"I don't like this," Grond said.
"Yell at me later," Darsi said. "For right now, show me where the infirmary is and let's figure out how to keep xir alive and unconscious."
"Give me that," Grond grunted, taking the body away from Darsi. "You act like you've never been on the damn boat before. Over here." He led her to the infirmary, moving quickly. That was another big difference between this ship and the old Nameless. The old one's medbay was basically a couch that swung down from the wall and a small closet. This boat had an actual infirmary, with room for more than one person to be hurt and everything. It was practically decadent by comparison.
Grond dropped Relict on a bed in the infirmary and strapped xir down, then pushed a couple of buttons in a wall console and a dome snapped down over the bed.
"Namey, you heard the girl. Healing and unconscious. We can do that for an elf, right?"
PROVIDED THAT THE ELF HAS NO MAGICAL MEANS TO FOOL MY SENSORS, YES, the boat replied. YOU MAY BE AWARE THAT THIS IS THE FIRST BENEVOLENCE AGENT WE HAVE PROVIDED MEDICAL CARE FOR. WE SHOULD HAVE A PARTY.
"Figure out the right drinks and we will," Grond said. "Meantime, lock … hell, lock everything. The bed, the infirmary, any doors between the infirmary and us. Xe wakes up and gets out of that bed, I want all the oxygen in the infirmary pumped into the atmosphere and then the room filled with acid. You understand?"
I LACK THE CAPACITY TO—
"I said do you understand?"
YES SIR.
Grond turned his attention back to Darsi. "Where's the Debut?"
"On its way back to where I left it," she said. "Can we pick it up along the way or do we need to land again?"
"Along the way," Grond said. "C'mon, you're pilot. I don't fit in the damn chair."
"Wait, really?" Darsi said.
"No," Grond said. "But you're in the chair. I'm piloting. May need you to shoot somebody, though." The Nameless had been specially outfitted for Brazel and Grond to fly. Grond's seat was behind and above Brazel's, and Brazel generally flew the ship. Clearly the chair didn't actually matter and either seat could pilot.
They both dropped into their chairs, Darsi securing her pack next to the chair and then adjusting her dad's straps to keep herself in place. "I've still got the package, too, by the way. The guy I was delivering too was dead."
"I know," Grond said. "Listening in, remember?"
"Yeah, and remind me to hit you for that later," she said.
"Am I not saving your ass right now?"
"Not really," she said. "I took out the guy shooting at us and captured a Benevolence agent. Have you ever captured a Benevolence agent?"
No answer from behind her.
"The Debut is incoming," Grond said. "I'm going to lock it down outside the Nameless so that we don't have to stay in atmosphere while we dock it. There anything on there you need?"
"No," she said. A few minutes later, she felt a thunk as the Debut was magnetically locked to the outside of the Nameless.
"Once we're clear of the planet, we'll head into tunnelspace," Grond said. "Unless you have any reason to stay in the neighborhood."
"Nothing I can think of," she said. "Our contacts are both dead and as far as I know the person who killed them is on board. Unless you feel like trying to fix an environmental nightmare we can take off."
"Not my problem right now," he said. "What's as far as I know mean?"
Darsi outlined the entire story for Grond, filling in all of the details his surveillance had missed.
"So if it wasn't Relict who killed Fahrhad, it's a completely separate party, and that person hasn't had any reason to reveal themselves. I mean, he was working out of a brothel. Maybe he's got an angry ex-wife or something. But that doesn't explain why Relict was going to leave his head in the Debut. It had to have been xir. Otherwise, what, she found it and thought I might want it for my collection?"
Grond snorted. "Okay. I'm convinced. Now explain why xe's on my ship instead of lying on the floor of the Shaft with a hole in xir forehead."
"Because Mom's got a leak somewhere," Darsi said. "I think that helmet's the one you found. And Mom didn't bother telling me why she sent me to deliver the thing to Fahrhad, and Fahrhad is too dead to explain why he wanted it or why he didn't tell his brother it was coming. Mom thought Kerron was involved or she wouldn't have let him unlock the box. So maybe Fahrhad lied to her about something. Either way, Relict found out from somebody that the helmet was heading to Untkaar, and xe obviously wanted it back."
Darsi thought for a few more seconds. "And, honestly, looking at how unhealthy Relict seems to be, xe may have needed it back. Taking Fahrhad out may have been taken the last bits of strength xe had left. I … I put the thing on for a second, during the fight at the Shaft. The rush was incredible. Xe may have had just enough juice left to survive a fight with an ogre and then lost it when xe attacked the Shaft the second time. Xe'd already collapsed when the ogres got to xir. Relict hasn't woken up since. We need to know what xe knows."
"Good job," Grond said. "Rhundi made the right call letting you handle this."
Do not smile, Darsi thought, and felt her face disobeying her. Do not giggle, she thought, and only barely won that fight.
The Nameless trying to drop out from underneath her as the shields absorbed a hit from something wiped the look off her face.
"Namey! What the fuck was that?" Grond shouted.
A SINGLE SPIDERSHIP JUST CAME OUT OF THE PLANET'S SHADOW, the ship responded. IT OPENED FIRE IMMEDIATELY. THAT WAS A MISSILE. SEVERAL MORE INCOMING.
"You didn't see it?"
I HAD TIME TO ACTIVATE AND ANGLE THE SHIELDS PROPERLY. YOU ARE NOT DEAD. MAY WE FIGHT BACK NOW?
"Dars, you're gunner," Grond said. "Tell me right now if that's a problem."
"How come there's only one?" she said, bringing up the Nameless' combat interface. She'd only simulated ship-to-ship combat a few times, but the Nameless was a warship. It technically probably didn't even need her assistance to fight back.
SPIDERSHIP IS UNOCCUPIED, Namey said.
"It's Relict's," Darsi said. "It's coming after its owner."
"Blow it out of the sky," Grond said, unbuckling himself. "I'm going to go move that recovery pod into somewhere where xe can't send a signal. There's gotta be some hardware in xir head or something like that. Namey, we don't die until I get back."
ACKNOWLEDGED.
Darsi had already shot down two of the missiles. The third missed as the Nameless spun crazily out of its way and the fourth bounced harmlessly off the ship's shields to explode a few kilometers away. A second round of fire incinerated the surviving missile as it attempted to regain a target lock, and Darsi turned her attention to the spidership. Spiderships were standard-issue Benevolence single-passenger fighters. They had eight arms, each of which could either be used for assault or maneuverability, but not both at the same time. This meant that a spidership in evasive mode could be insanely difficult to target but not terribly dangerous, but that one bent on destruction was incredibly formidable.
This one was firing at her with three arms, and was mostly missing the target, the shields soaking up the rest. No further missiles were launched, either. It was using two arms to fly. The others …
Two of the others were missing. One hung off the ship, only moving in reaction to the spidership's movement, completely dead.
"The ship's a piece of junk," Darsi said, easily catching it in a target lock. Grond and Brazel had spent their entire careers fleeing at the mere thought of a Benevolence spidership being nearby. And she was about to destroy one on her first mission.
The Nameless' guns erupted, and the spidership was reduced to powder. A few moments later, Darsi felt the entire boat shudder as they leapt into tunnelspace. Short of a blockship between them and Arradon, they were safe for a while.
"Grond?" she said over shipwide comm. "I got it. Everything okay back there?"
"Yeah," he said. "Your buddy had a seizure when xir ship died.
The capsule's trying to contain it. I'm putting xir in a shielded berth until we're home. Any more surprises?"
"We're in tunnelspace, if you didn't notice." The feeling of shifting into and out of tunnelspace was pretty subtle so long as you were doing it on purpose. If Grond was distracted with Relict, he likely hadn't felt it.
"Thanks," the halfogre responded. "Go find a bunk and relax. I think you've earned it."
Darsi started to unbuckle herself from the pilot's seat, then stopped.
Nah.
She would stay a pilot a while longer. It was a feeling she wanted to get used to.
* * *
Inheritance
"Explain this to me one more time," Rhundi said. She rubbed her temple as she said it. There was a headache of rather epic proportions coming on, and this job sounded complicated.
"I need you to find an urn," the dwarf sitting across from her said. His name was Xyl. Usually male dwarves who escaped the matriarchy changed their names. This one, for whatever reason, hadn't.
"One urn," Rhundi said.
"Yes. About half a meter high," he replied.
"And this urn is located where?"
"I have rough coordinates," he said.
"How rough?"
"I can pin it down to a system. I think."
"You think you can pin down the location of an object the size of my head to somewhere in an entire system."
"That's correct," he said. Xyl was the first dwarven male Rhundi had ever met who she could use the word smarmy to describe. This was new.
"And what's in the urn?"
"The cremains of my mother, Starlight-in-the-Darkness, and my grandmother, Color-of-Rushing-Water."
"And you want to pay me to help you find those cremains," she said. "This is the part where you need to provide me more detail."
"My money isn't good enough?" he asked.
Rhundi glared at him, altering her tone. "You're in my office on my planet right now, asking for my help. I don't need you or have any reason to care what happens to you, and I suspect someone very much wants you returned to the fold. You will show me more respect or I will have my employees return you to the nearest dwarf planet. Quite possibly in chains."
Xyl held her gaze for a moment longer, then lowered his eyes. "I apologize," he said. "I need your help. I am doing a poor job of asking for it."
"You are, yes," she agreed. "Answer all my questions and I will consider forgiving you for it. I don't believe a rogue male is simply interested in retrieving the ashes of his ancestors. There is something else going on here. Tell me what it is."
"There is something else in the urn," he said.
"Now we're getting somewhere," Rhundi said. "And that is?"
"A nanocloud that unlocks a vault."
"And in the vault?"
"Enough wealth to buy a small planet."
Rhundi's headache disappeared.
"Keep talking," she said.
"My grandmother was … fertile," he said. "Or at least very interested in a large family. You probably already know that wealthy dwarves rarely actually gestate their children inside their own bodies. My grandmother was no exception, and her wealth gave her … well, I'll say more opportunities than most. My mother has twenty-four sisters and another twenty-five brothers, one to serve as seneschal for each of the sisters. Those twenty-four sisters have a hundred and seven offspring. Of those, fifty-six are female and I believe there are at least two other rogue males. Which means that there are at least 83 other people searching for the urn. As one of the rogue males, you can easily imagine that I am not interested in being located by my aunts or my cousins. So I need … well, we'll say agents to do the search for me."
"And you don't think showing up with the nanocloud to unlock the vault will lead to trouble?"
"On the contrary, I'm certain it will," he said. "But the cloud will adapt its sequence to the first of us to touch it. Which means that if I reach it first, no one in my family can take it from me or open the vault with it. That buys me some leverage."
"This is a ridiculous way of handling an inheritance, you know," Rhundi said.
"Grandmother was eccentric, and mother more so," he said. "My mother was the oldest and should have expected to inherit nearly everything anyway. I think she only went along with Grandmother's wishes because she thought she would outlive the old woman and could simply take the cloud for herself. Instead, they both died in the same raid. And it is not all of her fortune. Just enough to ensure that whoever finds it controls the lineage."
Xyl sat up in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. "I would very much like to be the one who controls the lineage. I suspect you understand why."
"I do," Rhundi said. "Give my secretary the details of the location and ask him to set you up with a suite for the next few weeks. We will see what we can do for you."
"I thank you," the dwarf said, standing up and bowing.
* * *
APPROACHING THE 5254SDO SYSTEM, the Nameless said as it slipped out of tunnelspace. Dwarves were notoriously unsentimental about place names, and only the oldest of their planets had names that most of the Known Races would recognize as "normal." Xyl had identified a planet in this system as being a possible location for the urn, so Brazel and Grond headed there first.
"What are we looking at?" Grond asked.
"Six planets in the system," Brazel answered. "Two gas giants, three terrestrials, and an iceball too small and far away to matter. The third terrestrial is the only one worth living on; that's 5254SDO-3. Somewhere in this mess is a very tiny object moving very quickly that we've been hired to locate. Care to speculate on how we're going to do that?"
FOUND IT, Namey said.
Grond started laughing. "Well, that was easy. Can we go home now?"
"And how did you find it?" Brazel asked.
THERE ARE CURRENTLY TWO DOZEN SHIPS OF DWARVEN MAKE IN ORBIT OR NEAR PROXIMITY TO 5254SDO-5. I THINK IT IS REASONABLE TO BELIEVE THEY ARE SEARCHING FOR THE URN OR HAVE ALREADY FOUND IT AND ARE COMPETING TO CAPTURE IT.
"Any of them seem to have noticed us yet?"
NO. THEY APPEAR TO BE CHASING SOMETHING IN ORBIT AROUND THE PLANET.
"Chasing? Match velocity and pull up alongside. Easy. How fast is the thing moving?"
IT APPEARS TO BE PLAYING KEEPAWAY.
"Did the dwarf mention the urn being powered?" Brazel asked.
HE DID NOT.
Grond was still laughing. "So we need to grab a piece of ceramic moving, what, a few thousand kilometers an hour, that keeps changing direction whenever anyone gets close to it, and we need to do it with how many other ships trying to grab it at the same time?"
TWENTY-FOUR PRECISELY. CORRECTION: TWENTY-THREE. THEY HAVE BEGUN SHOOTING AT EACH OTHER.
"So much for family," Grond said.
"It wouldn't surprise me if they all hate each other," Brazel said. "Throwing the majority of your clan's wealth to the winner of a contest is not the action of a family-oriented matriarch. That's vicious."
"So you're splitting everything evenly when you and Rhundi die, huh?"
Brazel grinned. "If only because Darsi would eat all of her siblings if we tried to pull a move like this. It's no fun when there's no contest."
"There's a reason she's my favorite," Grond said.
TWENTY SHIPS REMAINING. THE COMBAT IS SPREADING.
"You're kidding," Brazel said. "Can we get it on viewscreen?"
The viewscreen zoomed into a close-up of 5254SDO-3, and Brazel and Grond watched as a cloud of angular dwarven boats blew the hell out of each other.
"I pick that one," Grond said, highlighting one of the ships. "It's the biggest. Looks heavily armed."
"I pick this one," Brazel said, pointing at a single ship that had pulled out of the combat entirely. "Smart enough to back off and let everybody else destroy each other. Either that or—"
The ship disappeared from the viewscreen.
YOUR CHOICE HAS JUMPED TO TUNNELSPACE, Namey said.
"Think she's got the urn?" Grond said.
"Roll the video back a couple of minutes," Brazel said. "Highlight that one boat. Where's it go?"
The two watched as the ship, initially toward the front of the pack, dove underneath the explosion caused by the first hostilities. It juked to the right, slowed down for a moment, then abruptly wheeled and left orbit.
"It left before the rest of the shooting started," Brazel said. "And nobody noticed because everyone else joined in so fast."
"They've got the damn urn," Grond said.
"Namey, figure out where they went," Brazel said. "And follow them. We're faster than that boat, aren't we?"
PROBABLY, Namey said, his engines powering up.
* * *
They spent only a few minutes in tunnelspace before the Nameless suggested exiting.
THE OUTERMOST PLANET IN THE 5254SDO SYSTEM IS PRECISELY ALONG THE PATH THEY CHOSE, Namey said. AND IT IS FAR ENOUGH FROM THE STAR THAT IT IS REASONABLE TO HAVE JUMPED TO REACH IT.
"Get some distance from it," Brazel said. "I'd prefer they not notice us right away if we can avoid it."
UNDERSTOOD. A moment later, Brazel felt the telltale shimmer in his bones as the boat dropped out of tunnelspace.
FOUND THEM, Namey said. THE SHIP IS IN LOW ORBIT AROUND 5254SDO-6.
"Why stop?" Grond said. "Why not take the thing straight back home?"
"Xyl said that there were other rogues looking for the urn," Brazel said. "Maybe those guys aren't dwarves. The boat looks dwarven, though."
"Loaner ship, maybe?" Grond said. "There's no reason—"
There was a flash on the viewscreen, and the ship began noticeably listing to one side.
"That's not good," Grond said.
"Hail them," Brazel said. "Find out what happened."
THEIR SYSTEMS ARE COMPLETELY NEUTRALIZED, Namey said. NAVIGATION, LIFE SUPPORT, COMMUNICATIONS, EVERYTHING. THE SHIP IS CAUGHT IN 5254SDO-6's GRAVITY. IT WILL CRASH BEFORE WE REACH IT.
"Is it going to survive descent?" Brazel asked.
Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3 Page 8