Trojian Horse
Chapter 23

Roue forced his eyes open, his head was swirling and despite his best efforts he was unable to string together any coherent pattern of thinking. He closed his eyes again and thought of space. Focusing on an image of bright nebula he found himself becoming clearer. This time when he opened his eyes he found he had greater control of his faculties. He sluggishly took to studying his surroundings, concluding that he was in a cave though there was very little light that managed to trickle in. He could feel the wet earth against his skin and the smell of mud and humus invaded his nostrils almost instantly. His breathing helmet was gone! Was he dying? Were these the symptoms Iris had warned him about? Panic set in.

He tried to raise his hand to wipe away the dirt on his face but found he could not move. His hands were tied together. He wriggled around aimlessly while moaning loudly, as he found that his mouth had been stuffed with leaves. Several minutes of wriggling around yielded no results in the way of freeing himself and he eventually decided he would accept his fate with dignity. He rolled onto his back and waited to suffocate. He felt each breathe would be his last but the moment when he would keel over and exhale his last breath never came.

Instead he found his senses getting sharper with each moment. He heard swirling water nearby. Very close-by. He thought he could make out some stalactites, and stalagmites a short distance from where he lay. His thoughts drifted to his captor, a captor he had not even managed to catch a glimpse of. It had not even been an hour since he ventured away from the Rogue, his ship, and he was already going to be a meal for something here. For all he knew the leaves stuffed into his mouth were seasoning and he was going to be slow roasted over a large fire when the creature felt the urge. Or maybe the leaves would make him more palatable. Better yet they were meant to paralyse him so he could be swallowed whole with ease. Whichever way he thought about it, it didn’t end well for him. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious for but he felt his time would soon be up. Iris would never know what happened to him.

Yet again, he had found himself in another impossible position. This time, however, he did not have Iris to help him out of it and this had been an unforeseen undertaking, though necessary, he was starting to find he had the worst luck possible. Even if Iris managed to regain communications she would not find him since his earpiece had been plucked out of his ear presumably at the same time as he was being left to slowly suffocate to death. If he ever made it out of this alive, he would head back to the Rogue and never look back on any of it. Not the Georas, not the war, none of it.

After some time, when he found he was getting stronger, not weaker, a tiny bit of hope that he could extricate himself from this trouble started creeping in. After a while he found that he could move his arms and legs then he managed to sit up and the wall of the cave staring into the darkness wondering what lay in his future or how much longer he would still have a future, he heard a noise coming from what he guessed was the entrance of the cave. Whatever it was, it was very silent barely making a sound as it drifted toward him. He was still a little light-headed and the shadows in the dark formed a colossus coming toward him. A hand jutted out the darkness and grabbed him by the back of the neck. The leaves were yanked out of his mouth then a gourd was held up to his mouth and he was forced to drink whatever was in it. At first, he struggled, refusing to drink but the strong hand gripped tighter around the back of his neck relaxing only when he drank the vile metallic tasting fluid which did not stop flowing until he had taken several good swigs. Any hope he had of overpowering his captor quickly dissipated. He was utterly hopeless. He was being fattened for the kill and the last thing he would remember was a mouthful of mud as he was slung to the ground. He had never considered this was how he would be taken out. In his mind his death would come from a drunken binge on dariks on an obscure moon base surrounded by all the ansers he had not managed to spend. This was pathetic, even for him.

Something with a pungent smell was shoved up his nose and soon his head swirling again. Once again, he was drifting into oblivion. At least this creature had the decency to knock him out before it ate him. He felt himself drifting further and further away from reality. His eyes sealed shut and for a few moments he was back on the Rogue sailing among the stars, free again. He shivered involuntarily then followed violent spasms which led to suffocation then a silent darkness. He did not feel the pain of his passing. A wave of euphoria swept over him before he breathed his last. He was free.

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