Mothwing — William Tedford

Ten thousand years from now, in the far reaches of our galaxy, a human outpost has lost control of its machine intelligence. A war eight centuries in the past pitted humanity against a radiation-damaged AI that no longer recognizes its creator and leaves remnants of each faction at eternal odds with one another. Humanity lives within ark-sized cities that roam freely among the stars, when not matter-transmitted into the core of paradise words for safety. They do not venture from their refuge in their flesh and blood bodies, but live upon the surface in quantum-entangled avatars. These are the Techs. A minority, the Nats, Naturalists, go naked in the world in their own flesh and blood. For the courageous, death is the spice that makes life worth living and the only source of new generations of humanity.

Twelve-year-old Myla Rhodes is a Nat, her parents murdered by the Chineen Hive. Overlord Khalin Nome has desperately tried and failed to convince her to use the avatar he has created for her for her own safety, although the excessive extent of his upset is suspect. What can he be hiding from the nine cities? When Myla wanders off and is attacked by the Hive, she escapes and she survives with both the Hive and Covonia in pursuit, one faction intent upon destroying her and the other to rescue both her and the secret to her survival.

The nine cities panic, suspecting that Overload Nome has harbored a forbidden biochemistry that once gave birth to a super-human that brought the Chineen Hive to its knees, but at a terrible cost of human lives. Open warfare ensues once again, an interstellar battle in which nobody is certain from which direction or source a death blow may strike. The nine cities are hoping an innocent child has died and worthy of grief, but dreading the suspicious power that is leaving devastation in its wake among the stars. As for Myla, nicknamed Mothwing by a lost father, she wants only to survive and, with quiet desperation, to be nothing more than the child she thought herself to be.