Lyta AlexanderBorn December 10th 2225 on Earth, Lyta Alexander was a sixth generation registered telepath. Even though she was merely a P5, she interned in Psi Cops but changed into commercial telepathy after realising that she didn't like working there. She made her decision after witnessing Psi Cops punish a serial killer by planting nightmares into his mind, driving him insane. After graduating from the Psi Corps academy Lyta spent ten years (2247-2257) working for a corporation called Xenocorps before being transferred to Babylon 5 in January 2257. She arrived on the station around the same time as Kosh Naranek and when there was an attempt on the Ambassador's life, she tried to help to solve the crime by scanning him. The scan didn't help with the investigations, but it did have a great effect on Lyta's life. A few weeks after she had scanned Kosh, Lyta was called back to the Psi Corps headquarters. For some time the Corps tried to find out what she had seen in Kosh's mind, but she was able to keep it hidden from them. Finally she ran away from the Corps, eventually ending up working for the Mars Resistance. It was while on Mars that Lyta found out about the secret Psi Corps sleeper program which was used to 'brain-wash' people into spies. Risking her own life she returned to Babylon 5 in late 2259 and used a telepathic password to find the spy among the command staff's inner circle. Although no-one really believed her at first, she proved her claims by revealing the hidden 'Control' personality in the station's resident telepath Talia Winters. Still, despite the gratitude of the station personnel, Lyta - a rogue telepath on the run from the Corps - couldn't stay on B5 for long. Ever since she had scanned Kosh Lyta had felt a strange attraction towards the Vorlons and for two years she did all she could to visit their homeworld. In 2260 her persistence finally paid off. The Vorlons allowed her on their homeworld and, in order to make her more suitable for their needs, increased her telepathic abilities higher than a P12 (she was made into a kind of doomsday machine that could be used as a last resort against the Shadows). Under the Vorlons' wings, Lyta was now also able to travel without the fear of being taken in by the Psi Corps. She returned to Babylon 5 with Kosh, and became his diplomatic aide whose unofficial duties included carrying parts of his consciousness in her mind so he could explore the galaxy incognito. When Kosh was killed in August 2261, Lyta became the assistant for Ulkesh. The new ambassador didn't care about Lyta as much as his predecessor and used her merely as a tool. He treated her badly and even forced her to get rid of all her possessions because, according to him, they distracted her. In secret from Ulkesh Lyta helped the Army of Light by using telepathic interference to distract Shadow ships and with her increased talents she became a valuable asset to Captain Sheridan's forces. When the Vorlons turned against their former allies and began destroying anything or anyone who'd had any contact with the Shadows, Lyta was forced to take a stand against her employers. She helped Sheridan kill Ulkesh and joined the Army of Light in the last stand against both Shadows and Vorlons. After the war the Vorlons left the galaxy and Lyta was left unemployed. Without any income she couldn't even pay her rent, but at the same time she was unable to leave B5 or even get a new job because of the fact that without the Vorlons she was again a rogue and needed Sheridan's protection to avoid capture. Michael Garibaldi, who had by now resigned from his job as the station's chief of security, hired her but was forced to give her notice almost immediately because of his own employer William Edgars' distrust of telepaths. In the end Lyta was forced to make a deal with Bester and bequeath her body to him in return for getting her name off the rogue list. Money wasn't the only thing Lyta lacked after the Vorlons left - people who had previously been her friends now treated her with some suspicion because of her close involvement with the mysterious race. One of the few people who did not shun her was Zack Allan and for a while the two were quite close. After Sheridan declared war against President Clark, however, Lyta was welcomed back into the inner circle. When Doctor Franklin discovered her ability to control telepaths with shadow implants, he took her to Mars with him and without her the war would have most likely been lost. Before the real battles had even began she had already helped Garibaldi prove his innocence (he had been brainwashed to betray Sheridan) and the resistance to free Sheridan (who had been captured by Clark's men thanks to the aforementioned betrayal by Garibaldi). During the final battles she telepathically contacted the cryogenically frozen 'shadow-telepaths' (smuggled into the enemy ships by the resistance) who then merged with the ships disrupting their computers and allowing Sheridan's forces retake Earth with lesser resistance. After the Civil War Lyta felt used. All her life she had served others - the Corps, the Vorlons, the Army of Light - without even so much as a simple thank you. In early 2262 a group of rogue telepaths came to Babylon 5 seeking sanctuary (which they were granted after Sheridan took them under his protection) and Lyta found true friends among them. She became especially close with their leader Byron who had also grown tired of being used by others. Byron was a pacifist but nevertheless it didn't take long for the telepaths to get into trouble with the station's residents and when Byron found out from Lyta that the Vorlon's had in fact created telepaths to be used as weapons, all hell broke lose. Together Byron, Lyta and the rest of Byron's followers began campaigning to get a homeworld of their own as a reward for all the work they had done for the mundanes. They failed, violence resulted and half of the telepaths (including Lyta and Byron) walled themselves into Brown Sector and began a hunger strike while at the same time the other half resorted to terrorist activity. The telepaths never had a chance. Sheridan cancelled his protection and Bester - who had been called in to unravel the situation - was given full authority over the telepaths, who then in return took hostages. The situation was eventually solved by Byron who - with the help of Lyta - escaped his self-made prison and talked the rest of the telepaths into surrendering. Lyta stayed by her lover's side until, thanks to Bester, the events took yet another violent turn and Byron asked her to leave. She had promised to do so if he ever asked her, and as she walked away, Byron and those telepaths who had resorted to violence killed themselves. After Byron's death Lyta became the leader of the rogue telepaths and she made sure that all of them were able to leave the station safely. Continuing the work of her late lover she contacted several companies such as Interplanetary Expeditions, offering them non-Psi-Corps telepaths in return for an uninhabited, but habitable planet. When this didn't work she contacted G'Kar who had years earlier expressed his interest in buying the genetic material of telepaths. Lyta negotiated a few ships and quite a lot of money in return for DNA samples of her telepaths. More nest-egg she gained during the war between the Centauri and the Interstellar Alliance when she charged Vir Cotto several hundred thousand credits for accompanying Franklin on an expedition to find out why the Drazi were hiding the bodies of the Centauri who had died in battle. Even though Byron had been against violence, Lyta used the money she had gathered to fund terrorist activity against the Psi Corps. Unfortunately she wasn't careful or skilled enough and the weapons were soon traced back to her and Babylon 5. Captain Lochley made an attempt to arrest Lyta, but she was no longer shy to use her enhanced powers and resisted. It was only Sheridan (someone who had also been 'touched' by the Vorlons) who managed to restrain her. Lochley was all for sending Lyta back to Earth for questioning, but Garibaldi used his contacts to buy her free. In return he wanted her to remove the neural block Bester had put in his mind. Lyta agreed, but her help had a price tag attached. She wanted Garibaldi to help her to continue the terrorism against Bester and his precious Corps. The price for removing the neural block was that during the next two years Garibaldi would put together an army that could bring down Psi Corps for good. One of the terms for Lyta's release was that she never returned to B5. Unfortunately the station was the only place where she could live without being arrested, and so she was once again left with nothing. At this point G'Kar came to her help asking her to accompany him on his tour of the galaxy. She didn't forget her deal with Garibaldi, though, and after a few years of keeping low profile she returned to her work as the leader of the telepath resistance movement. She died during the Telepath Crisis in mid-2260's in a failed attempt to assassinate Bester. Episodes: TG, 041, 048, 062, 067, 069-070, 072-073, 080, 082-083, 085-086, 091, 094-095, 097-099, 103, 105-108, ThS |
