Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3

by Luther M. Siler

  The inside was completely different. From the outside, she was expecting dirty and smelly. Instead, she got a place that almost approached classy, with muted lighting, low music playing, and furniture that looked carefully cared-for. If you overlooked the occasional cage hanging from the ceiling with a gyrating female— of two or three different species— in it, or the stripper's runway that ran down the middle of the common area, it could be any of the restaurants on Arradon that she'd eaten at. The place smelled bad, but not nearly as bad as she'd expected, and most of the more objectionable smells were coming from the rooms that surrounded the balcony on the open second floor. The sole stairway was at the foot of the runway, spiraling up to the rooms upstairs. The bar took up the entire back wall of the room.

  The words THE SHAFT were printed on the runway in big letters.

  Oh. I never ever wanted to be right about that, she thought, fighting back giggles again and only barely succeeding. They weren't even bothering to be subtle. There was no way anyone in here was going to take her seriously if she walked through the door and immediately collapsed on the floor laughing. Keep it together.

  There were only a handful of patrons in the room, all ogres, plus the bartender. She figured the women in the cages weren't going to be terribly interested in talking to her.

  Amazingly, no one even looked her way. She'd tried to prepare for a number of possible reactions to her presence but indifference hadn't been one of them.

  Well. To the bar, then. The bartender looked up and made eye contact once she got within a couple of meters, an amused look on his face. He was actually on the small side for a full-blooded ogre, no more than a few centimeters taller than Grond at the most and not as thickly muscled as most ogre males were. He almost looked like he might be a halfogre, but the thick brow and slightly protruding lower jaw made that unlikely. He was just one of the smaller ones.

  So are you. Don't get cocky.

  The most amazing thing about him, though, was his hair. The ogre practically sported a mane, with a ridiculous shock of straight black hair spraying in all directions from his scalp and easily halfway down his back. Most ogre males either kept their hair short or shaved their heads. She did a quick scan of the rest of the patrons to see if it was a local style. No one else sported his haircut.

  "Drink?" he said.

  "Looking for someone," she said, climbing up into a bar stool and not doing a great job of looking suave about it. Seated, her chin barely came up to the bar, so she knelt on the stool. "You know Fahrhad?"

  The ogre rumbled, deep in his chest, a flash of red coming over his eyes. Darsi tensed. Red-eyed ogres were definitely not something she had been hoping to see. Then he looked at her a bit more closely and the glow faded. His arm shot out, snatching her left wrist. His hand was big enough that he got most of her left hand too. He held her arm out, looking at it carefully.

  "Who did the work?" he said.

  "Why does it matter?" she asked, wincing as he tightened his grip a bit. There was no way she was going to pull away from him, so she didn't bother trying. She started wondering if she should go for a weapon.

  "Ogre work, right?" he said. "He tell you what this says?"

  "Says?" she said. The design was mostly geometric, abstract work. It didn't look like language at all.

  "You got tatted up by a scholar," he said. "There's a couple different references to old myths hidden in there. Most of us wouldn't even recognize them." He winked at her. "Luckily for you, I read."

  Maybe he is a halfogre, she thought. "What's it to you, anyway?"

  "It's the story of Iklis. I think I'll let him give you the details," the other ogre said. "Just be aware that he made you interesting, and that normally somebody walks in my bar demanding to see my brother, and my brother's been dead for a few days, well, I might wanna beat that person to death just on principle. Those tats let you stay alive long enough to explain yourself."

  Iklis. Grond's longbow Angela was an Iklis sniper's longbow. She'd always assumed it was a planet, but she'd never asked him about it.

  The bartender let go of her arm.

  "So explain, little gnome," he said. "Or maybe I throw you out of my bar, but not until after hanging that arm up above it somewhere. It's good work, after all."

  Fahrhad's brother, she thought. Okay. Let's try this.

  "It's been darker than usual in the mines lately," she said. That was what Farhad was supposed to say to her. It was his identification phrase.

  The bartender stared at her, his face emotionless. For a moment, neither of them moved.

  "The coal absorbs all the light," he said. Darsi relaxed, just the tiniest bit.

  "Come with me," he said. "Boksch! Come cover the bar for me. I got a thing here."

  Another ogre stood up from a table and headed toward the bar. The bartender turned and headed back toward the kitchens without another word. Darsi followed. He walked into a cramped, brightly-lit office and sat down behind a desk. She decided to stand.

  "So show me this package that got my brother killed," he said. "I thought Rhundi was sending us a human. What is she, your mom?"

  "Yeah," Darsi said.

  The bartender laughed. "Grond's work. I shoulda guessed."

  "You know Grond, too?"

  "Yeah," he said. "Name's Kerron. Now that we're old friends, lemme see the fuckin' box."

  She took it out of her pack and put it in front of him. He put a hand on it, and she heard an identcoder inside the box start to spin up. Kerron winced as the box took a blood sample.

  And then it simply fell apart.

  "Shit," they both said at the same time.

  * * *

  "Is … is that what I think it is?" she said.

  "Yeah," he said. "What the hell was Fahrhad into?"

  "You don't know?" she said. "But the box opened for you."

  "Rhundi knows we work as a pair," Kerron said. "She'd have coded it for both of us. But he didn't tell me this was coming, or what he planned to do with it. Did you know he was dead?"

  "An elf with a couple of local escorts left his … uh, his head in my ship yesterday," she said. "Tried to find the box, too, but didn't end up having time. I got some information out of one of the bodyguards. Xir name is Relict. I think it was xir that killed Fahrhad. I wasn't even sure it was him. My dossier didn't have a description or anything."

  "Where's the head?" Kerron said. His eyes were red again, but Darsi didn't think it was for her this time.

  "I buried it," she said. "I can show you where."

  Kerron nodded. "You know anything about the elf other than xir name?"

  "Scars all over xir face," Darsi said. "At least according to the bodyguard. And I don't think xe really needed the backup, either."

  "Fuck," Kerron said.

  He lifted the Benevolence helmet off the table, looking inside it.

  "How much you wanna bet this was the elf's?" he said.

  That's trouble, Darsi thought.

  "Wait," she said. "Relict ran away when I startled xir guards yesterday. Who manages to behead an ogre but runs away from a gnome? Ex-Benevolence shouldn't have been worried about either of us. And hiring local kids as lookouts? Why? It doesn't make sense."

  "Dunno," Kerron said. "Maybe it's got something to do with the—"

  The explosion from the direction of the dance floor cut off anything else he was going to say.

  "Stay here," he shouted, eyes blazing red, and stormed out of the room, weapons in both hands. Darsi heard dozens of shots echoing from the front room, along with a chorus of yells and hoarse, deep screams.

  She shoved the helmet back into her pack and summoned her ship back from orbit. Then she activated both ends of her staff, following Kerron out of the room.

  This is a terrible idea.

  She hadn't been sent to Untkaar to fight Benevolence. She'd been sent to Untkaar on a milk run.

  Milk runs always went bad.

  She paused outside the office, trying to decide what t
o do. The Shaft almost certainly had a back exit. She could be out the door in seconds. Or she could join the fight at the front, or at least go see what was happening. Kerron was at least nominally on her side. That might not last if she ran away on him.

  More bellowing and yelling from the front of the building. But these weren't screams of pain. And the shooting had stopped.

  She made her decision and headed toward the bar.

  Most of the front room was in flames. At least a couple of the patrons were injured, and one looked dead or close to it. The rest of them were putting fires out.

  Kerron and Boksch were enthusiastically beating the living hell out of something on the floor.

  By the time she made it over to them, Kerron was standing up straight, one arm shoving Boksch away from whoever they were taking apart.

  There was an elf on the ground. Well, most of one. It looked like the elf's legs and one arm had been mechanical, and they'd been torn clean off xir body. It was tough to see if xir face had any old scars on it because of all the new blood.

  "Is that Relict?" she asked.

  "Xe threw an incendiary as soon as xe came in the door," Boksch said. "Blew the runway to hell, killed Oreg. Pointed a gun at me— it's around here somewhere— and then just collapsed."

  Kerron looked her way. "I got here just as Boksch was jumping on top of xir. Xe never even fought back. How the hell did this thing kill my brother?"

  Relict convulsed a few times, spitting a fine mist of vomit and blood into the air. Darsi turned her head to the side, braced herself, and made sure the elf's airway was clear.

  Xir one biological arm was bare. It was covered in scars too, including one huge, prominent one at the shoulder.

  "Withdrawal?" Darsi asked. "Is that a thing? My mom's had that helmet for a while. Maybe losing their armor makes them nuts."

  "Who the hell knows?" Kerron said. "Let's finish the job and be done with it." The ogre had holstered his guns. He drew one now, pointing it at the elf's head.

  "If you kill xir, you'll never know how Fahrhad died, or why," Darsi said.

  "He's dead one way or another," Kerron said. "What do I care anymore?"

  "You don't want to know why he was taking delivery of a Benevolence helmet from my mother? You're sure about that?"

  Kerron put the gun away.

  "Tie xir up," he said to Boksch. "Figure out a way. And do something to keep xir from talking. Blindfold, too."

  "Ain't that a little overkill?" the other ogre said. "Xe's such a little thing."

  "Xe's Benevolence," Kerron said. "Or maybe ex-Benevolence. Take no chances."

  He looked at Darsi. "Take the helmet. I'd give you your payment but I don't know what it was. Just take the damn thing and get out of here. I'll deal with … that."

  "You don't think that—"

  Kerron's eyes went bright red.

  "I think I'm done with everything right now. I think Fahrhad and I came out here to get away from this bullshit and I'm not in the fucking mood to see you any more, Iklis tattoos or not. Get outta my whorehouse, gnome."

  Darsi nodded. This job was about as blown as it could be. She had no good reason to—

  Energy blasts flooded the door. She dove for the floor. Kerron stood in front of her, a confused look on his face.

  "What the fuck …" he mumbled, and then crumbled to the floor, a half-dozen smoking holes in his chest.

  A thought struck her, and she checked the tracker she'd attached to Anzel's jacket.

  The tracker showed him eight meters away. He was either more dangerous an adversary than she'd thought or under some serious compulsion. She'd heard of Benevolence doing things like that before.

  Great.

  Her subcomm pinged. It was Grond.

  "Busy right now," she said, as another volley of bolts flew in through the door. Some of the remaining ogres began firing back, but she was pretty sure they were shooting blind.

  "I'm pulling you out," Grond said. "Go out the back. This just got too hot."

  "Fuck that," Darsi said. "This is just getting fun." She cut the connection, not actually feeling her own bravado. But if she let Grond rescue her from this, she'd never be able to go out on a job solo again.

  Going out the back was a good idea, though. If only she had brought those goggles, she—

  Wait.

  She opened her bag and pulled the Benevolence helmet out again.

  Oooooh, this is a terrible idea. But the thing had to have all sorts of visual field enhancements and specialized optics in there.

  She pulled the helmet onto her head.

  * * *

  For a moment, there was tremendous pain. That went away quickly, though, and then the entire world slowed down. She felt the helmet reshape itself to better fit the protruding snout of a gnome. Her field of vision went black, then lit back up again with the position of every living thing over a kilo in weight within a hundred meters subtly indicated. One of them was subtly outlined in red. She concentrated on it and the walls of the brothel simply went away. Anzel was outside up in a tree, carefully camouflaged, pouring fire in through the door. He had a second rifle set up a few meters away, set to autofire, shooting another energy blast every few seconds through the door to confuse his angles.

  Darsi felt that it would be very simple to go outside and simply shoot him out of the tree. Everything was moving so slowly. Even the shots from Anzel's rifle seemed to be moving like they were dragging themselves through mud. She grabbed Anzel's original pistol from her hip and danced out the door in between blasts. She could see how he had tried to hide. She even understood how other people might not be able to see him where he was. She gave him two shots. The first went through his forehead, the second a few inches farther down, transforming his face into a ruin. His body slid out of the branches and crashed to the ground. A faraway part of her regretted having to kill him. He had been a nice person, she thought. He hadn't deserved to be caught up in all of this.

  Then there was the second rifle to deal with. She spun toward it as it fired again, the blast passing harmlessly over one shoulder as her third shot directly hit the muzzle. The gun exploded.

  Call home, she thought, or was it the helmet talking to her? She ought to—

  She came back to herself for a moment, and shoved the helmet off her head, a sharp screech escaping her throat as the connections between her skull and the helmet were suddenly severed. The thing had already started worming into her brain. If she'd been human or an elf, it would have had her already. The armor was slower to adapt to gnomes, apparently.

  Back in the bag. The only question left was whether she was leaving Relict with the ogres or not. The elf wasn't in good health. It was possible xe didn't have a lot of time to live. It was also possible that her mother and their troll Benevolence expert Irtuus-bon could get a lot of information out of xir during the time xe had left.

  "Grond," she said over subcomm.

  "Two minutes," he said.

  "We're bringing back a prisoner," she said. "An elf. Possibly ex-Benevolence. My ship or yours?"

  "Um," the halfogre said. "I vote neither."

  "I wasn't asking," she said. "This is my job. If you're going to insist on helping me, you're going to do it on my terms."

  There was a brief moment. When the halfogre came back, his tone of voice had changed. She could have sworn he'd been laughing.

  "Mine," he said. "I'm in the Nameless. Namey's got a berth or two that should be able to keep even an ex-Benevolence elf in check until we get home. And we can probably park your boat in the cargo hold, while we're at it."

  "The Debut will be landing in a few minutes too," she said. "But a few kilometers away. You're coming straight here? Can the Nameless do that?"

  THE NAMELESS CAN LAND WHEREVER IT WANTS, Namey said into her ear.

  "I didn't know you were listening," she said to the boat.

  YUP, it answered.

  "Fine. Be ready to leave right away. I'm gonna go get the prisoner, a
nd I don't plan on taking no for an answer." She activated the studs on her electrostaff again. Hopefully Boksch wouldn't want anything to do with Relict at this point anyway.

  She walked back into the Shaft.

  She was expecting nearly anything. Ogres were not especially known for backing down from fights, but the ogres in this place seemed to mostly be locals, and the local population seemed notably low on warriors. Even an ogre with a desk job could be a formidable opponent, of course, just by virtue of their strength and size, but that didn't mean that they wanted to fight all the time.

  Did it? She hoped not.

  Luckily, everyone was far more concerned with Kerron than they were with either the elf or with Darsi. There were a couple of ogres dragging him back toward the kitchen and Boksch was nowhere to be seen.

  Relict was lying facedown on the floor, unbound but also unconscious. Darsi checked xir pulse, wondering if one of the ogres had simply killed xir, and found one: weak and thready, but there.

  I need you to really be unconscious, she thought.

  The elf's mechanical limbs were scattered all over the bar, and likely contained tracking devices. Darsi thought about scooping them up to give them to Irtuus-bon— there was probably somewhere on the new Nameless that could keep a signal from getting out— but she dismissed the idea. Too dangerous.

  Well, at least an elf missing three of xir limbs wasn't going to weigh very much. Darsi worked quickly, first frisking Relict for any hidden weapons and, upon not finding any, scooping the elf up and balancing xir over her shoulder. She staggered for a moment under the weight then stabilized herself and carried xir outside.

  The Nameless was hanging overhead, just above the treeline. The boat adjusted position slightly, then dropped to the ground, knocking several trees flat along the way but not touching the Shaft. The side cargo door opened, Grond standing just inside, Angela at the ready. Darsi dashed aboard.