Page 1 of Champion (The Outlander Book Club… in Space! #6)
For a moment… for the breath of a second, it felt like home.
Then, the hardness of the stone slab wormed its way through the softness of the furs beneath me, and the stale smells of sweat, dust, and mustiness invaded my nostrils, making me cough in retort.
I stretched, the soreness in my limbs making me wince. It brought back a vivid memory of sleeping in the bunks at Recruit Training Command at the Naval Station Great Lakes. Like the Navy’s only boot camp, this place was devoid of comfort and devoted to training.
It could be worse. At least the weird machine they put me through gave me back the youthful, strong body of my twenties.If my sixty-four-year-old bones had to endure this crap, I’d be dead already.
Thankfully, the machine hadn’t taken away my memories, so all my years of training and experience were still intact and proved useful since I found myself in some type of gladiator situation on an alien planet.
As the daughter of a Rear Admiral, wife of a Navy Seal Master Chief, and mother of a Navy Seal, not to mention my own career as a Lieutenant Commander with Naval Intelligence, I knew how to throw a punch.
Of course, throwing punches at dudes with red skin, horns, and tails was a new experience.
I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the stone slab that served as my bed, feet resting inches above the dirt floor.
Other than the slab, the only furniture in the small, square room was a rickety table and chairs made up of something that resembled driftwood.
An adjacent room held the alien version of a toilet—a metal pan that drained into a hole in the floor—and a sink stained with years of nastiness.
A trickle of water running down a far wall stood in pitifully for a shower.
Despite the rough accommodation, I couldn’t help but smile, thinking of how excited my son Samuel would be to know he’d been right about the existence of aliens.
As usual, my heart twisted when I thought of him.
His dark hair, bright green eyes, and goofy smile lost to me forever, thanks to a Taliban offensive a week before the US withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.
He wanted to be just like his father… and he was.
My husband, Mark, died during the battle of Kandahar during the early days of the War on Terror.
If it hadn’t been for the Outlander gals, I wouldn’t have survived.
After Mark’s death, I needed something new. I resigned my commission and took a position at the University of Georgia overseeing the ROTC program and moved myself and my son to Athens.
It was my son’s fault I became friends with the Outlander girls. We were in church one Sunday when he noticed my friend Agnes hiding a copy of Dragonfly in Amber behind a hymnal and announced it to the entire congregation.
Mommy! She’s reading the same book as you!
Twenty-plus years and eight books and one TV show later, those women were my rock. I just wish I hadn’t failed them.
Part of being a military leader was knowing how to pick your battles.
Logically, I knew there wasn’t anything I could have done to save my friends despite the ache in my heart.
After I punched one of those purple cat-looking aliens, they kept me so drugged I didn’t know my own name half the time.
When I finally came to my senses, Nansar had purchased me.
I had no idea what happened to Pearl, Agnes, Clara, or Daisy, but I’d found Emmy again. Or at least she’d found me.
Nansar originally took me to his palatial estate on a desert planet.
He didn’t treat me bad for the most part, he just treated me like an object…
a pet. He’d bought me as a gift for his father’s upcoming birthday, and the way he laughed and told me I was the ‘gift he’d never see coming’ made my blood run cold.
We’d lingered at his estate while he conducted business with a group of grizzly bear-looking aliens until the day Emmy showed up.
She’d arrived in the company of some rather impressive alien warriors.
Three of them took out Nansar’s contingent of guards and most of the grizzly men.
Unfortunately, Nansar was able to make his escape with me in tow.
I’d never forget Emmy’s angry scream as he carried me aboard his ship.
Nor will I forget the last sight of my friend being comforted by a large, muscular alien.
Emmy didn’t appear afraid or hesitant, and the alien male seemed to care and protect her.
Just like Adtovar protected me.
The pit , the nickname given to the arena where we trained and lived, hosted ten other species of alien fighters and over three dozen guards.
While my fellow gladiators regarded me mostly with curiosity, the guards weren’t so gentlemanly.
On my first night here, three of them dragged me toward the rocky escarpment surrounding the arena, intent on raping me.
I’d managed to give as good as I got, bloodying one’s lip and issuing a well-placed kick to another’s crotch before the third one zapped me with something that resembled a cattle prod, but with a much worst shock.
Then Adtovar showed up.
He seemed to be the same species as the guards, only much bigger and stronger despite being older.
He dispatched the three men easily, issuing a warning that I was now under his protection.
He’d escorted me to the small stone house assigned as my quarters, and when I went to thank him for the help, the bastard called me a weak female.
I’d punched him in the nose, he laughed, and we’d been besties ever since.
I glanced at the small hole in the wall that sufficed for a window. The faint shards of buttery yellow light the opening allowed indicated it was close to mid-morning. It wasn't like Adtovar to let me sleep this long.
I climbed out of bed, shuffling to the table.
Grabbing the small metal jug, I finished the water that remained, then scarfed down bread left from last night’s supper—stale and holding the flavor of rancid cheese.
What I wouldn’t give for some of Pearl’s cooking.
I prayed with every breath that my friends had landed in a situation like Emmy and didn't suffer my fate. .. or worse.
Stripping off the thin shift leftover from my time on the purple cat alien’s ship, I donned the outfit given to all of us upon arrival.
A leather tunic and kilt-like skirt. I was large for a woman, nearly six feet and broad-shouldered, but the tunic still reached to below my knees.
The kilt had originally fallen to my ankles, but a few minutes with a blade made it a more manageable length.
Heading into the bathroom, I took care of morning business, then finger combed my sleep-mussed hair, tying back the shoulder-length strands with a leather remnant from my kilt alteration.
Time to train.
Adtovar didn’t just protect me. He was teaching me to protect myself, although I was no slouch in the self-defense department.
My husband was one of the best Master Chiefs the Navy ever produced.
He trained hundreds of Seal recruits. As his wife, not to mention the daughter of a Rear Admiral, I’d received permission to take part in Seal training as well, including hell week and SERE training.
Seven weeks of hell on Earth. While it would take until 2021 for the Navy to acknowledge that a female had successfully completed the 37-week training course, I’d done it first. And, little-known fact, the movie GI Jane was loosely based on my participation in Seal training, although I never shaved my head.
However, my time in the arena with Adtovar introduced me to a whole new way of fighting: swords! Despite the soreness and scratches, I enjoyed myself. I loved learning something new. Not to mention training helped me feel more in control in an out-of-control situation.
During his prime, Adtovar was a champion gladiator.
He proved an excellent teacher, stern and demanding, but he never asked for more than I was able to give.
Adtovar believed Nansar plotted against his father, Duke Ako, one of the leaders of the governing Alliance.
While he didn’t yet know the details, one thing Adtovar suspected…
whatever the plot, Nansar planned to use me as a key player.
And I planned to be ready.
The rumble of a deep male voice caught my attention.
I grinned to myself, expecting to hear Adtovar yelling and banging on my door at any minute.
After my first day of training, an intoxicated guard tried to break down my door, supposedly to teach me what it was like to fight a real male .
After kicking the guard’s ass, Adtovar had taken to sleeping on a bed of furs in the alley outside my doorway.
When I was unable to convince him otherwise, I’d invited him to make his pallet inside the room, but he refused, saying it wouldn’t be proper.
I went to grab the stick dangling by a rope that served as a doorknob when another voice reached my ears. Although I couldn’t make out his words, the voice was deep and male and made me think of sipping warm bourbon on a chilly night while sitting in front of a fireplace.
I pressed my ear to the door, holding my breath, and listened.
“You wish to see the human female Vaktaire? Then you must get through me.”
Shit! That was Adtovar’s don’t fuck with me voice , which meant a fight was brewing.
I yanked open the door, striding into the small alley and putting myself directly between two massive alien males.
Adtovar appeared more relaxed than I expected to find him. I cast a glance at the other male, and it took my breath away… literally.
He stood as tall as Adtovar, but was broader through the chest. I could discern the definition of the muscles roping his arms and shoulders despite the robe he wore, which reminded me of a Catholic priest’s cassock, save for being a deep green color.
His hair was dark, almost black, with a few strands of gray at the temple, that he wore in a single braid that lay halfway down his back.
Despite being an alien face, he was classically handsome, with high cheekbones, a Romanesque nose, and full lips.
His eyes! Dear God, his eyes were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Irises the color of the morning sun swimming in a sclera as deep blue as the sea off the coast of Corfu, where I’d spent my honeymoon.
His eyes widened at the sight of me. I noticed his lips purse slightly as he released a deep breath, and the faint scent of cinnamon and allspice filled the air.
“Willa.”
The sound of my name in his deep, rich voice made goosebumps prickle over my skin. I started to ask him how he knew my name, but then the fog that encased my brain since seeing him cleared, and I remembered.
“I know you.”
He’d been at Nansar’s estate on the desert planet.
I remembered the way he roared, running toward me, fighting off the guards and grizzly men with the medieval-looking weapon he carried.
More than his actions, I remembered how seeing him heading toward me as Nansar wrestled me aboard his ship, imparted the most curious sense of comfort.
It was like I possessed some inner wisdom that told me if he could get to me, I’d be safe.
Even now, that strange inkling of comfort settled in my gut.
“Yes.”The full lips twitched at the corners in a suppressed smile, and his eyes brightened as though he was happy to see me. “I am Charick, Sage of the Bardaga.”
Well, it was nice to have a name to go with his handsome face, but that told me squat. He’d been with my friend Emmy. He had to know what had happened to her, maybe to the rest of my friends.
I stepped closer to Charick, hearing my trainer’s grunt of displeasure as I drove the point of my finger into the center of Charick’s chest. It felt like poking granite, but I persisted, demanding in as stern a voice as I could muster.
“Alright, Charick, Sage of the Bardaga. Where the fuck is my friend Emmy?”