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								Treason


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								Overview


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

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


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


								   Setting: Between [7]"Revelations" and [8]"The Geometry of Shadows"

								    Writer: Mark Moretti

								   Premise: J. Michael Straczynski

								 Penciller: Michael Netzer

								     Inker: Rob Leigh


								     _________________________________________________________________


								Synopsis


								   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.


								   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..."


								   Garibaldi, meanwhile, is in his quarters, showing Talia his

								   second-favorite thing in the universe (cf. episode [9]"Midnight on the

								   Firing Line.")


								   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.


								   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.


								   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.


								   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.


								   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.


								   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.


								   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.


								   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 _was._ 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."


								   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.


								   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.


								   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."


								Backplot


								     * Delenn is still a member of the Grey Council, even after her

								       transformation and her rejection of the Council leadership.

								     * 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.


								Unanswered Questions


								     * What will the Minbari do to Sinclair?

								     * What happened on the Chiyoda-Ku? Did Hall kill all the other

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

								     * Was the bogus package intended for someone other than Sinclair?

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

								       [10]Analysis)

								     * How did Colby intercept the security transmission about the

								       Chiyoda-Ku's arrival?

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


								Analysis


								     * This story seems to take place between the episodes

								       [11]"Revelations" and [12]"The Geometry of Shadows" 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.

								     * The placement of the package 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 _real_ assassination plot.

								     * 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.


								Notes


								jms speaks


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								      Last update: June 23, 1996


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