Shield of Drani (World of Drani Book 1)

by Melonie Purcell

  Chapter 14 – Sharing

  In short order, Taymar was following Nevvis through the winding corridor, turning where the blue light told them to. She had heard Nevvis speaking with the captain while she was changing, and assumed he knew where her teke would be the most helpful. The fact that he had managed to knit her flesh together was a little disconcerting. She couldn’t even do that herself and it was her ability. And he hadn’t done a bad job of it. It was a little puckered and red compared to that of a trained healer’s, and certainly the crawling flesh thing wasn’t normal, but overall she had to admit she was impressed.

  He led her to an area of the ship she hadn’t seen before, which wasn’t saying much. The thoughts of the others already there told her it was called the power-bay. They also told her it wasn’t at all the way it should be. The walls were warped and covered in rainbow-colored circles. In many places, the wall was actually peeled away to reveal a skeletal interior. Debris was scattered along the floor, and even as Taymar stood staring, people were working frantically to clean it up. This was obviously the location of one of the hits Nevvis had told her about.

  They walked directly up to a makeshift mobile computer console, where a woman was bent over the viewer in concentration. To look at her from the back, Taymar wouldn’t have been sure the person was female, except that Nevvis’s thoughts indicated as much. She was tall, broad-shouldered, and large-boned, but when she turned around her gender was obvious. Very obvious.

  Taymar almost laughed. The woman’s white-blonde hair stood out from her head about one finger length in every direction. Her eyes were large and as green as grass, which was an odd color against her orange-hued complexion. And then there were her breasts. Taymar was just trying to figure out how the woman could possibly see anything on the screen she had been leaning over when Nevvis introduced them.

  “You are Lieutenant Jalla Savant?” he asked, stepping in front of Taymar. No doubt he was trying to hide her dropped jaw from the large orange creature in front of her.

  “I am,” the woman replied, her voice raspy and clipped. Annoyed, even.

  Nevvis persevered. “We are here to help repair some of the major damage to this part of the ship. Captain McCauffer sent us.”

  “He did mention that you would be showing up. To help. Somehow.” Her massive breasts shuddered as she spat the last bit in exasperation.

  “I assure you,” Nevvis said, unfazed by her peculiar physique. Maybe he saw orange people all the time. Orange people with breasts large enough to float on. “We can help. This is Taymar.” He stepped to the side. “She’s an Arlele, and her telekinesis will make repairs much easier.”

  Taymar nodded, working hard to keep a straight face. She didn’t dare try to speak.

  Nevvis shot her a warning glance, then placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “This is how we are going to do this. Lieutenant Jalla, you’re going to just think about the things that need to be done, and I will use Taymar’s telekinesis to do them. Tay, all you need to do is just let me have control. No fighting.”

  Taymar turned to Nevvis. “How are you going to use my telekinesis? It is not as easy to use as it looks. Reforming metal is harder than sealing skin.” Which may or may not have been true since she had no idea how to seal skin, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

  Nevvis grinned. “Thanks for the concern, but I have teked metal and skin and even brakeal before. Just let me in; no resistance, and I will do just fine.”

  “When have you used it before?”

  “On a number of occasions, Tay. I can handle myself just fine.”

  Taymar didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Whose did you use?”

  Nevvis shot her one of his looks. He had several. This one said he was running out of patience. “Not all Arleles hate me, Tay. Now, you agreed.”

  She logged his expression in the “don’t care” compartment and pushed against his shields as she pressed her question. “Why don’t you just let me do it? I agreed to let you in. As in, let you in to show me what to do, not do it for me. I can do it myself.”

  “Because, like I said, you have no idea what you’re looking at here.”

  “Well, I can use my telepathy to get into Orange’s mind the same way you can, maybe even better. I’ve had a lot of practice recently.”

  Nevvis acknowledged the practice part with an eye roll. “Taymar, Lieutenant Jalla’s knowledge won’t do you any good,” he said, stressing Orange’s name. “You have to know what you’re looking at in order to fix it.” Nevvis paused and gave her a hard stare. “You agreed to cooperate, Tay. Backing out now would not be a healthy decision.”

  Taymar directed one of her more intimidating glares his way. On Daryus, that look would have been rewarded with paling skin and open fear. Nevvis was unmoved. “I’m not backing out. It’s just that I don’t know if you are talented enough to use my telekinesis. It’s tricky to use, and after all, you are just a Dran. You probably lack the intelligence to manipulate it properly.” She transformed her squint to a wide-eyed look of innocence. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Your concern is truly touching.”

  The agitation rolled out of Orange’s mind as she watched them banter. Her raspy shout cut them off. “If you two are going to stand there and argue, come and get me when you’re done. I don’t have the time to waste.”

  “We’re ready,” Nevvis informed her. “Take a seat, Tay. I wouldn’t want you to fall down with astonishment.” Then, he turned to Jalla. “You need to just relax your mind. You’ll feel me in there. It will be like a daydream, but don’t try to stop it, okay?”

  Orange eyed him suspiciously, but nodded her consent.

  First, Nevvis hooked up with Taymar. She felt him finding his way in. It was like a thought that just wouldn’t go away. He was subtle, but before she knew it, he was everywhere. Taymar had to keep reminding herself that she had agreed to let him in there. After a few moments, Nevvis was the one reminding her of that fact.

  he sent. Since he was in her mind, it felt like her own thoughts.

  she snapped back.

  He did just that, and since she and Nevvis were now essentially joined, she knew his every move. He moved into Orange’s mind next. She didn’t know what to expect as Taymar had, so Nevvis went in more carefully. At first, the lieutenant was surprised. She jerked her head around to stare at Nevvis, closing her thoughts against him in the process. But Nevvis pushed in again. He used his ridiculous smile and subconscious coaxing, and before she knew what she was doing, Orange had let him in. At last, they were all three connected.

  Taymar felt Jolla’s thoughts just as if she were the one in the other woman’s mind instead of Nevvis, and it suddenly occurred to her that this openness she agreed to went both ways. If Nevvis could go tramping around wherever he wanted in her mind, why couldn’t she do a little snooping in his? She found out the answer almost as soon as she thought the thought.

  Nevvis warned.

  Taymar sent him a mental snarl, but made no further attempts. It wasn’t as if she could sneak in there. Trying would just prolong her own exposure.

  Nevvis took that as a go and got started. He started off by asking Jalla what repairs were needed, and then he used Taymar’s telekinesis to do it. At first the going was slow, but when Nevvis finally got through to Jalla by asking her what she would do if she could move metal, things picked right up. Eventually, it seemed as if Jalla was actually the one using the telekinesis. Nevvis was directing the thoughts through so quickly that sometimes it was hard to tell.

  Taymar knew it had to be Nevvis, but there were moments of uncertainty. As Taymar sat, with her mind being used but not actually getting to participate, she experienced brief instances of uselessness. It wasn’t boredom. She was taking the opportunity to learn as much as she could
from Jalla’s mind, much to Nevvis’s irritation. No. It was more like she had been suddenly left behind. She attributed it to the fact that, much to her irritation, Nevvis was very good at what he was doing. That was the only reasonable answer. The other option was that Nevvis was using telekinesis of his own, and that wasn’t possible. Dran were never telekinetic. But, it was odd.

  She also had to grudgingly admit that Nevvis had been right about her inability to decipher Jalla’s needs herself. So much of what was going on was a mystery to her that Taymar would have never been able to do what Nevvis was doing. The damage was actually caused by an overload in the ship’s ability to transfer heat directed at the hull. Jolla didn’t have to just fix the warped walls—she had to delve into the integrity of the hull itself. Taymar was lost within fifteen minutes, but she decided that the reason for her ignorance was that the Dran kept such knowledge from the Arleles and added that insult to the already adequate number of resources for her hatred of them.

  Before she knew it, they were done. Even though she had not actually been the one doing anything, Taymar was tired and glad that the repairs were finally finished.

  Nevvis had done an amazing job. Even though it was almost physically painful to admit it, Taymar was impressed with how well he had handled the entire situation. Like everything else in his life, he had taken complete control of everything and it had gone just exactly the way it was supposed to. She hated that. Just once she wanted to see him fall on his face. Just once.

  She had gotten nothing from Nevvis’s mind except the usual shroud of secrecy that constantly shielded it. He was keeping something from her, though. She had gotten that much. And it was something big. Orange’s mind had given her plenty of information, though. Most of it meant nothing, for the moment at least, but it was more than she had to start with.

  Lieutenant Jalla’s skepticism had passed, to say the least, and she made it a point to thank them both in her boisterous manner repeatedly before they stepped onto the deck shuttle one more time.

  “Are we going to the atrium now?” Taymar asked.

  “No.” Nevvis tapped something into the control panel of the deck shuttle and sat on the nearest bench. “The ship is still locked down. We have to wait for it to power up again.”

  Taymar tried to make sense of the control panel, but the scrawls didn’t mean anything to her. Speaking Universal was one thing, but reading it was a whole different skill. “Is there more damage somewhere else?”

  “I’m sure there is, but the captain only asked for help with the power-bay, so that’s what we are going to do. He doesn’t trust the process just yet, which is fine by me. No need for them to get too comfortable with the idea of having an Arlele onboard.”

  “Scared?”

  Nevvis cocked his head at her. “Yeah. For them.”

  The door to the shuttle opened, and Taymar recognized the hall that led back to their room. Nevvis’s room. “It could work,” she said, pushing past Nevvis out of the shuttle. “A Dran/Arlele pair on each of their ships. I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t have a hard time finding volunteers.”

  She turned and headed down a narrow corridor, but Nevvis’s hand on her shoulder guided her back the other way. How he could tell one walkway from another was beyond her. “It wouldn’t work,” he said. His voice sounded too far away, and when she turned to see why, she found him smiling at her in front of the open door to the cabin. The door she had just blown past.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  He waited in the hall for her to enter. “Because Arleles are too unpredictable. That kind of impulse control in space would end in imploding ships.”

  Taymar glanced at the broken chair still lying on its side up against the wall and thought about all of the things she could do with it if she were so inclined. Telekinesis could change the molecular bonds of something if the Arleles knew how to do it. But even basic knowledge allowed Arleles to heat things up and cool them down. Melting something was a time consuming process, but it could be done. “An unpredictable doctor ends with exploding bodies, yet doctors are always Arleles. Never Dran.”

  Nevvis shrugged and headed over to the converter. The fact that it ignored him too was somehow satisfying. “True,” he said, turning to the washroom instead. “But they are on Drani.” The door closed, muffling his voice. “There are protections in place on Drani—many, many protections to keep that from happening. There wouldn’t be anything like that in space, and I assure you it would end in death.”

  “Maybe you just assume some things are impossible because Dran are afraid of change.” Taymar glanced over at the main cabin door. The dinisolate field wasn’t set. “Why aren’t there any Arleles on Leading Council?” She could easily warp the washroom door, trapping Nevvis inside long enough to make a run for it, but where would she go? “It’s because the Dran are afraid of what might happen if they gave up some of their control to the Arleles and let us make up our own mind about some things.” It wasn’t as if there were any unsuspecting shuttle pilots around to help her out this time.

  The washroom door slid open, and Nevvis’s frown told her he had heard every thought she had just had. His shakiu touched her shaki receptors. It wasn’t a tag, just a reminder that he was there. “First of all, how do you know there aren’t any Arleles on Leading Council? For all you know, it could be made up entirely of Arleles. Leading Council is anonymous, remember? Nobody knows who’s on it. That is the key to our government’s success. That anonymity.”

  He stepped in front of her and stopped. He was considerably taller than she was, which meant she had to look up at him to maintain eye contact. She opted to walk away instead, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her. “And secondly, what you just thought about doing. Warping the door? Making a run to nowhere? That right there is why an Arlele should not be on a spaceship. And for the record, you never would have made it to the door. I don’t have to see you to tag you.”

  Taymar shrugged his hand off her shoulder and walked over to the bed to lie down while they waited. She wasn’t about to admit that he was right, even if she knew he was. Dran usually required sight to use their shakiu, but not Nevvis. He could do it without looking, and it made her crazy. He could do a lot of things he shouldn’t have been able to do, but then so could she, so it kind of made sense. But she didn’t have to like it.

  After yanking the stuck chair free and fussing with the other one’s broken leg for a little while, Nevvis was just heading over to the bed to join her when the com beeped, making her jump. He glanced around the room in a rare moment of confusion before walking over to the door. As he was about to push the button on the wall, the lights powered up to full strength and the converter let the world know it was living again by beeping out its three-tone mating call.

  “Now that was impressive timing,” Taymar said.

  Nevvis turned and gave her one of his rare, genuine smiles. She looked away. It was harder to fight him when he acted like a real person instead of a trained ki.

  The com sounded off again, and this time Nevvis actually pressed the blinking light on the screen.

  “Mr. Nevvis. This is the captain. I’ll be needing a word with you in my office.”

  The long pause told Taymar what her telepathy couldn’t. He didn’t know what to do with her. “You should absolutely put up the dinisolate field and just leave me in here. Now that I know where I am on the ship and how to reform walls, leaving me alone is an outstanding plan.”

  When Nevvis turned to face her this time, he wasn’t smiling, which was just fine. Exasperated Nevvis was someone she could manage without remorse.

  “We will leave now,” he said to the com. Taymar’s bare feet were already on the floor by the time he tapped the com off and turned around.

  Nevvis just shook his head and swiped open the door as she hopped out into the corridor, pulling her shoes on as she went.

  ###

  Jalkean hit the replay button again. The screen made the clicking sound that was alleg
edly a word in the Shreet language. It sounded exactly like the previous three clicked words. Maybe it was a little longer, but whatever nuances were supposed to be there to decipher this word from the previous three were beyond his ability to detect. He made a guess and tapped the Universal word for food. The machine projected a frowning Shreet and the click replayed.

  A noise at the door brought blessed relief from the language program torture, and Jalkean turned to open it, expecting one of the small Yarnit that worked as servants all over the ship. Instead, the brae filled the small opening, the skinbraids at his scalp bright orange and his glowering anger radiating from him like heat. Rydon’s bells tinkled as she followed Yittbrae into the already cramped space.

  Jalkean stood and silently kicked himself for not doing a mental check of who was at the door before opening it. He couldn’t afford to be so sloppy. He was, after all, on an enemy ship and only a tiny step away from being a prisoner on that ship, if the truth were told. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, and kicked himself again for such a ridiculous greeting as he grabbed his translator and fit it over his ear. “How can I help you?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the schematics?” the brae said, his translator mimicking his voice with disturbing accuracy.

  Jalkean stared for a second and then remembered to shield. Not that he had the faintest idea what they were talking about. “Schematics?”

  The door tried to close behind them, but the brae stood in the opening. “Yes. The schematics for this station that very nearly fell into the hands of the ship that has the dual-talent Arlele you are so insistent we retrieve.”

  “You found Taymar?”

  The brae stepped fully into the room, making it seem much too small, but Rydon still blocked the doorway. If it was by design or because she couldn’t fit in the room was anybody’s guess. “The schematics.”

  The hostility radiating from the brae dropped slightly, but the importance of Jalkean’s response was as clear in his mind as if he had spoken it. If Jalkean was ever going to win the leader of the Shreet movement over to his plan, it was right now. “Yittbrae, I truly have no idea what schematics you are referring to. To my knowledge, nobody has the layout of this ship. Ask Rydon and she will verify the truth in what I am saying.”