The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2

by Luther M. Siler

  Shit. There was a cleaning ‘bot, headed somewhere. And that somewhere was currently right toward her. There wasn’t room for both of them in the tunnel.

  The lights grew bigger as the ‘bot zipped toward her. It slowed to a stop a meter or so in front of her face, then beeped at her inquisitively.

  “Go away,” she hissed. “Go back where you came from.”

  It beeped again, then backed up a meter or two. There were a series of mechanical clicks and buzzes.

  Oh, hell, what’s it doing?

  The clicks and buzzes were replaced with a whirring sound. The little ‘bot advanced toward her.

  It thinks I’m an obstruction in the passage. Which means…

  It was a cleaning ‘bot. The damned thing was trying to clear her.

  Rhundi quickly considered backing up to see if she could coax the ‘bot into turning around a corner and rejected the idea. She couldn’t see well enough as it was, and didn’t want to leave the ‘bot tunnels by accident.

  Please be using brushes, she thought, and punched the ‘bot. The thing emitted a surprisingly animal-like squeal and backed away, increasing its speed as Rhundi followed it. Good. It had some sort of self-preservation code built in somewhere. No doubt enough of these things had been deliberately kicked over the years that the manufacturers had seen a point in programming them to avoid threats. Pulling herself through the tunnel as fast as she could, she rounded a corner just in time to see the little ‘bot exit through another grate into a larger room beyond.

  She sniffed the air again. The smell of cleaning fluids was much stronger here. Perfect. The ‘bot had led her exactly where she wanted to go. She pushed the grate open slowly, listening carefully for any signs of biological life in the room. Nothing, and likely no AI smart enough to notice she was in there. She looked around. The room she’d emerged into was basically a large storage closet, one wall lined with cabinet-like charging stations for cleaning ‘bots and the rest of the room filled with vats of various cleaning compounds that the ‘bots used while performing their duties. A handful of ‘bots sped into and out of the room through three other access tunnels–though none, she noted, through the one she’d used. Perhaps the ‘bots had temporarily blacklisted it. There was a touchscreen set into one wall.

  “Let this be a programming kiosk,” she murmured, flipping the display on.

  It was a programming kiosk. She spent a few minutes learning the interface, then managed to call up schematics of the entire ship. As she’d suspected, the little ‘bots could get basically anywhere they wanted through the access tunnels built into the walls.

  She listened at the room’s one door for a few minutes. There likely wasn’t much reason for anyone to come in here, at least not until K’Shorr and Barren exhausted all the other places they might find her. She didn’t hear anyone moving beyond the door, and decided not to bother trying to lock it closed. She’d just do her best to keep her ears open.

  Aren’t I just the luckiest today. She hadn’t escaped from kidnappers that many times in her life, and most of those times she’d been on land and not in space, but she was pretty sure this was the most fun she was ever going to have doing it.

  Twenty-Six

  “Ow,” Haakoro said. “My head hurts.”

  “Perhaps your brain is trying to escape,” Asper said. The elf was picking idly at xir fingernails with one of Grond’s knives.

  “Funny,” he replied. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Left behind at the teleporter. I’m told Remember’s robes are impressively comfortable, though.”

  Haakoro looked down at himself. “Yeah, I suppose. Where are the other two?”

  “Gone with Remember,” Asper replied. “They left me to keep an eye on you.”

  Haakoro stood up. “Who the hell decided I needed to be taken care of? I’m getting tired of you guys treating me like a child.”

  “Assume I was simply not invited to follow them, then,” Asper said. “If that will make you feel better.”

  “I’m good at things, you know,” Haakoro said. “I had my own ship. I was a freelancer. I did jobs for people. Made good money. Then I decide to go to Khkk for a while and everything goes straight to shit.”

  “It could be worse,” Asper said. “You’ve passed up any number of opportunities to be killed in the past several days. You do seem to be astonishingly lucky.”

  “Yeah,” Haakoro said. “Always have. But I used to be able to … I don’t know, use it for stuff. Not just getting me deeper and deeper into trouble. My luck’s gone bad on me.”

  Asper nodded, clearly tiring of the conversation.

  There was a soft knock at the door. An elf entered, carrying a box.

  “Your effects,” the elf said to Haakoro. “Please change. The Lady Remember has requested both of you come with me.”

  “What about the statue?” Asper asked. It was still sitting on the table, back in dormant form.

  “Bring it with you,” the elf said. “But do it quickly. The Lady is not accustomed to being kept waiting.”

  “Wait outside,” Haakoro said as Asper picked the statue up. “You already got one look for free. I’m charging if you want any more.”

  Every so often, Grond found himself wishing that he worked with people whose legs were somewhere closer in length to his own. This was absolutely one of those times, as Remember strolled though the corridors of her ship at a businesslike clip and Brazel stubbornly took his time. The gnome was deliberately being obstinate, but Brazel moving at normal speed still forced Grond to slow down a lot of the time, and he was moving at something far less than normal speed at the moment. Trying to keep both of them in view was rapidly becoming annoying.

  The only question was which of them to get angry at, and getting angry at Remember never seemed like a terribly good idea.

  “Braze,” the halfogre said, slowing and letting the gnome catch up with him. “This is ridiculous. You’re getting what you want. Can we move this along?”

  The gnome only glared, not altering his pace at all.

  “I’ve picked you up and put you over my shoulder before,” Grond said, trying to hit I’m about halfway serious right now so please don’t make me do this in his tone and not sure if he was succeeding.

  “Bluffing,” was all the response he got.

  “So you feel like getting lost in this ship? She’s not gonna wait for us up there.”

  “If I get lost I’ll just start stealing stuff,” he said. “She’ll send a ‘bot.”

  “Most of the time when she sends ‘bots they have guns on them.”

  “Once. And if I remember right it was you being inhospitable that time, not me.”

  The ‘bot appeared a moment later. It did not have any guns.

  “Lady Remember has requested that you increase your rate of movement,” the ‘bot chirped.

  Brazel got as far as “Lady Remember can…” before Grond clamped a hand over his snout.

  “We’re coming,” the halfogre said. “Give us a moment.”

  The ‘bot floated annoyingly in the air in front of them, just out of Grond’s reach, as the halfogre struggled with his partner. It tilted itself slightly to the side, managing to look almost quizzical, and Grond could hear a series of clicks and beeps as the thing either made a decision or quickly communicated with some other AI entity elsewhere in the ship.

  “I have been requested to provide audio from your destination,” said the ‘bot.

  Brazel looked disgusted for a moment, then nodded.

  A moment later, he let Grond pick him up as the big halfogre sprinted after Remember, the ‘bot straining to keep ahead of them.

  Rhundi watched as the last of her cleaning ‘bots rolled out of the supply room. She’d made a few modifications to a large number of them and sent them to strategic locations on the ship. It remained to be seen whether they were going to come in handy for her or not. She looked around. She hadn’t found any way to access any cams through the computer console in
the room, so she was still basically blind. She was still in a secluded part of the ship, which was an advantage, but she’d heard feet tromping through the corridors around her. They were stepping up the search. It was time to move. And find a weapon. Luckily, she’d been able to identify a couple of rooms that were almost certainly being used for storage–they were marked as low-priority for the ‘bots and in out-of-the-way parts of the ship. Hopefully she’d be able to find weapons in there rather than having to take them away from one of the people on the ship.

  Only question was how to get there. She could try and make the trip through the access tunnels, but if someone overheard her while she was in there she’d have nowhere to go to escape. If she moved through the boat itself she at least had a chance to flee or fight anyone hunting for her. In the tunnel, all it was going to take was a gun fired around a corner or a grenade rolled toward her and she’d be done for.

  Corridors, then. She stared at the map for another moment, making sure she knew the route and had a couple of escape paths in mind. She memorized the cleaning ‘bots tunnels while she was at it, in case she had to duck back into them at some point.

  Rhundi took one more look around for a weapon. There simply wasn’t anything useful–at least, nothing that she hadn’t already repurposed somehow. She’d hoped for a toolbox and hadn’t found one. She stashed a portable control unit for the cleaning ‘bots in a pocket.

  “No point wasting time,” she said, and listened carefully at the door. Nothing. She slid it open and headed toward the first of the rooms she’d identified, listening carefully and also scanning for the rather distinctive smell of ogre. The halls smelled mostly of humans. This was probably a good thing. She figured she could handle one human easily enough: two, if she got the drop on them. Any larger group than that and she’d have to run and hide.

  She heard footsteps coming toward her from up ahead, where the corridor hit an intersection. She slid into an open room and waited. The room was full of bunks, but looked unused. The boat wasn’t anywhere near to full capacity. She put a couple of them in between her and the door and got low to the ground. A few moments later a group of three walked past the doorway. She waited and listened as they moved farther away, then went back into the hallway.

  Lucky. Still.

  She saw no one else during the few minutes it took her to find the first storage closet. Unfortunately for her, it was locked. And the lock wasn’t mechanical, which meant she couldn’t pick it. It was a palm lock. She knew a few tricks for fooling palm locks, but they all relied on her having hands the same size and shape as the people who were supposed to be using it. There was no easy way to trick a palm lock into thinking a gnome’s hand belonged to a big.

  All the garbage on this ship, and THIS is where they shell out extra money, she thought. On the other hand, if she managed to get inside the room, there was probably something good in there if they’d bothered to go to the trouble to lock it up.

  Second choice was the tunnels. Maybe those wouldn’t be locked. They certainly wouldn’t be palm-locked. Worst that could happen would be a proximity sensor on the ‘bots themselves to get them into the room, and she had ways around that. The nearest entrance was down the corridor a bit.

  She caught a whiff of ogre on the air.

  Of course. She turned away from the intersection and quickly picked a mechanical lock to get into the room next to the storage closet. This one was a private berth. And the bed was suspiciously oversized. And the room reeked of ogre.

  You’ve got to be kidding me. She’d found K’Shorr’s quarters. Which made the palm-locked compartment next to the room make a bit more sense. The ogre likely kept his gear in there and there was no way any human on the boat was getting past a palm-lock keyed to an ogre.

  Much less a gnome.

  She hurriedly looked around the room and then dove under the bed. The place was almost empty of furniture. There was a wardrobe against a wall and a chair and that was about it. The floor and walls were bare, the ceiling a simple metal grate that had probably been raised hurriedly for its oversized occupant. K’Shorr apparently wasn’t big on personal effects. At least the bed was big enough that there was plenty of room to hide underneath it. Otherwise, she’d be inside the closet.

  She turned around, facing the door, and then her blood chilled as she realized she’d left it open. Fuck.

  She waited.

  Nothing happened. She strained her ears to pick up any sounds from the big ogre moving toward her.

  Nothing.

  And then it hit her. She hadn’t picked up on K’Shorr’s scent because he was coming toward her. She’d been standing next to his quarters. The hallway outside of his room was going to smell like ogre all the time.

  He probably wasn’t anywhere near her. She’d been worried for no reason at all.

  “Hopefully that’ll be the last dumb thing I do today,” she muttered to herself, coming out from under the bed. She still needed to figure out how to break into his storage room.

  After that, it would be time to move on to the fun stuff.

  Grond watched his partner’s foul mood fall away as if it had never been there, as the gnome buried himself in a pile of his squealing, laughing children. Darsi stood off to the side, watching and waiting for the younger kids to be done with their father.

  “How the hell did you get here?” the halfogre asked, snatching the girl up off the ground to give her a hug and then carefully putting her back down again.

  “The ship just sorta popped up in front of us,” Darsi answered. “Came out of nowhere, set off proximity alarms all over the ship. Remember knew exactly where we were and where to find us. I can’t imagine how.”

  “You’ll find that you get used to that,” Grond answered. “Knowing what she’s not supposed to is sort of her thing.”

  Darsi shrugged. “Anyway, it grabbed us in an inertia beam and just held us there, and then one of Remember’s people came over the comm and told us what was going on. It took a while to convince Lorryn it was a good idea. I had to tell her you’ve met Remember before. Hopefully Dad’s not going to be mad about that.”

  “I doubt it,” Grond said. “It’s not like she wouldn’t have figured it out eventually. The story’s kind of blown once they physically drag you onto Remember’s ship with an inertia beam. Is everybody else okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Irtuus-bon and the rest of the crew are over there,” she said, pointing toward another part of the room. They were in a large common area for the crew, one that appeared to have been hurriedly re-accessorized to be able to accommodate and entertain a large number of gnomish children. The adults and a few other figures sat together off in a corner. “They’re fine, but Remember’s ‘bots said she wanted us to see Dad first.”

  “Have you actually met her yet?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “One elven steward that met us at the door and a bunch of ‘bots.”

  “What else have you noticed?”

  Darsi scowled. “Everything?”

  “Everything,” Grond replied. He straightened up to his full height and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  The girl closed her eyes, thinking. “Seven minute walk from where the ship is docked, but that was trailing all the kids with us, so I can probably run it in two or three. No trams, so right now we’re somewhere close to the exterior port side of the boat. Occasional obvious security bubbles at intersections of corridors and in larger rooms means that there’s cameras everywhere and they want us to know it. We walked past twelve personnel on the way here: ten humans, two elves, plus the elf steward who was guiding us. Six males and four females, which is a little off-balance for gnomes but probably pretty typical for a human crew. No one obviously carrying a weapon, but we passed by three security ‘bots armed to the teeth, and the crew walks like they’re used to carrying, so they may be issued something easily concealed.”

  She stopped, looking at Grond. The halfogre raised an eyebrow.

  Darsi
rolled her eyes.

  “Fine. No obvious military or national insignias anywhere and the crew isn’t really in any sort of uniform, although they’re all pretty conservatively dressed. Clear implication is that this is a private vessel, but it’s enormous for something not owned by a governmental agency or maybe one of the bigger interplanetary corporations. We certainly couldn’t afford anything like it, and there’s probably not more than two or three shipyards in gnomespace that could have built it.”

  “Why gnomespace?”

  “Bigs tend to forget we exist, and while the thing is probably pretty deeply customized it’s a bit too organic-looking from the outside to be dwarven work. But the whole ship is dual-use and all of the control panels and such are accessible by someone our size. They’re using live virtual wall panels where the control space can be dragged down to gnome height at a touch rather than a fixed pad that might be too high for gnomes or too short for a human. None of the doors have knobs. They’re all active. Stuff like that.”

  “You just made an assumption.”

  She thought for a moment.

  “All of the ship that I’ve seen. I said the whole ship. It could be that they just put us in a gnome-friendly section, which happens to be conveniently located to the ship bay. Better?”

  “Attagirl,” Grond said. “Proud of you.”

  “I need to talk to Dad without the rest of the family around,” she said. “How long do I give him before we dig him out of there?”

  Grond glanced over at Brazel, who was still surrounded by the horde of his children. “Another couple of minutes. We’ve had a rough day. Almost died. And we lost the ship.”

  Darsi sucked at her teeth. “You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding. He loved that ship.”

  “Got a new one already, for whatever that’s worth. Remember gave him a present.”

  “Are you guys okay? I mean, hurt or anything?”

  “Nah,” Grond said. “Everybody’s sore and pissed off, but even the elf and the human came through okay. Although I notice they’re not in here. You know what Remember did with them?”