Alien Blood

Two fast-paced novels about a half-human telepath called Cat...

In the 23rd century, the interplanetary Human Federation is controlled by such giant hereditary Combines as Centauri Transport, to whom the poor of any world are little more than slave labor. Psions - men and women who possess any sort of psychic abilities - are hated and feared ... particularly if they can learn Combine secrets. But a teenage pickpocket living on the periphery of society can get by. Even if - like Cat, whose green feline eyes mark him as the half-breed child of a human and a telepathic alien - he's an outcast among outcasts.

Yet survival is never certain, no matter how street-wise one may be.

In Psion, Cat is picked up for stealing and sentenced to hard labot in a mining camp. He knows it means almost certain death, so he's more than willing to cooperate when he's drafted into an experimental group researching how psions' powers work... and how they can be controlled.

The truth is, Cat's own considerable talents are locked away behind an almost impenetrable mental barrier. But before he can really awaken his telepathy, he is betrayed...

The shock of a fellow psion's violent death has left Cat in a bad way as Catspaw begins, bereft of his psi powers and traveling the starways in search of a new life. He finds it - when he's kidnapped and offered a job by Braedee, the head of Centauri Transport's Corporate Security.

Braedee says he needs the psion's unique talents to help protect the Lady Elnear, a crucial pawn in a Centauri Transport power struggle. Since the Lady happens to be related to an old friend to whom Cat is indebted - a beautiful friend who personally expresses her concern for Elnear's safety and asks the youth's help - he's willing to go along. Besides, he needs the money... and something else: the drugs Braedee gives him to amplify his telepathy. Drugs that a psion deprived of his powers finds impossible to resist, despite the fact that their use may destroy his talent forever.