Night Song (The Guild Wars Book 9) by Mark Wandrey (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📕

kinds of specialists in the suits. Ripley could make the suits do things that amazed them all, able to dodge incoming fire and take cover behind seemingly useless articles. Drake was a marksman of singular talent, able to hit nearly any target without aiming. He didn’t like the automatic systems, which annoyed their instructors. Sonya grasped situations and took advantage of them faster than the rest could realize what was happening, often flummoxing her opponents. Shadow could use the jumpjets like an artist, preferring to attack from above after analyzing the opponents’ positions and catching them completely off guard.

Rex liked the direct approach—charge in guns blazing. Not as surprising as some of his siblings’ tactics, yet it worked more often than not. Taken as a whole, they would be a team impossible to deal with. At least, that’s what Father was telling them. And why would he lie? Rex went back to bending the rebar.

* * *

Ripley didn’t think Rex realized they were watching him bend and unbend the steel bar with child-like glee. More than any of them, he seemed to be reveling in the pure power of the suits. Each to their own, they were enjoying themselves. Sure, Ripley was a little annoyed that Shadow had mastered the use of jumpjets before she had. She was a pilot, for goodness sake. Life was funny sometimes.

She was more excited about the CASPer than getting to go into space and through a stargate. She was fairly sure her feelings would change when the time came. However, for now, the mech was the name of the game.

“Break’s over,” Edgar yelled as he came into the bay.

Before, they might have complained and delayed the work. This time, they all immediately headed for their CASPers, exchanging back slaps with the Humans. Edgar kept an eye out while all who weren’t mounted yet got set, the Zuul suits coming alive within moments of each other.

“Looks like you’re getting it,” he said.

“Piece of piss,” Drake agreed. The rest nodded. Rex tossed the steel bar a few meters away, where it rang like a bell on the ancient concrete.

“Let’s do this,” Ripley said, and their training continued.

* * *

Dana sat in her office, eyes fixed on the screen in front of her rather than the work she needed to do before launch. She’d keyed into the master channel, listening to the chatter of enthusiastic youth training for violence.

Not entirely fair, she rebuked herself, wincing at Drake’s utter joy as he executed a ridiculously dangerous move to the cheers of his current teammates. They were training to stay alive and make an absurd amount of money.

“Ripley! On your left!” Rex, commanding, not a hint of snarl in his voice. Jumping into training with his whole heart, the way he did everything.

She’d argued with Alan for months about the modified CASPers. Not the cost or because it meant their children would actively join the company. She’d always known that would happen. But having CASPers would make them targets. The only non-Humans in CASPers anywhere in the galaxy…it would be a free-for-all, if the wrong beings found out.

“Hewers, drop! I got your six.” Drake, sounding delighted more than threatening, in a way she’d never heard him interacting with other Humans outside their family.

She saw it in his face, the moment the CASPers were unboxed. Joy.

“No, don’t drop, Hewers! Messy shooting, you deserve to take it up the—” Ripley cut herself off with something not quite a yelp, making an incredible shot and rolling out of the way like a pro.

They sounded like any younglings in training. All in, happy to be there, overbold to hide nerves. Like mercs.

The tradeoffs had always been worth it before. A merc’s life, while often short, was better than a life on the basic subsistence stipend. Taking an active role, not just waiting for death, but courting it and fighting it off…that had been enough.

Until Alan had come home with five tiny bundles. Puppies would have wrenched her heart, but these? Her children. All bright-eyed intelligence and unreserved love, always wanting to please her, and straining for the next adventure. Zuul were a merc species, all right, and they’d taken to training like ducks to water, needing something for their energy. A whole other race, ready for things much earlier than Human young, but her babies had never been alien, not to her.

The Zuul who’d come to visit, though...who’d come to take them…they weren’t the same. Uufek and Teef were intelligent, yes, but cold, distant. Alien in truth.

Tomorrow her babies would leave her, would go with the rest of Silent Night and these two Zuul. What would they be like when they came home to her?

What, a voice whispered to her as Sonya’s wild laugh rang across the channel, if they never come home to me at all? Hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

* * *

Fur matted and every joint aching, Sonya ate a bar in the empty mess and reviewed her progress over the last days of training. She rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the soreness. It didn’t make any sense—the CASPer worked as the well-oiled machine it was; all she had to do was lift and lean and anticipate. She wasn’t actually lifting hundreds of kilos of suit of armor with every movement, so there was no need for her to hurt so much afterward.

“You’re tensing.” Hewers couldn’t possibly have snuck up on her; she must be even more tired than she thought to have missed his approach.

“What?” she asked through a mouthful of powdery protein.

“Tensing. That’s why you’re sore.” He gestured at her shoulders, which she belatedly realized she was still rolling.

When she continued to stare blankly at him, he laughed and sat across the table from her, snagging her extra bar and tearing it open.

“The CASPer doesn’t really give