"We will send more ships," Vizhak announced. "And we will keep sending ships until these Shadows are all destroyed."
"You can send all the ships you like," Delenn said softly. "You will only create more of the dead. The Enemy is too powerful for that. They are also too quick. You saw yourself just how the ambush turned around there. Did both ships have telepaths?"
The two Drazi looked at each other, and then proceeded to find many things of interest in the papers before them.
Delenn sighed again, rubbing at her eyes. She had not slept well last night. Not at all. "Telepaths are the only real weapon we have against the Shadows," she said. "You both know this. Why then were those ships not provided with telepaths?"
"It is easy for you," Vizhak said, looking up. His tone of voice was faintly apprehensive. "Minbari have many telepaths. Drazi have few. We do not breed as many telepaths as Minbari do, and those we have are.... needed. Our laws do not bind them. They are not soldiers. We cannot command them to go to war."
"We have.... some telepaths here," she said.
"Yes. Minbari telepaths. Brakiri telepaths. One human telepath. None of those can serve on Drazi ship. Only Drazi serve on Drazi ships."
"I was on one of your ships," she pointed out. Twice, in fact, at Minbar and at the Third Line. The Drazi had been most eager to have her aboard the Stra'Kath, their flagship.
"You are leader," she said. "You lead Drazi. You speak for Drazi to aliens. You are different."
She did not know whether to be flattered or not. She had certainly been given worse compliments. Her general mood, however, left no time for recognising the absurdity of the situation. "The fact is, Vizhak.... without telepaths we stand little chance against the Shadows. At Epsilon Three we had the advantage of knowing they were coming, of setting defences, of time to prepare. We cannot do that this time, and if we simply fly around waiting for them to appear, then we will share the same fate as those two ships."
"At least we try," spoke up Taan Churok. "Kazomi Seven is as safe as we can make it. Is fortified, is strong, is safe.... but other worlds, other peoples, other ships.... We cannot protect them all. So we try to deal with Shadows. We try.... where are others?"
"We have hardly been idle," Delenn replied. "We have been trying to establish a strategy, so that we can understand the enemy. Ambassador Sheridan made it clear that we, the Alliance, would bear the brunt of the Shadows' attacks, and so far that has appeared to be the case, but their attacks have been against your individual worlds.... not against any Alliance holdings. Why? We have to understand what they want first."
"We know what they want. To destroy us."
"We try to fight them, Delenn," said Vizhak. "Is Drazi way."
"There is another concern," spoke up another voice, and all eyes turned to Lethke, Minister for the Economy. The Brakiri was a calm-spoken man, precise and used to thinking clearly before speaking. "We have among us, here in this very city, one who knows more about the Shadows than anyone else can hope to. He promised us his aid and the assistance of his people when he arrived. But he has done nothing. For three weeks he has done nothing. He is not even here now.
"Where is Ambassador Ulkesh?"
"He was invited to this meeting, as he has been to every other," replied Delenn, a slow chill spreading through her body. There was a great deal about Ulkesh that she disliked. He was very.... different from the Vorlon who had shared her mind and soul for so many years, the Vorlon who had given his life in the temporal rift.
And she was not the only one who felt like that. The technomage Vejar had been conspicuously avoiding Ulkesh ever since his arrival. And Lyta.... Delenn's friend had changed greatly in the three weeks since the new Vorlon had come to Kazomi 7. Delenn wished she had had more of a chance to talk with her recently, but she had been so busy....
There was something that kept Ulkesh from these meetings, and for some reason she could not identify, and certainly could not rationalise, Delenn had the very uncomfortable feeling that that something was her.
I've been listening to Sinoval too much, she thought uneasily. To be certain, the warrior detested Vorlons with every fibre of his being, and after his revelations at the Rebirth Ceremony at the beginning of the year Delenn understood something of why, but did that mean his paranoid suspicions were true? Previously she had disbelieved them all, but since meeting Ulkesh again....
"Then what do we do?" asked Vizhak. "Sit here and wait to die? Is not Drazi way."
"No, we do not just sit here, but we do not send our ships out to be pointlessly butchered either. We formulate a plan, and we force the confrontation on our terms. That is as soon as we are ready. Commander Corwin.... do you honestly think we can defeat the Shadows?"
The young human shuffled in his seat awkwardly. He had been invited to all the meetings of the Alliance Council since the Battle of the Third Line, but he had only started coming with the advent of the open attacks by the Shadows. Of everyone here, with the possible exception of Ta'Lon, he had the most experience of fighting the Shadows directly.
"There's no denying their superiority," he said, after a moment's hesitation. He was clearly uncomfortable. "Technological, that is. Some of their tech was put into the Babylon by the Resistance Government.... not as much as was built into the later ships, but still a little. We've been going over it as best as we can, and what we've found isn't very.... um.... reassuring.
"Their ships are organic in nature, at least partially. They're very resistant to damage. It can be done, though, with great difficulty. We've all seen that. Telepaths seem to be our only real advantage against them. Each time we've fought them.... something has happened to swing the battle in our favour.
"At Proxima Three it was the arrival of a Vorlon fleet. At.... Epsilon Three, the Great Machine helped us as much as it could, and when it.... exploded it took some of their ships with it." He fell silent, and Delenn looked down. When the Great Machine exploded it had taken something else with it as well. Commander Corwin's great friend Michael Garibaldi. And it looked as though it would take his Captain as well.
"I'd.... ah.... rather not spend all my subsequent battles with the Shadows praying for a miracle. Besides, if we take anything near the losses we took at Epsilon Three, another couple of battles like that and we won't have any ships left to pray for miracles with."
"Then.... what do you recommend?"
He was very quick, and blunt. "Get the Vorlons here to help us now. Because without them, we don't stand a chance. None at all."
Delenn sighed again. Exactly as she had thought. Sometimes she hated being right.
G'Kael seldom thought much about the future. As far as life in the army and in the lower circles of the Kha'Ri went, he was lucky if he had time to think about the present. However, if he had given much thought to where the path of his destiny would take him, he would never had believed it would lead to Kazomi 7, and to the position he now held.
Ambassador. A fine title in theory, but a hollow one in practice. The Kha'Ri had little time for this Alliance, being far more preoccupied with the war against the Centauri, and they had responded to the Council's offer of representation with hearty guffaws. Eventually, however, they had accepted the need to have someone here, even if only to serve as a spy, and a quick series of suggestions had thrown up G'Kael's name.
In the few months he had been here, though, he had learned that his post was considerably more important than some back home seemed to think. First, he had met and spoken to the fabled Ha'Cormar'ah G'Kar himself, who had pressed home the great importance of this place. G'Kar was gone now, on some personal errand of great urgency, but his second Ta'Lon was still here.