Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

years since we fled Earth.
To tell my story properly I need to start where I remember clearly. The planet I
was born on was called Errikus. It had one massive city - an alien trading
colony. It is where I grew up and where I made my first memories long before I
became a ‘user,’ and before I became a soldier fighting against the Skrav on our
journey to Eden. Errikus, my childhood home, an alien world like no other, a
home that fills me with happy thoughts and scars that will forever be etched into
the back of my mind and this was all long before my life went to hell.
    Child drawings hung on the wall in the schoolyard. They stood eighteen
by twenty four inches a mix of crayons, acrylics, and chalk. Each drawing
was a rocket or spaceship as only a child could imagine. Starships that would
touch stars or fly through clouds. Each drawing was a story, an idea, almost
like a one page comic created by a kid that showed how they saw the future
as it quickly approached. My drawing was giant rectangle. On the rectangle I
tried to include as many small details as possible combining different shades
of chalk to create shadows and depth. I wasn’t half bad for a young kid. In
some spots you could see little air hatches, turrets, even people crawling along
the sides of the ship. I used red acrylic for the fire that came out the bottom
and blue for the immer that I imagined at the top. My mother loved it. I can
still remember her smile as I first showed it to her. Before it was hanging in
the schoolyard she had hung it on the fridge in our quarters. For some reason
there seemed no better place.
    Our colony, Errikus had seen it’s fair share of ships come and go, our
city was for the most part a port sitting on the edge of uncharted territory.
Errikus main export was an exotic herb (an aphrodisiac) made from the
marrow of creatures known as ‘Lahna’ (translated as I have always come to
know them, hellbeasts). The pieces of art that hung around me were special;
created by humans celebrating the return of our three great ships set to arrive
in a little over one week’s time.
    I was born on Errikus just like I said but it wasn’t my “real’’ home. My
real home, like the other human children, was one of the three ships. Errikus
wasn’t a place that I belonged and I had spent my life being told that. We
were fourteen years old when it had come our time to leave. The Erebus (and
the other two) had gone on a short journey to visit a world called Epsilon
Eridani. It was a binary star system full of gas giants that would put anything
near us (or near the “old” us) to shame. Errikus was a border world, on the
edge of charted space (and charted immer) and had gone to Epsilon Eridani
to trade with a cybernetic race called the Arr7. The Arr7 were a race of
sentient machines that looked like old Earth Spiders with human torsos and
rectangular heads. Their upgrades included solar sails and equipment that
would both guide us and help us map our route through the uncharted region
of space and immer. I was amazed by the immer as a child, a dimension that
stood on top of our own, it was exciting, the idea of exploring it seemed like
the adventure of a lifetime.
    As a child reading about the immer I was fascinated to learn that when it
was first discovered some had wanted to call it hyperspace but it was so
unlike space those that had discovered it decided that would only lessen what
it actual was. It was then decided that it would be a called “the Aether” which
over time got shortened to immer. Those that crossed the immer in the early
days were called ‘immersers’ but now everyone that travels in space is like
that so the term stopped being used. Either way we had no choice but to go, it
was better to be excited to leave then sad to stay.
    Humans for the most part were feared throughout the galaxy. Even on
this backwater world the other species treated us with respect but would
whisper