Alwyn told his ship to open a jump point at the far side of the planet below Babylon 5. It should offer enough shelter that the people on the station would not notice him leaving.
He entered hyperspace without any trouble. There, he used information from both the regular hyperspace beacons and some less regular ones, set by the techno-mages, to locate the Excalibur, and set a course straight to it, at full speed. With both ships approaching each other, Alwyn counted that they might cut the time to their meeting down to four hours.
With the course set and the ship moving ahead as fast as possible, he could only wait, and think.
Like most techno-mages, Alwyn did not have many good friends. Once, he had had an apprentice, Carvin - a promising young initiate, a friendly, open and emotional centauri girl. Her death had been one of the hardest things he had ever had to face. Without the unlikely but warm friendship of a narn called G'Leel, he might not have managed it. He did not know how he could cope if Galen died.
Alwyn had known Galen for a long time - he had been a friend of Galen's father, and had been around when Galen had been just a little, troubled and badly treated boy. Alwyn had seen him grow up, fall in love, lose those he loved, close himself from the universe, overcome many horrible things, and in the end, open up again, somewhat, and emerge as someone entirely different. Not only different from his former self, but also different from all other techno-mages. Galen had tried to explain his amazing experience of liberating the tech from the Shadow programming and truly merging with it, but Alwyn had been no better than those frightened mages who were still in hiding. He had not understood, had not been able to do the same.
Still, Alwyn had always seen that troubled little boy somewhere underneath everything else. He had offered Galen his friendship long ago. First, Galen had not accepted, but that had been before he had changed. Now, Alwyn thought, they might not be called best friends, but they did talk every now and then, in an occasional electron incantation. They had even met a few times after Alwyn had abandoned his place of power on Regula 4. The last time had been more than a month ago, and Alwyn didn't know what Galen had been up to after that.
An electron incantation was a strange and powerful spell that no techno-mage fully understood. With it, mages could meet in an inner landscape and talk, no matter where and how far from each other they were. It could also be used to contact ordinary humans, although it was more difficult. And Alwyn had heard that an electron incantation could reach someone who was unconscious, nearly dead. With this in mind, he cast the spell.
As the meeting place, he chose not the large hall where he had brought captain Gideon, but a smaller chamber equally made of stone. The walls were almost entirely lined with tapestries. A large, thick rug covered the floor, and on it was a collection of blankets and plush cushions. There was a large fireplace in one of the walls, and the fire crackled softly. It was as nice and comfy as Alwyn could make it.
His spell reached no response. The tech told him that the connection could not be made.
He cast the spell again, commanding the tech to try harder. It was under his control, and it had to do what he told. Still, it didn't work.
Alwyn modified the incantation, casting it as if he intended to contact a normal human, not a techno-mage, and urged the tech to do its best, use all it had, to make this connection. This time, it succeeded.
Alwyn stood in the middle of his chosen meeting place. At the far end of the room, back propped against the wall, rested a dark form - Galen.
Alwyn stepped closer, unsure of what to expect, but prepared for the worst. Still, what he saw shocked him deeply.
Galen was lying in a puddle of blood. Blood stained the cushions and the blankets, and coloured the rug a dark, reddish brown. It flowed from terrible, open wounds that ran all the way up from his fingertips, crossing his palms in a red mess, up along his arms, across his shoulders, although the most of it seemed to come from beneath, from his back and the back of his head. Alwyn knew that if he turned him around, he would find similar cuts there, or even worse. He did not want to think what the head would look like - a hollow where the skull had been cut open and a large part of the brain removed. The wounds were clear of any signs of tech. Not even the slightest shimmer of gold. Only blood, torn flesh, sinew and bone.
Alwyn knelt next to Galen and forced himself to keep looking. He noticed one more wound that spoke even stronger words than the rest, although it did not follow the same pattern: a gaping hole in Galen's chest, a crimson gap in the black of his clothes, right where the heart should be.
In his self-image, Galen had not only been flayed. His heart had been torn out of his chest.
Finally, Alwyn turned away and allowed his gaze to fall. This could not be true. He knew it wasn't. Gideon had not given any exact details, but if what he saw here had truly happened, Gideon would not have claimed Alwyn could still save Galen. This was how Galen saw himself right now, not how he really was. Still, it certainly wasn't an encouraging vision.
Despite of what he saw, Alwyn called out, "Galen. Galen, please. I know you must be alive, since I could contact you like this. Tell me what has happened."
The ravaged form on the floor stayed the same, not one muscle twitched on the agonized face. Still, it was Galen's voice that Alwyn heard in his head, speaking softly. "No, Alwyn. Go away."
"Galen, have you lost whatever little bit of sense you had left? I'm not going anywhere. I'm doing exactly the opposite. I'm coming there, so I can help you."
"Alwyn. Leave me. There is nothing you can do. I am dead already. The tech is dead. We live and die as one."
Alwyn felt a tear forming in the corner of his eye. When he raised a hand to wipe it away, he noticed he had lost the connection. He was back in his ship, staring at the screen, the flow of hyperspace that was always changing, yet always looked the same. He checked the time remaining to the rendezvous - four hours. The incantation had only taken a passing second. But the dread and shock of it had been such that Alwyn felt he had aged a century.
Doctor Chambers woke up with a start. She hadn't meant to doze off. Someone was calling her on the comm.
"Yes?" she replied sleepily.
"Doctor, you had better come at once. It's Galen."
She jumped up, the sleepiness quickly dissolving. What could it possibly be this time? There shouldn't be anything left that they had not checked, double checked, and taken care of as well as they could. He was almost entirely on artificial life support, and if that could not keep his body alive, then nothing would.
Chambers was in her office, just a few paces away from the main MedLab. It took her less than two minutes to cover the distance to Galen's bed in the isolation room.
Still, she was too late. When she got there, the nurse who had called her shook her head.
"I'm sorry, doctor. I guess I gave youa false alarm. It's just that when I called, there was something - a flicker of brain waves. I even thought he might be coming to, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. Maybe it was just a glitch in the scanners."
Chambers pursed her lips. "Maybe, but let's hope it was more than that. I'll take a look at the data."