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

keep her drones in line, but it didn’t seem to be having the desired effect on her underlings. The drones surrounding her shivered and keened in terror. They’d smelled and seen Ak Ik and knew what the queen commander was about, even if their mistress did not. How could Sool Em be so blind as to her eminent demise?
    “This door is voice locked,” Ak Ik said. Her voice warbled with rage.
    The drones cringed at her high pitch. The one she’d cast down remained motionless, only its moving eye showing it was even still alive.
    “Yes, it is,” Sool Em said.
    “Open it at once.”
    “I know what you’re going to do, and I forbid it. You have no right to demand entry.”
    “Open this door at once, or I will tear open your breast and feed on your heart.”
    Sool Em opened her beak, seeming on the verge of defiance. A bird of her stature in the flock wouldn’t have risen so high without aggression and stubbornness, without pecking her way through rivals—literally in some cases—and wouldn’t take her demotion easily. But her drones weren’t so confident, the brilliance of their mistress’s plumage and the smell of her scent glands notwithstanding.
    Sool Em looked around her, seemed to recognize her precarious position, and fluttered her wings. It was an arrogant gesture, but a final one. She cocked her head and squawked for the door to open. It obeyed her voice command.
    The two commanders fluttered their way into the nesting chamber, Ak Ik leading. Some of the drones started to follow, but the queen cawed for them to remain in the ship corridor. They didn’t even glance at the princess to see if the order would be countermanded, but retreated with a series of pitiful squawks.
    The chamber was warm and humid. Dim red lights gave off heat from above like a collection of tiny suns. The Apex flocks had manipulated their genes hundreds of times in ways both small and large, creating numerous castes and ranks, but some things could not be altered. Eggs only hatched under conditions like those found in the swampy tropical lowlands of the home world.
    There were at least two hundred eggs in the chamber, smooth and gray. The fresher ones lay bunched together, while the ones closest to hatching had been moved to one side so that the new chicks wouldn’t peck apart their rivals as they emerged. Ak Ik walked across them, letting her talons crush the eggs as she put her weight down. By the time she got to the other side of the chamber, a trail of yolk and shell and squirming, dying chicks lay across the floor. The smell of them was ripe and delicious, and Ak Ik paused to gobble down a few of the larger chicks that had been on the verge of hatching. They squirmed and squeaked in delicious terror as they went down.
    The queen commander carefully watched Sool Em when she came up. The princess and mother of these eggs gave no reaction except for a nervously darting tongue passing in and out of her beak. Inside, she must be screaming with rage, but she showed nothing.
    “Your drones are forfeit,” Ak Ik said. “By rights, I could eat them all. And perhaps I will. I may pluck out your royal feathers and reduce you further.”
    “I understand your rage, Queen Commander. Mistakes were made.”
    Well. This was perhaps not going to be as hard as Ak Ik had thought. She had been prepared to use her saliva, and the dominance of a queen would have forced even a princess to acquiesce. A lesser bird could not take the queen’s saliva without it bending her will to her mistress’s.
    “Mistakes?” Ak Ik gave a derisive caw. “You lost three lances and let the primary warship escape. And through a trick, a subterfuge. Deception is our provenance, our strength, and you behaved as foolishly as a Hroom.”
    “You are mostly correct, Queen Commander.”
    Ak Ik’s head feathers ruffled in surprise. “Mostly?”
    “Yes, mostly.”
    Ak Ik screeched angrily. She stomped across the room, crushing more eggs and gulping down the chicks that