by Amelia Jade
Fire Dragon
Top Scale Book 2
By Amelia Jade
Fire Dragon
Copyright @ 2016 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: November 2016
Amelia Jade
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Fire Dragon
Chapter One
Amber
“Can I help you, miss?”
There was no missing the slight condescension in his voice. He knew it. She knew it. There was no hiding it as she approached him. To her, it made no sense. She wasn’t dressed in a miniskirt with her front ripped open to expose her cleavage to him. This wasn’t some backwater bar or downtown hotspot. She was wearing functional clothing appropriate for the job site.
Steel-toed boots, dark pants, and a button-up white blouse. Perhaps the color wasn’t the best choice, given that she was out in the field today, but the hard hat and clipboard in her hand, along with the security badge, should have been enough for the clown of a foreman to realize that she was supposed to be there.
Amber had been planning on doing a quick inspection and then gone on her merry way, much to the relief of both her and the slump-browed buffoon in front of her, but now she decided that his tone merited a closer look.
“Yes, you can,” she said, holding out her hand and looking at him expectantly until he took it.
She shook his hand once perfunctorily and dropped it, wiping her hand none-too-discreetly on the back of her pants.
“And how may I be of assistance?” he replied slowly, looking her up and down. It wasn’t a sexual look, but a reevaluation of her after she had quickly turned the conversation around.
His jaw worked at the overt slight directed at him, and she saw something flare in his eyes. Not respect; she never expected that from this type. They wouldn’t know what to do with an intelligent woman even if one fell into their lap.
Which she most certainly was not going to do.
Amber had to try not to snort at the mental image of such a scenario.
“Yes, you can bring me up to speed on the work,” she said. “Progress charts, reports, problems. Everything.”
The foreman—she didn’t know his name, nor did she care to at that point—looked over at the man next to her. It was a brief look, his eyes barely flickered, but everyone present knew what he was up to.
But Amber wasn’t having any of it.
“This is Anton,” she said slowly, as if talking to a child. “He’s security for me, since we’re close to the border here. I did not want him to come along. He did not want to come along. But corporate said I have to take him. But understand this: he goes where I go. Not the other way around, okay?”
The foreman just nodded, disinterested. “Sure. Wanna come to my trailer then?” he asked, his facial expression stopping just short of a leer.
Amber tried not to shudder at the way his worn features, yellowed teeth, and unshaven facial hair half-contorted. She had nothing against construction workers, but this man was a brute that made her want to retch.
He must be good at his job though, to get this posting. Corporate wouldn’t send amateurs out to work this section of the line, I know that.
“Has there been any trouble from the other side?” she asked, tilting her head in the direction of the chain of snow-capped mountains to the east of them.
The pipeline was due to run right along the base of them, cutting as close as possible. She wondered if there would be any protests, even though they were technically not crossing the border. A lot of times that little tidbit didn’t actually matter to locals.
“Not a peep,” the foreman said quickly.
“Excellent. So we’re on track?”
“We are, Miss…” He trailed off, motioning her toward the door of the long trailer that served as the site office.
“Klose,” she supplied. It was on her badge, but perhaps he couldn’t read.
“I’m sure you’ll be more than happy,” he said. “You can go back to corporate and tell them everything is proceeding as planned. They don’t need to waste their time sending an inspector out here.”
Amber succeeded at keeping the frown from her face at his comment, but she couldn’t do the same as she stepped into the trailer.
It was a disaster. The twenty-foot-long unit was filled with clutter. Papers were strewn everywhere, with no organization to them whatsoever. The garbage under the table was overflowing with food wrappers and other things that she didn’t want to think about, the stench of which filled the room. Ashtrays littered the surfaces of the tables, cabinets, even on top of the old computer monitor. The place reeked of cigarette smoke mixed with the garbage, forming a putrid aroma that threatened to bring up her breakfast on the spot.
The look of victory on the foreman’s face coincided with the queasiness she was sure was displayed across her own features.
You will not let this caveman win. You will not.
Straightening, she swallowed her rising gorge and pointed at the table. “Can you find me the latest progress report?” she smiled sweetly, but did not add a “please” to her sentence. Instead she waited expectantly, with her hand outstretched, until he sneered and pushed some papers around until he found the one he wanted.
“Here you are,” he said with fake kindness.
What the hell is this guy’s problem? Does he treat everyone like this, or just me? And how the hell does he justify working like this?
Something was up, but she wasn’t sure what. Calmly she took the report and glanced over it. As she did, she turned, ostensibly to put her back to the foreman, but also so that she could covertly survey the rest of the office. This had to be a prank or something. A chart on the far wall, small but detailed, caught her eye. She paused in her turn long enough to eyeball it.
It was a drawing of the pipeline and its expected layout. But in what appeared to be crayon, someone had drawn a new line. One that cut through the mountain chain, before hooking back up far to the north where the pipeline curved to the east around the chain and the border, lopping nearly two hundred miles from the overall length of the pipeline. The new line would save the company tens of millions of dollars, and months of construction time. The new line was on infinitely easier terrain.
The new line cut right through Cadia.
Amber steeled herself and nodded, putting the report d
own on the table, pretending to glance over a few other blueprints and miscellaneous forms. The foreman had no idea she wasn’t just a mere inspector, and that she could read some of the more complicated blueprints and charts scattered there. That all showed the changes. Changes she, as one of the lead engineers on the entire pipeline project, had not authorized.
She no longer cared about anything else. She had to get out and see the progress herself without making it seem like she was on to something. If they truly had decided to cut through the mountains without permission, things were going to end badly. For everyone.
“Well, everything seems to be in order here,” she said, scribbling on her clipboard and marking a few things off. “I just need to review the newest sections, the ones laid down since the last inspector, and then I’ll be out of your hair,” she said, trying to sound as prissy as possible, hating herself for it the entire time.
She shouldn’t have to pretend that she was someone else just for cooperation, but Amber knew it would be the easiest way. If he thought of her as an uppity desk-jockey who didn’t know left from right and was only there to sign papers, he would be much more willing to work with her.
It went at odds with her earlier show of personality, but the foreman didn’t seem to notice. He nodded slowly. “Of course. Does the same chopper that brought you out here have enough fuel for a visit?”
“It should,” she said as they exited the trailer and headed over to where her pilot was parked.
“Charlie, do we have enough airtime to go check out the construction?” she shouted over the idle whir of the engines.
The pilot checked his gauges, and then nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
Amber didn’t hesitate, hopping in and beginning to buckle herself up. Anton and the foreman followed somewhat slower, but neither of them protested the immediacy of everything. She did see the foreman pull out his phone and punch some buttons on it as he sat opposite her. What could be so important that he had to text now, before they were airborne?
She shrugged mentally and watched the landscape shrink below them as they rose into the air and then headed north, following the pipeline through the forest. Amber sat back and pretended to be bored, trying as hard as she could to pretend like she didn’t notice when the chopper slid between two mountains and across the Cadian border.
Her heart started to race. They could be attacked by the shifters who resided there at any time now, without warning. She was scared, but letting it show would doom her effort. So she forced herself to sit back into the chair and let her eyes droop closed.
“Almost there,” the foreman said over the headsets they had all donned upon buckling in.
She sat up, forcing herself to glance down at the ground, and not look frantically up at the sky. That didn’t mean she was completely successful, but for the most part, her eyes tracked how far into Cadia the construction teams had come.
Her heart sank. They were a good five miles inside the border now. Amber hadn’t known much about the shifter territory prior to securing her position as one of the engineers attached to the project. But she had made it a priority to read up on it as much as she could, just in case they had any interactions with the shifters. This was, to the best of her knowledge, almost as far away from their centers of population as one could get. A desolate, backwater corner of the vast lands that had been carved out of the country well before her time. Still, Amber knew they patrolled their borders ruthlessly. The way the mountains came together made it more convenient for them to patrol the smaller paths farther to the east, but she doubted this would remain secret for long.
How had anyone gotten approval for this lunacy?
The chopper set down near the end of the pipeline where a number of idle machines were parked, along with neatly stacked pipeline parts. Pallets of other materials were sitting nearby, and several large dump trucks sat empty, ready to haul dirt away as it was dug. To Amber’s eye it looked like a construction site, complete with people milling around, having paused their work as the unexpected vehicle descended near them.
Amber hopped off before they were even fully down, ducking low and holding onto her hat as she was buffeted by the turbulent air from the rotors. Now that she was here and had seen the massive deviation from the planned route, she knew she was in over her head. She couldn’t bring this crashing down on her own. For it to have gone this far, the new plan must have had support from very high up the chain.
As she waited for the rotors to die down, the workers all began to pile into pickups and drive off.
“Where are they going?” she asked, looking at the foreman.
“Shift end,” he said with a shrug. “They’ll be back at it tomorrow.”
She thought that was odd, but didn’t say anything. It was far from the first odd thing she’d noticed. In moments, it was just the four of them. The pilot in the powered-down helicopter, Anton, the foreman, and her.
Amber poked around the work site, but besides the route it was taking, everything else seemed to be done in proper fashion. All safety protocols were being followed, and things were clean and in working order. It was a stark contrast from the clutter of the office.
“Is everything okay?” the foreman asked after ten minutes had gone by. The afternoon shadows were beginning to appear, though the sun was still bright, and she figured he was eager to go have a beer.
“Just about.”
“Good.”
Her head came up abruptly at the change in tone of his voice, and at the same time she heard something approach.
She looked to the sky as something slid in front of the sun, casting its shadow across the ground.
Chapter Two
Zeke
It took several moments for the shouts to penetrate his sleep-infused fog.
“What?” he asked, sitting up.
“Move it, cadet!” Blaine Wingstar, senior instructor at the Top Scale Academy shouted at him. “Outside, on the double.”
Zeke shook his head, but his body was already responding. He slid from the bed, pants halfway up his waist before he even realized he was doing it. Socks, shoes, and a shirt followed, and he headed outside the fastest way he knew how.
The three-story drop out the window from his room to the ground was nothing with his enhanced muscles. He dropped to one knee, powerful legs absorbing the force of the landing easily. Rising, he strode across the large stone circles that dotted the rear courtyard of the tri-winged Academy building.
“What’s going on?” asked Asher Owens, one of the two other members of the cadet trio. He came up alongside him, having used the same method to descend.
“No idea,” he replied as they approached the figures in the dark.
He knew their outlines by heart at this point.
Off to the right, shorter and slimmer than the others, was Rhynne Nova, a Fire Dragon like him, and one of the instructors at the Academy. She specialized in breath weapons. Her disinterested face and crossed arms were a constant, something that Zeke now realized was not because of the cadets, though they often received the brunt of her displeasure.
To her left was Zander Pierce, a Brass Dragon. He was their aerial combat instructor. Skilled at the art of fighting while flying, Zeke had learned much from him, though he still had a lot more to learn judging by his test scores. The Brass Dragons were a bit of an oddity among shifters. They could breathe the very wind itself. It didn’t sound like much, but Zeke had the bruises to prove that the force of condensed air hurt. When in flight, it could completely derail his wings, sending him spinning from the sky.
He and Asher came to a halt several paces in front of Blaine. Blaine was a Green Dragon shifter, who could breathe clouds of noxious fumes at his opponents that affected the nervous and circulatory system. He was in charge of them from day to day, unless something big or serious came up.
In which case the shifter to his left, standing tall and serene as he surveyed the group of dragons, came into the spotlight.
Daxxton Ryker, Wing Commander and Master of Top Scale.
The single most feared dragon in all of Cadia, and possibly the world. Asher and Zeke, along with the late-arriving Dominick, the third cadet, all bowed their heads respectfully. They did so to all of their instructors, but most of all to Daxxton.
Daxxton was a Gold Dragon, the most powerful, and rarest type of dragon shifter. Larger than his contemporaries, he was nearly as fast as Zander, stronger than Blaine, and could choose between three breath weapons that all hit harder than Rhynne could. His ability to spew Frostfire, Dragonfire, or Electrofire was a powerful tool that left him as the undisputed power in this part of the world.
Whenever he addressed the cadets, they listened.
“Tonight, we have a different task for you,” Daxxton said.
Zeke straightened, both at the words and also the tone. Daxxton was often formal and slow-speaking. Today, he was all about business. The message was clear.
Shut up and don’t fuck around. This is serious.
“One of the Border Guardians to the northwest reported an incursion of some sort. As they were on foot, they were unable to follow and lost it. There was a commotion, and what sounded like lots of screaming. There’s a possibility of shifter involvement, and perhaps someone coming into Cadia from outside. As the nearest group of flight-capable shifters, we have been tasked with scouring the area from the sky.”
Daxxton turned and gave instructions on certain areas to Rhynne, Zander, and Blaine, who immediately turned and made their way to the center of one of the stone circles. Zeke wanted to watch, but his attention was dragged back as Daxxton continued to speak.
“As you are not yet graduates of Top Scale, nor are you Border Guardians, I am obliged not to send you out on your own.”
Zeke frowned. Why get them up then? That made no sense.
A slight smile crossed Daxxton’s face. “However, I will be sending you out together as a team. You will have the area directly to the south of Carver’s Peak. Do you know the one?”