Descend- Seeing Stars, Sean Oswald [best e books to read .txt] 📗

of his people and trying to defuse the situation to worry about what they looked like. His mind however was going back over that memory in detail now and he realized that they were in fact attractive women. That left him wondering how the cat people would feel about human women.

      He scanned around the tent and found that there were only sixteen living inside and no other ones for a mile from the tent. From what he could tell so far, they were playing it straight, but he would still keep his guard up. As he scanned, he noticed another oddity.

      More than ninety percent of the PSI that was leaking out of him and the fuses was all flowing straight into the tent. About half of it was leaking out the back side of the tent but that meant a huge amount of it was pooling inside. He wasn’t sure why it intrigued him so much. He knew he needed to focus on the meeting, but there was some sort of significance to this.

      When they walked into the tent Jay found four men sitting on pillows in a semi-circle. Behind each of them there were one or more females. All of them were in different colored robes or harnesses. There were a few guns and blades visible but just like his wives they didn’t appear to be dressed for combat.

      Off to the left there was another woman kneeling. She was younger than the rest. Her furry arms and legs had a leopard pattern. As he looked around, he saw that each of the seated males and the females behind them had different appearances from lion to tiger, leopard to cheetah.

      Once he took this all in, Jay began speaking in the cat people’s language, “I don’t know what your custom is, but it is ours to bow out of respect.” He then offered a short bow at the waist while never taking his eyes off of them.

      Jad-bal-ja said, “Greetings from the Tamoori people. We are the four elders. Each of us represent one of our clans, Leon, Tyger, Lepar, and Civet. We greet you before the Source.”

      Jay wasn’t sure what that meant but assumed that the source was some term they had for a god. “And I am Jay, leader of the human race. It is good to have a name for your people. The question before us now though is if we can find a way to work together.”

      The Leon elder then said, “That will depend, but there is the matter of your invasion of our ship and the nearly one thousand dead Tamoori warriors. Under normal circumstances we would never deal with those who had attacked and killed so many of ours. But the disappearance of the A’snkarnt and the threat of the Forlorn makes for a different situation.”

      “First, we did not attack first. Your people did that. What we did wrong though was enter your ship without making contact first. We have had bad experiences with both the A’snkarnt and the Forlorn, so we were worried about what we would find here,” Jay replied.

The Leon elder was almost as big as he was and the two of them kept staring at one another. Jay kept scanning their thoughts. Their thoughts were simply alien, but he kept getting a sense of excitement from them regarding something called helite crystals. He had to take a stab in the dark. “So, what are helite crystals?”

      The Tamoori may have been aliens but the surprise on their faces was still evident. “You do not know?”

      Jay paused before answering. “I know that PSI energy is being absorbed into those crates behind you.”

      “Show him”, the Tygar elder said. One of the two women behind him turned and lifted the furs that were on top of one of the crates. Jay saw crystals stacked up within it. Every color of the rainbow was represented.

      The Civet elder was the smallest of them, and his voice reflected that, being higher pitched. He said, “What do you know about PSI?”

      Another staring match began. Jay and the others discussed telepathically how much they should reveal. They had a split in their opinions between telling nothing and spilling everything. Not knowing the right course, he chose something that he hoped would start a conversation but not give away too much.

      “The A’snkarnt experiment on my people was about evolving us to be able to handle PSI. You certainly have reports of the powers my people have. Those abilities are powered by PSI.”

      Suddenly one of the women behind Jad-bal-ja, the one with the crimson necklace asked, “You must have an incredible number of repositories to be able to do this. But if you don’t use helite crystals then what do you use?”

      The Leon elder looked back at his woman and growled. She took a step back and dropped to one knee with her head down and her hands on the ground with her palms face up. Jay took it to be a display of submission. The more he learned about the people the better.

      Before he could answer Jay heard Mia’s voice in his head, “Maybe she is talking about PSI crystals.”

      That made sense to Jay so he reached into his storage ring and pulled out one of the spare PSI crystals that could be fitted into his B.O.B. armor. “So, you mean like this?”

      All of the Tamoori eyes opened but the kneeling woman gasped. Jad-bal-ja looked back at her. “Do you recognize what that is, wife?”

       She stood and said, “Yes husband or at least I have a guess.” She walked forward and kneeled before Jay. “May I hold it?”

      He couldn’t see any harm in it, so he handed the crystal to her. She studied it for