Greyblade

by Andrew Hindle

  He was unable to ascertain whether Skelliglyph had walked through here at some point in the distant past and made use of the bizarre transport. He didn’t inquire too deeply and satisfied himself with studying the history of Lonesome Ice as provided by the info package, since giving the locals reason to suspect they were hosting a figure out of folklore might not be the best approach to a clean and low-impact visit.

  As it turned out, his efforts to maintain Çrom’s anonymity and his hopes of achieving a clean and low-impact visit were doomed to failure – and he figured this out, coincidentally, at the moment he made the ostensibly unrelated discovery that the Attempted Molren of Lonesome Ice were venomous.

  THE LARAZANDUK SCHOOL FOR EXTRAORDINARY OPERATORS

  Çrom had been gone for only slightly longer than they’d agreed upon, which had already been enough to set off some low-level alarms in Greyblade’s mind and get him started on tactical scenarios and information gathering.

  The bite of the Lonesome Ice native sentient was not venomous as such, but their saliva carried a potent bacteria-analogous life-form that – most likely millennia ago – protected them from accidental exposure to the spores that drifted across the ice. The cure was worse than the disease, it appeared, in cases where the bacteria-ish thing was introduced to a foreign biological system.

  Even this was fairly obscure information, since the native sentients had been civilised non-biters for a considerable length of time, and there weren’t that many studies of the spores or the Attempted Molran mouth-bugs. Grunk kept the spores off vehicles, and there were numerous studies of visitors who were foolish or unfortunate enough to wander outside the spore-screens during a bloom. The spores were ultimately not that dangerous. And of course there was no way of knowing what would happen to a human or a Burning Knight if they were bitten by an Attempted Molran, because such a thing was staggeringly unlikely to have ever happened before.

  Çrom was almost an hour overdue when Greyblade became aware of a shift in the convivial atmosphere. His heightened combination of tactical simulation and instinct brought him to his feet and sent him marching out the door. His new best friend, Slaz the visor-peeker, followed him along the deathly-cold street, protesting that they were just starting to have fun.

  “This is fun, Slaz,” Greyblade told the towering Alien. “Stick with me, you’ll learn a lot about how Burning Knights smooth out wrinkles in their itineraries.”

  “Your friend was going to the Larazanduk sector for undisclosed reasons,” Slaz said anxiously. “If he became involved in the activities of the School for Extraordinary Operators, he might have run into serious trouble.”

  Greyblade didn’t answer for a few moments while he studied what he could about the ‘School for Extraordinary Operators’, but there wasn’t much. It was clearly an illegal organisation, and therefore not heavily featured in the Lonesome Ice greeting and orientation package. There were a few warnings, however, which was not encouraging.

  “He could be a teacher there for all I know,” he said. “No reason for him to miss our rendezvous.”

  “I doubt he is an Extraordinary Educator,” Slaz replied.

  “No,” Greyblade agreed, “even as I said it, that seemed unlikely.”

  “Are you going into Larazanduk?” Slaz asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Then I shall come with you, and if you fall in battle I will keep your armour.”

  “Was that the agreement?” Greyblade asked, and shrugged. “If I fall in battle, I suppose it’s not going to matter either way.”

  “If you are taken alive, I will flee and forget you ever existed.”

  “That seems smart.”

  Çrom was actually quite easy to locate. The locals of the Larazanduk sector were hesitant to contact the authorities and the authorities were even more hesitant to impose their presence uninvited, but Greyblade could read a community – particularly a sublegal one, and particularly one composed of members as sedate as the Attempted Molren, even if it was Alien. He followed the trails of traffic and communication, the scent only intensifying as his presence was noted and word went around that the other wrong-form mazon-hai was searching for its shipmate. He ran down the final lead and stopped in front of an oddly clinical establishment guarded by a pair of impassive security personnel carrying massive weapons melded to their lower arms. By this point Çrom had been off-script for almost two hours.

  Slaz hissed through his strange not-quite-Molranoid teeth as they approached the building.

  “This is an outpost of the School, my friend.”

  The weapons the guards carried were, on closer inspection, some kind of semi-symbiotic life-form. Greyblade didn’t fancy experiencing their combat capabilities – his sensors outlined the pair in undefined but high-level risk markers.

  “I come in peace, looking for my friend,” Greyblade said, and stepped forward between the guards confidently.

  “I accompany the metal-clad wrong-form,” Slaz declared with impressive firmness, then ruined it slightly by adding, “I will withdraw on request, rather than risk being ravaged.”

  “If I had a demi-yachut for every time someone threatened to ravage me,” Greyblade said in a low voice as they passed deeper into the strange clinic.

  “What is demi-yachut?” Slaz asked.

  “Value-marker for trade purposes,” Greyblade said. “A small one.”

  “To be ravaged by the little monsters of the Educators is–”

  “Didn’t ask, Slaz.”

  They found Çrom in a room that could have been a medical bay or a specialised pleasure den. It was difficult to get a read on the place. The three grey-clad Attempted Molren standing around the bed to which the squirming human was strapped were as solemn and phlegmatic as ever.

  “There was an accident,” one of them said.

  “The visitor was exposed to the microscopic wilful,” a second said, and gestured to Çrom’s hand, which was bare to the elbow, puffy and leaking blood-laced clear plasma, and showed the tell-tale puncture marks of Attempted Molran dentistry. Çrom was arching and shuddering in his restraints, sweat rolling from the thermal sheath’s exchange surfaces.

  “It is not responding to the microscopic benevolent,” the first said. Greyblade gathered from context and data updates that there was a range of antivenoms, or the equivalent, that could be fabricated from the bacteria. It was either having no effect, or was making matters worse.

  “Do you have any other variations you can try?” Greyblade asked them.

  “Many,” the third Attempted Molran said.

  “They will react violently with the microscopic benevolent,” said the second.

  “Greyblade,” Çrom gasped. “Berkenshaw’s Oil.”

  “What?” Greyblade leaned over the panting, grotesquely iridescent-sheathed human. Çrom stared up at him through the thermal, imploring and expectant.

  “Berkenshaw’s Oil,” Çrom whispered.

  “We don’t have the ingredients for a damn cocktail, Skelliglyph.”

  “We’ve been on the road … so long,” Çrom hissed through clenched teeth, “and we never … agreed on a safe-word. That … seems like a critical oversight right now.”

  Far too slowly, realisation dawned on Greyblade. Skelliglyph wanted to be rescued.

  “I will take my fellow mazon-hai to our ship,” he said, stepping up and beginning to unfasten the straps. “I advise you not to stop me.”

  “Berkenshaw’s Oil,” Çrom groaned. “I worked in Synfoss you know, at the end. It made my soul hurt…”

  The three Educators, or School Nurses, or whatever they were, stepped back from the bed. One of them turned and swept from the room, saying something about notifying Those Burdened By Many, Many Monsters. Slaz made an urversal sound of horror in the backs of his bifold Molranoid throat.

  “Take your time,” Greyblade called after the figure, and pulled Çrom free of his restraints. “Don’t need to bother them if they’re already so burdened…” e
ven through the sheath, he could feel the frenetic heat of the human furnace consuming itself.

  “Bag,” Çrom gasped. Slaz picked up the little carrying satchel that Çrom usually took on his shore leaves. It had been left lying next to the table. The Attempted Molran tucked the bag over Greyblade’s shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Greyblade said. “You should leave us as soon as we get out of Larazanduk. Operate in accordance with local custom. This is nothing to do with you. Will the … Educators leave you alone?” he began running scenarios and risk evaluations for taking the Attempted Molran with them, at least as far as Dûl. If the poor guy had to take the railgun route home …

  “Yes,” Slaz said, “I have complied with the School’s policies. I will be fine.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” Çrom whispered. Greyblade judged that he was suffering a fever-related psychological dissociative episode.

  “ … but we must leave now if we are to leave unravaged,” Slaz added urgently.

  “Always a priority for me,” Greyblade said.

  “Blacknettle,” Çrom raved in Greyblade’s arms. “Ah God, tell them I’m sorry. Tell them I won’t let them die. Tell them.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Greyblade said gently.

  “Blacknettle,” Çrom whispered, and then jolted in Greyblade’s grip. “Greyblade.”

  “I’m here, Çrom.”

  “Get me out of here,” Çrom said, his voice low and lucid. “I can’t … if the School … Berkenshaw’s Oil.”

  “I get it, Çrom,” Greyblade said. “I might not be the fastest ship in the dock, but–”

  “But the Highwayman is,” Çrom finished. “Let’s go.”

  “Try to lie still. If I need to use one arm, you’re going to mess with my balance and I’ve already got your bag over my shoulder.”

  “Just get us out of here.”

  He carried the shivering human out of the School outpost at a swift but dignified walk, matching Slaz’s speed, stride and bearing. They walked past the impassive guards, and only broke into a run once they were around a corner – again, in this Greyblade followed Slaz’s lead, and was almost caught by surprise at the Attempted Molran’s turn of speed. Sparing just a few moments to thank Slaz for his trouble and his comradeship – a bargain at half the price, Slaz insisted, leading Greyblade to wonder just how fascinating his face could really have been – he charged up the ramp onto the Highwayman, shrugged Çrom’s bag off onto the floor, and dropped Çrom himself into the pilot’s seat.

  “Dora,” Çrom quavered, “emergency protocol, Dûl, now.”

  “Understood,” Dora said.

  The ship arched into the air and accelerated through the spore-screens above the settlement. In moments they were at minimum safe distance, and a second later they flipped into the grey. Çrom looked up at Greyblade, the sweat-trickling thermal still sheening his skin. His hand, which had been exposed on their run to the ship but curled up against his body, had swelled and darkened alarmingly.

  “Take me to the med station,” he whispered.

  The med station was a general-use sterile area towards the engine compartments, and had seen as much use as a quarantine and analysis area for Çrom’s food as it had actual medical issues. Çrom tended to deal with his infirmities the way a wild animal would – by crawling into his private quarters and closing the door. Greyblade lifted Çrom out of the command chair and carried him to the examination table.

  “Okay,” he said, feeling a little helpless. His own admittedly shallow study of the ‘microscopic wilful’ had led him to conclude that the bacteria would be useless in the synthesis of a cure. Even if he hadn’t already seen the School Nurses fail to do so, he didn’t have any samples on board now in any case. Except what was inside Çrom … “I’m going to get this gear off you,” he said, and deactivated the thermal with a pinch of his fingers. The iridescent sheath folded out from between Çrom’s skin and his clothing, and Greyblade’s sensors dutifully reported the rolling wave of dire unwellness that rose up in its absence. “Dora, let’s have the full range of cellular processors and antibacterial agents. And give me a sample scan, maximum magnification. Let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

  “No,” Çrom said weakly, “that’s not what I’m … just … no, don’t.”

  “Sedative,” Greyblade ordered.

  He managed to keep Çrom alive for almost a week. Greyblade’s patient veered erratically from catatonia to cartilage-grinding convulsions and screams that tore the human’s vocal cords. At no point was there any sign of improvement, or indeed any sign of anything but degeneration at varying speeds, despite the robust nature of Greyblade’s human-med training. The microscopic wilful burned their way through Çrom’s immune system until it was almost like Çrom was the invading parasite and the bugs were the host.

  After the first day there were no further lucid moments from the patient, and on the sixth Greyblade finally admitted defeat, and prepared to grant the release Çrom had most likely been pleading for ever since they’d left Lonesome Ice. There seemed to be more than just the bugs driving Çrom towards the grave. Greyblade felt the heavy impetus of something like destiny at work.

  It might also have been his own exhausted state, of course. He hadn’t taken much downtime throughout the treatment, never pausing in the recombinations and scenario-running.

  “Well,” he said to the pallid, rapidly-breathing wraith on the med table, “I guess this is where we find out whether or not you’re the real deal.”

  He reached down, tapped a control, and sent a lethal dose of painless abbroprone into Çrom’s nervous system.

  FIVE WEEKS OUT OF DÛL

  Part of the reason Greyblade had fought so long with the Lonesome Ice bacteria was that he hadn’t really believed the stories. He hadn’t really believed Çrom was immortal, that he would come back after finally losing his battle. Nobody could really have stood in Nnal’s presence, defied the dread Ghåålus of Hatred, Master of all Adversity and Atrocity, and been cursed with a life eternal. Çrom would die, and Greyblade would be left trying to find Rosedian’s lost fleet in an infinity upon infinity of dead, empty universes.

  And that was a very real risk. Of course he knew in a broad sense where they were headed, at least as far as the Highwayman’s navigation system had been programmed with a selection of routes and stopover points, because it was straight-up insanity to leave himself at Çrom’s mercy and simply hope that they would never get separated or nothing would happen to his reckless guide. At the same time, in a practical sense that was exactly what had ended up happening because there was clearly far more to Çrom’s knowledge than he was revealing or could ever be effectively pre-planned and programmed into the ship, so a lot of their journey was utterly dependent on the mercurial human. It was not a tactically comfortable situation, and standing back and letting Çrom die only exacerbated things.

  Another part of the reason for Greyblade’s perseverance, a smaller part at direct odds with his scepticism and concern, was the idea that Çrom might actually be immortal. He hadn’t wanted to confront that reality – in fact, aside from his built-in stubbornness and protocol-driven field medic ethos, the driving force behind his work to keep Çrom alive had been an unwillingness to find out one way or another.

  He didn’t have long to wait after the abbroprone went in. He’d just removed Skelliglyph’s sweat-stained restraints and was considering the sodden wraps and variety of infuser feeds still smothering the body, when … it was no longer a body. It was Çrom Skelliglyph, lying where the body had just been lying, and releasing what should have been among the body’s final lung- and stomach-full of gases in a low, hungover groan.

  Çrom came back to life in the way the lazy physics of Motab Gunderbront had made rocks fall. He just went from being dead to being alive, with no real process at either end or in between to justify the final result. The medical equipment, which moments before had been dutifully reporting the presence of a very fresh carcass, hiccoughed and
began reporting the presence of an unconscionably normal, living human being.

  Çrom sat up, massaged his upper arms and scrubbed at his hair listlessly, and squinted at Greyblade while beginning to peel the infusers from his skin.

  “This is me, whanging you on the side of the head for using abbroprone,” the human growled, “which is not as painless as people like to think,” he dropped the bunch of infusers with a splat. “Next time, just an affectionate crushing of the spinal vertebrae between friends will be more than sufficient.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Greyblade said. Surprise – and an obscure embarrassment over the surprise – prevented him from saying more.

  Çrom didn’t seem to need him to speak at this point anyway. “And this is me, whanging you on the other side of the head,” he went on irritably, “for that entirely unnecessary ten days or so of nightmarish fever before finally getting around to bumping me loose like I wanted you to in the first place,” he paused. “Okay, how close was I?”

  “Six days.”

  “See, it’s always less than it feels like,” Çrom’s tone turned abruptly conversational, “once you go inside your own head … but I’m getting pretty good at adjusting for that. In any case,” he concluded, “you got me out of there and you eventually did the right thing, so this is me taking back those two whangs on the head. Retroactively.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Don’t push it. Just remember, Berkenshaw’s Oil means I’m irretrievably fucked and I need you to get me someplace where I can die without being noticed and dissected a hundred thousand times by sadistic biologists.”