“Give him an hour,” xe said. “He will be back to normal then.”
“What the hell did you just do to him?” Grond said.
“He was under a compulsion,” Asper said. “Which explains how he was able to find you so easily. Or, more likely, to find the statue. I have broken the compulsion. We shall see what he genuinely remembers when he wakes up. He may have some useful information for us.”
Twenty
Sirrys ban Irtuus bon Alaamac had decided that he did not like children very much. He was both lucky and unlucky to be on a ship full of gnomish children: lucky, because gnomish children were well known to be substantially more independent at a younger age than children of other species, but unlucky because gnomes tended toward very large families, and Brazel and Rhundi had produced a very large brood indeed. He had done his best to provide the children with tasks that needed doing and that he thought they might enjoy. He’d asked a couple of them to work on inventorying their various supplies on the ship, for example, and since he had a vague notion that gnomes were fond of water he’d set several of them to mopping and keeping the floor clean. He did not believe that the children were doing their best in attending to these tasks, but was unsure about what to do with them otherwise. They seemed to be eating and sleeping on their own, and Rhundi had neglected to provide him with any sort of list or similar document detailing what “take care of the children” actually meant, so he felt that he was probably safe in attending to his own duties so long as no one was injured or starving.
It had been very difficult to restrict himself to the small amount of equipment that Rhundi had allowed him to bring. Furthermore, the ship was built for speed, not for transporting large numbers of passengers and a troll with hundreds of kilos of surveillance and codebreaking equipment along for the ride. It was crowded and loud. Their security team, at least, seemed to keep mostly to themselves, although one of them seemed to spend an excessive amount of time in the presence of the oldest Tavh’re’muil child. She carried a weapon openly. Perhaps he was her trainer.
Regardless of the many small indignities of the trip, however, he was making progress on the encrypted Benevolence files. Whatever this Haakoro had been, or however he had managed to get ahold of them, there absolutely was Benevolence technology encoding those files. That was, in Irtuus-bon’s estimation, virtually impossible to fake–and certainly impossible to fake to a degree that would fool him.
As if on cue, one of his computers pinged. He walked over to take a look. He had tried several combinations of twelve different decryption packages and icebreakers, several of which he had invented himself, and had finally seen some success: he had managed to pull a list of file names out of the morass of encryption. He looked at it carefully, scrolling through the list and memorizing the contents as they fled past him. They appeared to mostly be technical documents and blueprints. He mentally flagged a couple of them as looking useful for the decryption effort itself–it was possible that the secrets to unlocking the files were within the files themselves, and if he managed to unlock the right one first, the rest would come much more easily.
His eyes lit upon a particular cluster of files and he abruptly stopped scrolling through the list. A low whistle escaped his lips.
“Oh,” he said.
He knew which files he was going to attack first, and they had nothing to do with encryption. He mentally blocked out the noise of the chattering children and the activity in the ship around him and got to work.
“I don’t know how much I remember,” Haakoro said.
“His memories themselves are suspect,” Asper said. “The compulsion could have created them, or prevented him from recalling things that in truth happened.”
“Can you fix it?” Brazel asked.
“No,” Asper said. “My parent may be able to. But it is beyond my skill. Memories unrelated to the compulsion are probably unchanged, however.”
“Like what happened to the ship,” Grond said. “Because I’m super curious about that.”
“That I can tell you,” Haakoro said. “I talked my way into the ship at the resort. Managed to convince one of your people that I’d lost the identcard they give you to get into the hangar and then picked a ship that looked easy to steal.”
Yep, Rhundi just fired someone, Brazel thought.
“It was an anti-theft device. Nastiest one I’ve ever seen. Blew out the engines, tossed those needles into my neck, and then started me on the drugs. Hallucinations. Felt like a month of lectures on why theft was wrong. The owner must have been the world’s most vindictive rich asshole. It explained right away I was stuck out there until I starved to death.”
“I don’t even like you that much and I’m glad we rescued you,” Grond said. “Nobody deserves that.”
“So how’d you get here?” Brazel asked. “We don’t even know where we’re going right now. How do you know how to find us? Space is big.”
“That is the compulsion,” Asper said. “He is following the statue. Even with the statue in stasis, he can find it. That’s how he found Arradon.”
“There’s no way to hide from a compulsion?”
“There are,” Asper said. “But they require magical aid as well. If I had known he was following us I could have hidden us. He would have searched until he lost his mind, and then the compulsion would have broken.”
“Man, somebody really doesn’t like you,” Grond said.
“So, that bit about the female halfogre selling you the statue and the plans…” Brazel asked.
“That’s true,” he said. I remember it.”
“No, you don’t,” Grond said.
“I swear I do,” Haakoro said. “I wasn’t lying about that.”
A dangerous look started to creep onto Grond’s face. “You don’t know much about halfogres, do you, son?”
“Well, no, but…”
Asper cut him off. “He’s clearly not supposed to remember how he got the files or the statue. He’s constructed something in his mind. It’s pointless to try and convince him otherwise.”
“I’m serious,” Haakoro said, growing agitated. “That happened.”
Grond started to argue and Asper raised a hand. “I’m sure it did,” xe said. “We believe you.” Xe looked at Grond. “Don’t contradict him. No point.” Grond shrugged.
HEY, EVERYBODY? Namey said over the speakers. WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM.
“More specific,” Brazel said, heading for the cockpit. “Always more specific.”
SOMETHING BIG JUST MOVED INTO SENSOR RANGE.
“How big?”
TERRIFYINGLY.
“AGAIN with the BE MORE SPECIFIC!” Brazel said, moving faster. Grond headed for his copilot’s chair.
“Asper, there are crash couches in the common room. Get him strapped in. Then … well, go wherever you want.”
BLOCKSHIP SIZED.
“Get out now,” Brazel said. “Anywhere. Now.”
I TRIED, Namey responded. WE ARE ALREADY WITHIN THE BLOCKSHIP’S RANGE.
“Shit,” Brazel said. “How many other fighters? How fucked are we?”
EIGHT.
“Eight’s too fuckin’ many,” Grond said. “Find someplace to hide!”
“Asper!” Brazel shouted, forgetting the comm. “You got any magic that can hide us? Anything? Namey, find a moon or an asteroid field or something!”
“Not an entire ship,” Asper said.
WE ARE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KILOMETERS FROM ANYTHING, Namey said. THERE IS NOWHERE TO HIDE. THE SPIDERSHIPS WILL BE WITHIN RANGE IN A MATTER OF MOMENTS.
“Shields? Chaff? Activate everything.”
MISSILE LAUNCHES DETECTED. WE DO NOT POSSESS ANY USEFUL COUNTERMEASURES AGAINST BENEVOLENCE TARGETING TECHNOLOGY.
“What the hell do we have?”
“I’ll do my damnedest to shoot ‘em down,” Grond said.
“We’ve had missiles shot at us before!” Brazel said. “What the hell did we do then?”
GOT HIT, MOSTLY, the
ship replied. MISSILES AND SPIDERSHIPS WITHIN RANGE IN TWO MINUTES.
“There’s no way out,” Brazel said.
“Then we die shooting,” Grond said, and opened fire into the black.
Rhundi had expected an invasion. What she got was a single capital ship, and not one anywhere near the Benevolence’s weight class, either. In fact, it looked almost secondhand, like someone wealthy and important had used it for years, someone who had then upgraded to something flashier and more impressive and cast the old ship aside. It had entered the system a few hours ago, and almost lazily made its way to her resort, descending as slowly as possible. Every attempt at communication had been ignored.
She stood at their hangar, Gorrim and Tarrysh, her head of security, flanking her. Tarrysh was the toughest gnome Rhundi had ever met, standing a full head taller than her, and Rhundi was on the tall side for a gnome. Tarrysh regularly sparred with Grond, training the halfogre on how to fight creatures much smaller than him. That she had thus far escaped those sessions with no major injuries was the best testament imaginable to her abilities.
“Not Benevolence,” she said. “Means we’re dealing with Option Two on the plan, then. You two both clear on what to do?”
“I don’t like this,” Tarrysh said.
“I pay you to not like my plans,” Rhundi said. “That’s fine. You’re going to do your job, though, right?”
“Of course I am,” she responded.
“Okay. Gorrim?”
“Pretty much nobody here but the folks who won’t leave,” he said. “Mostly employees.”
“I told them to go,” Rhundi said.
Gorrim only shrugged. “Sometimes we don’t listen to you.”
“So long as everybody follows the rules,” she said. “No violence unless they bring it, and then only enough to put on a good show. Nobody dies to defend this place.”
“Take your own advice, boss,” Tarrysh said.
“I plan to,” she replied. “Get moving, both of you.”
The two gnomes melted away. Rhundi thought over her options again. This was about the best set of circumstances she could have imagined. The Benevolence very well might have started with a bombing run just to soften everyone up. She’d known as soon as the capital ship had moved within visual range without opening fire that the dice were rolling in her favor.
She stood and waited, alone, as the ship landed.
A portal on the side of the ship slid open, and a ramp descended to the ground. A handful of armed soldiers stomped out of the ship and formed a loose line a few meters from her. She looked them over. They were dressed similarly enough that soldiers seemed like a more appropriate term than mercenaries, and they appeared to be fairly well armed. But the line was ragged, and a few of the soldiers were looking around, shifting their weight from foot to foot, almost impatient.
Trying to impress me, she thought. Which meant that whoever was running this crew thought they needed to impress her. She’d never encountered or heard of Benevolence who felt the need to worry about what anyone else thought.
Two more figures walked off the ship. One was an elf, dressed in a loose shirt and black pants made of expensive-looking, shiny cloth. Xe was–wait–
Is that a beard?
It was. The elf was male. And the figure behind him was an ogre.
Rhundi wasn’t sure whether she should laugh or pinch herself. She’d wargamed a number of possible ways this could go, and had prepared Gorrim and Tarrysh for a number of possibilities and contingencies.
Their antagonists being people she knew had not been on the list of things likely to happen.
“I’ll be damned,” she said. “Barren. K’Shorr. You might literally be the last people in the galaxy I was expecting to see today.”
“Where are they, Rhundi?” Barren asked. He actually had to put a hand on one of his soldier’s shoulders and move the man out of his way to get through the line. A better-trained corps would have already had a way to make that move look more elegant. Like, say, leaving a gap. This crew really had been put together in a hurry.
“They?”
“Your husband and your halfogre,” he said.
“Dunno,” she said. “Probably off on a job somewhere. They do freelance, you know.”
“Let’s not lie to each other, dear,” Barren said. “We scanned for life signs from orbit. You have less than five percent of the crowd I’d expect in a place like this. Either you have gotten much, much more ineffective since last we met or you evacuated. Which means you know exactly why I’m here.”
“I don’t have your statue anymore,” she said. “Or your errand boy.”
“I don’t want the statue,” Barren said. “I want Roashan.”
Rhundi raised an eyebrow.
“Never been there,” she said. “Is that in elfspace? I don’t travel too often.”
Barren glanced at K’Shorr. The ogre walked over to Rhundi, towering over her. Rhundi blinked at him. She’d gotten too used to Grond, and it was easy to forget just how large a full ogre could get. This one probably came close to topping three meters, and probably outweighed Grond by fifty kilos, damn near all of it muscle.
“Thanks,” she said. “Sun was in my eyes. Do you think trying to scare me will help? You’ve known me longer than that.”
“It’s not you I need to scare,” Barren said.
The kick came faster than she could have imagined. She felt herself go airborne, tumbling, and lost consciousness as her head slammed into the ground.
Twenty-One
They lasted ninety seconds.
Ninety seconds: a minute and a half of dodging, shouted instructions, hairpin turns, and astonishing luck–before the first missile broke through their shields. The Benevolence spiderships weren’t bothering to use more than a couple of cannons each, meaning that they were more maneuverable than they would have been if they were using more firepower. The Nameless was listing to starboard and leaking air moments later. Grond had scored a number of direct hits on the attacking spiderships that did nothing to their shields and had managed to blow several missiles into powder before impact.
All for nothing.
The warning klaxons on the ship were overlapping and so painfully loud that Brazel shut them down.
EVACUATE, Namey said. EVACUATE NOW. Something else hit the ship, tossing Brazel out of his pilot’s seat and breaking his scalp open on an instrument panel.
“Everybody drop what you’re doing and get into an atmo suit,” Brazel shouted over shipwide comm. “Namey … just run. Keep us alive as best you can.”
“Our escape pod isn’t sized for four,” Grond said. “It’s gonna be crowded in there.”
“I don’t think it matters much,” Brazel said, struggling into his suit. The Nameless had two spares for guests, cheap expandables meant to fit anything from a gnome to a younger ogre. Another explosion shook the boat. The lights went out.
“Namey? Still there?” Brazel asked. There was no response from the ship.
“Head for the escape pod,” Grond said. “I’ll be right back.”
“WHAT?” Brazel screeched. “We don’t have time for this, Grond!”
“Then leave without me!” the halfogre shouted. “You really think it matters much?”
“This way,” Brazel said to the other two, and headed for the escape pod. Most ships the Nameless’ size didn’t have one, but theirs had doubled as a smuggling compartment in the past, and actually more or less required the ship to be falling to pieces before it was usable–the outside of the thing was laced with shaped charges designed to blow it free from the ship. If the Benevolence didn’t bother scanning for life signs, they might actually mistake the pod for scrap, which was part of the idea. He threw a shelf out of the way and punched an access code into a keypad hidden in the wall of the common room. The door slid open and he shoved Asper and Haakoro inside.
“GROND! You’ve got thirty seconds!” he shouted, hoping their subcomms were still working and suspecting t
hat they probably weren’t.
It took the halfogre twenty-five. The boat was rocked by another enormous explosion, and Grond hit the doorway at an angle, nearly careening past it. He threw a bag and a bundle wrapped in cloth into the room, then pulled the rest of himself inside as the Nameless’ gravity gave out and everything went weightless. As soon as he was inside Brazel slammed the lock shut then shouted to Asper, who stood at the button to blow the pod free of the ship.
“Everybody hold on to something!” the gnome shouted, and the elf pushed the button. Brazel and Grond scrambled for the seats built into the sides of the pod and strapped themselves in. Haakoro had already found his.
A series of dull thuds sounded as the explosive bolts attaching the pod to the Nameless detonated, then a much larger explosion as the pod tore itself free of the ship. A moment later, the escape pod was rocked by another shockwave as the spiderships blew the Nameless into pieces.
This time, the white light came on by itself. The elf found his sight suddenly beginning to fade out and barely had time to fall into a chair before the vision overtook him completely.
He felt pain. His entire body ached. Old pain, like a broken limb that had never properly healed. He looked down at himself. He was in a child’s body again, only this time the milk-white skin was mottled with bruises and scabbed-over cuts and lesions. The luxurious white robe of his last vision was gone. What little clothing he was allowed was torn into filthy rags and insufficient to hide his shame.
YOU HAVE FAILED, the voices said. They were louder, this time, and their anger was obvious.
“I have not failed,” he said, pulling himself into a subservient position, his face pressed to the white floor. “I swear to you that I have not.”
YOU HAVE NOT ACHIEVED YOUR GOALS. THE DISSIDENTS HAVE NOT YET BEEN BROUGHT TO HEEL.
“I only require more time,” he said. “I swear to you that it will happen.”
OUR PATIENCE GROWS THIN. THE GIFTS OF AZAMOEG ARE SOON TO BE WITHDRAWN FROM YOU IF THEY ARE NOT PUT TO PROPER USE.
The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2 Page 13
