Disclaimer:  Crusade concept and characters belong to their creators and production company.     The following story is exclusive property of the author; no copyright infringement is intended.
Rating:  PG-14.  Sequel to  One Step at a Time and  A Different Perspective

Trust

© 2000, Jo Taylor

Tension filled the bridge, almost tangible in its intensity.  Ensign Palin felt every eye upon her and wanted nothing more than to sink through the floor.

"What do you mean, he's missing?" Gideon's incredulous tone accompanied as it was by his darkest scowl had the young woman quaking as he towered above her.  The Captain's temper was notorious -- just her luck to pull this duty.

"No one has seen him since yesterday, sir."  The snapped-back answer did little to soften the captain's mood.  His eyes narrowed alarmingly and she straightened her stance almost to breaking point.

"All right, all right!  You can go, but . . . I want everyone on the lookout for him.  Inform me  immediately anyone sees him."

Attention shifted to his first officer, as an unpleasant thought seemed to occur to him.

"John, is the flyer still in holding three?"

"Yes, sir."  He quickly checked his readouts for a fourth time.  "At least, the instruments show it's still there, and no launch has taken place."

"Has anyone actually checked?  I'm sure he could get off the ship without our knowledge should he choose to."  Exasperation echoed in the captain's rising tones.

"I'll send someone down there right now, sir."  Matheson quickly despatched a security detail and waited tensely for their report as the bridge crew became riveted to reports and data streams that required only a fraction of the attention they were now receiving.

Gideon slammed himself down in his chair, fingers drumming an impatient tattoo on its arm.  "How the Hell can you lose a Technomage!  Okay, I'll give you that this ship is big but he's hardly someone to get lost in the crowd.  Even with my failing memory I can just about recall what he looks like . . . tall, bald, big black coat and an attitude that is unmissable!  Who saw him last?"  The question had been expected, but Matheson's answer was of no help.

"It seems he was last seen with you, sir.  At lunch yesterday."

"I knew he was going to be trouble," Eilerson drawled, finally entering the conversation, having listened with growing boredom to the endless debate that had been going on for what seemed like hours.  He had finally translated the last two pages and the only person who could possibly explain their meaning had suddenly gone walkabout.  It was annoying to say the least, and Max had had his fill of being held up to the mage's whims.

"Who is trouble?"  No one had heard his soft approach, and all jumped with satisfying surprise at his cheerful inquiry.

"Galen!  Where the hell have you been?  And I really hate it when you do that."

Galen's half grin didn't appease the captain one jot.  Looking at the serious faces around him he settled himself against the doorframe and waited expectantly.  He was in an extremely good mood, ready to dispense his benevolence to all and sundry; they had only to ask.

"Well?"  His eyes travelled around the group, inviting confidences.  The sometimes stormy grey turned calm blue by his sense of well being.

Max made the first move.  He was still holding the last two pages Galen had restored.  The crystal encasing the texts flashed a rainbow of colour against the grey walls, briefly brightening the drab confines with its brilliant palette.

"Have you heard of the Sharians?  This piece quite specifically mentions the First Ones.  Could the Tereans have been servants of the Shadows?"

Suddenly sobered, his answer was emphatic, definitive.  "No.  They were the most peaceful of races, dedicated to the preservation of life, not its extinction."  His eyes hardened from their previous good humour as he jolted away from the wall.  "Show me."

Entering the Captain's office the small group settled themselves around the room and waited expectantly as Galen perused the transcript called into existence on the monitor.  Max joined Matheson by the door while the captain took his seat behind the desk.  Clearing a space before him, the captain leant eagerly toward the mage, reading over his shoulder the text that had puzzled them all.

"Well?  Come on.  What does it mean?"

. . . and so it was decreed.  For as long as our world remains we stand Guardians to the Sharian.  Their crimes permit no leniency, no freedom.  Though they are only four, we must stand firm against them, hold them securely that our children and our children's children may be safe.  And all the children on all the worlds must be ignorant of their existence.

We entrust their keeping to our most wise and brave, for the Sharian are devious and destructive.  The First Ones have begged this of us, and we obey their edict.  We are proud to stand between the darkness and the light.

Merlia's design is unbreakable; they can never be freed from their prison.  It is right, it is just.  They will be sent to the furthest corners of Terea, far from our population, far from each other.  The Universe shall never see them again.

We shall . . . and here the text ran out.

Galen scanned the piece quickly, then lowered himself into the chair and read it through again, this time with more care.  The blood seemed to drain from his face, leaving him pale and haunted.  When he finally dragged his gaze from the screen, his eyes were dark and angry.  "Is this all?"

"Until we can get back to Terea and finish the excavation, yes."

"How old is this page?"  The question barked harshly at Eilerson twitched all in the room to instant alert.

Immediately defensive, Max answered, "I . . . well . . . I haven't done a dating yet.  Not a definitive one, that is.  My best guess, around two hundred years."

"I suggest you check again.  If I am right . . ." his eyes swept around the intent faces, "and I am right, then these texts are two thousand years old.  Two thousand, Eilerson!"

"That's impossible!  The paper this is written on could never have survived for two millennia.  I think, Galen, you will have to admit yourself wrong this time."  The smug look disappeared as the mage turned his darkening glance toward him, reminding him in that brief look of all he was eminently capable of.

"Check your data."  He turned his attention to Gideon.  " I must leave you.  Now.  I don't know when I will return, but promise me, Matthew, promise me you will not return to Terea, for any reason."

"I need a good incentive for that, Galen.  We should return, see if anything else can be salvaged.  There were other settlements that we had earmarked for exploration."

Assuming his most distant aspect, Galen's voice echoed around the small room.  "You will find nothing."

Seeming to realise that he would get nowhere with Galen if he had an audience, the captain shooed the others out of his office, Eilerson protesting every inch of the way.  When they were finally alone, he tackled the mage again.

"Okay, Galen, spill it.  What or who are the Sharian, how do they fit into this whole mess and why should we not return to Terea."

Galen paced up and down the room, his agitation evident in every thud of boot on floor as his mind raced with question and counter question.

Matthew could almost hear the wheels going round in the mage's head as he debated internally what to say, and how much to tell.

Galen suddenly desisted his perambulations, and halted in the middle of the room, his mien forbidding.  "For once, just once, Matthew, will you take my advice -- no questions, no debates?  Trust me."

Gideon stood and joined his friend, uncertainty hovering in his eyes.  "If it were just my decision, Galen . . . Too much rides on this for me to be kept in the dark.  If anything on that planet can help Earth -- you have to see, you must understand that I have to know."

"So be it, Matthew," disappointment ringing in his lowered voice.  "But what I am about to relate goes no further."  He placed his fingers against the nearest terminal, concentrated for a moment, then watched as every system shut down and the doors closed, locking themselves with an audible snap of electrons.  Holding out his palm an image rose in stunning clarity; Matheson and his bridge staff abruptly galvanised into frantic activity as they tried to reinstate communications with their Captain; whilst a team attempted the door with equal lack of success.

"No harm has come to your captain.  Cease your attempts, he will be returned to you when we are finished."  His voice intoned around the room, and Matthew watched as his first officer recalled his crews to stand tense and alert.  "One last precaution."  With a brief word, he set up an interference field so that no directional equipment could be used against him.

"Is all this really necessary?"  Scepticism riddled Matthew's outraged query.

"Yes.  What I have to relate is known to few, and I intend to keep it that way.  This knowledge in the hands of someone like Eilerson and IPX would be too awful to contemplate.  Sit, listen and learn."

Leaving the image hanging above Gideon's desk he took another turn around the room before taking a stance in front of the now blind screen, and wondered where to begin and what he could safely relate.  Matthew was his friend and the crew had become almost family, in a distant sort of way.  The majority were Earth born and Earth was his birthplace too.  But there were things that were best left unknown, hidden from over curious minds.  His order had an obligation to help preserve knowledge; they did not dispense that learning lightly.

With a sigh, he began with a question.  "How much do you know about the First Ones: Vorlons, Shadows and those who until recently still walked our Universe?"

"Only what everyone else knows, that we were pawns in the power struggle between the two main races.  That, thanks to the intervention of Lorien, we finally settled the war once and for all."

"Simplistic, but it's a start I suppose.  It seems I need to give you a brief history of this Universe."  His anger was abating somewhat as he took up his role as teacher.

"Lorien was  the First One, creator of all that was to follow . . ."

"Are you saying Lorien was God!" Matthew interjected, incredulous.

Thrown by the interruption, his temper flared once more.  "There is no God!  No all-powerful benevolent being who watches over us.  Haven't you figured that out yet!  We are on our own out here, doing the best we can."  He took a deep breath, consciously reducing his heartbeat to a normal level; this was no time for a theological discussion.

"Lorien created his children."  He held up a hand, stopping the question before it could be phrased.  "They were the Naroo, Batan and Primiri and from them came . . . well, to keep this simple the last of the elder races before the creation of our own younger races were the Vorlons and the Shadows.  In between the first children and the last were a race called the Sharian.  They were destroyers, killers on a scale you can not imagine.  We have been on so many dead worlds, Matthew, have you never wondered why or how?  The Shadows were a pale ghost compared to the Sharian.  They were not content to manipulate the younger races for their own amusement but would reduce a planet to its components for the fun of it.  Lab rats were better treated than the worlds they experimented on.  Introducing plagues to a population just to see how quickly they could induce complete annihilation!  Killing off the plant life and destroying the animals so that a world slowly died of starvation.  They were pure evil and they had their followers.  Much of what you have witnessed is their doing, or that of their disciples.  Finally, the other races decided that their siblings had to be dealt with; but the Sharian were ahead of them.  The latter centuries of their existence they had been working toward a non-corporeal existence.  By the time the other races came after them, they were on the verge of becoming pure energy, untouchable or so they thought."

He turned his gaze away from Gideon's transfixed face.  Decision time.

"The Sharian escaped their captors . . ."  Matthew's horrified gasp returned his attention to his companion.

"Only four were ever caught, the rest, it was presumed, left for the rim to pass beyond.  Preferring whatever lay there to the punishment they were sure to receive here.  We never knew what had become of them, until now.  Matthew . . ."  His voice faltered for a moment.  " . . . have you ever heard of an Apocalypse Box?"

The captain's face took on a wary look as he slowly nodded.

"I fear they are the prisons created by the Terean master Merlia, to hold the last of the Sharian.  Four, Matthew, four!  Throughout time, the legend of the Horsemen has held worlds in horrified thrall.  It would make sense that this quartet should acquire that name.  Pestilence, Famine, War and Death.  It was what they represented.  The way they destroyed whole civilisations.  My order had been searching for them for centuries, not knowing what they contained, only following our instructions -- that they must be destroyed -- at any cost."

"Whose instructions?"

Galen waved a hand in dismissal of the question.  "One, at least, of the Boxes is out there, somewhere.  It was the cause of Isabelle's death.  I almost had it, almost . . ."  His eyes were bleak as the memories came flooding back.  He didn't see Gideon's hand reach out in an unconscious gesture of support; images flooded his mind, leaving him temporarily blind to his surroundings.  "Enough of this.  I have to make sure the other three are still on Terea, and then I will destroy them, completely and utterly with no chance of return."

"Are you sure you can?"

"I must."  The quiet certainty seemed to affect Gideon as his raised voice had not.  Finally, he appeared to understand what they were dealing with.

"Would these Sharians have any ideas on the plague?  Could they have been instrumental in its construct?"

Galen was horrified.  "Have you heard one word I have said?  Did you understand  nothing!  They may not have created this plague but they would take advantage of it.  What's one more civilisation in all the worlds they have destroyed?  They must die, and I will see that they do, if I have to destroy Terea to do it."

"You have the ability to do that?"  The hushed inquiry brought Galen some brief satisfaction.  He had become too friendly with these Humans; it was about time that they understood what he could do and how little he needed them.

He threw a glance at the image still hovering over Gideon's desk.  A security team had now joined Matheson and the bridge crew, their weapons fully charged.  He snorted his derision and was about to make comment when a wave of nausea swept through him, leaving him shaking and white.

Continued

Email the author!
[email protected]

Main B5/Crusade Fanfic Index        Crusade Fanfiction Index

Back to Main Library Index         Back to Main Fanfiction Index

Adventures of Sinbad   ~~~     Andromeda   ~~~     Angel   ~~~     Babylon5   ~~~     BeastMaster: The Series   ~~~     Beauty & the Beast
Buffy the Vampire Slayer   ~~~     Charmed  ~~~     The Crow: Stairway to Heaven   ~~~     Crusade   ~~~     due South   ~~~     Farscape
Gundam Wing   ~~~     Highlander: The Series   ~~~     Miscellaneous Fiction   ~~~     Mortal Kombat   ~~~     Mortal Kombat: Conquest
Poltergeist the Legacy   ~~~     Raven   ~~~     TSAoJules Verne  ~~~     The Sentinel   ~~~     Stargate SG1   ~~~     Star Trek: Voyager

I can't fix it if I don't know it's broken, so if you see anything wrong,  please let me know.  Thank you and enjoy your stay!