The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 Page 2

  He almost missed the false door. It only took him a minute to pick the lock.

  His eyes widened when he saw what was behind it.

  He opened a comm channel to Brazel. “Braze, we gotta pull out of this. There’s a—”

  “Too late,” Brazel said. “He just got home. Was about to tell you. He should be upstairs in a couple of minutes. Alone. What’s wrong?”

  Shit.

  “Just be ready for me to need to go fast,” Grond said.

  * * *

  The second the kid opened the door, Grond hit him in the head. The kid collapsed instantly, bouncing off a wall on the way down. Huh, Grond thought. He’d expected a fight. Instead, he’d knocked the kid out cold with a single punch. Is he even still breathing?

  He was. Grond shrugged, tying him to a chair, stuffing a rag into his mouth and blindfolding him.

  “Brazel.”

  “You sound less concerned than you did a few minutes ago,” the gnome responded.

  “Yeah, well… there’s a full fuckin’ suit of Benevolence armor hidden in a closet in the room. Four expensive-assed rifles, too. I figured the hardware was his. Looks like it isn’t.”

  “Shit. He’s dead, isn’t he.”

  “Nah, but I hit him like I was hitting Benevolence, not like I was hitting a half-sized human with tissue paper for muscles. He’ll be out for a few minutes. How do you wanna play this? The suit and the rifles are worth the debt right there.”

  “I wanna know where he got ‘em, I think.”

  “So do I. Stay where you are. I’ll wake him up once I’m sure there aren’t any more surprises in the apartment somewhere. We missed something.”

  The kid was still out, so Grond took a harder look around the apartment, taking careful note of how thick the walls were and looking carefully for anything that might hide a secret compartment. He shoved the furniture around, checking underneath the bed and moving rugs. Nothing. The apartment’s only secret seemed to be the hidden space in the closet, and Grond had that cleaned out in minutes, piling the suit of armor and the guns in front of the kid. Anything else he’s hiding is going to be software in the desk, he thought.

  “Braze, see if you can remotely hack into the desk console. Pull everything you can off it. We can steal it if we have to but getting it out of here is going to be hell.”

  “On it,” the gnome answered. And then, a moment later: “You, uh, may want to turn the thing on.”

  Grond activated the desk’s startup sequence. It displayed a hand outline on its surface, along with the text CONFIRM VOICE AND HAND MATCH. He didn’t speak, waiting patiently for Brazel. It didn’t take long before the display started flickering.

  “Nothing other than standard security programs, Grond. Namey’ll have the ice cracked in five. Go ahead and wake him up if you haven’t already.”

  Grond glanced over at the kid, whose head slumped down as he turned around. Awake already, and he had the sense to stay quiet. He’s not an idiot.

  “Shake your head if you hear me, boy.”

  The kid’s shoulders tightened up reflexively, then he shook his head.

  Grond lowered his voice, speaking directly into the kid’s ear. “In a second I’m going to take the blinders off of you and pull that rag out of your mouth. I need you to understand something, son: if I get the idea even for a second that you’re lying to me or even imagining using a spell on me, I’m going to start solving that problem by ripping your jaw off. I know people who can get the information I need from you straight out of your living brain. The rest of you does not have to be attached. Shake your head if you understand me.”

  I didn’t say piss yourself, Grond thought, as the kid shook his head, his pants darkening.

  He walked back around in front of the kid again and took his blindfold off. The tears were already rolling down his cheeks, the bruise where Grond had hit him already livid and angry-looking.

  Good. But we need a little bit more.

  He didn’t touch the rag in his mouth, leaning forward and staring directly into the kid’s eyes. His eyes brightened, losing their usual dark brown color and brightening to a fiery, glowing red. Full ogres could do this with little effort. It had taken Grond months of practice.

  “Look carefully. Think about what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  Grond was dressed inconspicuously, wearing a heavy duster coat. When he’d entered the apartment building, he’d been wearing a hat. He stood up and shrugged the coat off.

  Underneath, he wore his gladiator clothes: two bandoliers, crossed over his chest, both bristling with ammunition and bladed things of all descriptions. A breechclout. Well-used gladiator’s gloves on both hands, bristling with spikes and blades. Next to nothing else.

  Not that you could really tell. Grond’s natural skin color was a pale yellow. Other than his hands and his head, though, virtually none of his original skin tone was even visible any longer. His entire torso, legs, and arms were covered in scar tissue and fantastically elaborate tattoos. Grond had spent his entire youth and a good chunk of his adult life enslaved and working as a pit fighter. The scars and tattoos were all trophies. Occasionally he’d thought about having his skin rejuvenated. He never did, precisely for moments like this.

  The kid started screaming into the rag, absurdly trying to get away. The chair shook. He wasn’t going anywhere, though.

  One more thing.

  Grond picked his bow up from the floor next to the kid’s chair. Snapped his wrist, unlocking the limbs, the bow’s energy string shimmering into existence.

  “You know what this is?”

  The kid sat still, his eyes wide, still crying. Didn’t shake his head yes or no.

  “This is an Iklis sniper’s longbow. Her name’s Angela. Say hello.”

  The kid didn’t do anything.

  Grond smiled, showing his front teeth.

  “I said fucking SAY HELLO,” he said, putting every ounce of bass he could muster into his voice and tripling the volume. The kid screamed again, making sounds that would probably be hello and quite possibly please god no help me anyone in the bargain.

  “I can kill you with Angela from two klicks away with my eyes closed. If I have them open it’ll be three. Go ahead and run around corners. I’ll hit you anyway. That’s what I can do if, somehow, you get out of the room. Which has me in between you and the exit. And you don’t know how many of my buddies are out there, either. Ready for me to take the gag out?”

  The kid nodded.

  Grond pulled out the gag. The kid sobbed, gasping for air; it looked like he’d shoved it into his throat a little farther than he’d intended to. Or he’d sucked part of it into his airpipe, what with all the screaming and pleading he’d been doing.

  “You owe someone I know a whole goddamn lot of money.”

  The kid blinked. “You work for Jarekh?”

  Ha. “Prescott.”

  If anything, the name made him look even more panicked. “I paid Prescott back! I swear I did!”

  “He doesn’t think so. He thinks you’re into him for thirty thousand.”

  “I only borrowed twelve!”

  Hell, Brazel was right.

  “Let’s make this conversation shorter. I don’t care how much you borrowed or why you borrowed it or whether you paid Prescott back already or who the hell this Jarekh is. I care that I got hired to get Prescott’s money back from what looked like a spike junkie and instead I found a closet full of Benevolence hardware behind a fucking fake wall. Which you will now explain to me, so that I can decide whether I’m gonna kill you or not.”

  “B … Benevolence? What?”

  Grond moved out of the way, showing the kid the pile of armor and guns. He screamed again.

  “It’s not mine! None of it! I’ve never seen any of that shit before! Fuck, I gamble! I owe a couple of bookies some money! You think I’m stupid enough to fuck with the Benevolence? Are you crazy?”

  Timed perfectly, straight into his ear, Brazel spoke up. “
Grond. I think he’s telling the truth. There’s nothing but sports schedules and research data on city planning on that console. The kid’s in engineering school. We didn’t miss anything when we looked at him. The hardware’s a goddamned coincidence.”

  “I don’t like coincidences,” Grond muttered.

  He grabbed the chair the kid was tied to, lifted him three feet off the floor, and ripped the chair in half, tossing the wreckage into the corners of the room. The kid hit the floor hard, kicking feebly with his legs and screaming. Grond grabbed him by the face, lifting him back off the floor again.

  “C’mere, you lucky asshole.”

  He dragged him across the apartment, shoving him into the false room in the back of his closet.

  “You telling me you live here and you never knew about any of this?”

  “I moved in a month ago! Fuck, I’m never even here! I spend all my time at school! Hell no, I’ve never seen this!”

  He’s telling the truth. Grond had never seen anybody so obviously scared shitless; he didn’t have enough brainpower left to construct a lie.

  “Count to a thousand,” he told him. “You should be able to break out before you starve to death in there. I’m taking all your shit and giving it to Prescott. That’ll get him off your back. Lemme make a suggestion: don’t ever gamble again. I see you, I’m gonna kill you.” Not waiting for an answer, he slammed the kid into the back of the hidden space and closed and locked both the doors.

  “Pickup. Now,” he said over the comm. “I’m tossing his couch out the window in thirty seconds. Meet me there with the cargo door open. I want to be outside the atmosphere in five minutes.”

  “Coming,” Brazel said. “Rhundi will be so pleased when she finds out she gets to move Benevolence gear.”

  “We’re keeping the difference, too,” Grond said. “Think we ought to mention it to Prescott?”

  “Yes,” Brazel said. “He’s adding twenty percent to our usual fee next time.”

  “Yank”

  The Benevolence Archives 4

  Getting yanked out of tunnelspace at velocity hurt. And it hurt uniquely; every cell of your body felt like it got shoved about a centimeter away from where it was, except no two cells went in the same direction, and it took a second for your body to convince itself that, yes, it was still all put together the right way, and nothing had fallen off, and perhaps the contents of your stomach should stay where they were, and didn’t belong on the floor. Or in your lungs.

  Getting yanked out of tunnelspace at velocity counted as one of Brazel’s absolute least favorite things. Getting yanked out of tunnelspace at velocity to discover your happy little smuggler’s boat surrounded by half-a-dozen Mal pirate skiffs and an obviously stolen Benevolence blockship was worse.

  THEY’RE POWERING UP WEAPONS, the boat’s AI said into Brazel’s ear.

  “No way,” Brazel said. “I could never have guessed. I figured they just detunneled us to show off a new paint job. GROND!” Brazel was the Nameless’ pilot; the cockpit wasn’t really sized for bigs, although Grond had rigged up a copilot’s chair in his quarters that would let him fly the ship virtually if he needed to. Mostly, though, it was used for the guns, so Brazel really needed his partner to be sitting in his chair right now.

  “Already in position,” the halfogre growled, and Brazel’s viewscreen lit up with combat diagnostics. The blockship that had detunneled them was pulling back behind the skiffs; it would be lightly armed, if at all. Benevolence would have had the thing surrounded by twenty times the hardware that the pirates had. Brazel wondered how they had managed to steal it.

  SHIELDS TO FULL, Namey squawked. BEGIN PRETARGETING?

  “They’re not shooting,” Grond said. “Why aren’t they shooting?”

  RECEIVING A COMMUNICATION FROM THE BLOCKSHIP, Namey said. SHALL I TELL THEM TO FUCK OFF? I LOVE DOING THAT.

  “Not when they outnumber us, dear,” Brazel responded, making a mental note to speak with his partner about the personality he’d selected for the AI. “Gimme the holo.”

  A dwarven face shimmered into existence in front of Brazel. He figured it was probably female; it was usually hard to tell.

  Wait. No. He knew this one, and it was definitely female.

  “Shocksie,” he said. “That was awfully rude of you.”

  “My name is Shocks-the-Mountains, Brazel, and you’re under arrest,” she said. “So’s Grond. Let us board, or we’ll blow you to bits.”

  “That is even ruder,” Brazel responded, wrinkling his snout at her and signaling Grond to hold off on violence. “And last I checked, Mal pirates aren’t government. Care to explain how I’m under arrest?”

  She glared. Mal pirates weren’t especially fond of being called that; the name was pejorative—they didn’t actually call themselves the Malevolence; it was just a natural consequence of opposing a group that called themselves the Benevolence. “You’re under arrest because we control this avenue of space right now and I say so. And I have six ships and you only have one. Stand down.”

  “Charges?” Brazel asked. Any chance of outrunning them? he subvocalized to the ship.

  UNLIKELY, Namey spouted back in his ear. WE’RE FASTER THAN THEY ARE BUT THERE ARE SIX OF THEM AND THEY’LL BE SHOOTING. NOTHING TO HIDE BEHIND EXCEPT THE BLOCKSHIP. I WANNA FIGHT! LET’S FIGHT!

  We’re not fighting yet, he subvoced.

  “Quit chirping to your ship,” Shocks-the-Mountains boomed over the holo channel. “Kidnapping. Theft. Murder. Destruction of property. Shall I continue?”

  “KIDNAPPING?” Grond roared. He wasn’t on the holo channel; Brazel figured Shocksie probably heard him anyway.

  “It’s not kidnapping if the client is the person you’re kidnapping. The word for that is rescue,” Brazel corrected.

  “It’s kidnapping if it’s my son, you wretch,” the enraged dwarf bellowed back. “No dwarven male of my line gets to ask for rescue. He is mine.”

  Dwarven society was highly matriarchal. Brazel chose not to press the topic any longer, slowly backing the Nameless away from the skiffs.

  “Well, I don’t feel like being arrested today,” Brazel said, “and Namey would be awfully upset if you dismantled him. So if you don’t mind, turn off the blockship and I’ll just—”

  Laser fire erupted from four of the six skiffs and the Nameless at the same time. Flashes from the shields popped, darkening the viewscreen and forcing Brazel to navigate by the display. He threw the ship into a spin and accelerated directly toward the blockship.

  “Is that a good idea?” Grond said over the comm.

  “It makes ‘em pay for it if they miss,” Brazel said. “Namey, the thing’s shielded, right?”

  QUITE, the AI replied.

  “Well, it makes ‘em pay for it a little, then,” he said, swooping around the ship. One of the skiffs disappeared off his viewscreen, replaced with a cartoony X.

  “Got one,” Grond said.

  “Start using explosives, chaff, whatever we’ve got,” Brazel said, partly talking to the AI and partly to Grond. He was struggling to remember the last time he’d had to upgrade the ship’s armory; the Nameless wasn’t exactly built for extended combat operations. The shields were upgraded to hell—and a near miss from something boomy rocked him in his seat, making him freshly pleased with that fact—but they didn’t have much that was going to get through the shielding that blockship probably had.

  Another skiff blinked off the viewscreen. Grond chortled over the comm.

  There were four skiffs left, and they were doing their best to keep the Nameless surrounded, with his ship in between them and the blockship. Brazel picked one at random, highlighting it on the viewscreen, still doing his damnedest to dodge laser fire.

  “Grond. I’m heading straight for—”

  The ship went spinning as a massive explosion overtook their shields and tossed them away from the blockship. What in the—

  BLOCKSHIP DESTROYED. TUNNELSPACE IS AVAILABLE AGAIN.

  “Gr
ond, did you do that?”

  “I didn’t,” the halfogre said. “Did you?”

  BENEVOLENCE FORCES DETECTED. RECOMMEND SPEEDY EXIT.

  Oh, shit. The Benevolence had detected the tunnel pull somehow. And they’d found their missing ship that quickly.

  “Go,” Brazel told the AI. “Somewhere. Anywhere. Go go go go now.” His viewscreen was starting to fill up with Benevolence ID codes, what looked like an entire fleet of ships.

  THIS IS IMPRESSIVELY BAD LUCK, Namey said. IT APPEARS THAT THE BLOCKSHIP MANAGED TO PULL A BENEVOLENCE SHIP OUT OF TUNNELSPACE BY ACCIDENT. THE REST OF THEM FOLLOWED.

  “So fucking take advantage!” Brazel said. “Get us the hell out of here before they notice us.” The Benevolence spiderships had already blown two of the four skiffs into flaming powder. The other two were fleeing in opposite directions. No one was after them yet.

  THEY’RE SCANNING FOR ID CODES. YOU WANT ME TO LIE, RIGHT?

  “Yes!” Brazel said, hoping that his own ship was screwing with him, and punched the ship into tunnelspace, hoping the Benevolence didn’t have another blockship with them. The Nameless shuddered a bit and jumped, his viewscreen fading to black.

  “That was close,” Grond said.

  “Poor Shocksie,” Brazel said. “I kinda liked her. Should we tell Walks-the-Waves what happened?”

  “Maybe leave the part where she was shooting at us out of it?”

  “I think so,” Brazel said. And after that, he would work on how the Mals had managed to get ahold of a blockship. That sounded like something that Rhundi would want to know. Nothing’s ever easy, he thought to himself.

  “Remember”

  The Benevolence Archives 5

  They were halfway home from a successful job when the message came through.

  Well, not a message, precisely. A set of coordinates, a timestamp, and a single word. The timestamp was two standard days away. So were the coordinates. The word was REMEMBER.