Time enough

Time was of the essence. Time was an essence.

Mounded in powdered hills, shining like clear crystal in fractured valleys, Time gleamed on the world of Nar-es-shalaan. Each infinitely thin layer holding memories, light, thoughts, somehow bound into physical form, drifting down like snow on the dead world.

It was of course, forbidden. Distilled time did horrible things to living organisms. Machines fared little better. Energy fields fared not at all. People tried, of course, on bets, through curiosity, on theories of getting rich, or powerful. The starship hulks disintegrated very quickly, leaving only holographic memories imprinted on the landscape, eerie ghosts whose shapes were projected in shifting patterns by the light of the white dwarf star.

It was artificial, of course. Quick probes taken from a discreet distance hinted at power that would destroy any normal world. Or worlds, when hurricanes of frozen instants swirled across the world. None found out what it was like when weapons were turned upon the glistening globe, for those ships vanished utterly without a trace.

And so through the centuries it was forgotten, verboten, used as oubliette for governments too insecure with their own morality for long-distance executions, or suicide missions. So silently, slowly, millimeter by millimeter, fraction by slow fraction, Time fell on a vacant world.

And then…

His helmet sealed itself as the air thundered out through the punctured hull; his gunner, fortunately, still alive, the massive bolt that had whelmed them crossing through armor, engines, equipment, weapons, and out the other side, where it vanished on a trajectory into infinite space. The small fighter shook, the noise suddenly silenced, turning ever so slowly from the imparted velocity as they arced through the middle of the battle. Through the half-shaded viewscreen, the actinic glare of vaporized metal splashed back and forth between the two sides, nearly impossible to tell apart without instruments.

It took him three tries, but he found his voice. “Seerl? You okay?” The female alien replied slowly, shock making it difficult to form the words into human standard. “I am uninjured, Aveed...” She trailed off, and he imagined a four-limbed shrug though they were separated by the wall behind him. “The ship…is not.” Aved nodded, nearly smiling at the tone, though knowing what it meant. Hope for rescue by one side or the other was slim, a dead projectile drifting in space was nearly impossible to find. Beacons would make them weapon targets for as long as they stayed in range.

A white planet rotated into view overhead, then back out again. Aved caught his breath. “Seerl…?”

“Aveed?”

“…that planet. Are we going to hit it?” Theissan were far better than humans at calculating with just their eyes and brains, however modified they might be.

Seerl was silent for three more turns, the ivory globe sweeping silently by. Finally, she answered. “Yes.”

He swore, softly and with feeling. Then a small part of his brain jiggled loose the information of what planet that was, and he swore louder. And then there was nothing to do but watch Death herself loom quietly closer.

He reached out, blindly, for Seerl’s mind, knowing she would feel it. She reached back, and the two of them watched through each others eyes. He had touched her mind often enough, in fighting and making love, and now there was nothing left to say, or think.

The ship shuddered in the thin atmosphere, gravity sucking them down, and then there was a third mind with them. Telepath and human alike shivered away from the quiet, brooding immensity, but they were powerless as it enveloped them and took them away.

A new ship joined the ghostly holographic legions of all who had gone before, but this one was devoid of bodies.