. . maybe I could follow those invisible trails. Did some of them lead to Detritus, and the Superiority forces posted there?
But there was nothing that gave me a clue toward that end. I did feel something else nearby though. A kind of humming familiarity. What was that?
Brade, I realized, recognizing the feeling from earlier. She’s not in the room, but she’s near.
I opened my eyes and glanced around. The bustling room was filled with aliens eating and drinking—or in the case of some very strange rocky creatures, pouring liquid on their heads.
The sensation was coming from outside the room. I made an excuse to the others, saying I needed to find a restroom. Morriumur pointed the way, and I ducked out of the dining hall, glancing in the direction Morriumur had indicated. A string of doors ran down the hallway here, each with a sign identifying the kind of disposal unit contained therein.
I glanced in the other direction, where Brade’s cytonic sensation seemed to be coming from. There were no guards that I could see, so I slipped away down the hall.
The feeling got stronger as I reached a door off to the side. It was cracked, and I peered in to see that indeed, Brade was there. And she was speaking with a group of dione officials, as well as Winzik.
17
I crouched beside the door, trying to listen to what Winzik and the other officials were saying inside.
“Hey!” M-Bot said in my ear, nearly making me jump. “Spensa, what are you doing?” I gritted my teeth, concentrating on the sounds from behind the door. “Oh!” M-Bot said after a moment. “Are you hiding? What’s wrong? I was computing our flight back to Starsight. Weren’t you going to go release secretions in the lavatory? Spensa, did you release them in an inappropriate place? Is that why you’re hiding?”
“Shut up,” I whispered as softly as I could. “I’m trying to spy.”
“Oooooohhhh,” M-Bot said.
The others were speaking too quietly for my translator to pick them up. I could hear muffled voices, but couldn’t make anything out.
“Do you maybe want me to enhance your bracelet’s auditory reception capacities, then wire the translations directly into your ear, so your pin won’t give you away?” M-Bot asked. “This will help you spy more efficiently.”
“Yes,” I whispered back.
“Fine. No need to be terse.”
He wirelessly shut off my pin, then began piping the voices from the other room directly into my earpiece. My bracelet’s sound pickup was much more sensitive than the pin’s or my normal hearing, and M-Bot was way better at isolating voices from background chatter.
“—should have seen that this would be such a disaster,” one of the officials was saying. “These drone pilots were trained to fight against the humans at the Detritus preserve! They came out shooting far too aggressively.”
“These casualties are unfortunate.” That was Winzik’s voice, which had a calm tone to it. “But you needn’t worry about repercussions. This was an accident, not an act of aggression.”
“There are a dozen dead!” another official said. These diones sounded far less calm in private than they had outside, when talking to that gorilla burl. “The poor families!”
“Those poor families will be destroyed entirely if we don’t prepare a fighting force to resist the delvers,” Winzik said. “My, my. My department’s suppressors will deal with any outcries of injustice. You have done your duty well.”
“Yes, well . . . ,” another official said. “I guess, as long as you think the test worked . . . But was it necessary for you to bring your human here, Winzik? She makes me uncomfortable.”
“My my, Tizmar,” Winzik said. “You worry far too much. And about the wrong things! Consider instead the Department of Species Integration and their insistence on entering several very aggressive species into our contest. Cuna is up to something here. That newcomer, Alanik, uses human combat strategies. Her people are dangerous from their long association with the scourge, and should remain isolated.”
I frowned as I leaned against the wall—then felt something. A mind pressing against my own.
“What?” said an official inside. “What is wrong? Why is your human standing up, so alert like that? She’s properly trained, isn’t she?”
Idiot. If I could “hear” Brade with my senses, then of course she’d “hear” me back. I spun and scrambled back down the hallway. Sweating, I slowed down to walk back into the dining room. I tried to be nonchalant as I sat down at our table.
A moment later, Winzik appeared in the doorway,