In the Red Night

by Veldeia

1. Afternoon

Captain Matthew Gideon stared at the scaly face in front of him. The green eyes were fierce, and numerous rings and spikes pierced the scales, sticking out into all directions. His opponent was unlike any Drazi he had seen before, but it was only suitable that he looked so warlike. After all, this Drazi was Gideon's enemy.

Like in all the previous fights, there was a nagging voice somewhere far away, in the back of his head, that said that he shouldn't fight. That this Drazi had done nothing to him. It was a weak voice that he could easily put aside. He had to fight the Drazi, like he had fought all his previous opponents.

They would fight until one of them faced the greatest humiliation of all, losing the battle and dying. The other would receive the glory and honor of victory, and would go on to fight other, stronger opponents. Defeating them would bring even more glory.

The Drazi let out a feral growl and charged.

Galen stormed into the bridge of the Excalibur, taking in the scene around him. The officers at their appointed posts were there, taking care of their required tasks. In front of the captain's chair stood lieutenant John Matheson. To the lazy observer he was as calm and cool as ever, his face revealing nothing at all. Still, there were small signs - how he constantly changed weight from one foot to the other, the way he stood, the way he kept glancing at the communications console. Matheson was clearly distressed. It was no surprise for Galen. After all, he knew the reason for it. Captain Gideon was missing.

Galen walked straight to Matheson and asked, "When did you last hear from him?"

"We haven't heard anything from him, or the two crew members that were with him, since we lost them down there, two hours ago," he told, pointing at the screen, which was dominated by a close view of the planet below.

The planet carried a curious resemblance to Mars. Its surface was mostly barren desert with ragged cliffs and red sand. But unlike on Mars, where most cities had been built in large domes, here on Sozirja, they were underground. There were almost no signs of sentient life on the surface itself, only the few spaceports and numerous small entrances to the cities below, difficult to notice if one did not know about them.

"And the same would apply to his last known location?"

"I only know where we split up in the capital city. After that, no one knows. He never showed up at the rendezvous and never contacted us."

They both knew well that Matthew would certainly not leave his ship and crew without any note or message if he could send one. He had not been able to come to the meeting place, and he had been unable to contact his ship. He had to be in serious trouble.

Galen had tried an electron incantation with Matthew just before he entered the bridge, and it had been an odd one. Matthew had attacked him the instant they saw each other, with no explanation, without even one intelligible word. It had not been as if he had had a quarrel of some sort with Galen, because then such a fierce, almost animal assault would have made no sense. It was as if he had not recognized him at all. Although Matthew could do nothing to harm him in the incantation, all Galen's attempts at communicating with him had failed. It had not offered much of an explanation. It had only served to make him more anxious.

Luckily Galen had also set a probe on Matthew. He had checked it earlier as well, and it had showed nothing of use. Just a sparsely furnished room where Matthew had been, apparently alone. Now he looked again, and the view was completely different.

The microscopic probe rested on Matthew's shoulder. It showed a rogue-like Drazi standing in front of him, gazing menacingly. Blood was trickling from the Drazi's mouth and many of the decorative piercings on his face were askew. As Galen watched, he saw Matthew launch a furious attack, flinging a fast series of punches and kicks at the Drazi. The Drazi fought back, but he was slower, looking tired and drawn. He went down. Apparently Matthew had won. Why he had fought the Drazi in the first place was a complete mystery. Through the limited view his probe offered, Galen could not be sure if Matthew was injured as well.

Galen did not tell Matheson what he had seen. Instead, he posed another question. "What are you going to do about this situation?"

"There's no way we can find him from up here, unless he manages to contact us somehow. I've already sent one search team down there, but so far they've come up with nothing at all. I'll be sending more men to help in the search."

"You must, of course, go on as you see best. I shall join the search myself, and I will go alone. I have means at my disposal that your men lack. I would prefer your men to stay out of my way. I'll try to maintain contact with you, if possible."

Careful preparation was always the most important part, whatever the task ahead. Considering this particularly important task, Galen had begun with gathering all the information he could find about what he might be facing on the planet.

Sozirja was originally a Drazi colony, founded a hundred years ago by an anarchist fraction that had strongly opposed their culture's tradition of periodic division to green and purple and fighting for the winning color. Since it had been a free world with very loose ties to its home world and government, it had quickly become a popular place for other non-wanted people, those who needed to hide, or those whose business could not stand direct daylight. It was a particularly good hideout since the nearest jumpgate was in another solar system, so there was little traffic.

The Drazi origin was almost forgotten these days, although the descendants of the first settlers still formed a major part of the population. Aside from them, there were groups of nearly all known races. There were even some sightings of drakh and streib. Galen did not know if those were just the usual spies and agents enjoying the suitably shady environment, or if they might be independent individuals who were not serving the general cause. All in all, Sozirja was a world similar to many others, shabby, difficult, unfriendly to officials and law-enforcers, but, in its own harsh way, welcoming to almost anyone else.

Matthew, along with several members of his crew, had first set foot on Sozirja because of nothing more than a rumor. It suggested that an ancient and wise alien of some unknown species who had an extensive knowledge of medicine lived among the assorted entrepreneurs of the planet. At some point along their search, Matthew had decided that they should split up. He had given a time and a place for rendezvous, which he and his companions had then failed to reach.

Galen had only returned when Matthew was already missing, so he had not been there when they had left the Excalibur. He had his doubts about this rumor, and he would have wanted to accompany the group had he been there. But his absence had been necessary, his mission a very important one, and he did not regret it. Although, should he fail to locate and rescue Matthew, so that his necessary absence would be the cause of Matthew's demise, he would certainly come to regret it.

Even though Galen knew as much as there was to know about the planet, he did not have many clues as to what Matthew's situation was at the moment. He was glad he had a probe on Matthew, since he could simply locate it and follow it to Matthew's physical location, but he didn't know if that would be enough. Maybe Matthew was heavily guarded, and Galen would have to find a way to distract or fight a whole regiment of angry natives. Or maybe Matthew was in no trouble at all, simply just in an awkward situation where it was important that he did not contact the Excalibur for one reason or the other, and Galen barging in with firebolts and lightning would not help at all.

Galen accessed the probe again, and found out Matthew had returned to the small, sparsely furnished room. It seemed he was lying on a bed - maybe he was asleep, or meditating, or recuperating from injuries he had suffered in the fight with the pierced Drazi. He had to be alive, since it would make no sense at all for him to be in that room if he was dead. At least that was what Galen told himself, and what he wanted to believe.

To reassure himself, Galen tried the electron incantation again, and found that Matthew was indeed alive. Alive and kicking, just as mad as he had been before.

Galen chose not to land at the spaceport, but in the shadow of a nearby rock formation, his ship covered with illusions. At the port, he would have had to face some officials, no matter how sloppy and non-inquisitive, and he would have had to follow the standard protocol in leaving the planet. Instead, he wanted to have his ship somewhere that was quick enough to reach by foot, and even faster to leave behind with the ship, in case they needed to run away from something.

The spaceport was still the nearest entrance to the burrowed city below, the largest of the five major cities of the planet, generally considered the capital, although such terms did not mean much on this world. Galen covered the distance to the entrance on a flying platform, surrounded by a shield. The planet's atmosphere was slightly more hospitable than that of its lookalike Mars. There was more oxygen and not nearly as much carbon dioxide, so one might survive short times without a breather mask. It might prove an important detail if they got into a lot of trouble while escaping, but he hoped that would not be the case.

It was an easy thing for Galen to enter the spaceport and mix into the crowd. He had spent time considering his plan. The two basic options were entering as a techno-mage and showing off as much as possible, deliberately drawing attention, or then doing the opposite, going in disguise and trying to go unnoticed. He had opted for the latter, since although the former might have been the more efficient way in some things, the risks would have been greater, and it might have brought unwanted attention to Matthew as well. So, he wore a full-body illusion, appearing shorter than he truly was, slightly thicker, with short sand-colored hair and a plain dark blue suit. No one looked at him twice - he was not interesting enough, since he did not look like an easy target nor a particularly threatening person.

The signal from the probe did not come from very far away. Matthew was still in the capital, but at some distance from the place where the teams had split. The place was far enough that walking would take too long, so Galen took the local train. The station was busy with all kinds of people, most of whom concentrated furiously on doing their own business and ignoring everyone else, eyes turned to face the bare metal floor or to the bright advertisements on the walls. It reminded him of the tube on Zafran 8, so long ago, and with that came the memory of Isabelle and the time they had spent together on that world, her home. It was a painful memory, but one that he cherished. He spent most of the way, only two stops from the spaceport station, lost in those thoughts, although a part of him was constantly and carefully observing the surroundings.

Galen left the station to find himself in a part of the city that was fancier than most, cleaner, more decorated. Even the people looked richer, wore better clothes and carried more sophisticated weapons. The street, which of course was actually a tunnel dug into the planet, was lined with a few shops that showed expensive wares from several different worlds, and a large amount of restaurants, night clubs and bars.

Matthew's signal originated from beneath one of the night clubs, which made sense as a potential place to look for information about an ancient alien. However, it made little sense as a place where Matthew seemed to spend most of his time sitting alone in an ascetic room, while occasionally beating up a Drazi. To the outside, the club - Red 'Zirja Nights - was much like all thhe others, except for a posh marquise of red velvet. It seemed to be favored by the younger people, with Drazi, Centauri and humans as the dominant groups.

Galen spent a while observing the club from the outside. He planted probes on several people who approached it, and found out that the club was strictly exclusive. Anyone wishing to enter needed a membership card or an invitation signed by a member, unless they were with a member at the moment. Inside, there didn't seem to be anything unusual about the club. The decor followed the style suggested by the fancy marquise, comprising of velvet curtains and antique furniture, and a long bar of polished mahogany. Most of the tables seemed to face a railing that traversed the side of the room opposite the bar, but unfortunately the person carrying Galen's probe took a seat at the bar and stayed there, sipping his drink and chatting with the Drazi barkeep. Another probe-carrying person took a seat at a table, but Galen's bad luck continued, as the table was one of the few that weren't located near the railing. Yet the place seemed to be all about that railing. Most of the people were gazing at something over it, cheering or pointing at things.

Galen decided to check Matthew's probe before going in. To his surprise, it showed something different this time, a long corridor lined with doors, like in a ship, or a hotel, and Matthew was walking along it. He reached the end of the corridor and a door with a complicated-looking lock system, and a Drazi stepped out from behind him to open it. Matthew stepped forward, entering what looked like a large, circular area, perhaps an arena of some sort. At the far end of the arena, another large door opened, letting out a Minbari. He looked young, and taking in the shape of his bone crest and his clothes Galen took him to be a member of the religious caste. A metallic device of some sort covered half of his face. He raised his hands in the traditional fighting stance, approached Matthew, and attacked. Matthew fought back.

Matthew fighting a young religious caste Minbari made no sense whatsoever, and the Minbari was acting oddly as well, attacking him without any provocation. Galen would not wait any longer. He moved on to enter the Red 'Zirja Nights.

2. Evening

Getting in to the Red 'Zirja Nights was hardly a challenge for Galen. He had a clear picture of the membership cards and invitations several members had shown to the porter, and he could easily fake one for himself. He went for an invitation, since the porter would probably recognize most members, and would become suspicious of someone that he had never seen before but who still held a membership. He copied the signature from the card of one of the people he had planted with a probe, and the illusion was complete.

He stepped on the absurd red carpet leading to the door and joined the line. It was quite long, but moved along quickly. The Drazi porter was efficient.

"Card or invitation, please," the porter asked Galen, speaking flawless English, unlike many others of his race.

"I was invited," Galen said, offering his illusion of an invitation.

The Drazi took a quick look at it and gave it back, without the slightest sign of hesitation. "Welcome to the Red 'Zirja Nights, Mr. Johnson. The latest match is still going on, I believe. Enjoy your stay."

Galen nodded to the Drazi and stepped in, wondering whether 'the latest match' meant what he expected.

He entered the main hall, which was now full of excited cheering from the tables next to the railing. Galen walked closer and saw that, just like he had guessed, beyond the railing there was a sheer drop of ten feet or so into a circular arena with smooth, metallic walls and floor. Down there, Matthew was just about to land a finishing blow on the young minbari, who was already lying on the ground, twitching in a pathetic attempt to get up and continue.

"It was too easy, I'm telling you. That guy's had nothing but easy ones ever since he got here. Look at that, he's just a poor little bonehead kid, and as for old Grazzle, well, he had it coming, really, he was pushing his luck, no one can handle it down there for over a week," an unpleasant-looking man was speaking loudly to his table company, mostly humans and a few Centauri.

"You're right, you are. If only some of those old folks were still around - the real old folks, the ones who used to rule before Grazzle's time, like that Tharen! She was always a pleasure to watch. But I guess she knew best, getting out when she was still well and in one piece," a Centauri with a graying crest commented.

"Well, that guy down there, he hasn't got that choice. He's got to keep going, until one day someone will beat him, and then he's gone for good. Until then, I'll be betting on him. See, there goes the little bonehead - that's got to hurt!" the first speaker added, as Matthew ended the fight, crudely and spectacularly.

Now that Galen could get a good look on Matthew, he saw that just like the Minbari, he had a device of some sort covering half his face. It was only too easy to deduce why it was there. Matthew would never beat up innocent people like this, without any reason, not out of his own free will. Whoever was behind this gladiator-circus had installed a mind-control device on him.

A Drazi guard stepped into the arena and took Matthew away, but Galen knew they'd only take him back to that little room. He needed to know more before he could get Matthew out. Judging by their talk, the people in the nearby table had seen a good many of these fights, and at least thought they knew all about them. Galen took up a chair and joined the company.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I'm new here and I couldn't help overhearing you. You must know all there's to know about this?" he asked, waving his hand at the pit.

"Oh, you bet we do! And we bet too, often, and win lots of money," the loud human answered, laughing out at his own pun, joined by the rest of the table.

"And right now you're betting on that man, right?"

"Sure - he's been around only since the start of this round, but he's promising. I think he might last a whole week, or even longer. It's been a while since we've last seen one of his kind last that long," the man said, waving his hand about his face with the mention of "his kind".

"What would that mean? His kind?"

"The recruits, the ones from outside who the owners toss in. They play by the same rule as the ones who go in voluntarily, but they don't gain like the rest, and they can't leave the game, unless they survive a whole year, which has never happened. But you've got to know this stuff, right? If you want to, you can go and join the fight, and if you win, you get fame, glory, money, and you also get to loot the guys you've won. It's just that once you go in, you can only leave when the round's complete - you have to last until midnight. If you don't, well, there's nothing anyone can do about it."

"And the rules would be...?"

The man, and all the table, looked up at Galen as if he were a complete idiot. Galen rose from his chair and spread his hands. "I said I'm new here."

"I wonder how you came to be in here anyway - who'd invite you without telling you anything at all? Anyway, there's only one rule. Kill or get killed. Kill or die. It's as simple as that."

Galen nodded, and backed away from the table, like someone who didn't like the speaker's attitude, but would rather leave than respond.

He had learned almost as much as he needed to know, the rest he would find out easily. And he now saw that a change of plan was in order.

A menacing, dark figure approached the Drazi porter, passing all who were standing in line outside the Red 'Zirja Nights. His long, robe-like coat billowed about his feet, and the hood was pulled over his head, obscuring his face. In his hand he carried a dark, magical-looking staff. Still, the Drazi had his rules, and he stuck to them fiercely, no matter who was at the door. Even if it were Droshalla himself, he would still have asked the same question.

"Card or invitation, please."

"I carry neither. I will go in as I please. I wish to join in your little game."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot let you in without the proper authorization."

"There is a well-known saying, 'Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle, and quick to anger'. Do you not recognize a techno-mage, when one stands in front of you? And do you not know that standing between a techno-mage and his destination is a very dangerous and foolish thing to do?"

"Look, sir. It doesn't matter who or what you are. If you will join the line and wait for your turn, then perhaps I can ask the master to see you, and maybe, just maybe, he'll be willing to make the exception. It's not my decision to make, no matter what."

"Ah. I only came here to try my powers on the combatants in the arena, but I can start with you just as well."

Galen raised his hands and the staff in a series of showy gestures, always sure to impress the unknowing, and cast a complex illusion that surrounded the Drazi in a circle of flames. The fire looked very real, and it was hot enough to feel quite uncomfortable, even to set his clothes on fire unless he came to his senses soon enough. Which he did, of course. Galen had had every reason to believe that despite his extremely dense way of sticking to the rules, the Drazi was not stupid.

"All right, all right! I'll let you in - just this once - please, sir..."

With an uninterested wave of his hand, Galen put out the flames. He had nothing more to say to the porter, and nothing more he needed to hear. With his hood still down, he marched in through the red-draped doorway.

During the short time he had spent in the bar in disguise, Galen had located the man who accepted new challengers to the arena. He was a dark-skinned human with very short black hair, dressed in the Drazi way instead of any human style. He sat in the far end of the bar, behind the counter, but he never sold any drinks. Instead, he also took care of the betting, which was going on actively all the time.

There was another fight going on in the arena, between yet another Drazi and a Llort, neither of which carried a mind-control device. Galen had learned before that there would only be one representative of each race in the game at any given time, so if a challenger was of the same race with someone who was already in, they would be set to fight each other as soon as possible. He could guess that this new Drazi had just joined the fight after she had heard of the fall of the previous one, Grazzle, so she had not needed to fight him. But Galen wanted it to be the other way around when it came to him. He wanted to meet Matthew first, so there would be no more need for useless killing, for either of them. He only hoped that he would count as a human, even though he was a techno-mage.

"I believe you were notified of my entrance," Galen declared to the broker. "I have come to test my skills in the arena."

"Oh, I heard about your entrance, all right. I don't know what you did, but you really scared Zesra out of his wits, he's never let anyone in without the 'card or invitation, please'. So, you want to join in, sure, I can fix that. But do you really know what it means? Do you know the rule and the ways?"

Galen dropped down his hood and cast a piercing glance at the broker. "I am a techno-mage. Knowing all that there is to know is our purpose here."

"Yeeeah. And anyway, it's all on this form here, which I'll need you to sign. I'm sure you know all about what the fine print says, too - like the part where you promise that should you die, we're not responsible, since you went down there out of your own free will, and that we'll dispose of the body as we see fit, so there's no sending it anywhere for a fancy burial. And there's also the part where you agree that as long as you're down there, you play by the rule just like everyone else, just like the recruits who've got no choice. You kill or you die, and you only get out at the end of the round, which would be at midnight."

Galen only answered by entering his signature with a flourish.

"I'm sure I also don't need to remind you that no weapons are allowed in the arena itself, so that all potentially harmful personal possessions will be taken away from you and stored in a safe place until you either leave at the end of the round, when you get them back, or die, and they're given to the winner," the broker explained, eyeing Galen's staff.

"I am well aware of this, and most of my weapons are of such nature that they cannot be taken away from me."

Galen's words reflected no hint of the uncertainty he felt. It was continuously present when he followed the lead of a Drazi in a ridiculous red velvet uniform, who was to take him through some more formalities, and then show him to his room. Galen did have one thing he absolutely needed to smuggle in somehow. He didn't think it would be hard to cover with an illusion, or even simple sleight of hand. Still, he had a feeling that there was more to this place than met the eye.

3. Twilight

Galen sat on the luxurious bed in his room, in the complex beneath the Red 'Zirja Nights. It was completely different from the simple quarters where he had seen Matthew through his probe. The difference between "recruited", enslaved fighters and challengers who came willingly was made plain here as well. The furniture was, like in the club above, mostly made of polished wood and red velvet, the bed was huge and had sheets of crimson silk. A large armchair was set in one corner of the room, and a mirror with an impressive golden frame hung from the wall. Embedded in the wall was a screen that contained a selection of channels with all kinds of entertainment. There was also one that showed the current match in the arena.

Galen had the arena-channel open all the time. The fight between the Drazi and the Llort was still going on, and it was very even. Neither was very badly hurt yet, but both were getting tired. Soon, one of them would make the one fatal mistake it took to end the match. Then it might be Galen's turn, or Matthew's, or, as Galen hoped, the time for the both of them.

He had managed to smuggle in his one very important item - a special tranq tab that he had made before entering the game. He had designed it based on the data he had gathered on the mind-control devices. He was fairly certain that it would work as it was supposed to, not only putting the target to a deep sleep, but also disabling the device from within.

It had been a very close call. The Drazi guards who had searched him and taken his possessions for safekeeping had used a very effective scanner that had seen through all his illusions and attempts to hide things. Luckily, they had let him keep his healing crystal and several other things that apparently didn't look like anything that could be used in a fight. He was sure the tranq tab would've seemed like such a thing, though, and had only got it in by means of an extremely simple diversion. He had dropped the tranq tab and stepped on it, and then picked it up when the Drazi had finished scanning, making it look as if he was tying his shoelaces. It was almost shamefully primitive, but it had worked, and that was all that mattered.

The exceptional scanner had again made him wonder what, or who, was behind this whole thing. The technology was far more advanced than what he would expect from the Drazi, just like that of the mind-control devices. Nevertheless, he was fairly certain that it was not Shadow technology, since it was not organic, and did not carry the horrible familiarity, the likeness to his tech. Perhaps the source was the "wise and ancient" alien of the rumor that had led the Excalibur to Sozirja.

In the arena, the Llort let his guard drop for a very short while, taking a deep breath and relaxing his arms. The Drazi noticed this immediately and attacked, landing a forceful kick in the Llort's midriff. He doubled over, and she continued with another kick, this time aimed at his head. His head jerked back with a sickening snap that was clearly audible through the screen, and he fell flat on his back, completely still. The match was over. The next one would begin as soon as the staff had cleared the body from the arena and fetched the new combatants from their rooms.

Galen had just turned off the screen when there was a knock at the door.

"Enter," he replied, and in came yet another Drazi guard in a red uniform. After a closer look, Galen decided he had already met this one, although he saw no use for that piece of information.

This Drazi did not speak English quite as well as Zesra the porter. "I come to take you to first battle. I lead you to door to the arena and let you in. There you meet one you must fight. You know rule already. Now, please follow."

The guard led Galen to the long corridor lined with doors, familiar from his walk to his room, and from the earlier images from Matthew's probe. With mixed feelings, anxious and hopeful at the same time, Galen accessed the probe to see where Matthew was now. He saw an identical corridor, and as he checked the direction, he saw that the source of the signal was right in front of him and coming closer. Matthew was approaching the door at the far end of the arena.

It was exactly as Galen had hoped. He did count as a human, and so he was to fight the one other human currently in the game. He would fight Matthew.

Gideon was excited. Yet another match was coming, another chance to prove his worth and gain more glory. The previous one had been easy, the Minbari youngster religious caste and weak. He hoped this one would be more of a challenge, although easy fights had their advantages. His ribs were still aching from one tough blow that the pierced Drazi had delivered, and the cuts where the sharp nails had slashed his face were there as well. Still, the injuries were minor, and they did not slow him down at all.

His guard opened the door and he practically leaped in, gazing at the far end of the arena, where the other door opened, and his opponent entered. A human, like him, and still not like him, a severe figure with a bald head and a long dark coat. There was something odd about this human, something that he knew, as if they had met before. But the memory could not get through the endless, all-encompassing urge to fight and win.

Gideon stepped closer to his opponent, crouched in anticipation of an attack. He would let the man make the first move, so he could assess his strategy and skills. Then he would find the weaknesses, and use them against him.

The enemy was patient as well, and waiting. They circled each other slowly, but while Gideon kept his low stance, his enemy stood upright, seeming oddly at ease, not at all prepared to defend himself. Only his face looked tense. If his enemy was this stupid, Gideon would be mad not to take advantage of it.

Gideon went for a low kick, meant to take his opponent off balance. Instead of hitting, it slipped before it reached its goal, as if it had encountered a slick barrier of some kind. He followed it instantly with a punch at his enemy's face, but it, as well, was turned aside by some invisible force.

"So, you really don't remember me at all, Matthew?" the man said, taking a few steps back. Gideon retreated as well, befuddled. No, he did not remember this person, who knew his first name. But as confused as he might have been, he still stayed on guard. Maybe that was what this surprising talk was for - to make him slip, so he would be an easier target. He would never do that.

Galen was not in a hurry. Even though he had had little talent for shields when he was younger, all that trouble had disappeared when he had merged with his tech. They could create a barrier strong enough to stop any physical blow. Matthew could not harm him, and he had at no time been worried about that. Instead, he was concerned about Matthew getting hurt when trying to attack.

All he needed was a chance to hit Matthew with the tranq tab. But even that was a challenge. Matthew was a skilled fighter to begin with, and the mind-control device was pushing him further, making him more alert and more eager to fight. He could see that his words had some impact, but not nearly enough. And he was afraid that they would make those overlooking the match suspicious, since they revealed that he had known at least something about Matthew prior to the match.

There was always the option of simply waiting for Matthew to grow tired, but it would be a long wait. Matthew had noticed that Galen was passive, and had retreated to slow circling again, wanting to get at least some kind of initiative from him. As they paced, Galen went through his plan again. The tab would put Matthew in a sort of hibernative state, slowing down his metabolism so much that anyone except for a very careful observer would take him for dead. The nanotechnology he had put in would also instantly start disabling the mind-control device.

The Drazi guards would probably not care to check whether Matthew was really dead or just nearly so. Galen had seen them carry away losers when they were not quite dead yet. The young Minbari had been breathing, but so badly injured that without help he had probably died within the hour. So, they would take Matthew wherever they stored the bodies. Soon after, they would come and take Galen, the winner of the match, to that place, so he could loot the body. That was one of the set ways of the game - the winner always got to loot the loser's body with his own hands. Perhaps the Drazi did not wish to touch the corpses themselves if it wasn't absolutely neccessary.

From there on, Galen's plan was slightly less certain. He did not know the exact build of the complex, nor the location of the storage room with the bodies. Nevertheless, once he got there, he would need to disable the guards and escape the building. Matthew would come out of the tranq tab-induced hibernation in half an hour. Galen would try to stall with the looting until that, so he would not need to carry him. He would also need to fetch the possessions he had been forced to give away, but tracing them was no problem, since his staff gave a strong signal that was easy to follow. He planned to do that hidden with a camouflage illusion, so he would not need to fight all the Drazi guards he encountered.

His plan was clear. Perhaps it would be better to get it over with as soon as possible. He only needed to do something that would catch Matthew's attention for a while, to take him off his guard.

Galen lifted his hand and created an illusion of a fireball. Unlike the flames he had used with Zesra, he made this one bright, but without any heat emanating from it. He did not want to burn away Matthew's eyebrows. He tossed it, and it erupted in a blinding flash right in front of Matthew's face. Matthew shrank back, dropping his defences. In that very moment, Galen struck the tranq tab on Matthew's neck. He tried to make the blow look like a spine-shattering one, while actually not harming his target at all.

Matthew went down. Galen stayed near him, crouched above the body like a vicious killer gloating over his victim. Actually, he was constantly scanning Matthew, and he was happy to see that the tab worked perfectly.

All his sensors were on Matthew now, and he had let his shield dissolve the very moment he saw Matthew fall. The silent whoosh of something cutting the air at great speed was the first thing that alerted him something was wrong. Before he had time to turn around completely, a sharp pain pierced his back.

In the fraction of a second Galen saw his mistake. If there was someone behind this game who could build scanners delicate enough to reveal his illusions, then they would certainly have scanners that would show whether a combatant truly was lethally harmed or not. They had instantly seen that Matthew was neither dead nor dying.

The air in the arena rang with words spoken in a deep, inhuman voice, strangely familiar, but certainly not Drazi. "There is only one survivor in each battle. You kill or you die. Failure to kill is punished by death. There can be no compassion for the opponent. We are disappointed in you, techno-mage. You have lost."

Since Galen had been about to turn around, the blade entered the left side of his back at an angle. He both felt and saw through his sensors how it sank in, slicing through skin and muscle, slipping neatly between his ribs, and cutting through his lung. He was sure it would penetrate his heart, causing so much damage that his organelles would have no chance of repairing it in time, but he never felt or saw it happen. He passed out before his face hit the metallic floor, right next to Matthew's.

4. Nightfall

Gideon woke up with what was without any doubt the worst hangover he had ever experienced. His head was about to split, or worse, to shatter into tiny bits. The room around him was completely unfamiliar, and he didn't have any idea at all how he had ended up in it. His memories of last night were vague, and now that he thought of it, he couldn't even tell what day it was.

He had apparently fallen asleep – or whatever – wearing his uniform, but he didn't have his PPG, or his comm link, or anything that would tell him anything useful. He realized he didn't smell all that good. A moment later, it came to him that it wasn't the scent of someone who had spent the night out in some smoky saloon, but something else completely. There was dried blood on his knuckles, and splotches of it stained his clothes. Some of it had to be his own, and perhaps the assortment of aches he felt wasn't just the result of too much drinking. So he'd been in a bar fight? That wouldn't have been the first time, to be sure.

The vague memories about what had happened were slowly becoming more tangible. He had been in a fight. More than one, actually, and he hadn't been in a bar. He hadn't even been drinking. Overlapping the memory of the fights was an odd feeling, an urge to gain glory through the fighting, because it was the right thing to do, and the only thing there was. He had to kill, or he would get killed.

He remembered the first face, the first person he had fought. The fight had been in an arena of sorts, walls and floor of metal, and somewhere above it, a crowd, watching them, cheering. He knew the face, and the second face as well. They were members of his own crew, and the more he concentrated, the clearer the memory became, the more certain he was. He had killed his own men. He had killed Newfield and Ashley. He didn't want to believe it.

There were several other faces as well. A pierced Drazi, a young Minbari – and then he remembered the last fight, and everything that had happened before he woke up here, in the room that had become his prison. He had fought Galen. Galen had tried to speak to him, but he had not understood. He had had no idea of what he was doing, or who he was fighting. And as far as he could remember, he had lost that fight. Galen had hit him, and he had lost consciousness.

Gideon knew the rules. After all, they had been among the very few thoughts that had gone through his head during the time he had been caught here. He knew that there could only be one survivor from each match. Galen had attacked him and struck him down, yet now he was here, in his room, with a devastating headache, but not much more. He was not dead, and that could only mean one thing: Gideon had not lost the match. Galen had. And that would mean...

It couldn't mean what Gideon thought it would. There was absolutely no way Galen could possibly have died in that match. Gideon hadn't even gotten anywhere near to hitting him. With all the techno-mage powers Galen had, surely he could've handled a fight were no weapons were allowed. But still, why would they have let Gideon return to his room if his opponent had not died? Maybe Galen had fled. That was the only explanation that made any sense at all.

Obviously Galen had done something to snap Gideon out of whatever had had hold of him. He lifted his hand and tried his forehead, where he felt a strange weight. His fingers touched something cold and metallic. He followed its lines. It was a device of some sort that covered most of his forehead. He could guess it was what had kept him from thinking, waking up and understanding. Galen had disabled it somehow, and now Galen had probably fled, and was busy figuring out a plan to get them out. Gideon should think of a way to make it easier, or just get out on his own. He left the device in its place. Maybe it would fool his captors into thinking that he was still under their control.

With some effort, Gideon rose up from his bed, stood up. As soon as he got on his feet, the door slid open. Almost as if they had been waiting for him to come around. Behind the door stood his regular Drazi guard, a big, muscled one who spoke little, except with not-so-gentle nudging and pushing about.

“You win. You loot,” the Drazi said.

The thought hadn't crossed Gideon's mind. He cast a glance at the shelf, the only other piece of furniture in his room apart from the bed. On the shelf rested a few trinkets he had taken from his earlier opponents. Some of the more expensive bits of jewelry from the pierced Drazi, a fake antique pocket watch from one of his crewmen, a locket the young Minbari had had. Things of not much value. He remembered he had taken them because it was his right as the winner, it was expected of him, and every piece was further proof of his superiority.

Gideon could've just attacked his guard and tried to run away, but he didn't think he would make it very far that way. And he couldn't just leave Galen behind. He followed the Drazi's lead in a stupefied silence. He had won. Now he got to loot. The Drazi was taking him to loot Galen. He had won, and Galen was dead.

Galen woke up to the horrible feeling that he was under water. He was suffocating. There was something wet in his mouth, on his face, inside his chest.

He had spent most of his life training and striving for control, and now it took every bit of that training before he could calm himself and look at the situation in a detatched manner. Of course, he was not really drowning. It was among his first thoughts that made sense. He tried to stop panting and took a deep breath, which he regretted immediately. It sent such an agony tearing through his chest that he nearly passed out again. He concentrated, gathered all his willpower, and settled for lighter, shallower inhalations.

Galen accessed his sensors and assessed his situation. It was, perhaps, a bit better than he had expected, but considering he had thought he'd be dead, that wasn't very much. He was lying on his stomach, and the hilt of the knife still stuck out from his back. His organelles had mended much of the damage it had inflicted, but as long as the blade was in its place, all they could do was to close the edges of wounds around it. The cuts were still bleeding, the blood gathering in the chest cavity, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.

Despite the serious hemothorax, he had been lucky. The blade had not went as far as he had feared. It was lodged in a precarious position, the tip just touching the pericardium. As he looked, he noticed that where it had scratched the membrane, the organelles were working furiously. The cut was newer than the rest. He must've inflicted it on himself, must have caused the knife to move those few critical millimeters when he fought to breathe.

During his early days as a mage student interested in medicine Galen had learned the principles of first aid throughly. They said that an impaled object should remain in its place until the patient could be taken into adequate medical facilities. Still, this was a special situation. If he was to have any chance of ever escaping this place, his organelles would have to be able to truly heal the wounds, not just try and close them around the sharp edges. As long as it stayed in, the blade would continuosly keep causing serious damage, even lethal - it only needed to sink yet a few millimeters deeper to enter the heart muscle.

He hardly had any choice. The blade would have to come out.

His right arm was pinned underneath him, and he dared not try to pull it out. His left arm was free against his side, but considering the position of the knife, trying to move it would be even more risky. He could not think of any spell he could use. Techno-mage or not, he was no telekinetic. He could conjure flying platforms, globes and shields, but trying to clamp the knife between a formation of them so that the grip would be strong enough to pull it out was a feat he was not up to right now.

Every minute he spent considering, more blood was seeping through the partially closed cuts, and his left lung could not expand with the knife going through it. He didn't know which would come first, suffocation or bleeding to death internally.

His concentration was slipping fast, coherent thought becoming harder again. But he could not afford to pass out. Galen fought with all his ability to control so he would remain conscious.

Gideon went through his earlier memories of looting bodies. The place were they lie was horrible to begin with, a plain room with the dead just tossed in and left there, never touched again, except by the winners who came to loot. He had only seen the bodies of those who had lost during this round, the series of matches that had taken place since midday. None of them were decayed yet.

He wondered briefly what would happen to the bodies after the round was finished. The most likely option was that they were burned, or vaporized, or whatever, so there would be no traces left, no problem of hiding them or disposing of them quietly. He didn't know the time, but he was sure that midnight wasn't all that far away. They would get rid of the dead soon after the round ended, soon after midnight. Gideon would get Galen out before that, if he could. He wouldn't let them do whatever they wanted with his remains.

The Drazi opened the door, one just like the others in another identical corridor, pushed Gideon in without another word, and closed the door after him.

It wasn't hard to locate Galen among the scattered corpses. Most of them were aliens, except for the two humans at the back of the room that Gideon did not want to think about, and the one figure in a dark coat lying right in front of him, near the door, a knife in his back. And it only took Gideon two seconds to get over the first shock of it and notice that Galen wasn't dead, at least not yet. His raspy breathing sounded horribly loud in the empty room.

Gideon had thought that the match only ended with the actual death of one combatant, but now he saw he had been wrong. No, they wouldn't even let the loser die. The match would end when one was lethally hurt, and then they would just toss them here with the rest of the losers, and let them suffer.

“Matthew,” Galen whispered in a weak, strained voice.

Gideon crouched closer, so he could hear properly. “They let me in so I can loot you. But whatever you did to me, it worked, I'm with you again. Now I'm going to think of something to do. We'll get out of this place,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. He kept his voice low so the guard waiting outside the door would not hear it.

“The blade,” Galen rasped. Gideon didn't get what he meant to say. Maybe he hadn't heard correctly, or then Galen was delirious.

“Yeah, you've been stabbed in the back, and I don't even know who, when or how. But the Doc will help you get it fixed once we get out of here.”

“No!” the answer was sharp, and was followed by a pause where Galen closed his eyes, his face contorted with pain. But he continued. “You - must - get it out.”

“Galen, I can't! I'd just hurt you worse. I can just guess how bad it feels, but isn't it better to let it be?”

“No. Quickly, now!”

He sounded absolutely adamant about it. Maybe he knew better. Gideon knew that as a techno-mage, Galen probably knew more about medicine than he did. Besides, he hadn't got a better plan, anyway.

“All right, I'll do it. Brace yourself, this is really going to hurt,” Gideon said, but Galen didn't answer. His eyes were closed again. He had probably passed out. It was all the better, since that way he might not feel the worst of it.

Trying to keep his hands as steady as possible, Gideon grabbed the hilt. Most of the blade seemed to be in, and he couldn't tell how long it was, how deep it went. He would just have to try and get it out straight, so he wouldn't do more damage.

The blade was pretty long. Gideon could only imagine the kind of injuries it must have caused. Still it came out easier than he had expected, and Galen didn't groan or gasp, didn't even flinch. For a moment, Gideon was again afraid that he had died, just like that, but no, he was still breathing, the sound even worse than before, wet and struggling. The now open stab wound was bleeding profusely. Gideon dropped the blade on the floor and pressed the wound with both hands, trying to slow down the bloodflow.

And then, at the worst possible moment, the door opened, and the Drazi glared at him. He moved his hands away from the wound, as if going over the body, looking for any pockets or anything. He found nothing, so he took the knife and stood up.

“All right, I'm finished here. He didn't have anything of value anyway,” Gideon said, and reluctantly turned his back to Galen.

“Give me that,” the guard said, gesturing at the knife. Of course, he would not be allowed to keep a weapon. It would be taken to a safe place where it would wait 'until he got out of the game'. And in Gideon's case, that would never happen. He knew he would have to survive a whole year here to be officially allowed to exit. It was hardly possible.

Gideon gave the knife away silently. He noticed that his hands were coated with blood. Galen's blood.

“Now you go fight.”

He had thought he'd have a while to consider what had happened, and maybe try and start thinking of a plan. No such luck. On the other hand, if he managed to win this fight, he would get to loot his next victim, and then he could check on Galen again, see if he had survived.

Gideon followed the Drazi towards that particular door at the end of a long corridor, and back to the arena again.

5. Midnight

The alien who entered the arena from the opposite door was of a species Gideon had never met before. He couldn't even tell whether it was male or female. Its face reminded him distantly of a Brakiri, but looked less human, with eyes of a vivid purple and no pupils at all, and dark blue hair growing in irregular patches around its scalp - and that was the most familiar part of the whole. The alien had long and thin arms and legs that seemed completely out of proportion. It also had the strangest way of moving about. When it slowly made its way towards Gideon, he got the impression that it didn't quite know where to put its long legs.

The alien had a mind-control device on its head, but Gideon didn't think that would answer for its walking problems. He kept his distance and observed. The alien didn't look like a very formidable opponent. Gideon's best guess was that it came from a world where the gravity was lighter than here, and the extra weight was hampering its movement. Probably its fighting skills would be equally disturbed by the circumstances.

Gideon edged away from the approaching alien, still eyeing it cautiously. There was always the chance that it was just faking this weird walk to get closer to him and take him by surprise. He could wait. Then again, Galen couldn't. Gideon tried not to think of it, but the image of Galen lying there among all those already forgotten corpses, about to become one of them, finally forced him to act.

He stepped closer and aimed a punch right at the alien's face – and hit it square on. It really was moving slowly. Its attempt to defend itself was so late that it only managed to scratch Gideon's hand when he was already pulling it away.

Gideon backed away again, considering his success. His blue opponent seemed even more dazed now. It had stopped moving, swaying on its feet. This would not be a long fight.

He attacked again, but this time, the alien was slightly more prepared. It dodged, and immediately returned his attack with a surprisingly quick slash of its long, sharp-nailed hand, which only grazed his thigh.

Something strange was going on. The lights around them, always uniformly bright, were going dimmer, and the floor was shaking.

When Gideon tried to step backwards, away from the alien, he realized that nothing was wrong with the arena. Something was wrong with him. He placed one involuntarily shivering foot down, but couldn't find his balance, and almost fell.

The alien hadn't moved a bit. On the contrary, it had sat down in an odd crouch, its hands resting on the floor. Gideon wasn't sure which way its purple eyes looked, but he was pretty certain it was staring at him. It had no need to do anything more. It was just waiting for him to go down. The long, bright blue nails had to be poisonous.

The arena was spinning wildly around him, and the sounds from the spectators above were distant, like an echo. He couldn't stand up straight anymore.

A second later he found himself lying on his back, without any memory of falling down. He felt like someone had just dropped a mountain on him, a huge weight was pressing him flat against the floor. He couldn't move at all, could hardly breathe.

Another second, and he blacked out.

Galen opened his eyes into complete darkness. The floor against his cheek felt cold and sticky with what he knew was his own blood.

He felt better. Breathing was still painful, but not overwhelmingly so, and without the knife in him, he could take deeper breaths. Scanning himself, he noted that the injuries were mending well, but not as fast as he had hoped. He'd need to stay put for a good while if he wanted to have it all safely healed, and that was something he couldn't do.

It was already midnight, the end of the round, and he was sure the owners, whoever they were, would soon dispose of the bodies in this room. Galen had a strong guess on how they would do that. He scanned the blackness around him, concentrating on the walls and the ceiling, and found confirmation for his thoughts. There was machinery surrounding the room that could be used to generate a flash of extreme heat, efficiently disposing of all organic material inside the walls.

He sat up and turned his face and sensors to the room and those in it. The lights were off, so he switched to infrared. Most of the bodies were cold and lifeless, some showed lingering body heat that told they had died recently. And one was still alive, though barely. He had to be the loser of the very last fight. His vitals didn't look good – blood pressure too low, pulse too fast, hardly breathing at all. And he was a human. There had only been one human left in the game after Galen had lost.

With a horrible sinking feeling, made worse by the renewed agony in his chest, Galen made his way closer to the man. Things had certainly not gone the way he had planned. Looking back at it all, his plan had been flawed at best, and now, it seemed like a complete failure. It wasn't enough that he had almost got himself killed because he had not thought of everything. His failure might lead to Matthew's death as well. It was up to him to stop that from happening.

He was glad he still had his healing crystal. He might never have been a terribly skilled healer, but, as with most things, joining with the tech had helped quite a bit. He would never be an equal to Ing-Radi or other great master healers of the past, but he could heal many injuries. Continuing his scan of Matthew, Galen quickly noticed that he wasn't really dealing with an injury. There were slight scratches on Matthew's right hand and thigh, not nearly deep enough to cause significant blood loss. The reason he was dying was the poison coursing in his veins. Luckily it was a simple, natural venom, probably a characteristic of the winner's species.

The thought of the winner, combined with the distant sounds of someone approaching the door, reminded Galen of yet another important thing he had forgotten. Just like Matthew had come to loot him, now Matthew's winner was coming to search the loser's body for anything of value. Galen was fairly certain that Matthew had nothing valuable left. The owners, whoever they were, had probably taken away everything, not only weapons, but any means of communicating to the outside, and any signs of who he was and what he had been doing before he came here.

Someone was speaking right behind the door, the rough voice of a Drazi guard. Galen leaped away from Matthew and landed painfully on his left side. He felt something give in, another sharp stab in his chest. Still, he didn't scan to check what had happened, or how bad it was. It would change nothing. He stayed very still, tried to keep his breathing as silent as he could. His face was turned towards the door, and he kept his sensors on Matthew.

The lights went on, and the door opened. In stepped an alien of some race Galen couldn't recognize right now, and he didn't care enough to try and figure it out. It was blue, and both the build of its body and its way of walking suggested it came from a low gravity world. Despite the mind-control, it didn't seem too eager to loot Matthew. It stayed near the door, its hands placed under its chin in a gesture reminiscent of a praying mantis. Slowly and hesitantly it moved closer and folded its legs.

Galen wanted to shout at it, toss it with a fireball, tell it to move faster, or just go away and leave them alone. Of course, he would do no such thing. It was a maddening feeling, watching through his sensors how Matthew grew weaker with every passing moment, and the alien just sat there stupidly, poking him with long, venomous, clawed fingers.

Finally the alien stopped, having found nothing. It stood up and went away. The door closed behind it, and the lights went out, leaving Galen in the dark. He pushed himself up, doing his best to ignore the sting in his chest. Matthew needed help right now, or it would be too late. With a few quick steps Galen was by Matthew's side again. He placed his hands on Matthew's chest and sent in the first wave of organelles. Accessing them through the crystal, he set them to neutralize the venom, and found that it was indeed not a difficult task. Yet the venom had had time to spread all around Matthew's system, and it would take a lot of organelles to stop it in time.

Galen knew there was only one way to do this, and the tech was with him. They didn't like it, but both agreed that Matthew must be saved. After all, it was their fault that he was dying. The tech assured it would work. The organelles might not be very smart, but they could just spread along the circulation and keep neutralizing the poison on their own.

Closing his eyes with concentration, Galen sent more organelles into Matthew's body. As many as he could. More than he could afford. Almost sooner than he had expected, he felt the darkness closing in on him once again. As he felt himself falling, he only hoped he had managed to give enough.

6. Darkness

Captain Matthew Gideon had the most unpleasant feeling of deja vu. For the second time in, well, he did not know how long, but certainly not many hours, he woke up with a hangover that actually wasn't one. This time, it wasn't just a headache. He really felt sick. He rolled over to one side, and stayed there for a good while, his eyes closed, fighting hard not to throw up.

When he felt that the room was fairly still around him, he risked opening his eyes. And saw nothing. Wherever he was, it was completely dark, or then he had just gone blind. But if the place was really, truly and totally lightless, he had no way to be sure. At least his eyes didn't hurt, didn't feel unusual in any way.

Unlike the last time he woke up, now he could clearly remember what had happened before, each detail in lively color, though it took a moment to put it all together. The fight with Galen, which he had somehow won. Getting to loot Galen, and pulling out the knife. Then the fight with the odd blue alien. Which he had apparently lost. There had been poison in the blue claws, he had went down, and now he had to be in that gloomy room with all the rest of the dead. Apparently the poison hadn't been as deadly as the guards had thought, and he had just come out of it. Unless someone had healed him. Someone like Galen, who had to be in this place as well.

Gideon had no light of any kind with him, so he had no choice but to grope around blindly. His hand hit something cold, and he quickly recognized it as a foot, covered with clothing that had a silken feel to it. It might be the Minbari. He moved ahead on all fours – he couldn't just go walking around, that way he would just stumble on everyone and everything.

He found something else. A body wearing a suit of an eerily familiar fabric, the same sort that he wore every day. An Earthforce uniform. He knew he would be happier without the certainty, but he had to know. He searched for the head. The hair was short, coarse and spiky against his palm. Ashley. He had been one of the youngest and least experienced in the security team, and he'd had no chance at all in a fight against Gideon.

Alone in the dark, Gideon bowed his head in mourning, resting his forehead against his fist. This shouldn't have happened. He was fully responsible, even though he hadn't understood what he was doing at the time. Another letter that he had to write to a shocked family. As for Newfield, the older of the two, she was married to an Earthforce pilot Gideon knew. Gideon would have to tell him that he had killed his wife. If he ever got out of here.

A sound pierced his thoughts, something he had heard before, not long ago. The sound of a ragged, rattling breath, repeated at unsteady intervals. Of course, it could be someone else as well. There had probably been one quick match between his fights with Galen and the alien. He could find out easily.

The source of the noise was not far away. Gideon found it quickly, and reached forward with a shaky hand. It landed on a shoulder, the shoulder of someone wearing leather. He moved his hand upward, held it on the neck for a while and found a weak, racing pulse. A bit upper still – no hair. The head was bald. He'd not been too optimistic. Galen was still alive, though for how long, he could not tell.

Another sound had been growing louder, one almost too low to hear. It reminded him distantly of the Excalibur's main gun warming up. With a start, he understood what it was. It was past midnight, the last match was over. Time to get rid of the dead.

They had to do something. They had to get out of here right now.

Gideon grabbed Galen by the shoulders and shook him. “Galen, you've got to wake up! Come on!”

He could've been holding a rag doll, for all the answer he got. He let go, and tried slapping Galen's face instead. No response, as far as he noticed. The low humming had grown louder, and he was certain it was the sound of a high energy weapon, or something just like one, about to go off.

He wrapped his hands around Galen, under his arms, and dragged him upright. Galen wasn't a light or easy burden, and Gideon had no idea where the door was, but he had to do something. Moving very awkwardly, he advanced towards some direction where he hoped the exit might be.

He stopped for a short while to yell again right in Galen's ear, “They're going to burn us alive! Galen!”

Then, at the very same moment when the humming reached a high pitch and turned into an ominous buzz, Gideon felt something brush his skin, a fleeting touch of something weightless, like gossamer. The wave of heat struck them, but it wasn't as bad as he had expected. It didn't burn him, only made him feel uncomfortably hot. This had to be what it felt like in a sauna.

The sound stopped, something light swept over him again, and it had passed. They had survived.

“Well, that really was – what I'd call – a close call,” Galen's hoarse whisper echoed in the dark room, which was now, Gideon supposed, completely empty except for the two of them.

“Boy, am I glad to hear your voice! And you've saved me once again. Or twice. You healed me, right? And I bet it didn't help you heal at all, did it?”

“Without my help, you would be dead. As for myself – I'll live.”

“Yeah, assuming we can figure out how to get out of here. Any bright ideas?”

“Quite a few, actually. You could let go of me, for starters.”

Slightly embarrassed, Gideon realized his hands were still tightly clasped around Galen. When he let go, he felt Galen fall back, and heard his stumbling footsteps, searching for balance. It didn't sound as if he had fallen down, though, which was good. Still on his feet.

“How about some light? Could you do that?” Matthew asked.

“Oh, that...” Galen had hardly noticed that they were in pitch dark. He had switched his sensors to other wavelengths instinctively, but Matthew didn't have that option, so he probably couldn't see a thing. Casting globes of light was an easy thing that required almost no effort at all. With a thought, Galen sent two bluish orbs floating in the air.

“Better? And now, for a way out,” Galen said. He began walking towards the door, slowly and gingerly, one hand wrapped around his aching chest. He was afraid to scan himself. He could feel the tech's utmost worry. Part of it was a reflection of his own feelings, but most came from the knowledge that the tech had, and he didn't, except perhaps subconsciously. He told the tech he didn't want to know, and it understood his reasons. It would make no difference.

The tech alerted him of something else. The sound of footsteps approaching the door. Their best combined guess was that someone had heard voices from this supposedly empty room, and was coming to check it.

“Matthew – come a bit closer,” he whispered. Matthew did, and hearing the footsteps as well, he pressed his back against the wall.

Galen cast the camouflage spell, one of the one-term equations that he had found, the basic Shadow spells. It encompassed both him and Matthew, making them indistinguishable from the wall. He let the light globes wink out, and waited. A moment later, the lights were turned on.

The door opened, revealing not another Drazi guard, but a human-sized alien with large black eyes and grayish skin, carrying a similarity to the Vree. A Streib. One of the followers of the Shadows. It made perfect sense. The Streib had always been unethical explorers, capturing whoever they came across and testing them, often forcing them to fight one another, to find out which race was the strongest. Scouting and comparing potential enemies. Galen couldn't tell whether this place, this game, was just a new way of handling their task, or an unofficial business, a bit of horrid entertainment for a few stray, solitary Streib.

The Shadows had always been able to see through all techno-mage illusions. The Streib, apparently, could not. The alien at the door glared at the empty room with an expression that was hard to read. Puzzlement, perhaps, and frustration. It turned its back and left. Matthew darted towards the closing door, but it was too quick. And then they were in the darkness again.

“Damn! If I just could've been a bit faster!” Matthew's voice echoed in the room, silent yet clearly audible.

“Don't worry, Matthew. We only need to wait a while,” Galen said. A door with a complex lock on the outside and none whatsoever on the inside was not going to hold him back for long. He just didn't want the Streib to notice instantly. If a few seconds' head start was the best they could get for their escape, then he would at least have that.

“Now, move aside. Far from the door,” he told Matthew, who backed away, blind as he still was in the dark. Galen preferred it to be dark, now. Matthew need not see what he was doing.

Galen cast the spell of destruction, encompassing half the door in the devastating sphere. He could just imagine how startled Matthew would feel by the odd stretching of time and space that the spell always caused. For himself, Galen had grown quite accustomed to it. With the equally familiar crack, the sphere vanished, and with it, a good part of the door. A thick beam of light shone to the room through the opening.

Now, they would have to run. And Galen wasn't sure whether he was quite up to it.

7. Small hours

Gideon darted out through the hole Galen had cut in the door, and stopped to wait for him. Outside the room of death, the corridor was identical to every other one Gideon had seen in this complex. It could've been the same corridor where his room had been. Maybe it was. The door he had just come out of was about halfway along the corridor, which continued a long way into both directions. Both walls were lined with doors. As far as he could see, there were no markings on them. He wondered how the Drazi guards found their way here.

Gideon had heard several nasty sounds lately, such as that of high-energy burners warming up, signaling approaching doom, or the strained breathing of a badly injured friend. And now, the ear-splitting alarm that went off, saying that their escape had been noticed.

Galen pitched out of the room. Gideon was about to start running, took a few hasty steps, but Galen remained behind. Gideon hadn't got a good look of him in the dark room. What he saw now wasn't promising. There was dried blood all over Galen's face – a large smear covering his cheek, and thin streams on his chin where it had flowed out of his mouth. He leaned against the wall next to the door, arms crossed tightly against his chest.

“Galen, we've got to go,” Gideon told him, though he was well aware Galen knew that already.

“Yes - very soon,” Galen replied. Then, Gideon discovered another nasty sound he could add to his collection, one he would gladly have missed. Galen's breath caught in his throat, and turned into a racking cough. He spat bright red blood on the floor, and then instantly zapped it away with a spell of some kind. But Gideon had seen it. This definitely didn't look good. He really, really needed to get Galen out of here, and quick.

“Galen...”

“Matthew – I'm going to – cast the camouflage on us. They won't see us,” he stopped for a few more ragged breaths. “I'll cast another spell – to cover any sounds. But you will have to help me walk.”

Gideon returned to Galen's side and placed one arm around him, while Galen did the same, grabbing Gideon's shoulder with his right hand.

“Just tell me which way we're going,” Gideon said.

“That way. Straight ahead, and sixth door to the left,” Galen replied, and suddenly Gideon couldn't see him anymore. He looked around, and couldn't see himself, either. If they were not actually invisible, they blended to the surroundings so completely that it was the same thing.

When Galen had been in chrysalis stage, before he had received his mage implants, casting spells had been a great strain, both physically and mentally. What he felt now reminded him strongly of those days so long ago. The seemingly endless training sessions in Elric's large hall on Soom. The three lines of grave disappointment crossing Elric's brow. Trying to hold on to too many spells at once, and slipping...

His thoughts snapped back to the present. Yes, he had indeed been about to slip. His concentration was wavering. Unlike normally, when it was so natural he hardly even thought about it, now he needed to fight to keep it up. Simply walking ahead, even with Matthew's support, was exhausting. The primitive fear of drowning and suffocation was constantly lurking in the back of his head, renewed each time he breathed and felt the pain and the slowly increasing pressure that kept him from getting enough air.

One hand on Matthew's shoulder, the other still clamped against his chest, he closed his eyes and stepped on. All he had to do was to walk, and to keep up his three spells. Camouflage. Soundproof shield. Shadow skin. No one could find them or hurt them through those. A while longer to the door to the repository where they would find his staff and Matthew's PPG and link. Then another stretch to a door that would lead them out of here.

Of course he would make it, it would be stupid and utterly useless to think otherwise. And still, the tech was trying to offer other solutions. They could hide for as long as they needed to, so they could stop somewhere and rest, as long as it took, so that his few remaining organelles could work on the damage. But Galen had been with the tech too long not to notice that it was not quite certain of this. He didn't have many organelles left, and they might not be enough. It might not help no matter how long they spent sitting in a corner and hiding.

“Matthew – that door,” Galen said, pointing with his hand, only to realize that while his words were audible inside the soundproof shield, neither of them could see anything of themselves. The camouflage worked both ways, and it was better that way. He didn't want Matthew to see the Shadow skin. He didn't like hiding things, but revealing that in these circumstances would complicate things too much. Some other day, perhaps. Some day Matthew would find out, one way or the other.

“It's locked,” Matthew replied.

Galen searched his pockets. He still had that age-old key card Alwyn had once given him, the one that was supposed to open every door. He didn't know whether that was exactly true, but at least it worked on this one. The door slid open silently. Matthew led them in, and closed the door behind them.

Relieved, Galen let go of the spells. He looked around. The room was small, but the walls and even the floor were made of honeycomb-like cells of different sizes. On the floor, solid paths went around the room, offering access to all the cells. The cells were filled with all kinds of weapons, simple and complicated, ranging from knives, axes and swords to plasma pistols and complex devices that he couldn't even name without further study.

He checked the signal he had been following, and found that his staff was in a hole in the floor. Unthinking, he let go of Matthew, and advanced on his own. Luckily it was only a few steps away, and then he could let himself fall on his knees. He picked up his staff, and propped himself up with it. Perhaps he would manage with it, so he would not need to lean on Matthew all the time.

As he retraced his few steps back to Matthew, he knew it wouldn't work. He was too weak already, had lost too much blood. He didn't know how much, even though the tech could've given him an exact reading, down to each milliliter, each single droplet. He was better off not knowing.

Matthew was still standing by the door, his arms crossed. He looked slightly annoyed. “You could've told me where you were guiding me. I figured we were just going to get out of here as fast as possible.”

“Oh. I thought you'd figure it out – I wouldn't leave without my staff. And you – you should take your things. Three steps to the right, in the wall, the second row up from the floor.”

Matthew tried hailing the Excalibur as soon as he had found his link, but received no response. “They're probably jamming all outgoing signals, they wouldn't want any of the players in their little game to contact the outside world. Ah well. We'll need to get out of here anyway, I'll call them when we're there,” he said.

Matthew spent a moment gazing at the nearest cells in the wall, and then, with a crooked smile, picked up a large modified plasma rifle and a pile of energy pods. “All right, I'm all set up. Now, could we please find a door that lets us out of this place.”

Covered with Galen's protective spells, they stepped to the corridor again. They had just gotten out when a Drazi guard appeared, running towards them, or, actually, towards the door they had just closed. The guard had clearly seen the door open and close, but couldn't see them. He raised his gun – a simple PPG type pistol, and shot at them.

Gideon crouched to take cover, but before he got down, one of the blasts hit him. To his surprise, he hardly even felt it. Galen's shielding really was effective. Yet the Drazi had seen the blast encounter something, so he now knew someone was still here. Gideon couldn't see Galen, but he knew he had to be nearby.

“Galen. Can you run? We've got to get away from the guard,” he asked. Stupid question, he told himself.

“Let me – try something else,” Galen's reply sounded exhausted. Gideon wondered what he was up to this time, but decided to trust him. So far, every spell Galen had cast had proved to be just what they needed.

Gideon felt himself rising a few inches into the air, floating above the floor. He nearly lost his balance. Then he found himself gliding on rapidly, faster than he could've run. It was a slightly uneven ride, and he ended up spreading both arms for balance. Luckily he didn't hit Galen when doing so. They were growing the distance to the Drazi.

Some five doors away from the end of the corridor, their flight stopped abruptly. Gideon's feet hit the ground. He lost his footing and touched the ground with one hand, but was quickly up again. Galen, he noticed, was not. He was down on all fours, and clearly visible. They were both visible, and vulnerable as well.

Gideon helped Galen up, and started to drag him on, towards wherever they had been going. Gideon had no idea whether their flight had had some actual target, or if Galen had just taken them away from the guard.

“Matthew – second-last door to the right,” Galen panted.

He was leaning heavily on Gideon, and they were advancing quickly, though it might've been exaggerated to call it running. They stopped at the mentioned door, and Galen used a key card, just like on the previous one. It opened, and Galen practically fell in. Gideon went after him, and closed the door.

They weren't in a new room, but at the foot of a staircase leading up. Gideon couldn't see how far the stairs continued. Galen wasn't looking at the stairs, but stood in front of the door, leaning on his staff. With great effort, he lifted it from the ground, pointed one end at the door, and shot a bright beam of some kind out of it. First, he pointed it at the lock, and then followed the door frames, melting the door and the doorway together, making it at least temporarily secured.

Galen let his staff fall to the floor, doubled over and fell to his knees, coughing, flecking the floor with blood.

Gideon knelt next to him, feeling at a loss. There was nothing he could do to help Galen here and now. He placed one hand on Galen's shoulder and suggested, “This place seems quiet enough for now. Why don't we rest a moment?”

“We've no time. The guards approach – from both directions,” Galen replied, his words nearly obscured by harsh gasping.

Galen was probably right, Gideon had to admit that. “OK. Now, any idea where these stairs'll lead us? And how're we going to climb them? Could you just make us float all the way up?”

“Hopefully to the club – Matthew – I can't keep up all the spells – the shields and the flying platform – at the same time – not now – we'll have to walk.”

Gideon didn't know anything about a club. The Drazi thugs that'd taken him here had caught him in a back alley where he had been supposed to meet the contact for the rumored ancient and wise alien. He had never seen the upper part of the complex, where that cheering crowd must've been. He wondered how far above it was. Then he contemplated Galen, who was now sitting with one shoulder and the side of his head resting against the wall. The bright blood on his lips made his skin look white.

Gideon gazed at the stairs again. He had the awful feeling that this would be a very long climb.

8. Before dawn

Galen glared at the stairs, feeling both desperate and hopeful. He really had no idea where they would lead. He had picked the door leading to this room since his sensors had revealed it was much higher than the others. From that, he had deduced it contained an elevator shaft or a staircase. He had very much hoped it would be the former. Nevertheless, he was quite certain that these stairs would lead them out of this place. The club would probably be empty, except for an army of Drazi guards waiting for them. He hoped they'd be able to slip through them unnoticed, without needing to fight at all.

Galen picked his staff up from the floor, and used both it and the wall to prop himself up. The pain and dizziness struck him again, so bad he had to close his eyes and lean on the wall with all his weight.

Matthew was eyeing him with open concern. “You really up to this, Galen?”

“Not really – but that's irrelevant. We have to go.”

“I'll help as much as I can. You concentrate on those shields, and I'll take care of walking.”

There was only so much Matthew could do. He could support most of Galen's weight, but he could hardly carry him, so Galen still had to take all those steps himself, each single stair. There were so many. The first stretch, he counted one hundred of them. Then there was a landing where they stopped for a while. All he wanted to do was to let himself collapse on the floor and lay there, forget all about the spells and the stairs. And because of that, he didn't even dare sit down.

They had actually been lucky so far. They had met no guards. None at all. It was strange, but he certainly wouldn't complain. He could already hear the voices of those working on the door downstairs. Soon they would get through and come after them. No time to rest. He grabbed Matthew's arm, indicating they should continue.

As they climbed on, slowly, awkwardly and painfully, Galen found himself thinking that though he didn't believe there was a hell, if there actually was one, it might be just like this. He was breathing fire, agony flared through his chest with each quick gulp of air he took. He could hardly hear anything except for the frantic pounding of his heart. A red-black haze was obscuring his vision, and he had to switch to his sensors so he could see at all. They still worked, since the tech hadn't been directly harmed.

Loud sounds from downstairs cut into his private inferno. The guards had finally got through the door.

As Matthew and Galen reached another landing, Matthew said aloud what Galen was thinking. “We could just stop here and wait quietly in the corner, the guards'll probably pass us by.”

Galen was too winded to answer. He let go of Matthew and sank to the floor. And then he felt it again. Something was blocking his airway, he was suffocating, he was drowning, once again, and he had no choice but to cough until it came out, although it tore him apart from the inside, breaking whatever little good his organelles had managed to do. As he couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, couldn't concentrate to keep up the shields. One by one, they flickered away, leaving them both visible.

The metallic, echoing sound of the guards running up the stairs was getting closer. And Galen was looking bad. Gideon hated himself for what he had to do, but nevertheless knelt closer and grabbed Galen's shoulder.

“Galen, you've got to concentrate. Pull yourself together. Get those shields back. Otherwise we'll have no chance at all of ever making it out of here,” he hissed, hoping the guards wouldn't hear – though surely they had heard that horrible cough already.

Galen looked straight into his eyes, showing he understood and did his best. Then his eyes closed, face twisted with either tight focus or pain. His hands clenched into fists. And when the guards came around a corner in the stairs, into full view of them, the shields went up. They were invisible again.

Nevertheless, the guards had caught an idea of where they were – they had seen a flash of something, had heard their sounds. They started firing ahead randomly, trying to hit at least something. Hiding from them was out of the question. They would just have to keep going. Gideon felt Galen struggling to get up, searching for his support. The guards were hitting them already, but nothing came through, only the feeling of something heavy splashing against them.

They were on the stairs again, continuing their way up. Gideon could hear Galen gasping desperately, could feel his chest heaving against him. And they were moving too slowly. Gideon was getting exhausted himself, though he wasn't nearly as badly injured. Actually, he had figured that when Galen had cured the poison, many of the other bruises from the earlier battles had been healed as well. But he was hardly in top shape, and basically carrying two people up the stairs was tiring him quickly. The guards kept shooting, though now they didn't hit quite as often, since their target was moving, and they couldn't see it properly. And Galen's shielding was holding again, showing no sign of giving in.

They reached another landing, and like the two they had seen before, this one didn't have any doors either. Gideon had a hunch that this wasn't a regular staircase at all, not one used every day, but more of an emergency escape route from that deep-down complex to another place above it.

Galen had stopped, though he had to know as well as Gideon did that they couldn't afford to do that. They had no time to rest, the guards were right on their heels, moving much faster than them.

“Matthew -” Galen wheezed. “We're not – going to – make it – this way – take my hand – get ready – to shoot -”

Gideon had no idea what Galen was planning, but he took up the modified plasma rifle and loaded it, pointing it at the rapidly approaching guards.

Then they were floating in the air again, and Gideon could guess what Galen was about to do. He reached for Galen's hand with his left hand, and with the gun in his right, started firing away at the guards. Their shields disappeared again, but they were flying, rushing up the stairs without touching them, leaving the Drazi behind.

Gideon hit a few of the guards, but now that they no longer had any shields, the guards could get through as well. A bolt of searing plasma struck his right leg, and he would've fallen, had he not been holding on to Galen's hand.

Finally, they went around a corner, leaving the guards so far their weapons couldn't reach them anymore.

“How bad?” Galen asked. Their speed was slowing down.

Gideon bit his teeth and tried to sound unconcerned. “Burns a bit, but I don't think it's serious. Keep going. We've got to be almost there.”

Almost there, Matthew said. Galen hoped he was right. He was back in Elric's training hall again. Today, they were doing flying platforms. The spell for the platform itself wasn't complicated, nor was the one needed for setting it in motion. The difficulty laid in keeping it steady enough for anyone to stay on it. Particularly when there was someone else beside him. Elric. Matthew. Someone who must to stay on the platform. Everything depended on it. Keep up the speed, keep up the shape of the platform, keep it steady. Keep going.

He had given up on trying to stand, and Matthew had joined him soon, trying to keep his face calm and collected, though Galen knew that he had his share of pain too. A plasma bolt to the leg. Dangerous only if it was deep enough to cause significant blood loss, hit an artery, or if left untreated and then infected. And, in their situation, very much more dangerous in it that it would keep Matthew from walking normally. They were both crippled now, and they still weren't out of here. That was why they would not walk, and Galen had to keep up the platform. Never think of anything else. Keep going.

The sounds of the guards had almost died away, they were so far below them now. And unless Galen was completely wrong, they had already passed the level of the Red 'Zirja Nights, the main level of the burrowed corridors of the city. Another turn around a corner, and suddenly, the walls changed. They were no longer of the same, silvery gray metal that most of the complex had been. They were of red rock, tunnels cut into the planet itself. They were getting closer to the surface, and there were no doors anywhere to be seen. Keep up the speed. Almost there.

“Control. Concentration. Focus,” Elric was saying to him. “Without these, you will always fail.”

As often before, Galen wondered whether Elric was not asking too much of him. Asking the impossible. But Elric never did that, and if he failed, it would be his fault alone, not Elric's. So he had to try his best. He would not fail, though he could hardly breathe anymore, could hardly see where he was going.

“Galen! Galen, you can let go now,” Elric was telling him. He let go, the platform dissolved, and they fell to the floor.

“...and it's locked, of course. How about that key card you have, would it work on this door too?”

Why would Elric say that? It made no sense. It wasn't Elric, after all, who was talking to him. He was getting delirious. It was Matthew asking the questions. They were fleeing. Galen groped in his pocket for the card, found it, and handed it over. The door slid open, and Matthew pulled them through it.

They were in a hall, or rather, a hangar, a landing bay large enough for one medium-sized ship. And they had arrived just in time to prove how that one ship, a Streib vessel, left through the forcefield-covered opening in one of the walls.

9. Daybreak

The Streib ship was gone. Gideon saw no spacesuits or breathers around. He couldn't even spot an airlock. Apparently the Streib didn't enjoy hiking on the surface in their free time. He tried contacting the Excalibur, and still received only static. The jamming was effective here as well. They'd have to get out of the complex. Besides, the guards were probably still on their tail, and after a while, they'd burst through the door and start shooting again.

Gideon turned to look at Galen. There was a faint trace of blood on the wall where he had rested his back against it and slid down to sit on the floor – the stab wound in his back had begun bleeding again. Another trickle of fresh blood was making its way down his chin. His face was ashen, his lips bluish. When Gideon took hold of his wrist to check his pulse, he just stared ahead with a mildly stupefied expression. After an amazingly long fight, it seemed shock was finally taking over. But Gideon couldn't let it happen. They were so near already.

“Galen. Look at me. We're almost out. The only thing that stands between us and help from the Excalibur is getting out of this room. We have to find a way.”

Galen closed his eyes and nodded. He was shivering. “Cold in here...” he muttered.

“It's probably even colder out there. We'll need spacesuits, or air, or some kind of protection. Can you take care of that?”

“Shield.”

“That might work, I really don't know. You still with me, Galen?”

“I'm trying – concentration and control – I'm not good at shields-”

Gideon sighed. They had no time. Maybe Galen could do a shield that would help, maybe he couldn't, maybe he was just too out of it to do anything anymore. Gideon's leg certainly didn't feel good, not like anything he'd be able to walk on, but he had to. He pulled Galen's hands over his shoulders and started hauling him across the room towards the opening with the force field.

Galen was losing, and he knew it. His mind was fluttering between the dismal reality, Matthew dragging him on across the Streib hangar, and the memory, the dream, the delirious image of Elric giving a lesson, explaining to him about shield spells, and telling him to do it and keep going. Galen was no good at shields. Translating them to his spell language of equations didn't work at all. Except that in the reality, he no longer had a spell language, and he wasn't a chrysalis-stage student anymore. And yet he was, and Elric was there, behind him, holding the chrysalis, ready to override, stop it all if something went wrong.

It was so cold he couldn't stop shivering. He knew it was a sure sign of shock. Too much blood lost, and yet not lost at all, only misplaced, still inside him, gathered in his chest, keeping him from breathing normally. Everything was going wrong, and there was no way anyone could step in, override and stop it. It wasn't just about Galen's life. Matthew's was at stake as well, and he needed Galen's help. Needed that shield spell. No matter how difficult it was. Besides, Matthew's leg was injured. He shouldn't be forced to carry Galen like this. There was nothing wrong with Galen's feet, he should walk on his own, he should help Matthew.

Gideon cursed. Galen was probably heavier than he was. Luckily it wasn't a long way. And then, halfway across, Galen suddenly came to again.

“Matthew, let me,” he whispered, and eased himself away from his hold, keeping again only one arm around his shoulders, and trying to get additional support from his staff.

They reached the force field. Gideon poked a finger at it, and encountered what felt like static electricity that resisted his touch. “Galen, get ready with that shield. I'm going to get rid of this,” he said, waving his hand at the opening. He pointed his plasma rifle at the control panel and fired. The force field disappeared, and a gust of cold wind blew in from the surface, carrying red sand with it.

Something blue and faintly shimmering enveloped them, and Gideon didn't feel the harsh wind anymore. Galen had again succeeded in creating a shield, and the air inside it felt perfectly normal, though outside, the air in the hangar was quickly being replaced by the planet's low-oxygen atmosphere. Galen's eyes were tightly shut again, his hand pinching Gideon's shoulder so hard that it hurt.

Gideon took a step towards the red plain outside, and his leg gave in. They both fell to the ground, but the shield still held. Gideon managed to stand up again, and offered Galen his arm. Another step forward, and a third one, a fourth. They were out of the hangar, surrounded by a vast, red emptiness. They sank to the ground again, back to back, and Gideon tried his link.

“Captain! Good to hear your voice, sir!” Matheson's anxious reply came quickly. Gideon's lips turned into a wide smile.

“Likewise, Lieutenant – you have no idea... John. Can you home in on this signal? We need a shuttle here, right now. And send Doctor Chambers.”

“Just hang on in there. Help's on the way. The shuttle should reach you in fifteen minutes.”

Gideon sighed. Fifteen minutes was an awfully long time. “You'd better hurry up,” he added in a low voice.

Then it was silent again, except for the howling of the wind, the almost inaudible hiss of sand hitting their shield, and Galen's fast and shallow breathing, every now and then distorted by a cough.

“Fifteen minutes, Galen. We've made it this far, surely we can do that.”

He received no response. He had no watch, no way of knowing how much time had passed. Or hadn't passed. It had probably not been a minute yet.

“Galen? You still there?”

“Elric?”

Gideon knew Elric had been Galen's teacher, quite a while ago, a powerful techno-mage. It beat him how Galen could think they sounded alike. “No, not Elric. Gideon. Matthew. Captain of the Excalibur. The stray you once saved. More than once.”

Gideon moved around so he could see Galen's face. Without Gideon's back against his, Galen fell limply to the ground.

“Matthew?” – hack – “Thirteen“ – gasp – “minutes-” he managed, in the present again, though his eyes were gazing blankly at the sky above.

“Thirteen minutes. Just keep up the countdown. Concentrate on it.”

Gideon couldn't think of much to say that would make any sense or do any good at all, but the near-silence was oppressing. He had the horrible feeling that each breath Galen took was weaker than the one before it, fading ever so slightly.

“Galen? Are we there yet?” he asked, in vain attempt to lighten up the mood.

“Twelve.”

Still there. Good. Gideon decided he'd better keep talking. “Guess the guards won't come after us when they notice the force field's been blow away and we're out here. Good thing they're not as dumb as we are.”

Silence again. Galen was staring straight at him, but somehow he had the feeling that what he saw was something else. The shield was blinking, and a breeze of cold air came through, but then it stabilized again.

“Yeah! You can do this, Galen. Just stay with me.”

But Galen was shaking his head now, looking desperate. “No – Elric – asking – too much-”

That sounded really scary, Gideon thought. “Galen. Matthew here, remember. We don't have much longer to wait, probably just ten minutes.”

“Eleven-”

“One minute here or there. Maybe they'll be early. Trace might be annoying, but he really is a good pilot.”

“Matthew – sorry – can't-” Gideon wasn't sure whether Galen was saying he couldn't hold the shield anymore, or that he couldn't breathe. Either way, the results would probably be pretty much the same. A particularly bad fit of coughing hit him. With Gideon's help, Galen turned over to one side, so he could get the blood out. Then he lay back again, and closed his eyes.

A gust of icy wind struck Gideon's face. The blue glow had vanished completely. Their shield was gone. Ten minutes to go. There was oxygen here, so they might just survive that long in the planet's atmosphere. They had to.

He couldn't hear Galen's breathing anymore. He placed his cheek over Galen's face and felt air moving against it, but that could've been just the wind – he couldn't see his chest move at all. Gideon laid his ear on his chest, and heard nothing. Not a whisper of breath. Not even a heartbeat. He sought the pulse from Galen's neck, and to his surprise and relief, found it, still there, though weak and rapid.

Breathing wasn't all that easy for Gideon either now that the shield was gone. The sand was everywhere, he felt it in his nose and his mouth, stinging in his eyes, and adding an annoying tickling to the constant dull burning in his leg. The air was thin, like high up in a mountain. And the wind was cold, freezing cold. He knew they should gather more closely together, to share body heat, but he was suddenly feeling too tired to move. He stayed where he was, his ear resting on Galen's frighteningly silent chest.

A dark red fog was creeping into his peripheral vision. There wasn't enough air, he couldn't breathe. He wondered if this was what Galen had went through during their escape.

Gideon felt something warm on the side of his face that faced the cold sky. A moment later, a bright light pierced his rapidly narrowing field of vision. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating, but no, it had to be real. Day was dawning.

Just as the first rays of Sozirja's sun lighted the desolate red plain, Gideon gave in to the red darkness.

10. Morning

“So, do we know anything about what's waiting us down there?” Randall, the med technician asked.

Sarah Chambers shook her head. “Not really. Captain Gideon's there, since he contacted us, and there's an emergency of some sort, if he asked for a medical team. My best guess is that Galen's there too, considering that no one has heard from him in a while, and he was supposed to be looking for the Captain.”

“I've got visual,” Trace called from the shuttle's controls, and Chambers left her chair, moving to the one next to him.

He showed her an outside camera picture, and magnified it to reveal two figures huddled close to the ground. Matthew and Galen, as far as she could tell from the hazy zoomed image, so her guess had been a good one. They were wearing regular clothes – no breathers, no suits, nothing at all to protect them from the unfriendly atmosphere and the freezing surface temperature. Incredible, she thought to herself. What were they doing out there like that, hadn't they got the least bit of common sense? Or perhaps this was why Matthew had asked for a medical team. Had he known in advance that they'd be forced to spend time outside? She couldn't know until they got there.

“All right, people,” she addressed her team – Randall plus two nurses. “It seems they're out there on the surface without protection, and if they've been there ever since the Captain called, well, you all know that's not promising. Even if they haven't, we're probably facing some degree of hypothermia and oxygen deprivation. Thermal blankets and O2 at ready.”

Trace Miller brought the shuttle down elegantly, like a ray of the rising sun, landing just some feet away from their target. “See? When Matheson says fifteen minutes, I can bring her down in eleven,” he said, quite pleased with himself.

When he took a closer look at the target of their rescue flight, and his smugness faded. Unlike he had expected, the Captain and the techno-mage hadn't stood up to wave and greet their saviors – instead, they looked still as dead. “Oh, no.”

The rescue team jumped out of the shuttle, wearing breathers and thick parkas, and ran to their patients. The first question was, as always, whether it was safe to move them. There was something oddly touching in the posture they were in, Matthew lying with his face resting on Galen's chest. Chambers almost felt sorry to disturb them. But since a quick check showed no indication of spinal injuries, they quickly loaded the two men on stretchers and carried them into the shuttle.

“They've both stopped breathing – start the oxygen – Trace, take us back, quick, and keep it smooth,” Chambers yelled.

“I'm always smooth, ma'am, and I bet I can get you there in nine minutes,” Trace replied, but she wasn't really listening.

It didn't take her long to check Matthew, and she didn't find anything critical. He had already started breathing on his own. Aside from the circumstantially understandable lack of oxygen and low body temperature, he had what looked like a PPG burn in his leg, one that had probably been very painful, but wouldn't be difficult to fix. She asked one of the nurses to clean and dress it, and since he'd lost some blood, she called for a transfusion. Chambers didn't think any of this was why the Captain had called for a medical team. She turned around to see to her other patient.

Randall shook his head from Galen's side. “Doesn't look good. He's in shock, and O2 sat just refuses to go up .”

Someone was yelling. “It doesn't matter what I said before we got to them! You don't waste time wrapping blankets when you've got every sign of serious chest trauma right in front of your nose!”

Gideon just wanted to go back to sleep. He could afford that, now. He recognized Sarah Chambers's voice. They had made it. Those critical fifteen minutes had passed. They were in good hands, and they'd be back aboard the Excalibur in no time. But then, why was she shouting like that? And where was Galen? Had he really made it as well?

He turned his head, trying to blink the worst of the remaining sand away from his eyes. Galen was right there next to him, his back propped against the wall. He wasn't looking much better. Maybe even worse. Most of the rescuers were working on him. And Chambers seemed angry at them. Or extremely worried. Probably both.

Gideon grabbed the oxygen mask someone had placed over his face and tore it away. “Doc? Doc! What's going on? Is he going to be okay?” He knew he was babbling, but he went on. “He got stabbed in the back, I pulled the knife out with my own hands, and he's been coughing up blood, I'm pretty sure he's been bleeding internally for a good while – he wasn't breathing – I couldn't hear his heart-”

“Captain, we're working on it. Just take it easy. Randall, I want to hear some results right now!”

“I'm sorry, Doctor, I didn't – whoa,” the technician she'd been yelling at let out, peering at his scanner readings. “Massive hemothorax on the left side. Can't pinpoint the bleeding, seems to be coming from multiple cuts.”

“Trace, how long until we're there?” Chambers called out.

“Uh, the Excalibur's in orbit and moving away from us, so I'd say seven minutes,” Gideon heard Trace Miller's voice coming from the cockpit.

“That's seven minutes too long. You've got to be faster, Trace. And Randall, we've already wasted enough time. Prep him for chest tube insertion.”

“Doc? What's it?” Gideon asked anxiously.

In the blink of an eye, Chambers was right there, her face in front of his, her steady hand on his shoulder. “There's blood around his lung that really shouldn't be there, and we've got to get it out. Matthew, this isn't going to be pretty, but he's going to be just fine. The injury really isn't that complicated, it's nothing we can't handle. Just go back to sleep, all right?”

Gideon didn't want to go to sleep, not really. He needed to see what they did, he had to be sure that Galen would be all right. But it was so pleasantly warm here, and he was so tired, and his leg wasn't aching anymore. And Galen would be fine, Chambers had said so. Gideon closed his eyes.

Something wasn't quite like it should've been. Galen couldn't point a finger at it, but something was off. He hadn't opened his eyes yet, but he knew well enough that he was in the Excalibur's MedLab. Not for the first time, Sarah Chambers had had to step in to take care of injuries that his organelles hadn't been able to mend. And now that he thought of it, he realized what was wrong, though that wasn't quite the word for it. He was breathing, deeply, and it didn't hurt. He had grown so used to the constant pain during their escape that he had almost forgotten what it was like to breathe normally, without needing to think about it at all.

“Galen?”

“Matthew.”

Galen opened his eyes and looked up. Matthew was standing next to his bed, leaning on a crutch. Galen didn't need to use his sensors to see that Matthew had recovered well, though he wasn't wearing his uniform yet. Sarah had probably wanted to keep him off duty for a while, knowing that 'take it easy' was a phrase that none of this crew really understood.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Well, on and off, maybe a bit less during the last few days than the few days before that, but I'd say at least twenty-four hours altogether, give or take a few. You've really kept us on our toes. Doc said they'd fixed everything and that you should be fine, but you just wouldn't wake up. Had us afraid of brain damage, though nothing else pointed to it,” Matthew said.

From what the tech told Galen, he'd been out longer than would've been absolutely necessary, not because of Sarah, but because of the tech, though the basic reason was pretty much the same. The tech had wanted to keep him from straining himself until he had enough organelles to cover for those he had given to Matthew. Since it was an act of self-preservation, something necessary for his recovery, the tech hadn't bothered to wake him up and ask his opinion about it. Perhaps that'd been a good thing, since it had been quite successful. Taking a quick look through his organelles, Galen saw that the severe internal injuries he had suffered were completely healed. There wasn't even the slightest sign of the cut in his side where the Excalibur's medical team had put a tube through to drain the blood.

“So, how're you feeling?” Matthew asked.

Galen pushed himself to a seated position, and Matthew sat down next to him.

“I'm fine. Very good, actually. Sorry to have kept you waiting, it certainly wasn't my intention. How's your leg?”

“Fine. Just a bit itchy. Doc says it won't even leave a scar. You know, she was pretty amazed when I told her how long you'd went on during our escape, running and climbing stairs and all with a neat set of holes in your chest. She almost didn't believe me.”

“Why Matthew, I didn't have much choice – of course I couldn't have left you to face all that trouble on your own. And yet, to be honest, I believe I'd have died down there without your help.”

“If you hadn't come to get me out of there in the first place, I'd have died in one of those fights without even understanding who I was and what I was doing.”

“Had I come up with a better plan, neither of us would've got hurt at all.”

“If I'd had enough common sense not to go to a suspicions back alley just because of a rumor and with only two men, none of this would've happened.”

“Well, had I come earlier, we might have saved the others as well.” Despite the guilt and failure he felt, Galen tried to keep his tone light, as if joking with the endless what-ifs, but Matthew saw right through him. Of course, that was because he felt exactly the same way. Yet it was Matthew who found the right words to end it.

“And if pigs could fly... Galen, never mind. I think we're even. We both did some stupid things, and we both fought a pretty damn good fight down there, and we survived. That's all that really matters.”

Galen spent a moment considering the details, and then, with a series of suitably showy gestures, cupped his hands and brought them together.

“Do you think this would do?” he asked Matthew, and opened his hands to reveal a tiny, but otherwise perfectly well-proportioned pig. It spread out its pink dragon-like wings and took off, flying a few neat circles around them, before it vanished through the ceiling.

Comments? Please do tell! Mail veldeia(a)yahoo.com.