement too quick to follow, the chains fell to the floor. Dureena was in full stride before they had landed. Knocking two thieves aside, she grabbed Rolf and, with a single powerful move, threw him halfway across the room.

Rolf scrambled to his feet, his face dark with fury. He was about to come at her when Bishop raised his left hand, freezing everybody in place.

He said to Dureena, “You’ve made your point. I welcome you, as one Guilder to another.”

Dureena relaxed slightly. The all-important first step had been accomplished.

“While you’re here,” Bishop went on, “you’ll follow the rules: Do not interfere with the activities of any other member of the Thieves’ Guild, and do not betray our presence to the authorities.

“We support rigged games, pickpocketing, theft, con jobs, black marketeering, and barter, but nothing violent, nothing that would cause the authorities to notice us. We get ten percent of your earnings in exchange for a place to stay and our support. If you are captured by the authorities, you are alone; we cannot help you. Any questions?”

“No,” Dureena said.

“Then you can go. I’ll have one of the others show you the way.”

As Dureena turned to go, Bishop said, “One last thing. You’re a long way from home, Dureena Nafeel, wherever that is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone quite like you before. What are you doing here?”

Dureena looked at him and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, then turned and left the room without waiting for an escort.

Maneuvering the
Excalibur
away from its spacedock was a delicate operation involving carefully calculated forces. The big ship was still inert, not yet under its own power.
Excalibur
was dependent entirely on the tiny tugs that maneuvered it. There were a lot of them, but they came to only a fraction of its mass. An unexpected solar flare or an imprecisely calculated application of power could send the ship crashing back into its spacedock, or spinning out of control into the void. Unlikely, but these things did happen, and heads rolled in consequence.

A master helmsman from the spacedock crew, stationed on
Excalibur’s
bridge, was in charge of the maneuvering. Although it was cool on the bridge, the man was sweating. He was well trained for this, but there was no training that fully prepared one for the unexpected. He was doing the best he could, however, confident that his experience would guide him if the unforeseen arose.

Sheridan came to the bridge during the maneuver. Garibaldi and Drake were there, waiting for him. They all waited breathlessly while the move away from the dry dock was completed. Once that was done, it was less anxious work, towing the
Excalibur
out to the firing range. And when that had been accomplished, the master helmsman saluted the bridge personnel and went to the space lock with his crew, glad to return to the dry dock and be rid of the responsibility.
Excalibur
belonged to Sheridan now, and he was welcome to it.

“Well, we got here in one piece,” Garibaldi said to Drake. “That’s always a good sign.”

Drake looked offended, but didn’t reply. Sheridan, who was used to Garibaldi’s humor, grinned and checked the power levels as indicated on the control board.

It was time for the weapons test, second in importance only to the propulsion of the ship itself.
Excalibur
‘s small working crew--all Rangers, Minbari and Human--were distinctly keyed up, waiting to clear this pivotal hurdle. There was a low hum of expectation on the bridge. Sheridan was aware of the quiet sense of power the ship gave off, even though she was untried, inert, and had passively been towed along by mere tugs. A ship with weapons yet untested, the
Excalibur
still felt like a sleeping giant.