The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 Read online

  “Now stretch out on the floor, hands over your head and flat on the ground.”

  A moment of shuffling on the troll's part left her perched on his back with him flat on the ground and his hands in a safe position. Her gun remained at the back of his head.

  “You said I overreached earlier, Irtuus-bon. You were probably right. But understand that I am not bluffing now. I am, in fact, offering you a deal. You can accept it, you can leave my property right now, forever, with none of your belongings, or you can make anything remotely like a sudden movement and I can blow your head clear off of your shoulders. Tap your finger on the ground once if you would like to hear my proposal or twice if you would like to leave under armed escort. Anything else, including three taps, and I start shooting. And I assure you I am faster than you are.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then tapped a long finger once on the floor.

  “You are moving. I want this space for expansion, and now that you've gone to the trouble of locating a cave network down here that will make my expansion easier, there's no way I'm backing off on those plans. That doesn't mean that you are leaving. In fact, I plan to relocate you somewhere better. Closer to me, in fact, where you won't have to run illicit power lines and I can keep an eye on you. Whatever you're currently stealing from me to run your operation, I'll provide. And your rent? Consider your living expenses your pay now. But everything you discover and everything you know? Is mine in exchange.”

  She paused for a moment, letting him take this in.

  “That's your deal, Irtuus-bon. You give up your gross, dusty hole in the ground and your bootleg, cobbled-together equipment for a dedicated power source and the best stuff I can buy. And your days as a freelancer are over. It's that, homelessness, or a hole in the one part of your body that you can't shrink. You have ten seconds to think about it. Tap once if you agree.”

  She let thirty seconds go by before giving a slight nudge to the back of the troll's head with the gun.

  He tapped once. She let herself breathe.

  “I'm going to back up now. So are you. You are going to do nothing stupid and you are not going to stand up any shorter or more obnoxious than you are right now.”

  She took a few steps back, toward the rifle, keeping herself in between it and Irtuus-bon. The troll slowly pulled himself to his feet, stretching his joints. He had, surprisingly, a gleam in his eyes that almost looked like happiness.

  “I'm keeping the rifle,” she said. “Anything else dangerous in here that I should know about?”

  “Some of the artifacts could be incredibly so,” he replied.

  She considered this. “Anything in there you can shoot me with?”

  “Not that kind of dangerous,” he admitted.

  “I'll be back in a day,” she said. “In between now and then, I want you to make me a wish list. Let me know what you need and how much you think it will cost. I'll let you know after I see it how much of it I think you're going to get. Do we have a deal?”

  “We ... sss ... have a deal,” the troll responded. Yes, that was definitely happiness, no matter how much he was trying to hide it.

  “Good,” she said, pivoting on one heel and walking out of the room. “And that door had better let me in the next time I come back, too.”

  She let the door shut behind her as she left, wrinkling her nose again at the damp smell in the outer corridor. No wonder; there were unventilated cave systems attached directly to the room. It was a wonder she hadn't had mold problems.

  At least I didn’t need any lawyers, she thought. It could have gone worse.

  “Sigil”

  The Benevolence Archives 7

  “There's a job,” Brazel said.

  “We're on a job right now,” Grond replied. “There can't be another job until the first job is finished.”

  “Technically, we're on our way back from a job,” Brazel answered, nonchalantly smoothing his fur. “The job itself is finished. The only bits left are delivery and receiving of payment, and we've got a solid week before deadline. That's plenty of time for a side trip.”

  Grond pointed at his ear. Both of his ears were masses of scar tissue under the best of circumstances, but one of them looked rather more singed than usual.

  “That'll heal,” Brazel said.

  “It'll heal with time,” Grond growled, “and some time is exactly what I was looking forward to just now. Time, and a book. Maybe a cold compress or two.”

  “Speaking of that,” Brazel said, making sure he was comfortably out of his halfogre partner's rather long reach. “Keeping it cold won't be hard.”

  Grond's eyes flashed red.

  “No,” he said.

  “It's a little ice planet,” Brazel said.

  “NO,” Grond said again, putting a bit more bass into his voice this time. “No ice planets. I told you no ice planets. You know this.”

  “They're not that bad,” Brazel whined.

  “You are a gnome. You have fur,” Grond said. “I do not. You're fucking adapted to living on an ice planet. Ogres live on planets with jungles and deserts. Not on damned iceballs.”

  “There's a penalty rider in the contract,” Brazel said. “We get an extra twenty percent if the temperature goes under fifty below.” He spent most of the next thirty seconds dodging, as Grond threw a few convenient heavy objects at him.

  “I'm taking sixty percent of the fee,” Grond said. “You know I hate ice planets.”

  “I worked that into the bargaining,” Brazel answered. This was not precisely true; his wife Rhundi had done all of the legwork on this contract, but she knew Grond's preferences as well as Brazel did, and had pushed hard to make the job worth the pay. “It's a milk run anyway. The planet's in dwarfspace. We pick up a package from somebody and we deliver it to-- get this-- anywhere outside of dwarfspace. And then we get paid.”

  This was unexpected. Grond paused for a moment, thinking.

  “You know what the package is, right?” he said.

  “Person in a box, obviously,” Brazel answered. “I'm guessing a dwarfcicle of some sort who's trying to flee, so probably a male.” It would not be the first time they'd been asked to quietly spirit someone out of dwarfspace; in fact, it nearly counted as a full-blown side racket for them.

  “Why not hide it a little bit?” Grond said. “What other possible reason would we have to just deliver outside of dwarfspace? There's really not even a planet or a system to take it to? Just 'anywhere'?”

  “Anywhere,” Brazel said. “And that means that our contract is probably with the dwarf himself. Rhundi said the job came through a whole complicated network of fronts; she hadn't sorted through everything yet but had a feeling it was legit.”

  “You're sending me to an ice planet to pick up what is probably a dwarfcicle in a box based on a feeling that it's not going to get us killed,” the halfogre said. “Do you think that makes me any happier than I was before?”

  Brazel said a number. The halfogre's eyes lost their red sheen and widened slightly.

  “Now that makes me feel better,” Grond said. “But you'd better not bitch about it the next time I send you to Kratuul.”

  The gnome shrugged. They could have that argument later.

  “The planet’s only half a day off,” he said. “Barely even counts as a course correction. We’ll be in and out in no time.”

  “Find a way to make it quicker,” the halfogre said. “And there had damn well better be some cold-weather gear stowed on this boat someplace.”

  * * *

  The planet, in true dwarven fashion, was named only with numbers; the dwarves called it 00901213. It was, as Grond had feared, an ice planet, far enough from its star that it would only barely register as a sun from the planet’s surface. It was tiny, too, but despite being smaller than many actual moons that Grond and Brazel had walked upon, it had two of its own: captured nickel-iron asteroids, from the look of them, each about a dozen or so kilometers wide, that whirled around the planet in a day or two
each.

  “We shall call it Shithole,” Grond said, looking at a holo of the planet.

  “Do the moons get names?” Brazel asked.

  “Nah. Fuck ‘em for not choosing a better planet to orbit,” Grond said. “How much do we need to know about this place?”

  Brazel shrugged. “No major population centers; the package is at what appears to be either a hermitage or a small research station. There's some mining, but it's on the opposite side of the rock from where we're going; basically a few pockets of heavy industry among a whole lot of nothing. Shithole's too small to have much of an atmosphere, so we'll need envirosuits with a supply until we can get into somewhere pressurized.”

  “We needed envirosuits anyway,” Grond said.

  “Right, I completely forgot it was cold on account of you hadn't whined about it in ten minutes,” Brazel retorted. “Point is, you won't be able to breathe enough useful air into your lungs to complain during the couple of minutes it'll take you to freeze to death. Our target is actually mostly underground, not a domed hab like most of the surface structures-- it's apparently actually accessed through the side of a mountain, believe it or not.”

  “Do they know we're coming?”

  “Apparently,” the gnome said. “Which doesn't quite square with the dwarfcicle idea. But there's a place to land almost on top of the doorway, so we won't have to travel too much to get where we're going. You'll barely be outside at all. And even if they weren't, Namey hasn't spotted anything that looks like planetary defenses. The rock's harmless.” Namey was Brazel's nickname for their ship, the Nameless. He and Grond had argued for months about what to name the boat when they bought it, and had never settled on an acceptable answer.

  “Dwarven research station, I assume.”

  “Yeah, so probably not sized for bigs. But we won't be there long.”

  Grond shrugged. At 2.4 meters tall, he was nearly twice his partner's size, but he had spent most of his adult life in the company of gnomes, and was well used to existing in places that didn't cater to beings his size. So long as the ceilings were manageable-- and dwarves were taller than gnomes, so they ought to be-- he would be fine.

  “So long as there’s no complications,” Grond said.

  “I wish you hadn’t said that,” Brazel responded.

  NO ANSWER TO OUR HAIL, Namey chirped in.

  “That’s your fault,” Brazel said.

  Grond just glared.

  “I told you I hate ice planets,” he said.

  * * *

  An argument ensued, and by the time it was resolved that they were going to land and check out the station, Namey had, without consulting either of them about it, landed himself on a strip of level ground half a klick away from their target. It really was built into the side of a mountain— a towering, jagged set of frozen peaks that jutted high from a level plain of ice. Unexpectedly, the mountain was located next to a shallow lake, filled with a mirror-sheened white liquid of unclear composition.

  “Any sign of anybody home, Namey?” Brazel asked.

  THE BASE IS POWERED, the ship responded. NO LIFE SIGNS, BUT MY SENSORS WILL NOT PENETRATE FAR INTO THE ICE. IF THE BASE IS MOSTLY SUBTERRANEAN THE LACK OF LIFE SIGNS WOULD NOT BE SURPRISING.

  “Plays merry hell with the idea that they know we’re coming, though,” Grond said.

  THERE CONTINUES TO BE NO RESPONSE TO HAILING FREQUENCIES, Namey continued. I HAVE TRIED A VARIETY OF COMMON DWARVEN, GNOMIC AND HUMAN FREQUENCIES AS WELL AS A NUMBER TYPICALLY USED BY BENEVOLENCE. THERE APPEARS TO BE NO ONE LOOKING.

  “Discouraging,” the gnome muttered. “We’re going in anyway.”

  “We’re arming ourselves a bit more heavily than we’d planned, though,” Grond said. He was already pulling on an envirosuit, to which he had strapped a few energy weapons-- the thin atmosphere made projectile weapons unreliable-- as well as his usual complement of sharp things and Angela, his prized Iklis sniper’s longbow.

  “You’re bringing Angie?” Brazel asked. “We’ll be indoors. Not much use for a long-range weapon even if we do end up in trouble.”

  “I don’t trust a single thing about this,” said Grond, “and I’m not leaving tools behind on the ship. Plus, she’s scary. I like scary.”

  Brazel nodded.

  “Also, if you call her Angie again, I’ll throw you in the lake,” the halfogre added. “Try me if you think I’m kidding.”

  * * *

  One thing was clear: they were going to earn the penalty rider for the temperature. Grond flatly refused to even speculate on what the temperature was, but Brazel put up a readout on the faceplate of his envirosuit that registered the temperature at fully ninety degrees below zero. Luckily for both of them, Shithole’s thin atmosphere meant that the wind was not a factor. The surface was, in fact, frighteningly still. Shithole had no indigenous life of any kind, and the quiet was almost maddening. The system’s sun was a cold white pinprick far in the distance, providing just enough light to the surface to maneuver around without assistance but not enough to see well. Overhead, one of the planet’s two moons tumbled by.

  “Faster we move, faster we’re done,” Grond said, and headed toward the station’s entrance. This was a round portal-- gratifyingly, sized for bigs-- set into a recessed part of the base of the mountain. There was a simple access panel set into the ice next to the doorway with a single button. He pushed it, and after a few moments the door obligingly glided out of the way.

  “Not much on security, are they?” he said.

  “Not sure why they would need to be, I guess,” Brazel said. “The thing probably locks when they want it to; it’s not like they’re going to get a lot of drop-ins way out here.” The portal opened into a long tunnel; an intercom system was set into a walled booth just inside, along with controls to re-close the door, which Grond did. Fiddling with the intercom produced no response, although the lights were on.

  “Down the hallway?” Brazel asked.

  “I assume so,” Grond replied. They walked for a few minutes, passing through a second larger portal into what was clearly a reception area, with a long counter against the far wall and a few chairs and tables scattered around. There was no one anywhere to be seen.

  “Answers the security question,” Grond said, walking behind the reception counter. “They’ll let you into that outside hallway to get you out of the cold, but I’m guessing there’s no way through that second door unless somebody in here buzzes you through. Or-- hmm.” He waved his partner over.

  There was what looked like a space for door controls set into the employee side of the counter. They’d been ripped out.

  “We got lucky; the door must have been unlocked when whoever wrecked the controls,” Grond said. “Otherwise you’d be cutting your way in here.”

  “You mean we,” Brazel said.

  “I mean you,” Grond said, “on account of this would have just become your nonsense side job and I’d be back on the ship waiting for you to come to your senses. Namey, you still hear us?”

  I DO, the ship responded.

  “Anything moves within two hundred thousand kilometers and I want to know about it,” he continued.

  THAT INCLUDES THE ORBITS OF BOTH MOONS, the ship responded. I ASSUME YOU DO NOT INCLUDE THOSE IN YOUR REQUEST.

  “I don’t remember programming you to be a smarmy asshole,” Grond said.

  BRAZEL DID IT, the ship replied.

  “I thought you picked the personality,” Brazel said.

  “We turn him into something more obsequious the second we get back,” Grond said. “Yes, asshole boat, you may ignore the moons. Nothing else, other than the two of us. Got it?”

  UNDERSTOOD, the Nameless replied.

  “I’m going to, just this once, suggest that something has gone wrong, that it is not our business what has gone wrong, and that we should just leave without trying to figure out what it is,” Grond continued. “There’s no one here with a package, no one answered our hails, and the entire station looks
to be abandoned, and abandoned with at least a little bit of prejudice. I think we should leave.”

  “That’s no fun,” Brazel said.

  “I knew you were going to say that,” Grond said.

  “Like you haven’t said it yourself a hundred times,” Brazel retorted. “You just don’t like it here because of the climate. I’m perfectly comfortable.”

  “Or, at least, you would be, if you could breathe the air.”

  Brazel snickered. “Actually, there’s still atmosphere in here. It’s probably safe to crack the faceplates if you want.”

  “I’m good,” Grond said. “At least until we have some idea why we’re alone.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Brazel said.

  * * *

  The top level of the research station proved to be entirely abandoned-- of living things, if not of furniture and materiel. The rest of the top floor appeared to be devoted to office space, filled with midrange desk consoles and a large server room. The servers were shut down, and a few minutes of experimentation had left Brazel unsuccessful at getting them back online again. Other than the damage to the door controls at reception, there was no sign of vandalism or violence, although the two found a large loading dock that had been left open to the elements, presumably deliberately.

  “Do you think anything’s missing?” Brazel asked. “Maybe they evacuated or they found something really interesting somewhere and went out to look at it. They’re scientists, after all; scientists get curious.”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Grond responded. The dock had a number of six-wheeled ground transports parked in it, but they were prominently numbered and the numbers were consecutive. “I gotta imagine that it’d take a few of these to get everybody out, and if it was some sort of discovery they’d still have left someone behind. And this has been here for at least a couple of days, I think.” He dragged a foot across the floor, disturbing some of the dust and snow that had blown in from the open entryway.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Something on the floor.”