A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 4 : Hopes, Aspirations and D

* * *

They moved quickly, as quickly as they could, carrying boxes and bundles of their valuables. Many did not want to believe, but the words of their Prophet had convinced them. The death of their world was at hand.

Every ship available had been press-ganged to this service. Cargo was emptied from merchant ships. Weapon storage was stripped from military vessels. Short-range flyers were commandeered. Everything was cannibalised.

All that mattered was that as many people as possible were removed from the dying Narn world.

Ha'Cormar'ah G'Kar looked at the figures again, privately despairing. His own death he could tolerate, but the deaths of so many of his people through his own blindness was too much to bear. They could not evacuate enough. They would never be able to evacuate enough. The children and their mothers were first of course. Any women expecting children. The race must continue.

Any with essential skills. Starship maintenance engineers and pilots. Diplomats. Some of the military. Astro- navigators. Survival experts.

But there were so many people, and so few places. They had tried to break through the communications barrier the Vorlons had placed around their system, but to no avail. There would be no help from elsewhere.

With every second that passed, ticking in his mind, another failed chance for salvation passed and died unborn.

The others reacted with varying degrees of responsibility. Some, like H'Klo, refused to believe that the Vorlons would destroy the world and declared that this was all a trick. He was determined to let them descend upon Narn and then fight them with every resource he had. Others in the Kha'Ri had killed themselves.

Da'Kal, for her part, had worked as tirelessly as he had, but she had not said a single word to him since he had spoken to the Kha'Ri.

He was tired, and weary, and sick to his stomach, but he had no time to rest.

Another second passed.

* * *

Susan found him, not entirely unexpectedly, standing on the pinnacle, looking down at the array of ships massed before him. He was silent and grim-faced, and specks of blood stained the golden hem of his robe.

'You have your fleet,' she said. 'Things are getting somewhere at last.'

'Are they?' he replied. 'I have seen them all and spoken to them all. I am not sure if I am supposed to be disappointed or elated or some strange mixture of both.'

'What do you mean?' He seemed very cold as she stepped up beside him. There was no heat coming from him, no warmth, nothing. Not for the first time, she felt she was looking at a dead man walking.

'I have spoken to Moreil, the Z'shailyl — the Shadowspawn. His kind revere me. To them, I am some prophesied saviour who will return them to the days of their Dark Masters and their immortal chaos. He has offered his whole race to me, and they will come and they will flock to my banner.'

Susan said nothing to interrupt. She knew a monologue when she heard one.

'I have spoken to Marrago. He is broken, and I fear there is nothing left to sustain him. A man needs a purpose for which to fight, and he has lost almost all of his purpose. Nothing remains but vengeance, and that will wither and die in time, perhaps taking him with it.'

Yes, she thought, everyone needs a purpose to fight. But it has to be the right purpose. Have you not learned anything?

'I have spoken to the human, the Sniper. He was a worthless, pathetic creature, a madman driven by desire for pain. A dangerous liability, and a monster which this galaxy does not deserve. I killed him. A simple act, with no thought or consequence.'

Susan looked at the blood on his robe, and then at his blade. There was blood there also. He had not bothered to clean it off.

'I have spoken to the Narn, G'Lorn. He maintains that everything he has done has been for the good of his people. His associate, whom Moreil murdered, worked directly for their Government. This was all a ploy to serve their own purposes. Never mind the thousands who died. What were they but pawns and toys for the powerful?'

You are powerful, remember. A great deal more powerful than the Kha'Ri ever were.

'I have spoken to the Drazi. They at least have good news for me. They will serve and obey and fight for my cause. But they will do so out of vengeance and anger, and they will not work with the aliens they say betrayed them. I am trying to create a unified army, but all I have is disintegration.'

No, you aren't, she wanted to scream at him. Everything is split apart. You have too many agents spread out all over the place, and none of them knows what the others are doing.

'I have spoken to the Tuchanq. I did something so simple and so profound for them, and they worship me for it. They worship me for saving a handful of their people when countless others remain insane and trapped on a dead world, a world rendered barren by hatred and greed. What remains for them but more war under my command?'

The monologue stopped, and Susan looked at him. 'So,' she said. 'What are you going to do now?'

'What I must,' he said darkly. 'I will do what I must.'

'It's going to start soon, isn't it? Whatever's going to happen, it'll start soon.'

'Yes,' he replied. 'Very soon. Indeed, it is already starting.'

* * *

The exodus of his people fleeing his home brought G'Kar nearer to despair than he had ever been. Not even during the worst moments of the Occupation, not even when the war with the Shadows was at its bleakest had he felt like this.

Because he felt something he had never felt before.

Guilt.

This was his fault. All of this. Had he been only a little more observant, had he focussed more of his attention on his world instead of on aliens, had he interfered less, always trying to change the views of his people....

Had he done or not done any one of a number of things, this fate might never have happened. The deaths of his people, of his world, were on his shoulders.

'I know that look,' remarked Da'Kal dryly. He looked up to see her standing nearby, arms folded. 'I know that look.'

'What?'

'You are not to blame. Do not even dare to lay the blame for this on yourself. How could any of us know that the Vorlons would do this? If you had not arranged for them to find out, then they would have managed it another way.'

'You do not understand. It is not that I informed them, however unwittingly. It is that I should have stopped this from ever happening. I should have....'

'G'Kar, stop it!' she cried. 'How should you have seen this? What is it that gives you the blame for this?'

'Responsibility,' he said simply. 'I took responsibility for our people, and thus I must share the blame.'

She looked at him silently for a few moments, and then, suddenly, she began to laugh. It was a sound he remembered from when they were younger; a girlish, mocking laugh that spoke of humour in the simplest of things combined with wonder at beauty in so many hidden places. It was the laugh that had made him fall in love with her.

'You have not changed,' she said. 'Not in a single way. You are still the same.' She walked over to him and laid her hands on the side of his head. Her hands were warm and soft. 'I am sorry,' she whispered, kissing the empty shell where his eye had once been. 'That is hard for me to say.'

'Do not be sorry,' he said softly. 'In these last hours of my life, I have seen more clearly with one eye than I ever did with two.'

'Always the philosopher,' she breathed, her breath so very hot.

There was a long silence, constructed from shared memories of good and bad, of joys and grief and separated paths. The years they had spent apart evaporated as water into air and they were young again, lying naked side by side beneath the moon, joyous in victory, weeping in defeat. She had been the last thing he had seen