Technology was taken quickly from hiding places millennia old. Some caches were inevitably forgotten, but that was no longer an issue the Shadows concerned themselves with.
And they assembled, one by one, shimmering in space above their homeworld, now lost to them forever.
They waited on just one of their number.
<You will not come with us, Eldest?>
"No. I have a duty here. Remember me, though. I will join you eventually."
<We will always remember you. We served you as best we could.>
"I know. I have been proud to know you all. Do not think of this as a failure. In a very real way, for you, this is a victory."
The Pale and Silent King ascended to his personal flagship, surrounded by the Heart Guards and the Seers of Stars, and he led the Shadow race to the next galaxy.
Among their number, beside the Drakh and the Zener and their servants and emissaries and agents, David Sheridan looked down at the Alliance fleet.
"I am proud of you, son," he whispered. "I'll always be proud of you."
Then they left.
But first, there was one final conversation.
"It is over."
"Yes, it is over."
"You have won."
"Yes, we have won."
"Enjoy your victory. We will be waiting for you."
"Waiting for what?"
"For you to understand."
"So, that's a victory, hmm?" John said to himself, as the last ship left.
"The best type," Delenn said. "No one is dead, and we are all.... wiser. We have all learned something."
"So.... I think Dad said it best. What now?"
"We take control of Z'ha'dum. We will have to stop anyone stealing technology from it. We will have to bring all the races together, make sure all the wars are truly over. We have to keep the Alliance safe and secure and build a true foundation for the future.
"But first.... we can go home."
John Sheridan smiled. "Good idea."
Part 8 : Meditations and Introspections.
Thus ends the Shadow War, and thus begins the great peace, but it is a peace built on sacrifice and bloodshed and lies. The terrible toll of the war is beginning to tear some apart, while others are already preparing for the future. Sinoval has three most unexpected meetings. David Corwin learns something about love and loss. Talia Winters makes a terrible discovery. And the Vorlons meet with the Eldest for the first time in a millennium.
All most of us have ever known is how to fight. Now.... we're going to have to learn something much harder. How to live.
Captain David Corwin.
And at last, after all these years, it was over. Not just one war, but all of them. All wars. All the wars that had been, that would ever be. They were all over.
The Shadows had gone, departed for a new life beyond the Rim. Z'ha'dum was a safe world now, one that would never again threaten the younger races of the galaxy. From far above the grim and dead planet, Vorlon ships waited, guarding the world, preventing anything from coming.... or going.
The Narn / Centauri War was over. Both races were now members of the United Alliance. Both races had ambassadors on Kazomi 7. The peace treaty had been signed. The borders had been fixed. Both armies would return home.
Above all, there was the Alliance. The United Alliance of Kazomi 7, protector of the galaxy, led by the Blessed Delenn and kept safe by the Dark Star fleet and their renowned General John Sheridan, the Shadowkiller.
The wars were over. All that remained was a little mopping up.
She had had a name once. A name that she sometimes still remembered, a name she sometimes heard in conversation. Her Captain spoke it to her often. She knew his name. David Corwin. He knew her name, but when he was not aboard her, she did not.
She was the essence of the Dark Star 3. The Agamemnon, one of the few ships of the Dark Star fleet to have a name. A name. It was not her name. It was the ship's name. There was a confusing separation there. Her name was not Agamemnon, she knew that, but it was the name of the ship.
Somehow, on some level, she was beginning to recognise that she and the ship were not one and the same. That spoke against everything, but when he was here, it made sense.
He was not here now. She could feel him, but not talk to him. He had been called away on a matter of some urgency. He was an important man, with many responsibilities.
Captain David Corwin. She knew his name. Once she had known her own, but the light had come, and had grown stronger and stronger. There had been screams within the light, and some of them she had been able to identify. Some of them she had even been able to name.
But now all the screams were becoming one. The network was consolidating. Those newly brought into it were losing their identities, their names, their faces.
She still had hers. A little. She had a name. She knew at least that much. She even knew someone who knew it.
The screaming all stopped, and there was silence. Total and utter silence. She looked around, seeing nothing but darkness.
"Captain," she said. "Are you there?"
<No,> said a voice, a voice that came from nowhere and everywhere.
She knew that voice. It was the voice of God. He was talking to her, His voice echoing throughout the silence.
<Your time is done. You are no longer needed.>
She meant to ask something, perhaps what was going to happen to her, perhaps what her name was, but she never had the chance. The light returned, brighter and more powerful than before, and it scourged everything from her, memory, mind and soul.
She died, in a sense, never recalling that her name had once been Carolyn Sanderson. In another, more real sense, she would be alive forever, with only the dark and silent void to mask her own screams.
It was a ship only of the dead, a place where a man who had striven all his life for greatness had faced his end, screaming to the heavens in defiance, promising revenge, pleading for mercy. It was a ship where the Enemy had sent one of their darkest, oldest and most powerful minions to destroy someone they had only ever seen as a tool.
It was the place where Sonovar had died.
The ship had been left where it was, a ghost ship to give rise to myth and legend. Maybe, in decades to come, young warriors would search for it, seeking it out as wanderers sought the Holy Grail, the Sathra Stone, the lost worlds of the First Ones and other legends.
He knew of the legends that would come, that Sonovar was not truly dead, that he would return when the time was right. His creed, wrought of inferiority and near–insanity, would rise again, and others would follow in his footsteps, dreaming of the day when Sonovar the Great would return.
So be it. The Minbari now carried their own destiny. Let them dream of lost heroes. That was their place. Besides, in one respect, they would be right. Sonovar was not dead.
Somewhere, in a wall in one of the oldest space–faring vessels in the galaxy, was a globe, within which raged a spirit, cursing the denial of his chance at reincarnation.
In a thousand years, he would return. There always had to be a balance. Sonovar did not understand that now, but he would. There was enough time for both of them to learn.