Categories > TV > Babylon 5 > Spirit Storm
Several months back I completed a two-part series crossover between Babylon 5 and a D&D campaign I ran once. It was originally posted at Fanfiction.net. Part One was entitled Aeon Ride and Part Two was entitled Elvenheart. I must have done something right because everyone who reviewed it seemed to really like it. A lot. Then something weird happened. Five chapters into another draft of the story, this time called "Spirit Storm", I dried up. So it has been sitting dormant for about three months now. One night I was chatting on AIM with scifimimi, and between us, we came up with ideas on how to actually make it better. She came up with a few other connections to the Buffy universe that I hadn't thought of before. The creative juices are now flowing again, and I say unto you, the time has come to take my characters and the ones that aren't mine on one last ride. I'll keep it going until the ideas run out.
Standard disclaimers apply, and no money will be made off of this project. No Techno-mages or Rangers were harmed in the making of this story.
Main universe is B5, with references to Buffy, and original D&D scenarios . Others might come up as need sees fit.
Dedicated to Scifimimi, fellow fanfic writer and critic, and AIM chat buddy.
In some other universe, it could have happened... like this.
SPIRIT STORM
by
Fastwalker
Chapter One: Giant Squids From Outer Space
"Can I help you find anything?" asked the pretty sales clerk. I looked around at all the cheap merchandise, what was left of it anyway. The gift shop was having a going out of business sale and all their inventory had been marked down by ninety percent. The crowds were thinning out as closing time drew near. I was too late. A few B5 baseball caps still hung on the rack, displays of action figures and rubber masks of all the diverse alien species that lived on the station were nearly cleaned out.
"I'm looking for something to decorate my quarters," I said. "Do you have any models of the station left?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said with a weak smile. "They're all gone."
"Thanks," I said. I walked out of the Babylon 5 Emporium and into the busy bruhaha of the Zocolo. I had thought of asking the sales clerk what she was doing after work, but something held me back. Maybe it was the way she smiled. It gave me the impression that once I got her alone, I'd find out that her face was made of rubber, and I'd peel it off to find a Pak-Mura hiding underneath. That huge head expanding after being pressed into nth space all day, and two tentacle-like appendages dripping down would be a bit too much for me. I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't mind having someone over for pizza and beer, but I don't share my carrion with anybody. But then, of course, she had to be human. Otherwise the stench would have given her away.
I nearly slammed into a real Pak-Mura as I exited stage left out of the Emporium, nearly gagging from the aforementioned stench. I guess it assumed I knew how to speak Pak-Mura, because it started laughing at whatever it thought I said.
A stiff drink sounded really good about now, so I elbowed through the milling throng toward the casino. All the alien races were represented here. Well, almost all of them. Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Vree, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Correllians, Wookies, shape-shifting reptilians from the lower astral plane of the Fourth Dimension, and some other race who's name eludes me, but the only way I can describe them is as a super intelligent shade of blue. Four Starfleet officers from Star Trek The Original Series and one of those wrinkly-faced long-haired aliens from Down Below sat around a poker table. One of the officers wore a red shirt, and I thought, "You're gonna die, dude."
Sure enough, the wrinkly-faced long-haired alien from Down Below threw his cards down, pointed at the red shirt and said "Hey! You're cheating!"
The red shirt's protests to the contrary did no good as the wrinkly-faced long-haired alien whipped out a PPG and fired three shots into the red shirt's chest, then himself vanished in a poof of green smoke. The remaining three Starfleet officers and everyone else just stood around, looked stupid for a few seconds, and went back to their card game while two med-lab orderlies came and stretchered the body away.
I elbowed my way to the bar. "Never a dull moment around here, eh Kat?" Kat the bartender polished a glass mug as she said, "The usual, Danny?"
"Naw, I thought I'd go with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster this time."
"Sorry, wrong universe."
"A Baltimore Zoo then."
"Haven't made one of those in three hundred years. Probably forgotten how."
"How 'bout a Dos Equis?"
"Sold the last one to a techno-mage a few months back. Still have forty cases on back order."
"Okay, I'll have the usual." The usual for me was a Jovian Sunspot. "Hey, wait a second. Did you say a techno-mage?"
Kat took the order, but it was Guynan from Star Trek the Next Generation who handed me the drink. A voice in my head said Don't say anything. Just go with it.
"Yeah, about five hundred of them came through on some kind of mass exodus a while back. Wouldn't say where they were going. Why?"
"Just curious. I knew a few techno-pagans back home." I stood at the bar sipping my drink and scanned the room, taking it all in as if for the first time. It seemed that way every time I came in here. There was always something new to see. There was only one problem. If I could just remember...
"Guynan, what's the secret of life?" I asked.
"Forty-two," she said, and vanished in a poof of green smoke.
I used to know the truth, I thought to myself, watching the green smoke dissipate.
"What is the last thing you remember, Danny?" I looked up from my drink and realized that in a momentary lapse of consciousness, I had gone from the bar to a table. Seated across from me with a glass of water in front of him was Bester. But he was talking with a Russian accent, like Chekov from Star Trek.
"A dream," I said, or thought. Sometimes I can't tell which. "Yeah, that's it. Just a dream."
"Perhaps," said Bester, an icy smile forming, "or a nightmare. Or worse yet, it could be quite real."
"Even if I did remember," said I, "why would I tell you? You could probe my brain and find out if you really wanted to."
Bester took a sip of water. "Maybe that is what you need to help you remember."
"Maybe, but not from you." I was thinking of Talia. Now there's someone I wouldn't mind submitting to for a deep scan. "Or, I might choose to not remember."
"Well," Bester said with a chuckle, "It's your choice. But you'll spend the rest of your life wondering." Glass in hand, he stood up, giving me that Psi Corps salute. "Be seeing you." He then vanished in a poof of green smoke.
I downed that Jovian Sunspot and ordered another. I downed it and ordered yet another. By the fifth one I figured there must be some secret ingredient that affects the synapses in the brain, because something just on the other side of that veil that divides conscious and subconscious started leaking through like a barely remembered dream. The first thing I remember was waking up in med lab. Beyond that...ah, the hell with it. I paid for my drinks, went back to my quarters, and downloaded a bunch of Marvin Martian cartoons. Nothing in the universe is more relaxing for me than to kick back in front of the monitor and watch some old cartoons. My favorite is the one where Bugs Bunny crawls up inside a rocket that happened to be parked directly over his rabbit hole, and shoots off into space.
Rocket...shooting off into space.
That's it! I remember!
The year was 2004 and my cousins and I were competing for the X-Prize, the 10 million dollar cash prize for the first private interest to launch a 3-man space vehicle into orbit, come back to earth, and then use the same vehicle within two weeks. After two years of designing, building scale models, experimenting, redesigning, rebuilding, we had a multi-stage prototype, called the Star Blazer One. On Friday, April 30, psyched up for a big Beltaine celebration over the weekend, I took her up for a solo test flight.
We couldn't have asked for a clearer day. At exactly 2:30 pm, with my favorite Rush CD cranking, Star Blazer One rode a column of fire, punching a hole in the sky. I jolted forward in the straps as the first stage jettisoned at 200,000 feet, slamming back into my seat as the second stage kicked in. With 60 miles being the minimum requirement, I had only 22 more miles to go, but was ready to go for 80. I rode the second stage until it flamed out, then cut it loose.
So this is what weightlessness feels like...Orienting my ship so I could get a good look at Earth, I felt a little like the Starchild at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I thought about everything that had been done in science fiction, especially the old pulp magazines of the 1930's and 40's that one of my great uncles established his writing career in. Back then, they thought mankind would be conquering the stars by the 70's. It was a big joke. In reality, we stopped going to the moon in the early 70's. Since then, the human race couldn't seem to get out of earth orbit. It all depended on who you talked to as to why that was the case. Conspiracy theorists were certain the Apollo astronauts found something up there. It also depended on who you talked to as to what that something was, whether it was aliens, alien ruins, ships that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, or a big sign that said "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
Speaking of which, a red light on my console started beeping. Something really big showed up on my radar. I flipped the ship around for a visual and screamed silently. A giant squid-looking thing with four appendages was heading right for me.
As my spacecraft got sucked into the Vorlon ship, all went black, then blue. I was in some kind of floatation tank. I was floating in this blue liquid, looking around at other floatation tanks holding a thousand life forms. Right in front of my tank stood these two naked Vorlons...meaning they were these amorphous beings of light outside of their encounter suits. One was wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses he had picked up at Wal Mart for $8, while the other held a Dos Equis beer in one hand and a Don Diego cigar in the other.
"Think he's had enough?" said the one in cheap sunglasses.
"No," said the other, who then took a big drag, coughed once, and blew smoke rings with what smoke didn't get wasted in the cough. "Let's run thetoga partyscenario one more time before we begin the final mind probe." He then took a swig from his beer. However, because he was made of light, the beer poured through him into a nice golden puddle on the floor.
The one in the cheap sunglasses looked down at the puddle, shook his head and said, "Amateur."
Standard disclaimers apply, and no money will be made off of this project. No Techno-mages or Rangers were harmed in the making of this story.
Main universe is B5, with references to Buffy, and original D&D scenarios . Others might come up as need sees fit.
Dedicated to Scifimimi, fellow fanfic writer and critic, and AIM chat buddy.
In some other universe, it could have happened... like this.
SPIRIT STORM
by
Fastwalker
Chapter One: Giant Squids From Outer Space
"Can I help you find anything?" asked the pretty sales clerk. I looked around at all the cheap merchandise, what was left of it anyway. The gift shop was having a going out of business sale and all their inventory had been marked down by ninety percent. The crowds were thinning out as closing time drew near. I was too late. A few B5 baseball caps still hung on the rack, displays of action figures and rubber masks of all the diverse alien species that lived on the station were nearly cleaned out.
"I'm looking for something to decorate my quarters," I said. "Do you have any models of the station left?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said with a weak smile. "They're all gone."
"Thanks," I said. I walked out of the Babylon 5 Emporium and into the busy bruhaha of the Zocolo. I had thought of asking the sales clerk what she was doing after work, but something held me back. Maybe it was the way she smiled. It gave me the impression that once I got her alone, I'd find out that her face was made of rubber, and I'd peel it off to find a Pak-Mura hiding underneath. That huge head expanding after being pressed into nth space all day, and two tentacle-like appendages dripping down would be a bit too much for me. I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't mind having someone over for pizza and beer, but I don't share my carrion with anybody. But then, of course, she had to be human. Otherwise the stench would have given her away.
I nearly slammed into a real Pak-Mura as I exited stage left out of the Emporium, nearly gagging from the aforementioned stench. I guess it assumed I knew how to speak Pak-Mura, because it started laughing at whatever it thought I said.
A stiff drink sounded really good about now, so I elbowed through the milling throng toward the casino. All the alien races were represented here. Well, almost all of them. Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Vree, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Correllians, Wookies, shape-shifting reptilians from the lower astral plane of the Fourth Dimension, and some other race who's name eludes me, but the only way I can describe them is as a super intelligent shade of blue. Four Starfleet officers from Star Trek The Original Series and one of those wrinkly-faced long-haired aliens from Down Below sat around a poker table. One of the officers wore a red shirt, and I thought, "You're gonna die, dude."
Sure enough, the wrinkly-faced long-haired alien from Down Below threw his cards down, pointed at the red shirt and said "Hey! You're cheating!"
The red shirt's protests to the contrary did no good as the wrinkly-faced long-haired alien whipped out a PPG and fired three shots into the red shirt's chest, then himself vanished in a poof of green smoke. The remaining three Starfleet officers and everyone else just stood around, looked stupid for a few seconds, and went back to their card game while two med-lab orderlies came and stretchered the body away.
I elbowed my way to the bar. "Never a dull moment around here, eh Kat?" Kat the bartender polished a glass mug as she said, "The usual, Danny?"
"Naw, I thought I'd go with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster this time."
"Sorry, wrong universe."
"A Baltimore Zoo then."
"Haven't made one of those in three hundred years. Probably forgotten how."
"How 'bout a Dos Equis?"
"Sold the last one to a techno-mage a few months back. Still have forty cases on back order."
"Okay, I'll have the usual." The usual for me was a Jovian Sunspot. "Hey, wait a second. Did you say a techno-mage?"
Kat took the order, but it was Guynan from Star Trek the Next Generation who handed me the drink. A voice in my head said Don't say anything. Just go with it.
"Yeah, about five hundred of them came through on some kind of mass exodus a while back. Wouldn't say where they were going. Why?"
"Just curious. I knew a few techno-pagans back home." I stood at the bar sipping my drink and scanned the room, taking it all in as if for the first time. It seemed that way every time I came in here. There was always something new to see. There was only one problem. If I could just remember...
"Guynan, what's the secret of life?" I asked.
"Forty-two," she said, and vanished in a poof of green smoke.
I used to know the truth, I thought to myself, watching the green smoke dissipate.
"What is the last thing you remember, Danny?" I looked up from my drink and realized that in a momentary lapse of consciousness, I had gone from the bar to a table. Seated across from me with a glass of water in front of him was Bester. But he was talking with a Russian accent, like Chekov from Star Trek.
"A dream," I said, or thought. Sometimes I can't tell which. "Yeah, that's it. Just a dream."
"Perhaps," said Bester, an icy smile forming, "or a nightmare. Or worse yet, it could be quite real."
"Even if I did remember," said I, "why would I tell you? You could probe my brain and find out if you really wanted to."
Bester took a sip of water. "Maybe that is what you need to help you remember."
"Maybe, but not from you." I was thinking of Talia. Now there's someone I wouldn't mind submitting to for a deep scan. "Or, I might choose to not remember."
"Well," Bester said with a chuckle, "It's your choice. But you'll spend the rest of your life wondering." Glass in hand, he stood up, giving me that Psi Corps salute. "Be seeing you." He then vanished in a poof of green smoke.
I downed that Jovian Sunspot and ordered another. I downed it and ordered yet another. By the fifth one I figured there must be some secret ingredient that affects the synapses in the brain, because something just on the other side of that veil that divides conscious and subconscious started leaking through like a barely remembered dream. The first thing I remember was waking up in med lab. Beyond that...ah, the hell with it. I paid for my drinks, went back to my quarters, and downloaded a bunch of Marvin Martian cartoons. Nothing in the universe is more relaxing for me than to kick back in front of the monitor and watch some old cartoons. My favorite is the one where Bugs Bunny crawls up inside a rocket that happened to be parked directly over his rabbit hole, and shoots off into space.
Rocket...shooting off into space.
That's it! I remember!
The year was 2004 and my cousins and I were competing for the X-Prize, the 10 million dollar cash prize for the first private interest to launch a 3-man space vehicle into orbit, come back to earth, and then use the same vehicle within two weeks. After two years of designing, building scale models, experimenting, redesigning, rebuilding, we had a multi-stage prototype, called the Star Blazer One. On Friday, April 30, psyched up for a big Beltaine celebration over the weekend, I took her up for a solo test flight.
We couldn't have asked for a clearer day. At exactly 2:30 pm, with my favorite Rush CD cranking, Star Blazer One rode a column of fire, punching a hole in the sky. I jolted forward in the straps as the first stage jettisoned at 200,000 feet, slamming back into my seat as the second stage kicked in. With 60 miles being the minimum requirement, I had only 22 more miles to go, but was ready to go for 80. I rode the second stage until it flamed out, then cut it loose.
So this is what weightlessness feels like...Orienting my ship so I could get a good look at Earth, I felt a little like the Starchild at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I thought about everything that had been done in science fiction, especially the old pulp magazines of the 1930's and 40's that one of my great uncles established his writing career in. Back then, they thought mankind would be conquering the stars by the 70's. It was a big joke. In reality, we stopped going to the moon in the early 70's. Since then, the human race couldn't seem to get out of earth orbit. It all depended on who you talked to as to why that was the case. Conspiracy theorists were certain the Apollo astronauts found something up there. It also depended on who you talked to as to what that something was, whether it was aliens, alien ruins, ships that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, or a big sign that said "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
Speaking of which, a red light on my console started beeping. Something really big showed up on my radar. I flipped the ship around for a visual and screamed silently. A giant squid-looking thing with four appendages was heading right for me.
As my spacecraft got sucked into the Vorlon ship, all went black, then blue. I was in some kind of floatation tank. I was floating in this blue liquid, looking around at other floatation tanks holding a thousand life forms. Right in front of my tank stood these two naked Vorlons...meaning they were these amorphous beings of light outside of their encounter suits. One was wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses he had picked up at Wal Mart for $8, while the other held a Dos Equis beer in one hand and a Don Diego cigar in the other.
"Think he's had enough?" said the one in cheap sunglasses.
"No," said the other, who then took a big drag, coughed once, and blew smoke rings with what smoke didn't get wasted in the cough. "Let's run thetoga partyscenario one more time before we begin the final mind probe." He then took a swig from his beer. However, because he was made of light, the beer poured through him into a nice golden puddle on the floor.
The one in the cheap sunglasses looked down at the puddle, shook his head and said, "Amateur."
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