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Chapter One

N ow that the gladiators who fought for the House of Badari were free men, there was no longer any entertainment in the form of potent feelgoods and willing ladies provided for them by the Master of the House.

Kyden, the former gladiator known as the Death Dealer, who was now the Master thought grown men could find their own entertainment without his help.

Benet Arencollo was sure his mate-wife Lady Elara had undoubtedly made her opinions known as well.

Actually the change was fine with Benet. Not being a slave far outweighed the benefits of the old system. He certainly had no problem finding parties, feelgoods and agreeable company on his own. As the third highest ranked gladiator in the House, he was much in demand.

The games earlier in the day had gone well.

The House of Badari with Rennyr, Talinn and himself to lead the team had vanquished their opponents with a minimum of bloodshed and a maximum of the showmanship the House was now famous for.

There’d been no matches to the death, thank the gods.

Benet could be lethal when the occasion demanded it but he preferred to leave the other side bloodied and bruised but alive.

Kyden was making inroads on his goal of getting the populace of the Five Systems to realize the gladiators were men and women with lives to live, not puppets to die for the crowd’s entertainment.

There’d been the obligatory after-game debriefing with Kyden and the others, going over their strengths and weaknesses and then he’d gone to his apartment in the massive house to shower and put on his best clubbing clothes before going out to celebrate.

Now he waited at the stairs for his private car to be brought by one of the servants and a huge party awaited at one of the swankiest clubs in the city.

Benet wished he felt more excited about the night ahead. The clubs, the women and the feelgoods were all becoming a blur to him, none of them bringing the pleasure he craved. He was going through the motions of being a celebrity bachelor athlete but it was pretty meaningless.

Kyden and Elara emerged from the house, arm in arm, both dressed to the nines.

“Off to the Senator’s?” Benet asked as the couple descended the steps to stand next to him.

“Big political meet and greet and fund raiser,” Elara said. “It’s work, trust me.”

“But later, we’ll play,” Kyden added, his massive hand on Elara’s back in a protective, possessive gesture. He dipped his head to kiss her. “I’ve been promised.”

“Yes, you have.” She laughed, leaning closer to Benet and lowering her voice. “We’re taking a few days off and going to stay on my family’s lunar estate. No interruptions, no shop talk, just us.”

“Have fun.” His groundcar came gliding up and as the servant stepped out, he sat in the driver’s seat and shut the door. Kyden’s limousine was pulling up behind him so he accelerated from zero to one hundred and took to the air, heading for the heart of the city and the party.

And that was the last thing he remembered when he woke up an indeterminate time later, head aching and reflexes slowed.

Benet opened his eyes reluctantly, wondering why the seven hells the room was so cold and then as he stared around at what was obviously a cryosleep awakening chamber, his adrenaline spiked.

“What the fuck is going on here?” He tried to sit up but he was in restraints and naked on a bare metal table, hence the cold.

He indulged a brief hope he was caught in a nightmare, maybe on a bad trip from an illicit feelgood spiked into his drink.

“Hey,” he shouted, having figured out he wasn’t getting loose from the table without help. “I don’t know what’s going on here but I demand to be released.”

“You’re hardly in a position to make demands,” said a disembodied male voice from a speaker hidden in the room.

“Relax, the med robo is coming. A few injects to finish countering the effects of the cryosleep and you’ll be fine.

I’ll get paid and you’ll be on your way to your final destination. Everything good.”

“Where the hell am I?” he asked as the chamber door opened and an oddly shaped robo floated in on an antigrav cushion.

Benet eyed the robo with distaste and submitted to its cursory examination, probes, sensors and injects with more curses. When he got loose someone was going to pay dearly for this outrage.

“In transit to a new life, buddy,” said the voice with a chuckle. “I wish I could say it was a better life but then I’d be lying. You’ll get your answers soon enough but I have a feeling you won’t like them.”

Benet didn’t like any of this but he especially didn’t like the robo and what it was doing, however when the examination was complete and he’d had two more injects, the clamps on the table retracted and he sat up, dizzy.

He wished he had the strength and co-ordination to jump the robo and rip its ‘head’ off but that wasn’t happening.

“Helluva a hangover,” he said, sliding off the table.

He had to hold onto the edge to keep from falling.

The robo drifted out the door again and he was alone with his dazed but murderous thoughts.

“Incoming,” the voice said and a panel in the wall across from him opened. A pile of garments was pushed out, falling on the floor in a heap, with a pair of boots landing on the top. “You’ve got about two minutes to get dressed or they’ll be taking you out naked. Have a nice trip.”

Benet staggered to the clothes, finding a pair of pants, a tunic with a complicated braided leather belt that he cast aside for now, no underwear and a vest with a gold and red two-headed bird crest stitched into one side panel.

He disdained the vest but put on the other clothes and wound the belt around his waist to keep the tunic in place.

As he was fastening the boots the door opened and a squad of six men marched in.

Ordinarily Benet could have taken them but right now he was not at his best by a long shot.

“You will come with us,” the leader of the group said. “Wear the vest.”

Benet noticed the squad was all wearing jackets with the same bold crest. “Not a member of your club, buddy,” he said, doing his best to stand straight. “Got my own boys and when they find me which they will, you’re going to be sorry about this whole kidnapping scheme.”

Several of the soldiers smirked. The officer wasn’t fazed by Benet’s attitude.

“Take my advice and forget the past,” he said, not unkindly. “There’s no return for you. Now put the vest on and let’s go.”

Benet walked away from the disputed piece of clothing.

The soldiers formed up around him, all with their weapons drawn.

He didn’t recognize the armaments but the muzzles resembled stunners rather than blasters or projectile weapons.

So he wasn’t to be killed, or at least not right now.

Who in the Five Systems could he have pissed off to the extent of staging an elaborate kidnapping?

With the flick of his fingers the man in charge sent one soldier scrambling to gather up the vest and the whole group proceeded out of the room, Benet in the middle.

He trudged down a corridor bearing all the hallmarks of a spaceport. Checking behind him, he saw the door had closed and there was a vibration in the floor under his feet. Spaceport? Landing pad? Where the seven hells had he been taken?

After walking through several more passageways with his escort, he emerged into an open area and as he was prodded to keep walking, there was the sound of a ship lifting off behind him.

He watched a small ship arrowing into the sky, which was a washed-out blue nothing like his home world.

There were faint rings in the sky, stretching across the horizon from edge to edge.

The spectacle gave him a sinking feeling in his gut because there was nothing like it in the Five Systems.

The soldiers loaded him into the enclosed back of a groundtruck, where he sat on a hard bench and did his best not to get thrown around while the vehicle made its way to his next destination.

The road had serious curves and was definitely climbing a mountain.

Benet was getting pretty nauseated by the time the truck came to a halt and the back panel was thrown open.

The fresh air hit his lungs like a miracle cure as he was marched into a building so old and greenery covered it looked as if it had grown from the mountain, through more corridors, past gaping servants, down several flights of stairs, to be locked in an actual dungeon.

There was straw on the floor and chains hung from the wall but thankfully no one tried to restrain him.

He faced the barred door. “Hey, what the seven hells is going on here? When do I get some answers?”

The officer, who’d dropped the vest onto the shelf in the cell before he stepped out, gave an unpleasant smile. “Soon.”

Frustrated Benet wanted to ram his fist through a wall but since the dungeon was built of stone, he refrained.

For the next few minutes he examined every inch of the small space and concluded there was no escape possible.

The floor was a single slab of stone and there was no window.

Lucky I don’t suffer from claustrophobia.

He seated himself on the shelf and ran through a few mental exercises he usually did before entering the arena at home to engage in combat.

Whatever was going to happen to him he needed to be centered and calm and ready to exploit any slightest advantage given to him.

He pushed aside all his questions about why he’d been abducted.

The answers were useless to him right now.

He wanted to stop reacting to events and resist effectively.