When Garibaldi arrived to find Rally in Sheridan's quarters already, he blinked and paused a moment before entering his normal friendly attitude.
"Well, this is a surprise," he said. "I thought this was a command staff party."
"Yes," Sheridan said. "Well, I figured that we should have a semi-official apology for the recent problem."
"All right," Garibaldi said, turning toward Rally. "I'd say nice to meet you when we're not talking about some sort of assault or the like, but looks like it is already to late for that."
"That's fine," Rally said with a smile. "I'm used to talking shop. I hear you're out of medical leave."
"That's right," he said. "How's Shanti?"
"She's fine," Rally said, hiding the fact that she was a little troubled by that. "She's not happy that I won't let her go to the arcade while she's healing up, but she's fine."
"Good to know," Garibaldi said, moving over to sit down across from her. "Mind if I ask something?"
"I guess so," Rally said shrugging.
"I saw the hole in Jack's hand and the scoring across his thigh," Garibaldi noted. "What about the bruised ribs?"
Rally was silent for a little bit.
"Probably Shanti," she admitted.
"You're joking," Sheridan said with a laugh. "She's tiny."
Before Garibaldi could respond, the call button ringed and Sheridan called out for the next visitor to enter. Commander Ivanova hobbled in dressed in an evening gown and with her hair down.
"I wasn't sure how formal we were...oh hello," she said, noticing Rally sitting across from Garibaldi. "Miss Vincent, this is something of a surprise."
Rally waved in response.
"I asked her to come somewhat last minute," Sheridan noted with a smile. "I guess this just leaves Dr. Franklin."
Susan limped her way over to a chair and sat down, watching Rally with curiosity and looking toward Garibaldi with a question as he shrugged.
As Franklin arrived a few minutes later, he came in nodding to everybody clearly not surprised by the bounty hunter's presence.
"You knew about this?" Ivanova accused.
'He was there when I was invited," Rally explained. "He was about as surprised as I was then."
"And now that we're here," Sheridan said, pouring out some drinks for his guests. "It's time to..."
Garibaldi raised his hand up for a moment.
"Let's not pretend this is about me coming back to the job," he said. "Because we all know it's a little more than that."
"All right then," Sheridan said with a frown as he sat down. "To business, if you want. Most of you here don't know me very well, but I've worked with Susan in the past."
He nodded toward Ivanova and leaned companionably forward in his chair.
"Everybody knows what happened at the end of the last year," Sheridan said. "And most of us here know that it looks like that accident was no accident."
Rally sat up then and shifted forward, she'd heard rumors, of course, but nothing substantial. Sheridan, meanwhile glanced over toward Garibaldi.
"Before I was shot in the back," he said. "I found a shipment of poor-man's jamming signals designed to jam the Presidential Gold channel. I was ambushed and didn't wake up again until recently."
"This Jack," Rally started, half disbelieving. "Was part of an assassination plot?"
"It's looks to be the case," Sheridan said. "And we have you to thank for suggesting that the Psi Corps is involved."
Rally's mouth opened slightly before she smacked a hand to her forehead.
"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
"Unfortunately, no," Sheridan said seriously. "Now, you don't have proof, and legally, I'm probably putting my neck in a sling, so leaving you out of the reports has the potential to bite me in the ass later."
"I'm not asking you to cover for me or mine," Rally noted seriously. "We can take care of ourselves."
"Trust me here," Sheridan said laughing, "even if I wanted to report your kids as rogue telepaths, which I don't. Susan would do something to stop it and I can't afford to lose her as an officer."
"Well, thank you sir," Susan said. "It's good to be appreciated."
"Unfortunately," Garibaldi said. "I don't think a couple of rogue telepaths are going to get much credibility. And we'll be taken as conspiracy theorists and criminals ourselves if we try to use that testimony."
"That would be the case if Vivian was a telepath," Susan said.
"Excuse me?" Franklin said curiously.
"What are you talking about, Susan," Sheridan asked.
"Vivian is an object reader," Rally said. "And..."
She paused for a moment and thought about it.
"Shanti is a pyrokinetic," the bounty hunter said.
"Pyrokinetic?" Sheridan repeated.
"It means she can start and control fires," the doctor said with a giddy expression. "This is amazing, it explains her metabolism and body temperature quite a bit. She'd need immense amounts of energy to be able to..."
He noticed Rally turning to look at his excited explanation.
"Right," he said. "Don't worry about me."
"It would also explain that explosion when we were firing on Jack earlier," Garibaldi said.
"And what's an 'object reader'?" Sheridan asked.
"If she picks something up that was being held by someone when something major happened," Rally said. "She'll see what happened."
"Okay, so when you had your hacker friend send that message?" Michael asked.
"He'd let us in to use the shooting range and let us borrow his weapon," Rally explained. "Vivian saw everything when she picked it up."
"It has to be something intense?" Sheridan asked.
"Intense emotions last longer as an impression apparently," Susan interrupted. "So if it's just something normal, it'll be useless in..."
"Ten or fifteen minutes," Rally finished. "More intense emotions will last a lot longer depending on a few things. That gun is likely to hold that image for a long time."
"And given that they're not, technically, telepaths," Garibaldi said. "What does that give us?"
"It means there's no law on the books to govern them," Sheridan said with a bit of relief.
"It won't stop Psi-Corps from snapping them up," Rally said grimmly.
"Hence why no mention of your name is included in our reports," Sheridan said. "If the Psi Corps, or even just elements of it, are behind President Santiago's death then we can't afford to give them our only witnesses."
Rally's frown deepened at that chosen wording.
"Which is fine, because we weren't reporting them anyway," Susan repeated.
"Even without putting them in the report," Garibaldi said. "Someone is going to realize that you were involved just by the rumor mill. You raised a ruckus they're still talking about in Downbelow."
"Right, here at least we can watch your back," Sheridan noted firmly. "In case someone tries to close some loose threads."
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(Posted Mon, 27 Dec 2010 11:35)
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