The Sentinel (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

array to send the actual message. Convinced the war was over, that Singapore had won, and the battle station was somehow overlooked, the man had planned to run the single-man ship out behind the nearest of the Kettle’s moons and send a subspace to the home planet.
    Giving away their location, of course. Anna had caught wind of the plot, rushed to intercept the rogue pilot before he could escape, and blasted him before he could launch.
    Li had authorized the operation, and had always wondered if he’d done the right thing. They’d killed a man and damaged part of the station. Could he do the same thing now? Hard to say. Swettenham and his sort posed a risk not unlike that of the rogue scooter pilot all those years ago.
    The risk of remaining on mission was a long, lonely death. They would eventually die of old age, and the last few survivors would probably starve to death, too old and feeble to grow their own food, if the oxygen plant didn’t fail and suffocate them all instead. Sentinel 3 would eventually become another derelict, a floating coffin in orbit around a distant, forgotten gas giant.
    But the risk of communicating with the outside world was more immediate and obvious. Brutal and short. Apex might kill the low-level functionaries like Dong Swettenham quickly enough, but a different fate awaited the officers.
    If captured, Li would be tortured, then eaten. The Apex queen would peck out his eyeballs, his tongue, his ears, his nose. Then she and her princesses would plunge their beaks into his belly and tear out his intestines.
    He would be alive when they did it.
     
     

Chapter Three
    Ak Ik ruffled her feathers and spread her wings to display her red under plumage. Recognizing the dominance and fertility of a queen commander, the two sentries turned their beaks to show acquiescence and folded their tattered wings inward to show submission. Feathers littered the hallway at their clawed feet.
    These two were drones, permitted a bit of color as sublieutenants of a princess commander, but such was their mistress’s disgrace that their feathers were uniformly gray and brown and had begun to fall off. Bare flesh showed on their necks, and bloody scratches marked where they’d been tearing at themselves. Lack of control turned drones neurotic, and they’d eventually kill themselves.
    Upon entry to the ship, Ak Ik had found similar levels of distress even among the higher-ranked drones, the taller and more aggressive ones that would have attacked her mercilessly under other circumstances for daring to enter without permission.
    Instead, the drones had showed their necks and exposed their breasts, quivering with fear, but prepared to die should she take their lives. Ak Ik ignored them and strolled inside unaccompanied by any drones or soldiers of her own. She expected no opposition, and had yet to receive any.
    Ak Ik gestured with her beak. “Open this door.”
    “We cannot, Queen Commander,” one of them answered. “It is voice locked by our mistress.”
    Ak Ik let out a terrible cry and flew at the one who’d spoken. She grabbed the drone in one talon and hurled it against the wall. There was a loud crack, and the drone lay there, shuddering, squawking in pain. Ak Ik swooped over and stood above the drone with her hooked beak at its throat. The squawking ceased, and the drone merely shuddered.
    The queen turned to the other. “Get your mistress. Now.”
    #
    To Ak Ik’s surprise, Sool Em walked proudly down the hallway, her head bobbing with all the arrogance of a queen commander, not a princess who had just been tricked and defeated by an alien race, said aliens now racing off with valuable intelligence as to Apex technology and tactics. Three more drones flanked the princess, her guards. Her plumage was still bright green, and to Ak Ik’s surprise and rage, she boasted red feathers on her breast.
    Sool Em still carried the scent of high rank about her, must have continued to secrete her dominance saliva to