Shall Machines Divide the Earth by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (list of e readers txt) 📕

Ouru has ceded one of zer Assembly overrides to me, giving me two in total to work with. I briefly explored them while we were preparing in the fortress: they showed me the quantity of available material, and how much two Assembly commands would allow me to utilize. Daji explained its functions to me, and when I bring Assembly online I find it not unlike piloting reconnaissance swarms. For now I leave it dormant.

I know what the override does in theory, but seeing it in action is different. The command draws from Libretto’s architecture, letting the user reshape the material of buildings and streets. Ouru has chosen excess—ze has hoarded this specific command—and ze summons from the ground itself goliath beasts, hammer-headed, mobile battering rams that mass and move toward Chun Hyang’s fortress in a silver tide. They’re almost soundless despite their size. I’ve never seen anything like it.

On my part I move on foot, Daji close to me as we navigate Libretto’s skeleton. The Cenotaph alone stands intact, shielded in a wide radius by an aegis maze. I wonder if Wonsul is in there, watching this the way humans watch dramas; whether he is bored by a spectacle that must have repeated many times. Or maybe he finds comfort in the predictable. Plenty of people read the same books over and over, even if they know the prose and plot by heart.

I imagine what that’s like for duelists who participate repeatedly, like Ostrich does, locked in this fatal cycle until finally it ends them.

But I have no room for such considerations. On the far side of the city, Chun Hyang’s fortress is done arming. Daji sends me readouts as the edifice’s nine-pointed sunrays bead with mercurial light. Emission spectra equivalent to military-grade artillery, except the entire system has been put together within hours. Armies and labs the galaxies over would die to know how the Mandate configures this, what composition and calculus go into these rapid-permutation armaments.

Two Assembly commands mean I can make much fewer city-drones than Ouru. I track the enemy fortress’ discharge with a timer and compose the Assembly input.

The Vimana’s ruin offers scant shelter, but better than its neighboring buildings. I start running, and wolves made of Libretto bud from the ground, joining me in a long-legged lope. Black-pelted, black-muzzled, nearly as tall as I am. Their white teeth glint behind and around me, a pack of asphalt and steel.

Not foxes? Daji’s message flashes.

Recadat called me a wolf. One last attempt at reconciliation, at a peace offering. I have my own preferences.

We make the Vimana in time.

Warzone acoustics takes over. The world becomes one of sheer sound, obliterating all other senses. The thunder that makes the air itself seem under stress, the vibration that seems a prelude to the splitting of the tectonic plate: a regurgitation of lava and the star’s soul, a scorching armageddon that returns Septet to its primeval beginning. The human perception isn’t made for this. It is a defective instrument. Even if you equip yourself with the finest sensors money can buy, by instinct you listen to your flesh receptors first, the hindbrain instincts. Functioning at all on the field is a matter of conquering that animal part, rejecting its antiquated response.

Modulators take care of my hearing, and when the assault stops I’m on the move once more, the timer ticking down for the next barrage. I send Ouru a status check; ze returns with a curt Fine. Not exactly versed in tactical communication.

By the time we reach Chun Hyang’s perimeter, its fortress has fired thrice. Thick smoke suffocates the air; what remaining city material has been reduced to rubble and, once I come close enough to view, so have Ouru’s drones. They lie shattered, split open or riven cleanly in pieces, and none look like they’re about to reconstitute. That override only goes so far, though zer drones have dented Chun Hyang’s fortress—immense impact sites and entry wounds that are slowly repairing.

From the haze tigers run at us, a revelation of gold eyes and topaz coat.

My wolves meet them, an answer in black tide and white teeth. Autopilot—they possess basic friend-or-foe heuristics and they know where to place their long-toothed jaws, how to scrabble with their claws, how to bite and rip and tear. As natural to the task as their organic counterpart, and I have more wolves than there are tigers, either because Recadat has conserved her drones or because she has spent all her overrides on Retribution.

A message from Ouru: I’m moving out.

Uninformative. I bring up one of my Seer commands and soon Septet’s satellites show me what ze means

Zer fortress has uprooted and reconfigured into an oblong crowned with writhing cilia, a deep-sea monster summoned to the surface, mouths arrayed across its head like serrated gashes. It is snaking fast across the city. Debris spumes and whips. The mass of it flattens all in its path, its passage the final blow to what’s left of Libretto.

I scan the vicinity for safe ground; being here when Ouru’s fortress arrives will reduce me to collateral pulp on the quick. As aware of this as I am, Daji gives the tiger carcasses a quick glance—to ensure they don’t get back up—and folds her sword back into herself. “Hold onto me, Detective.”

I’ve never been hoisted in a woman’s arms before—let alone one who looks this slight—but Daji conquers the logistics of it despite our disparity in height. Air roars in my ears as she starts moving, fast, faster; she leaps, balletic. The world flips on its axis as she runs up the facade of a skyscraper. The ground recedes.

She sets me on my feet and steadies me. We’re on the roof of a building that has survived Libretto’s reconfiguring, worse for the wear but in one piece. The streets look incredulously far away, even though we’re only ten or twelve floors off the ground. Daji covered this vertical distance in a minute. Less. As powerful as proxies are, they shouldn’t be able