The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 Read online

  Luther M. Siler

  The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES, VOL. 1

  Copyright © 2014 Luther M. Siler

  Cover art copyright © 2014 Yvonne Less,

  www.diversepixel.com

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9906253-0-8

  ISBN-10: 0-9906253-0-3

  First Printing: May 2014

  The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 is dedicated to my wife Becky and my son Kenny.

  Table of contents

  Foreword

  “The Planet it's Farthest From”

  “The Closet”

  “Yank”

  “Remember”

  “The Contract”

  “Sigil”

  About Luther M. Siler

  also by luther m. siler

  About the cover

  Foreword

  It all started with Star Wars.

  Or, rather, it started with George Lucas selling Star Wars. The geek uproar was massive; if you’re reading this, you probably remember. Betrayal, and terrible things happening to captive childhoods, and all that.

  I stayed out of it, for the most part. I’ll be a Star Wars fan until I die, and the idea that my two-year-old son’s first movie in theaters could be a new Star Wars movie had more than a little appeal to it.

  And then I read this interview with this guy. (This would be a better story if I remembered who the guy was. I’ve been racking my brain for a year. I have no idea, and my Google-fu is not strong enough to recover the interview.) Anyway, the guy was a writer-- comic books, specifically. And he was doing a promo interview for his new series. Which I can’t remember the name of either.

  Here’s the part that stuck in my head: Wouldn’t it be great, he said, if instead of arguing about what George Lucas or Disney should do with Star Wars, we just took our inspiration from what they’ve already done and wrote our own stories?

  That’s interesting, I thought, and went on with whatever I was doing.

  But the idea stuck in my head. And a couple of days later, it was What if Star Wars had been about Han and Chewie instead of Luke? And a day or two after that, it was What if Luke had just been a job, and Han hadn’t come back at the Battle of Yavin?

  And a few days after that, Grond and Brazel were alive. Grond, actually, was an old D&D character that I’d been trying to stick into a story for years. Brazel sort of came out of nowhere. And then the first story, the one that became Benevolence Archives 1, was written-- the one I’ve called The Planet it’s Farthest From, a reference that anyone familiar with the saga ought to recognize.

  (I have just, at this exact second, realized that I’m writing this on May 4th, Star Wars Day. I swear that was not intentional.)

  BA 1 starts with the line “I have a bad feeling about this.” And there are scattered references here and there-- particularly in that first story-- that no Star Wars fan is going to miss. Be aware that I want you to see them; I’m going for homage here, not ripoff, and ... well, I’ll let you decide whether I’ve hit my mark or not. The stories are numbered in the order they were written, which turns out to be more or less chronological. The exception, BA 2, is missing because BA 2 is quite a bit bigger than the others. And also not finished. But I think-- and hope-- that the six stories you have here are going to be well worth your time. And believe me, there’s more where they came from.

  Thank you for reading.

  Luther M. Siler

  A wretched hive of scum and villainy, somewhere in Northern Indiana

  May 4, 2014

  “The Planet it's Farthest From”

  The Benevolence Archives 1

  I have a bad feeling about this, the gnome thought.

  The saloon had a bad reputation, but precious little on this backwards shithole of a planet was thought of highly. The only thing that Kratuul was known to export was exotic fevers and several deep-space-capable varieties of mold; there was indigenous life that had been rumored to have reached sentience, but having met several of the locals he was unconvinced.

  The saloon was located at the ass-end of a wide patch that had been hacked out of Kratuul's ubiquitous jungle. It was one of six in a tiny trading depot barely worth the name; the gnome couldn't think of a single thing he might want enough to travel to Kratuul in order to get it.

  Well, one thing. It was inside the saloon. He'd have to go inside to get it.

  I bet it smells terrible in there. Gnomes were blessed with an especially keen sense of smell, something that felt like less of an adaptation when it couldn't be turned off in malodorous places. He smoothed his fur and adjusted his clothing, making sure his assortment of weapons were all in the right places-- easy enough to reach, less easy to detect in a quick pat-down-- and strode toward the door.

  The door was rather bigger than he'd expected it to be.

  Oh, hell, he thought. This was not a good sign.

  He put his shoulder into the door, pushing it open slowly. The gnome was large for his species, but that still put him at barely over one and a quarter meters tall, even with the lifts he'd had installed in his boots. The door was clearly built for a species much larger than he was.

  Always do your own research, you idiot, he thought. He hadn't been prepared for an ogre bar. Someone had failed to let him know that he was going to be looking for his target in an ogre bar. The only question was who to choose to blame.

  The saloon, unsurprisingly, stank of ogre-- an odd mix of sweat, lubricant, and a spice the gnome had never managed to identify. It was surprisingly full; apparently it was happy hour, or whatever ogres called that. Glower hour, he thought, hating himself a little bit for the thought. The clientele was about what he'd expected: overheated, mostly male, sweaty, and mostly twice his size. Ogres were by far the largest of the recognized Galactic Types; they ranged from two meters at the small end to nearly three meters tall, and were generally as musclebound as they were oversized. Most of the patrons had legs thicker around than he was. And most of them were staring at him, scattered pairs of red eyes glowing in the darkened room. Several were openly laughing.

  He looked around, giving his eyes a moment to adjust, and spotted an empty stool at the bar. The halfogre sitting next to the empty stool looked just as unfriendly as the others but was noticeably less massive than the rest of the clientele. He also hadn't turned around yet. Stride, he thought, and did his short-legged best to not look like he was waddling as he walked to the stool.

  Which was taller than he was. He cursed under his breath. Always do your own research. He climbed up into the stool, which lifted him just high enough to see over the top of the bar-- which, surprisingly, gleamed; it was the one thing in the saloon that looked like it had any attention paid to keeping it clean. He cursed again and stood on the seat, pounding on the bar a few times to attract the barkeep's attention.

  The barkeep did not appear to appreciate the gesture.

  “We don't serve your kind here,” he snarled. “I don't even have cups in goblin size. You see a kiddy table around here?”

  “I'm a gnome,” the gnome responded, sighing theatrically. “Not a goblin. Look at me. I'm wearing clothes.”

  “Unless they make you taller, I don't fucking care,” the barkeep retorted, pulling his lips back and raising his voice a bit. His teeth were filed. “I ain't gonna repeat myself, neither.”

  “My money spends,” the gnome said, trying not to notice that the saloon was getting noticeably quieter than it had been when he'd entered. “How about we start with me buying my friend here a drink?” He gestured toward th
e halfogre next to him, hoping that his neighbor was in a reasonable mood.

  The halfogre pulled a knife from a sheath and slammed it into the bar, burying the tip of the blade three inches deep in the wood. Not so much, then.

  “Why did you even bring that with you?” the gnome had time to squeak, and then all hell broke loose. The bartender, roaring, swung a bottle at the halfogre's head-- a bottle that was snatched from his hand and hurled across the saloon so quickly and easily that it almost looked practiced. The bottle struck a mirrored wall and shattered, spraying something foul-smelling and thick over a table of four sitting underneath it. Three of the four, all females, shrieked. The fourth, a male, who had been directly under where the bottle struck the wall, was completely drenched.

  He stood up and tossed the table out of his way. The gnome took this in and then looked back at the bartender and his former seatmate, not sure which direction to bolt.

  “Run,” the bartender growled, settling the issue. The halfogre pushed his sleeves back, revealing arms covered in tattoos and a pair of wicked gladiator's gloves on his hands.

  Right, then, the gnome thought. This was not going as he had expected. It had been a while since he had been in a bar fight. It had been longer since he'd been in one where the furniture was all bigger than he was. He leapt from his stool, hitting the floor hard and rolling underneath a table. The fight was already spreading, a pair of ogres having taken unkindly to having had a table thrown at them and a few others apparently joining in for the sheer joy of it.

  A hand clamped down on his ankle. And most of his shin; it was a large hand. The gnome was dragged unceremoniously from underneath the table and shaken in the air. It was the seatmate, who grinned at him and hurled him bodily at the drink-soaked ogre across the saloon. The gnome flew through the air, hitting Wet Ogre in the chest and clinging for dear life to his clothes, digging his hands into the ogre's vest and holding on.

  “Save me!” he shrieked. “I have money!” He climbed up Wet Ogre's chest, swinging himself over his head and clinging to him like a backpack. The other responded by whirling, trying to knock him off. He leapt instead, landing behind the bar and fleeing through a nearby door.

  As it turned out, it smelled even worse in the kitchen, but at least it was empty. The sounds of combat intensified behind him, the first telltale whines of laser blasts joining the melee.

  Window. It was higher than it should have been, of course, but at least it was open. The gnome leapt onto a countertop and from there to the window, clambering through and dropping to the ground outside, losing a few buttons off his shirt in the process. He fled, retreating to a darkened alleyway a few blocks away. In the distance, he heard sirens. The local constabulary was actually responding; surprising for a place like this. As fast as the saloon had dissolved into chaos, bar fights had to be a common occurrence. He waited, watching back toward the saloon, not willing to trust the open streets just yet. The planet was in unclaimed territory, far from gnomespace, and he was probably the only gnome in the settlement. It was likely that the constables would be looking for him soon, and probably not to see if he'd had medical attention.

  A few more minutes of noisy chaos, and a shadow detached itself from the wall ahead of him. An uncomfortably large shadow. No way.

  “Brazel.”

  The gnome breathed a sigh of relief. “Grond?”

  “You should hope so,” the halfogre said, shaking blood from one of his gladiator gloves. “Everybody else back there is busy blaming the fight on you. Did you get it?”

  “Did I get it? Of course I got it,” Brazel said, insulted. He held up a data chip. “I got the chip, his money, a shiv, and two different data pads to go with it. I'd have lifted his gun, too, if he hadn't spun around so fast. You care to explain why you didn't mention we were going to a fucking ogre bar?”

  “Did I forget to mention that?” Grond said, sounding confused. “I can't imagine why. Sometimes I forget how short you are, you know. Was there something wrong with the plan?”

  “Ass,” Brazel retorted. “The plan was that you'd create a distraction and I'd lift the chip. In and out, easy. I was expecting you to bump into him or something, not to get chucked at him like a bloody throwing knife.”

  “Exciting, wasn't it?” Grond said, chuckling. “Can we go now, or do you want to yell at me for a bit longer?” He cocked his head, listening to the sirens, which were growing louder. “I bet I can convince the authorities I've captured you. We could charge more if we have to break you out of jail before we bring the chip back.”

  “I'm taking two thirds of the take,” Brazel said. “It's the least I deserve for being used as a projectile.” But Grond was right; it was time to get back to the ship. Revenge could come later.

  “The Closet”

  The Benevolence Archives 3

  “Found us something to do,” the gnome said.

  “Details,” the halfogre responded, not bothering to look up from his book. Brazel could be longwinded, and it was better to let him do the explaining than to ask questions.

  “It’s actually pretty straightforward,” the gnome said. “Somebody owes Prescott some money. He wants it back.”

  Grond waited. Brazel didn’t add any details. “He happen to say how?”

  “It’s up to us, apparently,” the gnome replied, grinning. “We can steal it back, convince the fellow to hand it over voluntarily, or just beat it out of him. Complete discretion. I asked Rhundi how pissed Prescott seemed about it. She said it sounded pretty routine.”

  It was never routine to owe Prescott money, Grond thought. Prescott handing off carte blanche on getting his money back to a couple of freelancers was a little bit on the unusual side, but they’d worked for him before. He’d normally have handled something like that himself; maybe it really just wasn’t a big enough deal for him to bother.

  “Here’s the dossier,” Brazel said, tossing a datapad in Grond’s direction. Grond caught the thing one-handed, carefully setting his book aside and putting his reading glasses on top of it. The glasses were an affectation; he only wore them when he was reading something that was actually on paper. They helped pull him deeper into his reading, somehow.

  The target’s name was Arrakin Darl. The dossier listed an address in a rough neighborhood in a large city on a basic terrestrial planet relatively nearby, on the border zone between gnomish and dwarven territory. The pictures included were of a human male, 22 years old, of slight build. He looked like a junkie. Grond raised a scarred eyebrow at the amount he owed.

  “How’d this kid get into Prescott for thirty thousand?” he asked. “He doesn’t look like he’s seen half that in his entire lifetime.” Prescott was rich enough that he could have written off the debt with little trouble, but this amount of debt hardly seemed routine.

  “No details,” Brazel said. “I’d have told you already. For all I know he borrowed five and the rest is interest.”

  It would take about a day to get there, Grond considered. Maybe another two or three days to find the kid and scope the place out; another day to get back. Assuming there were no complications.

  He didn’t have anything he needed to do in the next five days.

  “Usual rate?”

  “Plus ten percent,” Brazel said. “He’s still being nice to us after the bullshit we got into last time.”

  Grond nodded, chuckling. Brazel had burned off a third of his fur the last time they’d done a job for Prescott. Their usual rate now included a grooming rider.

  “Gimme an hour,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the dock.”

  * * *

  Three days later, they’d found the kid and had had him under near-constant ‘bot surveillance for a day and a half. Brazel had spent the time watching him while Grond and Rhundi checked every source they had for information about him. Other than owing unsavory people money, the kid was boring. He was a student, if you could believe that, spending most of his time commuting back and forth to class or in the library. Th
e apartment was in a rougher part of town, but the kid seemed to live there mostly because the rents were cheap. Brazel and Grond hadn’t seen him do a single thing that rated as dangerous, much less interesting, the entire time. The junkie look appeared to be just that; a look. The kid was just skinny.

  “You’ll be the scariest thing he’s ever seen,” Brazel said. “How do you want to handle this?”

  “You stay with the ship,” Grond said. “Stay nearby in case I end up throwing him out of a window or something; I may need you to catch him. The building’s sized for bigs, so I’ll go get the money. Or his head. I’ll play it by ear.”

  “My ears, I hope,” Brazel said. Grond’s were mostly either scar tissue or missing.

  “Joke away, pipsqueak,” Grond growled. “Only one of us gets to be pretty.”

  * * *

  Grond didn’t pass a single person on the way into the apartment block and rode an empty hoverlift to the kid’s place on the 114th floor. He wasn’t home, which they knew; they’d watched him leave an hour before, and Brazel was keeping an eye on him. The first option was to toss his place and see if there was anything to steal, but Grond could tell seconds after breaking in that that wasn’t going to be the case. The only thing in the apartment that looked expensive was a desk console that rivaled the one in Rhundi’s office, but even for Grond something like that was too big to be portable. The kid doesn’t have much money, Grond thought, but he has priorities. He spends it on things he needs. The fabber in the corner had come standard with the apartment, the furniture was secondhand. The desk console was handprint-locked. Hackable, certainly, but electronics were generally Brazel’s thing. He certainly wasn’t going to be able to convince the console that his hands were human. He spent a few minutes rummaging through cabinets and the bedroom’s one closet; no luck.