The Zarqheba had returned to their asteroid homes, their great wings carrying them through space as they had many millennia ago. Lorien was one of the few who remembered their cities of gold and splendour, before they had collapsed in fire and fury. The Zarqheba would never again know their former intelligence and beauty. Now they were little better than animals, but now at least they were free. The Vorlons were hunting them, but they knew how to hide. Lorien supposed they would escape.
The Zener had scattered. Some had gone with their Dark Masters, others had stayed. They the Vorlons wanted most of all, for it was they who had crafted the weapons of biotechnology and chemical warfare that the Shadows had used so effectively. Some had been caught, some had been killed, but some remained free.
The Streib had retreated. Never truly a vassal race of the Shadows, they had simply taken advantage of the chaos they brought. That was enough for them to be hunted and pursued. Their ships no longer raided, no longer hunted. They settled in their homeworld and hid.
The byakheeshaggai were all dead, the last one slain by the Vorlons on Centauri Prime. None remained, here or beyond the Rim.
There were others of course. The Z'shailyl, the Moradiin, the Faceless. Lorien watched them all, just as He watched everything else that transpired in the galaxy. He watched the building of Babylon 5. He watched the Drazi fall and be conquered. He watched peace and order come at last to the Tuchanq. He watched the others, the last survivors of races almost as old as His, move at last, returning to attend to the fate of the galaxy after so long in silence. He watched Sebastian awake and walk forth on his mission.
And when, at the end of the Earth year 2262, Ulkesh came to see Him in His hidden sanctum, as he had more than once in the last year, He asked the same question He had on every other occasion.
"Tell me. Have you found Cathedral yet?"
The answer was always the same.
It was so quiet. So new. Crafted fully formed from hopes and aspirations and dreams. Every bit of metal, every bolt, every door, every room, every piece of equipment.
It was all so new, and yet it seemed haunted.
As G'Kar walked slowly through the corridors of Babylon 5 he could not shake that feeling. He had not used to believe in ghosts. But that was before. Before he had met Londo. Before the Machine. Before the War.
Now he thought he believed in almost everything.
It was finished. Babylon 5 was finished, almost ready to go on line. Oh, there would still be improvements and modifications to be made, little bits of tweaking here and there, but for the most part it was done.
And was it worth it? Was it worth the expense? And not just in financial terms. The Drazi had rebelled partly because of this station. He had heard reports from Centauri Prime of famine and drought exacerbated by the crippling payments made to the Alliance. There were whispers of protest from Narn.
And was it worth it? What price peace?
He could not find an answer.
He walked into the room that had been designated as the conference hall, the place where the representatives would meet, where the decisions would be taken, where the fate of worlds would turn.
The Vorlon turned to look at him. Its encounter suit was pure white, unmarked by any other colour, unsullied and clean. G'Kar understood that in some cultures white meant purity and virtue.
All he could see in that gleaming whiteness were bones. Bones of the dead.
A light twinkled in the Vorlon's eye stalk and G'Kar took a slow step back. For one moment it had looked as if a skull was smiling at him.
He placed his fists together on his chest and bowed his head slightly. As far as he knew he was one of the first people on Babylon 5 apart from the construction crews, given permission to survey the new base for the Alliance. The others would come later, either being too busy to inspect it now, or not wishing to do so. G'Kar alone wanted to see the finished station as soon as possible.
He was not terribly surprised to see that the new Vorlon Ambassador had got here before him.
There was a rush of air, and a sound like dry leaves rustling across a marble tomb. <Welcome to Babylon Five,> it said.
G'Kar said nothing in reply. There was nothing to say.
The Babylon 5 station became operational at the end of 2262. The first meetings there took place early in 2263. It was always hoped and believed that Babylon 5 would be a consolidation of the peace that the Shadow War had ultimately brought to the galaxy.
Unfortunately, this was very far from being the case.
LAKER, A. (2293) A Shining Beacon in Space. Chapter 14 of The Rise and Fall of
the United Alliance, the End of the Second Age and the Beginning of the
Third, vol. 3, 2262: The Missing Year. Ed: S. Barringer, G. Boshears, A. E.
Clements, D. G. Goldingay & M. G. Kerr.
Gareth D. Williams
Part 1. Learning How to Live
With Babylon 5 complete at last, the Alliance is ready to enter a new age, a golden time of peace and prosperity. But in a galaxy that has known only war, the concept of peace is hard to grasp. The new age brings many challenges, not learning how to fight, but learning how to live. Some seek that understanding through work and labour, others through continuing to build a better world, while for some there is no understanding, only continued war. And across the dead vastness of space, ancient ships continue to move, gathering for a purpose no one can comprehend.
Chapter 1
The Alliance had been shaken in 2262, the Drazi Conflict representing its first real test since the end of the Shadow War, but ultimately it had held. The union of the Blessed Delenn and General John Sheridan, the Shadowkiller, kept the disparate Alliance together through months that were largely marked by peace and optimism. The completion of the Babylon 5 space station at the end of the year was meant to mark a new beginning for the galaxy.
And it did, although not in the way anyone could have foreseen. Babylon 5 comes later, though. The early weeks and months of 2263 were distinguished by activity elsewhere, by a slow building of forces, by steadily burning tensions.
And by the continued absence of Primarch Sinoval.
NEY, S. E. (2295) The Birth of a New Dream. Chapter 1 of The Rise and Fall of
the United Alliance, the End of the Second Age and the Beginning of the
Third, vol. 4, The Dreaming Years. Ed: S. Barringer, G. Boshears,
A. E. Clements, D. G. Goldingay & M. G. Kerr.
And at the same instant, they all woke up.
They were spread out across the galaxy; rich people, poor people, powerful people, helpless people. They were the people who shaped the galaxy, in one form or another.
And they all woke up at the same time.
Londo Mollari awakes from a dream he can remember now, wet tears on his face. He is a young man again, standing alongside Marrago and Urza and Dugari and Malachi and so many others. He is boasting in the way that only a young man can, and the others are agreeing with him. "I am going to be Emperor one day," he says, and they laugh. And then he looks up at the throne, and Refa is there, nailed to it by his own kutari. And then he looks back and sees Dugari covered with blood, coughing up more blood with each breath and taking those awful cough tablets of his which are covered with blood. And he looks back and he sees Marrago is not here any more, and Urza is dead and Malachi is dead and they are all dead except him and only his enemies are left, and Cartagia raises a mocking toast to say 'I won' and Elrisia combs out her long beautiful hair and Kiro plays an open flame across his fingers and it does not burn him and Mariel and Daggair laugh and plot and Morden is behind them all, smiling as he always does and saying, 'You owe me a favour, Emperor or Minister or peasant or wanderer, you owe me a favour and a man must always pay what he owes.'