by Tim C Taylor
“I refuse.”
Indiya felt her face heat with anger. “And yet you shadow my every move. If not you, then CSO Arbentyne-Daex. You’re lying in wait for the moment when I crack. Well, wait no longer.”
“I do not deny it. I have been concerned for your well-being since the start of the campaign to liberate this system, but your words today carry a despair I have never heard in you, My Lady. How long have you felt this way?”
“How long do you think? Twenty hours. You were there, Kreippil. Twenty hours ago.”
Before she could berate her friend further, Indiya’s mind tingled. It was a comm chime of sorts, but it was a unique form of transmission that piggybacked off unsuspecting entangled comms and was used only by her kinfolk augments. Of the other augments, Fant was dead. Tizer long-since lost on Tranquility-4, and Finfth would never bother her at a moment like this. It could only be one person.
“You know how to pick your moments,” she replied, forming the words in her mind. “I’m hearing you, Furn.”
“Greetings from Khallini. Well, to be honest, warnings.”
“What’s wrong? Another attack on the command hub?”
“No, something’s up closer to you. I have a few contacts in Fleet Signal Intelligence and I don’t like what they’re saying.”
She watched an image of Karypsic accelerating away, on the cusp of time jumping. At a time like this, she hadn’t the strength to be angry with Furn. The augment was forever plotting, inserting his data tentacles into every opening. But she knew his heart, and while he had done evil, she knew his spirit was not so much malevolent as easily misled.
“I’m just watching,” he protested against her unspoken accusation. “I’m not plotting. Indiya, I’ve been locked in a bubble under the ocean for decades. I need to see the galaxy, or my mind will blow, but I think I’ve just spotted someone else who is plotting. I’m seeing signal traffic from your vicinity to the outer Solar System, and it’s trying hard to go undetected.”
“Hardits?”
“Negative. At least, if it is, then it’s not using their tech signature. I’ve never seen it before–”
“Hardits innovate like hell,” Indiya interrupted. The conversation was being conducted at the speed of thought, but Karypsic was about to jump, and this was no time for yet more mysteries.
“Hardits can be highly inventive,” Furn admitted, “but they still have distinctive modes of thought. This is different, Indiya. If you put me on the spot, I’d speculate that the transport and encryption protocols share a common ancestor with the old Human Marine Corps comms. Have you encountered a third party? Imperial renegades? Another Littorane religious cult?”
Mader Zagh! Xin! Liar! She said she’d only had two ships and Indiya had believed her!
“Thank you, Furn. I owe you. Tell no one.”
“Happy to help. Pop in some time. I could use company.”
“I will,” Indiya replied and cut the link.
She allowed herself a half-second to let the anger flow through her veins, dispelling the funk that had been claiming her.
Looping in Kreippil so he could hear, she contacted her senior flag officer in CIC. “Hood, raise the Saravanan. I need to speak with…”
But Arun and his team had jumped, the drop capsule shimmering briefly and then… And then the vacuum of space rushed in to claim the sudden absence and the Saravanan had never been.
“Stop the Karypsic,” she shouted. “Fire on her if necessary, Hood, just stop them.”
“Stand by,” Hood replied.
Before her in the water, she felt Kreippil trembling with frustration at not understanding Indiya’s sudden change of heart, but he trusted her and so kept his peace for now.
Which meant he was a fool. Indiya had proven today that her judgment was faulty. No one should trust her.
Too late. Now it was the sleek Karypsic’s turn to shimmer and disappear…
And come back.
Greyhart had said the flickering was not real. It was an illusion spun by primitive minds to protect them from what they had not evolved to comprehend. He claimed he could not see the effects of a time jump, but he felt using other senses.
But Karypsic had been somewhere, all right. The dropship was on fire. Two of its nacelles had been shot away, one was bent over at right angles, and a jagged wound scored right through the hull as if something had tried to rip the craft open. She could actually see smoke, flames and the frantic movement of people on the inside of the Karypsic, the atmosphere contained by an unknown mechanism.
And of Saravanan, there remained no sign.
The return mechanism on Arun’s craft had never activated. Which meant it had been destroyed. Or faulty. Or sabotaged.
“Dad? Are you there?” It was Grace, of course, her normally eager voice ragged, as if savaged by the horrors she’d escaped. She was broadcasting on a crude radio transmitter. “Are you okay?” she implored. “We’ve lost sensors and comms. Lost a lot of good people too. I need to know you’re safe. Dad?”
It would have been a trivial matter to hook into Grace’s signal and answer her, but Indiya did nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
She had authorized a desperate gamble.
And it was going terribly wrong.
— Chapter 09 —
20 hours earlier
Fleet Admiral Indiya
Gymnasium, Deck 23, Legion destroyer Pavonichi
She had screamed with delight when Caccamo pulled strings she never suspected him planting and revealed that he’d brought Arun and Aelingir back safely. But when Indiya raced to meet the veteran squadron leader, she discovered he had brought poison with him.
Perhaps that judgement of Grace was premature. Indiya dimly remembered a time when she had thought the best of people, but only a fool would regard anyone associated with Lee Xin with anything but the deepest suspicion. With this living blood connection to Xin leaving Arun wide-eyed and giddy with happiness and fear, she had to regard him as compromised too.
In a stroke, a gulf now separated her from her closest ally. It was now all down to her to bring the long war to a winning conclusion.
And then she heard the explanation of how this so-called Far Reach Fleet had traveled faster than anyone in recorded history.
Here they were again. The Legion’s high command – or at least part of it – debating another dramatic shift in the winds of war. Now there were even more powerful enemies to contend with; some currently masquerading as allies, and some too mysterious to classify.
Command decisions were normally forged around the central axis of Indiya and Arun, with his meat-encoded battle computer allied to her many cognitive augmentations. He set the overall strategic direction of the Legion, and she was in operational command. It had been that way almost since the beginning.
And she had lost him.
Indiya watched Arun as he floated in the gym hall of this unremarkable Gliesan destroyer. He kept close to one of the sweeping poles from which the winged Gliesans would practice aerial maneuvers when the ship was under acceleration. He was closer still to the daughter of the greatest traitor in Legion history, close also to his aide, Lissa. Indiya had long suspected them of being lovers, but a change had come about the large Wolf after their time down on Earth. Lissa had grown more assertive, speaking openly as if she were a senior commander herself, and not an aide there to wrangle sense out of her tired master, much the way Indiya’s faithful Kurlei, Arbentyne-Daex, did for her. Indiya couldn’t explain why Aelingir of all people deferred to this new right to speak that Lissa had assumed.
For Lissa to act like Arun’s loyal attack dog would be understandable – through no fault of their own, most Wolves were lobotomized thugs, after all – but she was speaking more like a trained diplomat, deflecting the calls from Legion Council members to torture the truth out of Grace and launch an immediate attack on Xin’s two warships so her mother could be put on trial and executed before the day was over.
And t
hose calls to war on the Far Reach renegades had come thick and fast.
Watched constantly by elite Gliesan Marines who circled the commanders at a respectful distance, Kreippil had argued strongest for war on Xin. Normally, the Littorane would look first for support from Indiya, but not this time. He didn’t need her backing. Xin had betrayed holy sanction and must pay the price for blasphemy.
“You’ve hardly said a word,” Indiya told Arun bitterly. “Have you better things to do?” She looked poison at Grace.
Her old friend looked momentarily stung by the bitterness in her voice. That was something, she supposed. She’d reached him at some level. “I have tried to explain,” he said. “We’ve been shepherded. We are here at a time and place of someone else’s choosing, wound up and ready to go, but we need our toymaker to release us. The best thing we can do at this moment is wait. I don’t expect we’ll need to wait much longer.”
“Bravo, General,” said a man’s voice directly behind Indiya. She turned. “You are more perceptive than I imagined, though I fear your talent for tortured metaphor rivals my own.”
It took a while to focus her eyes on this person who had appeared from nowhere. It was a human man. Or maybe men. He was blurred, as if a composite built from multiple versions of the same individual, and just being near him made her mind hum with static. She held out the palm of one hand to indicate to the Gliesan Marines that they should hold their fire.
“Grace,” she asked, “is this him?”
“That’s Greyhart all right,” said the woman, and in her voice rang loud and clear the same joy of adventure Indiya had heard in her parents when they had all been impossibly young. “Hang on, everybody,” said Grace. “This is going to get interesting real quick.”
—––
Arun McEwan
Gymnasium, Deck 23, Legion destroyer Pavonichi
Greyhart floated behind Indiya with his arms out and a beaming smile, inviting the attention of the Legion Council. His appearance seemed to be actively resisting description; it was… averaged. Height, build, skin color and facial features were all middle of the human ranges Arun had encountered, and he had seen variations on the human design that extended far beyond anything that had emerged naturally on Earth. The only characteristics that came across distinctly were that the intruder was male, and that he wouldn’t stop grinning.
Arun loathed Greyhart on sight.
Why can’t I see him clearly? he asked Barney.
I’ve been pondering the same question, replied the AI embedded in his neck. I’ve compared notes with Saraswati. Springer is not perceiving him the same way. The differences are small but confirmed. We can’t explain it. After this encounter, I want you to hook me up with Aelingir via her AI, so we can compare the data both of you are recording from your optic nerves. I suspect aliens will see Greyhart very differently.
Any ideas on how to trap him? Or kill him if we need to?
Arun, the man just appeared in the middle of a compartment locked down under tight security in a starship in the middle of the Legion fleet. Anyone who can do that might as well wear a pointy hat and carry a staff, because it’s magic as far as I’m concerned. If he becomes threatening, you could try pointing a gun and shooting. Somehow, though, I don’t think that would do you much good.
Fair point. Let’s see what he has to say.
“What kept you, Greyhart?” said Arun. “Lose track of time?”
The man bowed in acknowledgement like a frakking court jester.
“I don’t like people who manipulate me,” said Arun. “We’re your puppets, right here where you’ve summoned us, but I don’t guarantee we’ll perform as you intend. I’m guessing that if you could shape your past however you wanted, you wouldn’t feel the need to reveal yourself. You need us, but you can only manipulate us so far. Am I right?”
Greyhart’s grin evaporated. “You alone can dimly perceive the truth, McEwan, and that’s because I’m not the only manipulator here. You blame the Jotuns for implanting a battle planner AI inside your head – neat trick, by the way, and lucky for you that I doubt I would learn it by dissecting you. The Jotuns were bio-engineers of choice for human subjects, but it was not a Jotun idea to do this, and it was not placed within you for… Oh, and I perceive one in your daughter too. Now, that is highly revealing. But I digress–”
“The Hummers,” said Springer.
“Indeed,” Greyhart started to reply, but then he froze like a video image that had lost transmission. Suddenly, he was back again, but his image had changed. Now he wore a mud-spattered greatcoat, a bulky woolen garment with a military rank Arun didn’t recognize embroidered on epaulettes and cuffs.
What was he wearing before? Arun asked Barney
Before when? He’s wearing a military greatcoat, British Army pattern, circa 1918. Always has been.
He wasn’t a moment ago.
I checked the data in your audio-visual memory. Whatever you think you saw, Arun, you didn’t.
“Yes, the Hummers,” this revised version of Greyhart told Springer, studying her with interest. “A species with which you yourself are also intimately linked, Miss Lissa.”
“Now it’s starting to make sense,” said Arun. “The thing inside my mind has given me an edge all my life. It’s helped me make the right calls in the Legion’s wars, but it always seemed a ludicrously complicated asset to store away in someone’s head. Why not simply provide us with advanced battleplanner AIs in a regular processor block? But it was never about the Human Legion’s wars, was it? The Jotuns might have rewired my head, but they did so because the Hummers wanted to prepare me against you.”
“Indeed, although their meddling might also help you resist them. The Hummers have their own agenda, you see. And they are enjoying their own civil war at this period in time. What you hypothesize may well be true but is not relevant to your current agenda.” He spread his arms to encompass the assembled group like a cheap theatre actor. “Questions, people. I have time to answer a few.”
“Are you human?” asked Kreippil.
“Broadly speaking, I am.”
“We always knew the Hummers can peer through time,” said Aelingir, “now I learn humans possess similar abilities, as was always suspected. White Knights, Jotuns, Achaeans, Cienju, Tuskers and others all broke the contact seal around this planet because we heard rumors of time travel technology. We found nothing but warlike apes. If you could hide from such intense scrutiny, so might others. Who else possesses this advantage?”
“The good general refers to the events of the twenty-second century that in my day is known as the Scramble for Earth,” said Greyhart. “I am aware of several time-capable species. All nonhuman, but nonetheless all natives of Earth.”
Barney detected Arun’s confusion and chimed in privately. He’s either implying knowledge of alternative realities in which humans do not evolve, or events far in the future.
Indiya was already ahead of Arun. “Dolphins?” she suggested.
“Dogs?” said Aelingir
“Dinosaurs?” Arun asked.
“Not dogs,” Greyhart replied. “The other two, yes. Especially a derivative of Dilophosaurus that caused a lot of grief that resonates still.” He floated across to Arun, despite the lack of any obvious sign of propulsion. “And that is why you can trust me over the Night Hummers. Everything you have ever done in your long life, McEwan, the friends and lovers who fell along the way, all those who died on every side because of your decisions in your wars, all that will never have been if humans turn out to have been dinosaurs all along. All the sacrifice will have been for nothing.” He slapped a dismayed Arun on the back. “Welcome to my world.”
“But… they didn’t win,” said Arun. “The dinosaurs, I mean. We evolved enough to contact species from other stars, and the dinosaurs and dolphins did not.”
“All potential realities coexist simultaneously, General McEwan. The only reason I’m able to talk with you, and not with a super-intelligent highly evol
ved hedgehog, is because your reality wave function is stronger than that of the hedgehogs. A lot stronger, thankfully. I fought in the Reality War, dear boy. Trust me, you have no idea how fragile our species’ existence really is.”
“I get it,” said Springer. “You’re a time cop.”
“No, madam. Cop suggests the rule of law, and the only law I uphold is the right for my people to survive. You and I are natural allies because I require your version of history – or something close to it – to prevail in order for the people of my time to exist.”
“When is your time?” asked Indiya. “Who are your people?”
Greyhart said nothing, but he was still human, and Arun knew Indiya’s many mental enhancements included pattern recognition that could read most people like a book. “You don’t know, do you?” she accused. “All this… the speech you just gave, and you are completely adrift. Do you even remember your name?”
The time traveler appeared to flicker and then stabilized, this time wearing crude black garb with a white lace collar. “I do not, Lady Indiya. The name Greyhart comes from a character I once wrote in a story. Or perhaps I named the character after myself.”
“I am quite sure I know my own name,” snapped Indiya. “And the rank I have earned. I am an admiral, not a lady.”
“Forgive me, Admiral. I speak too soon of a title you may wear in your future.” He sighed, and Arun sensed the man was genuinely worn out. “I confuse your title because time war is a grueling strain even for those, like me, who are engineered to fight it. Even being around you people is like having exploding EMP grenades shoved up my nose.”
The grin that had seemed such a permanent feature now reasserted itself. “Time’s up!” he roared. “It’s always a shock for mundanes to meet me, so I’ve learned to give you a brief little chitchat to get over your initial oh my God it’s a man from the future! You’ve had your dose now – except for General Lee-McEwan who’s had the dubious pleasure of a double helping. Now, it’s time for you to get your bloody fingers out and act. As that worthy of the Far Reach Fleet has already explained, I retrofitted two of her ships with time travel capability. They are now at the disposal of you all to defeat Tawfiq, and perhaps thwart the Night Hummers to boot. Whatever we do will be dangerous, but for me to tell you what to do at this stage would be suicidal. Two ships. Range five thousand years. The further back you go, the less mass you can take. And the more widespread the change you make, the more likely you are to bugger up the present day. So keep it surgical, and keep it smart, but you must decide your target time and objective, and then I’ll wind the clock for you. Begin!”