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

This appendage forks, one end slipping into her ear, another slipping into a tertiary port tucked under her clavicle. Both would interact with neural and optical extensions, showing the princess a rudimentary interface and giving her a look into what the symbiote network has gathered from countless pairs of eyes—simple or compound, depending on the symbiote—and woven into a format compatible with the human brain.

“It’ll take me a while,” Savita says, staying quite still, her eyes shut and twitching beneath the lids. The umbilici joining her to the nexus throbs. “We aren’t exiting via a relay, so we could be colliding with anything. A station. An asteroid. Some moon.”

“We don’t have much time, princess. Vishnu’s Leviathan has survived so long exactly because it is able to calculate spatial relations between real and lacunal, so I trust you won’t bring us into a blackhole. Can it reenter lacunal space on its own or does it need a relay?”

“It depends.”

On the astronomic conditions, on the proximity to the nearest relays and the gravitational pressure they exert. That has not changed; Anoushka files that thought away—she would have expected that aspect of it to be iterated upon, improved, but the world-beast has organic limitations. Perhaps that is one of the upgrades that will go into the larvae, another reason Nirupa bred more than one. “The AI that told you it was Erisant, did it seem sound of mind? Rational?”

“Yes. A little quiet but—please don’t distract me, Admiral.”

She pulls up her harrier’s feeds. Its sensors reach no further than just outside its bay but she should have some idea if Nirupa’s other guests have successfully escaped their suites and reached the dock. Many will not, suspecting her message for a trap. Some will attempt it and that should keep the enemy AI from doing anything drastic, like destroying the bays or cutting off airflow. Her armor can double as an environmental sheath, but she’d rather not wade through toxic fumes or rely on a finite oxygen supply.

“One more question,” she says. “Did the AI attempt to integrate into the leviathan? Did you notice any system irregularities in these last five years?”

“Not that I could tell, but I’m not an engineer. What do you mean integrate?”

“Nothing.” Yet the thought, once it’s latched on, will not leave her. A haruspex is the union between AI and human, but there’s no reason the organic half couldn’t be something else. The leviathan is not sapient but its brain is huge in size, decently plastic. A human may take a decade or more to acclimate as a pre-haruspex, adjusting to the new neural stacks and preparing for the load of a second mind. Entire systems shifted, a limbic revision. But an AI wouldn’t need to be delicate with a leviathan, might only require five years to complete the change. And this would be a surefire method to commandeer both the present world-beast and any future ones. Benzaiten, for all xer guile, may have been too late. Far too late.

“We emerge into real space in a hundred twenty-seven seconds,” Savita says, her head jerking slightly. “Accounting for margin errors.”

Anoushka makes a guess at the computations required to make that judgment. Significant, especially given the network nullifier on Savita; the leviathan itself—she is fairly sure—doesn’t offer such assistance. “You’re much better at piloting the leviathan than most, aren’t you? A real affinity for it. That’s why you are the successor and not Rajathi.”

“Mother’s love revolves around this particular talent, yes.” The princess gives a little laugh. “She’d have designated me the crown princess even if I were a complete sadist who has the servants drawn and quartered for entertainment, as long as I show aptitude with the leviathan.”

“An aptitude your sister doesn’t share.”

“Thirty-three seconds,” Savita says flatly.

She keeps her own countdown. It ticks forward, both too fast and too slow for her liking. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten.

Her overlays come online. A flood of information, messages and alerts and notifications, Amaryllis channels coruscating across her senses. She filters them out, tunneling down to priority communiques. Frantic messages from Numadesi. She reads them and replies with, I’m as safe as I can be, under the circumstances. Yes. Xuejiao turned on me—she was Erisant’s disguise. A moment’s pause before she composes the next part. If I don’t contact you within forty-eight hours, muster all available troops that you can trust and destroy Vishnu’s Leviathan. Track it through relays if you must. I want it in cinders.

My lord. On the other end Numadesi is standing inside a small, strange ship—a corvette, but not an Amaryllis one. You are to be eternal. You’ll still be conquering worlds and crushing your enemies by the time I am dust.

Anoushka smiles faintly. You’re my home, Numadesi.

“Captain Erisant is steering the leviathan to the nearest relay,” Savita is saying, her voice tense. “I’m trying to countermand em, but we won’t have forever. Admiral?

“Yes. We’ll get back to my ship or, failing that, find a place we can fortify.” Another message blinks in her vision.

This is a time of last retorts, Admiral. Benzaiten’s tone is serene all the same, amused nearly. Come rendezvous with me—I’m already onboard, I’ll explain shortly. Let’s see if we can still snatch victory from the jaw of disaster, shall we? Seung Ngo is going to be so mad.

Chapter Eight

To Numadesi’s surprise, Benzaiten’s corvette is furnished for human habitation, though it becomes less odd when one accounts for the comfort of xer human half. This is the first time in years that Numadesi has been aboard a ship that doesn’t belong to the Amaryllis, a ship that doesn’t feel like home. The difference between a hotel and one’s own residence. She tries not to think about the soldier Benzaiten killed—the number of spies and traitors Erisant seeded in the meat and marrow of the Amaryllis, a body that has been guarded against such interference for so long.

“You’re very quiet, Lady Numadesi.”

She glances over her shoulder at Benzaiten, who is cleaning xerself in a tank