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.
The pressing issue was the giant nanotech cobra hissing and shooting lasers at Jollies and Alex.
Going into the mountain range was an almost guaranteed death trap now. When the drones were just a horde, they would have been easy enough to scatter. Now that they had formed a whole creature, they seemed to have grown bolder and more aggressive.
On top of that issue, if there were any cracks in the mountain range Team Boundless could have exploited, they would be useless now. The drone cobra was too large. It would dominate the space.
Alex couldn’t think of a reasonable course of action, other than linking back up with the rest of the team. So far, Alex’s usual plan was to attack and hope things worked themselves out. This time, it was obvious attacking the techno-cobra was not going to work out.
Alex’s comm started to buzz and she flipped up her HUD to see who it was. Manny’s unhappy eyes met hers. “I do not have time for this right now,” she muttered as she hung up on Manny.
He’s probably just going to tell me in a thousand different ways how I should have stayed at the facility. And I do not have time for that.
The techno-cobra let out a roar that reminded Alex she did not have time to talk to Manny. As she looked over her shoulder, she could see it opening its mouth, a bright red light glowing in the back of its throat. “It’s charging for a blast!” Alex shouted.
Jollies and Alex broke away from each other as a laser blast seared past them, carving a gash into the side of the mountains ahead. “That thing is no joke!” Jollies shouted.
Alex pointed up and started to ascend, heading straight into the clouds. Jollies followed her as she patched into Gill. “Hey! Hypothetically speaking, if there were a giant nanotech snake following us, would you have any idea how to disable it?” she asked.
Gill’s voice crackled over the comm. “Hypothetically speaking, Jim should have an EMP device in his dragon mech that would disable any electronics that aren’t dragon-forged,” he answered.
“Is that true, Jim?”
Jim replied confidently, “Yeah, I have a couple of EMP devices. A bomb, even. The mechs come outfitted with a dozen different EMP weapons.”
“Are you ready to play the hero today?”
“I was born ready.”
Chapter Six
Alex and Jollies rose higher as the cobra followed on their tails. They were biding their time, trying to put some space between themselves and the cobra while Jim told them his coordinates.
Surprisingly, the rest of the team had found an almost invisible cavern in one of the mountains. Brath had had the great idea of hiding there for an ambush.
The only problem was, Jollies and Alex needed enough space between them and the nanotech cobra so they could surprise the machine creature.
A laser blast tore past Alex, who pulled hard to the left on Chine, swinging up higher to avoid the blast. “Are we getting any farther ahead of them?” Alex shouted.
Jollies checked over her shoulder and shook her head. “It looks like it’s gaining on us,” Jollies replied. “Oh, wait! I have an idea. Gill said an EMP would disable them, right? Amber can create her own electromagnetism. Hold on!”
Jollies started to weave back and forth in front of Alex. Every couple of seconds, Amber would drop what looked like a small glowing ball. Every so often, a crack of lightning would snap around the ball—tiny EMP grenades.
As the techno-cobra sped after the dragonriders, it bumped into the first mini-EMP grenade. The grenade went off, sending a chain reaction of exploding EMPs through the sky.
The techno-cobra shrieked in what sounded like pain as its body started to come apart. Drones flew in different directions, confused by the energy coming off the grenades. Their communication was severed. It would take some time to re-establish a link.
Jollies and Alex flew down under the clouds as fast as they could toward the coordinates of the rest of the team. They sped through the mountains until they found the cavern where the team was huddled.
The cave was a huge gash in a slope, with enough space to fit at least two more full-sized dragons. Chine and Amber were easily able to fit into the remaining space. There was even enough room for the riders to walk around beneath their dragons.
As Alex leaped off Chine, Jim’s mechanical mech moved toward the lip of the gash and plopped down. The back opened up, and Jim pulled himself out of the mech. Gill came up and gave Jim a hand climbing down from the mech. “And now for the final touch,” Gill said.
Timber turned around so his tail was facing out toward the other mountains. He spread his wings over the gap, blocking out the light, so only a little bit got through. Then his scales shimmered and changed color and texture to that of the mountain.
Team Boundless was completely camouflaged from the outside. Even to a drone, they would look the same as the mountain’s slopes. Now all they had to do was wait for the drones to come through. “Wait, Jollies and I lost them. How do we know they’re coming?” Alex asked.
Jim jerked his thumb at his mech. “We figured out how
