Shall Machines Divide the Earth, Benjanun Sriduangkaew [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

ramshackle roof of an old storage. Exposed architecture cracks and dissolves: I determine immediately that the ammunition is large-bore, and that the shot was made by a human. An AI would not have missed and, more importantly, would have struck with something much deadlier and harder to avoid than a conventional bullet.

Calculations wheel in the corner of my vision as I run through the warehouse—the duelist is a sharpshooter. The vector originated from two and a half kilometers away: decent, nothing remarkable, and they do not have access to anything in the orbit that would have conferred greater range and precision.

My imaging and the navigation Wonsul’s Exegesis provided let me know that I’m near a mausoleum, one of the larger buildings in this area and which—importantly—has a basement. I review the footage I captured of the fighting regalia, but it is less informative than I’d prefer. At least it doesn’t look like either of them is deploying transatmospheric artillery. That should keep me safe for some time.

I run up against a corrugated door. There is no time for subtlety. I step back and slam my fist into the lock. It gives in a crumbling of brittle mortar and oxidized metal.

The space behind it is wide, high-ceilinged, the floor tiled in mosaic the color of antique gold and worn jade. A patina of dust clings to everything as though nobody’s been in here for a long time—possible: this is not a Divide facility, not a place of commerce or accommodation. I wend deeper, looking for the staircase that’d bring me to the basement and from there to the maintenance warren beneath Libretto.

I pass rows of sarcophagi: some are stone, others milky glass or blackened steel, and none have been disturbed. One exception—a bronze casket with its lid agape, the contents within on full display. Despite my need for haste, I slow down. The corpse is perfectly preserved, pale in the way of new ivory rather than the gray of dead flesh, and drowned in fox pelts: a wealth of blazing electrum and copper, immaculate and untarnished. The body’s mouth is filled with roses so fresh they’re radiant with dew, petals dawn-pink and bruise-red, such a surfeit of them that they spill out. Down the chin, scattered along the throat and collarbones. Whoever it is was buried nude.

A roar like muted thunder. The mausoleum’s wall falls apart in a shower of smashed stone and riven reinforcement. Behind it is the regalia with the gold wings and the glaive, their expression as serene as a bodhisattva’s.

I’ve faced death before: I’ve learned to keep moving, to not freeze up, as I clasp eyes with what might be the last thing I ever see. I have kept one step, two steps, ahead of my mortality. To do otherwise is to die like a dumb beast.

But at this moment there’s nothing I can do, no action I can take to avert what is about to fall. No bullet is fast enough, and fleeing is futile.

My overlays light up and roses suffuse my vision. A voice whispers in my ear, You only get one chance to answer, duelist. Do you belong to me?

“Yes,” I say, on sheer instinct.

A flood of song: for a moment I can’t tell whether it is virtual or exists as a physical fact, the percussion that vibrates through my bones, the high ringing notes that fill my skull. A new module registers in my overlays, bannering a short message. Duelist acknowledged. Welcome to the Court of Divide. To victory eternal.

The golden regalia strikes. Its glaive is caught by a crimson sword, broad, the edge of it faint blue-black. I observe every detail—the intricacy of each regalia’s weapon: how well made both are, how thoughtfully fashioned, the etched motifs. In such moments the world is written out with stunning clarity.

What I thought a picturesque corpse stands tall before me, a splendor of petaled pelts and precious metals. Now animated and acutely alive, long-backed and wide-hipped: beautiful in the way of water’s mirage in the desert.

It—she—glances over her shoulder, meeting my gaze. Then she turns to the other regalia and says, “It’s indecorous to pick on an unarmed human, don’t you think?”

The other regalia doesn’t answer. It adjusts its glaive, folding its wings into its back. Its next blow carves the mosaic open and splits the tiles. The rose regalia—mine—guards against it almost without effort, holding her weapon one-handed. She pushes the enemy back, and back again, driving it out of the mausoleum. Dust rises in spumes.

On my feet, I keep to the cover the shattered wall provides; what little visibility I have I use to scan for the next attack from the duelist who shot at me. Nothing yet. I draw my gun, clasping the cold weight of it and contemplating the ammunition with which it is loaded. An AI proxy built for combat—and all of them would be, on Septet—is a potent weapon, obliteration incarnate. Not invulnerable, however; nothing is. Weapon labs across the galaxies have dedicated themselves to designing anti-proxy armaments. Of course they’re as destructible as anything else, but most people can’t carry around artillery of the appropriate caliber. An AI usually keeps its core somewhere safe while its physical representation is deployed on the field. What gunsmiths focus on, obsess over, is how to snip the link between proxy and AI.

The two regalia are more like phantasms than reality, palinopsia of gold on red, too fast for me to track. But optical assists allow me to distinguish between them, enough to sight down and fire. The range isn’t so terrible.

Show me some trust, duelist. The same voice as before, sonorous, operatic. A music of lily and bergamot. What good am I as a regalia if I can’t fend off a little thing like this?

From my perspective the golden regalia is hardly little. Petite-figured, but so is the rose regalia, who moves like a fox’s poem. I lower my gun. It is not a good time in any case. This is