Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

of our savagery. At night I could hear it sung in alien tongue from
closed bars and windows, “The Cries of Deimos,” a song about a man
murdering his wife before the Skrav could carry her away. It was a song that
they sang about us in private, a song that they sang to frighten children and
teach them to be wary trusting species that were different then their own and
most of all to teach them of the dangerous Skrav. Most aliens called us human
but they also called us the Terran or Ter. I heard plenty of people say that our
name meant terror in some alien languages or was used as a synonym in
others.
    What made us feared wasn’t just our violent nature; we were the only
species in the galaxy (at least living) that challenged the Skrav. For hundreds
of years we had been at war. Any planet caught harboring humans was
considered contaminated. The Skrav would turn civilized worlds into deserts
in mere hours just for harboring us for a day. The Skrav called us a plague, a
parasite; as far as they were concerned we were a blight on the universe and
we had to be eliminated. As far as we were concerned the Skrav were the true
embodiment of childhood fear, they were the blight - to speak of the Skrav
was to talk about terror. They were the ones who should have had songs sung
made about them only everyone was too afraid.
    Errikus might have been a backwater world but it was still full of
hundreds of spiraling towers, rivers, and home to many different species and
hundreds of different lifeforms (most of which were the wildlife that lived
outside the city walls). Some of these species we even considered our allies.
The ones that stand out in my mind, or at least the ones that I can name, are
the tall and grey Eek, the short and fuzzy Pok, the Arr7, the duck-faced
Myra, and the batl-like Kir. The city ran for miles surrounding rivers and
atriums. Some areas rose far above were the eye could see covering hills and
creating shadows on slums and ghettos. Homes were placed on top of one
another or etched into the sides of rocks. The sky was full of paper-thin birds
and triangular beasts that floated through the air like flying manta rays.
Massive ships would stretch and block out the horizon came and went from
the ports that made up most of the inner city. A massive wall stretched all
around us protecting us from the wild outside. It also separated us from the
air in which we couldn’t breath. Even close to the outskirts we had to be
weary or wear breathers. Inside the city organic vines ran through the streets
and sides of houses purifying the air while massive plumes of gas poured out
into the sky from oxygen factories. The wall was the line between life and
death.
The best part of Errikus was of course my family.
    My father had died when I was young just before I was born. Killed by a
hellbeast that came through the wall. From what I had been told he was a
valiant man, honorable and well respected and liked by everyone. He had
protected the city with his life joining the guard that hunted it down after it
slaughtered several Eek and Pok. I still had my mother but my family wasn’t
just my blood; my family were my friends: Hayden, Aira, and Dom.
    Aira and Dom belonged to the Aelita crew and Hayden, well he was a
member of the Erebus crew like me but unlike me Hayden was a Drok (yes,
one of my best friends was an alien. Get over it.). The Drok were kind of like
our brothers-in-arms, an endangered species (our fault) that were so similar
to us it was almost impossible to tell humans and Drok apart. Two hundred
years ago before any of us were born ‘the Trintiy’ stumbled upon a world
filled with a human-like species. We thought for a moment that maybe we
could breed with them (we couldn’t - at least not without a few altercations).
The only real difference between our species and their own was that the Drok
had yellow eyes and their blood was darker then ours. Some had red skin
pigment