Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (read me a book .TXT) 📕

Two hundred and fifty-nine parties, in total, have petitioned to board Vishnu’s Leviathan. Most were denied outright for lacking the funds—Queen Nirupa has not published a specific minimum, but must have taken the financial statuses of each polity or mercenary organization into account. Anoushka pans around the snapshot she took of a Vatican ship—shaped like a winged seraph, tasteless she thinks—and a frigate from the Diamond Republic of Da Nang. It doesn’t appear the Nova Legion is going to make a bid; Benzaiten has done her the courtesy of sending live updates, recent up to twelve hours ago.

Xuejiao cocks her head. “I don’t want to sound jealous, Admiral, but Lady Numadesi must be working overtime to compile all this. I thought I was one of your intelligence chiefs.”

A reasonable enough deduction; Anoushka doesn’t usually source her intelligence externally. “We’ve been between relays. One must divide the labor on occasion.”

Her lieutenant skims the list and pushes away from the wall. “The Vatican will be too busy feuding with the Catania Protectorate—I was investigating them for something else; they excommunicated the Catanians over one minor liturgical point or another. So that should keep two factions out of your hair.” She ticks her fingers off. “Beyond that, there are five polities and organizations whose leadership want you dead.”

“And eight or twelve whose leadership prefers me very much alive. Decent odds.” Anoushka folds her hands. “Queen Nirupa’s security is soft. They haven’t fought for years and I’d be surprised if they have worked on anything more challenging than beating unarmed servants. If her prospective customers come to blows, her forces will be completely useless at containing incidents.”

Her lieutenant makes a soft hmm and crosses her arms. “Then she’d be extraordinarily stupid to have let in this many well-armed foreigners.”

“There is a prohibition against anything bigger than a handgun, and no cyborg armed beyond a certain threshold.” Anoushka watches the lines of Xuejiao’s dress undulate, notes with interest when the high slit parts and grants her a revelation of muscled thighs and cabled calves. “Beyond that, she’s not entirely a fool. This place wouldn’t have survived this long otherwise. The corridors here—and the rooms, such as the one we are in—can seal and trap troublemakers, and of course she can cut off their oxygen supply. Granular control is a handy thing. In essence, the people in here are hostages. If that is what it comes to.”

“You really,” Xuejiao says with a sigh, “should have sent one of us, Admiral. Not come here yourself.”

“Fieldwork can be a challenge, and this is a more stimulating challenge than most. Why hoard all the fun to yourself, Xuejiao?”

Xuejiao makes a face. Then she smirks. “I concede the point, Admiral. Speaking of fun, are you going to put a collar and a leash on me any time soon? We really ought to look the part.”

In the observation room it is frigid; in the cell below, two soldiers are strapped to restraining cradles, their skin dark where paralytics have been injected. Their overlays have been cut off, their network implants disabled and their augments suppressed. Numadesi has read their profiles—both are young, forty-seven and fifty-two respectively. One is openly weeping, gagging on their own saliva and mucus. The other has the distant look of someone who has resigned themselves to the inevitable; has already withdrawn into the recesses of the mind where what impends will happen to someone else, or to flesh that they no longer associate with. In her years in the Amaryllis she has seen all kinds, has catalogued the reactions to the finale privately; has contemplated them, should her turn one day come.

No matter the rank or experience, the end terrifies. The human instinct to continue. To not yield, as yet. To wring another minute out, another second.

Executing saboteurs is not usually Numadesi’s purview, but these two have piqued her interest. She reexamines a view of their faces, close up. One was recruited by Xuejiao, the other by Numadesi herself and so a particular disappointment. No relationship or alliance exists between the two recruits and the reports—and scans of their overlays—indicate that they maintained active communication with different factions that regard the Amaryllis as an enemy. Clear-cut enough. And yet. Numadesi has been with the Armada for decades, functioning in this liminal capacity, not an officer but empowered to authorize certain decisions in her lord’s absence. In this time, she has developed a specialized hunch: pattern recognition honed to a surgical edge.

She browses the list of traitors put to death in the last ten years. Half a dozen spymasters—including Xuejiao—screen new recruits and assess current officers, meticulously check-and-balancing each other. The final decision belongs to the admiral herself. It is an exhaustive system and for the most part it has served the Amaryllis well. She studies the roster, looking at which execution has been initiated by whom, which behaviors were flagged as suspicious. But it is an enormous amount of data, and as good as Amaryllis heuristics are, they are not true AIs and she won’t be able to get through this in a single day or even several.

“Lady Numadesi?”

The soldier behind her is not impatient exactly: ze knows perfectly well Numadesi’s position, and though some resent her for the authority she wields while having little combat experience, they also know she is instrumental to the Armada’s administration. But ze has a task to do and a full day of duties ahead—even during the fleet’s fallow period there are a thousand intricate moving parts that need attending. She pulls up the soldier’s profile. “You’re due for a shore leave, aren’t you, Corporal? I understand you’ll be heading home for a visit.” Unusual for Amaryllis troops, most of whom have made the fleet their home and who have—for one reason or another—severed attachment to their places of nativity, their kin and former lives. This corporal has a large family who subsists almost entirely on zer Amaryllis wages. “Allow me to give you a little extra stipend. It is