To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Babylon 5 Page B

dashing lieutenant and flight instructor.
    He had literally taken her breath away on their first meeting, by executing a hairpin backward loop followed by a spinning barrel roll on her first instruction flight with him that had nearly blacked her out. She had accused him of being a dangerous show-off, although she had to admit to herself later that her anger had come more from embarrassment at almost losing it than at anything he had done. He told her she wasn’t tough enough to make it as a pilot and said she was treading very close to insubordination. It was, embarrassingly enough, love at first sight.
    What followed was war and separation and reunion and separation again, fifteen years of fighting with him, breaking up and getting back together, breaking up again and seeing other people. But always, always loving each other. As he put it, that just never went away, even if they sometimes didn’t know why.
    But they had spent far too much time apart during those years, and for what reason? Her job, his job, his stubbornness – her stubbornness. It didn’t make any sense to her now, and yet here she was again, many light-years away, orbiting a godforsaken planet, having left just two days after agreeing to marry him to carry out a five-month stint on the rim of explored space.
    The irony of the situation hadn’t been lost on either of them as one of their longest-running arguments had been that Jeff never allowed himself a real life, a personal life because of work and duty and honor and orders. That he was never off-duty and never would be and what kind of life could they have together if that were so?
    She tried only once to get him to quit and go into business with her, but he had refused, and the resulting argument had ended in yet another one of their breakups.
    She had found it particularly difficult to understand his devotion to Earthforce service since it had treated him so badly after the war. He had been the fighter pilot with the greatest number of craft-to-craft combat victories, one of the heroes of the Battle of the Line who saw virtually all of his friends and comrades killed – and had emerged from the experience so emotionally scarred she had barely recognized him the first time she saw him after the war. But in spite of his heroism, he had been treated with suspicion and harassment by his superiors, shunted aside when he refused to resign, and then assigned to the worst postings.
    But now he was commander of Babylon 5, so maybe his steadfast devotion to duty had finally paid off. On Babylon 5 he at last had been given a job that was both important and worthy of his abilities. It had helped him become a man more at ease with himself and his world. He laughed more easily now than he had in years. He no longer automatically tried so hard to keep others at a safe, emotional distance, a tendency he had developed after losing so many people dear to him both before and during the war (a trait not unknown to Sakai herself, as she knew he would be gently reminding her right about now). He had made some important new friends and deepened some old friendships. The true Jeffrey Sinclair had finally reemerged from the hard shell the war had put around him.
    The computer broke into her reverie. “Incoming transmission from Universal Terraform tachyon transmission channel four zero eight zero seven six.”
    “Receive and record. Oh, and restore the lights.”
    Sakai swam back to her seat and strapped in, eagerly watching the data log scroll by on the communications monitor: new planetary and jump gate coordinates, jump gate codes, updated mission instructions – but no personal transmissions.
    Oh, well, she thought. It had been a nice hope. There was always next time – four more months of “next times.” For now, it was time to get back to work.

C HAPTER 6
    MARCUS Cole checked his instrument readings, took another visual check through the murky atmosphere of Arisia 3, brought up the nose of his XO-Sphere