Warchild
Karin Lowachee
Warner Aspect, 4/2002
ISBN:0446610771
When Jos' parents were killed in an attack on their trading ship, the boy is kidnapped by his attackers and then escapes-only to fall into the alien hands of humanity's greatest enemies.
As he grows into a young man, Jos is brainwashed into becoming a spy against the human race. At every step, his choices are made for him-until the climactic moment when he takes his life into his own hands.
Winner of the THE WARNER ASPECT FIRST NOVEL CONTEST
From the publisher:
FIRST MISSION
We'd memorized schematics of the Diamond-class merchant ships.
Our goal was the bridge.
We spread through the ship like a virus.
"Where's our resistance?" Dorr muttered, once we'd reached the
command deck. The ship sat curiously silent. Only our booted steps
along the deckgrille made noise. Overhead the lights flickered red:
warning, warning, warning. Dorr unhooked a singing grenade, poked
the settings, then let it go in midair. It shot forward down the corridor
and turned the corner, seeking man-sized heat signatures that weren't
protected by our coded armor beacons. Dorr flipped the tracker open
on his wrist and watched the grenade's route. None of the other teams
reported any contact. That meant that none of the rooms or quarters
were occupied between here and the bridge.
My gut started to coil. "They're lying in wait," I said, just as the ceiling
panels slid aside and fire rained down...
Committed to finding science fiction's voices of the future, Warner
Aspect sponsors worldwide searches for debut novels. The
competition's first winner, Nalo Hopkinson, quickly became one of the
most acclaimed authors of her generation. Now, from a selection of
over one thousand entries, Warner Aspect is proud to present
WARCHILD, by Karin Lowachee, the engrossing story of a young
boy's coming of age amid interstellar war, a riveting saga in the
tradition of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.
WARCHILD
The merchant ship Mukudori encompasses the whole of
eight-year-old Jos's world, until a notorious pirate destroys the ship,
slaughters the adults, and enslaves the children. Thus begins a
desperate odyssey of terror and escape that takes Jos beyond known
space to the homeworld of the strits, Earth's alien enemies. To survive,
the boy must become a living weapon and a master spy. But no
training will protect Jos in a war where every hope might be a deadly
lie, and every friendship might hide a lethal betrayal. And all the while
he will face the most grueling trial of his life...becoming his own man.
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