Dragons in Space
Dragon Approved™ Book Ten
Ramy Vance Michael Anderle
The Dragons in Space Team
Thanks to the JIT Readers
Kathleen Fettig
Diane L. Smith
Kelly O’Donnell
Dave Hicks
Deb Mader
John Ashmore
Veronica Stephan-Miller
Dorothy Lloyd
Kerry Mortimer
If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
This Book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2020 by Ramy Vance & Michael Anderle
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / jcalebdesign@gmail.com
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US Edition, May 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-911-6
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-912-3
Dedication
For Orla Julia Sim Habeeb – the little alien in my life.
—Ramy
To Family, Friends and
Those Who Love
to Read.
May We All Enjoy Grace
to Live the Life We Are
Called.
— Michael
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Author Notes Ramy Vance
Author Notes Michael Anderle
Other Books by the Authors
Connect with The Authors
Chapter One
The skies of Earth have an understated beauty. It’s as if when they took form, they wished to be seen as ordinary. They are the sort of skies that open up to you. They are human skies.
In the nine realms, there are skies that are filled with stars throughout the day and the night, skies that boast two suns or three moons, and skies that hold hosts of floating whales and creatures made from the stuff of myths. Yet whenever an elf or gnome steps onto Earth for the first time and is greeted with the accepting blue skies peppered with clouds that look soft enough to sleep on, they stop and stare. There is a beauty in the simplicity of Earth’s sky, one that cannot be easily understood or replicated.
It was this sky that Alex and the rest of Team Boundless tore into. A portal with a two-mile radius opened over the Big Sky state of Montana.
The portal was from the hadron collider at the Wasps Nest, one of the older models. It was Myrddin’s first attempt to find a way for humans to move throughout the realms without spells cast by magi or the use of a familiar. This collider wasn’t as precise as the newer models, and it tended to make oversized portals that could easily be noticed by many different kinds of technology.
A metallic warship roughly the size of a Navy aircraft carrier floated out of the portal. It buckled for a moment before it adjusted to the gravity of the planet, firing its thrusters to even out and remain in the air.
The ship was running a skeleton crew, just enough to keep it operational. Myrddin didn’t have enough recruits or officers to spare, so they were making do with what was available. The crew was in the main viewing area of the craft.
And because most of them had never been to Earth before, all duties were put on hold as they crowded around the windows.
Manny, a Beholder who headed up the recruitment process for the dragonriders and just about any other group that had to deal with the human realm, was one of the few passengers who didn’t seem interested in the view. Instead, his many eyes were poring over a collection of paper and digital dossiers.
The other person seemingly uninterested in the ship’s descent through Earth’s skies was Alex, the leader of Team Boundless. As the rest of her team clambered to the viewing ports, Alex sat near Manny, reading a book on the theories behind human integration of draconic fluids. She yawned loudly as she read. The book was far from interesting.
Manny looked up from his work, one of his eyes narrowing as he watched Alex reading. “Would’ve thought you’d be more interested in being home,” Manny murmured under his breath but loud enough for Alex to hear, then even louder, “Some people would kill for this kind of shore leave.”
She tried to ignore Manny, concentrating on her book’s text. It was difficult. She was having a hard enough time paying attention to what she was reading, but it was better than trying to crowd around with everyone and pretend to be excited.
Manny was right; most people would have been excited about the chance to go home. Alex wasn’t one of them, though. Nervous wasn’t the word. She was more stressed than she’d ever been, and that was saying a lot since her life had devolved into a series of tense battles and events.
Alex looked down at her robotic hand. She’d left in such a rush, she hadn’t been able to head to the med bay and see if they had anything to make her arm any less noticeable. She wasn’t looking forward to explaining how she had lost her arm to her parents.
There was going to be a lot of yelling and crying, and that wasn’t the way to spend her first day home.
Alex glanced at the rest of the crew, who were losing their minds over the Montana skies. She was glad they were all enjoying themselves. She had even heard Brath, the perpetually grouchy gnome who seemed to despise human culture, gasp in awe when the ship had exited the collider portal.
It was probably better to give the team some space and let them take everything in on their own without risking raining on their parade. That was all she was able to do. There was too
