Dekkir (Galaxy Alien Warriors #1)(24)

I could feel the almost paternal warmth of his feelings for me transmit down the communication and smiled. I could still remember having such a terrible crush on him and knew now he had known of it the whole time. He did care for me, but his feelings were such that desire would have been . . . somehow inappropriate.

I washed and oiled my waist-length, relaxed hair as we “talked.” My dreams are wild. Unfortunately, I haven’t been getting enough sleep to remember them. Other than that, well, I would probably be having more problems if I were back at Highfort. I only really get disoriented in crowds.

That makes sense. Your abilities seem to be telepathic and empathic in nature. On the one hand, you’ll never be able to fly or lift more than your weight. On the other hand, telepathic and empathic abilities can come in very handy. Just as they are doing now.

I could sense his amusement as he communicated with me. Emotions were very easy for me to sort out now. Besides doing it through telepathic contact, I could sense people’s feelings from as far away as two floors above or below me. It made it very easy for me to determine whether someone was lying or trying to hide his or her true feelings. The downside was if someone was having an argument with her lover, which had happened a few times so far, or if they were having sex, I would feel all of it. It was a bit of a roller coaster ride, because I never quite knew what was causing the sudden surge of emotions. At least now, after three days of adjusting, I could pick out when the emotions in question were someone else’s instead of mine.

He went on. I am taking the liberty of fabricating some communications between the two of us in order to satisfy our superiors that you are still in contact. They aren’t aware that your communicator was confiscated after the assassination attempt on the high chieftain.

I heaved a small sigh of relief. I had no doubt I would get my communicator back as soon as the Lyran leaders were satisfied I had done all I could to rectify the situation. Meanwhile, though, I didn’t want anyone showing up by dropship to check in on me. Thank you.

It’s no problem at all. You would be surprised just how easy it is to recycle an old report, doctor it a bit, and pass it off as yours. The flash of amusement he sent reminded me of a mental chuckle.

Have you had any luck finding out who is responsible for the drone that poisoned the high chieftain?

I reached for the small bottle of scented oil the healer had gifted me with yesterday. I seemed to be the only person on the planet who naturally had tightly curled hair, and in the constant humidity, I had been looking for something that would keep it from frizzing. Neyilla had put together the combination of nut oils for me, and ever since I had tried it last night, my hair was suddenly manageable again. It made the synthetic stuff I used at home feel and smell about as pleasant as rancid bacon grease.

Dorin is finally recovering, thanks to that formula you recommended, and may even be leaving in a few days. But I’m pretty worried that whoever is responsible will try again.

That’s completely understandable. Whoever it is, they don’t exactly have anyone’s best interest in mind here. I will continue to search for them. Just suffice it to say that whoever they are, they’re going to have significant difficulty slipping any major plans by me. His mental voice radiated confidence and reassurance. I couldn’t keep the doubt out of my own thoughts, however. Neither one of us had expected the poisoning attempt, after all.

So no suspects yet? I sat down on the little stool in the shower pod, working the oil through my hair with my fingers.

I have my suspicions. I do know, however, the commander himself is not responsible. He’s hard to read when he’s drunk . . . but none of the drone operators have received any orders signed off by him for months. What that means is either the order came from above him or below him.

What about Lieutenant Norcross? I winced even thinking of the name. Damon Norcross was my actual immediate superior, and he had done a great deal to cause me problems already. He had intervened in my training, sexually harassed me, and made sure my trip to Lyra was as bumpy and unpleasant as possible by giving my dropship computer poorly calculated landing instructions. He was petty, he was power crazy, and he had no real grasp of the gravity and importance of creating an alliance with the Lyrans. It was one of the reasons I always went to Dr. Stirling first. Between the two, the doctor was the one who always came up with good answers and advice. Norcross, on the other hand, could mostly be relied on to do whatever he considered to be in his best interest.

The problem is Damon Norcross’s mind is unreadable. Certain mental and physical conditions can make minds impossible for me to reach. For one thing, his emotional states tend to be extremely shallow, and he has no emotional attachments to anyone outside of himself. There’s very little for me to latch onto, unless he is angry about something.

My eyes widened slightly as I sat there letting the oil do its work. Shallow emotional states? No emotional attachments? It set off an alarm bell in my head. What kind of mental disorders make someone unreadable?

Certain forms of extreme psychosis will do it. Extreme autism can as well. Essentially, the mind is shielded. But the commonest sort of person that remains unreadable by us is the sociopath. Especially if he is also a narcissist, which we both can tell is true with the lieutenant. Across the gulf of space between where I sat on Lyra and the doctor’s room up on the moon base, I could feel his concern deepening. I had not considered him to be effective enough to pose much of a threat outside of his petty acts of revenge. But he does have some power, and for all we know, he has friends on the base that I had not considered.