An Alien Affair: A Middang3ard Series (Dragon Approved Book 9) Read online

  An Alien Affair

  Dragon Approved™ Book Nine

  Ramy Vance

  Michael Anderle

  The An Alien Affair Team

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Dave Hicks

  Diane L. Smith

  Kathleen Fettig

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  John Ashmore

  Deb Mader

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Dorothy Lloyd

  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 / [email protected]

  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 [email protected]. 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, April 2020

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-871-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-872-0

  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 Wasps Nest was a marvel of modern technology and magic. The design had been Myrddin’s-he was the wizard who had dedicated his life to the destruction of the Dark One—and the technology used was his attempt to bring together what he’d seen humanity excel at with what he knew magic could do.

  The Nest was unrivaled in any of the nine realms. True, there were races who could boast of their magical creations and artifacts, but there was nothing like Myrddin’s project, a constantly growing, changing, and learning machine imbued with a magic that only Myrddin seemed to understand.

  It hadn’t been built for housing alien species or with decontamination in mind, but luckily, due to its ingenious design, it was prepared for the extraterrestrial guest. All that had been needed was a quick word between Myrddin and Roy to give the team enough time to plan.

  That was why Alex had never seen this particular hallway or section of the Nest before. It was an alabaster medical bay split into two sections with a thick glass wall.

  The alien was on one side of the glass, staring down at its hands, apparently still disoriented. The extraction from the crash site had been rushed and uncomfortable. Even Alex thought Myrddin could have been more accommodating.

  They were all acting like the alien was something to be afraid of, as if it didn’t come to their world specifically to offer them help against the Dark One. Everyone was acting like they’d watched too many alien movies. Alex had never seen one, but she had often listened in on her dad watching them.

  Science fiction had been her father’s favorite genre, and anything to do with the subject of aliens interested him. It got to the point where he’d once claimed he wished he would be abducted. Alex and her mom had teased him for years, telling him his dreams of being kidnapped by some extraterrestrial being were insane and it was never going to happen.

  Dad would freak the hell out if he saw this, Alex thought as she stared at the alien through the glass. And he’d have an answer to his age-old question: yes, everyone in the universe does speak English.

  She had to tell her dad about the most recent visitor. There was no way he would believe it. Luckily, Alex didn’t have to rely on her word. She flipped up her HUD visor and started snapping pictures.

  The alien looked up from his hands and stared at Alex. She suddenly realized how rude she was being and how frightening this experience must be. The alien was obviously annoyed that it was being treated like an invader.

  Alex walked over to the glass and placed her hand on it, hoping it would understand.

  Shouldn’t be too hard, she thought. He obviously understood my words.

  As if it could read Alex’s mind, the alien stood and approached the glass, resting its hand against it as well. They looked into each other’s eyes.

  Alex had seen a lot of strange things since she got her eyesight, but there was something very odd about the alien’s eyes. The irises seemed to be constantly expanding and contracting. It was impossible, but Alex couldn’t deny what she was seeing. It was not that its eyes were sunken or that they implied some kind of wisdom; rather, it was as if they were a portal into another world, one that stretched away to infinity and was filled with welcoming darkness.

  Alex had to look away. Staring into the alien’s eyes gave her the distinct feeling of falling and not being able to catch herself. She’d felt something like that while looking at Gill or Jim at times, but there was no emotion behind the sensation she was getting from the alien, just the physical feeling.

  As Alex pulled away, Roy and Myrddin walked into the decontamination area. They were both wearing hazmat suits that looked almost laughable on them. Neither of them seemed to be joking, though.

  The two men walked up and Myrddin waved his hand, causing the barrier to slide open enough for both of them to step through. They approached the alien, and the three began speaking together. The alien seemed to respond, but Alex couldn’t be sure since she couldn’t hear through the glass.

  After a couple of minutes, Roy stepped out and pulled off his mask. “You were the one who found it, right?” he asked, breathing in as much fresh air as he could.

  Alex peeked over Roy’s shoulders to see what Myrddin and the alien were doing. “Yeah, with help from the rest of Team Boundless.”

  “You spoke to it. And touched the ship.”

  Alex thought back, trying to remember if any of the rest of the team had spoken to the alien. She wasn’t sure, but she was very certain that she had touched the ship. It had been warm, almost as if it were alive. “Yeah, I did. Why?”

  Roy pointed to the door he and Myrddin had come through. “You’re quarantined. Come on, follow me.” He walked past Alex, only turning for a moment to motion for her to follow him.

  Alex didn’t bother asking why she was being quarantined. She’d worked with Roy enough to know he would tell her when he thought she was ready to hear. Besides, he was her commanding officer, even if he was a mech rider, and it hadn’t been a suggestion.

  Roy led Alex down a long hall to a room n
ot much different than the one the alien was in. The glass door slid open, and Roy gestured that Alex should step inside. She did, and the door closed behind her. “Sorry about all that. Myrddin’s orders.”

  Alex went over and sat down on the bench in the room. She could hear Roy perfectly, so it must have been different from the room the alien was being held in. “Kinda figured. I don’t usually get sent to my room without a reason.”

  Roy rubbed off the sweat beading on his forehead and then scratched his stubbly five-o’clock shadow. “The old man’s freaking out a little bit. I’ll be back. Myrddin and I need to chat with you after this thing gets finished telling us what it’s doing here.”

  “It’s not a thing,” Alex corrected, indignant at Roy and her situation.

  Roy flung his arms up as he turned to leave. “Far as we know, this thing could be talking mold or an irradiated fingernail shaving. It’s a thing until it lets me know whatever the hell it is. I’ll be back, kid.”

  Roy walked off, shutting the door behind him as Alex jumped to her feet, shouting, “Could you at least leave me a book or something?”

  It was too late. Roy didn’t hear her, but the Nest did. The glass wall next to Alex opened up, and a leather-bound book shot out at Alex and fell to the ground. It was titled All You Need to Know About Space.

  Alex groaned as she picked up the book and started flipping through it. At least the Nest is starting to get a sense of humor, she thought.

  For the next two hours, Alex read through the book. It was dry, lacked any wit, and seemed to have an ever-expanding, nonsensical idea about outer space. The more Alex read, the more she was convinced that the author should not write anything on any subject.

  Once Alex’s irritation peaked and solidified, she tossed the book across the room and gave a frustrated groan. Why the hell was she the one locked up? It wasn’t like she came from space. Sometimes it felt like Myrddin and Roy were punishing her for doing her job.

  The glass door slid open, and both Roy and Myrddin walked into the quarantine room. Both of them were still wearing their hazmat suits. As they walked toward Alex, a faint mist that smelled of lilacs sprayed throughout the room. “What’s with the mist?”

  Myrddin took a seat on the bench and pulled off his mask. “Just a precaution. We need to make sure we’re going about this the right way. Alex, when did you first see the ship?”

  Not even a hello. Wow, she thought before answering Myrddin. “Around early evening. I don’t know, maybe five-thirty?”

  Roy narrowed his eyes at Alex. “What were you doing in that area?”

  “Why am I the one on trial right now? Isn’t it a good thing I reported a strange thing in the sky? And I’ll have you know, it was my day off, so I went on a date.”

  Roy patted Alex on the back as he chuckled. “Glad to hear you were making the most of your leave time. Not everyone knows how to spend it. Some of those nerds read on their days off. Who was the lucky—”

  Roy trailed off as he turned to see Myrddin staring daggers in his back. “Uh, I meant, good thing you didn’t forget your duty to report things.”

  Myrddin folded his hands together as the lines in his forehead became more pronounced. “You are not in trouble, Alex. We’re only asking because this is unexpected.”

  Alex hadn’t ever heard Myrddin admit to being caught off-guard before. She let go of her anger and let her curiosity take over. “What do you mean unexpected? Is that thing a for-real alien? Like, from another planet?”

  Myrddin shook his head as he kneaded his forehead wrinkles. “When there are nine realms, each with their own universe, the term ‘alien’ stops having any real meaning. Humans are alien to elves, and so on and so forth. But this creature is something else entirely. It’s not from our dimension.”

  “Wait, you mean like the meteor? That thing that had the Dark One’s persona or essence in it?”

  Myrddin reached out to the wall, which opened, letting a tray with a cup of iced water pass through. “Similar to it. It’s from the same dimension, but it came here in a conventional fashion. That’s why you and it are quarantined for the moment. We can’t risk there being an interdimensional virus or something that our bodies aren’t used to. It should be fine, but we need to be safe.”

  Alex didn’t want to think about the meteor. But if this thing was from the same dimension as the Dark One, there was a good chance it had witnessed what he was capable of firsthand. “So, why’s it here?”

  “We were only able to get a little information. The creature referred to the Dark One as the Devourer of Worlds, and it meant that quite literally. I don’t quite know what to make of that, but the creature fell asleep shortly after. We plan on speaking with it more tomorrow. We will be examining the ship as well.”

  “Great. Thanks for the check-in. Anything else I should know?”

  Myrddin and Roy exchanged glances. “Guess I’ll tell her,” Roy said, sighing. “You’re going to have to spend the night here. And most of tomorrow. Just to be safe.”

  Alex groaned and sat back down on the bench. “Are you kidding me? All night?”

  Myrddin and Roy were heading to the door. The old man looked over his shoulder. “If you need anything, the wall will help. But be very specific. I’m still working the kinks out. Thank you again, Alex.”

  They left Alex alone with her thoughts. Even though she tried to fight it, her mind inevitably turned to the meteor and what she had seen within it. Nope, Alex thought. No nightmares tonight.

  Alex focused on what she wanted: company. She closed her eyes and imagined Jollies’ smiling face. When she opened them, the wall next to her had built a holoprojector and Jollies’ comm frequency was ready to be dialed. After a quick ring, Jollies picked up. “Hello?”

  Alex sighed in relief. “Thank God. It’s me, Alex.”

  “What are you calling me from? What happened to your comm?”

  “It’s a long story, but I’m in quarantine.”

  Jollies popped up on the holoscreen. She was brushing her teeth. “Long story? Good. I’m all ears,” she giggled.

  They talked for a long time, then Alex went to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  Alex awoke in the middle of the night. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, and her heart was pounding fast enough to crack her rib cage. Sweat poured from her brow. Worst of all, she wasn’t sure if she was herself.

  Her fear had been growing since the night after she destroyed the meteor that had come rocketing through the sky a few weeks ago. The first night after the mission, Alex’d had a nightmare, a rarity for her. Even as a child, she’d rarely had nightmares. That had changed recently.

  The nightmares were never understandable. They were not like dreams. She didn’t find herself repeating her experience of the meteor, nor did her mind take past experiences and layer them on top of that one horrifying episode.

  Instead, Alex dreamed of a color that permeated her mind like some kind of gas, staining the inside of her skull, leaking out of her skin, and submerging her eyes until they were a deep, awful green. Alex felt the color crawling up her body like living slime, covering her from head to toe, and then stretching out toward her friends, toward the end of the universe.

  It was this dream, recurring nearly every night, that Alex awoke from. She rubbed her eyes, trying to remind herself that she had a body. That she was not some abstract interplay of light and darkness. That she had weight to her. By the time she was comfortable again, she felt stupid. It was obvious she wasn’t a color.

  As she pulled back the blankets supplied by the magical hole in the wall, she wondered why she had started having these dreams. Obviously, she’d been shaken up by what had happened on the meteor. Anyone would have been. The whole thing had seemed like a bad acid trip, or at least what she’d heard that was like.

  Yet Alex felt it was something more than the disturbing nature of her experience. She felt that if she were just dreaming about that, then it would have been more focused, not t
his vague feeling of dread about becoming green.

  The Nest needs to hire a therapist. You rarely heard about that or saw it in war or science fiction movies, except for Troi on the Enterprise, Alex mused as she leaned back on the pillow mattress she’d built atop the glass bench.

  As she tried to shake the last bit of sleep from her head, she imagined herself in a coffee shop, reading a book that would take some of the edge off her nightmare. She turned to the magical hole in the wall and took the steaming coffee that appeared alongside a copy of The Interpretation of Dreams by Carl Jung.

  Alex had heard the name before, although psychology had never been an interest of hers. But if it was going to help her better understand her dreams, it was worth a try.

  The next few hours dragged by as Alex powered through the first chapters of the book, sipping coffee. She had no idea what time it was but also didn’t want to check. Obsessing about how much longer quarantine was going to last sounded like about as fun as finishing Jung’s book.

  She could see why she didn’t like to read psychology. It was filled with terms and concepts she’d never encountered. The book read like a foreign language. Further, it made her tired, and sleeping was the last thing Alex wanted to do.

  That didn’t matter, though, because she drifted off to sleep in her third hour of reading. She woke up screaming from the same recurring dream. Waking up this time was much more violent since Alex had thrown herself off the bench and was tangled up in her blankets.