The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 Read online

  “You’re kidding,” Brazel said.

  “Not a bit,” Grond said. “Somebody’s gotta fly the ship; you’re a better pilot than I am. And it’s nuts to try to get there on the ground. That leaves the windows or the roof.”

  “And when they see us and come into the building to find you?”

  “So distract them,” Grond said. “Namey’s got external loudspeakers. Make the loudest most obnoxious sound you can and then fly a few blocks away. See if you can get them to follow you. If not, I’ll manage.”

  “Or we could just bomb the building. That seems a trifle safer.”

  “For us. There’s a few hundred people that are gonna get landed on if you do that. And the box is in the basement. No guarantee that dropping the rest of the place on top of it is even going to do any good. We’re not Benevolence. We’re not killing four hundred people today even if we think it saves more than that.”

  “Tell me you’re at least suiting up.”

  “Completely,” Grond said, holding up an envirosuit. “Rhundi had this thing custom-made. There’s even holsters built into it. She’s thoughtful, that wife of yours. You oughtta treat her nicer.”

  “You treat her nicer,” Brazel grumbled. The halfogre was right, though. He had a much better chance of getting in and out than Brazel did, and both of them leaving the ship was crazy.

  COMPLICATION, Namey said.

  “Of course there is,” Brazel answered.

  THERE ARE ALREADY LIFE FORMS IN THE TARGET BUILDING, the ship responded. ALL ON THE TOP FLOORS. MOST BUILDINGS IN THE AREA ARE ABANDONED.

  “I thought you said they’d cleared everything?”

  CONJECTURE. THEY MAY HAVE MISSED SURVIVORS IN THE BUILDING OR THESE MAY BE INFECTED.

  “Are there less than four hundred of them?” Grond said.

  THERE ARE LESS THAN A DOZEN.

  “I’ll survive,” the halfogre said, pulling on his envirosuit. “Braze, get me near that building across the alley. Do a nice slow pass and I’ll jump out; if we get lucky they won’t even realize that anyone left the boat. Then make a bunch of noise and fly off somewhere else. Maybe they’ll follow you, maybe they won’t; either way if they’re not looking at the roof I ought to be able to get across and into the building. Wait for me to comm you back and come get me. Easy.”

  “Famous last words,” the gnome said.

  “Nah. My last words are probably gonna be much more profane than that. I’ve always figured ‘Oh, fuck!’ would be the last thing I ever said,” Grond responded.

  “Quit telling jokes and head for the cargo hold,” Brazel said. “I hope your timing’s good. You’re not going to enjoy the fall if you miss your jump.”

  Grond slung his longbow over his back and grinned.

  “I won’t miss if you can fly straight,” he said.

  * * *

  Grond didn’t miss, and the halfogre fell into a forward roll as soon as he hit the rooftop, stopping his momentum before running into anything solid. He rolled to his feet, a heavy projectile pistol loaded with stun darts in one hand and a heavy knife in the other. He looked around. There was nothing alive anywhere near him. He flinched as the wall of sound from the Nameless hit him; Brazel seemed to be playing every audio file on the boat at once at the highest volume Namey’s external speakers could handle. Hopefully it would draw some attention.

  He took a moment to be briefly grateful that the two buildings were the same height. The gap between them was about eight feet wide; in the alley below, the mass of plague victims was already starting to separate and clear. None of them appeared to be looking up. He took a running start and cleared it easily.

  Need a way in. There was an access door in the northwest corner of the building, right over the door they’d used to get in from the alley. The stairwell, presumably, would go all the way down to the basement. Convenient. He spent a moment thinking about the best way to get the door open quietly and then laughed at himself; the Nameless was still making so much noise that nothing short of explosives would made a difference.

  Also, it was unlocked, as he discovered when he tested the handle. He opened the door slowly anyway, widening the gap just far enough to squeeze his huge frame inside the doorway. Good thing the planet’s sized for bigs, he thought. It was too dark to see inside; he felt his way down the stairs to the top floor and then waited, listening carefully. Namey had said there were less than a dozen people inside. That meant he’d assume twenty.

  He couldn’t hear a thing.

  It was too easy the first time, he thought. Maybe he’d get lucky again. He gave his eyes another minute or two to adjust to the darkness, adjusted his respirator over his mouth and nose, then started making his way downstairs.

  He made it almost an entire floor before all hell broke loose.

  Something exploded on the floor beneath him, blowing the door on the landing beneath him off its hinges and into the stairwell. A small form stumbled through the doorway, coughing and wiping its eyes— a human female, it looked like— and then shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs and fled down the stairs. A moment later a scrum of other humans flowed through the doorway and down the stairs after her. “Flowed” was the only word for it— at the speed they were moving, they should have been running into and stumbling over each other, but not one of them made contact with anyone else as they came out and headed down. There were glowing blue lines tracing over their exposed hands and faces; their features were distressingly calm. Not one of them made a sound. And not one of them noticed Grond as he shrank back into the upper floor.

  Shit. He had enough to do without adding a rescue. At least they were headed the right way. He heard a scream from below, thumbed Angela into stun mode and hurled himself through the smoke and down the stairs.

  The woman was fighting for her life against a crowd of infected, a short stun baton in one hand and a crackling electroblade in the other. Grond dropped two of them with two shots in the back before they noticed he was there, their bodies slumping harmlessly to the floor. One turned its head to look his way and then, moving as one, the entire group disengaged itself from the first fight to focus on him.

  “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said, retreating and shooting two more. The woman, meanwhile, turned and fled back down the stairs without a word to Grond.

  “HEY!” he shouted, assessing his situation. They’d be on him in a moment; he wouldn’t be able to shoot fast enough.

  Nonlethal methods be damned; it was time for blades. He threw Angela onto his back and drew two of them; either would be a sword in Brazel’s hands but looked like long daggers in his. He didn’t have the room for anything bigger. The victims were unarmed, but there were a lot of them and he needed to keep his envirosuit undamaged. The woman hadn’t been wearing one; he wondered if she was infected yet or not.

  Circumstances aside, though, one armed and skilled halfogre against what turned out to be nine unarmed humans did not end up being a long fight. Their motions were coordinated but it was clear that none were warriors and Grond was able to put all of them down in a couple of minutes of intense fighting. Pretty sure a few of them aren’t even dead, he thought. A few would need to learn occupations that didn’t involve having two arms, though.

  Back down the stairs. This time he made it three floors down before the woman barreled into him, coming back up again and around the corner. She swung the stun baton at him and he grabbed her wrist, the baton flying out of her hand and bouncing harmlessly off the wall.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  “No time,” she said. “They’re coming.”

  Pain exploded in Grond’s right forearm, and he looked down to see a ten-inch gash torn through his suit and his arm as well. There were more of them coming— lots of them— and one had just thrown something sharp at him.

  Shit. Networked. The ones outside found out about the fight inside. No amount of noise Brazel was going to make would distract them now. The woman wriggled out of his gras
p and headed up the stairs. Grond grabbed the first infected to get close to him and hurled it at the rest of them, knocking a dozen or so people back down the stairs in a writhing, silent mass.

  There was no way he was getting into the basement without killing his way through all of them, and he wasn’t equipped for it. And his suit was compromised. The wound on his arm looked bad.

  GROND, Brazel commed into his ear. UPSTAIRS. NOW. WE’RE ABORTING.

  What?

  “I was about to tell you that,” Grond muttered, turning and fleeing. “What’s your reason?”

  THERE’S BENEVOLENCE ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE SYSTEM, Brazel responded. NAMEY SAYS WE’VE GOT FIVE MINUTES TO GET CLEAR BEFORE THE BLOCKSHIP GETS CLOSE ENOUGH TO KEEP US HERE.

  The halfogre didn’t need to hear anything else, making his way back to the roof in a matter of moments and locking the door behind him. The woman was still up there, eyeing the gap between the two buildings as if trying to decide if she was going to be able to jump it.

  “Need a ride?” Grond asked. “One chance. Benevolence is coming; we’re all dead in a few minutes.”

  “I’ve got a ride,” she said.

  “Unless it’s fucking invisible, no, you don’t,” Grond said. He heard the wail of the Nameless’ engines as Brazel brought the ship around, opening the cargo door and giving him room to jump in.

  RIGHT NOW, GROND.

  The two of them wasted no time with more words, turning and sprinting for the ship. Grond leapt, landing and rolling to safety in the cargo bay first. He heard and felt the woman land next to him. The cargo bay door groaned closed as Brazel streaked out of the moon’s atmosphere.

  “Stay here,” he told the woman, locking the cargo hold behind himself and heading for his copilot’s chair in his quarters. He threw himself into his chair, activated the holographic screens, and commed Brazel.

  “You noticed we picked up a stray,” he said.

  “Tell me later,” Brazel responded. “She look smart enough to figure out to hold on to something for the next couple of minutes?”

  “She heard me say Benevolence,” he responded. “I hope so.”

  “We’re heading for the other side of the star,” he said. “Namey doesn’t think they’ve noticed us yet. Cross every finger you have that they don’t or they’ll probably come after us too.”

  His arm was still bleeding badly. No time for that right now. If the Benevolence sent spiderships after them they’d need him handling the guns, not in the closet that passed for the ship’s medical bay. The long-range sensors showed two blockships and a sub-Testament class capital ship; they were definitely planning on an interdiction.

  “How far?” he said.

  “Just a couple minutes,” Brazel responded. “We’re not trying for tunnelspace if we can hide; they might notice the jump.”

  Grond waited. Watched the capital ship move into position near Gallireen 12A. Watched, as a sequence of energy blasts from the ship scorched the surface of the moon into flaming cinders, the sheer violence of the blasts tumbling it from orbit. The massive explosion when it inevitably fell into the planet would be visible from lightyears away.

  They had failed.

  * * *

  They waited for hours on the other side of the sun, waiting for the Benevolence to leave the system, and then for a few more hours after that, just to make certain they were really gone. Grond sat, staring, the bleeding from the wound on his arm eventually slowing on its own, uncared for. Brazel wandered the ship, taking care of little maintenance jobs here and there that he’d not found time for but that suddenly seemed terribly important. They let the ship take care of their guest for a while, Brazel eventually bringing her some food himself just to have someone to talk to.

  “She’s asking for you, you know,” Brazel said, braving his partner’s quarters. Grond was sitting on his bunk, his arm still unbound, staring at a thin, lightweight shiv that he had balanced on one finger. It was the narrowest blade he owned, nearly useless for combat but perfectly balanced and easier than most to conceal. He could actually toss it from one finger to another without dropping it on a good day.

  Grond said nothing.

  “You’re probably not infected,” the gnome continued. “We’d know by now. Rhundi wants you to use the nanoanalyzer anyway. She’s worried about you.”

  The halfogre spun the knife into his palm, reached into a drawer next to his bunk, and tossed something at Brazel. The gnome caught it, a surprised look on his face.

  “It’s … a vial of blood. You have a vial of your own blood in a drawer next to your bed.”

  “I was gonna do it,” Grond rumbled. “Just … not ready to yet. Gimme a bit. Go run the blood; I’ll be out in a few minutes. We’ll talk to the girl and then decide what to do next.”

  “We did everything we could, Grond.”

  The halfogre stood up.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  * * *

  Her name was Ilana, and that was really all she had to say about anything. She was a female human, perhaps 25 years old, and amazingly slight for a human, perhaps only forty to fifty centimeters taller than Brazel. She’d willingly surrendered her electroblade and another smaller blade she’d had concealed in a boot; she said she had had a gun but had lost it in the battle before encountering Grond. She would say nothing on why she was on Gallireen, much less in the precise building that Grond and Brazel had left Remember’s package in.

  “So what do we do with you, then?” Grond asked, scratching at the bandage he’d finally put on his arm. “We could space you and be done with you. You’re not telling us anything, which makes you hard to trust. I could make you tell us things. So could Brazel. But I feel like we’ve hurt enough people lately. So why don’t you just tell us what you need.”

  “Just pick somewhere with a spaceport and drop me off,” she said. “I’ll figure it out from there. I can take care of myself.”

  “You’d be dead if I’d let you take care of yourself,” Grond said. “And I’d be dead if I didn’t have Brazel flying a ship for me. So can the solo act. But fine, you’ll get what you want.”

  He turned to Brazel, who was standing just behind him. “We’ll set up something comfortable in one of the bigger lockable cargo bays. She can stay there until we get somewhere civilized. You okay with that?”

  The gnome nodded.

  He turned to her. “You okay with that?”

  She nodded.

  “Fine, settled. Namey, where are we going?”

  THERE ARE HALF A DOZEN ACCEPTABLE PLANETS WITHIN A DAY’S TUNNELSPACE FROM OUR CURRENT POSITION, the ship replied.

  “Pick one on the way back home,” Grond said. He looked at the other two. “We done here?”

  No one spoke.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be in my bunk.” He turned on one heel and left the room.

  “Enjoy your stay on the Nameless, I suppose,” Brazel said. “I’ll be back in a bit. For right now, you’re staying right here. The ship won’t let you get anywhere outside the cargo hold. I’ll bring you some bedding and a change of clothes once we’re moving.”

  She remained silent.

  “Have it your way,” he said. “The halfogre’s actually a pretty remarkable guy when he hasn’t just had a planet blown up in front of him. I’m the one you need to worry about. He’s upset that they’re dead. I couldn’t be happier that we’re alive.”

  She smiled at that, just a bit.

  “And you?”

  “Both, I guess,” she said. “Thank you for saving me. I owe you. But that doesn’t mean we have to be friends.”

  “That’s fair,” Brazel said. “Mercenary, even. I like that in a person. I’ll come back when I know where we’re going.”

  * * *

  He didn’t even make it to the cockpit. Years of piloting the same boat had taught him to recognize the subtle shift in his body when the Nameless entered tunnelspace; most flyers couldn’t tell you unless they happened to be watching or paying c
lose attention when it happened.

  Coming out of tunnelspace was something entirely different, especially when it happened at speed. Getting torn out of tunnelspace was exquisitely painful. It wasn’t quite as unpleasant as the unexpected teleportation had been, but it was hard to imagine anything that was that didn’t kill him or leave most of his insides somewhere new.

  The ship stopped dead, too fast, faster than it ought to be able to. It overcame the inertial dampers and sent him flying into a wall.

  “The fuck was that?”

  There was no response from the Nameless.

  Oh, fuck. “Namey. Say something. Grond, you out there?”

  “Yeah,” the halfogre said, sounding dazed. “I’m … holy shit, the AI’s rebooting … Oh fuck. Get to the damn cockpit. The fucking teleporter. It’s outside.”

  “What the hell do you mean it’s outside?”

  “I mean Remember just yanked us out of tunnelspace, which means she’s got her own blockship built into that thing, and she’s not shooting at us yet but she might start,” Grond yelled.

  Brazel sprinted to the cockpit, ignoring pains from what seemed like half of his body. The grey facade of Remember’s enormous teleporter filled the Nameless’ viewscreen. The ship appeared to be listing to the side, drifting across the face of the sphere.

  Wait. He checked their coordinates and gave the yoke an experimental twist. They weren’t moving. The teleporter was rotating. The boat was still dead, immobile in space. He checked Namey’s brainbox; Grond was right— he was rebooting. The last time the AI had had to reboot the boat had nearly been blown in half. And without the AI’s help, he couldn’t figure out why the ship couldn’t move without manually checking the engines himself. He couldn’t see any evidence of an inertia beam outside the ship, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  The sphere rotated, and the docking port slowly came into view. With a jerk, the Nameless began moving again, pulled inexorably toward the landing bay inside the sphere.

  Remember was calling them to her.