Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 1)

Chapter One

Chapter 1

THE SKINNY BOY pushed his chin out and faced the Elders, who were gathered in a semi-circle around him.

"I won't!" he shouted defiantly at them. "You can't make me!"

This provoked some raised eyebrows on the part of some of the Elders and smiles on the rest.

The boy felt fury overtake him at their condescension. "You're all just a lot of old dodderers, close to collapse into dust," he said. "There is nothing you can do to me that would make me go to Valhai in company of a Sellite. Nothing."

Because of the Elders he had been left to forage for himself on the edge of the habitable zone ... and now they needed something from him? It must be some kind of sick joke. He had had to learn to take care of himself, just because his mother hadn't been one of them and had died in childbirth. But now he was fourteen years old, now he could take care of himself and his two sisters. Now it would be much more difficult for them to harm him, to intimidate him, to make him feel the lowest form of life on the unprepossessing planet of Kwaide.

He looked slowly round at the Elders, and forced a grin onto his face, knowing that it would annoy them, that they would see it as lack of respect, lack of due repentance for the form of his birth.

"You will go to Valhai." The oldest of the Elders had moved slightly towards him. "You are the indicated candidate for apprenticeship; the test we gave you was quite conclusive."

The boy's body, honed after the long hard years of survival, told him to fly. His muscles tensed and in the split second before he was gone he felt a tiny pinprick at the back of his neck, and slumped onto the ground. Try as he might, he was unable to move a muscle in his legs. The sleeping dart had paralyzed his speech too, so he was helpless in the conversation which followed.

"You have no mother," the ancient's thready voice went on. Sly rheumy eyes met hot young ones. "But you have siblings." He drew a few photographs out of an inner pocket.

The boy spotted the ragged clothes of the only two people he cared about in the whole rotten universe: his twin sisters - five and eleven minutes younger than him, respectively.

The old man warbled on, "It would be a very simple matter to find out their whereabouts ..."

A red haze flashed in front of Six. They had been ejected from the birth shelter at four, and taken forcibly to the edge of the habitable zone. Six had survived purely because of his determination to protect his younger sisters. The constant ignominies of his struggling life over the previous ten years had only been bearable because of the girls. All his life he had tried to take care of them and now they would be waiting for him, wondering where he was. He had no idea how they would cope on their own. He thought of the countless freezing nights their three huddling figures had shared, and cursed Kwaide, his home planet. And all Kwaidians. He swore, at that moment, that one day he would get even with them, would find his sisters again and make these teetering toothless puppets rue the day they had sent him away.

The Elder nodded slowly. "I see that we understand each other. Good. All you have to do is sign the apprenticeship papers when the Sellite arrives. I am sure you won't break that oath at any time in the future. After all, you won't want to cause your sisters any ... discomfort."

May Sacras burn your tongue out! thought Six. Sacras didn't oblige, and the man droned on. "We have filled out your indenture under your Kwaide birth registration number, as we have found no reference that you were ever given a name."

All his life Six had been referred to by pointing, or by the number 31245.56, which had been the number he was known by at the birth shelter. There, it had normally been shortened to .56 (Point five six), which was the first word he had spoken - obliged to do so by the matron at age three. Until that moment his younger self had carefully kept a reserved and prudent silence.