Chapter Text
Marcus had not been expecting him, and Stephen could honestly say the surprise was mutual. He'd found Marcus in a crummy dive bar - dank, sticky-tabled, and vaguely smelling like smoke - deep in conversation with someone scruffy who wasn't wearing shoes and from the looks of those cracked heels, hadn't worn shoes for the past two years.
It was Marcus' expression that had Stephen mostly taken aback. Ordinarily Marcus, in his experience, was this animated, silly guy. Of course, Stephen knew he wasn't always like that. When he'd approached Stephen about a friend of his who had disappeared, he'd been intense; when he mentioned how the Minbari had taught him, he was morose. Presently he was neither, but neither was he the absolute clown as during their trip to Mars. Marcus sat with his arms folded, one hand lifted to his chin, stroking his beard almost absently, lost in thought. From time to time he'd interject something short and witty. Stephen had never seen him like this.
Then something caught his attention and he flicked that laser-guided gaze upon Stephen: recognition at last. It was nearly shocking, like Marcus had caught him redhanded, or had been caught without a mask, and it sent a jolt like the cracking of ice underfoot through Stephen, settling uncomfortably in his belly. There was that intensity back again in those bright gray-green eyes.
There was something about him, Stephen decided. More than met the eye. A lot of the time Stephen got the impression Marcus wanted you to think he was a bother, or a buffoon, throwing you off the scent when there was something dangerous there. Something hidden. Something he didn't want you to see. What Stephen couldn't figure out - beyond whether Marcus showed you little facets of himself, or a fabrication of his own invention - was why he wanted to know. Was it a longing to be part of that danger, that excitement, that old disdain his dad had had for espionage as a trade rubbing him into rebellion? Or was it what he told himself: the desire to help Marcus out of his worse habits, once again that old, I can fix it, I know best, that doctor's hubris? Either way Marcus had always been something of a mystery. A friendly mystery, always at arm's length.
"We can pick this up later," Marcus said, loud enough for Stephen to overhear. The lurker nodded. He stood, drained Marcus' beer - although Marcus didn't seem much bothered - and shuffled away.
"Stephen!" said Marcus, sounding delighted. He brushed a speck of ash off the table. One of his previous clients must have been a smoker - Marcus himself had never done. "What brings you to, ah, this fine establishment?"
"Those are some words for it," said Stephen under his breath, as he sat. "Look, I didn't mean to interrupt -"
"Not to worry, we were about done anyway," said Marcus. He cracked a grin. "And what kind of honourable man would I be if I didn't make time for my husband." He gestured around, and there he was, Pagliacci restored. Nice try, thought Stephen, who'd seen behind it just a fraction, enough to catch the glint of something sharper. "I plan the best date nights, don't you find?"
"Man, you're never gonna let me live that one down, are you," said Stephen. But Marcus' grin was less clownish, more rogueish, and his eyes sparkled. He wasn't pushing the joke too far this time - he knew Stephen had actual business. Well, best get to it, before Stephen waste anymore of Marcus' valuable lurker time. "I was thinking -"
"Always dangerous," said Marcus.
"- of writing a paper on what we found on Captain Jack."
This had Marcus straightening in his seat. His grin fell, only a minute amount, but enough that Stephen saw. "That's very dangerous," he said, more soberly.
"I mean, it's dead now," said Stephen. So was Captain Jack, sadly. "I have a draft ready on my analysis - you can read it if you want - I just wanted to ask if you wanted credit."
Marcus narrowed his eyes. "On an academic article? I'm not the doctor."
"No, but you were there," he replied. Marcus said nothing, but watched him evenly. He had begun stroking his beard again.
Honestly, in the face of Marcus' scepticism, it all seemed silly now. "You know what, forget I asked," Stephen said. He laid his hands on the table to push himself up to go and immediately regretted it - the table was as disgusting as it looked. "Probably I'm over-thinking it. I guess you'll see it on starXiv. Or not, not really a big deal."
He turned to leave and made it a couple paces before Marcus had caught up to him. "No, hang on." Marcus reached out and grabbed Stephen by the arm with a firm grip to pull him back around.
It was a little anomalous, but then again Marcus always was a friendly-touchy sort. Out of reflex Stephen looked down at where Marcus had lain hands on him with what he hoped was just an innocent regard, but something must have given him away, because Marcus dropped his touch, suddenly bashful. "You're asking because you want something," Marcus said, "or because something's not quite right. Which is it?"
Sometimes Stephen wished Marcus were not so clever. Seemed unfair he could read Stephen so well.
Stephen sighed. He put his hands on his hips - forgetting about their stickiness and then immediately distracted again by it - thought about what he'd say, ran his tongue over his lips to stall for a little time and looked off into the distance, mulling it all over. Ultimately, he decided on, "I ... have a concern."
"A doctor's concerns are very concerning," Marcus said. It was a sort-of joke, but Marcus' expression showed he was only halfway in the mood for a laugh.
"I think if I publish this article, people are going to think I'm crazy," Stephen explained. "Look - you gotta see how it looks from an academic's perspective, from a xenobiologist's perspective. Sample size of one, was affecting a particular human individual, so it would be most relevant to human biologies. Seems like an alien race. I think it's a parasite. Well, that kind of news, Clark's regime'll spin it for days. But it's not clear if it's a biomachine, bioweapon, something unalive. It moved on its own, but automatons can too. Is it cybernetic? It didn't look it, it didn't seem to have any inorganic machine components." But then again, if Stephen had been better able to separate inorganic from organic, he might have anticipated what happened with the Ikarran war device his old friend had brought him and plunked in his lap. "It has what I think is DNA but it's a neutral form of it. We have some information from what Jack said about how it regrows, although we can only take his word for it. That makes it seem more organic. But then where's the race that spawned it? Where'd he pick it up from? We've already been through Jack's last known locations and all of them were in Earth Alliance spaces - but they were Earth Alliance spaces that had a lot of external, alien contacts. Which Clark's PR machine will pick up on. So not only is it barely scientifically viable, it's also going to be ripe for being politicised."
Marcus agreed with a tense nod; he could see the logic in it. "So why publish it at all?"
That was just the thing.
Stephen couldn't put his finger on it but it had disturbed him. He remembered Marcus saying how he hated parasites, talking about the Vindrizi. The Vindrizi were downright noble compared to this, and there was no way to quantify this thing gave me the creeps in a way he could fit into an academic medical report.
So he was doing the next best thing. "If I publish it, I might get some eyes on it. People who've seen this creature. People who've seen it used, or found it on corpses, or anything. If I put it out there, I might get their stories. And then it's not a sample size of one, anymore, is it?"
"Fair point. So why me?"
"If I put someone else there," said Stephen, "I look like there's some credence to it."
Marcus thought it through. "Not a bad solution," he decided, again stroking his beard with those long pale fingers of his. "You didn't ask me this about the Vindrizi."
"I didn't do this about the Vindrizi because I didn't write a paper about them," Stephen said. He didn't about the Ikarran war machine, either, and if he had he might have gotten clearer answers. But he'd been yoked silent by Earthforce who'd whisked the technology off immediately. "The truth is the Vindrizi have their own literature out there, if you know how to look for it. And once we'd met them, I did know how to look for it, and I found what I wanted. I'm not gonna tell the Vindrizi about themselves. This new species, though - there's nothing. And there's nothing like prompting things to come out of the woodwork like publishing."
Marcus nodded. "Still, I'm not a doctor. Why not share your notes with Dr Hobbs, or Dr Fernandez?"
"I can't sink their careers with something so ridiculous."
"Oh, but you'd sink your own?" Marcus reflected. "Certainly, it's honourable of you to fall on that sword, if a bit short-sighted -"
But something had popped into Stephen's mind. An idea. A good idea. A crazy idea. "That's it - that's actually perfect," he said, "Marcus, you're brilliant."
"I am?" Marcus straightened, preening. He saw Stephen's grin and returned it with one of his own, a little shyly, as he flushed pinkish under the low lights of the dive bar. "I am, of course. Glad you recognise it. Flattery will in fact get you everywhere."
"Thanks, Marcus," said Stephen.
"Ah, don't mention it," replied Marcus, as his grin faded into what almost seemed like genuine mirth, nearly shy. "Just glad to help, really."
"... not clear what life force is, so it's not clear what this device is using or generating to heal. The settings Dr Rosen uses are only documented for humans, and there's a variance in what's needed. For terminal illnesses, use the following settings: the green switch should be turned all the way right, blue dial on half, roughly eleven o'clock. For chronic conditions, you need the red. But I've done some research on my own about how to use it for aliens..."
-Notes on the "Alien Healing Device", S. Franklin
He polished the draft, stuck a name on it - two, in fact - and published it. It came back with a harsh review some weeks later and was rejected from that journal, recommended instead for a lesser-known academic publication, known for looser standards. Well, any port in a storm. Stephen tidied it, re-submitted it, went back and forth in review, it published, he thought no more about it.
In Stephen's defence, a lot happened in the interim.
Sheridan's contingent converged on Earth to take it back, Ivanova was promoted in light of her bravery against Clark's shadow-hybrid destroyers, and Marcus nearly died, because he was a self-sacrificing idiot. Stephen could only count himself lucky that it was obvious enough what he was preparing to do, and that enough people in Medlab insisted - with weapons - that Marcus back down and let someone else have a turn to heal Ivanova with the alien healing machine. Not that Marcus really listened to them, for he fought people off to insist on sitting vigil.
Stephen's White Star got there in time enough for him to take over. First for Susan - who wasn't entirely hale yet, but farther along on the mend than Marcus was. Marcus had given more than he needed to and was ailing. If Stephen hadn't been so quick - if the Medlab staff hadn't protested quite so much - if Marcus had been more willing to harm the nurses and doctors who tried to stop him - all these factors and more combined to result in Marcus clinging to life, but only barely, and without much attachment to it, seeing as how he was pushing all of what was left him down the tubes through the alien healing machine to Susan. Stephen hadn't had much choice; he separated them, unhooking Marcus from that damned machine, and put him in stasis for a month while he dealt with Susan's situation.
It turned out that a lot of people would give lifeforce for Commander Ivanova, but not a lot of people would give lifeforce for Marcus. Could be it was the timing: when tragedy strikes, people line up that day to help. But when you had a tragedy every week - and Babylon 5 had had her share of those, she'd certainly been active of late - then nobody paid attention to last month's victims. Empathy was a revolving door. It was human nature; it was alien nature too. Still, it struck Stephen as immensely sad. Marcus had some friends, in Downbelow. But none of them usually ventured outside Downbelow, and the device - and Marcus' cryostasis container - was in Medlab One.
It took another month to restabilise Marcus outside of stasis. It took a further four months off-and-on to heal him. Most of that time was the stasis process - the chamber had been kindly donated by the Minbari. Stephen told them they had their own - they'd used sleeper tubes for the telepaths who'd been experimented on with Shadow technology - but Lennier had insisted. He'd looked extremely upset about his involvement in the whole affair, which Stephen wondered might be one reason he'd skipped off to ranger training the moment he could.
Whenever Lennier returned through Babylon 5, he made an appointment - unfailingly - to visit Marcus. Still in Medlab One, still comatose. "You don't have to stay with him, you know," said Stephen, one afternoon.
"But I do," said Lennier softly. He looked down at Marcus. He could remain outside the stasis chamber more often now, and he was perhaps a couple weeks away from waking, provided Stephen could leech enough liveliness back into him. Lennier took him all in: the pale skin, the sunken eyes and dark shadows, the full beard that had grown in, unlike Marcus' usual care-taken grooming, the longer hair - it fell to mid-torso, now, and it had more than a few stray greys than Stephen remembered it having. The flat gurney. Lennier winced most at this last.
Stephen recognised the look on Lennier's face. "Wasn't your fault."
Lennier didn't seem to agree. "I could have... I could have lied." He looked balefully at Stephen. "I wasn't supposed to know of this device. After its use in 2258, it was confiscated by Babylon 5 security, at your orders. When you used it on Mister Garibaldi, you had done so privately."
That... that was a good point. Stephen narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, how did you find out about it?" he asked, mostly wondering aloud. Did he need to set better security protocols? Scratch that, probably nothing kept the Minbari out of privilege escalation, given that they half-funded the station.
"After Delenn's transformation," Lennier said, "I ... employed various methods to discover what might and might not help her. I found the machine and your notes about it then."
"You used it?
"No. I had intentions," he admitted. "The timing was such that she emerged naturally before I would have acted. To steal the device, use it, then have it replaced. But it is true that I knew of the device. And the knowledge was damning on its own, for when Marcus mentioned he would do anything to assist the Commander ... I did not lie well enough."
"Minbari don't lie," said Stephen.
"We do," said Lennier. "When we must. And we hide truth, a practice in which I particularly am expert. I did not hide it sufficiently from him. I ought to have. I ought to have remembered that Marcus seeks out situations that will allow him to sacrifice himself during the successful completion of a mission."
There it was - a clue. Lenner had spotted it. Not the clown, but behind the makeup. "I've noticed that too," Stephen mused. "Do you know why does he do that?"
But Lennier selected this time to be a better liar. "That is between him and the stars," he said. "He may have made mention of it during his ranger training, but no ranger will tell me whether he did. He might have elected to share that burden during the nafak'cha ceremony. But he did not sit it. So the truth is a mystery for the ages."
Lennier looked down at Marcus' sleeping face and murmured, "But I believe he keeps it because he likes it. It is a crutch to him." More softly, he added, "I recognise what he does, if not why."
He paused there, at Marcus' bedside, and looked down in some sudden embarrassment, some shared guilt.
"Well, thanks," said Stephen, "you've given me much to think about." He was about done with the machine for the day. Only a little bit, here and there. Week by week, he could give less and less. It was like struggling to pay the principal on a high-interest debt.
Lennier nodded, adjusted his uniform (already in-place), and turned to leave. A beat passed; he thought better of it and pointed to the machine, to where Marcus was hooked up to it. "May I ...?"
Stephen looked at him.
"It is not only Humans who may use it, if I understand it. You have configured it best for Human biology but you have also configured it for others. I believe the Drazi gave most willingly for the Commander."
Sure, that wasn't a problem. "Do you too seek out situations where you can sacrifice yourself during the successful completion of a mission?" Stephen asked.
Lennier sighed. "Marcus and I are of a pair, in a way," he replied. He undid the tightly-buttoned cuffs of his ranger uniform and unrolled the sleeve. On Lennier's forearm - which was still very thin, despite ranger training - there was a sly sneak of something bluish at the crook of the elbow. Stephen thought it a vein before he looked more closely. It was more like a tint on the skin. Some kind of skin colouration or birthmark. It was curiously shaped, a line, more or less straight, with some jagged fractal pattern at the edge, outlining it where it met the usual Minbari pallor.
He'd known Minbari could have freckles and moles. He'd seen these before on Minbari, although not Delenn; if she had had any of these marks, they faded sharply after her transition, and there was nothing left after the chrysalis device had peeled its ... whatever-it-was off her skin. It must have taken these marks with them. At the time he'd seen them, he'd been busy trying to save Minbari lives - seven of them, who had crashlanded in a bad way and needed urgent medical attention. Four of the Minbari had had something like this, and they had been mortified when Stephen asked about the blue marks. He'd written it off as a skin condition. But it was wider spread among Minbari than he'd thought.
Unlike the Minbari that Stephen had tried - and failed - to save, Lennier was unembarrassed. But neither did he say anything about it. Stephen didn't particularly want to stare or interrogate him, so he helped Lennier hook himself up to the machine and that was that.
Marcus woke a week after Lennier left. He was weak, and he couldn't stand yet without assistance. "Just give me a cane, then," he said, his voice gravelly with lack of use. "Or my pike."
"How 'bout I give you another two weeks bedrest," Stephen shot back. He pushed Marcus gently on the chest, more as a warning, but even that was enough to knock Marcus back in full.
"Oh, alright," he said, with a whuff of breath, and a put-upon expression. "I can't fight you on your own territory."
"You could, but you really shouldn't." Stephen gave him a wan smile as he scanned him once over. "Vitals are better," he decided. "That was a close call."
"Yeah," said Marcus, nonchalant, not meeting his gaze. No part of him felt jocular; the joker was D.O.A.
Stephen clicked off the scanner. "Want to explain yourself?"
Marcus glowered. "Not particularly. But have I got a choice? You always do love your blunt truths. Render men catatonic with them, you do." His eyes grew comically wide, though his tone withheld an edge of bitter sarcasm. "Ooh, actually, that's a good idea. Psychoanalyse me, knock me out again."
"Sure," said Stephen, "and have you wake up when my back is turned and zip out of here undetected. Hobbs remembers you. You've done that twice to her, now. You won't find me as inattentive, not where you're concerned."
"Why, Doctor," said Marcus, in a false warm tone, "have I got your undivided attention, then?" He batted his eyelashes.
Why are you like this, thought Stephen. He wasn't swayed. He recognised the tactic: humour to defuse a situation, and shut down any attempt to address a more serious topic. "Two hours' bedrest," he said sternly. "Then we'll try the cane. If it works, I'll discharge you. Early, I know, and I'd be happier keeping you -"
"You can keep me anytime you like," said Marcus, false-sweetly.
"- but I know you, and I know there's no use keeping you here when you won't stay." Stephen frowned. A simpering flirtation - yet another Marcus Clownism - seemed to be his latest tactic in trying to unsettle Stephen so he could worm his way out of Medlab early, and not have to admit any reasoning to why he'd done what he'd done. It made Stephen angrier, and he only had so much patience. "Look, just do me a favour and take it more or less easy. We all lost a lot trying to heal you."
This had Marcus surprised. Even a little offended. "Why'd you do something that daft?"
"Oh, I don't know," he snapped, "maybe people like you. You ever thought of that?" That shut Marcus up. He looked away, like a sullen child. "Too blunt a truth? Don't want to make Sir Galahad permanently quiet." He thought about Marcus' incessant speech; his theatricality, his buffoonery, his false flirtation ... well, maybe sometimes he'd like to stifle him. Just a little.
But Marcus was stolidly not looking his way.
Stephen settled instead for placing his hand on Marcus' upper arm. Marcus flinched, which was if nothing else a good sign his reflexes were alive.
"Marcus," Stephen said, as gently as he could. "There are people on this station who would be very sad if you did what you did again. Don't let them down."
Marcus' grumble was hardly a whisper, and about as feeble. "Fine, read me the riot act, why don't you."
As if Marcus were even in the state to listen to it. No, you told someone something when they were stubbornly not willing to listen to you, you were wasting your breath. More than learnt from his own father. "Well, I'm just saying," Stephen replied. He checked his watch. "Two hours, okay? Then, if you can stand, you can go."
Marcus, of course, was gone in thirty minutes. He didn't even make the bed.
"...which is early onset hyperspace syndrome: vertigo is common, recommend not having window access for this. The further inward to the ship you are, the better it is, and actually a higher gravity would be advisable; in the absence of this, consider strapping the patient to the gurney..."
-Notes on hyperspace syndrome, by S. Franklin
There was so much in the interim that it was perfectly understandable why Stephen had put the paper from his mind.
No one had sent him any word corroborating his experiences. There had been nothing, not even the kind of screwball letter from the conspiracy theorists. If there were other creatures like this, they weren't easily findable, or they weren't letting go of their prey. He'd wondered about that, too: a bolt of plasma from a PPG had barely knocked the critter off Captain Jack - it was skittering away when Marcus had kept shooting at it, clearly some level of unnatural life still inside. If Jack was right, it grew back even when it was removed from you. If anybody had such a beast on themselves, you wouldn't know. No, these things were hard to kill and hard to detect - perhaps by evolutionary design, perhaps by some guided principle. And they seemed to want to stay hidden at all costs. Stephen couldn't say he was surprised, only disappointed.
But in the meantime, Ambassador Mollari had a heart attack. Sheridan had a telepath problem. Lyta partially was the telepath problem. And what luck that Ivanova had made herself scarce by then, opting instead for captaincy on the Wilusa, which ostensibly ran weekly supply runs between Io station and Beta colony and in reality did... well, Stephen wasn't sure, but he doubted the Susan he knew would be part of something so mundane, even if she wanted to seem it. Lochley was partially inspiring, for Stephen. She had clearly had her own walkabout, her own come-to-Jesus moment, her own shadows and skeletons in the closet. All of this he could relate to, although he could not relate to what Garibaldi found, which was that Lochley considered that orders were orders and you had to follow them no matter what - that was simply the chain of command, and you had to obey. If Stephen'd felt the same way, the Minbari might have found themselves facing biological weapons from Earthforce.
Garibaldi was growing more and more distant by the day. Bester had returned recently, in the wake of the telepath problem, and Garibaldi had not taken it well. Matter of fact Garibaldi hadn't taken any of the telepath problem well, having narrowly escaped execution at their hands. The fact that Stephen couldn't find whatever-it-was that Bester claimed he'd left in Garibaldi's mind didn't help. Sorry, but this isn't a medical thing obviously hadn't cut it for Garibaldi as far as explanation went. Twice now they'd intended to meet up after dinner at Earhart's and twice Garibaldi had not shown, saying later he'd been busy with work and plumb forgot to get word to postpone.
Something was up with him. Probably he was mad about Stephen's failure to find Bester's trickery. But sometimes you just had to give people time. Sometimes you had to get right up in their face and tell them what was what, and Stephen thought he'd always been good at knowing which was which. But Marcus' words had stayed with him. You always do love your blunt truths, don't you, render men catatonic with them.
Stephen hadn't seen Marcus around in weeks. He must have touched a nerve. But rumour was that Marcus was off here and there and not even on the station but flitting back and forth between Minbar, setting things up for the ISA's eventual homecoming. So who could say? Maybe Marcus went where Delenn had sent him. Maybe Marcus asked for it the same way Susan did: to be away for Babylon 5 for a bit, and all its lingering spirits. Maybe Stephen had overstepped a line when he'd donated life force to nurse Marcus back to health. It had been pretty clear what Marcus wanted out of the situation he'd created for himself. Maybe he even thought Stephen had stolen that from him, and he was sore about it.
All this and more was of greater precedent, so when Sheridan asked him for a private meeting one evening, Stephen had truly no clue what it was about.
He wandered into Sheridan's office to find Marcus there, waiting, Sheridan nowhere to be found. "Hey," Stephen said. "You're back."
"Been back for awhile," said Marcus. He sounded chipper enough, and he met Stephen's eyes with minimal caginess. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"How've you been?"
"Fine," Marcus replied, "fine." Only now he lowered his eyes, a little furtively. "The, ah, rebuilding in Tuzanor's proceeding apace. Although the place looks a lot more worker than I remember it having done. They have more influence than they once did. Less need to cater to another caste's tastes."
"That's good," said Stephen.
"Mmm," said Marcus. "Not sure. So far they're only messing about with guidelines and zoning restrictions. But some of those restrictions were put there for a reason. Whether that reason's good or not is maybe moot."
"Think it'll offend the warrior caste?"
"Actually, I think it's more likely to offend the religious caste." Marcus relaxed back in his chair. Had he really been so much stiffer and on edge when Stephen had entered? "The warriors don't give two whits about Tuzanor. But it's a very religious city. How would you feel if what you thought was an overgrown union redesigned Jerusalem? And now the religious caste doesn't have the power to force the workers' hands. The warriors were always a bit salty about not having power - that was always their problem. Nothing's changed there. But the religious caste got used to being in charge, and now suddenly they're not. That'll stick in their craw."
"Surprised you'd say so," said Stephen, "given Delenn."
"Well, Delenn is Entil'Zha. Her background is religious, true, but ... she's had her warrior moments. And now the rangers have more than claimed her, rather harshly. And I think the religious caste is growing tired of her antics at long last. They seem happy to let her go. Let her belong to Minbar and not one caste, be the Ranger One she says she is. Dunno how she'll deal with that -"
"- She'll be fine," said Sheridan tersely, interrupting their conversation as he walked into his office, joining them at last. He glared at the two of them. "Sorry I'm late, gentlemen. And I don't have a lot of time, so I'll have to be brief, and we'll keep the gossip about my wife to a minimum, shall we?"
Marcus spread his hands, amiable, gesturing for Sheridan to carry on.
Sheridan took his seat. "We have a missing Minbari," he said. "And the circumstances of his disappearance are unorthodox. It seems he was on a trip to Babylon 5 to meet with contacts here, but his liner was waylaid and rerouted to Immolan V for a pit stop. It's a Centauri colony world, and safe enough. But when the liner left a day later, our man was not on it. Given the tourism of Immolan V, and given what we know of Minbari, we suspected he stopped by the famous temple of Gon to pay respects, visit, who knows what. And we're right about that, because he was sighted in the crowds around the temple. It even seems he made it inside. Him and ten thousand others in a slow, complicated procession. Takes about an hour to walk the tour."
"He went in, but never came out," realised Marcus.
Sheridan was grim. "Exactly. And that's where our trail goes cold. There's only one other clue, which is a handshake signal sent off from an outpost at the borders of Sector 130. That one signal managed to get to the jumpgate, where it embedded itself in the buffer pattern. A passing ship picked it up, and our rangers were able to track it down from there. Sector 130 is Centauri space, further inside it than Immolan V, and it's the last jumpgate you hit before you make it to Centauri Prime. We think that was his final destination."
"Clever," said Marcus. "That's a worker caste technique, to use that ping. But you said this man visited a temple?"
"We don't know what his business was for the temple," Sheridan said. "But the Minbari in question is Parshan of the eleventh advanced organics guild. And he is worker caste."
"I know that name," said Stephen. Incidentally, he'd read a paper or two by Parshan, although it was mangled pretty badly in the machine translation from Interlac. "Never met him, but I know of him. He's one of their leading xenobiological researchers." He turned to Marcus. "For what that's worth, for the isolationist Minbari. He's an unorthodox man. I take it the worker caste would really like him returned?"
"Actually, no," said Marcus, a bit sadly. "I know him too. He's not the most popular man on Minbar. You're right, he is unorthodox. In a time when a lot of Minbari - of all castes - feel that appropriate attention should be paid to Minbari and Minbari alone, he spends what they feel is an awful lot of time researching aliens. He's a ranger contact. We've been supporting him and his efforts for years, during a time when Minbar at large would not give him the time of day, much less support for his research. Minbar doesn't care about Parshan. I take it it's the rangers that want him back?"
Sheridan nodded. "Who took him, and what for, we have no clue. Evidence points to Centauri Prime, but no Centauri will speak to us on this matter - we've already run it by Londo, and he says he doesn't know a thing about it, and no one in the Centaurum knows what he's talking about."
"If Parshan were there, Londo would know about it, given that he's the Emperor," said Marcus. "They can't keep things from him."
"It might not be Centauri that are keeping him captive. Centauri Prime is a homeworld, after all, but there's a big enough underclass of Golians there, and they might do something like this for the ransom. In many ways, a homeworld is a great place to get lost in. But it might be Centauri after all. They might have captured a Minbari worker with xenobiological knowledge for some purpose - planetary security, maybe - and if that's the case, then even if we did ask Londo, he wouldn't say a thing until he had to. And we didn't force his hand on it, we just asked casually." Sheridan darkened, as his face grew grimmer still. "It's important we do nothing that would attract Londo's attention."
"You still think it has something to do with what Mister Garibaldi found on Zhabar in the Drazi Freehold," said Marcus.
"He did find that Centauri button there," said Stephen.
"That button could mean anything," said Marcus. "All he came back with was that. It could have been planted, it could have been dropped, it could have been palmed and stolen and traded like a trinket. Drazi aren't Llort but they do love a good shiny thing. There could be any number of reasons why that button was there. Indeed, it could be that whoever is behind this wanted it found! To finger the Centauri because after all, aren't they the weak link? Why, everyone was against them during the Shadow war. Now they must feel they need to prove themselves in the honour department."
"You don't trust Garibaldi's findings?"
"I think he didn't go far enough," Marcus said, not a little primly. "That whole mission was sloppily done. And I'm really not sure why."
"Well, we would have sent you on the Zhabar mission, as our resident qualified spook, but you were on Minbar," explained Sheridan. "And Garibaldi knew the contact. There was a personal connection there."
"And now the contact's dead, the pilot we wanted to interview is missing, and we have a single scrap of a clue that isn't really evidence," snapped Marcus.
"You have opinions against my head of covert intelligence, Mister Cole?" said Sheridan hotly.
"I do, matter of fact," retorted Marcus. He glowered. "But I'll keep them to myself."
"Yes, see that you do!" said Sheridan. "In any case, this is two weird things happening about or on Centauri Prime. We can't ignore it, and Minbar is mad, even if they won't be vocal about it. It'll appease them if the ISA can solve this mystery, and we'd like them appeased, because we're going to be living there. So we're sending a ranger to extract Parshan."
"Great," said Marcus. He set his hands on his thighs and made to stand. "So when do we leave?"
"I didn't dismiss you yet," said Sheridan. "The problem is... we can't send a ranger without Londo getting involved. ISA codes require that we run these things by him. So we're sending a ranger without sending a ranger." He sighed. "There's a xenobiological conference coming up on Centauri Prime. Very secret, invite-only. None of us have an invite to it. Except for Daniel Lane."
Silence in the room.
Who was Daniel Lane, again? Stephen racked his mind, flipping through the mental rolodex of his coworkers. Nurse in Medlab Seven? No, that was Damian Larkin...
"Dr Daniel Lane has one and only one paper to his name," supplied Sheridan. "A short and frankly bizarre text that was submitted in last year's second-quarter edition of Exogenomics and Proteomics. The co-author on that paper is a Jim Fennerman." He eyed them both, a paternally unimpressed gaze travelling from Marcus to Stephen and back again. "Want to explain why you didn't publish under your own names, gentlemen?"
Oh, right, thought Stephen. That.
Now Marcus was looking at him too. "That paper you asked me about," he said. "I thought - you said you wanted an extra name. I thought you meant -"
"I didn't want it on my record," said Stephen. "I'd look like a nutjob, it would've impacted my career. And Daniel Lane doesn't know Marcus Cole, but, well, he does know Jim Fennerman -"
"Yes, biblically," retorted Marcus.
"I guess it was the right move if you were thinking about your career," said Sheridan, "I don't know how Earth Alliance xenobiology experts would have considered you for Benjamin Kyle's replacement otherwise. I asked his advice on it, he says the paper is really out-there."
"What?" Marcus straightened. He looked between Sheridan and Stephen in shock and dismay, evidently expecting one of them to yell sike. "Replace- you're leaving? You're heading back to Earth?" Marcus sounded alarmed, even taken aback.
"And you didn't even tell your co-author," Sheridan said. It was a joke, but even Sheridan knew it fell flat. He had that regretful look on his face like he'd just realised he'd told someone they were the last to know a thing.
"I didn't exactly make a secret of it," Stephen muttered. "Maybe you would've known if you hadn't been gone."
Marcus spluttered, "Now, that's not fair - I've been busy, and it's for work -!"
"Gentlemen!" Sheridan held up his hands. He sighed. "Well, it's good to know your covers from Mars check out. Obviously you two can still pretend to be a married couple, given that you bicker like one."
Warmth crept up the sides of Stephen's neck. "He started it," said Marcus petulantly, "he always does, and that's why I've been sleeping on the couch."
"Is the couch Minbar," Stephen retorted.
"Mother always said you'd break my heart," Marcus wailed, folding his arms and looking to the heavens.
"Gentlemen!" Sheridan groaned. "As first author, it was Daniel who got the actual invitation, so he's going to Centauri Prime. That's how we get in. But because we need a ranger incognito there, his husband Jim Fennerman will be accompanying him. Luckily the Centauri don't seem to mind a spousal plus one. Marcus - you'll need to keep your ranger gear with you, but keep it hidden from possible Centauri bag inspection. We don't want to alert anybody on the Centauri side who's watching for ISA interference, who might alert Londo."
"So we're going so Marcus can track down a Minbari," said Stephen. "And all I have to do is go and enjoy a conference?"
"You do what you do best," offered Sheridan. "Be a medical researcher and keep a low profile. Marcus will be the one with the more challenging job here."
"As always, pulling my unfair share of the labour in our relationship, I see, emotional or otherwise," sniffed Marcus primly.
"Oh, I think a certain alien healing device tells me otherwise," Stephen snapped.
Marcus flinched. He paled somewhat, shrinking back into his seat. "It was a joke, Stephen," he said, clearly stung. "It was only ever a joke."
Stephen gaped, incredulous. How? How was it always possible to cross the line with Marcus even though he was always joking with a galaxy's worth of levity and got away with it every time, but the moment you clapped back he made you feel like you'd gone too far? How dare - how dare what, how dare you make the clown himself try to laugh?
And now Sheridan looked at them both like he wondered if they'd have difficulty. Great. "Can I at least bring a weapon," Stephen begged him.
Sheridan shook his head. "No, the Centauri would definitely pick that up. And I don't think Dr Lane is the type to carry a gun." He sighed. "And they'll probably be watching you, so you two will have to find another way to get around and get what you need that doesn't involve weapons. But figure it out fast. Your ship leaves tonight, and I have another meeting in two minutes with an important Abbai merchant guild, so you both leave this office now."