Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5 : Средь звезд, подобно гигантам - Гэрет Уильямс

a leader

leads from the

front.

They were here

waiting

close to the edge.

He did not

fear

them

But he knew what they were and he

feared

for others

For those who did know

fear.

These creatures were fear.

Ancient

terrible

death incarnate

black hearts beating in the mausoleums of stars.

So near

whispering to him

No.

Not yet.

He was Primarch

He was Sinoval

the Accursed

the Saviour.

He had the

responsibility

the

duty

the

….

the

….

the

power!

He called out his

name

and

hyperspace parted.

The door opened and

closed

behind him.

* * *

US

* * *

Sinoval the Accursed, Primarch Majestus et Conclavus, stumbled back to real space, reeling and nauseous. He fell to his knees, the welcome weight of Stormbringer at his side. Around him power crackled, burning and forceful and pounding.

He looked up, his head almost too heavy to lift.

"Primarch Sinoval, I presume?"

* * *

YOU WILL

* * *

Susan ran as fast as she could, until she thought her lungs were going to burst into flames and her legs collapse into jelly. Never in her life had she moved with more urgency.

Each step leading to the precipice seemed steeper and higher than the last.

The Well had been angry, dark whispers resounding in her mind. It wasn't as if she wanted to hear that gibberish. Death, lots of warnings about death.

And danger.

There is danger. Remember.

Of course there was danger. They were about to besiege a space station housing the most important people in the Alliance and guarded by a massive Vorlon fleet. Of course there was danger.

And where was Sinoval?

She thought she knew, but she prayed she was wrong.

There was a figure standing on the precipice, but it wasn't Sinoval.

Moreil turned sinuously to face her.

"The Chaos — Bringer is not here," he hissed, his ugly, rasping voice hitting her like fingernails on slate.

"No," she whispered, trying to get her breath back.

"He has gone ahead of us, to bring the war to the enemy."

"Yes," she breathed.

Yes, gone ahead to take on the Vorlons in single combat, presumably. God save her from all this death — or — glory rubbish.

"Then we must follow him, and spread the fire with our footsteps."

She looked at the alien, the Shadow — spawned alien, and she saw the fanatical zeal and passion in his twisted, wrong eyes. She knew why Sinoval had spared his life, and she knew he could be used, but she didn't like it, and she didn't like associating with him.

But as she raised her head and looked at the fleet arrayed in hyperspace around Cathedral, waiting for the order, and as she remembered her purpose, she made the decision that Sinoval had always known she would have to make.

Sinoval, if we both survive this, I'm going to….

She never completed that thought. Instead she looked at Moreil.

"Yes," she said.

* * *

OBEY US

* * *

No one troubled him.

No one stopped him.

No one interfered or even looked at him

Anyone who passed him by ducked to one side, pressing themselves tightly against the corridor rather than meet his gaze.

John Sheridan had acquired a reputation amongst the Minbari when he was younger. He was the Starkiller, and more than one Minbari child had woken from nightmare visions of his face in the dark. The John Sheridan who walked through the corridors of Babylon 5 was more terrible by far than all of those dream images put together.

He reached the door he wanted, a door that was unguarded, for who would want to break in here?

It opened at his touch, and closed behind him.

From here, he could see everything around him — the Vorlon ships massed and ready, the myriad jump points opening to admit the invading fleet. He should be there to defend his station from the invaders, but he was not needed.

<We have been waiting for you,> came the voice from the bone — white Vorlon.

He paused, and looked around at the beginning of the battle.

"I'm here now," he said at last.

* * *

It is acceptable for you to hate us. It is even right that you do so.

You hate us because we are perfect, and that perfection merely reveals your own flaws. By hating us you see this, and you accept it.

Accepting your own weakness is merely the first step towards your apotheosis. You hate us, and hatred is merely a form of envy. You hate us because you wish to be us, and that hatred will be your first step along the path to becoming us.

To becoming perfect.

Chapter 4

We have never wished you harm, never wished to hurt you, or destroy you. You are our children, and we are your parents. All parents want only the best for their children, to see them grow and learn and become strong.

But as children grow they must be forced to become other than that which they were. Children are selfish and self — centred and greedy. An adult must be different.

The very act of growth is one of change, becoming different from that which you were. So it is with the growth of your race. We shall change you, that you may grow and become something better.

And then you will never need to change again.

* * *

He liked to think he did not feel, this creature of Order, of cold and passionless regimen and duty. That was what he had been told before he was…. changed, that he would never feel again.

And certainly, that was mostly true. He had felt no fear since the day he had been reborn. He had felt no doubt. Uncertainty and grief were now just words to him, or tools with which to manipulate others.

But there were emotions there. He sometimes thought of these as wrong, but at other times he recognised them for what they were.

Pride: in himself for acknowledging his own strength and conviction.

Satisfaction: on witnessing the effect of his existence.

Joy: in the aftermath of a task well done.

Gratitude: to his Lords for enabling him to be their tool.

Hatred: for those who would seek to oppose his great and holy work.

He felt all five at once as he stared down at the prone figures of his opponents. Satai Kats, the liar, the whore, the conspirator. Tirivail, the traitress, and the traitor's daughter.

And Sinoval.

The arrogant, the Accursed, the one who could not see where his duty lay. Sebastian had seen many like him over his long years of service. Petty little men, who sought to raise their heads above the herd and cry out, a piglet bleating to its mother to show it more attention than the others, a cog in the machine that thought itself more than the machine.

Vanity and vainglory, that was all it was. Some people simply could not accept that they were a tiny part of a greater whole, and they sought to become the whole, or worse, to create an entirely new whole built around their own selfish concerns and desires.

Some of those had seen sense, had repented and recanted and returned to their positions chastened and chastised. The others had been removed, smoothly excised like the cancerous cells they were. There would be a brief and localised illness, but the whole would soon recover.

This Sinoval would be no different. He had power, yes, and, unusually, he had power both spiritual and temporal, and he wielded authority among too many. He was intelligent and quick, and possessed of devious cunning.

But he was playing games with those who had been masters of the game since time immemorial, and eventually he would lose. He was mortal after all, and mortality carried within it a flaw as basic as the need for breath or nourishment or love.

Some were flawed in many different ways, or by many different means, but all possessed at least one flaw. Some few — the blessed, or the fortunate, or the particularly virtuous — were permitted to transcend, and that flaw was removed. Some few were made perfect.

Sebastian had knelt, glorying in the holiness of the Lights Cardinal, and he had heard Their plans to render the entire galaxy perfect, as he had been rendered perfect, and he had wept with joy and exultation at such an existence.

But first, there was one matter to deal with. One little matter, and that was all he was. No matter how great or noble or heroic he thought himself, Sinoval was only a small concern in the grand scheme of things.

"Primarch Sinoval, I presume?" Sebastian said, standing over the body of his opponent.

* * *

you will obey us

* * *

Delenn did not like Babylon 5. It was not that she did not like the Alliance, or even most of the people involved in it; but she did not like the station itself. The first time she had set foot in it she had suddenly become very cold, a great fear assailing her as if from nowhere. The emotion had soon passed, and for a long time she had kept it to herself.

She had told G'Kar though, not long before he had left for Narn. He had looked surprised, and then confessed he had felt exactly the same way.

And, in common with G'Kar, she regretted the lack of a past here. Kazomi 7 reminded them all with every step what the Alliance was for. No one could look at these stones bathed in blood and not be chastened and touched. Kazomi 7 was built on the blood of the innocent and the memories of the survivors.

Babylon 5 was new, far away from Kazomi 7 — in a central position at the heart of numerous trade routes, but still far from the people the Alliance was meant to represent. Perhaps if it had existed sooner, if it had known battle and fear and death and glorious defiance as Kazomi 7 had done, then maybe it could have been the emotional centre it so desired to be.

If the station survived this onslaught, perhaps it might yet become that, and the Alliance might be strengthened by it, but Delenn doubted that very much.

The Alliance was dying, perhaps even dead. The thin, hairline cracks she had seen during the past few years had grown into mammoth fissures. Any attempt to heal them could be no more than plasters to a man missing all his limbs.

But she was a healer. She had discovered that for herself. She was a healer, and she would heal.

She would at least try.

Fortunately there were others who felt as she did. G'Kar, Lethke, Kats, David…. she tried to think of other names but faltered. Surely there were others, or had the entire Alliance become filled with warriors or cynics or opportunists? Had the good men and women become so filled with bitterness that they no longer saw even the possibility of victory without bloodshed?

She missed Lyta — but Lyta was gone, defected to join Sinoval, or so it was said. Delenn could not even find the mind of the woman who had been her closest friend.

She missed Londo, but he was close to death, burdened by his own problems and his own ill — health. She could have acted sooner to help him, to save him, but she had preferred the good of the whole Alliance over the good of one friend, or one friend's people. Just another paper — thin crack that had become a chasm.

She missed John, but he was dead, had in fact been dead for years. She should never have brought him back from the ruins of Epsilon 3. She should have left him there to live always in her memories rather than become the man who had broken her.

No, that wasn't fair, but she was hardly fit to think of him now.

She was not a wife, she was not a mother, she was not a leader.

She was a healer.

There were few, precious few who could help her, but the Alliance had been born from only a few, and perhaps it could be re — born. Lethke would have needed a great deal more stealth to have hidden his meeting from her eyes, although she had not discovered his plan until after she had returned from the garden, limping and hobbling.

These were good people, people who desired peace and tranquillity, and if they worked together….

The smell of the room hit her while she was still in the corridor. At first she hoped it was just an illusion, or a memory, but as she came closer she realised that it was real. She kept hoping, daring to believe it might be something else, right until the moment she reached the still — open door.

These were not bodies, at least not the ones she could see. They were lumps of flesh, ruptured and torn and mutilated. One piece of flesh bore a fragment of Durano's red coat. The blackened Drazi corpse could only be Taan Churok. She wept at the sight of Lethke's body.

Her heart almost stopped when she saw the all — but — headless body of a Narn, but as she looked at it closely, with the cold, dispassionate glance that can only arise from the purest fear, she saw that it was not G'Kar. The clothing and build were different, and this had to be G'Kael.

She could not see G'Kar at all, and there was only one Narn body. Perhaps he had never arrived. Perhaps he still lived. Perhaps….

"G'Kar," she whispered, holding on to that one thought. She did not know how these people had been killed, although she could suspect, but if G'Kar still lived, then maybe their lives' works would still endure.

"He…. lives," rasped a broken voice, and she turned. There was a movement behind a table which had clearly been hurled into the wall with tremendous force. It took Delenn a long moment to recognise the voice.

She moved forward cautiously, lifting the hem of her skirt and picking a slow trail across the mass of flesh. As she got close enough to look behind the table, she saw Kulomani, blood sprayed across his chest and still dripping from numerous wounds.

"At least…. I think so," he said, gasping for breath. Horrible sounds came from his chest, the grinding of countless broken bones, a grisly rasp against the faint drumbeat of his heart. "Heard voices…. from the…. other side of the…. world."

"What happened?" she asked, leaning over to touch him. He shook at the lightest caress on his chest.

"Vorlon," he said, his eyelids fluttering. "Treason…. it said." He sighed. "Can't…. feel my legs." He looked up at her, his eyes filled with sincerity and conviction. "Kill me."

"No," she said firmly, tracing the outline of the table. It was hard to tell where it ended and Kulomani began, but she managed it eventually. Both his legs were broken, probably completely shattered.