Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3

by Luther M. Siler

  "I'm sorry," Aisra said. "Well, no. I'm not. I did what I had to do. And that includes getting caught, although your good cops here tell me I got caught maybe later than I should have."

  Rhundi sat in the chair across from her and leaned back, one hand on her chin. "I'm going to say explain once, and the next time I have to pry I'm going to leave and have my security strip your tech and toss you off the planet," she said.

  Aisra nodded. "Okay. Look, have you heard of a guy named Parson? Parson Oterros? He's a gangster. Runs drugs, guns, all sorts of contraband. Slaves, too, I think."

  Rhundi nodded. "I'm familiar with his work. Go on."

  "He doesn't seem to like you very much," she said. "He's had me hit six other places before he'd let me come after you. I stole enough for him to turn a moon into an interstellar yacht if he wanted to. He said I had to prove myself before he'd trust I was smart enough to steal from you."

  "You did the Fourth Horizon job," Rhundi said. The Fourth Horizon was a nearby competitor. Or it had been, before Aisra had nearly cleared the place's bank accounts out a year ago. And then wiped out their insurers, just for giggles. "We'd noticed Oterros seemed to be coming into funds from somewhere. Hadn't connected it to you yet."

  "Yeah," Aisra said. "That was me. Remote job. I never even set foot in the place. They weren't being careful enough with their data transmission."

  "I don't need the details," Rhundi said. It had the sound of a warning. "And that's quite a claim for someone who just got hustled off the floor for trying to pull a jackpot out of one slot machine."

  "Like I said, I wanted to get caught," Aisra said. "Parson's watching me, but he's too damn dumb to know how I do anything I do. I needed to come inside and then not come out."

  She stared at the woman on the other side of the table. "He's got my kids," she said. "I have five. I know where he's keeping them— his security isn't good enough to keep me away— but he doesn't let me out that often, and my ship's tracked. I need someone else to go and get them for me while he's distracted. You've got a rep as someone who can be reasoned with. You get my kids back. Maybe wreck Oterros' organization a little bit while you're doing that. I get myself out of there, and I give you ninety percent of the money I've stolen over the last year. The stuff I didn't tell him about. Then I make myself and my family scarce, and you never see any of us again."

  "I'd be ashamed to ask for help rescuing my own family," Rhundi said.

  "Can't really afford pride right now," Aisra answered. "But I can afford money. Are you going to help me? One way, you beat me up and toss me off the planet and then I send you a lot of money once you've finished the job. The other way you beat me up and toss me off the planet and you don't get anything for your troubles. Or you leave me in a cell someplace, Parson hurts my kids, and you don't get anything for your troubles but you've made an enemy of me for life if I ever manage to escape."

  "That sounds threatening," Rhundi said.

  Aisra shrugged. "You're grown enough to recognize the truth when you see it. Those are your options. I'm hoping you take the one that gets you paid and wipes a competitor off the map."

  "Fill my lieutenants in, then," Rhundi said, standing up. "You have any sense of how bad Tarrysh needs to beat you up, or how long we should keep you here before she does?"

  "I'm sure we can work something out," Aisra said, heavy relief flooding her. At least part of it was because it would be Tarrysh doing the beating and not the halfogre. She didn't trust him to not accidentally kill her.

  * * *

  She was released a few days later— without a beating, surprisingly, although she'd been given a pill that had triggered bruising and muscle weakness all over her body, so she might as well have been beaten up. Probably full of nanotrackers, too, she thought, but those would have been unavoidable anyway— after all, there was no way she would have been able to escape Arradon without eating anything. She was given a small amount of money and a one-way ticket on public accommodations to a hub planet near where she'd sent Brazel and Grond. Tarrysh handled that part, glowering at her the whole way to the spaceport and coming very close to actually handcuffing her into her seat, then staying nearby and watching while the boat took off. The bastards impounded her ship. ("We'd have done that anyway," Rhundi had told her. "It'd look suspicious if we let you fly your own rig back home. Consider that the first installment on your payment if you like.")

  Luckily, they hadn't bothered to dig her tech out of her, settling for deactivating it while she was on Arradon and leaving it to her to work out how to reboot everything, which took her most of the trip. An hour after disembarking she'd robbed half a dozen local establishments of amounts small enough that they'd likely attribute them to minor accounting errors and she was reasonably flush with funds again.

  Her comm came back online with a burst of static.

  "Where the fuck are you?" Parson said.

  "Balsheon," she said. "I screwed up, Parson. You gotta give me another chance."

  An ugly laugh in her ear was the only response.

  "Stay where you're at, loser. Find a place to hole up. I'm sending some folks to pick you up. You don't want them to have a hard time finding you. There will be consequences. You understand this, right?"

  "I do," she said. "I'll find a place to stay."

  "You do that," he said. "Order room service. Don't leave again. You don't go anywhere or do anything until I let you again, you hear me?"

  "I hear you," Aisra said, and Parson dropped the connection. She allowed herself a smile. With a little luck, that would be the last conversation she'd ever have to have with him, if Brazel and Grond were good at their jobs.

  She just wished she knew how big of an if that actually was.

  She thought for a moment, and made a decision.

  What the hell. She'd help them out.

  * * *

  Luckily for Aisra, Balsheon was a reasonably well-established and wealthy planet, located conveniently at the nexus of several important trade and travel routes, and the spaceport she'd landed at, a city called Osarron, was nicely equipped to host wealthy travelers who wanted to spend some time with their boots on the ground in something like standard gravity.

  She needed a desk console and a solid comm connection, preferably somewhere where the proprietors understood that taking her money meant it was in their best interests to pay no attention to what she was doing. Using her own equipment would have been vastly preferable, but she had enough software packages stored in her own bioware that she'd be able to make do easily enough. And there were places where the name Diode still opened some doors.

  She found one in an hour. In an hour and fifteen minutes, she'd followed Parson's orders and paid for enough energy drinks and salty snacks to keep her in her room for a few days. In an hour and a half, she was remotely monitoring the compound he was keeping her children in. In two hours, she had nearly full control of the entire place, from the security to the air conditioning to the sewage system. She wasn't sure how she'd use that, but it would be fun coming up with something.

  Until then, it was time to wait. She let the sensors in her eyes pipe in the feed from the room her kids were in and settled back, pretending they were together. Her oldest son fidgeted, keeping watch over the girls. She smiled; Darnel had a protective streak a kilometer wide, and was old enough to have figured out something was wrong, if not old enough to have an idea what to do about it. She spent a few minutes thinking about strategy, wondering what Rhundi's henchmen were going to do to get her children away from Parson. Brazel and Grond hadn't seemed like the type to go in half-cocked and guns blazing. She set a few alarms to alert her if any ships requested an approach vector or if there were any security alerts, then relaxed and let herself drift off to sleep. Rhundi's husband and their halfogre just needed to get to Aisra's children before Parson's goons got to her. Then she'd worry about what happened next.

  * * *

  The security alarm woke her up after a short nap.

/>   "Time to play," she said, activating her visual feed again. There was a chance that the incoming ship wasn't Brazel and Grond, but if Parson needed to be warned about anyone else it was probably time to get her family away from him anyway.

  "Okay, Darnel," she said. "You got raised right. You're a smart kid. Show me you're paying attention." Her children were all still in the same room. All of them but Darnel were asleep or on their way there.

  She began flashing the lights in the room. Darnel sat up and looked around.

  She flashed them again. Then the lights in the corridor outside. She had access to a full map of the compound and camera access nearly everywhere. If she could just get him to follow the lights …

  He tried the door. Locked.

  "Good boy," she said. The lock, luckily, was electromagnetic, not mechanical. She killed the power to it too and watched it slide open.

  For a brief moment, she regretted not forcing him to memorize some simple blink codes. This would be a lot easier if she could directly communicate.

  Darnel stepped back into the room and looked directly into the camera. She didn't have audio, but Mom? was easy enough to lipread.

  Two more quick flashes. The girls were waking up. Darnel moved fast, making sure everyone had shoes on and collecting a few possessions from around the room.

  "Follow the flashing lights, son," she said, and—

  The feed went dead. Not just her visual feed— everything. She was completely disconnected. It was as if Parson's entire place had just ceased to exist.

  "No way," she muttered to herself. Perhaps she'd given them too much credit. Had Brazel and Grond just blown the entire damn place to bits? She backed out a step, checking her own comm connection. Had the flophouse she was squatting in cut her off? She was—

  Something exploded a couple of floors below, and the power went out. Then gunfire; what sounded like a powerful projectile weapon and something energy-based.

  Well. Suddenly her comm connection didn't matter anymore. One way or another, nearby explosions meant time to go.

  She didn't have time to wipe the console she'd been using, but the software she'd installed would burn itself out on its own the next time the machine turned on if she wasn't nearby. She looked around hurriedly, not quite panicking yet, but just on the edge of it. Was there anything she needed? No. Time to go.

  She almost made it out the door before it slid open, and she was tackled to the ground before she even had time to process who her attacker was.

  "Stay down," a voice said. She rolled, trying to throw a punch. It got her nowhere, the other person locking her elbow and putting just enough pressure on her shoulder to keep her from trying again.

  "It's Rhundi, idiot," the other person said, and the adrenaline fog cleared a bit. "Stay down. I mean it. I don't think I got all of them, and you rented a room with only one exit. That was not a good idea."

  "What do I—" she said.

  "Hush," Rhundi said, and the pressure on her shoulder abated. Rhundi pressed a gun into her hand and then got off of her, pointing silently at the corner of the room farthest from the door. Stay down, she gestured, then held up two fingers, shrugged, and changed it to three.

  Parson? she mouthed. Rhundi shook her head no.

  My kids?

  A curt gesture and no answer. Aisra swallowed hard, trying not to read anything into Rhundi's response that wasn't supposed to be there.

  They're fine. They have to be fine. She just doesn't have time to explain—

  Someone kicked the door in, and Aisra fired her gun empty in moments, not sure who she was aiming at or if she was hitting anything at all. If Rhundi was shooting too, she couldn't tell. The door slid back and forth, trying to recess into the wall but no longer able to, the mechanism screeching in protest. She couldn't see anyone or anything through the holes in the door.

  "Did I hit—" she said, and this time the door exploded, shrapnel peppering her face and shoulders, smoke filling the room. There were more shots, and she felt her ankle burst as she desperately dry-fired her empty pistol toward the door.

  And then, quiet. She blinked tears and ash out of her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on, trying to ignore the pain from her ankle. She didn't want to look. It felt bad.

  "Can you stand?" Rhundi said. Aisra looked up, her vision still blurry. Rhundi didn't look like she had so much as a scratch on her.

  "I don't know," she answered, trying to get her good leg underneath her. "I can try."

  "Parson's people are dealt with," Rhundi said. "But the local authorities are gonna be here in a minute. We need to be gone by then." She hauled Aisra to her feet. To her foot; the other one crumpled underneath her, the pain almost making her black out.

  "Shit," Rhundi said. "Darsi, make us a hole. Customer is stationary."

  Who the hell is Darsi, Aisra thought, and then something slammed through the wall behind her. There was a crash and suddenly the wall was gone, bright sunlight shining through the hole. There was a ship floating just beyond the hole. What had been her wall hung from a cable attached to the ship. They'd brought the wall down with a javelin.

  For a moment, Aisra was impressed enough that she forgot about her ankle.

  "Get the bay doors open," Rhundi said, obviously over comm. "I'm carrying her over. Get as close as you can. We don't have Grond around to just toss her to you." Without another word, she unceremoniously hauled Aisra off the floor, balancing her in a dead carry across her back.

  "If I drop you, try to roll toward the boat," she said, and then took a running leap into open air. Aisra had just enough time to scream in terror before they hit the deck, Rhundi not even losing her balance as she carried Aisra toward the med bay. At least, she hoped that's where they were going.

  "Get moving," Rhundi yelled into the comm. "I'm heading toward the cockpit."

  Oh. Well, at least she got to come along for the ride.

  A moment later, the ship bucked and she hit the floor, a loud crash sounding from outside.

  "What the hell was that?" she asked Rhundi, who was climbing to her feet herself, a trickle of blood dripping from her nose.

  "DARSI!" Rhundi bellowed, loudly enough that the comm was probably unnecessary. "Did you just forget to drop that fucking piece of wall?"

  "Sorry, Mom," a voice said over the shipwide comm. "Maybe get up here and yell at me later? I could use a copilot and maybe a gunner."

  It's her daughter. She actually brought her own daughter out here.

  "Come on," Rhundi said, pulling Aisra to her feet again. "We're not done with this yet." She half-assisted, half-carried Aisra to the cockpit, her shattered ankle leaving a trail of blood behind them. There were four seats in the cockpit, three sized for gnomes and one much, much too big. Rhundi dumped her into one in the back and yanked a medkit off the wall, tossing it to her.

  "Fix your foot," she said. "Do the best you can. Then get the console in front of you up and running. We're gonna try to get out of here without any more bloodshed but I may need you to shoot somebody down. You ever been a gunner before?"

  "I've never killed anyone before," Aisra answered. "Until today, I guess."

  "You didn't even shoot anybody today. Your aim is terrible. But let's not celebrate yet. Hurry up." She turned to her daughter, who looked to Aisra's eyes to not be much older than her son— and therefore not nearly old enough to be flying the ship. Aisra decided to do what she was told and buckled herself into the seat, then cracked the medkit open and wrapped the pack inside it around her ankle. The pain lessened immediately. She felt the boat accelerate as she was pushed back into her seat slightly.

  "You ready?" Rhundi said. "We're being followed. You don't need to blow anybody up but making them keep their distance is probably a good idea. Our boat's faster, we'll outrun 'em in a minute."

  "How do I—" she started to ask, and then the controls in front of her reconfigured themselves into a gunnery interface. There were three smaller skiffs chasing them. She picked the
first one and fired a few tentative shots at it. One of them lit up their shields; the others missed.

  "Maybe coulda not shot first," Rhundi said, as the other two skiffs opened fire on them.

  "I thought that's what you wanted!" Aisra yelled, starting to panic.

  "I just said make them keep their distance," Rhundi snapped. "Not the same thing!"

  "Both of you shut up," Darsi said, and they accelerated out of Balsheon's atmosphere. Aisra fired a few more shots toward the skiffs, coming nowhere near any of them. One of them fired what looked like a missile. Laserfire lanced out from the ship and blew it to pieces before it got too close.

  "I didn't do that," Aisra said. "Did you do that?"

  "Yeah," Rhundi said. "I'm not sitting here doing nothing, y'know." Then, to her daughter: "We're set on tunnelspace. Jump when you're ready."

  Aisra's entire body shimmered, and the viewscreen in front of her blanked out as the ship jumped.

  * * *

  "So … what now?" Aisra asked a few minutes later. Darsi and Rhundi had busied themselves with the boat since jumping to tunnelspace, and neither of them had spoken to her.

  "We're on the way," Rhundi said. "There was a bit of a setback. Parson may be a bit smarter than you'd given him credit for. By the time Grond and Brazel got to him he'd split, and we're pretty sure the mercs he sent after you weren't supposed to bring you back home. They're running him to ground but they don't have him just yet." There was just the faintest edge of derision in her voice.

  Aisra took a moment to try and slow her racing heart. "Please tell me my kids are OK," she said, just on the border of tears. I will not cry in front of her. I won't.

  "We think so," Rhundi said. "Brazel said he thinks Parson will keep everyone safe and alive until he's certain they won't provide him with any more leverage. They're fine so long as they can do him some good."