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

by Luther M. Siler

  “Any idea how they got those valid identity codes?”

  “We’re working on that,” she replied, “but it seems most likely that the mercenaries were provided the codes by the Benevolence somehow. They were almost all human mercs, no evidence that there’s anybody that we’ve worked with before.”

  “That is not a good sign,” Overmorrow replied.

  “It’s not, no. Do you want to talk to the prisoners?”

  “In a bit,” xe said. “Do you happen to know where we are heading right now?”

  The dwarf appeared taken aback. “I don’t, actually,” she admitted. She wouldn’t, Overmorrow thought. It was entirely possible that no one did other than the navigators, and random chance played a significant role as to where Roashan went when the station jumped under duress. It was all part of the secrecy necessary to keep them out of the hands of the Benevolence. It would probably be necessary to go directly to the navigators to get an answer.

  “My apologies,” Overmorrow replied. “That would be outside your sphere of influence, I suspect. Have security informed that the prisoners are to be kept reasonably comfortable but under close guard. Continue to work to repair the damage with all possible speed, and convey my personal thanks to your team.”

  “Everyone’s saying it would have been much worse if the halfogre and the gnome hadn’t been on board,” the dwarf added. “The two of them and Asper drove off half the invasion by themselves, I hear.”

  Overmorrow nodded. Xe was well aware of Asper’s abilities, and Brazel and Grond had proven to be impressively capable themselves. The dwarf let herself out.

  Overmorrow forced xirself to be still and mentally reached out to Asper. Xe received a confusing jumble of sensations in response. There had been danger, but it had receded, and strong uncertainty and anxiety about the future was present but Asper was controlling it. Overmorrow sent a whisper of reassurance and pulled back from their connection, choosing to let Asper handle xir own problems.

  It was time to decide what to do next.

  Twenty-Three

  “Not in front of the kids,” Darsi snapped, grabbing the surprised Lorryn by her elbow and pulling her back into the room she’d just come from. “What in blazes does taken mean?”

  “First of all, young lady–”

  Darsi’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare young lady me right now. Neither of us has time for it.”

  Lorryn laughed.

  “I’m being funny?”

  “You’re being your mother,” she said. “Or maybe that’s your dad, since you just insulted me without any real thought to the consequences.”

  “Marvel at my development later,” she said, a smile creeping onto her face anyway. “Right now just tell me what happened.”

  “The resort’s fine,” Lorryn said. “And as far as anyone knows, your mother is too. They cleared the resort for the same reason they sent you away: they were expecting an attack. It never came. One ship landed. An elf and an ogre got off. The ogre knocked your mother out and they took her away.”

  “They didn’t follow?” Darsi asked.

  “They tried. Tarrysh was breathing fire when I called. Your mother had locked down the security team’s ships with a voice override. It didn’t expire until an hour or so ago, but by then they were gone.”

  Darsi brightened.

  “This is good news?”

  “It means she’s fine,” Darsi said. “I don’t know what she’s got planned, but she’s got something planned and she’s fine.”

  “Good to know,” Lorryn said. “What are we going to do? Since you’re in charge now, of course.”

  “Mom said we should head to Taralon if anything bad happened. I think this probably still qualifies even if we’re not worried about her. So we just need to inform the pilot–”

  Lorryn visibly shuddered, then looked around, alarm on her face.

  “What?”

  “The ship just dropped out of tunnelspace. We don’t have any reason to–”

  The relative quiet of the ship shattered as alarms began sounding everywhere.

  “Shit,” said Lorryn. “I’m in charge again. No arguing. Get you and your siblings’ asses into a secure room and strapped to something and do it now.”

  Darsi turned and bolted away to collect her brothers and sisters. Lorryn signaled to her security team to follow them and to secure the troll, then headed for the cockpit.

  “Status report,” she said.

  The pilot only pointed.

  Lorryn’s jaw dropped.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Rhundi awoke in a cell. On the floor in a cell, which seemed needlessly insulting. She took a few moments before opening her eyes, breathing steadily and listening carefully, trying to pick up any sounds or scents of anyone else in the room. One thing was certain: the place smelled terrible, of body odors and fluids from more species than she could count.

  Not much blood, though, so she probably wasn’t in a torture chamber. After convincing herself she was alone in the room she sat up and looked around. She was on someone’s boat. She could feel the engine thrumming through the floor, which was a metal grate partially covered with some sort of cheap rubberized mat. Her fur was damp. She didn’t especially want to know what with. There was a bench set into a wall that she could use for sitting or sleeping, but it was sized for humans. She’d have to climb to get onto it. Surprisingly, neither her feet nor her hands were bound.

  Typical, she thought. The room had no windows and wherever the door was, it was flush with the wall. There were no toilet facilities, which was probably why the room had a grated floor and stunk of urine. A bit barbaric, but not torture, she thought. She was meant to get out of the room at some point. They had put her here to soften her up and break her will, not to leave her to die.

  She checked her subcomms, not expecting any luck, and got none. Everything was still implanted properly but they’d been either dampened or deactivated. No surprises there. She was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when K’Shorr had knocked her out. She’d had a couple of smaller weapons concealed on her but those were both gone. She’d had a belt on, too. That was missing too.

  Okay, then. K’Shorr had kicked her in the chest, just at her breastbone. She stood up and stretched, checking to see if any bones were broken. They weren’t. Other than quite a bit of lingering soreness and a big lump on the back of her head where she’d hit the ground, she was basically fine. She thought about the implications of that for a moment. The ogre had been a pitfighter for as long as he’d been alive. He had trained Grond. Rhundi was certain that he could have broken her neck with a kick a few centimeters higher, or aimed his foot a few centimeters to the right or the left and broken some ribs or a collarbone. He hadn’t. She mentally upgraded her status even further. Not only did her captors not intend to kill her, they didn’t seem to really want her hurt.

  “I’m practically a guest,” she said.

  She climbed onto the bench and stretched out. With no one in the room and no visible cameras or ways to contact anyone else, there was little to do but try to catch up on sleep. You never knew when you were going to have a chance to get more.

  The Memento hung in space, silent and impossibly large, a portal opening in the side to admit Ilana’s ship. Brazel still couldn’t fathom the sheer scale of the thing. He’d landed ships on smaller planetoids before–had, in fact, had smaller planetoids thrown at him before–and the Memento was entirely artificial.

  “What I’d do to get access to her bank accounts,” he muttered to himself. He and Grond had handed the Nameless’ sensor logs over to Rhundi after encountering the giant teleporter the first time, and she’d passed them along to her engineering crew. It had taken only an hour for a member of their team to summon the courage to accuse Brazel and Grond of faking the sensor data somehow. The Memento, apparently, was both physically and economically impossible.

  And yet there it was. Ilana’s ship moved into the center of the giant sphere and
landed a few minutes later.

  He went and found Grond.

  “You felt the ship land. We’re here.”

  “And so we are,” Brazel answered. “You’re not going to try and kill Remember again, are you?”

  “Not planning on it,” Grond said. “I figure I got enough enemies right now.”

  “And you like winning your fights,” Brazel said. Remember had rather handily humiliated the halfogre last time.

  “And I like winning my fights. Sure. You ready?”

  “I am,” he said, standing up and stretching. “Not like I packed a bag before the boat got blown up.”

  Grond opened his mouth to respond. The gnome held up a finger.

  “Still not the time. Later.”

  Grond closed his mouth again. About half of him wanted to start a roaring argument with his partner. The rest recognized that Brazel was probably right, even if he was being an asshole about it. The two of them left the ship, joining Haakoro, Asper and Ilana outside.

  “You coming with us?” Grond said to Ilana.

  “No,” she said. “Just on pickup duty. You got everything off my ship?”

  “Everything but the escape pod,” Grond said. “And I don’t think we want that anymore.” He glanced at Brazel, who shrugged.

  “Good luck, then,” Ilana said, turning away.

  “You’re not waiting for us?”

  “I’m not,” she said over her shoulder. “Remember said she’d take care of you. And I don’t especially want to be around you if I don’t have to.” She entered her ship without another word.

  “I remember her being friendlier,” Grond said, looking Brazel’s way. The gnome shrugged again, then headed for the teleporter without speaking.

  “You two haven’t done this before,” Grond said. “I hope you’re not modest. Remember has a bad habit of stealing all your stuff on the way through the teleporter. The first time Brazel and I used it we came through stark naked on the other side.”

  Asper looked impassive. Haakoro turned bright red, then looked at the elf and giggled.

  “You’re kidding,” Grond said.

  “Let me guess. You’ve never seen an elf naked before,” Asper said.

  “Nope,” Haakoro said.

  “I hope the experience is illuminating for you, then,” Asper replied.

  There was a table outside the teleporter itself, which hung in the precise center of the hollow sphere of the Memento. There were four glasses on the table, filled with a blue fluid. Brazel was already halfway through his by the time the rest of them arrived.

  “Drink up,” Grond said. “It’ll make the trip itself a lot easier.”

  The four of them downed their drinks, Haakoro’s nose wrinkling at the taste. The entrance to the portal slid open on its own, and they filed in. The inside of the room was featureless, the walls and floor covered with a black, cushioned substance.

  “Lay down,” Grond told Haakoro and Asper. “If you’ve got anything with you, I’d put it next to you, too, rather than keeping it attached to your body.” He pulled Angela off his back and set her carefully on the floor next to him along with the rest of his weaponry. Haakoro looked around for a moment and sprawled out on his side of the room. Asper sat on the floor cross-legged, the backs of xir hands lightly resting on xir knees.

  There was a wet sound as the black material oozed over the doorway, sealing the room shut.

  “Get ready,” Grond said.

  A moment later, the material expanded into the room, filling it completely, and there was a tremendous sound as the four of them were flung across the galaxy.

  “I am angry,” Overmorrow said.

  The elf sat in xir quarters, speaking into a stationwide comm. Xe rarely had reason to address all of Roashan at once, but when xe did it generally brought all activity at the station to a standstill.

  “We have had hard losses today. Our base on 9013LV has been overrun, and civilian losses run to the thousands. Roashan itself has been attacked, and several of our own who were warm with life yesterday lie cold today. But we do not bend to our sorrows. We are warriors, and warriors are grown used to loss.”

  Xe paused for a moment, letting the sound of xir breathing pass over the comm.

  “It is time for the Benevolence to experience loss as well. We have fought them for generations, and in that time we have prevented their spread in our lands and our stars. But we have not pushed them back. We have not beaten them. We have, at best, stood in their way.”

  “Right now, there are beings fighting to resist the Benevolence. There is war and death in ogrespace, as the Benevolence’s allies scheme and attempt to go around us where once they might have simply fought through. And they are succeeding. Our partners and our friends are dying on Khkk as we speak.”

  Overmorrow paused again, letting xir consciousness expand to fill the ship. Xe felt fear and trepidation, but also bravery and strength. And xe did not feel rebellion or betrayal. The people of Roashan were standing together.

  “We have lost one planet today. We shall not lose a second. I call on Roashan: We shall travel to Khkk and we shall join the battle there. We shall fight against the Benevolence’s allies, and if the Benevolence themselves arrive we shall fight them as well. The Benevolence shall not gain one single meter of new territory while I live.”

  “We depart for Khkk in one half hour. Those of you who are uncertain of your devotion to our cause have that time to take your belongings and leave. No one will try and stop you, and none shall criticize your decision. The rest of us should prepare for battle. The Noble Opposition goes to war today!”

  As xe closed the connection, xe heard cheers echoing from every corner of the station.

  Overmorrow had xir people with xir. Now all that was needed was to keep them alive.

  Twenty-Four

  “Ow,” Grond said to no one in particular. His head ached abominably. The pain wasn’t as bad as the first time he’d used Remember’s teleporter but it was still far from a pleasant experience. His vision cleared a bit, and he realized something: he was still dressed. Angela sat next to him, right where he’d left her.

  He sat up and looked around. Asper and Brazel were both on their feet and dressed. Haakoro was still unconscious, sprawled out on the floor. He was the only one whose possessions and clothing had not made the trip with him.

  “Whaddaya know,” Grond said. “Remember’s got a sense of humor.”

  “Kinda surprised she let you through,” Brazel said.

  “Guess she forgave me for last time,” Grond replied. “What do we do with him?”

  “Carry him with us,” Asper said. “Remember would not have brought him across if she did not feel he belonged here.”

  Grond lifted the unconscious man off the floor, draping him across his shoulders.

  “There’d better be a robe for him in there,” the halfogre said.

  The door squelched back open. The last time Brazel and Grond had been through, it had opened into what looked like an opulent lobby. This time it delivered them to the bridge of a capital ship. Just like last time, there was a small table next to the door with a box on it. Grond opened the box, which contained a robe for Haakoro. The halfogre set the man on the ground and covered him with the robe.

  “I’m not dressing him,” he said. None of the other three argued.

  The bridge was a hotbed of activity, with beings of several different species moving about purposefully and a low buzz of background noise from staff going about their business. Nothing the size of a capital ship had a transparent canopy, but this one had the next best thing, with a huge holographic display running across the front portion of the bridge. They were within visual range of a reddish-brown terrestrial moon orbiting close to an enormous yellow gas giant. Brazel thought it looked familiar.

  No one took any particular notice of the four of them, who stood awkwardly at the exit from the teleporter for a moment.

  “This is new,” Brazel said.

  N
o one answered.

  “Tempted to shoot something and see if they notice us,” Grond said a few moments later.

  “Please don’t,” a voice said from above them. They looked up to see a ‘bot hovering toward them. “Lady Remember is aware of your presence and your inconvenience. She asks that you follow me.”

  “I would like to hear the words apologizes for,” Grond said.

  “Apologizes for,” the bot replied, floating away.

  Brazel snorted.

  “That is not what I meant,” Grond said.

  “I think it is the best you can expect, however,” Asper said. This time xe picked Haakoro up, first wrapping him in his robe and then slinging him over xir shoulder, only showing the smallest bit of strain under the man’s weight.

  “Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” Grond asked.

  “He will awaken when Remember wishes him to, I suspect,” Asper answered. The three of them followed the ‘bot, which led them around the perimeter of the bridge and then into a corridor. They entered a simple meeting room, featuring a table with a holoprojector and, rather incongruously, a cot. Asper tossed Haakoro off xir shoulder and onto the cot.

  “The Lady will be with you momentarily,” the bot said, flying off. Everyone took a seat.

  They waited only a short time before Lady Remember swept into the room.

  The Lady looked much as she had the last time Brazel and Grond had seen her, her silver-white hair gathered in a loose topknot and flowing down her back, clad in a billowing robe with deep sleeves that concealed her figure almost entirely. Her hands, as they almost always were, were clasped behind her back. She took a seat at the head of the table.

  “I understand you have something for me,” she said.

  Asper glanced at Brazel, who nodded. Xe produced the statue and placed it in front of Remember, who looked at it carefully, leaning forward and examining it closely without touching it. The statue had returned to its dormant form, looking once again like a simple sphere on top of a wood base.

  “Is it back in stasis?” Brazel asked. “I don’t hear the humming anymore.”

  “It is,” Asper said.

  “That may be dispelled,” Remember said.