The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2

by Luther M. Siler

  The elf abased himself further, stretching out full-length on the ground, face down, his arms splayed out to his sides.

  “I swear to you that I shall succeed,” he said. “I swear on my life. I swear on my soul.”

  YOU HAVE ALREADY SWORN ON YOUR SOUL, the voices said. WHEN NEXT WE MEET IT WILL BE EITHER IN SUCCESS OR IN FAILURE. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER CHANCES, OUTCAST.

  “Never,” he said. “I sw–I promise. It shall be as I have said.”

  AND NOTHING LESS, the voices said. He felt a sudden, terrible pressure on his body, pushing him into the floor, and felt the nose and ribs of the little body he occupied shift and crack.

  When he came back to himself, he was still screaming.

  “So … uh … now what?” Haakoro asked. The four of them were packed into the Nameless’ escape pod, an undersized box with walls lined with crash couches and compartments for storage. There was room to move, but not much. If they ended up having to use the couches, the ogre would have to take one and the three of them would be getting very friendly on the other.

  “You shut the fuck up,” Brazel whispered, “and we beg every higher power we can think of that they keep not noticing us.” It had been five minutes since losing the Nameless, and as far as he could tell none of them were dead yet. Unless they were, and this was the way the afterlife punished him for a lifetime of irregular behavior. He tried to think of any ways eternal damnation might be different from being locked in a tiny space with Haakoro and came up blank.

  He glanced over at the elf. Xe had ignored the couches, sitting cross-legged on the floor, xir eyes closed and lips moving. A pale golden glow emanating from xir body provided the only light in the escape pod.

  “What do you think xe’s doing?” he whispered to Grond.

  “Xe said the Nameless was too big to shield from notice,” the halfogre replied. “Maybe the escape pod isn’t. Contacting somebody, maybe. I have no idea.” He unbuckled his restraints and moved to the front of the pod, careful not to touch the elf.

  “I can’t get any status on the air supply without powering the pod,” he said. “And the last thing we want is to go live right now. Braze, do you happen to remember the last time we recharged it?”

  “It hasn’t been long,” he said. “If it was just the two of us, we’d be good for a week.”

  “And with four?” Haakoro asked.

  “It gets shorter with every word you say,” the gnome snapped.

  The kid held up both hands, surrendering.

  Grond pulled open a panel. “Plenty of food. Only other thing’s fuel. And we’re kinda in the middle of nowhere, so who knows how far we’ll have to go to–”

  Something slammed into the side of the pod, sending the halfogre drifting into the opposite wall. Asper, still sitting cross-legged on the floor, didn’t react at all.

  “The hell was that?”

  “No idea,” Brazel said. “Something else blew up out there? If they were shooting at us we’d be dead. They can’t be shooting at each other, can they?”

  “No,” Grond said. “But something’s going on.”

  Something else hit the pod again, this time throwing it into a spin. Grond swore, ricocheting off the floor and a wall before managing to pull himself back into a seated position.

  “I think it might be time to risk powering up,” he said. “It’s better than getting battered to death.”

  Brazel unbuckled himself. “I got it,” he said. He had always been better at zero-G maneuvering than the halfogre anyway, and at his size he did a lot less damage if he bounced off of something. He pulled himself to the pod’s rudimentary cockpit and flipped a few switches, putting the pod into a low-power standby mode–which activated passive sensors and let them see through the front canopy.

  The blockship and the spiderships were already gone. The escape pod floated in the middle of a debris field created by the destruction of their own ship.

  “Time to go, then,” Brazel said, restoring gravity and pivoting the ship around.

  “Wait,” Grond said, pointing at the long-range display. “What’s that?”

  A single blip had appeared on the display.

  “They might have left somebody behind to see if we did exactly what we were about to do,” Brazel said. “Going back to passives.”

  “It’s closing in,” Grond said. The blip was moving toward them at high speed.

  “Everybody just relax,” Brazel said. “Nothing we can do about it.”

  Asper stopped chanting, and the glow faded. The four of them sat in near-darkness, only a few dull red lights from the console penetrating the gloom.

  They all felt it as the ship started pulling to starboard. The stars outside the ship started moving.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Brazel said. “Tell me that’s not an inertia beam. Please.”

  “It is an inertia beam,” Asper said. The pod began rotating, bringing the distant ship into view. None of them recognized the make of the ship, a fact that did not change as the ship grew closer. One thing was clear: it was much bigger than them, big enough to be able to power an inertia beam in the first place, and big enough to pull them into its dock without any input from them at all. The pod continued rotating and was pulled through the field emitter that kept the air inside the ship and set down gently in a cargo bay, the canopy facing open space.

  “They coulda blown us out of the sky in a boat that big,” Grond said. “This has to be good news, right?”

  “Depends. Does captured sound like an improvement?” Brazel answered.

  “It sounds better than starving to death,” Haakoro said.

  “We weren’t gonna starve to death. We had you,” Brazel said. “Air was always going to be the problem.”

  Haakoro took a moment to work that through, then wisely closed his mouth again.

  Grond picked up the bag and the bundle he’d brought onto the ship. He removed a few weapons–one of Brazel’s guns, Angela, and a few mid-length knives–from the bag, then put the bundle into it and stashed the entire thing in the compartment with their food supplies.

  “You risked your life to save your longbow?” Brazel said.

  “Angela is not just a longbow,” Grond said. “And yes.” He looked at Asper. “I assumed you had the statue. I couldn’t find it.”

  The elf nodded. Brazel thought about asking where xe was hiding it and decided against it.

  “Where the hell are you hiding it?” Haakoro asked. Asper calmly reached behind xirself and produced the statue. Haakoro opened his mouth to continue protesting. Grond grabbed his chin and closed his mouth for him.

  “That’s enough for now,” the halfogre said. He handed Asper and Haakoro each one of his blades.

  “Those are my favorites,” he said. “Try not to lose them.”

  He pointed at Brazel, then at the exit hatch. His body language made it clear: he would go out first, followed by Asper and Haakoro, then Brazel. He snapped his wrist and Angela flared into readiness, the energy string casting a blue glow over the room.

  Brazel counted backwards from three to zero and then pulled the hatch open. Grond charged through, ready for anything.

  The dock was empty. There were no other ships or pods, and no other people. There wasn’t even really anyplace for anyone to hide. Their escape pod was the only object in the dock. Grond turned to look behind the pod, just in time for the doors to close over the force shield that had kept the atmosphere in place while the inertia beam dragged them inside.

  “What?” he bellowed. “You want us to go looking for you?”

  “I didn’t really want you around at all, if you want the truth,” a voice said.

  Grond whirled around.

  “Ah, shit,” he said.

  Twenty-Two

  Sirrys ban Irtuus bon Alaamac was growing frustrated with the ship’s comm system. He had been trying to raise his employer for nearly an hour with no luck. Neither her office nor her private quarters were responding, and Rhundi had always st
ubbornly refused to give him access to her private subcomm. She had his, of course, and could contact him whenever she wanted, but he was not granted the same courtesy from her. He wouldn’t even mind talking to Gorrim, if the obnoxious little gnome would at least tell him where to find Rhundi.

  Wait. He was on a ship with her children. Surely the Tavh’re’muil children would have access to subcomm frequencies that Irtuus-bon did not–if not for their mother, then surely for their father, who rarely appeared to have anything very important to do.

  He approached the eldest daughter. What was her name again? Darsi.

  “Child,” he said.

  The girl had the nerve to roll her eyes at him. “My name is Darsi, Irtuus-bon,” she said. “People my age don’t really like being addressed as child.”

  He nodded. This was entirely irrelevant.

  “I need to contact your mother,” he said. “She is not responding to any of the comm frequencies I have been provided with, and I cannot reach her secretary either. I was hoping she had provided you with additional means to contact her that I might use.”

  “What, you mean her subcomm?”

  Irtuus-bon grated his teeth. This child would require things to be spelled out clearly to her, apparently.

  “Yes. Or a direct comm to your living quarters, or to her sleeping-den. I just need to get ahold of her.”

  “She told us never to give those to you,” Darsi said. This was true. However, Darsi suspected that under the circumstances the rules might be bent a bit. “I’ll see if I can raise her, if that’s good enough for you.”

  “That will have to be sufficient,” Irtuus-bon said.

  Darsi raised her mother’s direct subcomm. Subcomms weren’t location-dependent, but they were range-dependent, meaning that it wasn’t a method that she thought was terribly likely to work very well. They’d been tunneling away from Arradon for several days. Even a high-powered subcomm was unlikely to be able to throw a signal that far, and the one her parents had allowed her to embed was not terribly strong.

  No luck.

  She tried her father. Nothing there, either. Over the next few minutes, she tried several of the same comm locations that Irtuus-bon had already attempted, hoping that Rhundi–or anyone, really–might answer a comm from her when they might have ignored one from the troll. She got nowhere. All of the lines timed out without any connection.

  She thought for a moment. This was probably bad. The troll had likely already run through the exact same frequencies she had. Her parents’ direct subcomms and their living quarters were the only ones that she had access to that he didn’t, and those hadn’t worked.

  “I can’t find her,” she said.

  “That is unfortunate,” said Irtuus-bon, who appeared to be struggling to keep his height. “I have information that she will find very useful. It would be best to be able to give it to her.”

  “You could just send her the data, you know,” she said.

  “I would prefer to speak with her first,” Irtuus-bon said. “I have my reasons.”

  Darsi thought for a moment. Oddly, she really didn’t feel like her parents were in any trouble. She’d found herself inexplicably worried about her father any number of times in the past only to discover that he’d just narrowly pulled himself out of a scrape. She didn’t feel that way this time. She looked around for Barash, her youngest sister. Barash had been known to have nightmares or sudden panic attacks in the same circumstances. Barash looked a bit frightened, but many of the younger children had spent most of the trip looking worried. There was nothing to worry about there.

  Wait. She was being stupid. She knew plenty of other people on Arradon. She went and found Krin. The gnome brightened visibly as she walked toward him. The other members of the security team snickered a bit, but didn’t move away at all.

  “I need you to get in touch with Tarrysh,” she said.

  This startled him.

  “What for?”

  “The troll and I can’t find either of my parents,” she said. “I’m hoping she knows where they are.”

  “You know Tarrysh isn’t really big on being bothered,” Krin said. “Any chance she’s just busy?”

  “You’re suggesting that my mother, Rhundi Tavh’re’muil, your boss, is so busy that she won’t take any calls from either her oldest daughter or her head researcher, both of whom she sent away from their homes so that they would be safe? You’re saying this as a member of their security team?”

  Boys could be so dumb sometimes.

  “Okay,” Krin said. “You’re probably right. But I’m not gonna be the one to call her. I don’t run the team. Let me talk to Lorryn.” He walked back to the rest of the security team and had a word with their security chief, who argued for a moment, then shrugged and threw up her arms, no doubt as Krin used the same line of argument against her that Darsi had just used against him.

  Lorryn approached Darsi. She was an older gnome, selected for her intelligence and cunning rather than strength and size, with most of her fur starting to go to grey. She’d spent most of the trip ignoring the family and Irtuus-bon entirely, spending her time and effort on keeping her security team focused on their jobs, along with occasionally spelling their pilot.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “I don’t want a lot of Tarrysh’s time,” she said. “Just to know where at least one of my parents are. We need to know that too, you know. We probably ought to head straight for Taralon if they’ve gone missing.”

  Lorryn nodded once, accepting her argument. “All right,” she said. “I’m supposed to check in with Tarrysh every couple of days anyway, and we’re about due for that. But I talk to her, not you. I’ll find out about your parents. If she needs to talk to you, I’ll bring you in on the comm.”

  “Okay,” Darsi said. That felt like she’d won.

  The older gnome walked away, heading for the security team’s quarters to make the comm. She was gone for no more than a few minutes. When she returned, Darsi noticed she’d armed herself.

  “Your mother’s been taken,” she said. “You’re right. We have a problem.”

  “Ilana,” Brazel said. “I’ll be damned.”

  “You couldn’t have shown up two hours ago? Before the Benevolence blew up our fucking ship?” Grond asked.

  “No,” she said, not bothering to elaborate. She stared the halfogre down for a moment, a sight that was almost comical: Ilana was human, but barely half a meter taller than Brazel and as slender as a teenager. “Remember sent me. This is when I got here. She said to bring you in.”

  “She couldn’t send the Memento?” Brazel asked. Remember lived, as far as he knew, on the other side of the galaxy. It was far too far away to ever imagine traveling to, even in tunnelspace. The last time they had met her, she had brought them to her with a teleporter, technology that Brazel was still half-convinced was impossible. The teleporter was called the Memento, Remember apparently being somewhat of a fan of puns.

  “She sent me,” Ilana said. “I’m bringing you to the Memento. The Memento will send you to her, just like last time.”

  Grond’s lip curled in disgust.

  “So … who’s this?” Haakoro asked.

  “Her name’s Ilana,” Brazel said. “She’s one of Remember’s people. We had a … uh … minor disagreement the last time we met.” The minor disagreement had left Ilana disarmed and unconscious on the floor in front of her employer. Brazel decided to leave that part of the story out. “This is Haakoro. The elf is Asper.”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.” She led them to quarters on the ship, putting Brazel and Grond together and giving Haakoro and Asper their own, separate bunks. She then excused herself, citing a need to find out where to meet the Memento.

  “I hate it when they do this to us,” Brazel said, eyeing the bunks. They were much too large for him and much too small for Grond.

  “It’s only for a little while,” Grond said. “Y
ou’ll be fine. I’m the one who has to break my spine if I want to sleep.”

  “Hopefully it won’t be for long. Who knows where the Memento is right now.”

  Grond nodded. “Listen, Braze, about the ship…”

  The gnome held up a hand. “Not right now. We’ll worry about that later.”

  “But–”

  “I mean it, Grond,” Brazel said, taking a sharper tone of voice than the halfogre was used to hearing. “We worry about the boat when we have time to worry about the boat.”

  “Have it your way,” Grond said. “I’m gonna go get our stuff from the pod and then see if I can fit into the showers on this thing.” He left the room, the door sliding shut behind him.

  “I have a damage report,” the dwarf said.

  “Proceed,” Overmorrow said. Xe sat on the floor, legs crossed in a meditative pose. Xe had been maintaining that pose since Roashan had jumped into tunnelspace to flee the Benevolence assault. Truthfully, there was little to do. Overmorrow was not an engineer or a mechanic and would not have been terribly useful in calculating the damage done by the mercenaries to Roashan’s complicated and overlapping systems.

  “It’s surprisingly minimal,” the dwarf replied. “The biggest problem was the damage to the field emitter. One of our ship bays is going to have to be closed for a few days to repair that. We lost about a dozen people. Everything else is minor or just cosmetic. We have three prisoners. All three are injured, one badly, but they’ll survive.”

  “Have the dead been identified?”

  “Ours, or–”

  “Ours,” Overmorrow said. “I don’t care about theirs.”

  “Most of them,” the dwarf answered. “Two are–well, two are going to be more difficult, and in all the chaos we haven’t had a lot of time to figure out who’s missing and who fled on their own.”

  “Do what you can, and send me a list of the deceased. We will remember them.”

  The dwarf nodded, making a note.

  “How did they get that close to us?”

  “Valid identity codes,” the dwarf answered. “Everything they had checked out. There was no warning until they started shooting.”