Rally sighed and shook her head. Security was becoming something of a common place for her to be it seemed. Which shouldn't have surprised her given her line of work and the fact that she was now depending on the chief of security and certain of the command staff for anonymity.
But, in the past couple of months, she'd had Shanti called in by security three times. She herself had had to consult with security several times on bureaucratic terms and then that ambush that Goldie's little disciples had set for her. And now Vivian had "witnessed" something and she needed to be present in order for Garibaldi to get her side of things.
"I should just transfer quarters up to Red Sector," Rally said under her breath. "And maybe then Shanti will cause Garibaldi less headaches than I caused Roy."
She checked her phone for any responses from Shanti to her message, but there was only a read confirmation.
"She'd better stay there," Rally muttered.
Then she walked into the security office and nodded at Zack.
"She's over there, Garibaldi's talking to this lurker about something," Zack said. "I notice this one came in without someone visiting medlab or missing limbs."
"I can fix that, Mr. Allen," Rally said, arching an eyebrow.
"Ahh, right," Zack said. "Anyway, it shouldn't be too long."
Rally shook her head and walked over toward where her daughter was sitting in Garibaldi's office drinking a cup of something that steamed and that Rally fervently hoped wasn't coffee.
"Hey, Little Girl," Rally said.
Immediately, Vivian was up and moving across the room to hug the bounty hunter.
"Whoa, hey," Rally said. "What's wrong?"
"I saw...something..." she said. "I don't know what it was...a ball of lightning...I don't know."
Rally rubbed her back and patted her on the head comfortingly.
"Maybe it was a nightmare you saw?" Rally said possibly.
"It wasn't just one person's memories," Vivi said.
Shanti waved out toward the clinic staff as she headed out into the hallways looking to head up toward Brown Sector and home...or the Zocalo and the arcade.
There was a message on her phone that Rally was going to be late, and she'd judiciously stopped reading at that point, because all that would follow would be "stay there, I'll pick you up later."
Rally would be upset, but Shanti could take care of herself just fine.
The girl was looking about in an apparently idle manner as she walked along. Just in case someone decided that she was ripe for targeting, and to make sure she wasn't getting lost. She was looking down one corridor when she saw the withered form of some alien drop to the ground surrounded by a nimbus of light.
"Hey!" Shanti shouted, moving forward. "Are you okay?"
At first she'd thought it was some sort of shock or energy discharge from the station, but then the nimbus of lights seemed to coalesce into a rough humanoid form fifteen feet tall at the least and it reached out toward Shanti.
She didn't have any more clear image of the thing than that, but it was enough to trigger her to action, her hand slipping toward the mace canister in her pocket and well aware that wasn't near enough.
"STAY BACK!!" she shouted in a near shriek as white shriek as the adrenaline in her system flared more than it had ever before.
The small white sparks appeared an inch or so ahead of her eyes as usual and quickly erupted into small suns with the intensity of her instinctual response to the unknown danger.
The first fire erupted out of the air, sparking the multitude of dust before heat to the point where various gasses normally inert also burst into flame. The creature hesitated and backed off just in time to avoid the white hot burning explosion that erupted throughout the hallway and leaving behind a line of melted metal along either side of the corridor five feet above the floor and pushing outward for another ten feet down the corridor.
And then Shanti full forward only a few yards away from the corpse of the alien that the soldier of darkness had just fed on.
It was a few hours later that Shanti woke up in medlab with her sister sitting next to her and Rally visible through the window talking to Garibaldi, Franklin and Sheridan in another room sealed off nearby.
"Vivi?" Shanti asked.
"Shanti! You're awake!" Vivian said.
"Yeah," the other sister said. "Did I kill it?"
"Kill...you saw the monster?" Vivi said.
"I saw...something," Shanti said sitting up.
"Don't be stupid," Vivi said, handing Shanti a bottle of water. "You were almost dehydrated to death when you came in here."
"I feel cold," Shanti complained, rubbing her arms and then taking the bottle of water.
"Your body temperature is at ninety-eight," her sister explained, pointing toward the monitors.
"You mean this is the way you and Rally feel all the time?" Shanti asked. "Why don't you wear more clothes?"
"Don't worry about it," Vivian said. "I'm sure you'll be back to normal as soon as you can."
"What's going on?" Shanti asked.
"I think they're talking about the monster," Vivian said.
"The dead alien died just like the man in the Copernicus," Franklin said. "Lucky the body wasn't caught in that explosion or wouldn't be able to confirm it."
"Amis said this thing walked through walls and killed pretty much on a whim," Garibaldi said. "Your daughter caught glimpses from that scarf but she can't say exactly what it looked like either, just a ball of lightning or something."
"Whatever it was scared Shanti a lot," Rally said.
"This just about proves that something is here and it is lethal," Sheridan said. "We can't assume it's dead because there are no remains, so we're going to act like its here. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds has hard about the situation and they're asking for a meeting to discuss things."
"I'll talk to Mariah to see if she can remember anything," Franklin said.
"Assuming she is who she says she is," Garibaldi noted.
"You think it's her?" the doctor said. "It couldn't have been, she had a complete rundown, no abnormalities."
"She was with the people that found Shanti, too," Rally noted. "And not the first. I talked to her and she feels scared and confused, not deceptive."
"So, how do we track it down?" Sheridan asked.
Rally uncomfortably looked over her shoulder and flexed the fingers of her left hand where it rested in the sling.
"We're not putting a fifteen year old girl on the track of a man-eating monster, no matter what she can do," Sheridan assured her. "Didn't Amis say he thought he could feel it?"
"He did," Garibaldi said. "I had something of the same idea."
"Get on it," Sheridan said. "I've got to talk to the League in the next few minutes. Miss Vincent, if you will?"
"Yeah," Rally said, expecting what was coming.
The walked to the side out of the way.
"She caused that explosion," Sheridan said. "That wave of white fire that some of the lurkers talked about. Didn't she?"
"Might be," Rally said reluctantly.
"Has anything like this ever happened before?" Sheridan asked.
"Are you talking about the scale?" Rally asked. "No, hell no. If it had, I probably wouldn't have even thought about taking her on to a space station for an extended stay."
"But this has happened on smaller scale then?" Sheridan said.
"She's burned people that threatened her," Rally said. "But nothing like this. Until now, anytime she's tried to cut metal has taken a lot of effort and a lot of time. I'm beginning to think she has an easier time if she's emotional."
"Like you said, something really scared her," Sheridan said grimly. "But we can't risk her being 'really scared' near the hull. And there's no one really who can teach her to control this kind of thing."
He paused and thought for a moment.
"Maybe the Vorlons..."
"No," Rally said sharply. "Just plain no."
The soldier of darkness found a dark space to regroup and consider it's situation and that little organic thing that had attacked it with mind fire.
Then it heard the voices of its masters, coming along with another of those tasty organic things standing between them.
"This one's a little out of his way," Morden said with a smile. "And this might be the answer to a little rumor I've heard recently."
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(Posted Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:01)
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