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

  Luther M. Siler

  The

  Sanctum

  of the

  Sphere

  The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2

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

  THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE: THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES, VOL. 2

  Copyright © 2015 Luther M. Siler

  Cover art copyright © 2015 Yvonne Less, www.diversepixel.com

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-99062534-6

  ISBN-10: 0990625346

  First Printing: April 2015

  THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE is dedicated to Brian K. Vaughan, who has never heard of me, but who is nonetheless still responsible for my stupid little book’s existence.

  Thanks for the inspiration, Brian.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Interlude 1

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Interlude 2

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Interlude 3

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Interlude 4

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  THANK YOU

  About Luther M. Siler

  Also by Luther M. Siler

  Foreword

  Welcome to The Sanctum of the Sphere, the second volume of The Benevolence Archives! Well, most of you, at least. If you’re reading this on some sort of magic rectangle, welcome to the second volume of The Benevolence Archives. Are you holding a book, made of actual paper? Welcome to The Benevolence Archives. The print edition contains both volumes that have been released to date, since BA Vol. 1 is short. Too short to print on its own, in fact, so I just stuck both of ‘em inside the same set of covers.

  If this is your first visit to the BA universe, worry not! I’ve done my best to make this accessible to new folks, and you will find if you are skilled with the Google that you can get the first volume at minimal cost anyway.

  Minimal cost. Less than that, even. I won’t pay you to read it, but the next best thing.

  Some thank-yous, and then I’ll let you get on with the story. First, The Sanctum of the Sphere would not have been possible had a certain charitable organization not noticed me and funded me to do nothing for a summer but sit and write. For various reasons I’m not going to name them here, but they know who they are and I’m very grateful. I’d like to thank my alpha/beta readers: Holly Bland, Scott Brown, L.S. Engler, Molly Enrick, Lauriel Masson-Oakden and Thomas Weaver. Their commentary and feedback was invaluable, and many of them will be able to point to specific scenes in the book and take credit for fixing them. I’d also like to thank Gene’O Gordon, Natacha Guyot, Winter Bayne and Adam Dreece for their help with publicity, marketing, and just generally keeping me sane.

  Finally, I’d like to thank my wife Becky, who lost a fair amount of sleep staying up at night to beat the manuscript into shape and argue with me about em-dashes and ellipses. I love you, babe. I’ll get the next one right, I promise.

  The next installment in the Benevolence Archives universe will be another short story collection, believe it or not. There are a lot of little corners I’d like to shine some light into before the next novel-length effort. In the meantime, check out the back of the book (or the end of the file) for a look at something else you might enjoy.

  Thanks for reading.

  Luther M. Siler

  Somewhere in northern Indiana

  April 10, 2015

  Prologue

  He awoke to white light.

  No, not just the light–the whole room was white, white walls curving into white walls and a white ceiling, a perfect, clean oval with no corners for darkness and shadows to collect in. The light came from everywhere, sourceless. This world was warm, soft, like a loving parent’s embrace.

  He looked down at himself. His body was not his own, the one he wore now much younger. There were no scars, no calluses on his hands, the nails neat, even and pink. A child’s body, but genderless, dressed in a simple, soft white robe. He wanted to wrap the robe around himself and, content, sleep forever.

  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He felt uneasy speaking before he was spoken to.

  A symbol flashed once, burning into the back of his eyes. An oval eye, with four arms protruding from each side.

  YOUR OFFER IS ACCEPTED, the voices said. There were dozens, speaking in unison. They were masculine, feminine, old, young. SHOULD YOU SUCCEED, YOU WILL BE RETURNED TO US.

  “To Azamoeg,” he said, quietly. His voice was weak, timid, high-pitched.

  TO US.

  “And after?”

  THAT DOES NOT MATTER, NOW. WE AGREE TO YOUR RETURN, SHOULD YOU SUCCEED. THAT IS ALL.

  “And if I fail?”

  DO NOT FAIL, the voices said. WE ARE WATCHING.

  The symbol flashed in his eyes again, and the white faded away. He came back to himself, to his own body, to the small, dirty room he occupied.

  He stood up, stretching. His hand sat atop a statue. He removed it, working the feeling back into his fingers, running his thumb along the ring he wore.

  A large shape appeared in his doorway. A very large shape.

  “We in business?”

  “We are,” he said, feeling sudden relief to hear himself speak in his own voice. “Bring him. We have much to do.”

  One

  The halfogre couldn’t shake the idea that he’d made some poor decisions.

  To start with, he wasn’t terribly happy with where he was. The system was on the far outskirts of ogrespace, so far out that the ogres hadn’t bothered to name it. The locals, gruesome insectoids that communicated with a mix of obscure gestures and directed smells, had some name for it in their language that he was biologically unable to pronounce. It sounded like a throat clearing, with some hand-waving, a head-bob of some kind and a strong smell of fruit. The eyes were involved somehow too, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. Rhundi had spelled it “Khkk” when she’d commed about the job.

  In about three minutes, a fast-moving ground transport was due to pass about five meters beneath him. It was an elongated, poly-legged mechanical monstrosity that followed a permanent pheromone trail to move cargo from one place to another. He’d heard the local name for it, but he wasn’t any more able to say that than he was able to say “Khkk.”

  He’d decided to call it a train. He’d been hired to rob it.

  It was fast and loud and heavily guarded at both the start and end points of its destination. Less so in between. And he was about to have to leap onto it, then find a way to break in.

  It was nighttime, but the gas giant that hung overhead reflected more than enough sunlight to be able to see by. Khkk was rarely in real darkness. The local landscape was flat and dusty, dotted with
occasional oversized rock formations that were the only thing that broke the monotony all around him. He’d found one that made an arch, twenty meters high, and if his map was to be believed the train was going to pass directly through it. He’d have about twenty minutes to find his package and get back off the train before getting picked up again got complicated.

  He wanted to avoid “complicated” today.

  He heard the train coming before he saw it, approaching from the west, the sun setting behind it. The halfogre shaded his eyes with his hand, trying to gauge the thing’s speed.

  Fast, he thought. But coming right where he expected it to, which was good. He was nearly two and a half meters tall, which meant that he’d only have a drop of a couple of meters if he was hanging from the underside of the arch when the train passed underneath. Even at high speeds, he ought to be able to control the fall easily enough. He adjusted the climbing gloves on his hands and scrabbled around to the underside of the arch, easily holding himself in place on the rock’s rough surface despite hanging upside-down.

  Which gave him a clear, if upside-down, view of the train as its path started to bend away from the arch.

  “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he muttered. The map was wrong. Of course the map was wrong.

  Moving fast, he pulled himself back up to the top of the arch and judged the distance. It looked like the train was going to go around the arch to the north. If he measured the jump perfectly he just might be able to hit the top of the train. Of course, then he’d have to stop himself before sliding off the other side, a feat that wouldn’t have been too tricky when he was dropping straight down sliding along the train, but was going to be a hell of a lot more difficult when he was leaping and sliding across it. Getting trampled by those stampeding feet did not look like an exciting way to go.

  The train’s path kept bending northward. He had about thirty seconds to decide. And it really didn’t look like he was going to be able to make the jump. Which meant…

  Shit.

  “Okay. I can do this,” he muttered again, climbing down as fast as he could.

  “Sure.” He hit the ground and sprinted toward the train.

  “Simple.” He was still in front of it, but just barely. It would be a lot easier if he could see the pheromone trail the train was following. He needed to get right alongside it.

  He watched the legs pistoning up and down as the train came toward him. The tips of those legs were probably really sharp.

  He just had to time it perfectly–-

  Ow. He leapt toward one of the legs as it slammed into the ground next to him, straining his arms a bit but scrambling to the top and hurling himself toward the body of the train before any of him got caught in a joint somewhere. The sides of the train were smooth, but his climbing gloves found some purchase in the material anyway, and he was able to drag himself onto the top within a few moments.

  Now to get inside. The object he was looking for was supposedly toward the back of the train. He could break in anywhere he wanted, but didn’t want to spend any more time inside than he absolutely had to. The clock was ticking. Staying low, he moved carefully toward the back of the train until he located a hatch. He tested it carefully, hoping he would get lucky and find out it wasn’t locked.

  He was not lucky. Naturally. Not only was the hatch far too small for him to get through, but the locking mechanism looked unfamiliar. Even if he’d had time to pick it, he’d still have to widen the hole somehow. The halfogre unclipped a microtorch from his belt and thumbed it on. The flame the torch emitted was only a few centimeters long but was more than hot enough to burn a halfogre-sized hole through the train’s metal skin in a couple of minutes. He grabbed the handle on the hatch, yanked the entire mechanism out of the hole he’d created, and tossed it off the side.

  The interior was unlit, pitch-black beyond the bit just below him. He slid himself into the hole he’d made and froze, listening. There weren’t supposed to be any guards on the train itself–no sentients, anyway–but it was always worth double-checking and he’d already been wrong once on this job as it was.

  Nothing moved. He pulled a pair of night-vision goggles over his eyes and moved toward the back half of the train. The package was supposed to be marked with a dye that would glow brightly if viewed through these goggles.

  Huh.

  He was standing on crates. There were crates to his left and right as well, and even a few netted to the ceiling. In fact, everything was held down with netting and ropes. He’d gotten lucky. They hadn’t put anything directly underneath the access port he’d carved through, although he could see where he’d scorched a few boxes that were too near to his torch. There was enough room for him to move around, but not much more. He’d been expecting an actual floor to walk on.

  And about every fifth or sixth package was glowing brightly. The natives on this rock apparently saw in a different visual spectrum from his in addition to communicating through pheromones.

  “This just keeps getting more fun,” he muttered, heading to the back of the train anyway. He activated his comm.

  “Brazel.”

  “What?” his partner responded into his ear. “You find it already?”

  “So, uh, was the package supposed to be marked in any particular way? Because half the shit down here glows.”

  He heard the gnome laughing over the comm.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “It’s hilarious,” Brazel responded. “And as a matter of fact, yes. It’s covered in warning symbols, apparently.”

  “Warning symbols.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Warning about what?”

  “Danger, I’d guess. They’re gonna be visible in the normal spectrum, too, but Rhundi figured the ones the goggles picked up would stand out a bit more. I guess not, eh?” Grond could hear his partner chuckling on the other side of the comm. “The crate it’s in is about a half-meter square by two meters long, if that helps any.”

  “Knew that,” Grond said.

  That was something, at least, since none of the crates were consistently sized. He moved toward a section that seemed to be mostly smaller boxes. Most of the crates that were glowing were either covered in whatever paint or dye was showing up in his goggles or were covered in writing. One of the boxes, about the right size, was painted in wide stripes and had a variety of scary-looking symbols all over it. It stood out.

  “I think I’ve got it,” he said, cutting through the netting that was holding the box in place.

  “I’m told it’s not fragile,” Brazel said. “So don’t worry about being too gentle getting it out of there. I’m not far away. Tell me when you’re on your way out and I’ll bring the ship over.”

  “On it,” the halfogre responded. Which was about when the floor leapt up and tossed him into the ceiling. He hit a couple of crates hard, head-first, and then hit the floor just as hard a moment later, bits of broken crate raining down on his head. Something heavy clonked off a shoulder. He looked at the floor. It was a pistol. Three more that hadn’t bounced off of him on the way down to the floor lay nearby.

  Weapons?

  “The fuck was that?” he said.

  “Trouble,” Brazel responded. “Something you just ran over exploded.”

  There was a moment of silence on the comm before Brazel came back.

  “Grond, you’ll love this. There’s a bunch of assholes trying to rob the train.”

  “There’s already a couple of assholes trying to rob the train. Be more specific,” Grond grunted. He pulled himself back to his feet and pulled the crate from the shelf. It was startlingly heavy for its size. The gnome wouldn’t even be able to move it, he thought.

  “Ambush. They’ve got sinkholes all over the place. The bugs are just pouring out. A couple hundred.”

  “Hundred?”

  “Dozens. I dunno. Want me to get Namey to count them?”

  TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX AND COUNTING, his boat chirped into his ear.
r />   “That’s too fucking many. Where are you?”

  The train bucked again. Grond saw a few of the bugs starting to peer into the hole he’d cut into the roof.

  “They didn’t pay us killing wages on this one,” he said.

  “You don’t speak their language,” Brazel responded. “Good luck talking your way out.”

  “You’d be surprised at how persuasive I can be,” Grond said, drawing a heavy pistol and firing a few shots. Crates near the hole exploded into splinters and the bugs retreated. The Khkks had clearly modeled the train on their own body shapes. They were elongated and multi-legged too, only with harder carapaces and distinct heads. They also had longer limbs at the front of their bodies that served the function of arms.

  Oh, and sharp teeth. And some of them had wings, too. It was those that had gotten to the train first. The others were likely waiting for the first bunch to get the thing stopped–

  The floor fell out from underneath him this time, his momentum hurling him toward the front of the train as the rest of it abruptly came to a halt. It got him close enough to the boxes he’d just shot to see what was in them. Even more guns.

  Oh, this is going to go wonderfully, Grond thought.

  “Train’s stopped,” Brazel said. “The legs all just went flat at once, like it laid down.”

  “Where the fuck are you?” Grond shouted, firing a couple more shots at an ovipositor that had appeared in his hole. The thing turned toward him and spat something his way. It hit a box and burst into flames.

  Fantastic. Apparently someone had paid the bugs killing wages. Hopefully whatever was in that box wasn’t too terribly explosive.

  “I’m about three hundred meters up,” Brazel said. “Namey doesn’t think we can fight the bugs off if it comes to that. Nothing on the damn boat can target anything that moves the way they do, and even if we hit something it’d be overkill.” The Nameless wasn’t a fighter to begin with, and what armament it had was mostly focused on blowing up other ships.

  “That didn’t sound like a suggestion, Braze.” He ripped down some webbing from the wall and tossed another crate on top of the fire the bug had spat at him. Several more appendages poked their way through the hole, and more fire-sputum sped his way. He growled and ripped down more webbing, causing the cargo above him to crash down and give him some cover. He picked up his box, holding it balanced on his shoulder, and headed toward the back of the train.