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

He was all too aware how many merc races were, by Human standards, considered monsters. Tortantula would slaughter until there was nothing left, feeding on the enemy dead. Besquith killed for the pure fun of it. Aposa were just bloody nuts. They wouldn’t eat the enemy dead, but they were just as brutal as the Tortantula. The Lumar, on the other hand, were almost Human in the way they treated their defeated adversaries.

Lumar were usually only used for garrison, reinforcements on major contracts, or security. Shadow wondered if it was their rather gentle nature which explained that. Oh, it wasn’t that a Lumar wouldn’t fight. He’d witnessed two squabbles in the cafeteria before leaving. Those four arms and the aliens’ powerful build was a horrendous combination to witness. Yet the fights were over as quickly as they’d begun. They were a strange and fascinating race, to be sure.

Once the Lumar had satiated their hunger, and Shadow had as well, Ulan and Iban led them from the cafeteria through the same door as they’d entered. The other Lumar were leaving, too, off to do whatever tasks needed doing. They weren’t self-starters, yet Shadow’s understanding was that they performed regular jobs or anything assigned them well. Still, Shadow wondered who was assigning these jobs. Normally on a contract, an officer of another race would oversee the Lumar to be sure they had been directed properly. There were no other merc races in the base that he’d seen or heard mentioned.

Shadow was about to ask Ulan about this as they were leaving the cafeteria until he spotted another of the females. She was standing in a doorway leading to another section of the Lumar barracks. She had two slates held in her lower arms, and was using her upper arms to do something with them, both at the same time. A millipede-like Jeha had half its body raised up to be closer to eye level with the female, its antenna waving in the air, apparently listening to instructions. At the group’s sudden appearance, the female’s head turned to regard them.

Shadow was immediately struck by the female Lumar’s eyes. They were deep blue with very little white to them, like massively dilated Human or Zuul eyes, since both races’ optical organs were nearly identical. She didn’t have eyebrows. The Lumar appeared hairless. However, her eyes narrowed, and she immediately stopped talking. Her mannerisms were that of a thoughtful, intelligent being, and manipulating two slates at the same time was something even Ripley couldn’t do. This is a strange Lumar, he realized.

Shadow opened his mouth to offer a greeting. The female turned and left without a word, her purple fur jacket flapping behind her as the door closed. The Jeha’s antenna moved around and waved in Shadow’s direction, its tiny nub eyes on short stalks split between the now departed female and Shadow. Razor sharp mandibles clicked and scraped, his translator rendering it into English.

“I wasn’t done giving my report.” After a second, the Jeha dropped onto its many legs and shot away at high speed, turning a nearby corner by running up the wall, since the gravity was so low. Then it too was gone.

“Oi, Shadow,” Sonya called. “You coming, idiot?”

He growled at being called a fool. “You see that exchange?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” Rex asked. “Come on, we’re going to meet an Aku.”

“I know where we were going,” Shadow said under his breath. His eyes lingered on the door the female had left through, his desire to follow burning brightly. Later, his inner voice said, so he turned to follow the two male Lumar and his siblings.

Because his thoughts were taken up trying to understand the earlier encounter, Shadow didn’t take note of many details as they descended until they were traversing the third ramp in a row. “What’s with the ramps?” he asked finally. “Wouldn’t elevators make more sense in a mine?”

“Dun’ know,” Rex said just ahead. “You can ask the Lumar, but I doubt they’ll have any knowledge to pass along.”

Shadow nodded, accepting the limits of questioning a Lumar. What he wanted was to talk to a female. Either the female was an exception for their species, or she wasn’t. He had his own suspicion. However, at the bottom of the next ramp, they encountered their first Aku, and ramps made more sense.

“They look like turtles,” Drake said.

“Turtle soup is tasty,” Rex said.

“You just ate,” Sonya muttered, elbowing him. Rex shrugged in answer—it took a lot of food to keep their largest brother running.

“Just saying. Turtle makes for good soup.”

There were three of the Aku in a circle, their long, flexible necks all turned and craned, bringing faces toward them. They were more like rocks with eyes and a mouth than turtles, which Shadow knew Chelsey, at least, would immediately consider cute. The eyes were situated forward and seemed to have an external lid, more resembling a mechanical iris than a lid. The eyes themselves were black-on-black and held an unmistakable feeling of intelligence. They were all staring at Rex.

“I don’t think they’d appreciate being soup, brother,” Sonya said, her voice low and wrapped with a laugh.

One of the Aku turned his big rocky head and stared at Ulan, then spoke. “Why Zuul here?” Shadow’s translator rendered their speech into clear, if stilted, English.

“So they’re intelligent?” Drake asked.

“We are,” the Aku replied.

Shadow glanced at his translator. The device had a small display to show information. He tapped the display, which told him the Aku were speaking Lumar.

“Zuul are with Humans,” Ulan explained, looking at Drake. “This Niss, who run Aku.”

Niss turned its attention back to Drake, its strange, almost mechanical eyes blinking in the gloomy cavern, then spoke. Their language had a gurgling sound that wasn’t translated. Then it spoke again. “Never meet