Well, I don't believe that this has been done before, so it is probably best just to get writing before I note down the sheer insanity of this piece. I'll get to it, I suppose. And I apologise if I misinterpreted the Tau race. I tried to portray them as being like our own modern world, and yet different in many ways. Henley is in the South East of England, by the way. For a map of it, see this link:

http://maps. this is the 1898 novel, not the Tom Cruise one.

The 41st Millennium, T'au

It was a normal day on T'au. The suns shone brightly in the sky, making an almost dazzling glare when combined with bright white buildings. Aircars and busses buzzed and hummed hither and thither, carrying Earth Caste workers to factories and farms, or Water Caste bureaucrats to their offices. The air was clean, courtesy to the modern plasma reactors rather than filthy oil and coal power stations. All in all, Shas Vre Montyr thought to himself, there were worse places to be summoned to.

The tau was tall by the standards of his race, and well muscled, but was oddly pale skinned. This came of spending too much time out of the sun, driving a crisis suit to face the enemy. It was a wrench to be called away from battle, of course, but he was quite sure that his hunter cadre could handle the Orks on Trans'vaal. And, although he hated to admit it, his doctor had been diagnosing him as having "battlesuit frenzy"; a psychological condition which drove the victim to bloodlust whenever the suit was donned. Whilst he enjoyed fighting, Montyr could tell that it would spell an end to his days of commanding troops if he succumbed. And he had no desire to die laughing manically in the middle of the enemy lines, enjoying himself immensely, only to be torn to pieces by gunfire. That wasn't the Tau way.

Montyr looked at the others standing with him. There was a water caste man by the name of Por El My'en, who was busily looking at his data slate and chronometer alternately through his holographic spectacles. "The girl's late!" he said, petulantly. "Five minutes of my time wasted! I may as well have stayed at the office and tell him that I wasn't available! I have an important meeting to attend with some Fio caste unionists, damn it!" He had once been a diplomat of some standing, but had now sank into the worlds of commerce and business. My'en was bald, neatly dressed and slightly plump around the middle.

"I am quite sure that it will be attended to in due course," the third tau said, silencing My'en. Aun Or'es was sitting calmly on a seating drone, looking for all the world like an ancient statue of the first Ethereal. "Although it is in the greater good for Fio caste workers to receive pay and superior accommodation."

"As it is for money to be used to buy more machinery and material for the next great expansion. I had to make forty five gun ships yesterday, would you believe that? Forty five!" The protest was half hearted, but real. The pair of them were from very different spheres of political thought: the ethereal for making life better for the common Tau, the merchant for spreading the greater good across the galaxy. Montyr wished that they would actually decided on policy once and for all. Politics was far above his head. It was the soldier's lot, he had found out long ago, to serve his commander and get on with life, not to question orders.

"Fio El Shovah will see you now," the drone droned politely over the intercom. "She apologises for keeping you waiting, but she had last minute preparations to look in to."

"Last minute preparations indeed!" My'en muttered, but followed the others into the office.

Fio El Shovah was a tallish woman with a disorganised topknot and an easy smile. "It's an honour, Aun O," she said, slamming her fist into her robe clad chest in salute to the Ethereal. The others did the same, and then sat down at the appropriate chairs. After offering drinks, and finding that the Fire caste veteran was quite happy with a large mug of Cacoa, the Ethereal steepled his long, slender fingers on the small, cluttered desk. Data slates were stacked in a great, tottering pile, and the cogitator unit was covered with paper cups which had once contained some form of hot drink.

"What is it that you have brought us here for, El Shovah?" he asked politely. "I am quite sure that it is for the Greater good-" the tau all saluted again- "but we are still ignorant of its nature. Even I, as an Etheral, have never heard of the… Goldwing project." He pronounced the name slowly, one syllable at the time, as if he had never said it before.

"That would be because that it has been kept top secret, Aun O," El Shovah said, with a note of regret in her voice. "Only Aun'Va himself knows of its existence. Along with us humble scientists, of course." She laughed shortly. "It is vitally important to our expansion, though," she went on. "It could potentially neutralise the Imperium entirely, and possibly even hand us the galaxy on a silver platter!"

There was a stunned silence, save from Montyr. He had heard this said of too many Tau weapons before. The Burst cannon, they had said, would annihilate enemy infantry in moments. But then they met space marines, who wore power armour and shrugged off volley after volley of fire. No matter, the scientists said, we have Vespids with neutron guns! They'll obliterate the enemy armour! But the space marines brought up land speeders with assault cannon, and the Vespids were shredded in a great volley of bullets. And so on it went. "What does this damned gun do?" he asked, preparing himself for a long, tedious description of the effects of plasma, electrons and neutrons flying over huge ranges with massive stopping power, but still inferior to most Imperial Guard artillery pieces.

"It's not a gun, Montyr," El Shovah said, tantalizingly.

"Terror – my apologies, Aun O- take me, but what is it?" Montyr was now shouting impatiently. "A sword? We've got Kroot with better weapons. Missiles? Warp Travel?"

"Give that tau a prize!" El Shovah said triumphantly. The Ethereal inclined his head politely, signalling her to continue.

My'en rolled his eyes heavenwards. "We tried that before," he said. "I invested in shares for it! But we lacked magicians to get in properly. Our crews got eaten by… things." The merchant shuddered. He remembered his loss on the stock market well.

El Shovah nodded. "We found a side effect," she said. There was another dramatic pause. Montyr considered reaching for his pulse pistol and ordering her to tell all. "Namely, that security footage recorded one of our scientists meeting himself whilst getting on his airbus." Another dramatic pause. The three non scientists in the room tried to work it out for themselves. "It turned out that he had gone back in time."

My'en laughed. "Time travel? Oh, come now! We all hear of time travel in lurid science fiction novels written by out of luck Fio'saals, but not in this world of ours, surely?"

"That is incorrect, My'en," the Ethereal said. "There have been at least four recorded cases of Imperial vessels doing just that in warp travel. But please, continue, El Shovah."

The scientist nodded her thanks. "Anyway, my department got to work on it at once! It took five Tau'Cyr, four billion credits and two dead volunteers to perfect it. But finally, we managed it."

The Etheral sat up suddenly. "Ah, of course!" he said. The other two non scientists looked nonplussed. "We go to before the Imperium, and spread the Greater Good there!"

"Exactly! We'll need troops to do so-" El Shovah nodded at Montyr- "and a linguist."

My'en nodded proudly. "I was an expert," he said, "in the Imperial Gothic language. It cannot be so very different before the establishing of the Imperium of Man. I will need a secretary, of course-"

"You shall have one," Aun O said. "It is the Ethereal's responsibility to guide the expedition along the path of the greater good, and I shall do so with the greatest honour."

"Well… yeah." The scientist had clearly not had many dealings with the Ethereal, Montyr thought to himself. They often spoke in pompous and old fashioned terms. But he had a far more pressing issue.

"You say," he said, "that there were two deaths?"

"They were in an early version of our system," El Shovah said hastily. Perhaps a little to hasty for Montyr's liking. "This is far more advanced now. And we think… well, we know that it can carry far more than our previous one could!"

There were hesitant nods around the table. After more small talk, the meeting was adjourned, and, two days later, the expedition began.

1904

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And then came the great disillusionment.

And yet, even fewer would have believed that, in times to come, other intelligences would be watching us, some human, some not so, and yet all greater than our own. Fewer still would have considered the possibility that they would desire to change our own world to fit their purposes. And so it was that, in the summer of 1902, they revealed themselves to us."

Quote taken from "A War of Time and Space: A History of the Contact Incident by one who has been through it" By H.G Wells.

I was walking the Chiltern Hills, around Henley on a Sunday afternoon, when the incident which would change the entire of the history of the human race and, ultimately, those of several others, came to our world.

That that day was to bear any great significance was entirely beyond my mind at the time. The sun was shining brightly, and the River Thames looked beautiful from the hills above, with small specks showing rowers enjoying the weather. I could just about see a small steam yacht chugging its way along, full of happy tourists with modern cameras. It was truly glorious weather, perfect for doing pretty much anything one desired. The local Aspect Park Golf Club was doing a fine business, and looking down I could see men dressed in their caps and plus fours going about their business quite happily, laughing as balls flew in utterly random directions. Church bells were ringing as the congregation filed out in their Sunday best. The world was utterly at peace, and I saw no reason for it not to be so.

Looking back on it now, I suppose that we had every reason to believe otherwise. We had all read reports in the papers of the strange green lights on Mars, and had heard of trouble in the Balkans and other such desolate parts of the world. But it all seemed so tranquil, so far away, that it seemed, much as I loathe the simile, as if it was on a different planet. Let the rebels fight, we told ourselves. We were all nice, and cosy, and safe, ensconced in leafy Berkshire, and nothing was going to take that away from us.

But, before going further with my account, and to bring a halt to this political ranting, I suppose that I must introduce myself to the reader. My name is Archibald Preston, a Doctor of Latin in Christ Church College, Oxford University, and even before that a Captain of Infantry serving in India and Cape Town. At the time of writing I was in my late fifties, a widower, and thoroughly pleased with life. I had made a reasonable fortune, and used it to settle down quite comfortably in the old Country. Every Sunday- in fact, most days when I didn't have to provide lectures- I would take up my walking stick and ramble around the country side, generally thinking about life, and marveling at the sheer niceness of the moment.

It was on one of these that I first espied the strange flying machine.

I heard it first. I had been mounting the crest of a hill, and then I happened to hear it: a queer humming sound, quiet yet audible. I first thought that it was a mosquito, or some such insect, but then common sense kicked in. I was not, I told myself, in India. There are no mosquitoes in England, and it was too early in the day even if they were. So, said my long buried practical instinct, it had to be something else.

I stopped walking and looked around me. There was nothing untoward: just fluffy white clouds, birds twittering serenely, a hot air balloon in the distance.

After a few seconds, I noticed that it was not a hot air balloon at all.

It appeared to be a small, wedge shaped craft, moving impossibly quickly through the air. And it seemed to be closing with me.

As it bore down on me, or so it seemed, I could make out more details. There seemed to be two men inside it, one of whom seemed to be driving it like a motor car, the other presumably acting as an observer.

Or, as my disturbed brain put it, as a gunner.

I turned and ran as quickly as I could.

The day suddenly seemed sinister. A bird, swooping down past me desperate flight, suddenly seemed like a vulture. The sun went behind a cloud, plunging everything into fell shadow. I tripped over a pothole and was sent sprawling into the dust. I scrambled to my feet and continued to run, frantically looking around.

I eventually arrived at Remenham, and I must have made a curious figure to onlookers. I was in a ragged state, hatless and panting. My face was dust covered and bloodstained from a graze. I looked deranged, I suppose. I panted about "A flying machine," and "men from mars." At some point I had made the connection between the queer lights, and the apparition in the skies.

I was put into a chair at the local pub, The Red Lion, and was handed a glass of beer from the sympathetic innkeeper. I thanked him, and drank it down, before paying him. I suspect that he thought me a drunkard.

Sitting at the inn, I began to consider the previous dangers to be a mere figment of my imagination. Was it impossible that it was just a human device, ingenious enough in its own way, but of simple terrestrial origin? The Wright Brothers, I had read with great interest, had developed such a thing in America. This could just be a coincidence of some kind.

Such were my thoughts as I made my way back to Henley, at a leisurely walking pace, stick in hand, and my mood returned to normal.

The next day, of course, it all changed forever.

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