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

distances between them. She rejected that makeshift religion. To her it was obvious, from the start, that the only path to light—to a human existence—would lie within herself. And so it did, and so she gave it pursuit.

Often she obsessed over chrysalises, over metamorphosis from pupa to imago. It was a seductive analogy and she latched onto it as soon as she gained the vocabulary, even though she knew it wasn’t a precise one. Brutalization is not a method: it is random, mindless. She is not tempered by it; she is who she is in spite of it.

Their descent speeds up and it is now that her natal years return, the visceral memory, those indelible neural pathways that refuse overwriting. How deep they have etched into her being: she believed herself free of it, that she would cut cleanly through the leviathan, a star-hot lance through ancient rot.

“I want to live,” Savita says softly. “I know you hate me, Admiral, but you do require me. A little, at least.”

“A little,” she says noncommittally. “I repay in kind what is done for me, and I do need you alive.”

The lift disgorges them into a tunnel that makes no pretense at chrome and glass and plastic: here it is deeply mortal, the ground slithering under them, everything warm and spiced with the leviathan’s lymph. Symbiotes cluster thick like larvae in a beehive, chittering and singing to each other. Once she had the organs necessary to understand their language, a lexicon of basic signals and primitive instincts.

The reek of meat and redness grows. She always found it odd that the leviathan’s insides don’t smell so different from a human’s when outwardly it looks so reptilian.

Savita stops, frowning. “This is near the damaged area. It’s not accessible, Admiral. There’s nothing there but a wreck.”

Anoushka sights down a glimmer of leopard gold that is visible to her alone. “No, we’re where we should be.”

Savita’s bioaccesses release each blockade and gateway. Barriers iris open, unclenching like spasming muscles. And then they are inside the sealed deck where the ground has blistered black, the leviathan tissue is inert and parched—the color and look of impacted ash. The princess treads with care, her nose wrinkling at the smell of decay. There is little light here. Anoushka’s sensors shift their range, giving her a view in wireframes and monochromes, spatial indicators and collision paths.

They venture down a hallway of withered symbiotes. Here the ubiquitous beast-hum is nearly silent and oxygen level is lower, though not yet beyond comfortable range. Anoushka briefly wonders why Nirupa has not had it repaired then realizes the queen couldn’t afford it. This deck’s destruction meant a drastic drop in personnel, in power, in recyclable material.

The leopards dissipate. Something creaks within a mass of shredded hull and desiccated tissue. A hand shoots out, angular and stark white in Anoushka’s vision. Another hand follows, then another and another. By the time Benzaiten’s proxy fully emerges, it stands nearly three meters tall, the chest bulbous and the waist waspish. Four slim, multi-jointed arms on the upper body, and two legs on the lower, both attached by gyroscope joints that let them rotate at angles impossible for any organic limbs.

“My apologies for looking less humanoid than usual.” Xe tucks in two of the lower arms, folding until they disappear into xer chassis. “I built this proxy in case I need to endure harsh conditions or defy gravity a little. Excellent to see you again, Admiral. Princess Savita, we haven’t met, but rest assured that I’m a friend. Follow me and we’ll adjourn to a more fortified spot.”

Benzaiten leads the way to a collapsed passage and dislodges pieces of debris as though they weigh no more than seafoam. “It’s perfectly safe,” xe says.

The room beyond used to be an infirmary, one meant to accommodate failing servants. The roughness of the cots makes it evident this wasn’t for ranked personnel or citizens. Illumination still functions, anemic and stuttering. The ground is deeply grimed, hemorrhage or vomit or worse, indistinguishable now from the muck of dead symbiotes. Savita steps gingerly as though she fears the filth might stain her shoes, but she does not object when Anoushka asks her to stay in what was once the physician’s office. Anoushka intends to discuss with Benzaiten subjects that she does not care to let the princess, or anyone else, hear.

“I had to remove a few corpses and clean up before I took over this little refuge.” Benzaiten folds xerself nearly double, sitting on the floor. Xer consonants slide slick and xer vowels susurrate like watered silk. The proxy’s eyes glow with a fine, webbed radiance, as if dusted by bioluminescent pollen. “Good news first. The leviathan’s architects wired life support right into it, so Seung Ngo can’t turn the whole system off, it’ll cease only when the beast itself dies. This does mean they can still selectively cut off areas from oxygen, but that’s still better than the alternative. And Seung Ngo isn’t dealing too well with integrating the leviathan into themselves—messy, as you might expect of trying to become one with something that can’t even think. The very idea. The disrespect, it’s a perversion of the haruspex process, they’re spiting me specifically.”

“I take it you didn’t account for this when you helped invent the haruspex tech.”

Xe puts one white hand on an obsidian hip, inasmuch as the proxy has a pelvis. “I didn’t help. I invented the entire thing. In any case, it took them this long to merge with the leviathan because they had to make changes subtly, weave themselves into the world-beast a little at a time. Otherwise during those rare times Vishnu’s Leviathan entered real space and went online, Seung Ngo’s signature would show up on outbound signals. I’d have found out. The rest of the Mandate would have found out, and Seung Ngo wanted to keep this quiet even from Shenzhen. I’d say they met Erisant some time after you defeated the Seven-Sung and conspired together. To keep