Greyblade

by Andrew Hindle

  It was as though the entire solar system had begun very abruptly coalescing into a sun and planets, so the planets were mostly-formed but a lot of the accretion disc was still present in the spaces in between … and then that brief flicker of sensible physics had gone out again, and everything had just stopped and solidified mid-process. Tomberland was therefore left as a solar-system-sized spiral web of dull stone, interspersed with worlds like nodes. Most of them were uninhabited, but several – not to mention large stretches of the inter-node network, and the central globe – sported settlements of assorted species. The settlement demographics depended on the amount of gravity and different atmospheric and environmental conditions the inhabitants could tolerate, seeing as – in welcome but still not-quite-complete adherence to familiar concepts in physics – the different sizes of the globes dictated their mass and gravitational pull. Tomberland Mighty, where they made berth, was the closest to Centre-normal according to Çrom and Dora.

  Greyblade remained uncertain why the decidedly tiny node-world was named Tomberland Mighty. But he decided it didn’t matter. They drew close, cruising along one of the huge trunk-like arcs that connected Tomberland Mighty with its immediate neighbours, and were cordially welcomed with an information package and lexicon set much like most of the rest they’d received.

  This one, however, had one major difference. As soon as Greyblade spotted it, he told Çrom not to exchange any further data with the settlement. Çrom, who by this point had already seen the same thing, snapped down an emergency packet they’d come up with together on the way from Lonesome Ice to Dûl.

  Sounding far more shaken than Greyblade had expected, Çrom assured him that they didn’t usually share their origins or languages anyway unless specifically prompted, and in this case he had locked out even more of their information. Nothing about their physiological and biological makeup, no Xidh markers … he even sent a harmlessly falsified set of data about their ship, making her seem somewhat less tantalising than she was, and substituting a few more Alien-normal emissions and readouts in place of the Fhaste specs.

  Her profile and appearance would be altered subtly on the readings, and while that wouldn’t hide her craftsmanship from a visual examination, they had ways of lowering their flight signature and – in Çrom’s own words – slinking into dock rather than swaggering.

  All of this was more or less standard practice to the point where it was really a mystery why anyone bothered sharing such data at all. Greyblade would personally have done even more to make their ship less remarkable on scans. However, he bowed to Çrom’s common sense when the human pointed out that the one thing more attention-grabbing than a spectacularly beautiful and high-functioning ship was the same ship pretending to be nothing special. He suspected this was just a rationalisation because Çrom wanted to flaunt the Highwayman whenever possible … but it was a decent rationalisation.

  This had all been a pointless precaution up to this point, because the chances of running into anyone this far from the Corporation who even knew Xidh, let alone knew who Fhaste had been or who was capable of recognising a Fhaste vessel, were simply too slim to be worth consideration.

  “So,” Greyblade said, “I assume they weren’t here when you last came through?”

  Çrom shook his head. “No,” he said, “this is new. And really, really bad.”

  Greyblade studied the census information again, fighting against the conviction that he was looking at some sort of solitude-mirage. A manifestation of homesickness, his pining for the familiar.

  But no, it was real.

  There were Time Destroyers on Tomberland Mighty.

  THE UNRAVELLERS

  OF THE FABRIC OF TIME

  Time Destroyers. To say they were the second-most dangerous of the Elder Races – those of the Elder Races who worshipped Nnal, in any case – was doing them a disservice. There were just a lot more Damoraks, and the Damoraks were a lot louder about their hostility and contempt for everything in the urverse – were, in their own unique way, more sociable. Time Destroyers were few, but they were truly horrifying. Greyblade quietly thanked Jalah and the Disciples and all the reputable Archangels that his campaigns had seldom taken him into Time Destroyer business, and never into full-scale conflict. The Firstmades made disapproving noises about the Time Destroyers, but when the Master Races overstepped their treaties it was generally the Damoraks who got kicked.

  The Firstmades would far prefer to leave it to the Ghååla and Their agents to deal with the more grievous crimes against the urversal order. And when it came to those crimes, the Time Destroyers were the prime offenders.

  “Where did they come from?” Greyblade asked. “Aside from the obvious.”

  “Yeah, I’m going out on a limb and saying Torphon, in The Unknown,”36 Çrom said. “But as to how they got here, I’m damned if I know.”

  “It says here that their ‘research group’ arrived about … Dora, do you have an estimated conversion for this timekeeping system?”

  “About ninety years ago, Sir Greyblade,” Dora supplied.

  “Ninety years?” Çrom groaned. “Who knows how much damage they’ve done in that time.”

  “There’s a few markers connected with their group,” Greyblade went on, “mostly about not trespassing on their territory, not engaging them in public … actually it looks like they’ve put down the full book of basic Time Destroyer military etiquette as a baseline here and the locals have played along.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Çrom commented sourly. “Compared to a lot of the local groups, they’re pretty sociable.”

  Greyblade grunted. “Time Destroyers know how to play the game,” he agreed. “As long as they’re left alone, they don’t get themselves worked up trying to be the biggest morchi-bird in the yard. For all I know, most of their powers would be null and void out here anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Çrom muttered, then brightened momentarily. “Look, there’s a note saying that they’re externally humanoid but don’t actually meet the criteria because of their heads. That’s actually the closest I’ve ever seen to them admitting they haven’t got ‘em.”

  “Apparently their desire to avoid Worm-related persecution outweighs their self-consciousness,” Greyblade noted.

  Time Destroyers did have heads, technically speaking – but they customarily concealed the mess between their shoulders using helmets, the designs of which were dictated by highly complicated sociocultural and military cues. Indeed, it was almost unheard-of for an outsider to encounter a non-military Time Destroyer. All those who exposed themselves to the impurities of lesser species – and they very much included their allies in this judgement – were of a specific military caste. ‘Time Destroyer’ was simply a shorthand for that caste, and the only members of the species anyone ever saw. If their ‘civilians’ had a name for themselves, nobody else knew it.

  “But what are they doing here?” Çrom insisted, scrolling through the package.

  “Their leader is a scientist named Gant,” Greyblade said, although he actually seemed to be categorised under professor, explorer, inventor, visionary. Time Destroyers loved their hyperbole. “Megalorn Gant.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “And whatever they’re doing, if they haven’t finished it in ninety years it’s probably not about to wrap up soon,” Greyblade added. “It’s also unlikely to be mentioned in the welcome literature,” the one direction in which Time Destroyer self-inflation did not extend, sadly, was in boasting about their projects and plans. It was another of their more dangerous characteristics.

  “I know,” Çrom sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. I know exactly what they’re doing here,” Greyblade waited, and Çrom glared at the data package for a few more seconds before looking up. “They’re conducting experiments at a safe distance from Gateway.”

  “Gateway,” Greyblade frowned behind his visor and reviewed their itinerary. Of course, Gateway – their next stop – was the point at whic
h Skelliglyph’s damnable secretiveness hit top gear despite his promise of full disclosure, so his expectations weren’t high.

  “They’re doing stuff that the Vultures wouldn’t allow them to do in the Corporation,” Çrom declared.

  “What’s the point of that? Honestly, you might as well just sit around and daydream,” Greyblade said. “Whatever they do Beyond the Walls, the Vultures still won’t allow them to bring any practical developments back with them and implement them inside the Boundary. It’s all pointless. There aren’t even real physical laws out here, they might as well be breaking the rules in a simulation.”

  “Except the Relth might come down on those sorts of simulations, if they conducted them in Corporate space,” Çrom replied. “This is like a … a material hypothetical. A simulation in near-real conditions. And completely safe from repercussions, unless they come from us.”

  Çrom was unusually grey-faced. In fact, he looked terrified. The sight gave Greyblade pause.

  “Okay, look,” he conceded. “Time Destroyers are bad news, and maybe we can find out more about what they’re doing without tipping our hand … but as long as we stay out of their way, they’re unlikely to care about us. They’re probably not going for the Godfangs, although by all means let’s make sure of that–”

  “Yes,” Çrom said urgently. “That’s what I mean. Let’s make sure.”

  “But I’m fairly confident our mission is nothing to do with them,” Greyblade concluded, “and vice versa. Let them run their material hypotheticals.”

  “You’ve been in enough conflicts involving Aliens to know that shit that comes from out here can cause trouble inside the Boundary,” Çrom warned. “And even if you haven’t, you’ve got historical records.”

  “Yes, but this–”

  “And the Relth don’t stop all the Alien incursions across the Boundary,” Çrom went on, “or all the Alien-sourced messing around. The Vultures might not even be able to stop it, and if they get the ball rolling out here and then just … roll inwards…” he shook his head. “Maybe they’ll be able to fix it, and maybe it will cost trillions of lives before they can. This thing they’re playing with, this place, it’s dangerous.”

  “This place, do you mean Tomberland?” Greyblade asked. “Gateway? The place beyond that, that you’re not telling me about? The more you tell me, the more likely I am to agree with you. You’ve proved entirely reasonable in the past, there’s no reason I wouldn’t–”

  “We have to kill them.”

  Greyblade sighed. Okay, maybe not entirely reasonable. “As much as I would enjoy a little break to stretch our legs and put a small but dangerous Master Races outpost to the sword, we are not equipped to engage…” he checked the packet and drew in a sharp breath through his teeth, “…twelve Time Destroyers.”

  “But–”

  “The best I can offer,” Greyblade said, “is that I’ll run some scenarios, draft some attack plans. And find out as much as I can about what they’re doing here. If you tell me what’s got you so worried.”

  “I can’t do that,” Çrom said in frustration. The Highwayman sliced through the atmosphere and swung into a landing configuration over a glittering cityscape like any of a hundred night-side planets Greyblade had descended towards. The only difference here was that Tomberland Mighty had no day-side, and that was mostly a psychological difference.

  “Fine,” Greyblade said, neither angrily nor in resignation – he opted to simply concur. “Then let’s spy out the lay of the land and see what this Gant fellow is up to. If you’re that certain of the danger, we’ll find a way to neutralise them.”

  “Killing them is a good way to neutralise them,” Çrom said. “Killing them, then atomising the remains, maybe venting them out of the relative field into the Liminal. Or just incinerating them in the reactor–”

  “We are receiving a recorded transmission from the designated landing area,” Dora announced.

  “We already got the welcome wagon,” Çrom frowned. “Is there something more?”

  “Yes,” Dora said. “There is a personal greeting and a non-compulsory summons to peaceful assembly–”

  “Oh fuck me,” Greyblade murmured.

  “–from Megalorn Gant,” Dora concluded. “Professor, explorer, inventor, visionary. You have one standard Firstmade day to resist or comply. Isn’t it nice to hear such familiar old turns of phrase, so far from home?”

  MEGALORN GANT

  You could tell, sometimes, when you had wandered into the radius of Time Destroyer influence. Sometimes, if you noticed quickly enough, you could get out before it was too late.

  In Earth or Barnalk terms, Greyblade reflected, it was something like walking along a beach. You could see the little ridges in the sand, the little lines of deposited debris that each wave left in succession. Taking a wider view, you could see the larger deposits at the high-tide line, and the delineation between wet sand and dry.

  Time Destroyers, especially in sufficient numbers, created an effect a bit like that … only instead of water, they made waves in time.

  It was particularly noticeable in a region of muted physics, which was probably one of the kindest ways to describe Beyond the Walls in general. Here on Tomberland Mighty, as Greyblade and Çrom passed through the landing area and the minimal-security administrative building with its scattering of angular native life-forms that were like four-legged, six-armed Molren in pale grey, the effect was visible as a series of anomalies in the building. Strips of material that were faded with age and whatever exposure could occur in such a place; others that were relatively crisp and fresh, with no sign of recent construction or any other artificial overlaps to explain the shift between new and old.

  It was easy to miss without sensors. It was easy to dismiss as a coincidence of environmental and utilisation effects, or even an Alien stylistic decision. But as they followed the invitation and stepped out into the chilly lamp-lit darkness of the street, Greyblade recognised that the strips were turning into arcs. Concentric rings, getting smaller as they drew closer to the epicentre of the damage Gant and his team were doing – apparently just by drawing breath.

  “Looks like at least some of their power works here,” Greyblade muttered, pointing at a join as they passed.

  Çrom looked down. “What?”

  “The chronological pollution,” Greyblade started, then waved a hand. “Never mind. Time Destroyers leave a mark. And twelve of them is enough to leave a big mark.”

  Twelve Time Destroyers, in fact, was an army. When travelling beyond their homeworld they were generally solitary creatures, and if they did gather together they rarely did so in great numbers. Indeed, they were prohibited from gathering in numbers greater than one hundred, by articles of the Elder Convention that predated most sentient life in the urverse. This was partly to do with their habit of pulling the fabric of the space / time continuum around their bodies and pretending it was a toga – metaphorically speaking – and partly to do with perhaps the most dangerous and understated characteristic of the species. The military-scientific race of the species that ventured beyond their citadels on Torphon,37 anyway.

  Two Time Destroyers, exercising their power,38 were considerably more potent and dangerous than one, doubled. Three, roughly speaking, were capable of feats that should have taken four Time Destroyers working in concert. Four Time Destroyers together were as powerful as seven taken individually. This greater-than-the-sum-of-their-parts effect continued, if not quite exponentially, then not exactly in a linear fashion either, until ten Time Destroyers were an effortless match for five or six hundred Molran or Damorak or Áea-folk wielders when one-on-one they would have found themselves level-pegged. After that it got a bit variable and ragged, prone to exceptions and outliers that … well, it still didn’t balance the Time Destroyers with other species, but it didn’t scale conveniently.

  Greyblade estimated that Megalorn Gant and his eleven colleagues would have been able to fight a thousand Burning Knight
mage-corps soldiers to a standstill – and Greyblade was not a mage. He didn’t like to think about what a hundred of them would have been capable of, and had often wondered why the Firstmades and the Elder Races hadn’t set the cap at, say, fifteen.

  “Do you have a tactical scenario down yet?” Çrom asked hopefully.

  Greyblade laughed. “Best one I’ve got so far is walking out onto one of those big stone spars connecting this world to the rest of the system, and gnawing through it with my teeth,” he said. “Then repeating the process on the other side, and letting Tomberland Mighty drift away into space.”

  “That doesn’t sound like something we have time for.”

  “Maybe the skullheads can help us with that,” Greyblade replied.

  The streets of Tomberland Mighty, or whatever this given city-state of Tomberland Mighty happened to be called, were busy but sluggish, the spindly residents moving in pairs and small groups with a dreamy gait that nevertheless conveyed an impression of urgency. After wondering for a paranoid moment whether this too was a result of Time Destroyer influence on the flow of time, Greyblade realised the Tomberlanders were actually moving the way they were because this node was relatively low-gravity for them. Vehicles and other mechanisms moved at a less disorienting pace, and there were even a couple of stocky, heavily-furred quadrupeds – with broad, smiling faces covering the rounded fronts of their bodies and rows of gaping, sharp-fanged mouths along their backs – shambling along the street like tourists. Clearly, these were Aliens from elsewhere, and had been directed to this node because it most closely matched their native conditions. Just like Greyblade, and Çrom, and the Time Destroyers.