Disclamers: Babylon 5 and it's characters and universe are owned by JMS, Warner Brothers and TNT. The story is mine and the characters of Nt'Both, the Zes, the Gmiths, Bzed, and Zabmi are mine. This story is for the enjoyment of the reader and not intended to infringe on any copyrights.
Comments are welcome at: AJMarks01@aol.com
The Primeval War
by
A.J.Marks
Part 1
Captain Elizabeth Lochley sat dozing at her desk. It had been a peaceful day so far and she was hoping that today would be no different than yesterday. The entire month so far had been quiet, no major quarrels, no wars, and no interracial incidents. So she sat lightly dozing at her desk after she had finished the light paperwork that was required for the week. She often wondered why Sheridan was so busy with this job. She figured that it was because he went looking for something to happen or that he was just fated to have things happen to him. He and his wife, Delenn had been back from Membari for about a week so far, she could just hope that a Michael Garibaldi would stay away from the station. It seemed whenever he showed up trouble was not far behind.
She had just begun to dream about a field where she grew up when she heard the intercom. She thought that was a bit odd because she could not think of anything important enough to be called about. She had dinner plans with Sheridan and Delenn, but nothing else of importance that she could think of.
“Captain Lochley!”
She activated the screen “Yes, what is it?”
“Captain you wanted to be informed whenever Michael Garibaldi came onto the station?”
“Yes?”
“Well ma’am he just arrived.”
She sighed and put her head into her hands.
“Ma’am, is everything all right?”
“Yes and no!” She said confusing the lieutenant even more. He was new to Babylon 5 and did not understand what she was thinking. “I’m all right, is everything ok on the bridge?”
“Yes ma’am!”
“Ok, let me know if anything unusual happens.”
“We’ll do&ldots;” He was cut off by an alarm going off indicating an unknown spaceship coming through the jumpgate.
Elizabeth sighed again and thought here we go, ‘the curse of Garibaldi’. “Bridge report!”
A female appeared on her screen, “the jumpgate has activated and there is going to be trouble, it is a Death Walker ship.”
Elizabeth clunked her head on the desk while saying ‘Why me Lord, why me?’
“Ma’am should I alert security of the new situation?”
“No, I’ll do it.”
A couple of minutes later she was walking along the hallway leading to the docking bay that the Death Walker ship was landing in. She was with the head of security Zack Allen, President Sheridan and, of course Garibaldi. She had to bit her tongue not to say a sarcastic comment to him.
“You want to say it, don’t you?” Garibaldi asked her. “You want to say it’s my fault.”
“Well it was quiet all month while you were gone, the most major thing that happened was a fight broke out. But you weren’t even on the station ten minutes and this happened. I’m telling you it’s the ‘Curse of Garibaldi’. How did you survive it John?”
John and Zack just laughed and shook their heads.
John Sheridan was a little bit nervous about this Death Walker coming to the station, after all one did try to kill Delenn. Relationship with the Death Walkers was strained but the human race had a better relationship than most of the other races.
Another minute later the Death Walker was standing in front of them and bowed to them.
“Thank you for allowing me to dock, I realize my being here is disturbing but I am not here because someone is about to die. I am called Nt’Both and I am here because of a soul that has asked to be brought here. I am as much in the dark about it as you are.” He said to his stunned audience. A Death Walker not to be following death was rare.
A couple of hours later Elizabeth sat back down at her desk. ‘I can not believe that only a couple of hours ago I was quietly dozing off, now I’m trying to keep news about the Death Walker quiet. This is not turning out to be my day.’
She looked up as Michael Garibaldi walked into her office unannounced.
“Don’t you ever knock Mr. Garibaldi?” She asked him.
“No, I just came from talking to Zack about the security.”
“Any problems?”
“He doesn’t think that there will be. I just wanted you to know that I haven’t heard of anything that would require the Death Walkers to take an interest. In fact John and I are a bit worried about this. I don’t trust what he has said so far, however except for one they have never given any reason for us to not trust them.”
“I have a headache from this and I’m blaming you Michael.”
“Me!”
“Yes you.”
Michael was about to say more when he was interrupted by a message from the bridge.
“Captain you are requested on the bridge.”
“May I come along?” Michael asked as he also walked out the door with her.
“Sure, why not.” She said shaking her head ‘can this get any worse?’
Minutes later Captain Lochley and Michael Garibaldi walked onto the bridge. The circle bridge was busy with activity and it seemed that any alarm that could go off was going off.
“How about we shut off these alarms that are going off.” The captain said directing a couple of people to the task. “And what is going on?”
“Captain the gate has just gone crazy, no one knows what is going on. We have a call to the gate technicians but I doubt even they know what is going on.” The Lieutenant on duty told her.
Michael stepped up beside her and looked at the readouts. “I’ve never seen anything like that and I don’t think that Sheridan has either.”
Before the Captain could reply there was a blinding white light from the jumpgate. Everyone looked up out the window to view what was happening. There appeared to be a tear in space about where the gate was. There were ripples spreading out from the rift like the ripples from a stone being dropped into a calm lake. Then just a suddenly as it appeared it disappeared. In it wake it left a ship that looked unlike anything that had ever been encountered.
“I’m reading faint energy readings from the ship captain, and picking up life forms inside.”
“No response to a hail captain.”
Elizabeth listened to the reports coming in and was debating what to do when the doors to the bridge opened. Nt’Both entered and was looking out at the ship.
“The spirit is right, it did arrive.”
“What are you talking about and why are you on my bridge?” Elizabeth asked slightly annoyed.
“I am going where he leads me, as was asked.” He replied holding up a glowing gold sphere. “He asks you to bring it aboard, many questions will be answered shortly.”
“I can hardly wait.” Michael said.
President John Sheridan sat at his desk not really believing what was happening. He looked again at Garibaldi after he finished his report about what had happened on the bridge an hour ago.
“You mentioned something about some passengers aboard this ship, Michael?”
“Yeah, there is a female, or she looks like a female, looks very much like we do, as a matter of fact the doctor says that the genetic makeup is almost identical to ours. She should recover from her wounds, looks like she was whipped. She was probably a slave of some sort.”
“This is mind boggling. The doctor should have a field day. Have you contacted Franklin about this, he would love it.”
“Yep, but he won’t be able to leave Mars for a couple of days. There was also one other creature, looked like a devil or something, it actually had two horns, but the skin was more of a tan color, he did not survive. Probably dead before it made it ‘jump’ or whatever that ship did.”
“Anything on what caused that weird jump?”
“No the technicians couldn’t find anything different, in fact it does have jump engines on it. That’s it John, what do you have there.” Michael asked pointing to a document on the desk.
“That’s what I originally wanted to talk to you about, Michael.” He said as he tossed the paper to him.
Michael caught the paper and scanned the document and paused for a moment.
“Are you sure about this?” He asked John.
“Yes, it was confirmed by a Centari warship. We have trouble out there Michael, there’s a new and deadly player.”
“One ship ripped to shreds five White Stars, we are in trouble. I thought that the White Stars were the most advanced warships around.”
“That’s what I thought to, but now there is a new ship that can take on and beat at least five White Stars. I am trying to keep this a secret for obvious reasons, but I need answers Michael.”
“It could be from Rei Alpha Six? There have been some strange readings from the area lately. I could send out a recon ship.”
“No that is across the universe from the attack, seems like an illogical choice.”
“I just hope something pops up before something bad happens.”
John Sheridan and his wife Delenn stood in the observation room. They loved to come in here when everything on Babylon 5 was on down time. John was watching the jumpgate when he noticed it activate.
“This doesn’t look good Delenn.” He told her as they watched a battered Shadow vessel come through the gate. ‘What in the world could have happened to tear apart a Shadow vessel?’
A couple of hours later the mystery was becoming even more mysterious and there were not many clues for Sheridan or Garibaldi to understand anything. The Shadow pilot wanted to speak to Sheridan before anything else. He told Sheridan that the Shadows and the other ancient races encountered another more powerful race. A war started in the outer rim. At first the ancient races held their own but they were just overwhelmed. This new race was coming into this space, to conquer it.
It did solve the mystery of who had attacked the White Stars a couple of days ago. The more pressing demand was who were they.
The Shadow pilot had brought pictures of the new alien race. He decided to show it at the next meeting and tell everyone what was going to be happening, there would be war again.
John and Delenn made their way to the med lab to see the two new additions, the young women and the Shadow pilot. When they arrived there they were shocked to find Nt’Both there with a golden sphere. John and Delenn watched as the sphere glowed brighter than anything in the med lab. It suddenly broke open and a golden vapor engulfed the room, it seemed to settle on first the Shadow pilot then it lingered on the young women for a long moment. The golden vapor then suddenly seemed to exit the room.
“Would you care to explain what just happened Nt’Both?” Sheridan asked the Death Walker.
“I do not know, I’ve never seen that happen before.” Nt’Both said to Sheridan with a completely confused look on his face. “Never in my 5,000 years that I’ve been alive, I thought I’d seen it all, now I have. The council will never believe this. It appears that my job here is done, I will be leaving now.”
“That is sure unusual, he didn’t cause any trouble.” Delenn observed.
“Yes that is true.”
After an hour of trying to talk to the young woman it was decided to try again tomorrow because the language barrier was to great.
When Sheridan entered his office he was met by Garibaldi who was sitting in the President’s chair.
“Well it’s about time you got here John.” He said while leaning back in the chair. “We’ve got even worse news.”
“Why is it when you say that, I get the chills. Oh, by the way, your friend Nt’Both the Death Walker left just a little while ago.”
“After the incident in the med lab, I heard about that. That must have been quite a sight, but we don’t have time for that. I just received word that the planet of Qoptar was either invaded or destroyed. I’ve got a White Star doing some recon in the area so hopefully we’ll get some information soon.”
“This is getting worse and worse Michael.”
“I haven’t even told you the worse news yet.”
“Oh great!” John said as he collapsed into a nearby chair. “I guess you should go ahead and tell me.”
“Well, we believe that they are coming here next.”
Captain Elizabeth Lochley and her security chief Zack Allen were standing on the circle bridge of the station enjoying the peaceful morning.
“So how long do you think this peaceful morning will last?” Zack asked her.
“I don’t know, hopefully we won’t have many more visitors.” She replied.
“I don’t think we will have a choice, Garibaldi told me that whoever is making these new attacks are heading our way. It could be that this race knows that this station is an important staging area for defenses.”
“I kind of gather that when more vessels started to arrive, and Shadow and Vorlon vessels also started to show up. Whoever is out there their technology is impressive, I have the impression that we don’t stand much of a chance.”
“I think that we will make it. There were times it seemed that we wouldn’t make it through the Shadow War, but we not only did we came out stronger.”
The captain was about to respond to Zack when the alarm for the jumpgate sounded.
“That’s odd, no one is scheduled to arrive for another couple of hours.” She said.
“Hopefully they are just arriving early.”
They looked out of the window to see a shimmering black vessel emerge through the gate. The outer hull looked like a Shadow vessel’s hull but at the same time also looked white, it was an odd contrast.
“Captain, whoever they are we can’t get a reading on them.” One of the crew told Elizabeth.
The radioman looked up at her “Captain, we are getting a request for docking a shuttle.”
“Well, what else can happen, tell them ok.”
Garibaldi and a Shadow walked into the med lab to ask the pilot that was there some more questions. Garibaldi still wasn’t to happy about the Shadow next to him, but the other ancient races had back up the Shadow’s story. Now they were going to see if the pilot could remember anything else about his last engagement. He noticed that the young woman was awake and eating some soup. She looked to be doing well, he also planed to show her the pictures of the alien ships.
John Sheridan, his wife Delenn, Captain Elizabeth Lochley and her security chief Zack watched as the shuttle came to a stop in the docking bay. The shuttle looked to be even more advanced than any other ancient race’s ships or shuttles. A door and a ramp just seemed to melt into place. Eight black robed aliens stepped out and toke positions, four on each side. Another robed figure stepped out of the shuttle, this one wore a blue robe, with thin gold stripes and walked up to Sheridan.
“Greetings President Sheridan.” It said in a deep voice and outstretched its arm for a handshake.
Sheridan was very surprised that ‘he’ knew his name. Sheridan shook its hand while trying to find something to say.
“Greetings, what can we do for you?” Delenn stepped in to help her husband.
“We are here to make sure one of our own is ok.” The blue robed one spoke again. Seeing the confused faces it said, “The young women in your med lab.”
“This way, please follow us.” Captain Lochley told them, gesturing with her hand toward the door. The group proceeded to head down the hall toward the med lab.
End Part 1