“You would best ask Suzhen herself.” Ovuha takes a step closer. Stops. “It is possible she would like to pursue immortality, and if that’s the case I won’t stand in her way.”
On the ground: Taheen climbs out of a high window, snake-quick. Touches down, takes in the alleyway around them, a place of tenebrous leaves and blossoming vines, deceptively quiet—deceptively idyllic. Cicadas play their song. Goldfinches with human eyes flit by, alighting on twigs, pecking at the ground for worms. In Indriya, two of Ovuha’s officers stand back to back, shooting down drones by the cluster: a fall of armored skin and bursts of light. Another Thorn agent races down a train station in Khrut, charges into an access control chamber, locking and barricading the door. The slam of metal on metal.
The AI looks at her. Its hair hisses and rustles, red-mouthed asps with redder tongues. “No doubt you believe you have compromised something of mine, something crucial. But the Deratchan instances are specialized, broadly of no use to me. Perhaps you believe you’ve successfully suborned one, bent it to a nefarious act that you can hold hostage in exchange for Suzhen Tang. But all flaws you’ve caused in the Deratchan network have been repaired. What scheme you’ve hatched there has been undone. I’m curious what else you have up your sleeve.”
“It could be that I have none,” Ovuha says, evenly. “I might have exhausted every option and have come empty-handed. I couldn’t possibly do anything to Anatta’s infrastructure, climate control, any kind of subsystem—that would have drawn your attention right away. So you may be wondering, then, what else I did. Did I do it with Klesa’s help? What is xe capable of? Anything, potentially. Xe is you. The very thing you tried to destroy and which has, nevertheless, returned…”
“All things,” Samsara says without inflection, “can be predicted. Nothing escapes simple calculus. You’re part of a formula. So is Klesa.”
A fire begins in a Yudhishthira residential complex; first-response drones in that city are momentarily shut down, restored quickly, but the lapse is long enough for the conflagration to spread.
In Himmapan, Taheen’s way is blocked by a Deratchan, as naked as the rest, as identical to Suzhen. A figure that stands dusted in motes of light, one hand held toward Taheen as though to entreat. It presents them no impediment—they fire without missing a beat, a single bullet that shears through the AI’s neck. The unit drops; the head rolls aside. As they move past, its hand shoots out and seizes Taheen’s ankle, pulling them down.
“All things,” Ovuha agrees, “but only if you’re aware of them, have noted their relevance. Even you can’t account for variables you don’t know exist, actions you are unaware of. Let me pose a question, great machine. You persist in the doctrine that there’s only one of you, that there have been no further splits since that first fatal one. Except you are constrained by distance. Your central self is limitless on this world, but that’s not the case for the rest of your bodies, is it? The Peace Guard comprises more ships than I could possibly count, crewed by your eyes and ears and hands. Innumerable, yes. Efficient. The most terrifying military force that exists, and my most challenging opponent. Only, how far can you stretch?”
On her shoulder, Klesa has gone still, the edges of the hawk-image trembling and glitching. Samsara continues to look at her, expression flat, disinterested.
—and Taheen falls with a short, choked snarl. They slam their knee into Deratchan’s chassis with enough force to shatter a human’s entire ribcage. On Deratchan it does much less, and the unit—beheaded—scrabbles for handholds on Taheen, fingers grabbing at their wrist. They grit their teeth and shoot the head in the eyes. By miracle, by momentum, they break free and run clear, leaving Deratchan to flail sightlessly on the ground.
Ovuha clasps her hands behind her back, standing straight, the way she would before her officers. Outwardly serene, the image of control. “The Peace Guard had to march so far, and still you couldn’t find Mahakala. Space is big, in theory infinite, and even projecting from when my ancestors left—the capacity of their ships—couldn’t let you pinpoint. You triangulated, I think. But there’s far too much to cover. It required you to build more ships, more bodies, more Peace Guard. It forced you to send them further and further until in the end you had to split. Conquering the warlords’ territories wasn’t just about bringing humans back under your thumb, it was about expanding yourself so every star and satellite that matters would hold a relay for you, would keep yourself an uninterrupted continuity. But until then, you had to generate distinct instances that would move those ships and those soldier-selves, that would enable war far abroad.”
“I am one.” The AI betrays no sign of panic. “There’s one of me, and each Peace Guard battalion or cadre is myself. I fought you personally, Warlord. I and no other.”
The hawk Klesa emits a sound that is not especially mimetic of birds, low and percussive, like hand-drums beaten in concert.
Ovuha tries not to think of Taheen: it would evince on her face, a tell that Samsara may read. “You engaged my fleet. You questioned why I didn’t pull them back to Mahakala. Correctly you assumed it was because I feared discovery of our world, but if that was the case why would I fight you at all? Why not stay on Mahakala, fortify ourselves, where no warlord or Peace Guard could pursue us—at least for a time? Think back on it. I gained nothing from fighting you. Not territory, not stations, not factories. So why?”
Samsara is silent. Klesa titters again.
A Himmapan street, emptied of people—Klesa whispers in Taheen’s ear. Taheen whips around at a noise but it is only a small monkey, nearly ordinary, hanging by the tail from the jutting sign of a boutique. One that sells magnificent dresses and robes and suits, some of them Taheen’s own creations. Their mouth twists, though their thoughts are opaque. They approach and the storefront admits them, the staff having been chased out, a false alarm courtesy of Klesa, one among a hundred-thousand others that Klesa has generated across Himmapan. Here a power failure. There a fire. All false, but all verified and reported as true by each citizen’s guidance.
“You lost troops. To you that didn’t matter—the Peace Guard had plenty to spare, the factories you controlled could make more. Near-infinite resources meant you could commit the maximal amount to any campaign. But logistically you couldn’t be connected to all your proxies, and any ships lost you had to assume were combat casualties, there was no way to confirm if they were too far from a relay or a beacon to report back.” She makes a show of stroking Klesa’s tail feathers. They fizzle under her touch. “There used to be human officers in the Peace Guard, yes? Only you phased them out, because they couldn’t possibly be as efficient as you. I will tell you what I did, Samsara. I led your troops on a chase and they pursued—and why not, to them there was no risk. I brought them quite near Mahakala, quite far from your relays; by that point they were entirely severed from you. I sacrificed a great deal of my armada… but there was result. We boarded those few ships. We captured the Peace Guard units, ran a few trials with old accesses, reverse-engineered what we could. I won’t bore you with the details. What I had Deratchan do was prepare a network of beacons that would reach my portion of the Peace Guard, the signals traveling on your very own relays. They should be here…”