Machine's Last Testament by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Author:Benjanun Sriduangkaew [Sriduangkaew, Benjanun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781607015406
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2020-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

A strange madness falls upon the camp, after.

No one expects the Thorn to be in their midst, incarcerated and under control of the Bureau: it is too mundane a fate, too risible a turn of chance. They are re-interrogated regardless. People are pulled out of dormitories, out of the cafeteria, out of the infirmary. The picks are random, the timing is likewise, and some inmates don’t come back. While no one knows where the disappeared went to, most speculate it is Vaisravana. The red world is spoken of like an execution chamber, the final karmic weight.

Even a warlord might not survive such a place.

Ovuha does not change her behavior. She considers whether she could last on Vaisravana, keep on for a few months, but it seems unlikely that anyone who’s been transferred there will ever be sent back to Anatta. And while she could survive there longer than some, it’d destroy her chance at her objective.

The other option—the only option—will require careful planning. The right time, the right person.

At seven exactly, curfew begins and all lights turn off: their time is regulated more strictly than in any creche, and they are regulated more closely than toddlers. Routines within the camp serve to discipline, deprive control, and finally to infantilize. In the dark, her dorm-mates toss and turn and cough, and Ovuha thinks of her strategies. The precision she will require against a dwindling timeline.

Her thoughts wheel inevitably to the Comet, transfixed by that moment of annihilation, that final gesture. Perhaps it is part of the script but she does not think so. In spite of what the Warlord of the Comet has done to her—all too willingly, if they must go then they will take her down with them—she thinks of the gun, the trigger: that is what Ovuha would have done herself to avoid the sentence. Years in captivity while Samsara wrings it all out of her, the secrets, the names of ships and the statistics and the routes. Better to go at a time of one’s choosing; a bullet is seductive. How the Comet learned that Ovuha infiltrated Anatta is another matter, but it is irrelevant. Information is a human thing and therefore impossible to make watertight. Control of it is illusory and transient.

She turns on her side and tries not to think of Mahakala. The Thorn’s seat of power and most guarded treasure, which even Samsara has not yet found. The ultimate prize other warlords strove to acquire, even the name of it a close-kept secret. The only world, other than Anatta, that can host human life.

The games continue, against all reason. Ovuha goes, there’s little enough choice. That night some new fancy has struck Ehtesham; they paint her face in jagged stripes, blue and white. In the dimly lit courtyard, she chooses her weapon from a rack. All are blunted, toothless. But they can still inflict damage, severe, even fatal.

Her opponent is an inmate whose name she’s never learned, a bulky creature who was the reigning champion during her absence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.