chapter 30
“Do you want me to sleep with you tonight?” Senna asked.
Vir considered it a moment, but then shook his head. “The time… isn’t right.” He sighed. “I don’t… I can’t… I…”
She put a finger to his lips and hushed him. “When the time is right, then.” Her lips brushed lightly against his. “Good night then, Vir.”
“Good night.”
He went to his quarters then. He had selected something simple for himself, nothing ostentatious. He couldn’t bring himself to take over the private quarters that had once belonged to Londo. Too many ghosts that had not been laid to rest, and quite possibly never would be.
As the door slid shut behind him, he glanced around the room approvingly. The things he’d transported from Minbar had been brought there and set up just as he had specified. There was the desk, and the chairs. And the wardrobe, polished and ornate, big as a man and twice as wide.
It was late; he’d had a long day, and he had a series of meetings scheduled for tomorrow that were going to be pivotal in his decisions as to what direction Centauri Prime should go. Yet with all that, he could not bring himself to sleep. Instead he sat down at a computer and recorded another entry in his chronicles. There were many ways in which he had no intention of following Londo’s example, but the concept of keeping a journal was a good idea. For an emperor owed it to more than himself to try to keep his thoughts orderly, try to maintain a record of his achievements, or lack thereof. An emperor owed it to whoever followed him in the office. A blueprint, a template, for what to do right… and what to avoid.
“I felt a frost upon my spine, feeling as if a shadow had touched me, and held Senna closer as the night chill began to fill the air,” he said, and was about to continue when another chill struck him. That was odd, however, because when he’d been with Senna, they’d been standing on a balcony. Here, however, he was in a room that had been warm only moments before.
The room also seemed darker somehow, and the shadows were impossibly-starting to lengthen.
Slowly Vir rose from his chair. He appeared for all the world as if he wanted to cry out, but he could not.
A form separated itself from the shadows and stood facing him in the middle of the room.
“Shiv’kala,” Vir managed to say. “You’re… not dead.”
“In that ambush? No.” When he’d encountered Shiv’kala in the past, he’d always been struck by the calm, level tone of the Drakh. Now, however, Shiv’kala sounded as if every word from his mouth was laced with rage. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if Shiv’kala was actually trembling. “No, I was able to make my escape… for all the good it did me.”
“Good?”
“I,” the Drakh growled, “have been shunned. Shunned by the Drakh Entire. Because of Londo. Because of you.”
“I… don’t understand…”
“Of course you do not,” he snarled. “You cannotunderstand. Cannot know what it was to commune with the Entire. But our hold on Centauri Prime has disintegrated, my people are in retreat. The mighty fleet we helped construct now seeks us out to destroy us… and they blame it on me. They say I did not treat Londo harshly enough. I attempted to educate him, you see.” He was circling Vir, exuding anger. Vir was rooted to the spot. “Tried to teach him our purpose. Our reason for existence. Tried to get him to understand the Tightness of our cause. Instead he mistook compassion for weakness, and betrayed us in a way that he never would have if I had treated him appropriately. I did not break him sufficiently. I will not make that mistake again.
“My people have abandoned me along with this world… but I will get them to understand. I will show them just what I am capable of. I will bend this world to the way of the Shadows, single—handedly if I must. And the Drakh will see my accomplishment, and return. If it takes a century, it will not matter, for legions of fire we have nothing but time, despite all your ships’ pathetic attempts to track us down and annihilate us. But it will start with you, Vir Cotto.”
“You mean… you…” Vir gulped. “You’re going to try to break me the way you didn’t with Londo?”
“No,” the Drakh said, speaking so softly that Vir could barely hear him. “You… I am simply going to kill. I will deal with whoever follows you… but you I will not suffer to live.”
Vir licked his lips, seeming to summon his courage. “No. You won’t kill me. Instead… you’re going to tell me where I can find the Drakh that spawned the keeper on David Sheridan.”
It was hard to believe that a Drakh could look surprised, much less as surprised as Shiv’kala did just then. “I had thought,” he said slowly, “that you simply acted the fool, in order to throw suspicion from yourself. But I was wrong. You truly are a fool.”
“Tell me,” Vir said, as if somehow he had the upper hand.
“You want the Drakh who produced David Sheridan’s keeper?” He spread his arms wide. “He stands before you.” And then his hands came together, and he advanced on Vir.
Vir didn’t budge. “Thank you. I figured as much. And it’s all I wanted to know.”
Shiv’kala had taken only two steps toward Vir when the door of the Minbari wardrobe cabinet banged open. He spun, staring in confusion.
Standing inside the cabinet, a PPG clenched securely in both hands, was Michael Garibaldi. There was a lopsided, wolfish grin on his face and a glitter of death in his eyes.
“What’s up, Drakh?” he asked.
Shiv’kala let out the howl of a damned soul, and his arm moved with a blur. But Garibaldi didn’t give him any time. He squeezed off two quick shots, and both struck home, one in the Drakh’s stomach, the second in his chest. The impact lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the far wall, even as a pointed steel rod flew from Shiv’kala’s sleeve. It thunked into the wood six inches to the right of Garibaldi’s head. He didn’t even flinch, or seem to notice.
Shiv’kala flopped about on the floor like a beached whale. The only sound issuing from his mouth was a sort of incoherent grunting, and his chest made a wheezing, sucking noise that Garibaldi knew all too well. The floor beneath him became dark and stained with the awful liquid that passed for the creature’s blood.
Garibaldi stood over him, aiming the PPG squarely between Shiv’kala’s eyes. “The first one was for David… and the second was for Lou Welch. And this…”
“Mr. Garibaldi,” Vir said sharply. Garibaldi looked to him, and Vir extended his hand, a stern expression on his face. “I can’t let you do that. Give it here. Now.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Garibaldi handed it over. Vir held it delicately, hefted the weight, clearly impressed by the lightness of it. Then he looked down at the fallen Drakh. “In the end… Londo had you pegged,” he told the Drakh. “He said you were predictable. And you were. Your ego had to bring you back here, make you vulnerable. To get away, all you had to do was leave. We’d probably never have found you. But you had to stay around, to have your vengeance. You refused to admit that the time of the Drakh on Centauri Prime is over. A lot of creatures that walked or swam or flew this world’s surface didn’t realize when their moment passed. But it’s strange: Nature doesn’t care whether they knew it or not. Nature just got rid of them. Turned them extinct. Oh… and by the way,” he added, almost as an after thought, “… this is for Londo and G’Kar.” And with that, he blew Shiv’kala’s head off.
David Sheridan’s shriek was so loud that many Minbari within a mile radius claimed to have been able to hear it.
Sheridan and Delenn were there in seconds, neither of them having even bothered to pull on robes. They had no idea what they were going to find when they entered the room, although neither of them would have been surprised to discover their son’s corpse.