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

the species itself.
    The final three canisters held human brains and spinal columns. To Ak Ik’s shock, the instrument panels showed a gray triangle, which meant they were still alive. She cocked her head and turned to Sool Em.
    “How is this possible?”
    “Delicate extraction, Queen Commander. Very delicate. We captured humans and experimented until we succeeded.”
    “That has been tried before. Dozens of times, hundreds. The humans always died.”
    “It took many attempts,” Sool Em said. “Some time ago, when you were fighting the Albion forces, I captured a fleet of refugees. That gave me many specimens.”
    “I never heard of this.”
    “It is my right to keep my own prisoners, Queen Commander. To devour them or experiment on them as I see fit. We ate their captains, and kept the rest for the laboratories.”
    “Go on,” Ak Ik said. She was intrigued, and a stirring of excitement tingled to her wingtips. “How did you take so many captives? The humans fight to the death or kill themselves. They know what awaits them when they fall into our hands. To capture so many in a human fleet is nearly impossible.”
    “We disguised ourselves as human pirates. Infiltrated their forces. Then we used the disruptor and captured the humans while they were in a torpor. I brought them into the labs one at a time. It took several thousand attempts to perfect the technique.”
    “That must have taken months.”
    “Indeed. Nearly a full standard rotation.”
    Sool Em walked up to the tanks, where the human brains and spinal columns floated in nutrient baths. She continued her explanation.
    “The human body is fragile, but the human mind more so. Deprive it of its senses and it loses sanity. To isolate a human specimen must be accomplished in stages. First, we strip away the unnecessary tissue, starting with the limbs, and then moving to the internal organs, and finally sight and hearing. To keep them alive and aware during this process is a challenge—they do not always survive the extremes of pain as we reduce the body to a remnant. At last, we extract the brains and spinal columns, and provide just enough electrical stimulation to the brain to keep it rooted in reality.
    “Once I learned how to maintain humans in a living state when they’d been severed from their bodies, my specimens suffered additional losses as my technicians worked on their brains. They continue to be fragile things—you can kill or maim or turn them insane if you alter them in the wrong way. But I needed to work directly with the brain, you see, before I could attempt my experiment on a complete human body.”
    “Tell me!” Ak Ik cried, unable to hold her excitement any longer. “You’ve broken them?”
    “Yes, Queen Commander. I have tweaked my own genetic code to do so. Any queen or princess could do the same, if I share my secrets. It was a costly alteration. You see the loss of control among my drones—temporary, of course, but costly. But I can now secrete the right enzymes. The humans can be controlled.”
    “Yes,” Ak Ik said. “Very good. Tell me more. What have you done?”
    Sool Em opened her wings to show her brightest colors. “I have sent humans into the enemy fleet. We have brood parasites, Queen Commander. They do my bidding.”
     
     
     

Chapter Four
    Captain Jess Tolvern of HMS Blackbeard retreated to her war room to study the report from engineering. She needed privacy, space to think. Seventeen hours had passed since the jump, twenty-three hours since Blackbeard ’s mauling at the hands of the enemy. The situation hadn’t exactly stabilized, but if the ship could be compared to a wounded man, they’d at least hooked him up to an IV and machinery to read his vitals.
    The information scrolling across Tolvern’s console was uniformly bad. Leak in the secondary plasma engine. Primary laser cannon destroyed. Kinetic batteries heavily damaged. Deck shield nonexistent. Other shields battered. Oxygen leaks from banks