And, soon enough, he did.

Sheridan was with an acolyte – another traitor to Minbar. Yet another traitor. Did no one believe in Valen, in the Nine, in the One any more?

Kalain killed the acolyte first. A blow to the base of the spine and then a killing strike to the neck.

Sheridan staggered back, obviously trying to flee. He reached instinctively for his dishonourable human weapon, which was of course not there.

Another weapon was. He extended the pike and Kalain’s eyes widened. He recognised the markings. One of Durhan’s nine. An Earther… the Starkiller wielded one of Durhan’s nine blades! Sacrilege left no word for it.

Kalain gave a roar of anger and pain and grief and charged forward… There could be no mercy, and no Narns this time.

“Report?” Corwin ordered. He was discovering a hard lesson. Even the greatest of furies only lasts so long.

“Hull integrity just over thirty percent. Jump engines down. Left broadsides exhausted. Right broadsides not far off. Forward and aft batteries off line.”

“Any word from Ben Zayn, from the Narn ship, from Proxima, from anyone?”

“Negative, sir.”

Corwin sat back. “Well, I don’t suppose anyone gets to live forever, do you?”

“I wouldn’t mind giving it a try,” muttered the lieutenant.

Corwin couldn’t help but look at Alisa. The medical staff were too busy to remove her body, and so he left it where it was. Death was no respecter of dignity. “We all would,” he said softly.

“Hold on,” barked the lieutenant. “There’s a jump gate opening. A lot of jump gates opening.”

Corwin leapt to his feet. “More Minbari?” Even they were preferable to those Shadows.

“No. They’re… Oh, my God.”

“On screen.”

Corwin looked at the sight before him. “What do those ships look like to you, lieutenant?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but if I had to… I’d say they were Vorlon ships.”

“I’d say you were right.”

Captain John Sheridan knew all about hatred. He had been immersed too deeply in that particular emotion for his own comfort. He remembered the pure hatred he felt after his return, all too late, to Earth after the Minbari were finished. He remembered transferring that hatred to rage as he attacked the Minbari over Mars. He remembered the hatred he felt after his daughter Elizabeth – one of the most shining elements in his life – had been killed during the bombing of Orion. He remembered transferring that hatred to grief and anger, both so profound that he shut out his wife and left her to collapse into her own private abyss.

Captain John Sheridan had lived with hatred for so long. Recognising the hatred in the eyes of Satai Kalain was not difficult.

Sheridan and Kalain had met before, on the dying world of Epsilon 3. They had fought and eventually been pulled apart by the Narn prophet and visionary G’Kar, who had taken control of the ancient mysteries that lay within the planet. G’Kar was not here now, and Sheridan did not have his PPG, just a Minbari fighting pike. A weapon he had little idea how to use.

Sheridan understood little about Minbari culture and myths and the name Durhan was largely unfamiliar to him. He only knew that the weapon had once belonged to Satai Delenn, who had been given it in love by the warrior Neroon. It had been taken from Delenn by the Shadow agent Susan Ivanova who had wielded it for countless years until two different time streams had crossed on board the space station Babylon 4. Delenn had taken it back and given it to Sheridan, exactly as she had been given it by Neroon.

Kalain did understand Minbari culture and myths, and he recognised a blade like that when he saw one. Fabled across the whole of the Minbari Federation, Durhan’s last great work before embarking on his solitary mission to the sea of stars, the nine blades had been given to those he deemed most suitable. Sinoval, current Holy One, had received one, as had the great Shai Alyt Branmer and his aide – and Durhan’s pupil – Neroon. Some had been lost since Durhan had made them, but enough remained of his legacy.

It said a lot that such a weapon was wielded by a human, one who had done more to threaten the Minbari race than any other, one to whom the Minbari gave the name Starkiller.

Kalain struck forward, aiming fast blows at Sheridan’s midriff and legs. Sheridan parried them awkwardly and stepped back. He still did not know exactly what he was doing, but how much could there be to it, he thought. Long heavy object. Your opponent. Hit the one with the other. There. Sounded simple enough.

Except that your opponent tended to try and stop you hitting him with the long, heavy object. After that it was a bit of a mystery. Hopefully, he would get another go.

Kalain rushed in for another attack. Sheridan managed to parry the first few blows and step out of the reach of the others. He even managed to attempt a vague and weak counterattack, easily parried by Kalain.

Pike crashed against pike, Kalain not letting up, driven by his hatred and his fury and his shame. Once before, over Mars, he had cowered before the Starkiller’s approach, and the Grey Council, whom he had been set to guard, had paid the price. He would not let himself be so dishonoured again, even if he had to commit a greater dishonour to do so.

Pike against pike. Charge against careful retreat. Blood against blood.

Blood calls out for blood.

For the Dralaphi, for Shakiri and Shakat and Nur. For the Emphili and the Dogato. For Draal and for all of those who had fallen beneath Sheridan’s hand…

Blood calls out for blood. Kalain’s called out for Sheridan’s.

Valen had prophesied that the Minbari would unite with the other half of their soul in a war against the common enemy. No one could have suspected that the other half of their soul would be the humans who were even now locked in combat with the Minbari, or that the two were uniting in blood, destroying each other in hatred and death.

Kalain did not care. Neither did Sheridan.

Neither cared about anything except for victory… and death.

There was death aplenty in the ship of the Grey Council at the Battle of the Second Line. The Grey Council, which had stood for a millennium as keeper of Valen’s prophecies, wisdom and legacy… the Grey Council was dead. Six of the Nine lay dead. Rathenn and Lennann of the religious caste killed by the being known as Deathwalker. Four others slain by one of their own – Hedronn of the workers – driven insane by alcohol given to him by Deathwalker. Hedronn himself was hovering between sanity and madness, unable to comprehend what he had done, unable to understand the enormity of what he had been driven to. Their leader, Sinoval, was missing, and Kalain was in battle with the Starkiller.

The Hall of the Grey Council was now occupied only by the dead, and by two who should be dead. There was Warmaster Jha’dur of the Dilgar, Deathwalker, who lived only by virtue of her immortality serum, her life bought by the deaths of countless others. And there was Delenn, formerly of the Grey Council, now named Zha’valen by that very Council. Considered dead to her people, none of whom could speak to her, speak her name, look at her…

Minbar had fallen, its leaders dead, its fleet destroyed, its confidence broken. Outside, the Minbari fleet and the Rangers were fighting and dying, not having been given the order to retreat because there was none to give that order. Under Deathwalker’s influence, the fleet would be destroyed. Delenn could not give that order.

The two were fighting then, not for any concrete benefit, but because they had stepped too far for them not to fight. Delenn was maddened by the death all around her, gripped by a terrible, terrible sadness, maddened by the changes in her body that she neither comprehended nor recognised. She was acting from pure willpower, pure determination not to let the deaths of Lennann and Rathenn and all the Council go unnoted and unremarked.