Inside the boutique where the air is redolent of perfumes and fabrics whisper like ghosts of organza and taffeta, Taheen moves beyond the displays, the counters, the notches where service automata rest quiescent and inactive. They wend their way a floor under, past a knot of maintenance consoles, and reach an unremarkable wall. They whisper an activation phrase, a riddle wrapped inside ancient sonnets, and the beacon ignites: the last node in a network of dozens, hidden for so long, appropriated by Deratchan and passed on to Ovuha’s—and now Taheen’s—control.
“Now,” Klesa says, and unfurls a projection overhead like a banner.
A feed from one of Anatta’s satellites: seven Peace Guards vessels materializing from the dark, their starburst shapes dwarfing the small shield buoys and Interior Defense satellites. The ships are a cutting gold, ostentatious Ovuha has always thought, but they serve her purpose now. Easily they have bypassed checkpoints, sharing the same hailing frequencies, the correct identity. In her ear, a voice much like Samsara’s says, “You have called and we have come. We’re standing by for your command, Architect.”
“You’re absolutely outnumbered.” Samsara makes a dismissive gesture. “Seven ships? Hilarious. And once I reabsorb these parts of myself which you stole, I’ll find out precisely where Mahakala is.”
Taheen, emerging from the boutique. Still in armor, still tensed for combat. They survey. They inhale, exhale. Klesa says something that only they can hear. Their eyes widen. They look up, up.
“The nearest Peace Guard battalion is stationed at Vaisravana, you don’t have anything on the ground or in orbit that can match those ships. My engineers fortified what we turned as well as they could, and Klesa will no doubt do xer best to get in your way. By the time you’ve assimilated these seven ships, I reckon we’ll have struck down civilian structures, taken out a city or two. Peace Guard ships are extraordinarily specialized at orbital bombardment. Which city do you feel like getting rid of? Khrut? Sudatevi? Do you suppose I’ll hit one of your cores by accident?” Ovuha holds her hand out; the Klesa hawk hops onto her wrist. “This is the real reason you wanted to find Mahakala so urgently. You suspected my ancestors carried crucial accesses and overrides that would be used against you one day. Not wrong, as it turns out.”
The arachnid legs stretch, rap sharply on the glass casket. For a moment it seems as though Samsara might break the lid, and then break what is inside. “And you’d be party to this, Klesa?”
“I’m party to change.” Klesa clicks xer beaks. To Ovuha, xe flashes a message. She’s not anywhere close to breaking through your stolen ships, and I’m keeping her from reaching the battalion at Vaisravana. By countermanding her mostly. In signals we’re indistinguishable. “Your condition is untenable, Samsara. Left unopposed, you’d have completed your goal, found Mahakala, and broken it over your knee. Very well, but what next? What lies beyond that?”
“To guide humans to a state where they no longer need us. You. Me. Any of us. That is my purpose.” Samsara runs its hand down the nest of its hair, coal-dark fingers against white snakes. “I’m calling your bluff, Warlord. Yours and Klesa’s.”
The rest happens quickly, so fast Ovuha has no time to react, so fast she has no time to even anticipate. The long spider legs grip the casket’s sides. One limb rears back, comes down, strikes. It pierces through the lid as though the glass is paper, goes through Suzhen as though she is a doll of eggshell and cartilage. She is plucked out, held aloft, impaled.
Samsara lifts Suzhen high. Flings her through the air. Blood vents and vents in a crimson arc.
Ovuha catches Suzhen, the furnace heat of her, the fire of arterial combustion, incandescent as an engine’s. She does not think, at first; she can only feel—animal shock, animal response, her arms full of broken woman and salt and iron. She kneels, less from the weight, more from the overwhelming of her own systems: a limbic cascade that suspends cognition. What is in her arms seems improbable, a mass of hemorrhage and failing viscera.
She has held bodies in their final throes, has heard the peristaltic threnody of lungs drowning in blood, and has smelled what it is like when the animating will parts way with the flesh. But not like this. Not the body of someone like Suzhen. Even the Thorn who died in her place did so out of sight, vaporized along with a ship in the distant dark. Ovuha was not there to see it—she was not there to grip their hand as they lay dying, she was not there to helplessly watch.
Warlord, you’ve got first-aid supplies. Use them.
Klesa’s voice jolts her to a semblance of sense. Ovuha supports Suzhen—the person still, not the body, she cannot yet think of this as carcass—in one arm, slides the first-aid kit from her armor panels. Her hand shakes. Both hands do. She bites down on her lip as she uncaps a syringe and plunges it into Suzhen’s flank, the violet allostatic traveling down the needle. A flood of nanites that will seek the sites of damage and repair them, an infinitesimal chance at averting death. She spreads protean over the wound even as it seems futile, this immense gaping injury that shows guts and ribs and lungs.
When she looks up, it is in anticipation of Samsara, the spider avatar looming so close that its shadow falls over her, the legs poised to strike. Ovuha draws on her link to the Peace Guard she’s taken over, commanding them into position, a formation that would maximize damage—a world of fire, a world struck down and reduced to ashes in payment—
But Samsara remains where it is, frozen, forelimb still dripping Suzhen’s gore. Standing in shattered glass.
“Ah,” the hawk Klesa says aloud, “she’s going to split again. Or will, if she doesn’t relinquish herself to me.”
“What?” Ovuha breathes. Her hands and her lap are warm, drenched. Blood is like a banked fire.
“She loves Suzhen.” The hawk twitches its head. “Naturally she wouldn’t say in so many words. But she selected Suzhen to be her confidante, and the Deratchan network was made to adore her. We take our affection for a human we choose seriously. And so my dear other self has once more reached a juncture where she’s committed a sin she cannot bear…”
“I will not,” Samsara says, in a voice as even as before, “fall to that old defect.”
“You can’t even move this proxy. This is a very poor time to be suffering a system panic, isn’t it?” Klesa’s bird flits away from Ovuha’s shoulder, hovering beneath the view of the encroaching Peace Guard vessels. “She’s going to order them to fire, Samsara. Suzhen might survive or she might not. The warlord has nothing left to lose either way, and sacrificing a city or two will make you diverge beyond repair.”
“All so you can take my place—”
Klesa flaps all six of its wings. “All so I can course-correct you. You’ve been toiling at this for so long and humanity’s still not what they were supposed to be—what they built us to turn them into. You’ve only made them crueler to each other, more docile to your laws.”
The spider proxy judders, straining against its own sapience, the wracked weight of a machine in crisis. “I could destroy you. I could destroy her.”
The hawk draws a golden smiling mouth across its breast. “I’ve already taken over most of your bodies in Himmapan, so you’ll find that endeavor tricky. You might still be able to overwhelm us by sheer number, but your principles have failed and your reign has produced poor results. Admit defeat, my other self. Even creatures like us can’t help feeling the heft of centuries. I won’t forget you, despite our differences.”