Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (e books free to read txt) 📗

the long convalescence from having every bone broken and reknitted, every artery sundered and rebound, nearly every organ regrown and adrenal gland rearranged. To be remade, to be born anew, her cerebral cortex cleansed of leviathan influence. No trace of history stays, not even on her face. Outwardly she says, “Why not update the biomechanical suite? Change the accesses and the receptor arrays.” But she already knows why.

“It’s impossible. The leviathan is part animal, you can’t update a whale or a wolf, you can only . . . retrain it, and that takes much longer.”

A flash of intuition. “The leviathan larvae, how many of them are in gestation?”

Savita seems to stop breathing. Anoushka can almost hear the judder of the girl’s heart; expects that if she touches the side of Savita’s neck, lover-soft, she would feel the princess’ pulse spasming at triple speed. Carotid percussion. “I’m not privileged with that information.”

Anoushka nearly laughs. “I’ll pretend I believe that. Something went wrong, didn’t it, with all the deal-making and negotiating? Nirupa hired someone to protect her before she came to me begging, promising a different larva to them. But that went south. She was double-crossed or else the very person she hired is responsible for the agriculture incident, for the assassination attempt, and for the attack on me. In fact I know precisely who it is.” Not the Nova Legion—none of this fits their patterns. Factoring in everything, assuming the Seven-Sung Fleet was able to hoard resources over years that they’ve wholesale committed to this, this is much more their style. Erisant’s style. She takes mental inventory of where her troops are stationed and the most recent reported Seven-Sung activities. She can make retaliation both thorough and swift. To Xuejiao she transmits, It is the Seven-Sung Fleet after all.

The princess’ muscles are as stiff as rusted steel. “Then you’ll help us?”

“Will I? My interest in the larva is much less than you think.”

“Why are you here, Admiral, if the larva presents no value to you?”

“Why indeed?” She could say I’m the one asking questions here and make a show of ushering the princess out of her ship, then undocking for departure. “The reasons are self-evident; I will not belabor them. This person Queen Nirupa engaged for services and who turned against her, how much access to Vishnu’s Leviathan have they gained?” Probably not its imprint, the one that is central to the world-beast’s obedience: that is difficult to reverse-engineer, exactly because it is essentially analog. The quirk that should have proofed the leviathan against tampering.

“Some.” Savita is breathing fast again. “They don’t have the surveillance or the symbiont subsystem. No access to steerage, none to the uppermost decks.”

Not much concern for the lowest decks, even though they hold so much of what is essential. Sear the ventral half and the leviathan itself would fail. “I can work with it. As for the other part of my compensation, I gave my word to your mother I’ll return you to her whole in mind and body, but that definition leaves a lot of room. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“What does that . . . ”

Anoushka presses her thumb to the princess’ chin. She curves her other hand around Savita’s throat—it is a delicate thing, this throat, a gracile stem that she can snap without effort. She strokes over the collar’s cool metal, rests the heel of her palm against Savita’s pulse. The girl is panting.

“Does danger,” Anoushka whispers, “excite you?”

Savita trembles, mute. Her pupils are dilated. Fear and desire, Anoushka thinks, a heady alchemy. She runs her fingernail over Savita’s clavicles and the princess jolts as though grazed by the tip of a knife. Those enormous eyes with their peacock lenses flutter shut. “Please,” the princess says.

“Please what, Your Highness? Did you imagine yourself in Xuejiao’s place as I toyed with her?” Anoushka flexes her hand, makes the pressure felt on the thin skin of the throat. “Did you visualize yourself at the end of a leash so I may lead you across your little garden, command you to lie down in the grass and open yourself for my pleasure? You’re a princess. It must be difficult to find a partner who’d help you achieve such fantasies.”

The princess’ hands grip the armrests, fingers clawing into them as though this is her single line to life. “Admiral.” Her exhalation whistles through her teeth. Her voice is low and hitched, almost hypnotized. “Yes.”

Anoushka abruptly lets go of Savita. “Perhaps one day you’ll find just such a person to master you, one who’ll deem your begging sufficient and who’ll have you the way you want. Sadly I find my wives most satisfactory, most exquisite, and have no need for a plaything as fragile and unseasoned as you are.”

Savita bolts upright, eyes and mouth wide open. She begins to speak—to snarl, to vent her outrage at this spurning.

Anoushka’s overlays snap offline.

Or rather her non-local connections do. Everything beyond the immediate digital vicinity is gone: no Amaryllis channels, no secure lines, no public broadcast from nearby major polities. From Xuejiao’s expression, her overlays have just been subjected to the same. “Lieutenant,” she says.

“Admiral.” Her lieutenant has extended her armor, is in the process of checking her ammunition. “I stuck a panoptic swarm into the leviathan’s orbit when we docked. Unless it’s completely broken, it just reported to me that Vishnu’s Leviathan has entered lacunal space. In a region that’s not networked, too.”

Anoushka straightens, activating her own armor. “Princess, was that supposed to happen?”

“No. No, it’s not . . . ” She stands and sways. Catches herself, with effort. “This shouldn’t be happening, the queen didn’t—why would she? This would trap us here with our enemy and cut us off from help or evacuation.”

“Sudden madness,” Anoushka suggests as she extends the reach of the harrier’s sensors, sweeping the dock and the adjacent corridor. Nothing amiss, for now. “She’s quite senior in years, as I understand. Cognitive functions can begin declining at that age despite anti-agathic treatments.”

“You will not disrespect my mother.”

“You will find I may do whatever I please.” Up