Out of the dark by David Weber

Author:David Weber [David Weber]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780765324122
Published: 2010-09-28T06:34:50+00:00

“I shall have to check the vehicle,” the mechanical voice said. “Do not do anything to alarm my warriors.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Mitchell said with every ounce of sincerity he could summon.

• • • • •

Gunshail looked over at his dismounted troops, then flicked his ears in the direction of the human’s vehicle. His troopers had heard his side of the conversation in their own language, so they already knew what he wanted, and Section Commander Brasik lowered his own ears in response to the unspoken order.

Gunshail knew Brasik was one of those who had come to deeply and sincerely hate all humans for their bloody-minded perversity and lack of civilized morals. For that matter, Gunshail wasn’t all that fond of them himself. Unlike the section commander, however, who would have vastly preferred to simply shoot every human he encountered and let Dainthar and Cainharn sort out who (if anyone) got its soul, Gunshail understood that sooner or later they were going to have to start interacting with these creatures without simply killing them out of hand. That was, after all, the reason for conquering them in the first place.

His superiors had made that very point rather firmly to him after that unfortunate business with the human female and its offspring. He still thought his battalion commander had been a bit unreasonable about the whole thing. How was Gunshail supposed to know it had half a twelve of cubs in its backseat? Or that it was unarmed? It hadn’t stopped when he’d waved its vehicle to a halt. Instead, it had actually accelerated, so of course his squad had opened fire on it! Anyone would have. In fact, he still wasn’t so sure his superiors’ argument that it had simply panicked and tried to flee to protect its young was accurate. Not that any of them had survived in the end anyway, of course.

All right, it had been wasteful. He admitted it. And apparently these “humans” really didn’t understand that any honorable hunters ate their kill—that it would have been an insult to the prey if they hadn’t eaten it! They’d certainly carried on hysterically enough about it, anyway. He still didn’t think he’d been all that far out of line, and he suspected his immediate superiors hadn’t thought so, either. They would have reprimanded him a lot more firmly if they had.

Still, they’d been firm enough to satisfy their own superiors. And they’d also pointed out that Ground Base Commander Teraik, commanding the rather jury-rigged Ground Base Two Alpha being built just outside the human city of “Greensboro” as a make-do substitute for the original, destroyed Ground Base Two, would really prefer to convince the local humans to submit without killing them all off in the process. So he was prepared to give this human the benefit of the doubt and assume it was capable of at least the rudiments of honorable behavior.

For now, at least; he could always change his mind if he decided to.

• • • •

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