The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 Read online

  “Grond,” Brazel said over the shipwide comm. “You may wanna come look at this.”

  A moment later, the halfogre was there, leaning forward into the cockpit, which was much too small for him. “What? I was reading.”

  “That,” Brazel said, pointing at the screen.

  He heard Grond mumble something under his breath.

  “You know anything about this?” the gnome asked. “That's in the Queris system. Hell if I've ever even been to the Queris system. I certainly don't remember pissing anyone off there.”

  “I've been there,” Grond said. “But not for a very long time.” He stared at the coordinates. “Pull up a map. Let's see this a little closer up.”

  Brazel manipulated the map. The coordinates were ... nowhere. The Queris system was four planets, around an utterly average-looking star; the one named planet was nearly exactly opposite in its orbit from where they were being sent. There was nowhere terrestrial, much less inhabited, anywhere near it.

  “And I suppose that two days from now there isn't going to be anything there either,” Brazel said. “There's no way Queris orbits that fast, is there?”

  “It doesn't,” Grond muttered. “Remember. There's ... ah, shit.”

  “We're going to die, aren't we,” the gnome said. “How's it going to happen?”

  The halfogre chuckled. “Remember. It's not a suggestion, Brazel. We're idiots. It's a fucking name. Lady Remember's called us. It's a job.”

  Several expressions-- annoyance, surprise, shame, and more than a touch of fear-- crawled across Brazel's face all at once.

  “The Remember?” Brazel spluttered, his fur involuntarily standing up. “That Remember? Remember needs something from us? When did we get so important?”

  “Oh, we aren't. We're still going to die,” Grond rumbled. “She probably just needs someone for a suicide mission. Or cannon fodder of some kind. I’m still guessing we’re not about to ignore Remember asking us to drop by.”

  “We are not,” Brazel said. “Not on this life am I gonna ignore Remember telling me to do something. You wanna comm Rhundi and let her know that we’re not coming straight back?”

  The halfogre grinned. “How come I have to do it? You’re about to miss something, aren’t you?”

  “Birthdays,” the gnome grunted. “Three of ‘em, in the same week. I don’t know how--”

  “Yes, you do,” Grond corrected. “Think about when your birthday is.”

  “Shut up and make the call,” Brazel said. “We’ve got just enough fuel to get to her. I hope there’s a supply cache we can raid somewhere before we do whatever she’s calling us about.”

  “I suspect she does,” the halfogre replied, heading to his quarters to comm Brazel’s wife.

  * * *

  No one was quite sure what Remember was.

  She had an elf’s lifespan, or she’d figured out how to magic her way into it. Just the stories Brazel had heard about her were too much for one regular-breed human to have accomplished, and there were doubtless plenty that Brazel had never heard. He could remember his parents and grandparents telling him stories about Remember, too; to the class of people likely to end up as a smuggler, the way Brazel had, the woman was a combination of a living legend and a demon.

  It was Remember’s job to know things. There were any number of organizations, both legit and otherwise, that would have gleefully sacrificed the population of entire planets in order to gain access to her sea of contacts and informers. People went to Remember— sometimes paying large sums of money to dishonest “friends” of hers to arrange a meeting— when they needed to know things. Sometimes she required payment. Sometimes she refused it. On rare occasions, she would summon people to her or-- more rarely-- seek someone out in order to pass on a piece of information. Her motivations for doing so were rarely clear. Some people insisted that she didn’t ever have reasons-- that she’d just set things in motion on a lark. Brazel was sure she was playing some sort of long game. It just wasn’t clear what.

  And she wanted Brazel and his partner for a job.

  The coordinates in the Queris system were nearly exactly two days of tunnelspace away-- which was a bit alarming. It implied that Remember not only knew how to directly comm the Nameless, she knew its exact location when she did, and had timed the meeting to ensure that Brazel and Grond came directly to her-- no time to get back home for a refuel and resupply or, critically, to pick up any passengers or extra muscle. Not that they often needed extra muscle with a halfogre on board, but still. If nothing else, Rhundi had proven herself to be more than capable in a firefight-- possibly more capable than Brazel, who preferred to talk his way out of trouble rather than fight.

  Of course, Brazel didn't know that Remember wanted them for a job. It was possible that they'd crossed her somehow and she was bringing them in to have them killed. That felt like Remember's style; there was no reason to hire expensive thugs to hunt the two of them down when she could just summon them to their own deaths and have them pay for their own fuel.

  There was little else to do on the way to the meet other than discuss Remember's motives, and since they didn't have any real idea what those were, Brazel and Grond spent most of the trip arguing. Rhundi was no help; she wasn't foolish enough to suggest that the two insult Remember but in her mind that was no reason to be nice about it.

  “I’ve got thirteen kids,” Brazel said, after attending the birthday party of his fourth-youngest via comm. “I don’t need this shit.”

  “Fourteen,” Grond corrected.

  “Whatever,” the gnome groused. “This had better be worth it.”

  * * *

  It surprised neither of them that when they reached the rendezvous point there was nothing there. Remember would almost certainly have some sort of remote or 'bot in the area scanning for their ship; they were going to wait for her, not the other way around-- although Brazel was certain that their punctuality was still expected.

  “Scan ... hell, scan everything,” Brazel told the ship. “If there’s anything out there bigger than two carbon molecules jammed together, I want to know about it.”

  MY SENSORS DO NOT OPERATE AT THAT RESOLUTION, Namey responded. ALSO THAT WOULD BE TERRIBLY BORING.

  “One of these days I’m reprogramming you into something subservient,” the gnome grumbled. This was unlikely; the ship had been a lippy bastard for as long as he’d owned it and he had made that threat any number of times.

  NOTHING WITHIN RANGE AT ALL, the ship blipped. NO RESIDUAL ENERGY SIGNATURES, EITHER. THERE HAS BEEN NO SHIP OR PROBE HERE WITHIN THE PAST THREE STANDARD DAYS.

  Right about then was when the proximity alarms started.

  The ship-- no, it was too big for a ship, the moon-- filled the viewscreen entirely, and appeared to be no more than a few klicks away from the Nameless. If it hadn’t popped into view they’d have plowed into it in seconds. As it was, Brazel had to nearly tear the yoke off to pull the ship back, running parallel with the ... with whatever the hell it was instead of directly toward it.

  “The shit is that?” Grond said over the ship’s comm. The halfogre was in place in his copilot’s chair in his quarters; he had access to a projected view of Brazel’s viewscreen. “Is that a ship?”

  Namey had lost his smugness all the sudden. THE OBJECT IS FOUR KILOMETERS IN DIAMETER, he said. IT DID NOT JUST EXIT TUNNELSPACE. IT WAS ALREADY THERE. IT APPEARS TO BE ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL IN NATURE.

  “Hail it,” Brazel commanded.

  THOUGHT OF THAT ALREADY, the ship responded. NO RESPONSE. THERE APPEARS TO BE A DOCKING PORT ON THE OBJECT’S FAR SIDE. NO SIGN OF SHIELDS OR WEAPONS POWERING UP.

  “There was no sign of the entire goddamn thing two minutes ago,” Brazel said. “I don’t trust your sensors anymore.”

  WE HAVE NOT BEEN DESTROYED. I DO NOT BELIEVE MY SHIELDS WOULD HOLD UP LONG AGAINST ANY WEAPON SYSTEMS THAT OBJECT POSSESSES.

  “Ship’s right,” Grond said. “Let’s go take a look at that port.”

&nb
sp; It took only a few minutes to circle the object. It showed no sign of life; no ships emerged from it and no apparent weapon or scanning systems tracked them as they flew around it. The docking port was big enough to fly a capital ship through and was unshielded.

  “Scan it for everything,” Brazel said again.

  THE OBJECT IS MOSTLY HOLLOW, Namey reported. AND THERE IS SOMETHING INSIDE THAT IS EITHER GENERATING OR UTILIZING AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF POWER. WE HAVE NOT BEEN HAILED AND I HAVE BEEN PROVIDED WITH NO SCHEMATICS. WE ARE FLYING BLIND.

  “That's Remember for ya,” Grond said. “She's screwing with us.”

  “I'd think I'd have heard about it if she lived in a spaceship the size of a small moon, though, wouldn't you?”

  “One would think,” Grond agreed. “Maybe it's new?”

  “And required an entire shipyard for two years, plus the GDP of an entire planetary system to build?” Brazel asked. But there was no denying the object; it was too big to be a hologram and, besides, had fooled Namey. The thing was real. “Is this fucker that rich?”

  “I suggest we find out,” Grond said. “Perhaps she shares.”

  “Screw it,” Brazel said. “In we go.”

  He activated the ship’s external lights as well as all its sensors and flew in through the docking port. The port itself opened into what was effectively a smooth corridor, if an absurdly big one; the floor looked flat enough to land Namey virtually anywhere but Brazel decided to continue on until he spotted something that looked more like a designated landing area. There were no other ships and nothing moving, living or artificial.

  The corridor continued until they’d penetrated about a kilometer into the station, at which point the walls fell away to emptiness and the floor continued on underneath them, a gangway now instead of a corridor, continuing into the center of the object. Namey’s external lights were no longer sufficient to penetrate into the darkness; the hollow area was simply too big.

  “Namey, get me a map,” Brazel asked the ship, and then the lights came on, and the entire interior of the object blazed into view.

  There wasn’t much to see.

  They were in the inside of the sphere, and the walls fell away on either side of them and curved back together at the other end, just over two kilometers away. The place clearly had gravity of some sort; there was a landing pad able to accommodate a ship three times the Nameless’ size just ahead of them, and then a narrow walkway— perhaps wide enough for four or five bigs to walk abreast, or seven or eight gnomes— that led to a structure in the center of the sphere. The structure was supported by a spire, with thick cabling coming off it in every direction heading out to various points on the inside of the sphere.

  “What am I looking at, boat?” Brazel asked.

  UNCLEAR, Namey responded. BUT THE OBJECT APPEARS TO BE BEGINNING TO POWER ITSELF UP. READING ENERGY DISCHARGES THROUGHOUT THE STRUCTURE. WHATEVER IS IN THE CENTER OF THE SPHERE REQUIRES AN ASTONISHING AMOUNT OF POWER.

  “Sounds dandy. Land,” the gnome ordered. “Grond, suit up. Grab everything you own that can be used to break something. Let’s go see what’s in there. Namey, is there—”

  THE SPHERE IS ESTABLISHING AN ATMOSPHERE, AND THE DOCKING PORT HAS CLOSED, the ship responded. INTERIOR TEMPERATURE IS CLIMBING. I PROJECT THAT THE INTERIOR WILL BE SURVIVABLE IN TEN MINUTES AND COMFORTABLE IN THIRTY.

  “Let’s be ready in fifteen,” Brazel said, heading off to his quarters to change. If he was going to be meeting Lady Remember, he was certainly going to do it in nicer clothes.

  * * *

  Grond was armed and ready in five minutes; it took Brazel twenty, as the gnome rejected three different outfits before settling on something that was an acceptable mix of stylish enough to meet with one of the galaxy’s most powerful people and utilitarian enough to be able to conceal a number of small weapons and useful tools underneath. The gnome suspected he would be searched; he had several items that he assumed or hoped would be found and a few, more carefully hidden, that even a scan ought not to locate. The halfogre was not dressed for subtlety at all; he wore his gladiator’s gear: two bandoliers, weighted down with ammunition and weaponry, crossed over his chest; spiked gloves on his hands, and minimalistic protective gauntlets on his forearms and greaves on his calves. His Iklis sniper’s longbow, lovingly named Angela, was slung over his back, and two heavy guns hung at his waist. The only other thing he was wearing was a multicolored, ragged-edged thermal utilicloak; the thing looked a horror to Brazel, but it provided a few dozen places to hide additional useful sharp things and could even produce its own heat for low-temperature environments. He’d found the time to treat his skin with something, too; his tattoos glittered in the low light of the Nameless’ cargo hold.

  “Good day to die?” Grond asked. The gnome nodded once, grinning, and they exited the ship into the sphere.

  Nothing happened as they followed the walkway to the structure in the center of the sphere. There was a low electrical hum, almost too low for Brazel's ears to pick it up, as the machinery of the sphere continued to power up, and a slight breeze from the newly created atmosphere tickled his fur. The gnome stayed directly in the center of the walkway; the manufacturers had neglected to include guardrails on either side and he wanted room to roll if he needed to without falling off. Grond paced him, following a few steps behind, not quite openly carrying weaponry yet but clearly itching to.

  The structure ahead was dome-shaped, perhaps ten meters high in the center, with a single door and no windows anywhere. It was the same steel-grey color that the rest of the sphere was. There hasn't been a single word or direction or sign written anywhere on this thing, Brazel thought. No decoration or ornamentation or even any color anywhere. It had to have cost more money than Brazel and Grond would clear in several lifetimes to build the thing; the owner hadn't bothered to invest in paint. Strange.

  The doorway noiselessly slid open as the pair approached. The space inside was dark.

  “We going in there?” Brazel asked.

  “I imagine we are,” Grond replied. “Otherwise you got all dressed up for nothin'.” The ogre muttered something Brazel couldn't hear, subvocalizing a command to the ship. “Namey says that he's figured out at least a little bit of what's going on around here, but he doesn't like it. The entire damn place is a power plant. And everything it's generating is getting funneled into this room. Whatever's in there is pulling enough energy to run a mid-sized city for a month.”

  Brazel tried to run the credits in his head again and gave up.

  “Also, there's a scanner just inside the door,” Grond said.

  Brazel shrugged. “Not like she doesn't know we're here,” he said, and walked inside. He actually felt the body scan; his fur rippled and he felt prickles on his skin even through the layers of fur and clothes on top of it. Remember wasn't bothering to be subtle; she wanted them to know this was happening. The lights came on.

  The room was empty. It was also much smaller on the inside than it looked from outside-- the dome had been maybe ten meters high, but the interior space was a rounded cube perhaps four or five meters to a side. Other than the doorway, Brazel couldn't see a mark or a seam anywhere. The ceiling, walls and floor were covered in some sort of material he didn't recognize; a black matte color, textured like very soft rubber, spongy to the touch.

  As soon as Grond stepped inside, the door slid closed behind him. As Brazel watched, the black material flowed over the doorway. Five seconds later the way out was all but invisible.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Grond said. The halfogre stood perfectly still, hands on his guns, waiting for something to happen.

  A moment later everything happened. Brazel felt, rather than heard, the immense energies the sphere was generating slamming into the dome they were standing in, and a sound like a sun exploding assaulted his ears, the vibration going straight into his bones. He felt movement, and the material on the walls abruptly expanded, trapping him inside, immobile, blind, and suddenly b
lessedly deaf.

  Everything went away.

  * * *

  Brazel awoke on the floor, some time later, his head pounding and his teeth feeling oddly loose. He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs, and forced his eyes open. He was still in the room, with nothing apparently changed. He located Grond, a few feet away, also sprawled on the floor.

  Wait. One thing had changed. The halfogre was stark naked.

  Brazel looked down. He was naked too. He sat up, pulling himself into a crouch, scanning the room. Other than the two of them, it was empty.

  The ship. His comm link with the Nameless was mostly subcutaneous, hooked into the bones of his ears. It was still there. He tried to reach the ship. Nothing.

  Grond staggered to his feet, growling, a deep bass rumble that Brazel could feel in his chest. The halfogre's eyes glowed a dim red even in the bright light of the room.

  “The fuck happened?” he grumbled.

  “I think she disintegrated our stuff or something,” Brazel said. He fluffed his fur, looking and smelling for singed parts. Everything looked and smelled fine. How the hell did she pull that off?

  With a noxious slurping noise, the black material pulled back away from the doorway. The door clicked and slid partially open.

  “Me first,” the halfogre said, flexing his muscles and clenching his fists. “First thing I see, I’m gonna beat it to death. Just so’s you know.” The gnome nodded.

  They had entered the structure from the hollow interior of an enormous spacecraft. The doorway opened into what looked for all the world like a lobby in a pricey resort. There was expensive-looking furniture scattered about the room, artworks from various cultures adorning the walls, thick plush carpeting at their feet. The ceiling, six or seven meters high at least, was painted a deep blue, scattered with hundreds of twinkling lights, imitating a starlit sky. In the middle of the room was an enormous, free-standing firepit, where some sort of scented wood blazed away merrily; a grand staircase in the back of the room led to both higher and lower floors. A few feet in front of them sat an ornate square table made of some sort of elaborately carved hardwood, two paper-wrapped packages sitting atop it. The packages were wrapped with festive ribbons.