Rally Vincent's home was a treasure trove of firearms of all sorts, legal and illegal, and wired up with all manner of security devices to make it difficult to break in without tripping at least one.
There weren't any booby traps as such, or loud alarms to scare off intruders. In fact, most of the security devices produced the same effect when tripped.
They turned on a little red light in Rally Vincent's room at the side of her bed.
Rally Vincent herself was the house's most effective crime deterrent. At one time, Rally would have commented that the pyro mad bomber she lived with was worse, but that had been eight years ago. May had her own place now, occasionally shared with her boyfriend Ken.
Now, as the light came on, Rally's eyes snapped open and she reached for the gun under her pillow. A slugthrower as adverse the PPGs more popular in the last few decades.
Moving quietly as ever, Rally tipped through her house eyes and ears searching for signs of the intruder. It was in the kitchen that she heard the sounds of motion and breathing.
Setting against the wall, she listened carefully. She heard the creak of her chairs and the distinct breaths of at least two individuals who sounded almost like they were sleeping. A third, even and controlled breath punctuated the other two.
Her own breath held to a mere flutter to keep unheard, Rally stepped lightly into the kitchen, slipping her gun toward the back of the sitting intruder's head and called out.
"Lights."
The brown-haired, slender woman in front of her was easily recognizeable, and it was only spotting the child in the woman's arms, and a second sitting in the other table, that kept Rally from pulling the trigger instantly.
"Goldie," she said coldly.
"You haven't slowed down at all, Rally," the woman said, and Rally knew that she was smiling. "I didn't hear you coming at all."
"What the hell are you doing in my house," Rally wondered, keeping her gun out and watching for any twitch of movement from the woman in front of her.
The bounty hunter's eyes flicked to the two children briefly, wondering what part they had in whatever scheme Goldie had set up now. They were about the same age, she saw, with somewhat dark skin and brown hair. Two girls, about five years old, twins by the look.
"I've come with a request," Goldie said.
"Well you can stuff it," Rally responded firmly, not relaxing a bit. "All I want from you is to put the kid down while I call the cops to come pick you up."
"I'm sure," Goldie said, setting down the girl she held in her arms. "But I'd rather no one knew my children where ever in your home, Rally. Most certainly nobody in any government body as prone to leaks as the police."
"Your..." Rally blinked despite herself. "What?"
"Children, Rally," Goldie explained. "Given life from my womb. Incidentally, while we're speaking of children, I was so distressed when I heard about Misty. I had so hoped to eventually have a close relationship with her."
Rally growled, hand slipping back as she prepared to club the intruder over the head with her pistol butt.
In that moment, the little girl laid quietly in another chair already, Goldie twisted about, knocking the weapon from Rally's hand before pushing the younger woman back.
Caught off-guard as she was, Rally didn't let Goldie keep the advantage. She twisted as her gun was knocked away, and slammed her knee up into Goldie's stomach before rolling aside to retrieve her weapon. She came up on her knees with the weapon aimed dead center at Goldie's body.
The mob-boss was getting a bit old it seemed. Either that or she hadn't really been serious.
"I think you're even faster than you used to be, Rally," Goldie noted with a cough as she stood up. "Then, you're not thirty yet, are you."
Rally's eyes didn't move, but the question flickered in the back of her mind as she considered that the two children hadn't yet woken up.
"Don't mind the children," Goldie said. "I gave them something to keep them out of our hair. I'll provide the counteragent, of course, when we're finished with our negotiation."
Rally held back the bile in her throat as she stood up, gun at the ready and lips curling in a disgusted snarl.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I want you to take custody of my children," Goldie said with a smile that contained no hint of concern or love. "They are...a project that I do not wish to see in danger at the moment."
"They're not a project," Rally noted. "They're children."
"You want to ask the question," Goldie said. "Don't you. Go on, I know its in there."
"Who's the father?" Rally asked.
"Ah, there it is," Goldie said with a small clap that provoked Rally into almost pulling her trigger. "Artificial insemination. I had a genetic sample on hand and I thought I might try and...see what the appeal was. I must say, the long term uses I've considered in the interim are very...interesting."
That bile rose in Rally's throat again.
"You're a sick and depraved psychopath, you realize that, don't you?" Rally asked.
"I tend to find its my most charming trait," Goldie said with a cold smile. "But it doesn't change my request. I want you to watch my children while I deal with an....issue."
"An issue?" Rally asked.
"There is some disagreement on the ownership of the project," Goldie said carefully. "Certain...organizations that...must be dealt with. I may be, as you say, a psychopath, but I'm hardly the only claw in a black and leather glove around here."
"You're having telepath issues," Rally said dangerously. "What's to say they don't crack open your skull and come right for me?"
"Crack open my..." Goldie smiled. "Rally, Rally, there are benefits to a deviant mental framework. One of the chief of which is that poking around in my skull is far more dangerous for the telepath involved than it is for me. As for you...you've survived me..."
This was said with a combined trace of admiration and frustration.
"I sincerely doubt that, after that, you'd have trouble with anything the Corps can send after you," Goldie noted. "Even if they do, eventually, think to look and see if you are indeed keeping the girls."
"So, the choice is this, my lovely girl," Goldie said. "You can protect my children while I take care of this...minor situation. Or you can let them remain in danger. After all, this really isn't about me and you. It's about a pair of innocent children and the fact that I would owe you a favor."
"Sounds more like you'd have a hook in me," Rally said.
"Perhaps," Goldie responded. "But are you willing to risk it?"
"And what makes you think I'll let you take any kid back after you let me get them away from you?" Rally asked.
"Really, my dear," Goldie said. "You speak as if you'd have a choice in the matter. After all, eventually, I will come for All of my girls."
A shiver worked down Rally's back as the woman spoke.
*****
That worry, at least, was put to rest the next day.
The two girls, Vivian and Shanti according to Goldie, were still asleep even after the counter-agent had been provided, but it was an even and natural sleep as far as Rally could tell. Rally was looking for cereal or anything else that could be fed to a five-year old when the news came on.
"An unknown band of assailants attacked the Psi Corps headquarters today," the reporter said. "Several high-ranking members of the Corps are rumored to have been injured in the attack."
"Fortunately," a Psi Corps representative was saying as bodies were wheeled out of the building behind him. "The extent of the fatalities has been exaggerated. We've determined that the attackers were operating under the influence of an extremely mind-altering substance which Earth Gov has been trying to eliminate for some time. Most likely, this was a more or less random attack by a gang of degenerates."
As Rally watched, a blanket fell off one of the bodies being carted away and she recognized the smooth, psychotic grin frozen permanently on the face of the woman revealed.
Quickly, she walked to her phone and dialed the first of several numbers.
"Becky," she said. "Can you come over to my house, please. I need to talk about something."
*****
"Any clue what she was here for?" an old man asked the short black-garbed figure in front of him.
"Not a clue," the man said with a shrug, his left hand clenched into a fist. "She managed to do whatever it is she came to do. Several files were wiped clean while her 'pets' kept us busy. And I suspect that anybody in the corps who had the information were among the ones killed."
"If only we could have taken her alive," the older man said. "We could be prying it out of her mind right now."
"Oh, I doubt that," Bester noted. "In the end, we had to settle for frying her synapses because she wasn't going down to weapons fire. No one could really hit her with anything. The telepaths that tried anything more subtle are...well, let's just say they're not feeling too happy at the moment. The woman was truly a grade A psychopath, hardly a human thought in the whole of her being."
"Well, most likely she felt we were a threat to her monoply on mind control," the older man said. "As to her minions, they were all operating under the influence of this...kerasine."
"And most of them as permanently bent or broken as anything we could do," the younger noted.
"We'll have to encourage stamping out the drug then," the older noted.
"After, of course," the other noted, left hand still clenched in a fist. "We find the formula, purely for investigative purposes, of course."
"Of course, Alfred," the older man said. "Of course."
******
"And you are?" the security officer asked as a woman in her mid-thirties walked up to the queue with two girls behind her.
"Rally Vincent," the woman said, handing over her passport.
The security guard looked up from her ID as she gave her name.
"Rally...the bounty hunter?" the man asked, obviously impressed.
"I only did that to pay the bills," Rally said, waving it off.
In the back of her mind she sighed. What was she doing on a space station? The only trade as a smith she could have here was on, yick, PPGs. Nobody wanted a slugthrower on a ship or a station. Too much chance of cracking the seal.
Which, of course, hadn't stopped her from putting some of her favorite pieces into luggage, for display purposes only of course.
So, given that she'd be stuck packing a cracker-jack pop gun while she lived here, just why had she decided to come here, of all places.
"Everything is so closed in," Shanti said behind her. "There's no space anywhere."
"There's space everywhere," Vivian returned with a smirk. "It's a space station."
Oh, right, kids she wanted to keep out Psi Corp sight.
Shanti wore her hair long and loose, the dark brown curls framing her pretty face. She wore a white blouse with a green jacket and a long green skirt.
Her sister, meanwhile, wore her hair short, cut just above the ears. Vivian wore jeans and a t-shirt that was fitting so tightly that Rally was planning on insisting it go in the trash as soon as they had a private moment. She was snapping some gum fairly loudly.
Their faces always struck Rally as familiar, and not because they looked much like Goldie, because that came more than their build than their other features. Rally was almost certain she knew whoever it was Goldie had gotten a "genetic sample" from, but she could never lay her finger on it. Meanwhile, she'd done what she could to keep either of the girls from getting a genetic test that might make them pop up on an alert somewhere.
"They say you k-," the security guard was saying as Rally loudly cleared her throat.
The woman moved her eyes toward the two fifteen year old girls behind her meaningfully.
"Oh, sorry," the man said, embarrassed. "I guess war stories aren't appropriate around kids."
"War stories?" Shanti said, suddenly interested. "You never told us you were in the war."
"Not appropriate, Shanti," Rally told the girl as she handed over Shanti's and Vivian's IDs.
"What brings you to Babylon 5?" the security officer asked.
"I'm trying to give the girls here a taste of interplanetary culture," Rally said. "Going to be staying for sometime. Setup business for a bit."
That and it was getting a bit...noisy in the colonies just now. Hopefully a diplomatic station like this would be a bit quieter. At least as long as she kept her head down from the inevitable politics.
Vivian, smacking her gum, watched as aliens passed through in the corridor beyond. Eyes flicking curiously at all the strange forms she saw.
"What kind of business?" the security guard asked cautiously as he looked down toward her ID again and noted a few lines underneath. "Investigator? Well, that'll be...entertaining for you."
Rally really didn't like the way that word came out of the man's mouth.
"Well, you're clear to go," the security guard said. "They should be delivering your luggage to your quarters shortly."
"Thanks," Rally said with a smile, shouldering her carry-on bag and waving to the two girls. "Let's go get something to eat."
"Is there a McDonald's?" Vivian asked as she followed the other
"Why did we have to move again?" Shanti asked. "I liked it on Proxima 3."
"Same as always, Kitten," Rally said, turning to look at her. "Business was bad."
"Not enough cheating husbands so we come to a place with less than half the population?" Vivian asked sarcastically, drawing a narrow eyed glare from her guardian.
*****
As the woman and the two girls with her walked through the gates into the station as a whole, Vivian paused and looked to the side as she noted a bag sitting off on its own near one of the other entry gates.
Still smacking her gum, she walked over to it, reached down and picked it up. Clearly, an image of a tall, bearded man in a distinguished suit standing next to a Minbari woman with, strangely enough, long black hair.
Vivian looked about, blinking, trying to find either the man or the woman she'd seen. She almost missed him.
He was clean-shaven and was wearing a military uniform, but it was definitely the same man. And he was also clearly looking for something.
That was weird, usually when she saw things after picking something up, it was what the owner looked like at the time. She didn't usually get much from the past.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her sister and Rally on the other end of the chamber and quick-stepped over to the man as he looked around the various pieces of furniture in the waiting area.
"Here's your bag," she said, pulling out her gum as it lost flavor and throwing it in the trash-can nearby.
"Oh, thank you," the man said, turning toward her. "I was wondering where I'd left that. How'd you know it was mine?"
"I saw you," Vivian said, shrugging. "You know, I didn't think Minbari grew hair."
"What?" the military man said with a sudden laugh. "That's an odd thing to say."
"Yeah, Rally doesn't like it when I say odd things," Vivian said, rolling her eyes.
"I didn't say I didn't like it," the man said with a smile. "I just said it was odd. Who's Rally?"
"She's my foster mother," Vivian said, looking around the room for a bit. "I'm Vivian Vincent. You can call me Vivi."
"Well, I'm Captain John Sheridan," the man said with an obliging tone. "Pleased to meet you, Vivi."
Sheridan held out his hand to shake with her and Vivian hesitantly took it as she rolled her eyes at the man's somewhat overly cheerful tone of voice. She could almost hear the baby-speak forming in the back of his mind now.
"Vivi! What are you doing over here?" a voice demanded firmly, drawing the teenager's and the Captain's attention to the speaker.
Rally's mouth under her sunglasses had that hard, worried line that Sheridan had seen on parents many times before. He immediately acted to put her at ease, reaching out his hand toward her and smiling broadly.
"Captain John Sheridan," he said in a chipper and inviting tone. "I'm guessing you're Rally?"
He looked behind Rally to see another fifteen year old girl with the same tall and slender build and vaguely dusky skin that Vivian had.
"And I'm guessing you're her sister," he said.
"That's right, Rally Vincent," the woman said in a slightly careful tone that caught Sheridan's interest.
"And I'm Shanti," the sister in the rather more feminine attire said brightly. "We're new here."
"So am I, as a matter of fact," Sheridan said with a smile before turning again toward Vivian. "And thank you for finding my bag for me. But I need to be going, first day on the job. Pleasure meeting you, and if I see any minbari with hair, I'll remember to tell you about it."
"Thanks," Vivian said as she hunched her shoulders and looked toward Rally's suddenly rigid face.
"Quite an imagination she's got," Sheridan said, his curious mind sensing the possibility of another secret to collect.
"You have no idea," Rally said with a motherly shake of her head. "Say, you wouldn't know if there's a civilian firing range on board."
"Not yet I wouldn't," he said, recognizing the attempt to change the subject and distract him. "But I'll look into it. I think I see my welcoming committee."
"Thanks for that," Rally said, grabbing Vivian sharply but not tightly and quickly moving off with both girls.
As they were out of earshot of the very friendly new commanding officer, she bent down to whisper into the girl's ears.
"Don't talk to people about what you see when you hold things," she warned quietly. "It isn't safe."
Vivian nodded and grumbled. She wanted to ask if that's why they kept moving, because of things she saw or Shanti did, but, at the same time, she didn't want to confirm it.
*****
It wasn't the requested McDonalds, but Rally found the equivalent of a sidewalk cafe, and had a momentary nostalgic wish for a Chicago hot dog. Sitting down she tried to avoid looking at Shanti, who was currently bubbling over with curiosity, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.
Rally eagerly hoped it would hold until they were somewhere more private than a public restaurant. The she really would rather not deal with the subject at all, hence the attempt at delay.
Eventually, Shanti couldn't hold herself in.
"Were you really in the Earth-Minbari War, Rally?" the girl asked, eyes wide.
"It's not something I like to talk about, Shanti," Rally said.
"But that was the biggest thing to happen in the last twenty years," Shanti protested. "Were you a fighter pilot?"
"No," Rally said, eyes looking up cautiously to see the reaction of the people nearby.
"She was probably infantry," Vivi said, wincing as Rally directed a glare her way that screamed the word "traitor."
"Of course," Shanti said, turning toward Vivi. "Rally taught us everything we know about..." she stopped and looked around as she realized what she'd been about to say. "Well, anyway, of course, I'll bet your were the best soldier of all."
"Shanti Vincent, this is not the place," Rally said firmly.
"Vincent," a voice behind the woman said. "The Stalking Cat?"
Rally's face turned grim as she turned around and looked to see what she knew was going to be a Minbari standing behind her. Indeed, she recognized the dark uniform of the Warrior caste almost instantly. Looking toward the twins again, she turned about to face the grim Minbari man glaring down at her.
"I don't like that name," she said in heavily accented Minbari.
"I thought you humans were proud of your reputations as murderers," the warrior said with a sarcastic drawl.
Rally glanced toward the girls again, who were watching the exchange of words with a rapt nervous expression.
"I'm not arguing about this," Rally said, turning back to face the girls and returning to English. "I'm going to go get us some drinks, all right?"
She started to stand up, but was shoved back down into her chair.
"This argument is over when I say it's over," the Minbari warrior snapped angrily, Rally rolling her eyes in irritation.
The Minbari confronting her was hardly the best she'd ever had to fight. She could tell by the way he was acting like a local schoolyard bully.
Her irritation, however, turned to concern as she saw what was coming next. Shanti had stood up furiously and moved forward toward the Minbari as Vivian also got to her feet.
"Don't you touch her!" Shanti shouted, moving forward.
Rally spun out of her chair to a standing position, pushing her shin into the back of the Minbari's knee and pulling him down with a grip on his shoulder before holding out a hand towards Shanti.
"Calm down," she instructed Shanti firmly, but without shouting. "Kitten. Calm...down."
"Sit down before you start something, Shanti," Vivi whispered insistantly, earning a pointing finger from Rally.
Shanti's face fumed for a moment before taking a deep breath and sitting down in a huff.
Watching her, one eye on the Minbari behind her, Rally nodded at Shanti encouragingly and smiled comfortingly.
"There's no problem, Shanti," she said, and then nodded toward Vivi as well, gesturing for the other girl to sit down.
"I could snap you like a twig, human," the Minbari behind her said.
Turning toward him, and waiting to frown until Shanti could no longer see her face, Rally looked up toward the minbari that stood nearly a foot higher than her.
"I know that," she said, switching again to the Minbari language. "Nowhere near as strong as you. So what? Not important."
Another Minbari came up to the scene, dressed in the bright robes of the religious caste came up to the two and spoke rapidly in Minbari such that Rally couldn't follow it. Eventually the fuming Minbari warrior turned on his heels and moved away.
The second Minbari turned toward the woman, a smile on his face that belied a sad look in his eyes.
"I apologize for the trouble," he said in English. "There are still many hard feelings especially in light of the appointment of a new commander to this station."
Rally thought back to the soldier that Vivian had helped earlier.
"Captain Sheridan," she said in realization. "Yeah, that would make things tense."
"Because Sheridan is the only human captain to defeat a Minbari cruiser?" Shanti asked.
Vivian groaned and shook her head at the question as the Minbari and Rally both looked rather uncomfortable for different reasons.
"Yes," the Minbari said. "That is the basic nature of the problem."
"I might have just made things worse," Rally said irritably, glaring out towards where the Warrior had vanished.
"I wouldn't worry..." the Minbari let the sound stretch out as he wait for a name.
"Rally Vincent," the ex-bounty hunter said.
There was a brief widening of the eyes as the man recognized the name.
"I see, yes," he said. "That might have, indeed, made things worse. Still, you seemed to handle things well enough. My name is Lennier."
"Would like to join us for lunch?" Rally asked. "A thanks for the help?"
Lennier glanced up at the name and menu of the mini restaurant they were talking at. The grimace on his face told of the numerous health issues that would develop from regular consumption of the so-called "fast food" served here.
"That's quite all right," he said. "I have duties to attend to."
He started to turn away after a brief bow and then paused, turning back to look at Rally.
"Your Minbari...could use some improvement," he said before a final bow and leaving.
*****
Rally looked over the quarters she and the girls had acquired and looked down at the rent quotes and took a deep breath. It was a very good thing that she had some hefty savings from her bounty hunting days. And the occasional bounty she took up in the course of work now.
Their larger pieces of luggage were in the center of the room, as security had told her. Not much of it, unfortunately, which came from having to move frequently on a budget. As of yet, she had the benefit that Psi-Corps didn't seem to know about the girls, so they weren't actively looking. Which meant that she could move whenever Psi-Corps started getting more frequent in a colony and not attract interest.
"Well," she said. "Home sweet home. Girls, first thing first."
Vivian rolled her eyes as Rally moved to one trunk and opened it. As a licensed gun dealer, Rally was allowed to carry a substantial number of weapons, as long as they were civilian legal. Beyond that, she had a fair amount of experience in moving weapons undetected through casual scans. Not to mention that most security didn't bother to look for weapons hidden in a shipment of weapons.
Passing the weapons about, Vivian, Shanti and Rally quickly found places to secret a number of back up weapons. Most of the the weapons were set off to the side, charge packs separate from the guns, and, again, as a legal gun dealer, there wasn't much suspicious about her have a trunk full of weaponry. If a few were missing from the original count, she may have sold a few.
Then the slugthrowers went up on the walls in their display frames while ammunition was hidden in bed frames or cuts in the underside of mattresses. Pieces of three PPG rifles were scattered about similarly hidden everywhere they could find them.
"I guess you want to know what that scene earlier was about," Rally said grimmly as their new home was armed and secured.
"Was it about the war?" Shanti asked, curiosity brimming again.
"Yes," Rally said. "Someone...close to me died on a trip, caught in the crossfire when the war started. So I joined up. I had a bit of a reputation by that point due to bounty hunting, so EarthForce gave me...special jobs."
"What kind of jobs?" Vivian asked.
"Nothing we need to talk about," Rally said. "Just enough that there's a lot of minbari out there that probably don't like me. Thankfully, they don't put people like me on the news."
She wouldn't be universally known and despised like Sheridan, but then the people that would hate and despise her would be veterans, their families and their political leaders. Namely, the people that would come to a diplomatic station like this.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, questioning her decision to come here yet again.
"Is that where you learned to speak Minbari?" Shanti asked.
"Sort of," Rally said, more willing to speak of this. "I had a bit of bad luck near the end of the war and ended up in a pirate ship run by rogue Drazi. There was also a Minbari there who had experienced the same bad luck. We got free, but damaged the ship in the process and ended up adrift in space for a while. Drazi food sucks, by the way. When we finally got picked up, the war was over."
"Is that why we move so much?" Vivian asked. "Are you afraid someone will come after us for revenge? I know it's not business. I thought it was Psi-Corps, but we hadn't started...doing things when you moved us the first two times."
Rally took a deep breath and sat down on one of the desks.
"That's something I'll have to talk to you about soon," Rally said. "But not yet, you're still young, you don't have know that yet."
Rally could tell by the looks on the girls' faces that she'd satisfied neither of them with her answers. Shanti at least looked merely disappointed.
*****
Sheridan walked over to his new desk as he rehearsed his speech, inserting small changes here and there to fit the situation he was moving into.
"It was old Earth President who said..." he paused as he read the report he'd just requested.
Rally Vincent, EarthForce Marines, specialist. Assigned to behind-the-lines discouragement.
Sheridan frowned as he read the last bit. Hunter-killers did not have the best of reputations among either side of the war. The few he'd met or heard of since the war ended were currently in prison for murders they'd committed after the war.
"Discharged for 'aberrant social interactions', meaning she's either homicidal or homosexual," he noted, shaking his head.
He lay bets on the latter after having met her, EarthForce had gotten very reactionary in the days after the end of the war, throwing away two centuries worth of developed tolerance.
"Licensed gun dealer, licensed provider of military and law enforcement grade weaponry, private investigator's license," his eyes widened briefly at the growing list of credentials. "Bounty hunter's license, master gunsmith, highest marksmanship results on record. MCMAP instructor qualified. Licensed to carry concealed weapons. Awards for valor from the Chicago Police Office. Next of kin, Shanti Vincent and Vivian Vincent, officially adopted as of seven years ago."
He shook his head, there was a bit more to this, he was sure of it. But Hunter-Killer records weren't easy to come by.
Ivanova came in through the room, straightening her uniform.
"They're ready for you, sir," she said.
"Hmm?" Sheridan noted looking up. "Oh, thank you. Lieutenant Commander, come take a look at this."
Ivanova walked over and looked down at the screen, quickly coming to the same conclusions as Sheridan.
"A hunter-killer," she noted. Her eyes widened as they moved further down. "A hunter-killer with legal access to military hardware. Why are we looking at this?"
"She's on the station with her foster daughters," Sheridan noted. "See if you can learn a bit more about her. She struck me as a bit jumpy."
"All of those people are from what I here," Ivanova said. "But I'll put a request in. How deep do you want me to get in?"
"If she's just a veteran here with family, I'd rather not bother her," Sheridan cautioned. "Just...keep it casual. She asked if there was a civilian firing range."
"All right, shouldn't be too hard," Ivanova said. "Pretty soon, security is probably going to be taking their weapons to her for customization or maintenance. Shouldn't be hard to keep a casual watch on her."
"Okay, let's get this speech finished," he said.
As Sheridan walked into the command room, he turned to face the crew and opened his mouth to begin his speech with a story about visiting the Dalai Lama.
"Sorry, we have a priority request," a deck officer said, who immediately noted the flustered appearance of his new commanding officer.
"What's it relating to?" Sheridan asked.
"He won't say, sir," the deck officer said. "He's a minbari and he insists there is danger to the station. He wants to speak to you face to face, sir."
"All right," Sheridan said, deflating as his opportunity to give a speech was taken away. "I'll be right there."
*****
"His name is Kalain," the Minbari said, coolly. "He was the second-in-command on a cruiser. When his commander died, he took over. He is here now and I feel he is a danger to the safety of this station."
"What makes you think that he's a danger?" Sheridan asked.
"I have my reasons, otherwise I would not be here," the thin man said. "Arrange to have him picked up and I will arrange to have him returned to Minbar."
"You say he was second-in-command on a cruiser," Sheridan noted. "Which one?"
"I don't see how that is important," the Minbari noted curtly.
"Was it the Trigati?" Sheridan asked, unfazed.
With a clearly disgruntled look, the Minbari nodded.
"What's the Trigati?" Ivanova asked.
With a deep breath, the Minbari reluctantly went into an explanation of the end of the Earth-Minbari war and how the commander of the Trigati killed himself rather than surrender.
"Since then, the Trigati has been rogue," the man said.
"There's one thing I don't get," Sheridan said, standing up. "You said you worked in the Minbari government, with the Ministry of Culture?"
"That's right," was the response.
"Then how do you know a high-ranking member of the Warrior caste well enough to recognize him twelve years later?" Sheridan asked pointedly.
"I would answer your question," the Minbari said. "If I recognized your authority. Unlike your predecessor, my government wasn't consulted on your appointment."
"EarthGov felt the Minbari had too much influence on Babylon 5," Sheridan snapped. "Times change."
"The day a man such as you is assigned to a position of this importance is a dark day indeed," the Minbari said stepping forward, close into Sheridan's face. "We lost many of our best warriors on the Black Star. And many more to your assassin on Proxima 3. We do not forget such things. If there is a doom on this station, then you brought it here!"
Then the man stormed out of the room, without listening.
"You're right, they don't like me," Sheridan noted blandly to Ivanova.
"Well, the Blackstar was their flagship," Ivanova noted.
"That's what made it a good target," Sheridan agreed.
"What did happen with the Blackstar?" Ivanova asked in curiosity. "I heard it was some new manuever, but I never heard the details."
"There wasn't much to it," he said. "We couldn't lock on to their ships, some sort of stealth technology, so I got the idea of miningthe asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. A fusion bomb doesn't need a targeting lock to hit a target. They lost the Black Star and three of their cruisers before they got out."
He took a moment to think things through.
"I don't like what he said about an assassin, however," he said. "Sounds like our hunter-killer."
"Shall I make her something more than a casual priority then?" Ivanova asked.
"Yeah," Sheridan's eyes started to stare off for a moment. "But first, I think I know where Kalain might be."
*****
Despite Rally's unwillingness to explain just why they moved so much, as had already been noted, the girls were aware that there was a danger they were avoiding. Given that they had to avoid PsyCorps anyway, that was pretty obvious, though it seemed there was more than just that.
It was also obvious that Rally didn't believe they were being actively hunted, because they hadn't changed their names ever, though Rally had warned of the possibility two years ago.
One, among many, of the reasons that it was obvious they were trying to avoid attention, was what had become a Vincent family home Christening tradition: reviewing the exits and escape plans.
"Okay," Rally said, unfurling a plan layout of their new home's sector and level along with an overall blueprint. "Becky got these blueprints for us last year, and 'Auntie May' did a light recon for us on her vacation a couple months ago. There's a maintenance shaft behind...that wall."
She pointed toward the back of the quarters and the two girls looked in the direction toward the blank wall.
"We're going to make a door," she said and then turned to look toward a new piece of furniture, a tall set of shelves. "And fix that to it to keep it hidden."
"I'm doing the cutting, right?" Shanti asked, raising her hand.
"Right, Kitten," Rally said. "Vivi, you can tell if the tunnel is clear?"
"Sort of..." she said shrugging. "It's a place, not a thing. Everything is faded."
"Here or not here is fine, Vivi," Rally said encouragingly.
She traced her finger along the plans of the station, marking the maintenance shaft.
"There's a pass to the next level here," Rally said. "We're level 8. If we have to bug out, we want level 18. There's a public comm station there that's hidden behind a few squats and never used anymore. Becky's sent us her most recent contact info, that should be secure. She says the longest its taken for her to arrange passage out of here is five hours. She already has our emergency money set aside."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of tiny cylinders.
"We've got the same old phone cams," Rally said.
Vivian nodded, recognizing the items. An old friend of Rally's named Roy had had those rigged up with a signal that operated on an unused bandwidth and sent out scrambled image that anybody without one of their modified cells would take as mere background static. They shouldn't even have been a blip on most scans.
"So we'll have eyes on the corridors and lifts around us by end of the day," Rally continued. "And on the shaft as soon as we can get the back door made and hidden."
Rally looked up and moved her head between the two girls.
"Any questions?" she asked.
"Is there a school here?" Vivi asked. "I didn't see many kids around."
"There're a few kids," Rally said. "But not many of any one race, so...it's going to be a tutor, girls."
"What?" Vivi asked. "No school? It's bad enough I keep having to leave behind friends. You're saying there's going to be nobody here?"
"But, no school, just a tutor," Shanti said happily.
"If we're lucky," Rally said. "We're only going to be here a couple of years, then it's somewhere with a college."
"Why do we need college?" Shanti asked. "You didn't go to college."
"I apprenticed with my father," Rally said, in the weary tone of voice that said she'd explained this before. "That's equivalent really. And then I went to the military, so I spent just as much time and effort."
"Can't we apprentice to you then?" Shanti asked.
"Aren't we already?" Vivi asked.
"Yes, but do either of you want to make a career of either gunsmithing or this stuff?" Rally asked.
"Err, not really," Shanti said, blushing.
"Not my first choice," Vivi snorted as she unwrapped a stick of gum.
"College," their foster mother said firmly.
"College," both girls agreed.
"It'll be a correspondence course if we have to," Rally noted as she rolled up the plans and straightened up. "Well, anything you want to do before today, now that all the normal stuff is settled in?"
"How about some sodas for the fridge?" Vivi asked.
"Wasn't there an arcade in...Red Sector, I think?" Shanti asked.
"Can you play a game without burning it?" Vivi asked.
"I can," Shanti said, her cheerful expression turning into a pouting frown.
"Sounds good," Rally said, turning to eye Vivi and her tight t-shirt. "And then new
clothes."
"It's not any tighter than stuff I've seen you wear," Vivi muttered.
"When something shrinks in the laundry," Rally grumbled under her breath.
*****
Shanti leaned forward over the game machine, strafing and shooting as her holographic figure came across zombie after zombie and the occasional weird mutant creature. The sleeves of her blouse and jacket were rolled up and her feet were in a sturdy stance, impressive given the heels of her shoes, under her long skirt. The green fabric swayed one way or another as she continued her game.
The few kids in the small arcade had started to gather around her as she killed monster after monster and the game announced her streaks.
"Headshot, 30 kill streak, 40 kill streak, headshot, headshot, 41 kill streak," the computer was saying.
Vivian looked over at her twin sister and shook her head. Who was she kidding telling Rally she wasn't interested in doing this stuff all her life?
She was such a momma's girl.
The short-haired girl turned away from watching her sister and to the issue of shopping for some new clothes. They didn't have much selection, but that was nothing new. She'd picked up a few t-shirts and some new jeans, but just some comfortable stuff, nothing all that inspiring.
And then she saw it.
A jacket, just like the leather one Rally used on stakeouts or anything she thought might turn into a shooting event. It was black and sleek and tough looking. And it was just the right size. She narrowed her eyes and looked either direction before grabbing it and pointedly not looking at the price.
"100 killing streak, 121 killing streak," the computer continued. "Texas! Texas! Texas! Texas! Texas!"
Several people looked around in confusion as the voiceover that was supposed to be keeping score started just repeating the same word over and over again.
"Heh, I guess I broke it..." she said embarrassed before turning back to the game.
The computer was still repeating the word "Texas" anytime she did something comment worthy. Which, given she hadn't broken streak yet, was pretty much anytime she fired. It was a somewhat annoying thing, kill too much too fast and the game started yelling "Texas" at you, and no explanation for it. Shanti always wondered who'd programmed that in.
As she reached the end of the level, she sighed and wished that her real life shooting scores came even half-way as good as her virtual scores. While waiting for the game to load the next level, and ignoring the fact that the word "Texas" repeated over and over instead of the next story segment, she glanced over to where her sister was shopping.
Didn't she own any dresses? And she kept her hair so short. Really, it was silly how much of a momma's girl her twin was sometimes.
Rally was watching them from a cafe where a few packs of water and sports drinks stood next to a small selection soda three-liters as she watched her kids.
Shanti was, as usual, eagerly shooting things in the video game arcade. That was kind of worrisome. It seemed to Rally that the girl only ever took an interest in things that involved guns or war. As ever, she tried to think of a way to broaden the girl's interests and vigorously missed her Cobra, sitting in storage in a garage somewhere in Chicago.
Glancing over toward Vivi she grimaced a moment at Vivi's selections. The girl was getting old enough that she'd have to talk to her about how to dress appropriately as a woman. Maybe look into some teenagers' sports jackets and woman's business fashions. Something a bit more than just t-shirts, jeans and leather jackets.
She shook her head and wondered just why kids fixated on things like that.
Then the overhead security alarms started blaring.
"Red alert, red alert," came the call. "All station personel to battle stations. Residents report to nearest shelters."
Rally stood up and looked toward her girls as they turned to face her. She gestured sharply and they quickly finished their business to catch up to her. Looking toward the monitors, she watched the image of a Minbari cruiser hovering sinisterly in open space.
"What the hell is going on?" she wondered.
*****
Coming as it did during the middle of the business day, the Red Sector civilian alert shelter was more than a little cramped. The Vincent women worked their way through the crowd, Rally's eyes scanning carefully through the crowds.
The largest single group was human, but that was a plurality, with various alien races filling out the mass. Rally noted, with an obvious amount of distaste, a large number of Drazi loitering in one color. She avoided that part of the room quite clearly.
Eventually, she guided the girls to a small area in a corner with a good view of the door and most of the shelter area. A smattering of security guards wandered through the area, with most stationed at the now sealed door.
"Can I get a soda?" Shanti asked, eyeing the vending machine in a nearby corner of the room.
The drinks they had bought before the alert weren't really suited for drinking while sitting around.
"Get the both of us one as well?" Rally said, setting down what she was carrying and pointing toward Vivian and herself.
Shanti nodded and walked nimbly across the room, in between the other people, taking smooth gliding steps on her heels that had Rally arching an eyebrow.
"So, when did she learn to walk on heels like that?" Rally asked.
"Aunt May, last year," Vivi said.
"I thought so," Rally muttered. "What else did she teach the two of you?"
"She asked a lot about boyfriends," Vivian said. "Then she asked about girlfriends, something about 'making sure she had the right target in mind this time'. What'd she mean by that?"
Rally rolled her eyes, May couldn't seriously be trying to play her matchmaking games with Vivi and Shanti as well now.
"That woman is handful," Rally said.
"Barely," Vivian replied with a snort.
"And who taught you to..." Rally started to ask.
She was interrupted by the sound of a crash across the room that brought both to a standing position.
"Watch where you're going," a loud voice declared lifting out of the throat of a young and rather drunk looking Centauri.
Not far away a Narn stood, simmering in fury as he shook off the drink that had been spilled over him. People pushed away from the two, making it hard for the nearby security staff to get to the center of the trouble.
"How typical of the Centauri to flail about drunkenly and think it a show of authority," the Narn snapped. "If this is an example of your glory, we'll be pushing you out of your own homeworld before you realize it."
"Yes, we saw what you could do in quadrant 37," the Centauri said tauntingly. "So fearsome it takes invisible faeries to eliminate one of your outposts."
At about that time, the crowd moved and a girl in a green skirt was pushed unceremoniously out of the tightening crowd and stumbled back into the open circle as the Narn lunged outward.
Shanti was carrying three sodas and still recovering from being unwillingly shoved into the center of the problem. The Narn tried to stop himself as the girl came into the picture, but was already badly overcommitted. Shanti's own training helped minimize the impact and almost kept them both standing, until a heel snapped under and both toppled to the floor.
Vivian started to move forward as Rally pushed her back down and started shoving her way through the crowd.
"Stay here," she said, just short of a command for the teen.
She was closer than most of security, but she still had to get through the packed crowd. Still, she was in a position to notice the glint of a PPG casing in the Centauri drunkard's hand before he turned in a way that hid it from view.
Rally wasn't the only Vincent to see the weapon.
Shanti's eyes fixed on the weapon and a thrill of danger worked through her as she took in the gloating look on the Centauri's eyes. She was in the path of fire and Rally'd have her tanned if she ever fired on any target with anyone in the way like she was now, but the girl seriously doubted the Centauri had thought that through or cared to.
As the gun came shakily into line, it glowed brightly for a moment before erupting in the Centauri's hand in an apparent misfire. Then the gloating Centauri's posturing turned to agonized screams as the weapon seared his hand and set fire to the arm of his clothing terribly fast.
Flailing about, and the crowd falling away before him, the man moved to a wall to smash his enflamed arm against the wall in an attempt to put it out. Shanti staring fixedly at him as he moved, seemingly in shock.
A hand on the young girl's shoulder brought her attention away from the unfortunate man as security reached him.
The fire was out soon after.
"Are you all right, Kitten?" Rally asked, helping her up.
"I broke a heel," she said with a pout that earned a small, amused smile from Rally.
"I'm sorry, Miss..." the Narn said, struggling to his feet.
"Vincent," Rally said without looking around. "Next time don't be so quick to get in a fight. There's already enough of that going around."
The woman was busy dusting Shanti off and checking her over, though she spared a moment to nod at the monitors showing the Babylon 5 starfuries facing down against the Trigati's fighters.
A security officer made his way over to her and looked to the Narn a bit irritably before glancing to her.
"Is everything all right, Ma'am?" he asked as he reached down to pick up the sodas and hand them over to Shanti and Rally.
"Some wardrobe damage is all I think," Rally said. "Anything bruised, Shanti?"
"No, I rolled into the fall like you taught me," the girl said. "But....my shoe?"
"I think we'll be good," Rally said, ignoring her daughter for a moment.
"All right," the officer said, turning toward the Narn. "And you, get over here, right now! You moron, we're in a state of emergency here."
As Rally escorted Shanti back to where Vivi sat, the girl whispered up to her.
"Am I in trouble?" she asked.
"Talk about it later," Rally said.
*****
It was barely fifteen minutes later when the Trigati self-destructed and the alert came to an end.
Rally watched up at the monitor as the shelter started to thin out and shook her head. There was a far away look in her eyes as she considered old memories.
"We haven't heard the end of that," she said quietly.
The twins around her looked confused for a moment.
"I suppose you took that to be a sort of victory, human?" an incensed voice said to the side, drawing the attention of the two girls to the Minbari speaker.
"Nobody won anything here," Rally said grimmly.
She looked over to the Minbari, noted he was too young to have been in the war and cocked her head to the side wordlessly to her kids.
*****
It was later that night, with the girls getting in some exercise before bed, as Rally tested the reception of the mini-cams they'd hidden in the hallways during a clear moment, that a call came on the Stellar-Com monitor.
Putting up the camera, Rally reached up and accepted the incoming call. She wasn't all that surprised to see a woman with Lieutenant Commander's bars on the screen.
"Rally Vincent?" the woman asked professionally. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Ivanova."
"That's me," the woman said with a smile. "What can I do for you?"
"The Captain wanted me to make sure to tell you," the woman said with a friendly tone. "There isn't a civilian targetting range, but as a veteran we can give you access to security's."
"And family?" Rally asked, a bit cautious as the fact that she was a veteran came up.
"That shouldn't be a problem," Ivanova noted. "We'll just need to see about some paperwork. Oh, and welcome to Babylon 5. Hope you had a more or less decent first day."
"It was a bit full, I'll tell you that," the gunsmith said, shaking her head. "Hope it gets a bit quieter from here on."
Ivanova seemed like she wanted to say something, but forced it down.
"We all hope that," the Lieutenant Commander said.
**********************************
Made as my own example for what IÆve been calling the ôParents and Childrenö challenge on a couple of places, basically:
This is based on the Parents and Children thread which Kender and I worked on some years ago.
I have occasionally placed challenges on other sites for people to do their own versions.
The two versions Kender and I did were "Thieves and Ninjas" and "Wild Dragons" you can find both in the Threads List
http://addventure.bast-enterprises.de/threads.html
"Parents and Children - Thieves and Ninjas" becomes "Thieves and Ninjas" about 100-105 episodes total
"Parents and Children - Wild Dragons" becomes "Wild Dragons" about 100-105 episodes total
As to what I'd like to see here:
the parents can be from the same series or a crossover couple, it need not have been a happy coupling, but that is preferred. If unhappy, then the unhappiness is in the past and the parent with custody moved on with someone else or alone
the guardian has to be someone from the same series as one of the parents and it there must be some reason people wouldn't automatically think of looking for the children with them
at least one of the biological parents had a hand in raising the children. They may have had a spouse that was a step-parent. If there was a step-parent, then the other biological parent has had little to nothing to do with the kids.
both the characters (assuming there were either both biological parents, or the biological parent and the step parent) that were raising the children primarily are dead.
The parents were killed by murder.
If the setting is fantasy, colonial or medieval, then the murderers might be known but too powerful or influential to challenge openly.
If the setting is modern, then the murderers are either unknown (ie have gotten away with it) or else have gone into hiding.
Futuristic settings can be either depending on the density of civilization. Star Trek, for instance is more along the lines of a modern setting, so it would be more likely for murderers to be unknown. Star Wars is more like a fantasy where some powerful people can get away with such things.
Characters can either be raised with an eye toward avenging their parents or toward making sure they can keep themselves safe. Vengeance will be harder to get away with in modern times, however.
If the children were raised by only one biological parent and a step parent, then it is permissable to have their other biological parent be one of the murderers.
The original thread was limited to the Ranma 1/2 universe + potential crossovers. There is no such limit here, though most characters involved should be anime or anime based.
oh, it is permissable to move settings around if you wish, as you'll see in a moment when I post the idea I'm starting with
and please, comment away
IÆm hoping this challenges produces a number of interesting fics.
There weren't any booby traps as such, or loud alarms to scare off intruders. In fact, most of the security devices produced the same effect when tripped.
They turned on a little red light in Rally Vincent's room at the side of her bed.
Rally Vincent herself was the house's most effective crime deterrent. At one time, Rally would have commented that the pyro mad bomber she lived with was worse, but that had been eight years ago. May had her own place now, occasionally shared with her boyfriend Ken.
Now, as the light came on, Rally's eyes snapped open and she reached for the gun under her pillow. A slugthrower as adverse the PPGs more popular in the last few decades.
Moving quietly as ever, Rally tipped through her house eyes and ears searching for signs of the intruder. It was in the kitchen that she heard the sounds of motion and breathing.
Setting against the wall, she listened carefully. She heard the creak of her chairs and the distinct breaths of at least two individuals who sounded almost like they were sleeping. A third, even and controlled breath punctuated the other two.
Her own breath held to a mere flutter to keep unheard, Rally stepped lightly into the kitchen, slipping her gun toward the back of the sitting intruder's head and called out.
"Lights."
The brown-haired, slender woman in front of her was easily recognizeable, and it was only spotting the child in the woman's arms, and a second sitting in the other table, that kept Rally from pulling the trigger instantly.
"Goldie," she said coldly.
"You haven't slowed down at all, Rally," the woman said, and Rally knew that she was smiling. "I didn't hear you coming at all."
"What the hell are you doing in my house," Rally wondered, keeping her gun out and watching for any twitch of movement from the woman in front of her.
The bounty hunter's eyes flicked to the two children briefly, wondering what part they had in whatever scheme Goldie had set up now. They were about the same age, she saw, with somewhat dark skin and brown hair. Two girls, about five years old, twins by the look.
"I've come with a request," Goldie said.
"Well you can stuff it," Rally responded firmly, not relaxing a bit. "All I want from you is to put the kid down while I call the cops to come pick you up."
"I'm sure," Goldie said, setting down the girl she held in her arms. "But I'd rather no one knew my children where ever in your home, Rally. Most certainly nobody in any government body as prone to leaks as the police."
"Your..." Rally blinked despite herself. "What?"
"Children, Rally," Goldie explained. "Given life from my womb. Incidentally, while we're speaking of children, I was so distressed when I heard about Misty. I had so hoped to eventually have a close relationship with her."
Rally growled, hand slipping back as she prepared to club the intruder over the head with her pistol butt.
In that moment, the little girl laid quietly in another chair already, Goldie twisted about, knocking the weapon from Rally's hand before pushing the younger woman back.
Caught off-guard as she was, Rally didn't let Goldie keep the advantage. She twisted as her gun was knocked away, and slammed her knee up into Goldie's stomach before rolling aside to retrieve her weapon. She came up on her knees with the weapon aimed dead center at Goldie's body.
The mob-boss was getting a bit old it seemed. Either that or she hadn't really been serious.
"I think you're even faster than you used to be, Rally," Goldie noted with a cough as she stood up. "Then, you're not thirty yet, are you."
Rally's eyes didn't move, but the question flickered in the back of her mind as she considered that the two children hadn't yet woken up.
"Don't mind the children," Goldie said. "I gave them something to keep them out of our hair. I'll provide the counteragent, of course, when we're finished with our negotiation."
Rally held back the bile in her throat as she stood up, gun at the ready and lips curling in a disgusted snarl.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I want you to take custody of my children," Goldie said with a smile that contained no hint of concern or love. "They are...a project that I do not wish to see in danger at the moment."
"They're not a project," Rally noted. "They're children."
"You want to ask the question," Goldie said. "Don't you. Go on, I know its in there."
"Who's the father?" Rally asked.
"Ah, there it is," Goldie said with a small clap that provoked Rally into almost pulling her trigger. "Artificial insemination. I had a genetic sample on hand and I thought I might try and...see what the appeal was. I must say, the long term uses I've considered in the interim are very...interesting."
That bile rose in Rally's throat again.
"You're a sick and depraved psychopath, you realize that, don't you?" Rally asked.
"I tend to find its my most charming trait," Goldie said with a cold smile. "But it doesn't change my request. I want you to watch my children while I deal with an....issue."
"An issue?" Rally asked.
"There is some disagreement on the ownership of the project," Goldie said carefully. "Certain...organizations that...must be dealt with. I may be, as you say, a psychopath, but I'm hardly the only claw in a black and leather glove around here."
"You're having telepath issues," Rally said dangerously. "What's to say they don't crack open your skull and come right for me?"
"Crack open my..." Goldie smiled. "Rally, Rally, there are benefits to a deviant mental framework. One of the chief of which is that poking around in my skull is far more dangerous for the telepath involved than it is for me. As for you...you've survived me..."
This was said with a combined trace of admiration and frustration.
"I sincerely doubt that, after that, you'd have trouble with anything the Corps can send after you," Goldie noted. "Even if they do, eventually, think to look and see if you are indeed keeping the girls."
"So, the choice is this, my lovely girl," Goldie said. "You can protect my children while I take care of this...minor situation. Or you can let them remain in danger. After all, this really isn't about me and you. It's about a pair of innocent children and the fact that I would owe you a favor."
"Sounds more like you'd have a hook in me," Rally said.
"Perhaps," Goldie responded. "But are you willing to risk it?"
"And what makes you think I'll let you take any kid back after you let me get them away from you?" Rally asked.
"Really, my dear," Goldie said. "You speak as if you'd have a choice in the matter. After all, eventually, I will come for All of my girls."
A shiver worked down Rally's back as the woman spoke.
*****
That worry, at least, was put to rest the next day.
The two girls, Vivian and Shanti according to Goldie, were still asleep even after the counter-agent had been provided, but it was an even and natural sleep as far as Rally could tell. Rally was looking for cereal or anything else that could be fed to a five-year old when the news came on.
"An unknown band of assailants attacked the Psi Corps headquarters today," the reporter said. "Several high-ranking members of the Corps are rumored to have been injured in the attack."
"Fortunately," a Psi Corps representative was saying as bodies were wheeled out of the building behind him. "The extent of the fatalities has been exaggerated. We've determined that the attackers were operating under the influence of an extremely mind-altering substance which Earth Gov has been trying to eliminate for some time. Most likely, this was a more or less random attack by a gang of degenerates."
As Rally watched, a blanket fell off one of the bodies being carted away and she recognized the smooth, psychotic grin frozen permanently on the face of the woman revealed.
Quickly, she walked to her phone and dialed the first of several numbers.
"Becky," she said. "Can you come over to my house, please. I need to talk about something."
*****
"Any clue what she was here for?" an old man asked the short black-garbed figure in front of him.
"Not a clue," the man said with a shrug, his left hand clenched into a fist. "She managed to do whatever it is she came to do. Several files were wiped clean while her 'pets' kept us busy. And I suspect that anybody in the corps who had the information were among the ones killed."
"If only we could have taken her alive," the older man said. "We could be prying it out of her mind right now."
"Oh, I doubt that," Bester noted. "In the end, we had to settle for frying her synapses because she wasn't going down to weapons fire. No one could really hit her with anything. The telepaths that tried anything more subtle are...well, let's just say they're not feeling too happy at the moment. The woman was truly a grade A psychopath, hardly a human thought in the whole of her being."
"Well, most likely she felt we were a threat to her monoply on mind control," the older man said. "As to her minions, they were all operating under the influence of this...kerasine."
"And most of them as permanently bent or broken as anything we could do," the younger noted.
"We'll have to encourage stamping out the drug then," the older noted.
"After, of course," the other noted, left hand still clenched in a fist. "We find the formula, purely for investigative purposes, of course."
"Of course, Alfred," the older man said. "Of course."
******
"And you are?" the security officer asked as a woman in her mid-thirties walked up to the queue with two girls behind her.
"Rally Vincent," the woman said, handing over her passport.
The security guard looked up from her ID as she gave her name.
"Rally...the bounty hunter?" the man asked, obviously impressed.
"I only did that to pay the bills," Rally said, waving it off.
In the back of her mind she sighed. What was she doing on a space station? The only trade as a smith she could have here was on, yick, PPGs. Nobody wanted a slugthrower on a ship or a station. Too much chance of cracking the seal.
Which, of course, hadn't stopped her from putting some of her favorite pieces into luggage, for display purposes only of course.
So, given that she'd be stuck packing a cracker-jack pop gun while she lived here, just why had she decided to come here, of all places.
"Everything is so closed in," Shanti said behind her. "There's no space anywhere."
"There's space everywhere," Vivian returned with a smirk. "It's a space station."
Oh, right, kids she wanted to keep out Psi Corp sight.
Shanti wore her hair long and loose, the dark brown curls framing her pretty face. She wore a white blouse with a green jacket and a long green skirt.
Her sister, meanwhile, wore her hair short, cut just above the ears. Vivian wore jeans and a t-shirt that was fitting so tightly that Rally was planning on insisting it go in the trash as soon as they had a private moment. She was snapping some gum fairly loudly.
Their faces always struck Rally as familiar, and not because they looked much like Goldie, because that came more than their build than their other features. Rally was almost certain she knew whoever it was Goldie had gotten a "genetic sample" from, but she could never lay her finger on it. Meanwhile, she'd done what she could to keep either of the girls from getting a genetic test that might make them pop up on an alert somewhere.
"They say you k-," the security guard was saying as Rally loudly cleared her throat.
The woman moved her eyes toward the two fifteen year old girls behind her meaningfully.
"Oh, sorry," the man said, embarrassed. "I guess war stories aren't appropriate around kids."
"War stories?" Shanti said, suddenly interested. "You never told us you were in the war."
"Not appropriate, Shanti," Rally told the girl as she handed over Shanti's and Vivian's IDs.
"What brings you to Babylon 5?" the security officer asked.
"I'm trying to give the girls here a taste of interplanetary culture," Rally said. "Going to be staying for sometime. Setup business for a bit."
That and it was getting a bit...noisy in the colonies just now. Hopefully a diplomatic station like this would be a bit quieter. At least as long as she kept her head down from the inevitable politics.
Vivian, smacking her gum, watched as aliens passed through in the corridor beyond. Eyes flicking curiously at all the strange forms she saw.
"What kind of business?" the security guard asked cautiously as he looked down toward her ID again and noted a few lines underneath. "Investigator? Well, that'll be...entertaining for you."
Rally really didn't like the way that word came out of the man's mouth.
"Well, you're clear to go," the security guard said. "They should be delivering your luggage to your quarters shortly."
"Thanks," Rally said with a smile, shouldering her carry-on bag and waving to the two girls. "Let's go get something to eat."
"Is there a McDonald's?" Vivian asked as she followed the other
"Why did we have to move again?" Shanti asked. "I liked it on Proxima 3."
"Same as always, Kitten," Rally said, turning to look at her. "Business was bad."
"Not enough cheating husbands so we come to a place with less than half the population?" Vivian asked sarcastically, drawing a narrow eyed glare from her guardian.
*****
As the woman and the two girls with her walked through the gates into the station as a whole, Vivian paused and looked to the side as she noted a bag sitting off on its own near one of the other entry gates.
Still smacking her gum, she walked over to it, reached down and picked it up. Clearly, an image of a tall, bearded man in a distinguished suit standing next to a Minbari woman with, strangely enough, long black hair.
Vivian looked about, blinking, trying to find either the man or the woman she'd seen. She almost missed him.
He was clean-shaven and was wearing a military uniform, but it was definitely the same man. And he was also clearly looking for something.
That was weird, usually when she saw things after picking something up, it was what the owner looked like at the time. She didn't usually get much from the past.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her sister and Rally on the other end of the chamber and quick-stepped over to the man as he looked around the various pieces of furniture in the waiting area.
"Here's your bag," she said, pulling out her gum as it lost flavor and throwing it in the trash-can nearby.
"Oh, thank you," the man said, turning toward her. "I was wondering where I'd left that. How'd you know it was mine?"
"I saw you," Vivian said, shrugging. "You know, I didn't think Minbari grew hair."
"What?" the military man said with a sudden laugh. "That's an odd thing to say."
"Yeah, Rally doesn't like it when I say odd things," Vivian said, rolling her eyes.
"I didn't say I didn't like it," the man said with a smile. "I just said it was odd. Who's Rally?"
"She's my foster mother," Vivian said, looking around the room for a bit. "I'm Vivian Vincent. You can call me Vivi."
"Well, I'm Captain John Sheridan," the man said with an obliging tone. "Pleased to meet you, Vivi."
Sheridan held out his hand to shake with her and Vivian hesitantly took it as she rolled her eyes at the man's somewhat overly cheerful tone of voice. She could almost hear the baby-speak forming in the back of his mind now.
"Vivi! What are you doing over here?" a voice demanded firmly, drawing the teenager's and the Captain's attention to the speaker.
Rally's mouth under her sunglasses had that hard, worried line that Sheridan had seen on parents many times before. He immediately acted to put her at ease, reaching out his hand toward her and smiling broadly.
"Captain John Sheridan," he said in a chipper and inviting tone. "I'm guessing you're Rally?"
He looked behind Rally to see another fifteen year old girl with the same tall and slender build and vaguely dusky skin that Vivian had.
"And I'm guessing you're her sister," he said.
"That's right, Rally Vincent," the woman said in a slightly careful tone that caught Sheridan's interest.
"And I'm Shanti," the sister in the rather more feminine attire said brightly. "We're new here."
"So am I, as a matter of fact," Sheridan said with a smile before turning again toward Vivian. "And thank you for finding my bag for me. But I need to be going, first day on the job. Pleasure meeting you, and if I see any minbari with hair, I'll remember to tell you about it."
"Thanks," Vivian said as she hunched her shoulders and looked toward Rally's suddenly rigid face.
"Quite an imagination she's got," Sheridan said, his curious mind sensing the possibility of another secret to collect.
"You have no idea," Rally said with a motherly shake of her head. "Say, you wouldn't know if there's a civilian firing range on board."
"Not yet I wouldn't," he said, recognizing the attempt to change the subject and distract him. "But I'll look into it. I think I see my welcoming committee."
"Thanks for that," Rally said, grabbing Vivian sharply but not tightly and quickly moving off with both girls.
As they were out of earshot of the very friendly new commanding officer, she bent down to whisper into the girl's ears.
"Don't talk to people about what you see when you hold things," she warned quietly. "It isn't safe."
Vivian nodded and grumbled. She wanted to ask if that's why they kept moving, because of things she saw or Shanti did, but, at the same time, she didn't want to confirm it.
*****
It wasn't the requested McDonalds, but Rally found the equivalent of a sidewalk cafe, and had a momentary nostalgic wish for a Chicago hot dog. Sitting down she tried to avoid looking at Shanti, who was currently bubbling over with curiosity, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.
Rally eagerly hoped it would hold until they were somewhere more private than a public restaurant. The she really would rather not deal with the subject at all, hence the attempt at delay.
Eventually, Shanti couldn't hold herself in.
"Were you really in the Earth-Minbari War, Rally?" the girl asked, eyes wide.
"It's not something I like to talk about, Shanti," Rally said.
"But that was the biggest thing to happen in the last twenty years," Shanti protested. "Were you a fighter pilot?"
"No," Rally said, eyes looking up cautiously to see the reaction of the people nearby.
"She was probably infantry," Vivi said, wincing as Rally directed a glare her way that screamed the word "traitor."
"Of course," Shanti said, turning toward Vivi. "Rally taught us everything we know about..." she stopped and looked around as she realized what she'd been about to say. "Well, anyway, of course, I'll bet your were the best soldier of all."
"Shanti Vincent, this is not the place," Rally said firmly.
"Vincent," a voice behind the woman said. "The Stalking Cat?"
Rally's face turned grim as she turned around and looked to see what she knew was going to be a Minbari standing behind her. Indeed, she recognized the dark uniform of the Warrior caste almost instantly. Looking toward the twins again, she turned about to face the grim Minbari man glaring down at her.
"I don't like that name," she said in heavily accented Minbari.
"I thought you humans were proud of your reputations as murderers," the warrior said with a sarcastic drawl.
Rally glanced toward the girls again, who were watching the exchange of words with a rapt nervous expression.
"I'm not arguing about this," Rally said, turning back to face the girls and returning to English. "I'm going to go get us some drinks, all right?"
She started to stand up, but was shoved back down into her chair.
"This argument is over when I say it's over," the Minbari warrior snapped angrily, Rally rolling her eyes in irritation.
The Minbari confronting her was hardly the best she'd ever had to fight. She could tell by the way he was acting like a local schoolyard bully.
Her irritation, however, turned to concern as she saw what was coming next. Shanti had stood up furiously and moved forward toward the Minbari as Vivian also got to her feet.
"Don't you touch her!" Shanti shouted, moving forward.
Rally spun out of her chair to a standing position, pushing her shin into the back of the Minbari's knee and pulling him down with a grip on his shoulder before holding out a hand towards Shanti.
"Calm down," she instructed Shanti firmly, but without shouting. "Kitten. Calm...down."
"Sit down before you start something, Shanti," Vivi whispered insistantly, earning a pointing finger from Rally.
Shanti's face fumed for a moment before taking a deep breath and sitting down in a huff.
Watching her, one eye on the Minbari behind her, Rally nodded at Shanti encouragingly and smiled comfortingly.
"There's no problem, Shanti," she said, and then nodded toward Vivi as well, gesturing for the other girl to sit down.
"I could snap you like a twig, human," the Minbari behind her said.
Turning toward him, and waiting to frown until Shanti could no longer see her face, Rally looked up toward the minbari that stood nearly a foot higher than her.
"I know that," she said, switching again to the Minbari language. "Nowhere near as strong as you. So what? Not important."
Another Minbari came up to the scene, dressed in the bright robes of the religious caste came up to the two and spoke rapidly in Minbari such that Rally couldn't follow it. Eventually the fuming Minbari warrior turned on his heels and moved away.
The second Minbari turned toward the woman, a smile on his face that belied a sad look in his eyes.
"I apologize for the trouble," he said in English. "There are still many hard feelings especially in light of the appointment of a new commander to this station."
Rally thought back to the soldier that Vivian had helped earlier.
"Captain Sheridan," she said in realization. "Yeah, that would make things tense."
"Because Sheridan is the only human captain to defeat a Minbari cruiser?" Shanti asked.
Vivian groaned and shook her head at the question as the Minbari and Rally both looked rather uncomfortable for different reasons.
"Yes," the Minbari said. "That is the basic nature of the problem."
"I might have just made things worse," Rally said irritably, glaring out towards where the Warrior had vanished.
"I wouldn't worry..." the Minbari let the sound stretch out as he wait for a name.
"Rally Vincent," the ex-bounty hunter said.
There was a brief widening of the eyes as the man recognized the name.
"I see, yes," he said. "That might have, indeed, made things worse. Still, you seemed to handle things well enough. My name is Lennier."
"Would like to join us for lunch?" Rally asked. "A thanks for the help?"
Lennier glanced up at the name and menu of the mini restaurant they were talking at. The grimace on his face told of the numerous health issues that would develop from regular consumption of the so-called "fast food" served here.
"That's quite all right," he said. "I have duties to attend to."
He started to turn away after a brief bow and then paused, turning back to look at Rally.
"Your Minbari...could use some improvement," he said before a final bow and leaving.
*****
Rally looked over the quarters she and the girls had acquired and looked down at the rent quotes and took a deep breath. It was a very good thing that she had some hefty savings from her bounty hunting days. And the occasional bounty she took up in the course of work now.
Their larger pieces of luggage were in the center of the room, as security had told her. Not much of it, unfortunately, which came from having to move frequently on a budget. As of yet, she had the benefit that Psi-Corps didn't seem to know about the girls, so they weren't actively looking. Which meant that she could move whenever Psi-Corps started getting more frequent in a colony and not attract interest.
"Well," she said. "Home sweet home. Girls, first thing first."
Vivian rolled her eyes as Rally moved to one trunk and opened it. As a licensed gun dealer, Rally was allowed to carry a substantial number of weapons, as long as they were civilian legal. Beyond that, she had a fair amount of experience in moving weapons undetected through casual scans. Not to mention that most security didn't bother to look for weapons hidden in a shipment of weapons.
Passing the weapons about, Vivian, Shanti and Rally quickly found places to secret a number of back up weapons. Most of the the weapons were set off to the side, charge packs separate from the guns, and, again, as a legal gun dealer, there wasn't much suspicious about her have a trunk full of weaponry. If a few were missing from the original count, she may have sold a few.
Then the slugthrowers went up on the walls in their display frames while ammunition was hidden in bed frames or cuts in the underside of mattresses. Pieces of three PPG rifles were scattered about similarly hidden everywhere they could find them.
"I guess you want to know what that scene earlier was about," Rally said grimmly as their new home was armed and secured.
"Was it about the war?" Shanti asked, curiosity brimming again.
"Yes," Rally said. "Someone...close to me died on a trip, caught in the crossfire when the war started. So I joined up. I had a bit of a reputation by that point due to bounty hunting, so EarthForce gave me...special jobs."
"What kind of jobs?" Vivian asked.
"Nothing we need to talk about," Rally said. "Just enough that there's a lot of minbari out there that probably don't like me. Thankfully, they don't put people like me on the news."
She wouldn't be universally known and despised like Sheridan, but then the people that would hate and despise her would be veterans, their families and their political leaders. Namely, the people that would come to a diplomatic station like this.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, questioning her decision to come here yet again.
"Is that where you learned to speak Minbari?" Shanti asked.
"Sort of," Rally said, more willing to speak of this. "I had a bit of bad luck near the end of the war and ended up in a pirate ship run by rogue Drazi. There was also a Minbari there who had experienced the same bad luck. We got free, but damaged the ship in the process and ended up adrift in space for a while. Drazi food sucks, by the way. When we finally got picked up, the war was over."
"Is that why we move so much?" Vivian asked. "Are you afraid someone will come after us for revenge? I know it's not business. I thought it was Psi-Corps, but we hadn't started...doing things when you moved us the first two times."
Rally took a deep breath and sat down on one of the desks.
"That's something I'll have to talk to you about soon," Rally said. "But not yet, you're still young, you don't have know that yet."
Rally could tell by the looks on the girls' faces that she'd satisfied neither of them with her answers. Shanti at least looked merely disappointed.
*****
Sheridan walked over to his new desk as he rehearsed his speech, inserting small changes here and there to fit the situation he was moving into.
"It was old Earth President who said..." he paused as he read the report he'd just requested.
Rally Vincent, EarthForce Marines, specialist. Assigned to behind-the-lines discouragement.
Sheridan frowned as he read the last bit. Hunter-killers did not have the best of reputations among either side of the war. The few he'd met or heard of since the war ended were currently in prison for murders they'd committed after the war.
"Discharged for 'aberrant social interactions', meaning she's either homicidal or homosexual," he noted, shaking his head.
He lay bets on the latter after having met her, EarthForce had gotten very reactionary in the days after the end of the war, throwing away two centuries worth of developed tolerance.
"Licensed gun dealer, licensed provider of military and law enforcement grade weaponry, private investigator's license," his eyes widened briefly at the growing list of credentials. "Bounty hunter's license, master gunsmith, highest marksmanship results on record. MCMAP instructor qualified. Licensed to carry concealed weapons. Awards for valor from the Chicago Police Office. Next of kin, Shanti Vincent and Vivian Vincent, officially adopted as of seven years ago."
He shook his head, there was a bit more to this, he was sure of it. But Hunter-Killer records weren't easy to come by.
Ivanova came in through the room, straightening her uniform.
"They're ready for you, sir," she said.
"Hmm?" Sheridan noted looking up. "Oh, thank you. Lieutenant Commander, come take a look at this."
Ivanova walked over and looked down at the screen, quickly coming to the same conclusions as Sheridan.
"A hunter-killer," she noted. Her eyes widened as they moved further down. "A hunter-killer with legal access to military hardware. Why are we looking at this?"
"She's on the station with her foster daughters," Sheridan noted. "See if you can learn a bit more about her. She struck me as a bit jumpy."
"All of those people are from what I here," Ivanova said. "But I'll put a request in. How deep do you want me to get in?"
"If she's just a veteran here with family, I'd rather not bother her," Sheridan cautioned. "Just...keep it casual. She asked if there was a civilian firing range."
"All right, shouldn't be too hard," Ivanova said. "Pretty soon, security is probably going to be taking their weapons to her for customization or maintenance. Shouldn't be hard to keep a casual watch on her."
"Okay, let's get this speech finished," he said.
As Sheridan walked into the command room, he turned to face the crew and opened his mouth to begin his speech with a story about visiting the Dalai Lama.
"Sorry, we have a priority request," a deck officer said, who immediately noted the flustered appearance of his new commanding officer.
"What's it relating to?" Sheridan asked.
"He won't say, sir," the deck officer said. "He's a minbari and he insists there is danger to the station. He wants to speak to you face to face, sir."
"All right," Sheridan said, deflating as his opportunity to give a speech was taken away. "I'll be right there."
*****
"His name is Kalain," the Minbari said, coolly. "He was the second-in-command on a cruiser. When his commander died, he took over. He is here now and I feel he is a danger to the safety of this station."
"What makes you think that he's a danger?" Sheridan asked.
"I have my reasons, otherwise I would not be here," the thin man said. "Arrange to have him picked up and I will arrange to have him returned to Minbar."
"You say he was second-in-command on a cruiser," Sheridan noted. "Which one?"
"I don't see how that is important," the Minbari noted curtly.
"Was it the Trigati?" Sheridan asked, unfazed.
With a clearly disgruntled look, the Minbari nodded.
"What's the Trigati?" Ivanova asked.
With a deep breath, the Minbari reluctantly went into an explanation of the end of the Earth-Minbari war and how the commander of the Trigati killed himself rather than surrender.
"Since then, the Trigati has been rogue," the man said.
"There's one thing I don't get," Sheridan said, standing up. "You said you worked in the Minbari government, with the Ministry of Culture?"
"That's right," was the response.
"Then how do you know a high-ranking member of the Warrior caste well enough to recognize him twelve years later?" Sheridan asked pointedly.
"I would answer your question," the Minbari said. "If I recognized your authority. Unlike your predecessor, my government wasn't consulted on your appointment."
"EarthGov felt the Minbari had too much influence on Babylon 5," Sheridan snapped. "Times change."
"The day a man such as you is assigned to a position of this importance is a dark day indeed," the Minbari said stepping forward, close into Sheridan's face. "We lost many of our best warriors on the Black Star. And many more to your assassin on Proxima 3. We do not forget such things. If there is a doom on this station, then you brought it here!"
Then the man stormed out of the room, without listening.
"You're right, they don't like me," Sheridan noted blandly to Ivanova.
"Well, the Blackstar was their flagship," Ivanova noted.
"That's what made it a good target," Sheridan agreed.
"What did happen with the Blackstar?" Ivanova asked in curiosity. "I heard it was some new manuever, but I never heard the details."
"There wasn't much to it," he said. "We couldn't lock on to their ships, some sort of stealth technology, so I got the idea of miningthe asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. A fusion bomb doesn't need a targeting lock to hit a target. They lost the Black Star and three of their cruisers before they got out."
He took a moment to think things through.
"I don't like what he said about an assassin, however," he said. "Sounds like our hunter-killer."
"Shall I make her something more than a casual priority then?" Ivanova asked.
"Yeah," Sheridan's eyes started to stare off for a moment. "But first, I think I know where Kalain might be."
*****
Despite Rally's unwillingness to explain just why they moved so much, as had already been noted, the girls were aware that there was a danger they were avoiding. Given that they had to avoid PsyCorps anyway, that was pretty obvious, though it seemed there was more than just that.
It was also obvious that Rally didn't believe they were being actively hunted, because they hadn't changed their names ever, though Rally had warned of the possibility two years ago.
One, among many, of the reasons that it was obvious they were trying to avoid attention, was what had become a Vincent family home Christening tradition: reviewing the exits and escape plans.
"Okay," Rally said, unfurling a plan layout of their new home's sector and level along with an overall blueprint. "Becky got these blueprints for us last year, and 'Auntie May' did a light recon for us on her vacation a couple months ago. There's a maintenance shaft behind...that wall."
She pointed toward the back of the quarters and the two girls looked in the direction toward the blank wall.
"We're going to make a door," she said and then turned to look toward a new piece of furniture, a tall set of shelves. "And fix that to it to keep it hidden."
"I'm doing the cutting, right?" Shanti asked, raising her hand.
"Right, Kitten," Rally said. "Vivi, you can tell if the tunnel is clear?"
"Sort of..." she said shrugging. "It's a place, not a thing. Everything is faded."
"Here or not here is fine, Vivi," Rally said encouragingly.
She traced her finger along the plans of the station, marking the maintenance shaft.
"There's a pass to the next level here," Rally said. "We're level 8. If we have to bug out, we want level 18. There's a public comm station there that's hidden behind a few squats and never used anymore. Becky's sent us her most recent contact info, that should be secure. She says the longest its taken for her to arrange passage out of here is five hours. She already has our emergency money set aside."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of tiny cylinders.
"We've got the same old phone cams," Rally said.
Vivian nodded, recognizing the items. An old friend of Rally's named Roy had had those rigged up with a signal that operated on an unused bandwidth and sent out scrambled image that anybody without one of their modified cells would take as mere background static. They shouldn't even have been a blip on most scans.
"So we'll have eyes on the corridors and lifts around us by end of the day," Rally continued. "And on the shaft as soon as we can get the back door made and hidden."
Rally looked up and moved her head between the two girls.
"Any questions?" she asked.
"Is there a school here?" Vivi asked. "I didn't see many kids around."
"There're a few kids," Rally said. "But not many of any one race, so...it's going to be a tutor, girls."
"What?" Vivi asked. "No school? It's bad enough I keep having to leave behind friends. You're saying there's going to be nobody here?"
"But, no school, just a tutor," Shanti said happily.
"If we're lucky," Rally said. "We're only going to be here a couple of years, then it's somewhere with a college."
"Why do we need college?" Shanti asked. "You didn't go to college."
"I apprenticed with my father," Rally said, in the weary tone of voice that said she'd explained this before. "That's equivalent really. And then I went to the military, so I spent just as much time and effort."
"Can't we apprentice to you then?" Shanti asked.
"Aren't we already?" Vivi asked.
"Yes, but do either of you want to make a career of either gunsmithing or this stuff?" Rally asked.
"Err, not really," Shanti said, blushing.
"Not my first choice," Vivi snorted as she unwrapped a stick of gum.
"College," their foster mother said firmly.
"College," both girls agreed.
"It'll be a correspondence course if we have to," Rally noted as she rolled up the plans and straightened up. "Well, anything you want to do before today, now that all the normal stuff is settled in?"
"How about some sodas for the fridge?" Vivi asked.
"Wasn't there an arcade in...Red Sector, I think?" Shanti asked.
"Can you play a game without burning it?" Vivi asked.
"I can," Shanti said, her cheerful expression turning into a pouting frown.
"Sounds good," Rally said, turning to eye Vivi and her tight t-shirt. "And then new
clothes."
"It's not any tighter than stuff I've seen you wear," Vivi muttered.
"When something shrinks in the laundry," Rally grumbled under her breath.
*****
Shanti leaned forward over the game machine, strafing and shooting as her holographic figure came across zombie after zombie and the occasional weird mutant creature. The sleeves of her blouse and jacket were rolled up and her feet were in a sturdy stance, impressive given the heels of her shoes, under her long skirt. The green fabric swayed one way or another as she continued her game.
The few kids in the small arcade had started to gather around her as she killed monster after monster and the game announced her streaks.
"Headshot, 30 kill streak, 40 kill streak, headshot, headshot, 41 kill streak," the computer was saying.
Vivian looked over at her twin sister and shook her head. Who was she kidding telling Rally she wasn't interested in doing this stuff all her life?
She was such a momma's girl.
The short-haired girl turned away from watching her sister and to the issue of shopping for some new clothes. They didn't have much selection, but that was nothing new. She'd picked up a few t-shirts and some new jeans, but just some comfortable stuff, nothing all that inspiring.
And then she saw it.
A jacket, just like the leather one Rally used on stakeouts or anything she thought might turn into a shooting event. It was black and sleek and tough looking. And it was just the right size. She narrowed her eyes and looked either direction before grabbing it and pointedly not looking at the price.
"100 killing streak, 121 killing streak," the computer continued. "Texas! Texas! Texas! Texas! Texas!"
Several people looked around in confusion as the voiceover that was supposed to be keeping score started just repeating the same word over and over again.
"Heh, I guess I broke it..." she said embarrassed before turning back to the game.
The computer was still repeating the word "Texas" anytime she did something comment worthy. Which, given she hadn't broken streak yet, was pretty much anytime she fired. It was a somewhat annoying thing, kill too much too fast and the game started yelling "Texas" at you, and no explanation for it. Shanti always wondered who'd programmed that in.
As she reached the end of the level, she sighed and wished that her real life shooting scores came even half-way as good as her virtual scores. While waiting for the game to load the next level, and ignoring the fact that the word "Texas" repeated over and over instead of the next story segment, she glanced over to where her sister was shopping.
Didn't she own any dresses? And she kept her hair so short. Really, it was silly how much of a momma's girl her twin was sometimes.
Rally was watching them from a cafe where a few packs of water and sports drinks stood next to a small selection soda three-liters as she watched her kids.
Shanti was, as usual, eagerly shooting things in the video game arcade. That was kind of worrisome. It seemed to Rally that the girl only ever took an interest in things that involved guns or war. As ever, she tried to think of a way to broaden the girl's interests and vigorously missed her Cobra, sitting in storage in a garage somewhere in Chicago.
Glancing over toward Vivi she grimaced a moment at Vivi's selections. The girl was getting old enough that she'd have to talk to her about how to dress appropriately as a woman. Maybe look into some teenagers' sports jackets and woman's business fashions. Something a bit more than just t-shirts, jeans and leather jackets.
She shook her head and wondered just why kids fixated on things like that.
Then the overhead security alarms started blaring.
"Red alert, red alert," came the call. "All station personel to battle stations. Residents report to nearest shelters."
Rally stood up and looked toward her girls as they turned to face her. She gestured sharply and they quickly finished their business to catch up to her. Looking toward the monitors, she watched the image of a Minbari cruiser hovering sinisterly in open space.
"What the hell is going on?" she wondered.
*****
Coming as it did during the middle of the business day, the Red Sector civilian alert shelter was more than a little cramped. The Vincent women worked their way through the crowd, Rally's eyes scanning carefully through the crowds.
The largest single group was human, but that was a plurality, with various alien races filling out the mass. Rally noted, with an obvious amount of distaste, a large number of Drazi loitering in one color. She avoided that part of the room quite clearly.
Eventually, she guided the girls to a small area in a corner with a good view of the door and most of the shelter area. A smattering of security guards wandered through the area, with most stationed at the now sealed door.
"Can I get a soda?" Shanti asked, eyeing the vending machine in a nearby corner of the room.
The drinks they had bought before the alert weren't really suited for drinking while sitting around.
"Get the both of us one as well?" Rally said, setting down what she was carrying and pointing toward Vivian and herself.
Shanti nodded and walked nimbly across the room, in between the other people, taking smooth gliding steps on her heels that had Rally arching an eyebrow.
"So, when did she learn to walk on heels like that?" Rally asked.
"Aunt May, last year," Vivi said.
"I thought so," Rally muttered. "What else did she teach the two of you?"
"She asked a lot about boyfriends," Vivian said. "Then she asked about girlfriends, something about 'making sure she had the right target in mind this time'. What'd she mean by that?"
Rally rolled her eyes, May couldn't seriously be trying to play her matchmaking games with Vivi and Shanti as well now.
"That woman is handful," Rally said.
"Barely," Vivian replied with a snort.
"And who taught you to..." Rally started to ask.
She was interrupted by the sound of a crash across the room that brought both to a standing position.
"Watch where you're going," a loud voice declared lifting out of the throat of a young and rather drunk looking Centauri.
Not far away a Narn stood, simmering in fury as he shook off the drink that had been spilled over him. People pushed away from the two, making it hard for the nearby security staff to get to the center of the trouble.
"How typical of the Centauri to flail about drunkenly and think it a show of authority," the Narn snapped. "If this is an example of your glory, we'll be pushing you out of your own homeworld before you realize it."
"Yes, we saw what you could do in quadrant 37," the Centauri said tauntingly. "So fearsome it takes invisible faeries to eliminate one of your outposts."
At about that time, the crowd moved and a girl in a green skirt was pushed unceremoniously out of the tightening crowd and stumbled back into the open circle as the Narn lunged outward.
Shanti was carrying three sodas and still recovering from being unwillingly shoved into the center of the problem. The Narn tried to stop himself as the girl came into the picture, but was already badly overcommitted. Shanti's own training helped minimize the impact and almost kept them both standing, until a heel snapped under and both toppled to the floor.
Vivian started to move forward as Rally pushed her back down and started shoving her way through the crowd.
"Stay here," she said, just short of a command for the teen.
She was closer than most of security, but she still had to get through the packed crowd. Still, she was in a position to notice the glint of a PPG casing in the Centauri drunkard's hand before he turned in a way that hid it from view.
Rally wasn't the only Vincent to see the weapon.
Shanti's eyes fixed on the weapon and a thrill of danger worked through her as she took in the gloating look on the Centauri's eyes. She was in the path of fire and Rally'd have her tanned if she ever fired on any target with anyone in the way like she was now, but the girl seriously doubted the Centauri had thought that through or cared to.
As the gun came shakily into line, it glowed brightly for a moment before erupting in the Centauri's hand in an apparent misfire. Then the gloating Centauri's posturing turned to agonized screams as the weapon seared his hand and set fire to the arm of his clothing terribly fast.
Flailing about, and the crowd falling away before him, the man moved to a wall to smash his enflamed arm against the wall in an attempt to put it out. Shanti staring fixedly at him as he moved, seemingly in shock.
A hand on the young girl's shoulder brought her attention away from the unfortunate man as security reached him.
The fire was out soon after.
"Are you all right, Kitten?" Rally asked, helping her up.
"I broke a heel," she said with a pout that earned a small, amused smile from Rally.
"I'm sorry, Miss..." the Narn said, struggling to his feet.
"Vincent," Rally said without looking around. "Next time don't be so quick to get in a fight. There's already enough of that going around."
The woman was busy dusting Shanti off and checking her over, though she spared a moment to nod at the monitors showing the Babylon 5 starfuries facing down against the Trigati's fighters.
A security officer made his way over to her and looked to the Narn a bit irritably before glancing to her.
"Is everything all right, Ma'am?" he asked as he reached down to pick up the sodas and hand them over to Shanti and Rally.
"Some wardrobe damage is all I think," Rally said. "Anything bruised, Shanti?"
"No, I rolled into the fall like you taught me," the girl said. "But....my shoe?"
"I think we'll be good," Rally said, ignoring her daughter for a moment.
"All right," the officer said, turning toward the Narn. "And you, get over here, right now! You moron, we're in a state of emergency here."
As Rally escorted Shanti back to where Vivi sat, the girl whispered up to her.
"Am I in trouble?" she asked.
"Talk about it later," Rally said.
*****
It was barely fifteen minutes later when the Trigati self-destructed and the alert came to an end.
Rally watched up at the monitor as the shelter started to thin out and shook her head. There was a far away look in her eyes as she considered old memories.
"We haven't heard the end of that," she said quietly.
The twins around her looked confused for a moment.
"I suppose you took that to be a sort of victory, human?" an incensed voice said to the side, drawing the attention of the two girls to the Minbari speaker.
"Nobody won anything here," Rally said grimmly.
She looked over to the Minbari, noted he was too young to have been in the war and cocked her head to the side wordlessly to her kids.
*****
It was later that night, with the girls getting in some exercise before bed, as Rally tested the reception of the mini-cams they'd hidden in the hallways during a clear moment, that a call came on the Stellar-Com monitor.
Putting up the camera, Rally reached up and accepted the incoming call. She wasn't all that surprised to see a woman with Lieutenant Commander's bars on the screen.
"Rally Vincent?" the woman asked professionally. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Ivanova."
"That's me," the woman said with a smile. "What can I do for you?"
"The Captain wanted me to make sure to tell you," the woman said with a friendly tone. "There isn't a civilian targetting range, but as a veteran we can give you access to security's."
"And family?" Rally asked, a bit cautious as the fact that she was a veteran came up.
"That shouldn't be a problem," Ivanova noted. "We'll just need to see about some paperwork. Oh, and welcome to Babylon 5. Hope you had a more or less decent first day."
"It was a bit full, I'll tell you that," the gunsmith said, shaking her head. "Hope it gets a bit quieter from here on."
Ivanova seemed like she wanted to say something, but forced it down.
"We all hope that," the Lieutenant Commander said.
**********************************
Made as my own example for what IÆve been calling the ôParents and Childrenö challenge on a couple of places, basically:
This is based on the Parents and Children thread which Kender and I worked on some years ago.
I have occasionally placed challenges on other sites for people to do their own versions.
The two versions Kender and I did were "Thieves and Ninjas" and "Wild Dragons" you can find both in the Threads List
http://addventure.bast-enterprises.de/threads.html
"Parents and Children - Thieves and Ninjas" becomes "Thieves and Ninjas" about 100-105 episodes total
"Parents and Children - Wild Dragons" becomes "Wild Dragons" about 100-105 episodes total
As to what I'd like to see here:
the parents can be from the same series or a crossover couple, it need not have been a happy coupling, but that is preferred. If unhappy, then the unhappiness is in the past and the parent with custody moved on with someone else or alone
the guardian has to be someone from the same series as one of the parents and it there must be some reason people wouldn't automatically think of looking for the children with them
at least one of the biological parents had a hand in raising the children. They may have had a spouse that was a step-parent. If there was a step-parent, then the other biological parent has had little to nothing to do with the kids.
both the characters (assuming there were either both biological parents, or the biological parent and the step parent) that were raising the children primarily are dead.
The parents were killed by murder.
If the setting is fantasy, colonial or medieval, then the murderers might be known but too powerful or influential to challenge openly.
If the setting is modern, then the murderers are either unknown (ie have gotten away with it) or else have gone into hiding.
Futuristic settings can be either depending on the density of civilization. Star Trek, for instance is more along the lines of a modern setting, so it would be more likely for murderers to be unknown. Star Wars is more like a fantasy where some powerful people can get away with such things.
Characters can either be raised with an eye toward avenging their parents or toward making sure they can keep themselves safe. Vengeance will be harder to get away with in modern times, however.
If the children were raised by only one biological parent and a step parent, then it is permissable to have their other biological parent be one of the murderers.
The original thread was limited to the Ranma 1/2 universe + potential crossovers. There is no such limit here, though most characters involved should be anime or anime based.
oh, it is permissable to move settings around if you wish, as you'll see in a moment when I post the idea I'm starting with
and please, comment away
IÆm hoping this challenges produces a number of interesting fics.
