Chiana awakened with a start. She stretched, feeling muscles protest that they didn't like sleeping on the floor any more than she did. She rose to her feet yawning. She ran her fingers through her hair. Flecks of mud and dirt broke away and formed a cloud around her head. She grimaced.

Chiana sauntered over to the where the others were craned over a computer screen, wondering vaguely what had woken her up, and whether the Scarrans had been thoughtful enough to leave a toilet in their prison.

"Hey, what's up?" she rested her elbow on Sikosu's shoulder in a gesture carefully calculated to annoy her.

None of them turned. "Hey Pip," Crichton said vaguely, "Nothing good."

"Sikosu managed to reactivate this console and link it into the mainframe." Aeryn said.

"She did? That's great!" Chiana thumped her palm against Sikosus back hard enough to make her stumble. "Well done! So what?"

Sikosu glared at her for a moment. "It was no great achievement." Sikosu said with what Chiana thought was slightly contrived modesty. "My access is limited. I can observe but I cannot affect any systems of importance."

"The Scarrans launched an assault on the enemy fleet a couple of arns ago." Aeryn said.

"Well that's good isn't it? Isn't that good?" Chiana said.

"Nope." Crichton supplied, "It was a trap. The Scarrans got their butts kicked."

"Frell." Chiana breathed, "What happened? They don't think that we..." she trailed off meaningfully.

"I am receiving some kind of transmission," said Sikosu, "I am attempting to route it to us."

A face appeared on the stained and chipped screen. It was a face Chiana knew better than her own. She felt a horrible tight sensation in her chest.

They listened to Neiri's short, terrible message. They heard him reply to Staleek. They continued to stare at the screen long after it had gone blank, after the distant echoes of the first of the bombings had began.

"Oh shit." Crichton whispered.

"We need to find a way out of here. They'll be coming for us." Aeryn said.

Chiana stared at the screen. She felt light-headed for some reason. Every time she tried to focus on a thought it skidded away from her, like soap in the shower.

"What?" she blinked. "But we didn't know, we didn't mean -"

Aeryn shrugged, scanning the room for some way to escape as if they had already searched repeatedly, "That fleet is out there wiping out their entire race, do you think they'll care what we meant to happen?"

"Now would be a very good time to get that door open, Sikosu." Crichton added.

Sikosu's hands poised over the console. She looked frustrated. "As I said, I have access only to tertiary controls. Door access are encrypted systems. I cannot access them, at least not in the time available to us."

There was a dull boom that reverberated around the room and through their bowels. A fine layer of plaster drifted down from the ceiling. They glanced upwards apprehensively as there were several louder blasts in succession. The bombardment had began, and it was moving closer.

"Then we're dead." Crichton said blandly. "Scorpius you bastard..."

Sikosu shot him a venomous glare.

"Hey Sikosu, you said you can access tertiary systems?" Chiana said desperately, "What does that mean?"

Sikosu shook her head, "Nothing helpful. I can access short range communications, climate control, fire suppressants, waste reclamation - "

"Fire suppressants, what does that do?"

"Standard procedure in the case of a fire is to activates an alarm, starts the fire hydrants and unlocks the doors to the affected areas." Sikosu looked up, her eyes widening, "Chiana, you're a genius!"

Chiana grinned, "Yeah, I know. What did I figure out?"

"Sikosu, can you do your party trick?" Crichton said.

"I suggest you stand back."

Sikosu walked to the centre of the room. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, her brow furrowed in concentration. She burst into flame. At first it was no more than a flickering corona that outlined her. Then blue tinged fire wreathed her arms , raced down her spine and licked hungrily at the floor. Her face was a pillar of dancing fire, twisting and writhing like a living thing. Chiana felt the heat burning the hair on her arms she had raised protectively as the fire continued to intensify. Fire raced the length of Sikosu's entire body. From deep within the incandescent blaze, Sikosu grinned like a demon. The floor and ceiling were turning black.

Then Chiana was pelted by a spray of heavy droplets A think shower of water sprayed down from hidden nozzles in the ceiling, except in one area where there was just an ominous creaking sound from the pipes. There was a clank as the doors bolts shot back.

Sikosu's fire flickered and faltered. As quickly as it had began it snapped out. Sikosu collapsed to hands and knees, gasping for breath.

"Is it just me, or are you hotter than I remember?" Crichton said.

Sikosu looked up at them. Water droplets sizzled and steamed as they struck her.

"I have been practising."

There was a deafening eruption of noise and the ground lurched violently, throwing them to the floor. A large section of the ceiling a little way across the room from them collapsed.

Aeryn hauled herself to her feet, swaying slightly. She banged the heel of her hand against her ear. Dust and water ran from her hair.

"I think that it's time for us to leave!" she shouted.

Outside of the room water was cascading down from a crack in the ceiling.

"Ok, now what?" Chiana said, "We're stuck on a planet full of Scarrans who will kill us on sight and which is having the dren kicked out of it by everyone else in the galaxy. We've go no where to run, even if we find a ship we'll just get shot down straight away by both sides. Is it just me, or are we even more screwed than usual?"

"Chiana, panicking won't help." Aeryn said.

"It helps me!" Chiana screamed.

"Scorpius's Ship." said Crichton.

"What?"

"Scorpius's ship." said Crichton.

"What?"

"You got a better idea?"

"The ships controls are locked to Scorpius's DNA." Sikosu shouted to be heard over another distant explosion, "Even if we could reach it, we cannot fly it."

"Then maybe we'll find the bastard trying to save his own ugly ass on the way. It's a stealth ship, it's our only way off this rock!"

"Either way, we're dead if we stay here much longer." Aeryn yelled, "Lets go!"

There was another huge explosion. This time it wasn't the ceiling which gave way, it was the floor. It took Chiana with it before she even had a chance to scream.

Everything was darkness. She opened her eyes.

She closed her eyes. She opened them again. It didn't seem to make much difference. It was as dark outside her head as it was within. She felt cold and numb Her mind refused to provide any clue as to location or self. She wondered vaguely if she was dead.

She moved an arm and then she wished she was dead. Layers of pain tore through leaving her breathless, each wave more devastating than the last. She groaned and even that awoke a rasping agony in her lungs. Everything hurt.

She lay still as the torrent of agony slowly receded to a trickle, until some small semblance of reason was able to reassert itself over the shapeless seething pain.

Chiana was lying on something hard but cold, uneven and uncomfortable. She could feel. She could feel. It. Biting into her body. And side of face. Hers.

Rock. She was lying on rock. It was hard because it was rock. And it was cold because it was wet, running with moisture.

Happy that she had solved that mystery, Chiana lay there for a little while longer. Eventually, as if from a great distance, another thought sidled into her bruised mind. Why was she lying on rock then?

She considered this. It was very, very hard. Her head hurt even more than the rest of her. Was she hungover? That might explain some things, but it still didn't tell her why she was lying on rocks in the dark. Memories of the recent past were beginning to shuffle apologetically into her mind and they did not fit into this theory. One of them included falling, air rushing around her and blackness seeming to swallow her, followed by the terrible realisation that she wouldn't be falling forever.

Chiana tried to think about that, although it seemed like a lost cause. Her brain felt as if it had been through a food blender then eaten, digested, excreted, reconstituted and finally tinned and shelved for sale as cat food.

She had fallen a long way and she didn't remember landing, although she was fairly certain that she must have done. That part of her mind that wasn't currently drooling gently to itself reminded her that she had been in the Scarran fortress, that she must have fallen into some sort of natural cave beneath the tunnels. She had no idea how long she had lain there.

Chiana opened her eyes again, just to vary the darkness. The stared unseeing for a long time until it occurred to her that she could see a light. Up above her somewhere was a dull grey light. It was barely more than a speck, a pinprick in the dark, but in the crushing oppressive darkness, it was a lifeline. It was the hole through which she had fallen.

Ignoring her body's screaming protests she pulled herself upright. Irrationally she reached up towards the light, as if she could grasp it and pull it towards her. She shouted, her voice pitifully thin, her words eaten by the darkness as soon as they left her lips. There was no reply.

Chiana laughed bitterly. She had expected nothing less; she was alone.

"Ok, okay – it's ok, just a big old cave," Chiana wasn't aware that she was speaking out loud, her voice high and shaking, "Nothing to be scared of. Just – just dark, just rock and slime and dark. Caves have to have ways out and – and tour guides and stuff. No problem. Just gotta find one. Yeah..."

Chiana tested her body for injuries. One side of her torso was a mass of bruises stamped into her by unyielding stone. Several ribs felt broken, they stabbed vindictively at her lungs with every panicked breath. One ankle was a swollen knot of agony; and that was before she attempted to put any pressure on it. Her head spun and lurched sickeningly at every movement, little spots of colour flashed in front of her eyes in the black.

Chiana managed a few tottering steps, her arms flung out in front of her in the cloying total dark. Something hard and sharp cracked her on the forehead. Then she saw light. She lay down and waited until the fireworks died away.

She gently touched her her skull with her fingertips to check that her brain was still on the inside.. She discovered a large stinging welt that seemed to throb and pulsate with a life of its own.

She continued on hands and knees, groping her way along the slippery dark tunnel. It said a lot about her state of mind that she wouldn't have found any innuendo to go with that last sentence. Stone brushed her sides and her hair. She sensed a feeling of depth in front of her. Cautiously, she felt in front of her. The rock dropped away sharply at about a sixty degree angle. Below her, she could hear the drip of water on stone, tantalisingly close.

With care bordering on paranoia she slowly swung her legs down onto the incline, feeling for footholds. The stone felt treacherously slippery and smooth. A toe brushed rock that felt solid. She tried to lower herself down to it, but that simple action was too much for her. Clumsy with exhaustion, her arms failed to support her and she lost her grip. She scrabbled desperately for purchase on the slimy rock then began to slide. Then there was only air below her again and she fell.

Chiana had just enough time to open her mouth to cry out when she hit icy cold water. Water filled her mouth and her nose and her ears. She kicked upwards instinctively and broke the surface, gasping for breath.

She struck out in a random direction, in the darkness she had no idea which way was closest to land. The freezing water seemed to turn her limbs leaden suck her down. She could barely keep her head above the water. Just when she thought her desperate floundering couldn't keep her afloat any longer, she grazed her knuckle against rock. She clung to it gratefully, her questing arms feeling solid flat rock above her head. Shivering, she hauled herself out of the water and collapsed.

Chiana tried to raise her head but her body refused to obey. It didn't even hurt any more, she felt numb. She felt a sense of great weight, as if the darkness had come alive and was pushing down on her, some terrible invisible presence that stole away what tenuous little strength and courage remained to her. She laughed, a long, toneless rattle of despair that echoed back to her tinged with madness. When she finally paused to draw breath it returned in sobs. She curled up into a ball, shaking uncontrollably.

Alone, bleeding and defeated in the dark, Chiana lay waiting to die.