Shield of Drani (World of Drani Book 1)

by Melonie Purcell

  Her mind tickled his as she searched out the answers she was really here to find. Definitely not a telepath up to Drani standards, but she didn’t know that. The fact that Rydon thought she was unstoppable rang out from her mind as loudly as her adornments. He could use that overconfidence. If he was careful.

  Jalkean smiled what he hoped was a shy smile, and looked away. He allowed a tiny bit of anger to slip past his shielded mind before shutting it away again. “I may have played a small part,” he said, rubbing his hand along the back of a chair. “Drani should have sided with the Shreet when they had the chance. Now, I just want to protect as many people as possible.”

  “Protect them? From whom?” Rydon asked, her own thoughts beginning to flow unbidden from her mind now that she thought she had the upper hand.

  Turning to pretend to hide his anger, Jalkean gripped the chair tightly and let his completely real feelings of frustration seep out of his thoughts. “From themselves. Drani needs to change. Our policy of isolationism has imprisoned us for too long.” She suspects I’m a spy? he thought, shielding his mind. That doesn’t make sense. Of course I’m a spy. I’m their spy, or so they think. “We could be a powerful player in this war.” He poked around her mind with careful precision. “Instead, we hide behind our shields and our ideals.”

  Ah. There it was. Jalkean found what he was looking for and turned to face Rydon. They thought he was a spy for Drani. And this clumsy oaf was supposed to sort it out before the brae arrived. Well, he could fix that. As long as they never figured out just how outmatched their telepath really was, she was his. Jalkean filled his mind with the pride of leading his people into an alliance with the winning side, the Shreet. He thought about how they would never know it was him and how he was okay with that, as long as his planet came out as a major power in this part of the galaxy. Then he fixed an expression of what he hoped was resolve in place, pulled out the chair, and sat. “I realize not everyone will understand what I have done, but in the end, if they really knew, they would thank me.”

  Rydon’s mind practically clapped as she cleared him of all suspicion. “I am sad that you had to make such sacrifices,” she said. “Your people will never know the cost you have endured so they can be part of the next great expansion.”

  For fear of pushing it too far, Jalkean only shrugged. They sat in silence until it was just beginning to become awkward when the door slid open again. Two guards, both the sickly pale yellow color of most of the Shreet, stepped into the room. Their skinbraids extended halfway down their heads before turning to hair, both whiter versions of their skin color. The skin to hair ratio was somehow connected to age; that much Jalkean had worked out. Exactly how old the short skinbraid people were compared to the long skinbraid people, he couldn’t guess. The two surveyed Rydon and Jalkean both, those large brown eyes not seeming to move as they looked for threats. Once satisfied, the shorter of the two, who appeared to be female, stepped sideways and cleared the path for what could only be the brae.

  Rydon’s mind confirmed the brae’s identity the instant he entered the room. She stood, and Jalkean waited a beat before joining her to keep her leaky mind a secret. The brae was about the same size as the male guard, and his skinbraid didn’t go much farther than the other’s, which was surprising to Jalkean. The man’s skin was a burnt orange color, which made his nearly-black eyes stand out in contrast. Unlike Dran or Arlele eyes, the Shreet eyes were large, teardrop-shaped, and one solid variation of brown. Despite his unimposing physical presentation, his presence filled the room and Jalkean had no problem believing that this was the brae who was building a space station the size of a small planet and taking over a section of the galaxy.

  The brae handed Jalkean a thin, curved band. Rydon’s thoughts explained right away how the translator worked, but Jalkean held the object in his hand until the other telepath sent him a visual of what to do with it.

  Without further coaching, Jalkean placed the band around his neck and connected the small pads mounted on the ends to the skin near his temples. He felt a clicking resonating up through his skull, and then silence.

  “I see you met Rydon,” the brae said, his clicks and whistles being translated into well-articulated Universal.

  “I did,” Jalkean answered. The brae was wearing what looked like a more sophisticated version of Jalkean’s translator. It was odd watching the obvious translation taking place and not being able to hear it.

  After a tiny pause, the brae continued. “Let us sit.”

  Following Yittbrae’s lead, Jalkean pulled out the chair and sat across from Rydon, facing the brae. The other telepath’s thoughts were hopping around his mind like a wild animal trying to get into its den, and Jalkean didn’t dare try to sift through the brae’s thoughts for fear of getting caught. Not until Rydon was sufficiently distracted, at least.

  The translator made an impressive imitation of the brae’s voice as it rendered the clicks and squeaks into Universal. “I am pleased we were able to provide you with safe passage from your planet. It seems from my report that you perhaps changed your mind at the last minute?”

  Jalkean’s hand went to the already healing cut above his left eye, all that was left of the bleeding gash from the fight at Nevvis’s house. “No. I didn’t change my mind,” he said, forcing his hand back down to the table and trying not to give away how unnerved the brae made him feel. “For one, Nevvis’s house is under surveillance. I had to make it look like another abduction.”

  “Why?” the brae asked. “What difference does it make now if they know you sided with us?”

  He had a point. Jalkean shrugged. “I have family on Drani. Who knows what could happen to them. But mostly I was trying to explain to them that I needed to get Taymar. We didn’t have one of these,” he said, pointing to his translator. “They didn’t understand what I was saying. That was our agreement, was it not? I help you get to the surface, and you take Taymar with you during the raid.” Jalkean gestured around the room. “Where is she?”

  He didn’t need his telepathy to know that the brae didn’t like Jalkean’s tone. Rydon sat back in her chair, creating distance. Her thoughts retreated as well. The skinbraids close to the man’s scalp brightened to a deep red before fading back to the normal dark orange of his skin. There was a long silence between them before the brae sat back, blinked his weird clear inner eyelid, and laced his fingers together in front of him. His nose slits parted as he drew in a long breath. “She isn’t here,” he said. “Perhaps you could advise us as to where she might be.”

  Jalkean frowned. “How could I possibly know that? She was supposed to be with me.” He kept an eye on the brae’s scalp. It seemed to work like Arlele spots in showing mood and agitation level, which could be handy. “Which is why I tried to stop them when they came for me. She was in the same house. Why didn’t they just bring her at the same time they brought me?”

  A tiny shrug was the brae’s only answer. “We are working to retrieve her now. I am still unclear as to how she could be an asset to us worth so much work to obtain.”

  “To begin with, that was our agreement.” Jalkean leaned forward and noted with satisfaction that Rydon completely withdrew her mental contact with him. That she feared the brae was obvious enough. “Since you are suggesting that may not be reason enough, she is a dual-talent. She can collect thoughts from a person’s mind and then make those thoughts happen. No explanation. No nothing. Think about how useful that could be.”

  “She is not the only dual-talent.”

  Jalkean scrambled to control his expression and shield his thoughts. How much did the brae know? What other dual-talent could he possibly be thinking of? A quick pass through his mind didn’t help. His language was so very different from anything Jalkean had ever heard; he needed more time to concentrate. “I don’t know what other dual-talent you are talking about,” he said when the silence was beginning to drag.

  The brae leaned across the table, his skinbraids swinging forward so that the
lighter hair part brushed the table. “Be careful, young Dran, that your overconfidence doesn’t get you killed. You were not my only choice on Drani. I have others much higher ranking than you.”

  For a moment, Jalkean held the commander’s dark gaze. He certainly didn’t want to take a walk in space, but he didn’t want to give in too easily. This time when he tried to hear the brae’s thoughts, they came through as loud as if the translator had spoken them. His high-ranking spy was a member of the Leading Council, a dual-talented member of the Leading Council. Jalkean couldn’t get a read on if the Council member was male or female. Nor an image, for that matter, which suggested that he had never met the spy directly. But a spy on Leading Council was bad. Very bad. How could he possibly get that information to Nevvis?

  Jalkean leaned back and glanced over at Rydon. She hadn’t made so much as a jingle the entire time, and he had a sudden sinking thought that he may have underestimated her as badly as she underestimated him, which would end with that spacewalk he was worried about. As if on cue, her telepathy reached out to brush his mind, but he made sure it wouldn’t find anything. “Well, Yittbrae, we had an agreement. I did my part. I pulled down the shields and got you the window you asked for. I only hope that you will do what you agreed to and make sure Taymar makes it to this station alive.”

  In a flurry of swinging braids and tinkling bells, the brae pushed back his chair and rose, Rydon scurrying to follow. Jalkean also pushed himself out of the chair, but he didn’t get in a hurry about it. “We have a ship going to retrieve her as we speak,” the brae said. He turned to the door, but paused before it opened. “Anything she can see in a person’s head, she can do with her mind?”

  “Yes,” Jalkean said. “If she can understand it, she can do it.”

  “Interesting,” the brae said. With a nod of his head, he beckoned one guard to stay. The other slipped out behind Rydon.

  When the door slid closed behind them, Jalkean collapsed back into his chair. He didn’t care what the guard relayed to her boss later. How Nevvis did this sort of thing every day, Jalkean would never know.

  Chapter 10 – Nevvis

  Nearly seven hours after his enlightening yet disturbing conversation with Taymar, Sean sat in his office, still staring at his viewer. The skeletal collection of the Alliance’s intel on Drani filled the small square in three neat, tabbed pages. And that was all of it. Three pages of information on an entire planet. A planet the Alliance was about to belly-up to.

  Sean swiped his hand across the projected facts and charts, collecting them into a crumpled mess of holographic nothing as he went. With a snort of disgust, he tossed the virtual mess at the hard-screen, sending it back to storage where it could wait for him and be just as useless later. He tapped the viewer off, stood, and stretched.

  Overhead, the lit ceiling flashed from its steady vitamin-enhanced white light to an ominous orange. “Captain to the bridge!” squawked a voice through the com panel. “Level one alert. Impact possible. Crew, assume impact protocol.”

  Moments later, Sean burst from a deck shuttle onto the bridge. The wall-size viewer at the front of the crowded room glowed in sharp contrast to the dimmed orange light filling the room. Against the backdrop of ink-black space, small bits of metal and scraps of God knew what filled the screen. One object in particular had been enlarged and centered on the main viewer.

  Sean regarded the elliptical sphere hovering before him with contempt before looking around the room at his crew. “What the bloody hell happened here?”

  “A freighter, sir,” offered the navigations officer. “It was on an intercept course when I initiated the alert. It scanned us and then launched that pod.”

  “And from the look of it, the bloody thing dumped its trash as well.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, her voice fading as she spoke. “It released its refuge and veered away.”

  Sean couldn’t see his officer in the dim light, but he didn’t need to see her to know she was embarrassed. A level one alert over a trash dump. It would be a long time before her fellow crewmen let her live that down. “Am I to assume that’s a pod you have there lined up and ready to shoot?”

  “Umm. Well, sir, it was launched directly at us. What I mean, sir, is that the freighter launched a projectile at the ship. It was coming right at us until it struck a piece of debris and…well, it changed course.”

  “Moving fast, was it?” Sean asked, stepping around the center map table to get closer to the viewer where the image of the pod drifted amid the rubble.

  “Faster than it is…I mean it…” She stared a hole into the screen. “No, sir. Not really fast, exactly.”

  Another crewman that Sean couldn’t see piped up from behind him. “The pod is contacting our ship, sir, with Alliance clearance to bring it aboard. It would seem the freighter’s transport equipment wasn’t working, so they couldn’t port the pod.”

  Having made his point, Sean leaned over and read the computer analysis of the pod. “Well, grand. Just bloody grand.” He turned around and slapped his hand down on the com panel. “Security team to cargo two,” he said, before turning back to the viewer. “It’s a good damned thing you didn’t fire, Lieutenant. You’d have likely killed the Drani ambassador. That is, if being launched out of the bloody freighter didn’t do it first. Transfer that pod to cargo two right away.” As Sean turned to leave, he gestured toward the ceiling. “And cancel the bloody alert!” The ceiling lost its fiery glow just as the doors slid closed on the deck shuttle.

  By the time Sean stepped onto the louvered cargo bay floor, the creamy white life pod had been transferred into the ship and was already being scanned by security. It waited in silence, looking for all the world like a giant egg.

  “Clear, sir. Do you want me to activate the lock?” asked an ensign, shouldering his scanner.

  Sean nodded.

  Three other security members aimed their weapons at the pod as the ensign stepped forward and triggered the release. The pod clicked, then hissed. Lights flashed along the length of the oval and the egg split in half. With a series of beeps, the top lifted up and slid around the back side of the pod. No one moved.

  While Sean waited, two of the security officers crept forward, weapons ready. “Someone is inside, sir. A man,” one said.

  “I should hope so. Is he alive?”

  “I’m alive.” The answer came from inside the capsule. “But I don’t think I missed the alternative by much.”

  Sean stepped up to the pod and peered inside where a tawny-haired saltari male was pushing himself up onto his elbows. “You are on board the UAP Regal. I’m Captain Sean McCauffer. And who might you be?”

  The frazzled man turned eyes as golden yellow as a cat’s toward the captain and offered up a weary smile. “I am Nevvis of Drani, and I must tell you, Captain McCauffer, that if I have to go back the same way I came, I’m going to become a permanent member of your crew.”

  Sean laughed and allowed security to finish scanning their guest to confirm his identity before helping him out of the pod. The Dran wasn’t at all what Sean expected. Unlike the squatty pig-eyed Targer, Nevvis was tall and muscular. His complexion, now that some of the color was coming back, was sunbaked brown. It stood out in sharp contrast against his sandy-yellow hair, which was somewhat wild at the moment.

  As the man cleared the pod and found his balance, Sean couldn’t hide his smile. Nevvis reminded Sean of a mountain lion from Earth. His hair was the same golden brown, and his eyes the same amber yellow. And when Nevvis stepped off the platform, he moved with a similar grace and confidence. No wonder Taymar was worried about this man’s arrival. She had a right to be. He was a predator.

  Nevvis regarded Sean with a warm smile and made an unsuccessful attempt at finger-combing his hair. “Not all Dran look alike,” he said. “Not all Arleles look alike, for that matter.”

  Sean’s smile vanished. “Just how telepathic are you now?”

  Nevvis grinned and pulled a large duffle bag out
of the pod’s opening. “Telepathic enough to know you have Taymar.” He shouldered it and looked Sean dead in the eyes. “And that you are surprised to see I don’t have sharp teeth and poisonous claws, as your conversation with her no doubt led you to believe.”

  Sean nodded and turned toward the door. Actually, he thought as he headed toward the exit, ’Twas my conversation with Targer making me think that.

  Skipping further pleasantries, Sean led Nevvis through the winding corridors that led to his office without speaking, partly for security reasons, but also because, for no rational reason he could think of, he didn’t like the man. Even during the short ride in the deck shuttle, he maintained a rigid silence and focused his thoughts on star charts and their next supply stop. Not until the door to his private sanctuary slid closed behind them did he speak. “Pease, sit,” he said, waving his hand toward a chair opposite his desk.

  “If you wouldn’t find it rude, I would prefer to stand. I’m sure you understand.”

  Sean nodded and slipped into the chair behind his desk. “Can’t say I blame you. Straight to it, then. You’re right. We do have the Arlele your people sent us after.”

  “Taymar,” Nevvis said, without looking away from a wall-size sector display. And without thinking, if Sean didn’t miss his guess.

  “Yes, Taymar. We found her on a planet called Daryus two days ago, but I’m sure you knew that, didn’t you?”

  Shaking his head, Nevvis clasped his hands behind his back and turned to regard Sean with the casual familiarity of an old friend, or a subordinate. “I’ve been on my way to connect with your ship for over a week. It’s been a long…uncomfortable trip. Were there any repercussions from Daryus for taking her in the manner I’m sure you had to?”

  “Seeing as how they assisted in the landing of a stolen Alliance shuttle, removed its recall override, and then not only harbored but employed the fugitive, no. Except to give us her living station coordinates, they were as quiet as wee lambs. One thing is for sure now, isn’t it? That company was needing a telepath in a bad way.”