The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 Page 5

  He cued up the coordinates and the Nameless fell into tunnelspace.

  * * *

  The trip passed uneventfully; Grond had already worked his way through three of his new books by the time the Nameless emerged from tunnelspace a few hundred thousand kilometers from their destination.

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR APPROACH? Namey asked.

  “Any reason we need to be particularly careful with this one?”

  NONE, the AI responded. NO NOTICEABLE MILITARY PRESENCE AND NO BENEVOLENCE SIGNALS OR STANDARD CODE FREQUENCIES IN USE.

  “One of the more common identities, then,” Brazel responded. “Just pick one.”

  There was a moment of silence as the Nameless negotiated with Gallireen 12A for permission to dock.

  GRANTED. THERE IS COMMERCIAL DOCKING SPACE AVAILABLE WITHIN EASY REACH OF OUR DESTINATION.

  Brazel breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been concerned about that; his maps of Gallireen 12A were not especially detailed and he’d been concerned that the nearest docking facilities that could handle the Nameless were going to be on the wrong side of the planet from wherever they were supposed to drop off Remember’s package— which meant two round-trips on planet, since they’d have to recover the box as well. The Nameless could land on rough terrain in a pinch, but if anything the gnome was pickier about his ship than he was his clothes; he didn’t like risking the ship to substandard landing conditions unless the job absolutely demanded it.

  “Bring us in,” he said. “Who are we, by the way?”

  THE HAMSTRINGER, OUT OF THE OKRASTER SYSTEM, the ship responded. ON PLANET ON BUSINESS. LENGTH OF STAY, TWO STANDARD WEEKS. NO ONE ASKED YOUR NAMES; CALL YOURSELVES WHATEVER YOU WANT.

  “Works for me. Where’s the box going?”

  THE BASEMENT OF A COMMERCIAL BUILDING WITHIN EASY WALKING DISTANCE OF THE SPACEPORT.

  “We’re couriers, then,” Brazel said. “You get the feeling anyone’s paying attention to the spaceport?”

  THEY ARE BEING EXCEPTIONALLY SUBTLE ABOUT IT IF THEY ARE, the ship responded. THE PORT AI WAS BORED. I DIDN’T THINK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES GOT BORED.

  “I didn’t think they used contractions.”

  EVERY SO OFTEN I LIKE TO SHAKE THINGS UP.

  “Wake up the halfogre, then. He’s got recon to do.”

  * * *

  Brazel had never understood how it was possible that his partner— his former gladiator, heavily tattooed, scarred, two-point-four-meters-tall halfogre partner— was so much better at going unnoticed than he was. Grond had walked through rooms full of gnomish children more than once without any of them noticing he was even there. He had the uncanny ability to blend in anywhere, right up to the point where he wanted to attract attention— and few were better than he was at that, either. Grond walked off the ship dressed in well-worn laborer’s clothes, Angela folded up and concealed under a jacket and no more than seven or eight knives concealed on his person.

  He was back within an hour.

  “This really is the easiest job ever,” he said. “There’s a back door into the building straight into a stairwell, and get this— only the two top floors of the building are even occupied; some kind of medical research company— and there aren’t even any windows facing the back. There’s an alley in between it and another building and neither of them have any windows facing each other. And the two of them are the two tallest structures in the neighborhood. I coulda had the case dropped off already if I’d thought to bring it with me. I like this place; everybody minds their own business.”

  “I’m still going with you for the drop,” the gnome said.

  “May as well,” Grond said. “You hang back, though; I’m gonna look like I’m carrying the box. Nobody anywhere is gonna believe that a halfogre needs help from a gnome to move something heavy.”

  Brazel nodded. “I’ll watch your back,” he said.

  * * *

  Grond had been right— the trip to the drop spot took no more than a fifteen-minute walk and neither Grond nor Brazel attracted anything more than a stray glance or two along the way. The alley between the buildings was slightly narrower and much higher than Brazel liked— they were trapped if for some reason they had to fight their way out of the building— but Grond cracked the lock in moments and they were inside the building quickly. The back door opened into a stairwell.

  “Downstairs,” Brazel said. “Coordinates are a bit underground.”

  “You think we’re supposed to hide the thing, or…?” Grond asked.

  “We’re supposed to leave it here for 25 days,” Brazel responded. “Stands to reason we probably ought to make sure nobody moves it before then. Let’s see if there’s a storeroom or something down there.”

  A few minutes of searching produced a likely spot; the lower levels of the building were clearly disused and the pair quickly found a lockable closet in a part of the floor that felt out of the way.

  “That work for you?”

  “Yeah,” Brazel said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Neither of them heard the device begin to hum as they closed the door behind them.

  * * *

  Being paid to laze about on Arradon, Brazel found, was very much to his liking. With nothing in particular to do during Remember’s specified 25 days, and unlimited access to the resort his wife owned a partial stake in, he found himself taking a lot of long baths and spending a lot of time relaxing and playing with his children.

  The peace and quiet lasted precisely ten days.

  “We have a problem,” Rhundi said.

  “I don’t have a problem yet,” Brazel responded. He was neck-deep in a hot scented bath and very much not in a temper where “problems” were possible things for him. “I only have a problem if you give me one.” Please do not give me a problem, he thought.

  “What was the name of the planet you dropped Remember’s box off at?” she asked.

  Brazel thought about it. “One of the Gallireens, I think. 11A? 12B? I don’t remember. Ask the boat.”

  “12A, right?”

  “Sure,” he replied. This can’t be good.

  “It isn’t,” she said, reading his mind. Rhundi and Brazel had been married for quite a long time and had had conversations very much like this many times.

  “And it’s not a problem I can fix from the bath, is it?” he asked, sighing. It never was.

  “Plague,” she said.

  He got out of the bath.

  * * *

  “First cases were reported seven days ago,” she said. Brazel had made himself dry, dressed and presentable in record time, and Rhundi was reading reports from her desk console in her office. “And as of right now it’s spread over a third of the moon. They’ve estimated something like four thousand cases on a rock that only has a population of about twenty times that many people. Most of them are in the neighborhood of a city called Rua’ta.”

  She paused for a moment. “Two guesses where you dropped off the package.”

  “I never even found out the name of the town,” Brazel said. “We were just following the coordinates. Fuck, I knew there was gonna be a catch.”

  “It gets worse,” she said. “The plague is a technovirus. It’s internally networked. The victims are flocking, like birds, and they’re actively seeking out new victims to infect. That’s how it moves so fast. If the Benevolence finds out there’s going to be an interdiction.”

  “They’ll wipe out the entire fucking moon,” Brazel said.

  “Likely,” she responded. “The virus doesn’t seem to be smart enough right now to animate its victims to do much more than seek out other people to infect. But we don’t know what will happen if it continues to infect more people. If the thing ends up being a distributed AI, and if it gets smarter as it gets more widespread…”

  “It eventually figures out how to make someone pilot a boat, it packs as many infected as it can into the holds, and it heads somewhere with a lot more people,” Brazel said.

  “Thus the interdictio
n,” Rhundi said. “Death sentence for the entire planet. And everything on it. I told you this job was a bad idea.”

  “You did not,” Brazel responded. “I specifically remember never asking you.”

  “You knew I thought it,” she snapped. “Remember’s bad news, and we never should have gotten into business with her.”

  “Do we know it’s the box?”

  “The first cases were three days after you dropped off the box, in the same city you dropped the box off in,” Rhundi responded. “You do the math.”

  “Never liked math much,” Brazel said. “Ask Grond.”

  “Grond agrees,” the halfogre said, lowering his head to get through the door. There was a single chair in Rhundi’s office sized for him, and he collapsed into it. “You don’t like math much, and this is our fault. We never shoulda taken this job, Braze.”

  “Right, because you were totally arguing against it,” the gnome said, disgusted. “How is this suddenly my fault?”

  “It’s not,” Rhundi said, laying her hand on her husband’s arm and smoothing his fur. “But we’re going to do something about it.”

  “What?” Brazel asked. “Seriously, what can we do about it? Slip back onto the planet before the Benevolence find out and blow it to pieces and then deactivate the box or something?”

  Grond grinned.

  “Stop grinning. That is not a plan,” Brazel said. “That is fucking madness and you know it. How the hell do we even get close to the thing without getting infected ourselves?”

  “That we should be able to handle,” Rhundi said. “I can get ahold of some gear. Just… try not to bleed. Or breathe too much.”

  Brazel glared at his wife.

  “Eighty thousand people, Brazel,” Rhundi said. “I can’t have that on my conscience. Neither can Grond. And even if you won’t admit it, neither can you.”

  “We could just tell the Benevolence where the case is,” he said.

  “Which would let them know where we are,” she retorted, “and wouldn’t you love to explain to the Benevolence how you know where the source of a technovirus is? Or that you knew there was a source in the first place? You’re delicate, Brazel. You wouldn’t last half a day under Benevolence interrogation.”

  “Okay, that was stupid,” Brazel said. “I admit it. But … really. You want us to, what, blow the box apart? Will that kill the virus? Or just stop it from replicating?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhundi said. “Yet. But I’ve got my people working on it already. We’ll have something for you in a day or so. Right now, start prepping the Nameless. You two have work to do.”

  Brazel and Grond both stood up.

  “Oh, and Brazel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shuni’s birthday is next week. You may want to spend some time with her before you leave.”

  “I knew that,” Brazel said. “I’ve even got a gift picked out.”

  “Good. Also, Grond?”

  “I know,” the halfogre rumbled. “Bring him back alive.”

  Rhundi nodded, a smile barely touching her eyes, and went back to work at her console.

  * * *

  “I feel compelled to point out that we still do not have a plan,” Brazel said a day later as the Nameless dropped into tunnelspace.

  “We’re making some assumptions,” Grond said agreeably.

  “We’re making nothing but assumptions,” Brazel responded. “We’re assuming that we had anything to do with this. We’re assuming that destroying the box or getting it off-planet will do anything other than spread the virus further if we’re right about it being our fault. We’re assuming that we can do this before the Benevolence show up and ruin our day and everyone else’s. And we’re assuming that we can slip into a technovirus-infected planet that is presumably full of violent nanobot-driven innocent people and do all of this without getting infected ourselves.”

  “Sounds like a tall order, when ya put it that way,” Grond said.

  “Don’t you get all folksy with me,” Brazel snapped.

  The comm chirped. It was Rhundi.

  “Good news,” she said. “Well, mostly good news. My engineers think they can find a way to turn the virus off. All you have to do is get them a sample of it.” Brazel spent a moment reflecting on the phrase my engineers. His wife’s business dealings had always been well beyond him; she had been every bit the smuggler he was when they’d met but was almost entirely legitimate now. He’d not realized that she’d gotten into anything that involved employing engineers.

  “You say that as if get them a sample of it and all you have to do belong in the same sentence. Tell me exactly what that means,” Brazel said.

  “Grab one of the infected people, get a blood sample, drop it into the nanoanalytics unit I had installed on the Nameless before you left, comm us the results,” she said. “Try not to kill the infected person while you’re getting blood from them. Also, try not to let them bleed on you. Or on the ship. There’s not enough news coming off the planet to let us be sure exactly how the virus transmits itself. Also, don’t breathe unless you’re wearing a respirator. Those are on the ship too. Hopefully my gals get back to you with a kill signal before your position becomes inconvenient.”

  “Easy,” Grond rumbled.

  “And blow the box along the way,” she said. “We’re figuring that if Grond couldn’t lift the thing without the antigrav pads on, it’s not too likely that he’s going to be able to move it now unless it wants to be moved. My people figure it’s manufacturing the virus and pumping it into the air. If we cut off the source and then shut down everything that’s in the wild, we’ll have saved the planet.”

  “Another understatement,” Brazel said. “Any word on Benevolence?”

  “No movement yet,” she said. “The planet’s out of the way and a lot closer to us than it is to them. You won’t have a ton of time once they find out and take action, though; the first thing they’ll do is drop a blockship into the neighborhood to keep travelers from entering tunnelspace and the next step is to blow up anything that tries to leave the planet or get too close to it. It won’t be pretty. Then… boom. We’re monitoring, though.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “You’ve also got a few cases of stun ammo. Try to use that instead of anything lethal unless you don’t have a choice. And seriously, don’t die,” she said. “I’m too busy for dating right now and replacing you would be a pain.”

  “You remain the light of my existence, dear,” Brazel said and signed off.

  * * *

  They spent most of the trip modifying their weaponry to use Rhundi’s stun ammunition. This was a simple process for a single gun, but Grond tended to carry a lot of guns on the ship and insisted on modifying virtually everything before they arrived. “Never know what tool you’ll need,” he said when Brazel called him out on it. “Don’t really wanna kill someone on account of being too lazy to reset my guns on the way.”

  “What if you do need to kill someone?”

  Grond pointed at a wall full of bladed weapons. “I do it up close,” he said. “And I can switch Angela over in a coupla seconds; those Iklis weapons are built to be versatile. We’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so,” Brazel said.

  APPROACHING THE GALLIREEN SYSTEM, Namey announced. DOCKING FACILITIES PLANETWIDE ON GALLIREEN 12A ARE BROADCASTING LOOPED EMERGENCY MESSAGES. WE ARE INSTRUCTED THAT WE ARE NOT TO LAND UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

  “Do it anyway,” Brazel said. “Or at least get in close. Let’s do a flyover of Rua’ta and see what it looks like down there.”

  Namey clicked an acknowledgement and the Nameless closed in on the moon.

  * * *

  “She was right, it’s like watching birds,” Grond said. The Nameless was hovering a klick or so above Rua’ta, and even from that distance, viewing a holoprojection, it was easy to tell that something was terribly wrong in the city. It had looked sparsely populated on their first visit; this time, nearl
y everyone was outside. From above the patterns were clear; there were knots of people standing virtually still, while others roved in large groups of perhaps thirty or forty, moving together in what almost looked like purposeful formation. Every so often one of the still groups would all move at once, relocating— at what looked like top speed— to some other location, then freezing in place again.

  “There’s the office building.” Grond tapped the image once and the building they’d left the box in lit up. “That’s… uh, that’s not good.”

  “How many do you think there are?” Brazel asked.

  I ESTIMATE FOUR HUNDRED, Namey added helpfully.

  The building was completely surrounded with people, who didn’t appear to be doing anything other than endlessly circling it in a manner that reminded Brazel less of birds and more of insects in a death spiral. There was clearly no way to approach the place from the ground.

  “Namey, any way to estimate the number of people who aren’t infected down there?”

  ONLY INDIRECTLY, the ship responded. THERE ARE THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND THREE STANDARD-TYPE LIFE FORMS OUTDOORS WITHIN TWO KILOMETERS OF OUR COORDINATES RIGHT NOW. THE POPULATION OF RUA’TA WAS ROUGHLY SIX THOUSAND A MONTH AGO.

  “So two thousand people uninfected, maybe, assuming all the plague victims are in the flocks outdoors,” Brazel murmured. “That’s … an awful lot of people.”

  THIS ASSUMES NO CASUALTIES AS WELL. THE TECHNOVIRUS IS DESIGNED TO SPREAD ITSELF, NOT TO KILL, BUT SURELY THE UNINFECTED WOULD HAVE FOUGHT BACK. THE ROVING GROUPS APPEAR TO BE PATROLLING; THEY MAY HAVE CLEARED UNINFECTED FROM THE AREA AROUND THE BOX ALREADY. THERE ARE SCATTERED POCKETS OF LIFE FORMS INSIDE SOME STRUCTURES AROUND RUA’TA BUT I HAVE NO WAY TO DETERMINE THEIR STATUS AS INFECTED OR UNINFECTED.

  “Still a lot of people,” Brazel said. “Now would be the time to hear about your plan, Grond.”

  “Drop me on a roof nearby,” Grond said. “Then come get me when I need you to.”