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

“Because you trust in Anoushka’s judgment.”

“Yes. And so should you.” Numadesi draws from her hair a bead of red pearl and presses it into the lieutenant’s palm. “This is one of the first gifts our lord gave me. It’s now yours. Take this as a talisman for longevity. The two of us will belong to her forever.”

Chapter Three

Two hours into the voyage—all via Amaryllis relays, both for alacrity and security—Anoushka selects her clothing and instructs her wife to do the same. On Vishnu’s Leviathan, appearance is everything. To represent the Armada of Amaryllis she and Xuejiao will be decadent and sharp in the way of bespoke blades. Even her harrier, One of Sunder, will gleam like a stiletto in the dark as it approaches their destination.

For herself she chooses her signature color, that shade between gold and white, with few embellishments save dark cuff-links and platinum chains. Dichroic petals chase her collar, marking her most recent success, meaningless except to those aware of which world she erased just a few days past. The only weapon she wears openly is a single gun, long-barreled and ivory-tinted. She takes pleasure in presenting herself this way, a monochrome expanse that admits to no past, marked only by her martial accomplishment. The tailoring of her jacket and shirt is exact, fitted to her biceps and shoulders to give her the effect of living statuary. To emphasize what is already obvious: the might of her limbs, the invulnerability of her body.

Xuejiao has put on a dress that drifts around her like a living sunrise, the skirt long and slit up high—no impediment to movement, nor much left to the imagination—and painted her eyes and nails in gold. Butterflies flutter around her arms and torso, occasionally peeking up between her breasts, glimpses of crimson and purple against her porcelain glaze. “How do I look, commander?”

“Like a spring song.”

“Your spring song.” Xuejiao grins and drops into a curtsy. “I’m thinking I could be your secretary, or at any rate someone that looks harmless. More useful than disclosing I’m an active-duty soldier, wouldn’t you say?”

“It did occur to me to have you put on an act.” Anoushka beckons Xuejiao close and pulls the lieutenant into her lap. She places her hand on her lieutenant’s lithe waist, feeling the silk and the ablative membrane beneath. Deceptively delicate. “You’ll be my aide or, perhaps, a pet concubine I acquired during a campaign. What do you think?”

Xuejiao giggles and slides an arm around her. “You know which role I’ll play best. I don’t have the look of an aide—not muscular or scary enough to be one of yours. Instead I’ll look sweet and innocuous and easy to underestimate, and everyone will think I’m just a piece of furniture. Especially if I pretend to be drugged up to my ears. Concubine it is. You have a reputation to maintain.”

“My reputation, I like to think, isn’t one of ceaseless lechery. I have taken only two brides in my life, not two dozen.” Anoushka takes a tress of Xuejiao’s hair and inhales: cherry and jasmine. “I’ll have troops on standby a couple relays away; something always comes up and a bombardment threat is a sickle that slices through many knots. I will leave communications and auxiliary redundancies to you.”

They emerge into real space in good time. The leviathan comes into view. Anoushka gazes at it and waits for anger to assert, for her composure to splinter under the weight of visceral fury. But she does not feel anything; she remains as impregnable as a fortress and her control is iron. There used to be a time when she could think of nothing else, when this creature invaded her rest and her waking, encompassing them and encompassing her—constricting her dreams, binding them like a choking umbilicus. Vishnu’s Leviathan.

The biomechanical creature outsizes a dreadnought, its vacuum-adapted hide bright with golden eyes scattered along its spine. Segments of armor run along its fins, warping light where they meet the defensive aegis rings. Enormous, more capacious than most stations, greater than some moons. Scores of ship hover near the leviathan, dwarfed into clouds of gleaming hulls and thorned light. She spots the banners of Mahakala, the Vatican, the Javelin of Hellenes, more.

Vishnu traffic regulation verifies their identity and authorizes them for landing. Each ship has its own discrete berth: no bidding parties may meet and conspire at this point. They are received by a young woman—no older than forty—in filigreed lehenga choli, her throat and biceps heavy with platinum, her nose glinting with a ruby-and-gold stud.

“I am Savita, eldest daughter to Her Holy Majesty Queen Nirupa, she who is favored by the Preserver’s light.” The woman bows to them, her palms pressed together. Coils of circuitry tinkle at her ears. Peacock lenses glint over her corneas, giving her indigo irises ringed in bands of turquoise and bronze. “It is our great delight and privilege to receive the universe’s finest commander, the Alabaster Admiral herself.”

Anoushka looks at this woman and visualizes wrapping her hand around that decorated throat, the throat of Nirupa’s daughter. It is a passing thought. “The queen honors us by sending the first princess to bring us greetings,” she says. “We must be one arrival out of many today.”

“Not so many as it seems, Admiral. My mother, blessed be her name, has been selective in who we allow into our home. Of those who have petitioned to join the auction, we have admitted but one third.” A nod; more circuitry music, metal and duochrome. “You must have come a long way. I’ve personally seen to your accommodation. If anything doesn’t suit your tastes you must let me know, and I will be most pleased to show you around the dorsal decks whenever you desire.”

The dorsal decks, where all that is beautiful and glamorous is kept, the habitation of those touched by the god Vishnu’s brilliance. Anoushka continues to smile.