Devastating powers of the mind

“Tell us your mission!”, the Narn captain demanded as he slapped Varas across the face.
She looked up, blood dripping from her nose, but did not speak.
“Tell us what you are doing here or we will have your bone!”, he yelled, but this time kneed her in the stomach.

Varas jerked forward, coughing up some slime, but swallowed her pain soon afterwards.
“I told you, I am a Minbari emissary sent to your world to check on the situation”, she insisted.
“She lies!”, a Drazi voice spoke from the corner. “She is a spy! One of the Minbari spies sent to convey your information to the Centauri! We Drazi have seen this before, do not trust the Minbari!”
“Well, what can you say to argue with that, emissary?”, the captain threatened.

Varas was out of options. She was chained to the wall, exhausted and had no idea if her distress call had reached Renati or not.
It had been four days since she sent it, still no word. Perhaps it never got through.

She should never have been in this situation in the first place. For once, it was her own overconfidence that had gotten her in trouble, not Renati’s.
She would never hear the end of it if she ever got to tell her tale to her friend.

She had travelled down to the planet incognito, hidden from the public under her cape. On dusty Narn, this wasn’t a rare practice.
Her search for Za’ha’Dum had lead her to one of the old libraries that housed the original scriptures of G’Quan, one of the Narn’s most important prophets. Her break-in to the facility had been most successful, the retrieval of information as well. It was at the escape that things started to go wrong.

From being startled by an unexpected animal to falling through one of the decorated glass windows – one storey down – Varas’ adventure took a turn for the worse.
Soon she was tailed by police and what not, until one clever tinker cornered her and knocked her senseless.

The next thing she knew, she was in this scruffy, dusty cave – for all she could tell it was a cave – being questioned over and over again by several Narn officers. They had now resorted to military forces, which indicated the escalation of the situation.

Why the Drazi creature had joined in was another mystery. The Narn could throw well enough punches of their own, they had no need for Drazi muscle.

With any luck, the Minbari government would find out before they had a chance to finish her off, but she didn’t count on it.
If Renati hadn’t found her yet, chances were grim anyone else would.

Her head felt woozy as another blow came, this time from the Drazi. “Admit to him your guilt!”, he bellowed.

Varas looked up at the gazy door in the back of the room that suddenly opened

Several hours earlier:

When night had fallen, Renati had suggested to her companions that they investigate the mysterious door in the square. It was probably where the perputrators had disappeared into after the alledged sandstorm.
They crept out of the local bar they had been sheltering at and moved towards it.

There appeared to be no mechanism near to open it.One of the two Warriors sent by Naroon to accompany Renati, signalled for the others to step back and hit it with his blade.

A loud crack sounded through the empty market place.
“As I thought, wooden doors”, he commented as he retracted his hand and sword, and opened the door.

Renati and Kujar passed through the hole while Moran closed the opening he had made. They walked through the long corridor that lead downwards in what they soon identified as the catacombs of the Narn people.

They were infamous for their intricate web of tunnels connecting and interconnecting. No Narn had ever taken on the task of mapping the entire system, so even to them some parts were illusive.

Corridors split up into corridors, which split up into more corridors and pathways, which themselves split up again until either they came to a dead end or lead to a new path.
Not only was the place a complete maze, but it was rigged with traps. For the Thenta Makur these catacombs were the perfect hiding place because of their structure, nevertheless they could not risk the occasional visitor slipping through and discovering their secrets.

The first couple of trap were child’s play, but the deeper they ventured, the more professional the traps became.
Renati had taken the lead but was too busy skimming through the sandy floor for hidden traps that she didn’t notice the scanner to her right. In the blink of an eye she was grabbed by the shoulder by Moran.
“Don’t move”, he said and moved his hands to the wall to the left of her. There he removed a brick and took out a circular device.
He balanced it carefully, not to trigger the explosion. Renati watched in horror as his fingers played with the click-system the device had.

The click bomb was a favoured weapon of the Narn. Its hull was too thick to be taken apart to cut the wires like with a Human bomb, but in order for the owner to be able to reconfigure it, it comes with a click system. It was a scaled down version of a Centauri original.

In theory only the one who armed the bomb, and thus knows the code, can defuse it, but in practice anyone with excellent hearing – or a special device – could.
The buttons gave away a slightly different sound when one pushes the button halfway, indicating right or wrong, because of the movement of the mechanism. It’s a crude tool, but most of the times it works.

Moran did have superior hearing – superior to the Narn anyway, as every Minbari had – but he still needed to concentrate on his moves.

Click.
Click.
Cl- rotate – click.
Pok.

“Got it”
Moran appeared as if no nerve had struck him, completely oblivious to stress. He put the disarmed weapon in his backpack, for future use.
“Nusen’taal”, Renati said, nerve-struck.

Eventually, the three managed to make their way through and found a hatch atop of them. Kujar opened it silently and peered out for what lay above.
Apparently they had travelled quite some miles out of the city and were in the middle of an open field.
When he looked around he noticed something was off. The line of one of the hills didn’t match the others, the colour varied in a central spot, but it was easily missed. Kujar believed that most Narn eyes would never see the difference.
He signalled for his companions to join him but lay low.

When Renati was on the surface, she too noticed the irregularity in the mountains. She moved her hands across the ground consisting of a light grey sand. In order to blend in better with the sand, she took off her cloak and put it under her grey robe.
Pushing herself down as far as she could, she followed the others in the forward direction.

The desert patch was all but hospitable. Every now and then the Warriors froze, because the sand moved next to them.
They were not alone.

Out of no where, a small serpent like beast leapt up, aiming for Moran’s arm. With a quick reflex, the Warrior flicked open his arm guard blades, skewering the animal on it.
“What is that?”, Kujar looked disgusted.
“Our local welcome”, Renati informed them, “Desert eels, they call them. They swim in the sand like eels in water and attack anything going through their territory”
“Are they poisonous?”, Moran wondered, peeling the creature off the sharp crystal spikes.
“Not intentionally”
“Not intentionally? Since when to Anla’Shok sound like one of the Nine? Speak plainly Renati”, Kujar complained.
“What I mean is that they carry no poison as such, but when they sink their teeth in someone’s skin, they release some extra saliva that coagulates to harden their grip. We have had an Anla’Shok returned from Narn with a wound like that. It’s terribly infectious as we’re apparently allergic to a substance in it”, she gave them the full speech.

Moran now used only two fingers instead of his whole hand to reduce the chance of getting stung by any of the spikes on the creature’s body. Not that they were poisonous, but better safe than sorry.
“Don’t worry, our hela’mers have an antidote for it now. It shouldn’t be more than a minor infection that troubles you. Unless of course, you wait too long with the treatment”, the Anla’Shok tried reassuring the Warriors, but achieved the opposite.

“Let’s move on”, Kujar insisted when noticing a nearby patch of sand on the move again.
The others followed his example and thus the three crept their way to the mountains.

The mountains held a hidden entrance relatively easy to find for anyone looking for it. Trap-rigged of course, but then again they hadn’t expected any differently.

After getting in the secret compound, they found themselves in another long corridor. Unsure which way to go, Renati scouted the floor for signs of movement.

Three pairs of footsteps, two similar, one clearly different indicated they were possibly on the right track.
The Minbari followed it through different corridors, until all of a sudden it stopped. There were a lot of footsteps scrambled and lost in the sand. In the end, the two pairs had each gone their own way and the third pair was nowhere to be found.

“Great, how can we be sure we have been following the right set of footsteps”, Kujar spoke.
“Oh we’re correct alright”, Renati said, revealing Varas’ Anla’Shok pin she had uncovered from the sand.
“She must have placed it here for us to find it”, Moran spoke
“But where to now? The footsteps split up and it’s not clear to see which one carried her, assuming he did”, Kujar noticed.

Maybe I’m close enough now… Renati thought and called upon her gift.

It didn’t take her long to locate the mind of her friend, she was very close by – and in pain. “That way”, she motioned.
The Warriors had no reason to question her and followed her lead.

They followed the path until reaching a room with the door left ajar from which alien speech could be heard.
Kujar dug into his backpack and took out the grenade he had disarmed earlier. He put shiny crystal inside where the ammo used to be and blinked at the Anla’Shok.

Unnoticed, he threw it into the room which was illuminated just seconds later by the brightest most, whitest of lights Renati had ever seen.

Renati, Moran and Kujar moved in immediately and soft slashes as well as the occasional thump and crack finished off the blinded Narn captain.

Surprisingly, in the centre of the room stood a Drazi soldier, not a Narn.

Renati noticed Varas hanging in chains in the corner of the room. She swept him onto the floor and grabbed the Drazi by his neck. She squeezed it softly with her fingers and barked: “What is your business here?”

The Drazi, too scared or too stupid to answer, tried struggling with no avail. Kujar sighed and aided Renati by putting one of the Narn knives through the Drazi’s hand, literally pinning him to the ground.
The captive let out a horrible cry but would not speak.
“I will not ask you again”, she insisted. The look in his eyes told of terror and fear in every language, yet he did not give way.
“You will tell us and you will tell us now”, Kujar said as he slowly walked over to the other side of the Drazi’s body, grabbed his hand and jammed another Narn knife through it.
“You’re not going anywhere, so you might as well tell us and save us the trouble of massacring another of your kind. You brother or father perhaps?”, Kujar threatened. The Drazi panicked but had no where to go. He still refused to speak.

Renati was near desperation. This creature, this thing, had harmed her friend and now had the nerve not to speak? How disrespectful can one get?
There was no other option left now. If she wanted answers, she was going to have to get them herself.

With extreme focus, raped her way through his cold alien mind. It was cluttered and chaotic, but determination aided Renati in quickly discovering the information she required.
Of course, the Drazi put up some resistance here and there, but nothing she couldn’t handle. The Minbari wasn’t subtle in tearing down built-up barriers though, so to viewers from without it appeared as if the Drazi was going into some kind of seizure.

The images that flashed before her were as she had feared: this Drazi was involved in a plot against her own.
The objective was to capture Varas post al ultimatum to the Minbari government: her safe return in exchange for the Minbari’s word of secrecy of the biological weapons they had developed in order to destroy the Balosians.
Only a Drazi could believe such a plan could succeed without retaliation.

Nevertheless, he full heartedly held fast. He had been playing the Narn by fooling them into thinking Varas was a Centauri spy. Given her under cover act and break-in to one of their most sacred libraries, it wasn’t a hard to sell story.
How he would get the Narn to give the Minbari over to him, he hadn’t figured out yet, but Drazi didn’t exactly excel in planning ahead. Renati figured he would probably have forcibly taken her with him when it got too much.

When her own mind focused on force, she involuntarily triggered the Drazi’s violent memories. Flashes of torturing, mishandling and other atrocities appeared before her. These were not of himself, but by his own hand.
Renati didn’t care if this was just a brain-dead Drazi, she had never seen such expressions of pain on a Pak’Ma’Ra’s face and swore to Valen she would not allow it to happen to Varas.

The creature probably thought that by enough persuasion, he could get the Anla’Shok to do whatever it was he wanted her to do – or say. Of course, no Minbari could never be convinced into that by means of personal torture, but there was no reason for her to undergo needless suffering. This new vision the Shai Alyt had shown her suddenly made sense.

Renati couldn’t take it any longer. No more thoughts, no more suffering!
She had to get out, leave his mind and knock him senseless – or worse. This wretched hive of agonywas no place for her pristine Minbari being.
But the thoughts locked on, they kept coming! Now that she had released them, they dashed into her from every direction. They twirled around her and kept her trapped in a typhoon where every wave was a razor sharp swirl of things a Minbari mind could not process without consequence.

Anger. Suffering. Pain. Agony. Hatred. Molestation. Suffocation. Torture.
Murder...

“Let me out!”, her shrill voice screamed through his mind. The burst of energy she unleashed by the will to escape was so crude and uncontrolled, it randomly dispersed in any direction. The Drazi’s mind was not capable of taking this kind of damage.
His seizure increased, his body jerked up and down in a fast pace until finally Renati broke free.
A trail of blood and two trails of tears ran from his nose and eyes before his hard head hit the floor and the lifeless eyes stared out into nothingness.

Moran, Kujar and Varas, who had been released by the hands of Moran, looked at Renati in shock. Varas couldn’t believe her eyes.

What has she done??

Unleashed from her shackles, Varas rushed to her friend.
“Are you alright??”, she yelped and held her by the shoulders.
“Are you?”, Renati looked at her with slightly pink eyes and put her arms around her.
“I’m not hurt, I can walk”, Varas said with a trembling voice.
“We must get out of here before we attract more attention”, Moran noted, trying to divert attention from Renati.

Apparently it was not known that this Anla’Shok was a telepath. He always assumed telepaths were forbidden amongst the Anla’Shok.
Why? He didn’t know, but clearly the two Warriors weren’t the only ones that didn’t know about Renati’s gift.

Kujar had already sent the signal to the Tiris in orbit of the planet for a transport back.
They back tracked their path out of the mountains and ran to the centre of the field where the transport was waiting for them. Stealth was no longer an issue and the desert eels seemed to stay clear of four pairs of roaring feet.

Before boarding the ship, Renati turned around to face her friends and, carrying fear in her eyes , asked: “Do not speak of what happened”

No one debated or intended to do otherwise, though each had their reservations.

Never tick off a telepath , Kujar thought joyfully as he too boarded the escort back to space.

Later that night, Renati was visited by Shai Alyt Naroon.
“Enter”, she spoke.
“I just passed by to get a word on Varas’ situation”, he justified his presence.
“She’s doing well”, Renati replied.
“She’s in sick bay to make sure the Narns didn’t do anything odd to her, but I heard her complaining about the probes when I passed by earlier, so she’s fine”

The Shai Alyt chuckled.
“She’s a bit of an odd ball that one”, he spoke carefully.
“Oh you have no idea”, Renati giggled as she served the commander and herself some tea.
“She sleeps in her ship because she likes the boundary-less experience of space”, Renati related.
“Well, she has a point”, he tried understanding the obscure ways of the Religious Caste through a smile.

“Oh Shai Alyt, you should know of the things she pulls sometimes; actually we pull together as I’m not that much better”, she mumbled that last part more quietly.

“I would love to spend a quiet night with you hearing of your heroic adventures. I’m sure you two will manage to bring them across very vividly”, the honourable Warrior replied.
“Oh you have no idea”, they laughed together.
“But I will continue the tales of Varas and her pink fighter when she is present. Please do not tell her I gave you a preview”, she asked.
“You can trust in me Renati”, he promised, “but I need to know one thing”
“Yes?”
“Why pink?”
“Only Varas and Valen know”, Renati replied and the two Minbari burst out in laughter again.

Naroon stayed a little while longer, talking and laughing and enjoying the fresh crew member’s company, before heading off to bed.

The next morning, Varas came to Renati’s room and found her in meditation.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt”, she excused herself.
“No no, come on in”, Renati insisted. Varas entered and sat on the matte next to her, looking severely at her friend.

“How long have you been telepathic?”, she asked in disbelief.
“Ever since I can remember”, Renati admitted.

Varas seemed disappointed. It was not what she wanted to hear. She could not blame her friend for holding it back, but could not help feeling pushed back.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how...

If I would have revealed this, I would have been taken into the sanctuary of the Telepaths to be trained as one of them and would have been prohibited to continue my passion as Anla’Shok.

I haven’t told anyone Varas, even Akel does not know. Please don’t tell Akel!”, Renati outed realising what she had implied.

“I will not”, she assured her friend by placing a hand on hers, “I am just sad you didn’t tell me earlier.
I’ve had my suspicions of course, ever since I saw you fight for the first time. You fought that bully back at the academy, what was his name again… ”, she pondered.
“I can’t remember right now, but it doesn’t matter. I always wondered why he didn’t hit you back when he had the chance”

“Yes”, Renati smiled, “Being telepathic does have its advantages sometimes indeed. But not always”

She thought back of the few things in life that had happened involuntarily. Just because she thought about it.
She had influenced several lives without wanting to, but had only ended one because of it.

“I was scared to tell you because I didn’t know how you would react. It’s not allowed for us, yet here I am, trying to bend the rules as I always do”, Renati tried to catch some sympathy with a sheepish smile.
“I know, I understand. Forgive my ego”, Varas admitted and lifted her hand, fingers elongated and placed it on Renati’s chest.
“Thank you Varas”, Renati replied with the same motion. The females ritually bowed at one another, their hands locked on their hearts, until they were satisfied with this new knowledge.

“So.. what is it like?”, Varas asked, curious as ever.

Renati lit up inside. The moment Varas asks you more about something, she’s over it. You could have started a war against her species, if she asks you what tactics you used, she forgave you for your mistake. It will always remain your mistake though, but she is not one to rub things in.

“It’s hard. The problem is I can’t control it. Sometimes I get all the information and more than I want and other times nothing comes my way. Even other times I completely lose control, that’s most dangerous. I think it’s tied to my adrenaline”
“Is that what happened yesterday?”, Varas asked, unable to hide a slight hint of disgust.

“Varas, I went into his mind and I saw what he was going to do to you. He was going to use you as leverage for the Minbari to keep quiet about the secret biological weapons I have discovered on the Drazi home world”
“What weapons?”
“I’ll tell you about that later. The point is he was going to put you through so much pain Varas… and he would enjoy it.

I lost it, I couldn’t allow that to happen. I had to punish him for even thinking of hurting you. I didn’t mean to do it that way, but I will not excuse the fact that I ended his life. I had just planned on a more physical means of doing so, but his thoughts wouldn’t let me go. I was trapped in there...

I’m sorry it happened the way it did”
“You should have let Kujar cut his head off”, she joked and placed her hand on Renati’s shoulder.
“It’s ok. But you must learn to control it. Evil or not, that was not a pleasant way to die”, Varas insisted.
“I know…”, Renati admitted uncomfortably.

But how to control it without proper training?

After an uneasy silence Varas said: “At least it must be relieving to finally have someone to talk about it now. I’m sure that will aid you in controlling it better”
Renati smiled. “I’m sure”

“So what did you find on the Drazi home world?”
“Well-” Renati paused, “Let me show you”
Varas couldn’t hide the excitement on her face. She placed her hands in the palms of Renati’s outstretched hands and waited for the connection.
“Be still and do not block me”, Renati asked as she transferred the images of her mind to Varas’, showing her every aspect of her experience, down to the smallest detail.
Varas was captured with amazement on the intensity of experiencing another’s feelings and views.

Suddenly, a mission with the telepathically gifted Gaim didn’t seem as threatening as it had before.

The next chapter will be 'Aiding the Gaim'

Stay tuned!