Shield of Drani (World of Drani Book 1)
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Shield of Drani
By
Melonie Purcell
Shield of Drani
Copyright © 2016 by Melonie Purcell. All rights reserved
www.meloniepurcell.com
Cover design by Radovan Zivkovic
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Please respect the hard work of this author by purchasing a legal copy of this book. Your support of the author’s efforts and rights is appreciated.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any real person—living or dead—actual locations or events is entirely coincidental.
For my sister who remembers straddling a tree branch while I rambled about how I was going to publish a book.
Dreams are funny things, aren’t they?
Contents
Two Months Earlier
Chapter 1 – Trapped
Chapter 2 – Tests
Chapter 3 – Stolen
Chapter 4 – Takeover
Chapter 5 – Lost
Chapter 6 - Capture
Chapter 7 – Waiting
Chapter 8 – Holding
Chapter 9 - Sean
Chapter 10 – Nevvis
Chapter 11 - Medica
Chapter 12 – Together
Chapter 14 – Sharing
Chapter 15 – Atrium
Chapter 16 – Brakeal
Chapter 17 – Kellin
Chapter 18 – Fight
Chapter 19 - Run
Two Months Earlier
Nevvis surveyed the room of stony-faced council members. They surveyed him right back. He’d lost count of how long the Council had been locked in battle, but they didn’t seem to be any closer to a solution than when they’d started. Here they were, thirteen of the most talented telepaths on a planet of telepaths, and they couldn’t communicate. Nevvis had to smile at the irony.
“You want to share your joke with the rest of us?” Lorelis asked. The long session had done nothing to dull his sharp wit and sharper tongue.
“No. I’ll keep that one to myself,” Nevvis said, hoping his comment jabbed his nemesis at least a tiny bit. If it did, Lorelis kept his reaction well shielded, both physically and psychically.
Nevvis ran his fingers through his hair and drew in a deep breath. “So, we are at an impasse?”
Lorelis shrugged, the motion seeming casual, relaxed even, but Nevvis knew better. Nothing about Lorelis was ever casual. “If by impasse you mean that you will not get your majority vote to lead us into war against a species we don’t even know, then I suppose the answer is yes. We are at an impasse.”
“Dicci!” Nevvis swore. “How many times do I have to repeat it, Lorelis? I’m not bringing this war to us. It’s already here. From the moment the Shreet slipped through that time flux and decided they liked our part of the galaxy better than theirs, the war has been on its way here. And, now that they know we have the brakeal they need to power their ships and that space station of theirs, it’s only a matter of time before they’re sitting on our porch waiting to be let in. When that time comes, we won’t be able to stop them.”
Erus shifted back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach, assuming the same annoying pose he always did right before agreeing with everything Lorelis said. If Lorelis said the moon was made of glass, Erus would rub his belly and say, Oh yes. A very shiny glass. “We have shields,” he said. Again.
“Yes, Erus. We have shields. And yes, Lorelis, we have time, but not much. When the Shreet come, and they will come, we will have only our shields to keep them from taking over Drani as they have taken over so many planets already. And when those shields fall, and they will fall, we have nothing.” Nevvis swiped his hands over the table. “No offensive weapons at all. Nothing.”
“Well,” Lorelis said, his pale blue eyes betraying his anger even if his slow speech and slumped posture didn’t. “We do have the Arleles.”
A spattering of tense chuckles rounded the table. “True,” Salakir said, offering Nevvis one of her encouraging smiles. “Let the Shreet try to take on the Arleles; they’ll be running back to their ships inside a week.”
Nevvis forced himself back to the calm, detached persona he used to lead the Council. The Arleles were the species that shared the planet with them, and they could be deadly. Without the controls placed on them by the Dran, the Arleles were so violent they would have destroyed themselves long ago. And since most of them were telekinetic, they could have done it with ease. Even though Erus probably had a point, Nevvis refused to let them get off track. “We need help from the Alliance. We can trade brakeal for protection. Simple. The only thing holding the Shreet back right now is the massive military force of the Alliance, and they aren’t winning by much. We will be helping ourselves and them. I don’t understand why this is still being discussed.”
“Speaking of Arleles, you need to deal with yours,” Lorelis said, using his sleeve to clean a spot off the glass in front of him.
“We weren’t speaking of Arleles, and Taymar isn’t my Arlele,” Nevvis said. “So, what is the harm in bringing in the Alliance? I have yet to hear a good counter to that point.”
“Your Arlele is dangerous,” Lorelis said.
“All Arleles are dangerous. We aren’t talking about Arleles. Stay with me, Lorelis.”
“Yours is more dangerous than the rest. We can’t have telepathic telekinetic Arleles. They are bad enough when they have only one psychic ability. We can’t have it be known that it’s possible to have both. She should have never been permitted to live this long. She needs to be termed.”
“We are not here to talk about Taymar,” Nevvis said, letting the statement hang as he stared at Lorelis from across the table. “And we are not going to term her, although these tests the researchers are insisting on just might.” He kept his focus on Lorelis as he addressed the room as a whole. “We are here to talk about how to keep the Shreet from invading our home and enslaving our people. All of our people. Why are you all so reluctant to get help from the Alliance?”
Salakir spoke first, which wasn’t surprising. She was usually the mediator between him and Lorelis. “Because, Nevvis, once we form an agreement with the Alliance, we will never be able to undo that.”
“Exactly,” Lorelis said, glancing around the room. “Once word gets out that we’ve been getting naked with the Alliance, everyone’s going to want to join the party. We keep ourselves to ourselves for a reason. A good reason. The last thing we need is off-worlders having a say in our politics and trying to control our brakeal. This Council right here.” He swept the room with his hand. “The thirteen of us who make up the Sinku rule this planet from a place of anonymity to keep ourselves free of outside influences. To ensure that our decisions are made in the interest of our people, all of our people, not just the ones with money or power or titles. And we don’t want the Alliance, or anyone else, coming in here and changing that.”
A series of grunts and mumbles followed Lorelis’s statement as most of the other members voiced their agreement. Most, Nevvis noted, but not all. He had at least some of them reconsidering their position.
“We’ve been at this for some time,” Salakir said, stretching her shoulders. “Let’s table this discussion for the time being. Allow us to reflect on what has been said.”
“Agreed,” Nevvis said, standing. “Thank you for your time today. But, please consider our options. This threat is real.”
The absence of the normal banter
and casual chat that usually followed Council meetings was palpable as one member after another hit their transtrem remotes and flashed out of the room in a series of blue swirls. Everyone except Lorelis.
“I think we’ve had enough of each other for one day, Lorelis,” Nevvis said, grabbing the projections of maps and diagrams he had prepared for the meeting and swiping them back onto the viewer.
“I am Kital, and you owe me this conversation.”
Nevvis threw the last diagram, one tracking the Shreet invasion across the quadrant, onto the viewer and swiped it off. “Yes, Lorelis. You are Kital. Second-in-command of the Sinku. And I am Kitalku. I am first. I owe you nothing, so say your piece before I finish securing the room, because I’ll be leaving.”
Lorelis’s lip twitched. The break in his mask was rare, but Nevvis couldn’t be sure if he had been about to smile or sneer. With Lorelis, it could go either way, and Nevvis’s telepathy was no use against Lorelis’s shielded mind.
“Well, Kitalku,” Lorelis said, placing his hands palm up in front of him and bowing in an exaggerated formal greeting. “I just want you to know that I agree with you. The threat of the Shreet is real. I just don’t agree with your solution. You seem to be stuck on just that one option. There are other options.”
“Like what? I didn’t hear any coming from you, or anyone else for that matter.”
“As you pointed out, I am only the Kital. The responsibility for solving this is ultimately yours. I’m just advising you.”
“Okay. Thank you for your superb advice, Kital. I will keep it at the forefront of my thoughts daily. I need to go.” Nevvis reached for his remote, but Lorelis grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Think on it hard, Nevvis, but also think on this: Taymar, too, is a very real threat. The longer she’s allowed to live, the more of a threat she becomes. It cannot become common knowledge that there are those among us with both psychic talents. It simply can’t. You need to handle that problem, and you need to do it soon.”
Nevvis met Lorelis’s pale blue stare and stepped away to watch the swirling blue light yank his second from the room. He was going to take care of the problem—both problems—but Lorelis wasn’t going to like his solution. And that was just going to be too bad. They were out of time. The Shreet were coming, and Taymar wasn’t going to survive many more of the so-called tests the researchers in the medcom were subjecting her to. No more talking. It was time for action.
Chapter 1 – Trapped
Taymar stood in the center of the barren room, knees bent and bare feet flat on the padded white floor. Sweat slid down her brow, stinging her eyes as she struggled to counter the moves of the holographic Virtual Interactive Opponent bearing down on her. The faceless man swung low with the arm-length stick in his right hand, aiming for Taymar’s thigh, but she planted her own short staff in front of her to block him. Her right hand snapped up with the shorter rod, just in time to block his backhand to her head. Both weapons vibrated down her arm as the computer registered the impact.
With each successful block, her VIO, a featureless solid black humanoid, attacked faster and with greater precision. Taymar jumped left. Bringing up her short staff, she blocked a strike to her ribs but missed the blow to her shoulder. Pain shot through her left side as a tiny hovering silver ball zapped her in the arm to mimic the VIO’s hit. Taymar grunted and spun away, nearly colliding with the hovering quarterstaff she was telekinetically spinning at her left. Using her mind, she shoved the staff away as she caught her balance. It wobbled in its spin, threatening to clatter to the floor, but she used her telekinesis and teked it back into motion and swung over to the VIO. It had used the distraction to move in with another low sweep. Taymar stifled a yelp as the orb shot her in the leg.
“Why are you using the black VIO? The white one adds difficulty.”
Taymar jumped at the unexpected intrusion. She tried to hide her reaction by moving in on her opponent, but Nevvis’s keen eye, not to mention his telepathy, would know the truth. He was probably smirking already. How he managed to sneak around her own telepathy she would never know. But he did it all the time, no doubt just to watch her jump. “Go away!” she yelled, fending off another blow and managing a strike to the VIO’s midsection. The holo backed away in response.
“Watch it. He’s feigning left, but he’ll come in from the right.”
Another bead of sweat slid down her temple. Taymar rubbed her brow across her shoulder, but only managed to smear more sweat into her already stinging eye. The VIO ducked in with a left jab. She jumped the holo staff and blocked a blow from the right, bringing two staffs together across the VIO’s chest. A sharp pain stabbed her right thigh. Taymar yelped and hopped sideways, right into her spinning staff. She hit the floor. The staff followed. From her right, the VIO moved in for the kill. “Freeze,” she called, staring up at the rod intended for her head.
“I warned you.”
As if he couldn’t have done better, she thought, pushing herself up on an elbow. Pain shot through her arm and shoulder as she climbed to her feet and turned toward the door. The VIO had managed far too many strikes. She was going to feel this workout tomorrow, that much was certain.
Nevvis leaned against the opening, hands tucked into the pockets of his loose-fitting black pants. A vivid blue pull-over tunic managed to fall over his fit torso in neat abandon. Short, tawny hair hung in perfect disarray. Even his smile was a precise mix of casual disinterest and genuine amusement. And, as always, his presence filled the room like a tangible bubble. Despite his attempt at casual, though, the truth was betrayed in his intense golden gaze. He worked to keep everything neutral, but Taymar could see in his eyes that something was about to happen—something bad. “Thank you. I will have a bruise now. What do you want?”
Nevvis smiled and stepped into the room. “Don’t blame me. You ran into your own staff.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t distracted me. What do you want?” Sweat stung her eyes, and she dragged her left forearm across her brow, letting the armband absorb the moisture. Since she couldn’t take the damned thing off, she could at least use its technology to her advantage. The viscous material swirled with shades of tan and brown, making short work of the perspiration.
“If I was able to distract you, then it’s a good thing you were using the black VIO instead of the white one. You wouldn’t have stood a chance at that level of difficulty.” Nevvis stepped closer and pointed to the shimmering image poised in a menacing crouch over a now-empty spot on the floor. “Look. You were about to die.”
Taymar grabbed the staff with her mind, yanked it off the floor, and set it spinning like a fan between herself and Nevvis. “That was my level of difficulty,” she said, waving her arm toward the twirling length of faux wood. Her shoulder protested the movement. “Keeping that spinning during a fight is a lot harder than tracking a white VIO. Let’s see you try it. Oh, wait. You can’t.” For effect, Taymar teked the staff again, stopping it dead still in midair before spinning it in the opposite direction. “I’m in the middle of a training session here, so one more time. What. Do. You. Want?”
With far too much ease, Nevvis walked up and snatched the staff out of the air mid-spin, one hand at each end. When he planted one end on the white floor and held it there instead of putting it down, Taymar sucked in a slow breath. She had guessed right; something bad was about to happen. He turned toward the control panel built into the wall near the door. “End program,” he called, and turned back to Taymar. “They want you.”
Make that very bad. For a long moment she watched, drinking in his stance, his weapon, and her options. In the end, he’d win. She knew that already. He always won. But she didn’t have to make it easy for him. Stepping back to center herself, Taymar brought both her half staff and her hand stick up to the ready position, one poised on either side of her. Nevvis’s smile disappeared. Except to slide his hand down to the center of the quarterstaff, he didn’t move, but his entire demeanor changed.
“Pull on your dry shirt, and let’s go,” Nevvis said. When he pulled back on the staff and met resistance, his expression hardened. “Tay, don’t do this. Not today. Just dry yourself off, grab your shirt, and come with me.”
“Where? The medcom?” Taymar held tight to all three weapons, but the futility of her options settled in like a winter storm. “What do they want? They have done every test imaginable at least twice. There can’t possibly be anything left to test.”
A familiar tingling ran along her spine, ending at her temples as Nevvis connected with the shatu in her brain. His expression smoothed out to hard detachment. “Easy way or hard way, Tay. You choose.”
She stood as still as stone, glaring back at his calm assurance with as much venom as she could manage. Those words sent a chill straight to her soul, trailing a pain as real as the one ratcheting up along her nervous system. It meant she was going to the medcom one way or the other; how painful the trip would be was up to her. Gods beyond! She hated it when he said that.
The burning pain ran under her skin like liquid fire, and with each passing heartbeat it became more engulfing. A Dran could ultimately kill an Arlele through the shatu, but Nevvis was only making his point. Before it reached a debilitating level, Taymar threw her fighting sticks toward the far wall. An instant before they would have landed in a broken pile, she caught them in the air with her telekinesis and placed them on the ground. When Nevvis moved to toss his staff over to join them, she snatched it away from him with her mind and whipped it down in a low, sweeping strike. Air whistled past it as Nevvis twisted and jumped to avoid the blow to his shin. Unfortunately, he was fast. Too fast. The staff managed a stinging thump against his calf, but not the bone-breaking strike she had been hoping for. If nothing else, he was going to have one hell of a welt.