Page 113 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Camila

I woke up feeling like death warmed over.

The skin all over my body ached, like full-body pins-and-needles.

I was fairly certain that was just my body’s reaction to the extreme cold from yesterday.

I was also certain that the aches in my lower back were from pulling a muscle when I’d dodged out of the way of laser fire aimed at me.

A low price to pay for still being in one piece—miserable though the experience was.

Forcing myself to get up, I appraised my surroundings again, noting the bare space and the oversized chair.

Seriously small ship for what was clearly a big guy.

How had he managed in here? At least the space was big enough for me to do some morning exercises, and those did help ease my sore muscles.

I was in the middle of some push-ups when the ship’s AI said, “Good morning, Camila. I see you are awake. Did you sleep well?” Sinking down onto the metal floor, I let it cool my sweat-soaked skin.

“I did, thank you, Akri.” Then I hurried into the shower, gratefully making use of the cleanser to wash my underclothes as well. Akri had a suggestion for drying those in a slot in the wall, which was handy.

So by the time I sat down to eat another brick ration, I was at least feeling more like myself, and blessedly clean.

I decided now was a good time to figure out where to go, and where the hell I was.

I took a seat in the pilot’s chair and asked Akri to show me, not that I was a nav or had any idea at all how to interpret these charts.

“Do you have any information on the Alpha Quadrant? That’s where humans are from. The ship I came with, we were on a long-distance mission for trade with someone in the Zeta Quadrant.”

The ship was quiet for a moment before star charts started flickering to life on one of the screens. “Yes, I have star charts for the Alpha Quadrant, as you call it. I have located your home planet, Camila. Is this where you’d like to go?”

An image of Earth jumped to the main screen at the front, spinning in front of me.

Its familiar moon floated nearby, built up with pretty high-rise spires beneath protective domes.

Earth was a patchwork of shimmering blue oceans, verdant green stretches of forest, and gray and rust-brown city continents.

I felt a pang of homesickness—I couldn’t help but miss my family.

“No, I can’t go home, Akri. Whatever happened that meant I ended up on the wrong side of a lasergun… it means I can’t risk my family by heading home.” The ship didn’t respond for some time, sorting through charts at a dazzling speed.

Then suddenly, everything froze and disappeared.

“Why were humans flying a mission into Zeta Quadrant, Camila?” Its voice was cool and precise, and I realized I had been taking the warm tones it spoke in for granted.

Even if the voice was a strange mixture between male and female, it sounded familiar—in part because it spoke to me in Spanish, which evoked all kinds of familiar feelings, conjuring up an illusion of home.

I shrugged. “Some trading mission to foster relations between the UAR and some bigwig here in Zeta.” I didn’t know many details about the mission; things were generally on a need-to-know basis, so this was pretty much all I had to go on.

I still, for the life of me, could not figure out why they had even decided to suddenly turn on me.

As far as I knew, I had done nothing to warrant so extreme a reaction.

“What bigwig?” the ship asked. I had the feeling this information was extremely important. Suddenly, it felt as though my very life might depend on my answer. Fear was making my heart race. If he didn’t like what I had to say, was he going to dump me out of the airlock?

“You have to understand, Akri,” I started, wetting my suddenly dry mouth with my tongue and running my hand over my hip to reassure myself of the comforting weight of my knife.

“I’m just a low-level grunt. Sure, I was a sergeant, but that’s only because I ran my platoon of marines.

We were just there for protection… and for some reason I don’t understand, my superiors turned on me and tried to kill me. ”

“If you say so, Camila,” the ship responded, though its tone was dubious, not at all believing what I was saying. “But you do know who this bigwig is, do you not?”

Shit, I was not getting out of answering that one, was I?

I wasn’t certain what, or if, this name was even going to mean anything to the ship.

I just knew that lying or refusing to answer could be as detrimental as answering might be.

In the end, I bit the bullet. “Drameil. All I know is that he’s some big guy out here who has his fingers in many different pies.

Supposedly, the UAR wanted to establish trade so that this Drameil could supply us—them—with weapons to fight off the Clade. ”

The sound that issued from the ship’s sound system was something very close to a growl, and it was extremely disconcerting to hear.

Fearing for my life, even though I had no clue who this Drameil was, I rushed to pick up the pieces of my EV suit and started putting them on.

It was out of air, so I wouldn’t survive out in space for another round, but if it tried anything else, at least I’d be wearing armor.

Akri’s threatening sound suddenly cut off, though, silence filling the small vessel and flooding me with absolute dread.

When it started speaking in a wholly foreign and strange language, I became even more concerned.

The clicks and growls were sounds my vocal cords couldn’t replicate, and if you’d told me I was listening to a lion or a tiger, I would have believed you.

I’d finished suiting up—except for my helmet—by the time Akri stopped speaking in that odd foreign language.

“That armor is not going to help you, Camila. If you are in league with Drameil, my captain will deal with you swiftly.” My gloved fingers clenched around the knife.

“What captain, Akri? There’s no one here but you and me! ”

Just then, there was a muffled thud, a hiss, and then the airlock door started to open.

Expecting to get sucked out into the vacuum of space by a deranged ship IA, it took a moment to figure out what was happening.

A scream lodged in my throat at the sight of the green giant stepping through that small door.

Horns spanning nearly a meter wide crowned a huge, bullish head with glowing green eyes.

The beast was easily eight feet tall, covered in armor-like scales of dark green, and a row of knife-like spines rose like a mohawk over his head, down his back, and the long, flexible tail that swished behind him.

The glittering, sharp fangs in his maw were on full display, and my lizard brain went into survival mode. Fight, flight, freeze? It chose to fight, stupidly suicidal as that was. With a scream of terror more than anger, I launched myself at the monster, knife aimed at his softer-looking belly.

I never saw the huge male who had come in behind him.

He was far faster than I was, so one moment I was facing down a green-scaled monster, and the next, some blond guy—wearing far too much leather and too many piercings—clotheslined me with a solid arm.

I went down—hard—and he followed, pinning me to the ground with effortless power. I hadn’t stood a chance.

Screaming in anger at the face looming above me, I tried to bring up my knife and stab the bastard, but the fist aimed at my face was far faster, and I went out like a light.

*

Thorin

I followed Ziame to the hangar bay, along with Da’vi and Jakar.

Though Kitan had been eager to come, he and Chloe stayed behind on the bridge to ensure all was well and that we weren’t about to be discovered.

Abby placed a hand on the tip of Ziame’s tail, which he’d stretched out behind him so they were still in contact, even though three gladiators stood between her and her mate.

Though Ziame was speaking in his own language—which none of our translators could understand—we could all guess that he’d located his ship and that it was coming in for a landing in our hangar bay.

Indeed, the moment we stepped into the large space, where one small shuttle was already parked, I could see some kind of disturbance on the second landing pad.

As my eyes focused on it, the whole space seemed to shiver until, out of thin air, a sleek, dark gray– and green–streaked shuttle appeared.

It wasn’t even as big as the ship-to-surface shuttle parked on pad one, but it looked far more advanced than any vessel I’d seen before.

It was certainly more advanced than the ships that were part of the Elrohirian fleet, which were the ones I was most familiar with.

The airlock on the side beckoned. Ziame was certainly heading straight for it.

But just as we reached it, he turned to ask Abby to wait and told Da’vi and Jakar to guard her.

“Akri has informed me that an ally of Drameil is aboard. We need to be careful.” I didn’t hear much beyond that, though, my blood boiling at the thought of some asshole inside Ziame’s old ship, someone who was buddy-buddy with the very evil bastard who had enslaved me.

When Ziame entered the ship, I was hot on his heels.

While I registered the scream that followed as female, all I saw was the glittering knife as it came at Ziame.

I acted accordingly, letting my anger and rage surge to the forefront as I pinned this bastard to the ground and knocked their lights out.

No one was going to hurt my brothers or me—ever again. Not on my watch.