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- Overview
-
- Ambassador G'Kar is desperate to get off Babylon 5, and in his rush
- to leave, ends up kidnapping Garibaldi. Now Sheridan and a strange
- Narn must begin a frantic search to find the two before tragedy
- strikes.
-
- Issue 9 (October 1995)
-
- Setting: Between [7]"The Geometry of Shadows" and [8]"A Distant Star."
- Writer: David Gerrold
- Penciller: Rebecca Guay
- Inker: Rick Bryant
-
- _________________________________________________________________
-
- Synopsis
-
- Ivanova clears a Narn ship, the D'Vordo, for docking. An urgent call
- from G'Kar comes in; he demands immediate clearance to depart the
- station from bay four. When she refuses, he sets his ship to launch
- anyway; Ivanova warns the D'Vordo to abort its approach. Garibaldi
- rushes to bay four to try to stop G'Kar, but when he arrives, G'Kar
- stuns him.
-
- G'Kar takes Garibaldi with him, but Garibaldi wakes up and fires a
- starweb, a sort of net made of energy, at G'Kar, entangling him.
-
- G'Kar's ship nearly collides with the D'Vordo as it rockets full speed
- away from the station.
-
- Ivanova tells Sheridan that Garibaldi is nowhere to be found; she
- believes G'Kar has taken him off the station. Sheridan heads for a
- shuttle to pursue G'Kar.
-
- Garibaldi and G'Kar float in a cylindrical area. G'Kar is still caught
- in the starweb, and Garibaldi sings annoying songs to him, threatening
- to continue until G'Kar reveals what's going on.
-
- On his way to the shuttle, Sheridan is intercepted by Greegil, a Narn
- who claims to be a relative of G'Kar's, newly arrived on the D'Vordo.
- He says he can help Sheridan catch G'Kar. Sheridan reluctantly brings
- him along. As they fly in pursuit, Sheridan tries to find out exactly
- how Greegil is related to G'Kar. Greegil won't offer any information
- unless Sheridan offers something in exchange.
-
- Garibaldi continues to sing. Eventually, G'Kar falls asleep. Garibaldi
- wakes him up and asks where the food is; G'Kar answers that he doesn't
- need to eat, as Narns can hibernate six days at a time. "I'll be happy
- to watch you starve to death," G'Kar says. "At least it'll be
- quieter." When Garibaldi points out that G'Kar will die, too, trapped
- in the starweb, G'Kar answers, "There are worse things than death.
- Dishonor is one."
-
- Garibaldi continues to search for food, but he's never seen a ship
- like the one he's in: no food, no controls, just solid walls
- encircling them. He begins to sing "It's a Small World," which causes
- G'Kar to surrender.
-
- Sheridan and Greegil haggle over the value of information. Finally,
- Greegil tells Sheridan how he's related to G'Kar, but the Narn
- familial ties he describes are meaningless to Sheridan.
-
- G'Kar shows Garibaldi where his food, a Narn delicacy called phroomis,
- is stashed. He notes that Garibaldi does seem to have some negotiating
- skills. On Narn, he says, negotiation is an art. Garibaldi asks G'Kar
- about the ship, but G'Kar says it's better he doesn't know. Garibaldi
- convinces him to play a game of "laser-mirror-starweb," loser tells
- all.
-
- Sheridan and Greegil catch up with G'Kar's ship, which doesn't respond
- to Sheridan's signals. Greegil tells Sheridan that G'Kar is possessed
- by a Lokvar, a seizure of the mind, that may cause G'Kar to be
- violent. Greegil predicts that Sheridan will have to shoot G'Kar.
-
- Garibaldi wins two games of laser-mirror-starweb, but G'Kar still
- refuses to talk about the ship.
-
- Sheridan grapples G'Kar's ship while Greegil tries to get him to put
- up the shuttle's shields in case G'Kar fires at them.
-
- G'Kar and Garibaldi hear a loud clanking sound from one end of their
- chamber.
-
- Sheridan and Greegil approach the airlock through a docking tube
- they've extended from Sheridan's shuttle. They open the door.
-
- The end of the cylinder swings open as G'Kar and Garibaldi watch
- apprehensively.
-
- Sheridan and Greegil enter G'Kar's ship... and find it empty. Greegil
- concludes that G'Kar never left the station.
-
- A cleaning robot enters the cylinder. G'Kar set his ship on autopilot;
- they are actually in Babylon 5's core. G'Kar shouts that it's
- Garibaldi's fault -- with just G'Kar's mass in the axis tube, the
- cleaning robot wouldn't have come ahead of schedule. The two of them
- flee through the other end of the cylinder, but the axis tube runs the
- length of the station, five miles, and there are apparently no exits
- along the way.
-
- G'Kar's ship begins to self-destruct. He and Greegil flee. Greegil
- gets to Sheridan's ship first, and promptly turns around and pushes
- the airlock door shut as Sheridan floats toward it. G'Kar's ship
- explodes before Sheridan's shuttle can escape; the shuttle's occupant
- screams...
-
- Backplot
-
- * Narn children are taught the art of negotiation at an early age;
- the Narn consider themselves master hagglers.
- * If Greegil is to be believed, the Narn kinial system has several
- ranks denoting levels of family obligation: this-kini, val-kini,
- dar-kini, on-kini, dru-kini, bas-kini, and ini-darka. Ini-darka is
- the highest rank.
-
- Unanswered Questions
-
- * Did Sheridan make it onto the shuttle?
- * What does Greegil really want, and how is he related (familially
- or otherwise) to G'Kar?
- * Why is G'Kar trying to avoid him, if that's what's happening?
-
- Analysis
-
- * Why would G'Kar drag Garibaldi all the way from the docking bay to
- the core of the station? Clearly Garibaldi wasn't conscious for
- most of the trip or he would have known he wasn't on G'Kar's ship,
- so G'Kar could have left him in the docking bay or in a closet and
- nobody would have been any the wiser.
-
- Notes
-
- * This story takes place in early spring 2259, between the episodes
- [9]"The Geometry of Shadows" and [10]"A Distant Star."
- * Laser-mirror-starweb is rock-paper-scissors with different names.
- * At one point (just after they haggle) Sheridan calls Greegil
- "Greelig."
- * This issue features a computer-generated cover picture by
- Foundation Imaging, a rendering of G'Kar's ship nearly hitting the
- D'Vordo.
- * During one of the negotiation scenes, Greegil says, "You'd have me
- cut my own throat, you dibbler". This is probably a reference to
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of novels, which feature a
- salesman called "Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler."
- * This story introduces a lot of gadgets we've never seen in the
- series (and probably never will.) The starweb and "shields" on
- Earth ships are two that seem like they would have appeared in the
- show if they were part of the canonical B5 universe. The
- maintenance robot in the station's core is questionable, though it
- at least isn't inconsistent with anything in the series. The stun
- gas used by G'Kar might be the same as the "morph gas" mentioned
- in [11]"By Any Means Necessary."
-
- jms speaks
-
- * Ron did a CGI cover, though I've only seen a B&W repro, and can't
- vouch for it in detail.
-
-
- [17][Next]
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- Last update: October 30, 1996
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