by Ramy Vance
Alex still wasn’t sure how far Chine’s telepathy stretched, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. She reached out to Chine, thinking, Hey, if you can hear me, could you meet us outside? We kinda did something stupid and need to get going as soon as possible.
Much to Alex’s surprise, Chine’s voice came through loud and clear. Oh, you did? Why am I not surprised to hear that?
Well, they left us alone for so long. What was I supposed to do?
I take it we will be leaving soon?
Yeah. As soon as we can.
Chine laughed softly and replied, Good. None of us dragons quite likes it here. It lacks the splendor of the Nest. We’ll meet you outside.
It took about fifteen minutes for the team to finally arrive back at the facility. They took the ATV around to the back, just in case there were still other riders around. Alex knew that if even one person saw them, it was over.
Team Boundless snuck around the back of the facility while she telepathically let Chine know where they were heading. Occasionally, she peeked through the facility’s windows to see if anyone had stayed around. It looked like the entire base was abandoned.
That said a lot about the situation of the dragonriders on this base. It didn’t seem like they could risk anything. They had launched a full-on assault on the imaginary troll horde. Either Gill had made the situation look extremely dire, or these riders couldn’t take any chances.
Alex felt a little bad for having tricked the riders, but it was their own fault. Hopefully, nothing terrible happened while they were out.
The team turned the corner and were greeted by Chine and the rest of the dragons, lazily lounging in the sun. Chine slowly raised his head when he saw Alex, his eyes twinkling in that smile only dragons could do.
The rest of the dragons rose along with Chine. We were wondering what was taking you so long. Ready to get to work, Dustling?
Chapter Three
The dragons and the riders split up, each pair making their way toward the stables. The plan was for the dragons to wait outside. It would be easy enough for them to enter once the coast was clear, and Alex wanted to make sure the facility was empty first.
She led the team around the back toward where Gill said the stables were. There was only one entrance from outside, and that was through the specially designed ceiling. The only thing that could get through the ceiling’s defense grid was dragons. Anything else would be instantly vaporized.
Instead of going through the ceiling, the team was going to work their way around and sneak in through another section of the facility. They were sending Jollies since she was the smallest, and she was the least likely to get caught after Gill.
Gill would have gone, but he had to keep an eye on the simulation he’d built. The riders of the facility still hadn’t come across it and he wasn’t sure how long it would hold. The simulation had been enough to get the riders out of the building, but he wasn’t sure if it would keep them out there for long enough.
Jollies was making a huge show of getting ready to go into the facility. Her flair for melodrama hadn’t lessened, however potentially stressful the situation was. She was demanding that Alex remind her everything was going to be okay.
Alex opened her palm and let Jollies take a seat in it. “Trust me, Jollies, you’re the best person for the job,” Alex said, wondering how much Jollies needed to hear this.
Jollies sighed, grabbed her hair, and pulled. “But what if I’m not quiet enough? I’m not a sneaky person. Pixies don’t sneak. Maybe a fairy would, but not a pixie. What if I get caught? What if I can’t find the…what am I looking for again? What if I can’t remember what I’m looking for?”
Jollies flashed bright white, then the brightness faded and she looked pale as a sheet of paper. Alex shook her head, smiling. It was evident that the pixie did need the comforting. “Jollies, you’ll do okay,” Alex whispered. “You’re going to head toward HQ and find the mission map.”
“How am I going to know what it is?”
That was when Gill spoke up. “The map is going to be in the middle of the HQ war room. It’ll be a large, green holographic map. They’re usually in the middle of the room. Nearly impossible to miss.”
Brath grumbled, “That’s if she can remember what she’s looking for.”
Jollies zipped in front of Brath’s face and pulled her dagger. “You bet your ass I’m going to remember!” she growled menacingly.
The rest of the team tried to keep from laughing at how ridiculous Jollies was being.
The pixie flew back to Alex. “All right! I’m ready. Let’s do this!”
Jollies slipped under the door leading to the janitor’s closet, which opened into the back of the facility to make for simpler waste management. Gill had found it the easiest point in the whole facility to sneak into. The closet was surprisingly large.
Once Jollies was in, she stuck her head under the door that led to the main facility. She was still a long way from the war room, and her best route was going to be through the air ducts. For anyone other than Jollies, it would have been a tight fit. For her, they were downright spacious.
Through the ducts, Jollies made her way toward the war room. The plan was that she would get a copy of the map while the rest of the team tried to find a way to get into the stables.
While Jollies was flying, she was also taking live readings of the areas of the facility she was passing through to make sure there were no other riders. So far, she hadn’t come across any.
There was still a good amount of distance between the janitor’s closet and the war room, though.
Gill led Team Boundless around the side of the facility, heading for the next section that had a supposed weakness, the gym’s bathroom.
Brath was joking about how he hoped that there were enough riders left for them to catch them in the shower. Alex had to cut him off. “Do you know how unbelievably creepy that sounds?” she asked. “Pervy little gnome trying to check out girls in the shower?”
Brath’s eyebrows raised with confusion. “Girls?” he asked. “I’m not trying to see girls in the shower. I wanna see how tough the dudes are. You never get a real fight out of a gnome unless you’ve burst in on him in the shower. That’s the only way you get to see the fire.”
Alex turned to Gill and asked, “Is he serious?”
Gill nodded absentmindedly as he checked his HUD visor to make sure they were coming to the right spot. “Oh, yes, quite serious,” Gill replied. “It’s kind of a game they play, a cultural rite of passage. Of course, these ‘fights’ are meant to take place under waterfalls, but in the modern setting of Middang3ard, gnomes have expanded this to bathrooms and showers.”
Alex was confused. “A cultural thing, huh?” she muttered.
Gill nodded. “All our cultures are strange to others. A drow delicacy is live slugs. And humans love to bleed trees for their desserts.”
“Bleed trees?”
“Yes. I believe your kind call it maple syrup.”
“But maple syrup is delicious.”
Gill gave Alex a blank look. “It’s barbaric. The trees have no way to defend themselves.”
Alex shrugged as she looked into Gill’s eyes. The drow clearly thought the method for making maple syrup was barbaric, and not wanting the conversation to digress into a defense all of humanity for what they slathered on pancakes, she nodded in Brath’s direction. “I didn’t know that gnomes were so violent. Guess, I always thought that was more of a dwarfish thing.”
“Most people think that—until you meet a gnome. Then you realize they’re just balls of anger. Makes for interesting friendships, to say the least.”
Alex looked at Brath, who was marching along the side of the wall. “Yeah, I imagine it probably does,” she mused.
Gill tapped the side of his visor, opening Jollies’ channel. “Hey, how’s it coming so far? Are you closing in on the war room?”
Jollies’ voice crackled over the headsets of the entire team. “Ge
tting closer. And I haven’t come across anyone so far. I think that we might be in the clear. How about you guys?”
“Looks like we’re in the clear right now. Nothing—”
Gill stopped talking abruptly. Up ahead, Brath had stopped and was holding up his right hand in a fist, signaling that there was an enemy up ahead. Gill had been right in deciding to take the long route. It would have been foolish to assume the entire facility had been vacated.
Brath joined up with the rest of the team as they moved back. Gill whispered to Jollies, “Be careful, there are definitely people still in the building.”
“Got it,” Jollies replied. “I’m going dark.”
The comm cut out, and the larger portion of Team Boundless moved farther back to plan how they were going to deal with the situation. “We gotta take them out,” Brath said. “That’s the only way that we’re getting past them.”
Gill shook his head as he pulled up his visor. “I don’t think that is the wisest choice. There could be more than we’re expecting. Also, we might face more extreme consequences.”
Alex impatiently squirmed. “How much time do we have on that, anyway?” she asked. “That simulation isn’t going to last forever.”
“You’re right. Let me check. Hmm, it looks like we’ve got a little over half an hour. They still haven’t reached the coordinates the simulation is broadcasting.”
“What’s the best plan of action? We could get in serious trouble for attacking someone, but I don’t know how we’re going to talk our way into getting in there.”
Brath puffed his chest out and slammed his fist to it. “I got this. You guys don’t need to worry about anything. They don’t call me Bronze-tongue Brath for nothing.”
Alex raised her eyebrow and asked, “Isn’t it usually silver or gold tongue?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not the greatest, but I’m a hell of a lot more charismatic than you chumps. Hold on and watch me work my magic.”
Before anyone could stop him, Brath walked in the direction of the soldier. Alex hit her face with her palm as she shook her head, and the rest of the team watched. “He really thinks he’s the charming one of the group,” she muttered.
Brath walked up to the guard and cleared his throat. The guard jumped when the gnome suddenly appeared. “Uh…” the guard said. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yeah, you can,” Brath answered. “There’s a coolant leak in the basement, and I’ve been trying to get on the horn with someone. I can’t seem to find anybody, but if that leak keeps on going, this whole place is going to lose power.”
The guard looked around as if he were going to magically find a senior officer. Brath grunted as the officer tried to figure out what to do. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Brath whined. “I can’t find anybody. It’s like they all went out to lunch or something.”
The guard nodded in agreement. “There’s an attack, reinforcements for that troll party that got taken care of a little bit back. All hands on deck. There’s probably only six or seven of us here right now. Not even a skeleton crew.”
“Well, guess that means you six are going to have to take care of that leak. Otherwise, by the time everyone gets back, this place might have already blown sky-high.”
“It’s that bad?”
“That bad.”
Brath pulled up his HUD and scrolled through his inventory until he found a book. He selected it, and the book materialized in his hand. He handed it to the guard. “This here’ll show you anything you need to know about coolant leaks. You take care of this, you’ll be a hero. Definite promotion.”
The guard took the book and looked it over. “Hey, if you know so much about leaks, why don’t you take care of it?” he asked.
Brath shook his head as he tapped his noggin. “Would if I could, but this isn’t the only leak I’ve found. I have to keep checking. All I’m saying is I need a hand because I’m not going to be able to patch everything up. I’m just a diagnostics guy.”
“All right, all right. Makes sense. I’ll get the rest of the guys together and go take care of this. If you run across any other leaks, let us know. Don’t want this place falling apart while everyone is out.”
The guard walked down the hall as he radioed for the rest of the guards in the facility. Once Brath was certain the guard was out of earshot, he went around the corner and motioned for the rest of the team to come forward.
Alex silently clapped her hands before patting Brath on the back. “I would never have thought you were the one who’d have the gift of gab. I’d upgrade you from bronze to silver.”
Brath took a quick bow, his smile a little less smug than usual. The gnome looked like he was genuinely happy with the compliment. “Nice thing about being a gnome is when you start rattling off mechanical jargon, everyone takes your word. Everyone assumes we’re always working on their crap.”
Gill pointed down the hallway and said, “Come on, this way to the stables.”
Brath and the rest of Team Boundless went running down the halls toward the stables, hoping to get there before anyone noticed them, Gill checking his map every couple of seconds just to make sure they didn’t run into anyone.
Finally, they arrived at the stables. Alex opened the door, and they stepped through. Her heart sank as she saw the state they were in.
Chapter Four
The stables were nothing like those in the Wasp’s Nest. These seemed to be in complete disrepair. It was hard to tell the last time a dragon had been in the place.
Computer equipment was torn up, and there were cables and internal mechanical pieces all over the floor. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside a massive computer. Alex wasn’t certain how she was going to make heads or tails of what to do for Chine.
She had a very limited idea of what changing equipment and maintenance was going to be like. Alex had only seen the equipment attached before. She hadn’t gotten to the part of training where she was taught how to detach anything.
Boundless wandered around the stables. All the other members looked confused by the state of the stables as well. “Isn’t this a dragonriders’ facility?” Jim wondered out loud. “How the hell do they take care of their dragons with everything so…busted up?”
Brath leaned over the side of the area that the dragons were usually kept. It didn’t look like anything had been there for some time. “Maybe they don’t have any dragons,” Brath suggested. “This place looks like it hasn’t been used for years.”
Alex tapped one of the computers and then hit its power button. The machine remained off. “That’s probably why they aren’t mounting a rescue party for Roy and Toppinir—they don’t have the resources. I thought they were just being jerks. How did this happen?”
Gill sat down in the control center of the stables. “No idea, but it isn’t good. It couldn’t have been funding. Myrddin has a nearly infinite budget. Perks of being an alchemist. Whatever happened here must have been something else. Who knows? We should focus on our situation.”
“You’re right. Let’s get this sorted out.”
Alex reached out telepathically to Chine. Where are you guys?
A mighty roar ripped through the air. Alex looked up at the opening in the ceiling. The dragons were flying overhead. They zoomed down into the stables, gracefully separating and taking up residence in the augment section of the stables. “Gill, can you get this stuff back online?” Alex asked.
Gill took a look at the main computer of the control center and sighed. “Yeah, I probably can. Might take a bit of time, but I’ll get it running.”
Alex hit her comm and patched to Jollies. “Hey, girl, how’s the search going?” she asked.
Jollies’ voice came through the comm, frantic and panicked. “I’m in the war room, but there isn’t a holograph. I can’t find it. I’m going to fail the only mission I have!”
“Hey, hey, calm down. Hold on; we’ll figure this out.”
Alex ran over to Chine and jumped down
into his resting spot. The dragon rose when he saw her. Hey, Chine, can you do me a favor?
Chine stretched out his wings slowly as he nodded. What do you need?
Jollies’ eyes. She’s having a hard time finding what she’s looking for. Maybe if she had an extra set of eyes, it could help her out.
Chine closed his eyes, and Alex took that as a yes. She came over to the dragon, sat down beneath his wings, and closed her eyes.
Alex felt a tickling behind her eyeballs, a soft scratching like something was moving around in the back of her skull. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the stables. Everything around her was moving very fast—far too fast to make any sense of it. “Hey, Jollies, slow down,” Alex shouted.
Jollies froze, or at least, Alex thought that she had stopped moving. Alex’s viewpoint had at least stopped moving. “Uh, Alex?” Jollies asked.
“Don’t worry about anything. I’m just looking through your eyes so I can give you a hand finding the holograph map. That’s all.”
“Wait, you’re looking through my eyes? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Alex couldn’t see Jollies’ fingers and chuckled. “Jollies, you have to look at your fingers for me to see them.”
Jollies laughed nervously and said, “Oh, okay.” She raised her hand in front of her eyes, holding up three fingers.
“Three fingers. Now can we get started? And fly slow. I’m not used to looking through your eyes.”
Jollies started to fly around the room, moving slower. “This is so weird,” Jollies admitted. “Are you in my head or something? Can you read my mind?”
“No, I’m just seeing through your eyes. It’s a psychic link, but I don’t think I can read your mind or anything like that.”
Chine’s thoughts broke through Alex’s. Not yet, but with practice, your psychic powers might be as strong as mine one day.