In the dimness of the Lahab-u-Din's Drop Ready Room, Ibrahim gazed down in dismay at the bulge his belly made in the skin-tight Park-suit he’d been issued. The fact that Raver looked distinctly sausage-like in his own suit was little consolation to him. After all, programmers had never, in the course of human history, been expected to maintain triathlon-ready status.

Wardens were another story. Ms. Jamjoom had been subtly -- and often not-so-subtly -- "encouraging" him to do something about his weight for some time, in preparation for his always-just-around-the-corner return to active status, a hypothetical future for which he had seen no real need to be prepared.

He'd failed to plan for his own success. If, under the present circumstances, a return to duty could be considered a success.

A clutch of Guest Character Support specialists swept into the room. They bustled around Ibrahim and Raver, measuring, poking, prodding and all the while tut-tutting their disapproval of the human material they'd been given to work with. There were four of them, alike in their androgyny, the lot of them more likely than not failed 'tainment-net make-up artists. Ibrahim was hoping he'd be made a Mage, or a Sufi, or even a Monk. Robes. Loose robes. That was what he needed to cover the rolls around his middle. Glancing again at Raver, he silently prayed that the GCSes would treat him with similar mercy. Spending the next few days looking at Raver in a Duelist's tights would be more than anyone could reasonably be expected to bear.

The Ready Room's hatch irised open, and Lieutenant al-Mutawwali strode in, his snapping gait making him look like a man who desperately wanted to goose-step. Behind him came Theresa Godwin, the Booth's chief administrator and the official voice of Misr on the asteroid. Rumor had it she had spent the hours since the initial power out locked in her berth, under the influence of one or the other of the illegal substances which Misr had traditionally tolerated among its non-Muslim staff. Though she'd managed to work her hair into something like order, she had apparently been sleeping in her coveralls. And eating in them, or possibly rolling around in some peculiar mixture of tahina sauce, ketchup and chocolate. She made a show of supervising the fussing of the GCSes, though her gaze kept straying across the military-grade austerity of her surroundings.

"We will be dropping you down within the hour, Warden Smith," al-Mutawwali barked. "We are waiting only for your escort to join us. They should have docked twenty minutes ago. Though I dare not expect Misr's hired help to keep to schedule."

That caught Ibrahim by surprise. "'Hired help'? Won't the ghazis be dropping with us?" His chest tightened, a sensation he refused to acknowledge right then. "Won't we have military protection?"

The Lieutenant raised an eyebrow. "One would think so, wouldn't one?"

"Head Office is providing security," Godwin said. The rasp in her voice hinted that at least one of the substances in which she'd been indulging had been inhaled. "On-planet covert specialists." She swallowed several times before continuing, clearly battling down the contents of a rebellious stomach. "Very highly trained." Swallow. "Know the Park Worlds," swallow, "know the Games." Deep breath, swallow.

Ibrahim was surprised she hadn’t persuaded Dr. Katz to diagnose her with food poisoning and stayed in her berth. He suspected it had taken a call from Setna Amjed himself to smoke her out of hiding.

Al-Mutawwali's wrist-comm beeped at him. He glared down at it with more or less the same expression with which he typically glared at Ibrahim. "Ah," he grunted, working whole sentences worth of disgust into that single syllable. "They're aboard and will be here in a few minutes." The Glare lashed the GCSes. "Where are the spangly robes and swords? Get these two ready!"

The GCSes scurried out of the room, leaving a stony, awkward silence behind them. Ibrahim and Raver shared a nervous glance, and Ibrahim tried to include Godwin in a sort of "Misr triangle" of misery, but the administrator's own eyes at that moment seemed to find nothing so fascinating as her own feet.

Then the GCSes scurried back in, armfuls of multi-colored clothing, brown leather packs and wooden, metal and leather equipage. Ibrahim watched in relief as they threw a studded Mage's robe over Raver, then the world vanished as his own costume was dropped over him. Sight returned briefly when his head popped out of the neck of his robe, then was extinguished as something else flopped down over his eyes. He felt around his head, identified the hood which had twisted itself around his face, and pulled it back.

A Sufi. When he’d learned the role he’d be assigned he'd wondered if the patches of a dozen colors would work for or against him in obscuring his tummy. For him, it turned out. He almost looked…well, not svelte, but what his mother would have called "healthy", instead of "fat." Definitely short of “chunky."

A GCS pulled his arms back and stuck them through the straps of a backpack. A belt of rope hung with a shabby-looking cloth pouch went around his waist and a string of prayer beads was thrust into his right hand. His fingers dropped to the pouch at his waist, and he felt somewhat better when he discovered the familiar edges and curves of a datakey stuffed in among the herbs, roots and unidentifiable bits and pieces, animal, vegetable and mineral, that were meant to pass for potion ingredients.

Raver was similarly equipped, though a Mage's spindly wand of lapis lazuli was substituted for the Sufi's beads, and a proper leather belt for Ibrahim's rope one.

The GCSes paused to observe their handiwork, tut-tutting and whispering amongst themselves. Al-Mutawwali banished them with a wordless growl, then examined the two with a skeptical eye.

"Pair of balloons, that's what you look like. The kind clowns wave around at kids' parties."

"They'll do," Godwin muttered. The phrase "damn with faint praise" came to Ibrahim's mind.

The hatchway irised open once more, and two figures stepped into the room. Black covered the tall one from head to toe, from black silk mask to black leather boots, with boiled black leather armor in between and a black cloak which somehow managed to give the effect of swirling, even in the cramped space of the ready room. A curved saber hung at his waist, in a black scabbard, of course, studded with onyx. Probably a Swordsman.

Not likely to be a particularly cheery companion, Ibrahim decided.

The youth beside the gloomy-looking Swordsman wore a mask that covered all but his chin. All but her chin, Ibrahim decided. No, his. No, probably her….

A Thief, that much was clear. The sex of the masked, waifish figure was less clear. A soft leather jerkin covered the…person's…torso, a shortsword and a dagger hung from…the person's…belt. The waist around which the belt was cinched tapered just a bit, the hips flaring just below, so despite the jerkin's hiding any curves beneath it, Ibrahim decided that this was a young woman.

As Ibrahim came to that realization, he realized as well that he'd been staring at this young woman while trying to sort out her sex. He looked away, hoping she hadn't noticed him staring and knowing full well that the flush he felt suffusing his face would give him away.

The Lieutenant saved Ibrahim any further humiliation by loudly clearing his throat.

"We need to leave. Now." Ibrahim blinked. So accustomed had he become to seeing everyone around him tip-toeing around Al- Mutawwali, he couldn't immediately register the fact that someone else had spoken. Had interrupted the Lieutenant.

The Swordsman. Blue eyes glinted behind his mask. "My ship is ready. We must go.”

Now Al-Mutawwali found his voice. "Your ship? One of my drop ships is standing by. I've got a marine pilot waiting to take you -- "

"No ghazis. I think Misr Hub has already declared unequivocally on that subject. You’ve had your chance – and failed. My own ship will be more than adequate for the task at hand, and I will serve as pilot."

"Now hold on there." Lieutenant Al-Mutawwali's voice bubbled with not-so-contained rage. "This is a marine operation. Misr wanted to send along a private consultant, and here you are. Fine. Foolish, but there it is. The first drop ran into a little trouble, didn't obtain all of its objectives. Granted. But Misr's solution is to send a gaggle of civilians down when professionals failed. Madness!"

"'Didn't obtain all of its objectives,'" the Swordsman murmured, his voice cool and mercury-slick. Something in that voice tickled at the back of Ibrahim's mind. He sounded like someone he'd seen on the 'net, like one of those killer-for-hire types that Tariq Bukhari spent nearly every episode of Starsong 3000 running down and putting out of business.

This time Al-Mutawwali ignored the interruption. "As far as I'm concerned, we've got as great a stake as anyone in this mission. If you lot go down and get yourselves killed, then it'll be the marines who'll have to drop down and pick up the pieces – and whatever's happening down there will be even worse than it is now. The ghazis deserve at least one spot on this mission. I'm sending my man down, or Misr can go to hell and you can all sit here and enjoy military hospitality."

As if to remind them of what exactly "military hospitality" would entail, the overhead glow panels flickered and dimmed and the air took on a sudden chill as power was drawn from the non-essentials (like crew environment control) to other systems as someone somewhere on the ship ran what some military manual had determined to be an absolutely vital drill. Charging up the planet-burners. Raising the solid-field particle shields. Ion-whipping the Crescent fighters to give them that added shine. Important stuff. The ghazi who had welcomed Raver and him on-board had warned him this would happen once in awhile. In military parlance, Ibrahim had decided, "awhile" applied to a span of about thirty minutes.

Raver was looking at Ibrahim with the glassy, panicked expression of a fish drowning in air. Ibrahim's heart thumped out what felt like a thousand thunderous beats while Al-Mutawwali and the Swordsman stood like two 'tainment-net banditos preparing to draw down on each other. Fire flickered in the depths of the Lieutenant's black eyes and the Swordsman's blue ones shone coldly from behind his mask.

"One man."

"Acceptable.”

Al-Mutawwali tried to look like a man who had won a negotiation, despite having just essentially agreed to send his marine along as a consultant with the private consultants he’d meant to tuck into the depths of a drop sphere to keep them out of the way while his ghazis did the job. "Wonderful, then," Ms. Godwin had done the impossible and actually gone a few shades paler since Ibrahim had last looked at her. "If that's everything, I don't see why you shouldn't leave immediately. The rest of us…back to work…go…."

She shut her mouth suddenly, as if afraid more than words might burst out if she opened it again. Then she was gone, through the hatch before it had finished rising open.

"Misr's best…." the Swordsman muttered. His gaze swept the room from behind his mask. "She is correct, however. We should leave immediately."

Al-Mutawwali drew breath, but before he could speak the Swordsman spun around and marched from the room with the air of a man who fully expected to be followed. His aide waved a slender hand toward the hatch, her dark eyes on Ibrahim. Al-Mutawwali still seemed on the cusp of speaking.

Ibrahim jumped to obey the Thief's unspoken command before the Lieutenant could manage to bark out another order of his own. As he followed the rapidly receding back of the Swordsman down the corridor, he heard the ghazi calling after Raver as the programmer stepped through the hatch.

"Keep your eye on Smith, Mr. Singh. Don't let him - "

Gratefully, what Raver was meant to keep Ibrahim from doing was lost to history as the hatchway irised shut behind the Thief.