K’Shorr turned toward Grond, pointing both of his guns at him.
“Freeze,” he said.
“Don’t think so,” Grond said.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you, Grond,” K’Shorr said. “Have I ever lied to you before? Why would I start today?”
“Maybe,” the halfogre replied. “But not with those, and not like that.” He stood barely three meters away from K’Shorr, his eyes shining red, nearly matching the ogre’s deep crimson in intensity. Brazel stood behind him, whistling quietly to himself. K’Shorr watched the two for a moment, then shrugged and holstered his guns.
“Where’s Barren, K’Shorr?” Grond asked.
“Down there somewhere,” the ogre replied. “I don’t even know what the hell he’s doing. And, y’know, I think he fired me before he went down there? After all our time together. You’re interrupting me. I was pondering my future.”
“Five minutes of grunting noises and pain, followed by death,” Grond said.
K’Shorr stared at Grond and Brazel, then laughed. He unbuckled his belt, letting both of his holsters drop to the ground. “Fuck it, halfogre. Let’s see how much you learned. I bet you last a minute before I halve your ass again.” He raised his hands and curled them into fists, knuckles cracking.
There was a bang. A large hole appeared between K’shorr’s eyes. He took a single step toward Grond, then crumpled to the ground, a terribly surprised expression on his face.
“Did that stupid bastard seriously just forget I was here?” Brazel asked, putting his gun away.
“Think so,” Grond said, picking K’shorr’s weapons up and kicking the ogre viciously in the head. “Funny part is, he always thought I should have cheated more often. Guess I learned my lesson after all.”
“Who learned a lesson?” Brazel said. “I was the one who shot him. It wasn’t like you signaled me or anything.”
“Yeah, but I wanted you to. That counts.”
“Good enough, I suppose,” Brazel said. “Let’s find Barren.”
“Just a minute,” Grond said. “You were right. Shoulda just brought my stuff with me.” He went and recovered his weapons.
Thirty-Five
“So what is this place, anyway?” Rhundi asked. The man’s name was Colyn. He’d been based on Khkk for close to four standard months. He’d led her away from the Sanctum and into one of the smaller buildings around it. The building, which was built from mud bricks, had concealed a stairwell that opened into a surprisingly high-tech manufacturing floor. A smooth tunnel cut into the rock led them further underground. They had been able to take a tram for what seemed like several kilometers at a steep angle and had walked perhaps another half klick. She had no idea how deep underground she was any longer.
“We thought the Sanctuary was just a tower at first,” Colyn said. “The two you were following are heading down a stairwell. That was covered and buried when we got here. We were trying to expand the base by going underground, since we didn’t want to be too visible from the surface or from orbit. One of our excavation machines managed to dig the floor out from underneath itself. It was awful—the fall killed a couple of our guys—but we found something down there. There’s … a cave network, or something, you’ll have to see it. Once the machines found the caves, we looked at the tower more closely. The entrance had been buried and plugged. We got curious and pulled the plug out.”
“Well, I see no way that could have backfired. The thing’s called the Sanctum of the Sphere,” Rhundi said. “It’s a pyramid. Did you ever find the sphere?”
“Like I said, you’ll see,” Colyn said.
The sound of low chanting became audible from ahead of them. Colyn and Rhundi froze.
“This is where you go back to Asper,” Rhundi said. “Don’t wait for me. Just go.”
“Are you sure? I could–”
Spare me from human males, she thought. “You can go find the elf, and get onto my ship, where you’re safe. I’ll handle things from here, unless there’s something else I need to know about what’s in front of me.”
“We don’t know anything about what’s in front of you,” Colyn said, sounding slightly insulted. “Good luck, I guess.” He turned and left, leaving Rhundi alone in the tunnel.
She crept ahead, trying to stay as quiet as she could. She made it several meters before realizing that the artificial lighting that had been illuminating the tunnel had ended. There was a yellow glow coming from in front of her, where the tunnel abruptly opened into empty space. Someone had attached a simple ladder to the lip of the tunnel. He wasn’t kidding. The excavators would have just fallen through.
She could still hear the chanting, coming from somewhere off to her right, but couldn’t see the source. She climbed down the ladder, which stretched ten or fifteen meters before reaching the ground. She looked around.
The crater from the broken excavator was not far from the foot of the ladder. The Malevolence workers had removed the machine and the bodies, but the scars remained on the floor. Several deep cracks in the surface spiraled out jaggedly from the impact point. She shined a light into one of them. It went far deeper than she felt like it ought to.
Odd, she thought.
The rest of the cavern was mind-boggling.
The floor looked like grey stone, but had a slight amount of give to it. It was nearly perfectly smooth, and stretched out in all directions around her. Above her, bioluminescent mold shone on the cave roof. Every fifty meters or so a wide column stretched from the floor to the ceiling. The columns were made of the same material as the floor.
She could see to the horizon. The “cave structure” appeared to go on forever. The entire place smelled dusty, stale, as if nothing alive had been down here for centuries.
“Sanctum of the Sphere,” she said. “The entire moon is the sphere.” How far underground was she? The Khkks had tunnel systems. Grond had dug his way into one when the Khkks had first attacked the train he was on. The moon had canyons, too. She suddenly remembered a detail from her initial research about Khkk that its few seas and lakes were thought to be abnormally shallow. Does this thing extend under the surface of the whole world?
What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?
The chanting continued from somewhere far ahead of her. She jogged toward it. The floor was … springy?
Yes. Springy. Just a little bit. It was quieter to run on than she expected it to be, too. Given the shape and size of this place, her footsteps should have echoed for kilometers. All she heard was the chanting. Her feet were nearly silent.
After a few minutes of running, her husband’s voice in her subcomm spoiled the quiet.
“Rhundi.”
She stopped. “What?”
“Ssh. Look up.”
She looked up. In the distance in front of her, the roof suddenly swooped upward into a hollow cylinder that soared toward the surface. A huge spiral staircase ringed the cylinder. Brazel and Grond were crouched at the end of the stairs, just before it left the column to hang in empty space. Another ladder extended from the staircase to the floor. The halfogre was blinking a handheld signal light at her. She waved to show she’d spotted them.
“What’s that chanting? Can you see Barren and K’Shorr?”
Grond pointed. The yellow glow from the mold was omnipresent throughout the caves, but Rhundi thought she could see a reddish glow in the distance. It wasn’t bright enough to pick out any details.
“Get down here,” she said. “If that’s them, we should go after them together.” She couldn’t shake the idea that Barren still had something planned. Moving silently, Grond and Brazel descended the rest of the way to the cave floor.
“I can’t believe Barren even survived the climb,” Rhundi said. “He wasn’t in very good shape the last time I saw him.”
Grond pointed at a spot on the floor. Rhundi could just make out a circular object. “Some sort of lift,” he said. “Barren rode down, and then wrecked the damn thing. Brazel and I got to wal
k. Something else I get to kick his ass for.”
“Just his ass?”
“K’Shorr’s dead,” Grond said. He showed her the pistols at his waist. Rhundi’s eyes widened slightly.
“I hope it hurt,” she said.
“Actually, probably not,” Brazel said. “Tell ya later. Let’s get Barren.”
As if on cue, the chanting stopped, and the vague red glow brightened and intensified, its glare filling the cavern.
“That can’t be good,” Rhundi said. The three of them charged toward the light.
Barren knelt on the floor, surrounded by an enormous sigil: a single, glowing eye, with four long, twisted tentacles protruding from either side. The elf’s wrists were bleeding freely. A whirling nimbus of red and white light surrounded him. He had his head thrown back, his arms outstretched, blood dripping down onto the sigil. He held a long, twisted knife in one hand. His other arm, badly broken, hung at a sickening angle from his elbow. If he felt any pain at all from it, it didn’t show.
Grond, Brazel and Rhundi all opened fire at once, their shots harmlessly being absorbed by the light.
“Shit,” Grond said. “What do we do?”
“Grenade,” Rhundi said, snatching one off Grond’s belt and throwing it at Barren. The grenade simply evaporated upon hitting the light.
“We’ve seen that symbol before,” Brazel said. “And it didn’t end well for anyone. We should leave right now.” He tried to open a comm to Asper, then to the Nameless. Nothing. We’re too far underground, he thought.
“We can’t just leave him down here,” Rhundi said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Brazel said. “You think any of us can get through that field?”
“Only one way to find out,” Grond said.
Asper stood in the cockpit of the Nameless and stretched xir senses as far as xe could, searching for any more living beings within the compound surrounding the Sanctum. The elf sensed nothing but the fear of the people xe had already rescued. Most of the refugees were humanoids, but there was a fair number of allied Khkks among them. Their fear was alien, but still recognizable.
ASPER? said the Nameless over the comm.
“Go ahead,” xe said.
SOMETHING IS HAPPENING IN ORBIT OVER THE MOON. AN ENERGY DISCHARGE OF SOME KIND. THE SOURCE IS UNKNOWN.
“Show me,” Asper said, and the Nameless activated a holographic display. Xe could see a single point of immensely bright light, hanging in the sky a few kilometers over the tip of the Sanctum. It was almost as if a second sun had decided to appear in Khkk’s sky. The point flared, growing in size.
“I need to see that with my own eyes,” Asper said. “Don’t go anywhere.” Xe raced back outside the ship, looking up at the anomaly, hanging in the distance high overhead. A moment of concentration sharpened the elf’s vision, screening out some of the light from the anomaly and allowing xir to see finer details within it.
Something inside the anomaly moved.
What was that?
Something started to come out of the ball of light. A long, sinuous shape, followed by several more, emerged from the anomaly and flailed around blindly.
“Ship, can you see that?” Asper asked.
MY SENSORS SEE NOTHING OTHER THAN THE PORTAL, the Nameless reported. BUT THE PORTAL IS GROWING.
That was bad.
That was very bad.
“Azamoeg,” Asper said. Wherever Brazel and Grond were, the two of them had failed. Xe tried again to reach out to the two of them specifically, wherever they were, and could not find them.
“Prepare to leave,” Asper commanded the ship. “We’re taking who we have with us. We don’t have time to wait.”
THAT IS STEALING, the Nameless responded. I WAS CLEARLY ORDERED TO NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO BE STOLEN.
“It’s not stealing if your owners are dead,” Asper retorted. “We have to go, or we’re going to join them.” The elf boarded the ship through the open cargo door, shoving refugees out of xir way as xe bolted for the cockpit.
Asper arrived just in time to witness the explosion, as a bolt of light shot down from the heavens to strike the Sanctum of the Sphere.
And the Sanctum shattered.
The roar of sound was overwhelming, and Asper fell to xir knees, both hands clasped over xir ears. Xe could feel, but not see, the refugees being deafened elsewhere in the ship.
“Take off,” xe pleaded. “Take off now.”
ACKNOWLEDGED, the Nameless responded, and lifted off Khkk’s surface, his shields flickering as they absorbed the impacts of uncountable thousands of tiny pieces of shattered glass.
Thirty-Six
Grond was only a meter or two away from Barren’s shield when the blast came. He was blown head over heels, landing on his back several meters away, dazed and startled. Rhundi and Brazel were knocked flat.
The halfogre staggered to his feet, still not entirely sure what was happening. Barren’s shield was gone, the ground around him cracked open. Grond reached for Angela at her usual place at his back, couldn’t find her, and then staggered toward the elf anyway.
Barren stared at his hands, the glow entirely gone from the sigil around him. The sigil itself slowly faded away as Grond watched.
“Rejected,” the elf moaned. “He is gone. I was not even worthy of death.” He held the knife loosely in one hand, as if he barely considered the halfogre a threat any longer.
“Who’s gone?” Grond said. The elf was hard to hear, his voice nearly drowned out by a ringing in Grond’s ears. And, oddly, a dull roar. The ogre shook his head. He’d been hit in the head plenty of times. It had never led to roaring.
Beyond Barren, he could see Rhundi and Brazel shaking their heads, slowly climbing to their feet.
“Everything,” Barren said, lifting his head to look at the halfogre. The elf’s eyes were filled with blood. “Everyone. Gone.” Tears rolled down his cheeks, staining his thin beard a soft pink color.
Grond found one of K’Shorr’s pistols at his waist. He fumbled it out of its holster and pointed it at the elf.
“You’re coming with us,” he said unsteadily.
“Never,” the elf said, and slashed his throat. Grond watched, dully, as Barren collapsed, dying in a pool of his own blood. The roaring in his ears grew louder.
“I was not expecting that,” Rhundi said.
“Leave him here to rot,” Brazel said. “Let’s go. It’s a long climb back to the surface.”
“Does anyone else hear that?” Grond asked. “Is that the—”
The rest of his question was lost in the cacophony of millions of pieces of shattered glass tumbling into the cavern. The three dropped to the floor again, covering their heads. Grond crawled over to Brazel and Rhundi, covering the two of them with his utilicloak. The avalanche of shrapnel continued for several minutes, smaller pieces bouncing off the cloak, the sound drowning out speech and thought.
Eventually, the din subsided. The air was thick with dust, and all three were coughing.
“There’s a tunnel,” Rhundi said when she recovered. “It’s how I got in. We can try that way.” The spiral staircase that Brazel and Grond had used was destroyed, torn away by the mass of the broken Sanctum.
Grond nodded, not trusting his ability to speak yet. He held up a finger, looking around for something. Brazel read the look on his partner’s face and began searching as well, eventually discovering Angela a few yards beyond where Grond had been thrown by the blast. The halfogre nodded again, a thankful look on his face, and hung the longbow back in her holster on his back.
Rhundi pointed out the way to the exit. The three of them turned, leaving Barren’s thin, broken corpse behind.
The Nameless picked up speed as it exited Khkk’s atmosphere. Asper cleared xir head, sending a brief pulse of reassurance to the panicked refugees in the cargo hold.
“Stay away from the anomaly,” xe said. “But keep it on the viewscreen. In the visual spectrum, not sensors. Use cameras.”
I DO NO
T UNDERSTAND, the ship responded.
“There is something inside the anomaly,” Asper said. “Your sensors can’t see it.”
The boat beeped an acknowledgment and an image of the anomaly appeared on the viewscreen. Asper watched as one of Azamoeg’s long tentacles swept through a spidership that had gotten too close, smashing the fighter into scrap metal. The battle around Khkk was over, every ship that still survived fleeing for safety, ignoring each other.
“If Azamoeg comes through that portal, he’ll scour the entire planet,” Asper said. “Contact everyone on our side who is not already in tunnelspace. Send them to Remember’s ship.” I do not know what else I can do, the elf thought.
TRANSMITTING COORDINATES. SHALL I SHOOT AT THE ANOMALY? I WANT TO USE MY GUNS MORE.
“Absolutely do not do that,” Asper said. The tentacles continued to flail about, finding nothing else within reach to smash. And then an amazing thing happened: They began withdrawing, pulling back inside the glowing portal.
The anomaly flared once more, the light’s intensity forcing Asper to shade xir eyes, and then disappeared, the ghost in the elf’s retinas the only evidence it had been there at all.
IT’S JUST GONE, the Nameless said. THERE IS NO TRACE OF THE ANOMALY LEFT AT ALL. NO RESIDUAL ENERGY SIGNAL OF ANY KIND. CAN WE GO BACK NOW?
“Do you really think that they could have survived that?” Asper asked.
BRAZEL AND GROND HAVE SURVIVED WORSE THAN THIS, the ship responded. AND RHUNDI HAS SURVIVED WORSE THAN EITHER OF THEM.
“There are a number of individuals on this ship in serious need of medical attention,” xe said. “I cannot see how spending time searching for our missing friends is more important than getting people who we know are alive to safety.”
I WAS TOLD TO NOT LET YOU STEAL ME, the Nameless repeated. I THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO STEAL ME AGAIN. The Nameless took control of itself and dove back toward Khkk’s surface. With its active camouflage turned on, it was unlikely that the Khkks would be able to see the ship from the ground, but it became clear quickly that none of them were bothering to look. Between Barren’s bombing run and the explosion of the Sanctum, most of the settlement had been flattened. The Khkk army that had surrounded it was scattered, many of them fleeing.
The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2 Page 24
