“Kalain,” barked out a voice from his communications device. It was Alyt Deeron, his aide and second. “The Earthers fired at us, a missile of some kind.”

“Crush them!” he ordered in reply. “Destroy them all!” Yes, Satai Kalain. Or perhaps Shai Alyt Kalain. Yes, that way he could lead, still have respect and yet be able to lead in battle. The Earthers would be crushed soon, and he would lead against them, all shame gone, all penance performed, all absolution granted.

“No!” Zathras was crying out. “No, this not good. Varn is being dying. With Varn dying, the planet is dying too. The Machine needs a heart, or the Machine dies, and then the planet dies, and then we die. All defence systems are activating. Automatic defences are activating. Humans not attack. It accident! Accident!”

Zathras knew almost as much about the Great Machine as Varn did. He also knew that the Earth / Minbari War had begun over just such an accident, and now it seemed as though a second accident would plunge the war into a new stage.

“No,” Varn whispered. “Not fight… not…”

Kalain didn’t hear him, either him or Zathras. Shai Alyt Kalain. Yes, in all respects his vision of the future would be correct.

All aspects save one. Sheridan would be presented to the Grey Council not as prisoner, but as corpse.

If Commander David Corwin had been given a pay rise for every time he had been in danger of losing his life, he would now have enough money to buy his own moon and get away from this whole damned war to somewhere safe. On the other hand, so would just about everyone else in what was left of Earthforce. He hadn’t joined Earthforce back in the days when there was still an Earth to give it meaning, but he had seen the signs. Greatest adventure of them all, they said. If only they’d known.

To put his life in some sort of context, staring down at a Minbari cruiser directly in front of him, above an apparently deserted planet that was in fact far from deserted, which the Captain had gone down to, along with the greatest Narn hero currently alive and a mysterious alien who babbled a lot about destiny and the Great Machine, with a Minbari Satai – with whom the Captain had apparently become friendly, in spite of the fact that she was a Satai who had been involved in leading the war against Earth, and therefore deserved nothing less than a lingering and unnecessarily painful death – on board, and on the bridge, nothing less… was all in a day’s work.

Which day’s work didn’t seem relevant.

The strategy for fighting the Minbari had been outlined in detail by the Captain over a period of time. It had been thought that destroying a Minbari cruiser was impossible. They were faster than Earth ships, stronger than Earth ships and had some kind of stealth system that made it impossible to lock on to them.

And then, there had been the Black Star.

The Minbari flagship, no less, and the Captain had destroyed it. Corwin hadn’t been on board the Babylon at the time, but he did remember the celebrations after news of it reached Earth. So what if the Captain had had to use mines and a faked distress signal? It had worked. The Minbari could be beaten. It had given them all hope.

Hope that was sadly misplaced. Not even the Captain could do much against the searing Minbari onslaught that had descended upon Earth and proceeded to destroy the entire planet. Hardly anyone survived. And then the Minbari had turned to Mars, and the Captain had arrived, raining fire and fury and causing even the Minbari to back off long enough for people to escape. One of those people was David Corwin, and destiny had intervened.

And now, David Corwin was second in command and executive officer on board the Babylon, and staring down Minbari cruisers was a routine affair, even if he never did entirely lose the feelings of terror and anger he always felt when staring at the beings who had destroyed his home and his family. Vengeance never died, and, as far as David Corwin was concerned, it was a dish definitely best served hot.

Except that now he had a Minbari on this very bridge.

Corwin had never been sure of what to make of Satai Delenn. He hadn’t had very many dealings with her, and he wanted it kept that way. He had heard snippets from her interrogation by Security Officer Welles, and he knew that she had played a large part in the beginning of the war. On the other hand, the Captain seemed to trust her – he’d even ended her interrogation and given her quarters on the ship, something which had earned him a very large shouting at by the Resistance Government. Corwin wasn’t sure why the Captain would choose to do that for a Minbari, but the Captain was the captain after all, and he must have had his reasons. So, he abided her presence, but he did not have to like it.

“It was the Trigati,” Satai Delenn was saying. “You have to let me talk to them.”

Corwin wasn’t listening. He knew the procedure for combatting Minbari vessels almost by heart. You couldn’t lock on to them with missile fire, so you had to use dispersion fire techniques, and hope to find the right frequency and direction. You also send out the Starfuries, both to engage the Minbari flyers, and to continue attacking the big cruiser with more dispersion fire. When you did enough damage to get a heat lock on the ship, you pulled back the Starfuries as a screen, and released the heat sensitive fusion bomb – sold at exorbitant prices by the Narns – and let it make its way to the Minbari. Sometimes it didn’t work, but often enough it did, especially with the Captain’s luck and skill guiding it.

Corwin was not the Captain, and he had neither the Captain’s luck nor his skill, but he did have persistence. The Captain was on that planet below, and he had orders from the Resistance Government to claim it. Corwin would rather space himself than be the cause of the Captain’s failure.

Assuming he had a choice, of course.

Captain Sheridan meanwhile was having problems of his own…

The ground was shaking beneath his feet. He wasn’t sure of the specifics, but both Zathras and his almost identical companion had stated that as Varn died, the Machine died with him. It needed a controller to keep the Machine and the planet – if there was a difference between the two – in a stable condition. With Varn’s obvious ill health, the planet was in anything but stable condition and the Machine was automatically reacting to anything it perceived as a threat.

Such as the two ships currently in orbit. Sheridan had heard a Minbari message to the effect that a missile had been fired at their ship. They assumed it was from the Babylon, whereas it was really from the Machine. The Minbari either didn’t know this, or didn’t care. Under other circumstances he might have been able to intervene, but he currently had his hands full.

The Minbari captain lunged at him with the pike, swinging it at his head. He managed to duck and leap backwards, having to avoid both the pike and the falling rocks and shaking ground.

Sheridan had fought hand to hand against Minbari a number of times. The last such occasion had left him with a massive headache and a one-way journey to Minbar in chains. He’d learned a bit since that occasion.

Rule 1. Minbari were faster than he was, much faster. They were also stronger, and could wield those bloody heavy pikes like they were made out of air. Stay out the way where possible.

Rule 2. If you could blast them from a distance, do so. It wasn’t fair, but nothing about this war was fair.

He was doing his hardest to obey Rule 1, and trying to follow Rule 2, but he spent so much time trying to regain his balance that he had little time to draw and aim his PPG, and he knew he would only have one chance to use it.