“You agreed, Captain. Please respect my wishes on this.” Sheridan did, but they were no less annoying for all that. Had Marcus been alone, he would probably have muttered something about respect and then let Marcus accompany him, but Marcus was not alone.

“Have the Kha’Ri decided to see you at last then, John?”

Susan Ivanova was one of the most confusing people Sheridan had ever met. She was breathtakingly – almost heartstoppingly – beautiful, and she was possessed of a deep, wry sense of humour. She reminded him – personality-wise – of Anna before they had been married. But instead of taking away his tensions simply with her presence, as Anna had done, Susan added to them. There was nothing he could put his finger on, but he did not like to be around her. Maybe it was the power of her unnamed ’friends’ who could blow away two Minbari cruisers in ten seconds, or maybe it was the fact that she reminded him so much of Anna as she had been, which reminded him only too well of what Anna was now, or maybe it was the fact that she kept coming to his bed at night, and he lacked the willpower to resist her.

Or maybe it was all of the above.

Sheridan had insisted she come along, and she had not seemed to mind. He did not like to be around her, but he didn’t trust her, and he wanted her to be where he could see her. He had hoped she would stay on the Babylon, where David could watch her, but… she was here instead.

“About time too. They want to see me alone, but I suppose the two of you can come along.”

Marcus merely nodded, but Susan batted her eyelashes and put on an infuriating display of childish ingenuousness. “Why thank you, Captain. I’m so glad.”

Sheridan was not a happy man, and he doubted that this meeting with the Kha’Ri would make him any happier.

“Well, Satai Delenn,” said Mr. Welles as he sat down and sipped his cup of artificial coffee. It was dreadful stuff, but old habits died hard. “And how do you feel now?”

“You do not care how I feel,” she replied, spitting fury with every syllable. “You only care about the knowledge I have that you want. You are concerned with nothing more than acquiring that.”

“True,” he conceded, looking at her. Boggs and Cutter had done their work well. The only visible sign of injury on her was a fading bruise on her cheek that had been there for over a week. She was sitting in the same posture she had adopted for the last six days. Only the hint of a sob in her breath, or the slight twitch of her left arm, attested to Boggs and Cutter’s work. Hopefully it would be enough to break her. If not, he could always call them back. “But look at it this way, Satai Delenn. At least I want you alive.”

“You use my title in mockery,” she replied, “not understanding its significance. I would rather you did not. Its meaning is sullied in a mouth like yours.”

So there it was. The anger that had been brimming beneath the surface for six days was now out in force. Welles removed his PPG from his holster and placed the weapon on the table in front of him. Just in case. Looking at her eyes, he understood how dangerous this woman was. “So then, Satai Delenn, explain to me its significance. Tell me about the Grey Council, about Valen and the Nine, about the darkness and the light. I will be a most attentive listener.”

“I pity you,” she replied. Another person might have laughed, but Welles did not. He merely raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. She did so. “Amongst Minbari, one individual leads, but we move together. When our leader was killed by your people, we went mad together, and we stayed mad for a very long time. We are only now beginning to wake up… together. But you… you are alone. All of your people are alone, with no one to wake you from your madness.”

“Madness? Really? Oh, well let me see if I understand this, Satai Delenn. You went mad because of the death of one man – your leader. His name was…?”

Softly: “Dukhat.”

“Ah, thank you. Dukhat, yes. You went mad from one death, one loss, and under that madness you destroyed seven colonies, two moons, most of our fleet, twenty thousand ships at the Battle of the Line, most of our leaders, most of our population in fact… and our homeworld. So tell me, Satai Delenn, if you went mad from just one death, why can we not go mad from all those deaths, from all those losses? You may pretend otherwise, but you are no better than us, are you?”

A silent stare was his only reply, but a stare with a hint of sadness. Ah, a beginning. “In fact, you destroyed more than just our homeworld. You destroyed our dreams with it. Do you have any… oh, how should I put it? Any point of focus? Something for your whole people to believe in – to worship, if you will? Anything at all?”

Equally softly: “Valen, and the Nine, and the purpose ahead.”

The purpose? He chalked a mental note to remember that one. “Well, we had a point of focus too. A centre for all our hopes and dreams as a people. It was called Earth. Here, look at this.” He pointed out the badge on his uniform. She looked at it, but said nothing. “Earthforce, you see. As in – Earth. When I first put on this uniform, I felt ten feet tall, as though I could take on anything the universe could throw at me. I had a calling, you see, and that calling was to serve Earth – the planet, the people, the ideals that gave it form. You took all of that away from me. From me, and from countless others. I have endured. I still have a purpose here. A small one, I grant you, but a purpose still. I still desire to serve, to do all I can. But others… others do not. They have fallen, grieving for their losses. Suicide. Dust or Storm, or alcohol. Sad, pitiful figures, without purpose, without calling, without a reason for living.”

Was that a burgeoning tear in her eye? A hint of remorse? “Now, I am a rational man, Satai Delenn, or I would like to think that I am. You see, I am aware that there are Nine in the Grey Council and that you doubtless do not speak for all Nine. You may not even have been in the Council during the war. I am aware that Captain Sheridan killed a few of your number during his attack above Mars just after the fall of Earth. You may be a replacement for one killed then. Or you may have spoken out against the war, voted against it, called for an end for all of it. The destruction of my dreams… of our dreams, may have been done at another’s instigation, not yours. I am a rational and fair man, Satai Delenn, and I cannot punish one person for actions committed by another. But they are not here, and you are, Satai Delenn.

“Mere words cannot express what I would like to do to you in return for all those lost lives, for all those severed dreams, for all those broken spirits. I would rip out your eyes, crush your bones, rip that crest from your head and smash it into powder, tear out your organs, rip you to shreds. The people elsewhere on this colony desire something similar. They would have you stoned to death, or crucified, or beheaded, or burned at the stake, as if you were a witch or something. I want all those things as well, Satai Delenn, but I know that I cannot have them. I know that you are needed alive, for the knowledge that you have, knowledge which may well serve to undo all the wrongs committed against my people. There are very, very few of us with the conviction to think that way. I do not blame the others. They have every reason to want you dead, but I… I want you alive. That makes me, Satai Delenn, the only friend you have on this planet.”

She was crying now, softly and silently, but she was crying all the same. Welles smiled. “Now, tell me the names of the other members of the Grey Council.”

Quietly, so quietly that he could barely hear it: “Sinoval.”

“Caste?”

“Warrior.”

“Clan?”

“Wind Swords.”

“Ah, that sounds interesting. We will return to him later. Another?”