Read Invoking Darkness for Free Online Page A

to recruit them to the alliance. Galen had seen John give this speech before, though each time he delivered it with power and conviction. The nine were telepaths, critical to fighting the Shadows.
    Galen believed John's effort doomed to failure, the alliance's technology vastly inferior to the Shadows'. Yet John had already accomplished two things Galen would never have thought possible. Although history showed that the Vorlons and the Shadows were ancient enemies, no record existed of any direct confrontation between them. A few months ago, however, John had managed to convince the Vorlon ambassador, Kosh, that he must intercede in the war.
    The result was a major defeat of the Shadows. In short order, the Shadows had retaliated with Kosh's murder. With him had probably gone any hope of future help by the Vorlons. They had the power to stop the Shadows, but they would not use it. John, though, had discovered another weapon: telepaths. They could disrupt the connection between a Shadow ship and the living being that served as its central processing unit. If the telepath was strong enough, the ship could be immobilized.
    The Shadows had taken steps to decrease this vulnerability, as John had learned. He had intercepted a freighter on its way to the rim, carrying telepaths in sleeper tubes, just as G'Leel's freighter the Khatkhata had been. The sleepers were to be wired into Shadow ships, where they might repel any telepathic attack. Whichever side had the most powerful telepaths would win. John finished his speech and stood silently. One by one, the telepaths agreed to join his alliance. Thus far, John had not been able to confront the Shadows with his new weapon in a major battle, for he never knew where they would strike.
    The Shadows' recent hit-and-run attacks were scattered over a large volume of space, their specific locations impossible to predict. After the last raid, however, Galen's repeated analyses had at last revealed an underlying pattern. The seemingly chaotic attacks were not chaotic at all. Their locations defined a rough shell around a sector of space into which refugees were frantically fleeing. As for why the Shadows might pursue such a plan, it had taken Galen only a moment to understand.
    The Shadows knew that despair led people to chaos. They had killed Londo's girlfriend to gain his alliance. And they had used the same strategy before. The Shadows were manipulating the flow of refugees so that the survivors could be killed in one single, devastating assault. Within the next few weeks, the Shadows would surely attack within the center of the shell, striking a demoralizing blow against the alliance and showing they could not be defied or escaped the telepaths filed out, and John sat at his desk, rested his head in his hands.
    He did not see the pattern of the attacks, which Galen found immensely frustrating. To be fair, John's information was incomplete, which made the pattern more difficult to see. And he was exhausted and overwhelmed with his duties. Yet he must see it soon. Foreknowledge of the attack presented his best chance of scoring a major victory against the Shadows. And countless refugees would be killed if he did not. Alwyn did not see the pattern either, even though his home of Regula stood in the very sector that would soon come under attack.
    Galen's knowledge, of course, was useless. It could not leave this place, could not save even one of those who was to die. He put the thought from his mind, searching through the cameras on board the heavy cruiser Hyperion for Matthew Gideon. Watching Matthew usually brought him some small consolation. Matthew had been an ensign when Galen had plucked him from space, sole survivor of the hybrid ship's attack on the Earth-Force Destroyer Cerberus.
    He was a lieutenant now aboard the Hyperion. It would have given Galen some satisfaction if Matthew, at least, had been able to fight the Shadows. Yet the Earth president, Clark, kept his forces out of the