Dragon Approved Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 13): A Middang3ard Series

by Ramy Vance

  Alex did a double-take, switching back to her own eyes for a moment so she could see Chine. Wait, what? Are you saying I have psychic powers?

  Didn’t Myrddin tell you? That’s why our connection is so strong. The spell Myrddin crafted for you was not merely new eyes. It’s a psychic link, which means you have psychic powers. The beginnings, at least. They need to be worked, like a muscle.

  Alex was giddy about the idea, but she figured she’d come back to that later. The mission needed to be their priority. “All right, Jollies, we’re looking for a giant holomap. Can you take a look around so I can get a better view?”

  Jollies and Alex slowly scanned the war room. Like the stables, the war room looked like it hadn’t been used much in ages. What had happened to this facility?

  It was obvious where the holographic map was supposed to be. There was a large platform in the middle of the room where it would have been projected. It would have been easy for everyone in the room to see it from that vantage point.

  “That’s where it should be,” Alex said. “That spot right there.”

  Jollies flew to the platform and looked around, taking her time when Alex reminded the pixie that she needed to concentrate on not moving too fast. Alex could see the spot had been outfitted for a projection. “Hey, Jollies, can you test the lights in the room?”

  Jollies replied, “Sure,” as she zoomed over to the light switch on the wall. She flipped the switch. The lights remained off.

  Alex switched back to her own eyes, jumped up, and leaped back into the main section of the stables. “Hey! Gill! Is the electricity running to this room?”

  Gill whirled around from the computer he was tinkering with. “Let me check,” he replied as he pulled up his HUD visor. After a couple of seconds, he pushed his visor back down and said, “Nope! It looks like most of the power’s being routed to other parts of the facility.”

  “Route the power back to this room and to the war room. That should fix Jollies’ problem, at least.”

  Gill flashed Alex a thumbs-up and started messing around on his dragon anchor. After a couple of seconds, the power cut back on, and the lights turned on in the stables.

  Alex closed her eyes and concentrated until she felt the tickle in the back of her head. When she opened her eyes, she was seeing through Jollies’ eyes, and she was looking at a bright green holographic map. “Perfect,” Alex said. “Jollies, can you upload the map to your dragon anchor? Along with any important information?”

  Jollies nodded, disorienting Alex. “Yeah, I can manage that.”

  “Let me know if you have any more problems. Head back to the stables after you get it.”

  Alex returned to her own vision. “All right, Jollies has the map,” Alex told everyone. “Now all we have to do is get these dragons taken care of. How are things going, Gill?”

  Gill stood up from the computer system, sighing and shaking his head. His face looked grim. “Not good. Even with power routed to the stables, we aren’t going to have enough to get any of the augment stations working.”

  “Can you explain what that means in English?”

  Gill jumped down onto the main platform of the stables. “It means we can remove what we’ve put on our dragons, but we aren’t going to be able to replace the weapons—and that creates a problem. The longer those augments are on are dragons, the more damage there’s going to be.”

  “Wait, what? I thought if we did the maintenance, it wasn’t going—”

  “That’s not how it works. The augments aren’t meant to stay on for extended periods of time. That’s why you have to do maintenance.”

  Alex threw her hands up in frustration as she paced. “Okay, Gill, I’m hearing a lot of problems, but I’m not hearing any solutions,” she moaned. “I just don’t know enough about this stuff.”

  Gill placed his hand on Alex’s shoulder and smiled at her reassuringly. “We aren’t screwed,” he said. “The power’s back on. We can still take care of the dragons, and I’ll work at seeing if I can get any more systems back online. Until then, though, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.”

  The rest of the dragonriders had come over to Alex and Gill. As Gill was preparing to speak, Jollies rushed through the door, almost flying into Alex’s face. “I got the map!” she squeaked.

  Alex gave Jollies a high five and said, “That’s great,” as Gill cleared his throat to speak. “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to steal your thunder,” Alex apologized.

  Gill replied, “You didn’t. And it wasn’t going to be an exciting statement. Have any of you performed maintenance on your dragons before?”

  None of the team said anything. Gill sighed. “Have any of you read through the manual on performing maintenance? Did any of you do any research after our initial lessons?”

  More silence. Brath awkwardly coughed, which only made the silence more uncomfortable. “All right,” Gill went on. “It’s going to be pretty simple. You’re going to use your dragon anchors to drain the draconian fluid from where the augments rest on your dragon’s skin. The fluid will be stored in your anchor. The fluid has a myriad of different—”

  Alex interrupted Gill, saying, “Uh, do we really need the science lesson right now? How about you give us the CliffsNotes so we can get up and running.”

  Gill nodded and continued, “All right, you’re going to drain the fluid, store it in your anchor, and reattach the augments. If I can get the system going, we’ll put some new ones on, but it’s unnecessary. They’ll be good after being drained. We should get to it.”

  The riders split up, looking for their dragons in the stables, which didn’t take long. Alex jumped down into Chine’s holding area and reached out to his mind. So, you know the drill, right? she asked.

  Chine raised his wings as he stood, allowing Alex easier access to his chest and claw augments. Ah, yes, my favorite part of my service to the realms—being taken care of and groomed like common livestock.

  Alex approached Chine and stood in front of his chest. She looked down at her dragon anchor, uncertain of how she was going to detach Chine’s armor and how she was going to scoop out the draconian fluid.

  Waiting was unnecessary, though, because Alex’s dragon anchor began to glow the same color as the flashing green light on Chine’s chest piece. Alex reached out to the blinking light.

  The chest piece contorted, plates of steel rolling back. It was the same kind of nano-tech Alex’s armor was made from. The chest piece created a hole the size of Alex’s wrist. “I put my hand in there?” Alex asked.

  Chine nodded as Alex curled her bottom lip. “Am I putting my hand…in you?” Alex asked.

  “Yes, into my chest. It’s the easiest way to drain my fluids. It’ll allow the augment to continue sitting there without my blood burning and searing the piece to my flesh.”

  “Jeez, sounds terrible.”

  “The first generation of dragons sacrificed a lot so we’d have the technology we do today. Their sacrifices should never be forgotten.”

  Alex took a deep breath and plunged her hand into Chine’s chest. The dragon winced as Alex felt her dragon anchor start to warm up. It went quickly from warm to searing. Alex almost screamed in pain, and the dragon growled under his breath.

  If she hadn’t been so concerned with Chine’s well-being, she would have pulled her arm out as soon as it had started to get uncomfortable. But this was necessary to keep Chine’s blood from melting the armor into his skin. This was her part.

  Alex could feel the heat traveling from her skin to her bone. It felt like her entire skeleton was catching on fire. And then it was suddenly gone. She pulled her anchor out, and the chest augment settled back into place.

  Chine shook his wings and huffed out a cloud of black smoke. “Just five more times,” he grumbled. “Save the neck anchor for last. It’s the most painful.”

  Alex nodded as she got started, working her way through each anchor, draining the draconian fluid. Her skin took fire, then her bones,
the heat boiling up in her body to such a degree she felt like she was aflame on the inside. Then, just as quickly as it started, nothing.

  After she had drained all of the lower augments, she climbed up on top of Chine and raised her hand above his anchor. Her anchor and the dragon’s started to blink in rhythm, then a hole opened up on his back. Alex knelt and plunged her arm into it.

  Chine let out a roar of pain as he flinched. Alex felt the fire shoot up her arm, faster than it had before. Flames were burning behind her eyes. There was no feeling in her arm. It was as if it had been dissolved. Then Alex felt her arm being forced out of the hole.

  Skin and scales grew over the wound until the nanotech covered everything. Alex leaped off Chine’s back as the dragon reached up and stretched. “Glad that’s finally over,” he said. “Now we just need to wait for the rest of them.

  Alex took a seat next to him. She felt sick to her stomach, and the world went black at the edge of her vision. Even though she fought it, she slipped into a deep sleep.

  Chapter Five

  Alex felt like she’d been sleeping for a lifetime, but when she woke up, hardly any time had passed. Chine had nudged her awake, and now she lay staring at the sky through the open ceiling of the stables. What happened? Alex asked.

  The dragon curled his tail around Alex to prop her up. A side effect of our mental link, your latent psychic abilities, and the draconian fluid.

  You know, just because you’re using words, it doesn’t mean you’re making sense. How about we try again, but you assume I don’t know how any of that works?

  Chine chuckled before he started speaking again. The anchor has to do something with the fluid. It recirculates through your body and processes it as waste. But there are some riders who have different effects. You seem to be one of them. And that means the draconian fluid, or dragon’s blood, as it should properly be called, makes you stronger, akin to the dragon-blooded of old. You might be the closest we’ve had to one in a long while, but don’t let it go to your head. It just means our bond will be stronger.”

  Alex yawned as she stretched, still trying to shake off her sudden sleep. Well, that’s good to know, I guess. How’s everyone else finishing up?

  Chine reached out telepathically to the rest of the dragons, and after a few moments, told Alex all the dragonriders had finished their maintenance. Jim had finished working on his mech a while ago. “Okay,” Alex said. “Guess it’s time to get moving.”

  Alex walked out of Chine’s area and approached Gill, who was still tinkering with the central computer system. “No luck getting it online?” Alex asked.

  Gill turned to face Alex. He looked exhausted. Apparently, the maintenance process had been hard on him, too. For all his book knowledge, the drow had been unprepared for the reality of taking care of their dragons. “No, not the entire system, but I was able to glean more information from the system using the map Jollies brought. Our coordinates are all entered and updated to our links.”

  Jim, Brath, and Jollies walked up to Alex and Gill, looking pretty beat. It would have been nice to have a moment for everyone to catch their breath. Jim was the only one who looked ready to go, but he was the only one who didn’t have to process the dragons’ blood.

  Alex sat down next to Gill. “Maybe we should all just chill for a little—”

  An alarm blared through the stables as the power came back on. Bright red lights flashed as a voice shouted over the intercom, “Intruders! Intruders! The stables are compromised. Security on the way.”

  Gill leaned over the computer, trying to see what could have tripped the alarm. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I must have brought the security system back on when I was going through the map.”

  “Well, forget chilling, then! We need to ride!”

  Team Boundless each went to their own dragon. Alex leaped down into Chine’s stables, landed on his back, raised her anchor, and then they were off, soaring into the sky as the alarms blared behind them.

  Alex looked over her shoulder, giddy with the fright of having almost been caught. “Hell, yeah!” she exclaimed. “Guess your plan went off without a hitch, Gill! Dude, you are a freakin’ miracle.”

  Gill, who was flying beside Alex, smiled softly as he nodded. “Thank you. It is appreciated.”

  Brath groaned loudly enough to be heard over the wind and without the comm. “You two could use a private channel, you know,” Brath suggested.

  A laser beam shot past Alex, burning a little bit of her hair. “Holy crap!” she shouted as she turned.

  A horde of drones was pouring out of the stables, heading for the riders. The drones were nearly the size of a gnome, but it wasn’t their size that worried her. It was the sheer number of them. There seemed to be dozens.

  Jim’s voice crackled over his older comm system. He was laughing as he spoke. “Looks like Gill the Nerd brought a hell storm on us,” he chided.

  Gill laughed too. “If you can’t deal with a couple of drones, maybe you shouldn’t be riding with Boundless.”

  Over the comm, Brath muttered, “Gods, you two should just get a room already. Alex, what’s the plan?”

  Alex pointed to a nearby mountain range. “We can lose them in the mountains. Maybe not Jim, though. Jim, can you keep up with us if we hit top speed?”

  He answered, “There’s no way I’m going to be able to match your speed. The mech is too slow.”

  “Jollies, you and I are going to run a distraction. The rest of you, cover Jim and head to the mountains.”

  Jollies flashed Alex a smile as the two of them peeled off from the rest of the riders, who sped toward the mountain range, making sure to slow down for Jim’s hulking dragon mech.

  Alex and Jollies went straight for the drones, using their superior speed to weave out of the way of the lasers. The drones seemed to take a long time to lock onto a target, especially if the target was moving. Alex didn’t need to say anything to Jollies. The pixie zipped and zoomed as fast as she could.

  They were still a good distance from the drones, and the air was already beginning to thicken with heat from the lasers. “Do you think we’re going to get busted for this?” Jollies shouted.

  Alex swerved to the left, barely avoiding a missile that had flown at her. “If we survive this, we might be in a little bit of trouble,” She laughed.

  “You have a really bad habit of getting involved in suicide missions.”

  Chine pulled up, absorbing one of the lasers with his chest piece before launching an ether fire ball at the drone that had made the mistake of hitting him. “You know, I’m pretty sure we’ve been on a suicide mission since we first got here,” Alex said. “At least we chose this one.”

  Alex and Jollies dived farther into the exploding field of lasers and drones. They were close enough now so the drones were having an even harder time aiming. The drones had been built for long-range combat, and the closer the riders got, the less effective the devices became.

  Heading toward the mountain range might not have been the best idea, in hindsight. It would give the drones the advantage. Further, it would funnel the drones into a tight space with the riders, making the range a shooting gallery for whoever got lucky.

  Alex determined that it was going to be the riders. She just had to figure out how to ensure they had the advantage.

  A drone larger than the rest broke away from the swarm. It was covered in multiple sensors and eyes. The drone did not attack, just popped out of the swarm and watched. “I don’t like the look of that thing,” Alex shouted. “Jollies, can you handle it?”

  Jollies didn’t answer but surged forward, working her way around the other drones with a skill far beyond her years and stopping abruptly in front of the drone. She aimed her dragon anchor, and Timber let loose a crack of lightning that split the drone in half.

  Alex was flying through the swarm now, the drones trying to figure out the best way to attack. There didn’t seem to be one. Chine was tearing through the drones, and Alex had
pulled out her scythe to help cut them down. However, the drones kept coming.

  Jollies and Alex pulled up out of the swarm, flying backward so they could keep an eye on the drones. The devices seemed to have lost interest in the other riders. That was good news.

  Then the drones did something that alarmed Alex greatly. The drones all stopped together. It was as if they had all received the same order and responded to it at precisely the same time. The drones stayed perfectly still, their red eyes blinking like a stalling computer.

  Alex leaned over Chine’s neck to get a better look. “This isn’t good. I’ve seen this happen before; I just don’t know where. But I’ve seen this. I know I have.”

  Then it clicked. It was the same uniform movement Alex had seen with her dragon armor. The drones were starting to move like nanotech. That was a very bad thing.

  As if the drones were reading Alex’s mind, they melded together, pressing against each other so tightly you couldn’t see where one drone ended and the next began. They formed a complex chain of robot bodies, taking the shape of a cobra.

  The drone snake was easily twice the size of Chine. The only dragon on Team Boundless large enough to deal with the drone cobra was Furi, but he was too far ahead with Jim and the rest.

  Alex didn’t need to tell Chine what to do. The dragon had already picked it up. He fired another fireball as he retreated, heading toward the mountain range, Jollies racing at his side. Can’t say I’ve seen that before, Chine murmured.

  Alex chuckled. Really? Aren’t you dragons supposed to have seen it all by now?

  I am still young and new to battle. This is a first.

  Alex always forgot Chine was still considered to be a young dragon and didn’t have much combat experience. Sometimes he said things that made Alex think he was as green as she was, but his combat skills suggested otherwise. Maybe dragons were born with an innate understanding of fighting.

  Jollies and Alex raced toward the mountain range. Alex tried to reach the other riders by comm, but there must have been too much distance between them, or the drones were blocking the transmission. At this point, it didn’t matter.