The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

She shook her head fiercely. ‘No. Don’t do that. It’s not true. We’ll find out what they want, together. Then we leave. Together.’

He hugged her to him, stroking his hands over the supple armour that covered her back, watching the blinking ready light of the drone on her forearm as her hand lay against his. The Bishop had claimed not to know his wife was with him. Why would the Grandmaster Valencia not mention the arrival of a citizen of the Kairi Protectorate to the Bishop who was sent to meet them? It was disconcerting, yet probably for the best. Eva was not their focus. He needed it to stay that way.

After a while she raised her head and sat back on her knees. ‘Should we eat?’

He signed back. ‘No. Dangerous until I meet with Grandmaster Valencia tomorrow and know why I’ve been summoned. Hungry?’

‘Not hungry. Tired.’

They settled on the firm bed with only their boots removed. He knew they weren’t safe. His body had prickled with awareness and warning since they’d arrived, and his instincts had kept him alive for many tempi in Valencia. He trusted them enough to know he wouldn’t sleep tonight.

‘You’ll take first watch?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You better wake me.’

‘Of course,’ he lied.

She snorted as he lay down, his chest against her back. She pulled his arm over her waist and he propped his head on his hand, so he could watch her sleep. Several minutes after they lay down, the sensors in the bed lowered the lights in the room and he lay in the dark, thinking, as her breathing evened out and the wind rose outside, the thick walls and windows muffling the sound to the whisper of ghosts.

*

*Hibernation mode activated.*

Sister pinged a query in response to the drone’s abrupt re-tasking and the loss of its live feed. She was engaged with analysing the Vineyard ship’s primary language and systems. The ship’s technology had originated on Terra, and this shared evolutionary foundation provided her with a key to begin her decryption within an hour. She required almost half her processing power to catalogue and flag the most useful information in the enormous database, so she’d delayed her reconnoitring of Valencia until she’d secured enough preliminary data on it to ensure security protocols were met.

*Hibernation mode in progress.*

Sister flagged the pingback as unsatisfactory and retrieved another drone to proceed to her Primarch’s location and comm a live feed.

At that moment, she registered several things at once. The Vineyard ship’s engines powering up. The navigational AI implementing a new course away from her home system. A Stage Four hardware breach of her solo-ship’s security. A localized EMP that sent the unshielded sections of her solo-ship’s power core into temporary shutdown.

None of these things disrupted her operational focus as much as the sudden silence from her Primarch’s location beacon. The drone responded to all pings with the proper hibernation codes, but it remained dark to her emergency activation commands.

Hidden in the Vineyard ship’s subroutines, Sister studied its live feeds as Knights surrounded her primary shell in the cargo bay, placing clamps on her struts and erecting a dampening field.

These, she understood, were acts of aggression.

As bonded AI to the leading Primarch of the Gomez clan – and frontline of any Kairi Primarch’s defence – Sister’s mission was now clear. She would enact Caution Protocol. Secure an operating base, determine the location and safety of her sister and husband, and ensure means by which she could access them and carry out offensive missions, if necessary.

While the Knights worked on her shell, Sister hid her secondary drone in an alcove on an empty deck. She supplanted the subroutines of several mundane programmes across critical decks before disguising herself as a diagnostic tool and slipping into the Vineyard’s primary AI. She would need to find her own seedling. It was clear the Valencians had no intention of giving her one, as promised.

Her Primarch, like all Kairi, was more than capable of protecting herself, but the Kairi were descended from a small Earth tribe. Every Primarch’s life was precious. She would take nothing for granted.

*

He is eleven and his grandmother kneels in front of him, smoothing her wrinkled hands down the front of his cream shirt. Her smile is sad, her eyes desperate.

‘You know what you must do,’ she says, and he nods.

‘I must enter the Greatwood and pass my Presentation so I can see the real Valencia.’

She grips his upper arms. ‘If you’re worthy. If you learn its language.’

He doesn’t reply because it’s not necessary. He’s heard the same story his entire life. He doesn’t know what language the Greatwood speaks, but he will learn it. He has no choice. His grandmother’s gaunt cheeks speak to the cancer burning through her and his parents are long dead. He will either become Septed or become an orphaned un-Septed. A child with no skill and no caregivers will die in Valencia’s Lesser Games. And he doesn’t want to die.

She takes his hand and leads him to the entrance of Sept Lucochin’s Audience Room. He joins the line of children his age.

The room changes around him, expanding as if breathing in, and he stops to look over his shoulder. The Red Door of Failure is open behind him, letting out crying children into the arms of their silent, devastated parents.

He can see his grandmother standing at the front, watching as a Pawn takes his hand and guides him to the Purple Door of Acceptance. She’s also in tears, but he knows they’re tears of relief.

He won’t die in the Lesser Games now.

He’ll never see his grandmother again. Only healthy family members can join the newly Septed in service to the Great Game. Anguish rises in him, knowing she’ll die alone. But he’s studied with his grandmother how to never show his emotions. He relies on that training now, as they close his first mask on his face.

*

He is thirty and a Pawn legendary for his ruthlessness.