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								<h2><a name="OV">Overview</a></h2>


								<blockquote><cite>

								Ambassador Sinclair arrives on Minbar, just in time to see a new Minbari

								leader sworn in... and a conspiracy plot unfold.

								</blockquote></cite>


								Issue 2 (February 1995, released January 3, 1995)


								<p>

								Setting: Between

								<a href="/lurk/guide/024.html">"Revelations"</a>

								and

								<a href="/lurk/guide/025.html">"The Geometry of Shadows"</a>


								<pre>    Writer: Mark Moretti

								   Premise: J. Michael Straczynski

								 Penciller: Michael Netzer

								     Inker: Rob Leigh</pre>


								<p>

								<hr>

								<p>


								<h2><a name="SY">Synopsis</a></h2>


								<p>

								In a docking bay on the station, an armed man in dockworker clothes loads

								a small package onto a Minbari flyer, which departs the station three

								hours later.


								<p>

								Three days later, Babylon 5 receives a distress call from a ship in Grid

								Epsilon.  Keffer takes Zeta Squad to respond.  In C&C, Ivanova arrives in

								time to see the final distress call, which turns out to be from the

								Starliner Chiyoda-Ku.  The person making the call is killed by an

								unseen person as Ivanova watches.  Ivanova begins calling up the registration

								and manifest of the Chiyoda-Ku.  "These are the times I wish Garibaldi

								was back on duty," she says, "but..."


								<p>

								Garibaldi, meanwhile, is in his quarters, showing Talia his second-favorite

								thing in the universe (cf. episode

								<a href="/lurk/guide/001.html">"Midnight on the Firing Line."</a>)


								<p>

								Parsecs away, the Minbari cruiser carrying Ambassador Sinclair stops to take

								on a transfer, arriving on the flyer from Babylon 5.  Racine, a Grey Council

								member, tells Sinclair that the period of mourning for Dukhat is over, that

								the Grey Council, which has ruled Minbar since Dukhat's death, is gathering

								on Minbar to install a new leader, and that the flyer is carrying a member

								of the Council who was away but has returned for the Shi-Ki, the installation

								ceremony.  Sinclair tries to talk to the newly arrived Satai, but is

								rebuffed by one of the Satai's guards, a member of the militant Star Rider

								caste.


								<p>

								Garibaldi and Talia are interrupted by a call from

								Sinclair, who apologizes for not being able to say goodbye.  He asks Garibaldi

								to forward his regards to Delenn, who he's glad isn't going to be at the

								ceremony.  "There's some kind of undercurrent running through the Minbari

								castes -- tension.  It seems dangerous with the Grey Council and the new

								leader all in one place."  Garibaldi tells Sinclair that Delenn has come

								out of her chrysalis, and is in fact on her way to Minbar.


								<p>

								Keffer's squad finds the Chiyoda-Ku, a top-notch starliner.  Flying close,

								they can see through the windows: dead bodies, bleeding, floating in the air

								inside the zero-G passenger areas.  Ivanova tells Keffer to attach tow

								cables to the ship and bring her back to the station.  As Keffer and his

								squad tow the ship back, Ivanova finally finds the ship listed in a

								registry... and the file is classified.  She tells Dr. Franklin to meet

								her in the docking bay, and tells the C&C staff to keep everything under

								wraps.


								<p>

								Elsewhere on the station, the man who loaded the package onto the Minbari

								flyer, Jason Colby (apparently a Homeguard sympathizer) manages to bypass

								the station's computer security and finds out that the Chiyoda-Ku is being

								brought aboard.  He quickly changes into a station security uniform.


								<p>

								The bodies are counted -- twenty-five aboard, all but one dead, some

								with PPG wounds, and none with any identification.  The ship's life support

								didn't malfunction; it was turned off.  One of the security men says he's

								seen the Chiyoda-Ku somewhere before, but can't place it.  As the survivor

								is taken away, Colby watches.


								<p>

								Franklin stabilizes the survivor; Ivanova has him placed under guard.

								Later that night, Colby enters Medlab and discovers the survivor, conscious.

								Colby tries to kill the man, but is hit by a powerful mental force.  The

								survivor stumbles out of Medlab, taking the dead guard's gun on the way out.

								Colby recovers shortly thereafter and goes looking for the man.


								<p>

								Ivanova discovers that the Chiyoda-Ku was confiscated by Earth Force in an

								arms-smuggling bust two years earlier.  Just then, Franklin calls in from

								Medlab, reporting the escape of his patient and the death of the guard.

								Ivanova issues a lookout for the patient; he is to be taken alive if possible,

								but is armed and dangerous.


								<p>

								Sinclair stands near a large window of the Earth Alliance embassy in Yedor, the

								Minbari capital, and looks out over a gathering area in the midst

								of the crystalline city.  He is joined by Ambassador Delenn, whose

								new appearance shocks Sinclair.  She tells him he didn't see her in time,

								that it's too late now.  Of her transformation, she says,  "I reached

								a time when I could go no further... as I <em>was.</em>  I cannot explain

								more yet.  I am the first of my kind ever to... become this.  I am now only

								half-Minbari.  I am also half-human."


								<p>

								The search for the escaped patient is going poorly.  Ivanova is coordinating

								search teams when Talia calls and says the man everyone's looking for is

								in her quarters.  Ivanova tells all the search teams to converge on Talia's

								quarters... an order Colby hears, too.


								<p>

								When Ivanova and her men burst in, Talia says the man's name is Dexter Hall,

								that he's a psi-cop, and that he didn't kill the guard.  He came to her

								because she was a fellow Psi-Corps member.  He had been working undercover,

								infiltrating a pro-Earth group on the Chiyoda-Ku who blamed Santiago's

								death on alien groups.  He found out the group was supplying weapons for

								an assassination of a head of state: the new Minbari leader.


								<p>

								Delenn and Sinclair are talking when Kozorr, military caste, barges into

								the room, two subordinates pushing a pile of boxes of Sinclair's belongings

								from Babylon 5.  Kozorr opens one of the boxes, revealing an Earth-made

								rifle, along with a map of the new leader's coronation route -- with a

								marker drawn at the point when the leader will pass closest to Sinclair's

								window.  He places Sinclair under arrest for conspiring to assassinate

								the new leader.  "When you are convicted," Kozorr continues, "be assured

								we will declare war against Earth for your treason."


								<H2><A NAME="BP">Backplot</A></H2>

								<ul>


								   <li> Delenn is still a member of the Grey Council, even after her

									transformation and her rejection of the Council leadership.


								   <li> The Grey Council has been in charge of the Minbari government

									since the death of Dukhat, but that will no longer be the case

									once the new leader is installed.


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="UQ">Unanswered Questions</A></H2>

								<ul>


								   <li> What will the Minbari do to Sinclair?


								   <li> What happened on the Chiyoda-Ku?  Did Hall kill all the other

									people on the ship, such as the person placing the distress call?


								   <li> Was the bogus package intended for someone other than Sinclair?

									Was it supposed to be discovered to implicate him?  (See

									<a href="#AN.package">Analysis</a>)


								   <li> How did Colby intercept the security transmission about the

									Chiyoda-Ku's arrival?


								   <li> Who is Colby's "boss," the one who told him to plant the package?


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="AN">Analysis</A></H2>

								<ul>


								   <li> This story seems to take place between the episodes

									<a href="/lurk/guide/024.html">"Revelations"</a>

									and

									<a href="/lurk/guide/025.html">"The Geometry of Shadows"</a>

									since it features Delenn post-chrysalis, but Ivanova is still

									referred to as Lieutenant Commander.  That makes it unlikely

									that Garibaldi's aide is Colby's contact on the station.


								   <li> <a name="AN.package">The placement of the package</a> is odd.  If it

									was intended to frame

									Sinclair, then Hall was wrong about there being an assassination

									attempt against the new Minbari leader (or there are even more

									weapons, as yet undiscovered by the Minbari.)  So perhaps it was

									supposed to be intercepted by someone else at the Earth Alliance

									embassy before Sinclair ever saw it, and the Minbari have

									unwittingly foiled a <em>real</em> assassination plot.


								   <li> The Homeguard is apparently unaware of the real plot to kill

									Santiago, if they assumed it was the work of aliens.  Or, perhaps,

									they know something that hasn't been discovered by the Babylon 5

									crew yet.


								</ul>


								<H2><A NAME="NO">Notes</A></H2>


								<H2><A NAME="JMS">jms speaks</A></H2>


								<pre>


								</pre>