New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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"Is that what's …" M'kar nodded at the box clutched in the crook of her arm.

"Egg."

"An egg. A dragon egg."

"Dracs. Figured, we discovered them, discovered their world. We get to name them."

"True."

"They're intelligent. They teleport. Thyal needs one."

If I use my invalid status as an excuse to be greedy and tell you to hurry, Thyal began.

Shut up. I'm thinking.

Laughter tickled through their link.

Raised voices rang off the walls of the docking arm. Dulit looked past her and he groaned.

"You need to get out now." Poki, go home.

The little drac vanished with a sub-audible pop.

"You owe me." So help me, I want one, too.

He did say he had a ship full of babies, so maybe a ship full of eggs?

"Add it to my tab." Dulit held out his hand, palm up. "Be safe, hearth-sister. Give my best to Thyal."

"Be safe yourself. Tell your captain to hurry. I'll wait for you on Le'anka." She grasped his wrist as his fingers grasped hers and they shook twice before releasing.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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"So help me, Dulit, if you don't start talking straight --" M'kar reached for her knife. Not her everyday, utilitarian knife. This one was ceremonial, the blade was dull compared to the sharpness required by ritual and her noble blood. Of course, Dulit and any indiferps she might run into on the station wouldn't know the blade was safety-bonded per station regulations. Even dressed in ready-for-trouble civilian garb, she needed a knife, just to feel fully dressed. She would have to press hard and put some muscle into any effort if she wanted to slice anyone open.

Again, Dulit didn't know that.

Something is coming, Thyal said.

M'kar ducked as a swirl of cream and lavender hide and talons spun around her head, chattering at nearly sonic levels.

"Poki!" Dulit snatched the double handful of fury out of the air and clutched it to his chest. "She thinks you were going to hurt me."

"I was considering it." M'kar clutched her knife.

The little dragon Dulit had shoved halfway inside his jacket glared at her. An image passed between their minds. M'kar drew her knife. The cream-and-lavendar little menace bit her hand.

We're friends, little cousin. Dulit and me. Friends argue. They tease, M'kar offered.

That's right. Dulit grinned crookedly and stroked from the wedge-shaped head, down the long, supple neck. Well, that proves something. Despite how intelligent it seems, it's entirely beastly, otherwise we couldn't talk through it. Come out and make friends, Poki.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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"Tell me," M'kar said. "I won't take anything that might endanger the crew. We have children on board."

"Look at it my way, we have babies on my ship. The hope of an entire race. Enlo help us, my captain says we have to go back. I keep arguing we should head straight to the Academy, not take any chances. He says we have a greater responsibility to go back and find out if any survived. If we managed to drag the monsters with us and lost them. Or worse, the monsters are still there, killing everything that's left."

He tossed the data wafer to her. M'kar clutched the box against her chest while reaching with her free hand. The wafer bounced on her palm before she caught it.

"Babies. Some haven't been born yet. In stasis. Like that should be." He waved his hand at the ti box. "M'kar, I swear on the infrenx. I don't care if I get shot out the repulsion tubes for this, Thyal is more important. Once you look at the data and you untangle it, you'll agree."

Remember, he was always the one who kept the rest of us out of mischief.

M'kar flinched, hearing the smooth baritone voice in her head. She glanced at Dulit, but he didn't seem to hear.

No, he can't hear me. I've been trying. I'm only linked with you. Thyal, their classmate left on Le'anka, chuckled softly.

All right, she shot back, so he isn't reacting to any pressure. Not that you would ever pressure anyone to do anything unethical.

Your faith in me is most gratifying.

At least give me a little warning when you initiate contact? She bit her lip to keep a straight face. Now was not the time to explain to Dulit that she could hear Thyal in her mind. It went beyond everything even the Premier Masters on Le'anka understood about mind-touch.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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Available now in print and Kindle/Kindle Unlimited

Then M'kar caught her breath and she knew. She held out her tattooed hand.

"Exactly," Dulit whispered. He tugged down his collar, to reveal his matching tattoo, the flaming wings spread to embrace the dip in his collar bone.

"You found …"

"Not exactly, but it has to be close. Do you remember that incredible smell?" His throat worked.

M'kar nodded. After their battle two years ago, her nostrils had been scorched so she couldn't smell anything for nearly a lun. She had been grateful. The overbearing sweetness in the air from the monstrosity they had fought would never fade from her memory.

"Well, I ran into it again. What we found … makes it run away." He let out a snort. "Fly away, anyway."

"Garion." M'kar took a step closer.

He reached into his belt pouch to extract a data wafer. The other hand he brought from behind his back. It held a ti box, the wrapper faded but still clearly proclaiming it the genuine ti grown on Le'anka for purifying the blood, stimulating the mind, and calming the nervous system. With a delicate flavor and aroma that didn't need enhancing with sweeteners.

M'kar doubted the box held ti, either pressed in blocks or loose leaf. Whatever it held would fill both her cupped hands.

"As soon as you're back on your ship, put the box in stasis. All the others are in stasis. Best thing we could think of. The last thing we need is to double the ship's population."

"Of what?" A gentle brush of her mind didn’t reveal anything alive in the box. However, she had been wrong before. Being one of the strongest animal-oriented psionic Talents ever trained at the Academy didn't preclude mistakes or limits. She simply hadn't found the wall hard enough and thick enough to make her brain bounce around like an old-fashioned rubber ball.

That battle that had scarred their hearts, minds, and bodies had come close, though. She had slammed against something out of legend, terror-become-flesh. Her brain hadn't bounced that time.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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"Wait a moment. I'm lost." Wexel shook his head, as if he was trying to knock it back into synch with the conversation. "I saw the mechanical hooples. Those are bad enough." He shuddered, indicating he was among Cynes' latest victims. "Are you saying the live versions are on my station too?"

"He shouldn’t be making the robot hooples." Genys wanted to curl up and cry. "We erased all his files and took all the prototypes and locked up the psychotic programmer working with him." The last encounter her ship had with Cynes and his hooples had been bad enough. Robotic and organic hooples, on one station?

Please, Enlo, hasn't my crew been through enough already? It's bad enough we're the Nanny Ship now. Why Cynes on top of it?

"Still making the robots," Decker said on a growl. "Even more addicting than the farting furballs."

"How exactly do they work?" Wexel glared at Cynes. "The results, I already know. How do they work, and how do we stop them?"

"They generate a frequency and a light show, in the ranges that Human eyes and ears can’t consciously register. It creates an addiction in the brain. You feel great, but you want to spend all your time playing with it."

"The newest version of subliminal programming." One of the civilians held out a ball of neon yellow fur, with four sets of oversized mosquito wings and eight pairs of legs. Genys itched just looking at it. "We were just realizing what was happening to us when we saw your crew chasing him. Captain, do you know how to set us free?"

"Is it turned off?" She didn't care that she was sweating. Her face felt cold enough, she had probably gone white.

"Still looking for the data access code, but we've got one of Dr. Tahl's maskers running," Decker said.

"Bless you." If she didn't think he would live up to his name with a good right hook, Genys might have kissed him.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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Down two more corridors and one more level to reach her destination. Genys held her breath as she stepped into the reception area of Administrator Wexel's office. M'kar was right, they were due for a clash between the Defender’s crew and the local indiferps. She saw no one, not even Wexel's irritatingly efficient and protocol-ruled assistant with a weaselish face. The type of person she expected to find out any day now was actually Gatesh. She was about to approach the closed door of the administrator's office when the door to a conference room on the far side of the reception area slid open.

"Ah, good, thank you for coming so quickly, Captain." Wexel leaned out far enough for his glistening ebony head to be visible. He beckoned and retreated back out of sight.

Genys stepped through the door. Her first glance was enough to estimate thirty people crammed into the conference room. Maybe a dozen were her crew, maybe ten were retrofit and upgrade engineers. The rest looked like civilians, maybe employees of the various restaurants, shops, and services provided by the station. Decker, the Defender's head of security, gestured with a tip of his head as Genys’s second look around the room put names to faces.

"Please --" She stopped short when he stepped aside, revealing a rotund man dressed in a furry tunic and leggings. "Jorono Cynes?"

"No, no, not at all," the little man jabbered in a fruity, mock-aristocratic voice. "Mistaken identity. I swear."

"It's him all right," Wexel said. "Identification verified. We owe your crew for recognizing and apprehending him. They were quite adamant that he had to be stopped and his cargo impounded."

"What is it this time, Cynes? Hooples or cherashires?" Genys wondered if someone had put Gatesh Green in her spicewater, and she was hallucinating all this.

Please, Enlo, let this be a hallucination?

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

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Every Gleaner in Friggley's took two steps from Genys’ Nisandrian half-blood Chief of Talents. Nothing more frightening than a Nisandrian with her hands out of sight. There was no way to predict what weapons she might draw from seemingly thin air. Legends said they had mastered N-space and could drag enough weapons along behind them, just slightly out of dimensional phase, to destroy a planet. Other legends claimed they could hide weapons inside body cavities. Genys always squirmed a little when she thought of that. M'kar never confirmed or denied those stories. Granted, no one had ever dared ask outright, but shouldn't her commanding officer have the right to know?

Bottom line: Nisandrians were always ready to fight. No need for provocation. Nisandrians liked fights even more than Gleaners liked pilfering anything and everything in sight.

One of these days, Genys vowed to learn how M'kar managed to enter a room without being seen. It was like she slit the fabric of space-time to just appear, when and where she was needed. According to the records of her training on Le'anka, M'kar didn't have teleportation among her psionic gifts. So how did she do it?

"What's it to ya?" the Gleaner captain said, his voice softening and rising another half-octave, while taking another step back.

Genys could almost call him a smart man.

"Just wondering if you're the Gleaner doing the pilfering, out on Dock Seven, or the one being pilfered, that's all. Nice big hole blasted right next to a cargo hatch. Don't your people know how to knock? Or maybe they forgot the security code to get in?" M'kar raised her voice to be heard over the curses and yells. The Gleaner captain and eight filthy, garishly ornamented crewmen scrambled to exit through a door only wide enough for two.

New Release Samples: FRIENDLY FIRE

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Available now in print and Kindle/Kindle Unlimited

"Got a problem?"

Later, Genys would swear the man's voice was just as greasy-gritty-rancid as the body odor that wafted over her left shoulder, as the speaker stepped up behind her. She met his gaze in the mirrors behind the rotating service pod in the center of Friggley's.

Gleaner. A captain, according to the garish assortment of brightly colored enameled bits of metal sewn or glued all over his long tunic. Speculation said that smell added just as much to a Gleaner's rank as the number of pilfering missions he survived, and how much profitable loot he could haul away.

"Getting there." She couldn't decide if the Gatesh Green was a good idea, or just an invitation for the Fates to open the doors of the nearest garbage chute of bad luck right on her head.

As if they hadn't already?

"Aww, the cute little captain-girlie's having a bad day, boys," the Gleaner growled, ending on a squeak. How he managed that without damaging his vocal cords, she couldn't imagine. She really wished he would. "What's your ship, sweetie?"

Genys turned on her bar stool. Friggley's was one of the few bars left in this half of the galaxy with stools that spun. If she was drunk, that might be fun. Nobody got drunk on Tullian spicewater. Maybe she could turn really fast and hold her arm out, and the Gleaners would be polite enough to run into her fist?

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

TODAY is the print release of the first book in a new SF adventure series:

FRIENDLY FIRE
AFV Defender 
Book 1

Back Cover Blurb:

Captain Genys Arroyan has a problem with her shiny new command -- the dregs of the universe are laughing.

While the Defender is in spacedock, getting upgrades, Genys has to deal with mind-hunters and farting fur balls, merchants-of-insanity and diplomatic intrigue. Her Chief of Talents is hiding from forced matrimony and her new crewmembers aren't too happy to be transferred to the Nanny Ship.

Then she finds out that the insectoid Hivers have a taste for the brains of the children of her crew. Falling through a Chute to another galaxy might turn out to be a good thing, even if dangerous.

A rescue mission turns into a battle to save a race of miniature dragons from genocide. They might just be sentient -- but more important, dracs could turn out to be the defensive weapon the Alliance needs against the Hiver threat. Genys and her crew could end up breaking dozens of regulations in the quest to save dracs and maybe the Human race.  Just how much trouble could teleporting, fire-breathing creatures with the personalities of four-year-olds cause on board a military vessel?

The misfit luck of the AFV Defender might finally be running out.

Published by Ye Olde Dragon Books

www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com

Coming title: FRIENDLY FIRE

The launch of a new SF series!

Space opera

Print release date June 1

NOW available in Kindle/Kindle Unlimited.

www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com