Page 140 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

As soon as the last guy dropped, Thorin let out a low whistle.

“That’s so sexy, babe,” he said with a laugh, the sound of the cane tapping against the metal floor and the dragging, shuffling footsteps indicating he was coming my way.

I laughed, heat scalding the edges of my ears.

My combat moves had never been called sexy before, but I wasn’t at all surprised that Thorin would think so.

I used their own restraint kits to tie the two guys up, disarming them as I went and belting their weapons onto my own body.

When I was done, I felt like our chances of a successful escape had gone up exponentially, now that I had the familiar weight of a laser rifle in my hands.

It certainly helped that I knew the layout of this ship, I’d been running around on ships just like this for the past nine years, and on this one specifically for the past six months.

Thorin was gamely following behind me, doing his best to keep up as we left the brig area and started traversing the ship in the direction of the nearest docking bay.

The corridors were surprisingly empty, worryingly so, in fact.

It was always busier than this. It was starting to freak me out, even if I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. After all, it was to our advantage.

We’d only gone about a third of the way when Thorin started slowing down, so I propped myself beneath one of his arms to take a little more of his weight.

This made it impossible for me to keep holding my liberated rifle at the ready, but I figured speed was better.

I was not leaving him behind. “Almost there,” I told him, worried about the cast of grayness to his skin.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. Is it me, or is it weird how empty this place is?” It was weird, really weird. This particular corridor ran past several training rooms and recreational areas; it was always busy with off-duty marines.

I was about to voice my thoughts on that when an alarm started blaring and red emergency lights began flashing along the bottom edges of the corridor. “Ah,” said Thorin, “I guess they discovered our escape.”

I shook my head, my stomach dropping into my shoes.

“No, that means we’re under attack. No wonder it’s so empty here, it’s probably an All Hands on Deck situation.

” What the hell was going on? Who was attacking the UAR battleship Praetor?

Out in the Alpha Quadrant, all UAR ships tended to be the biggest, baddest thing around.

I’d only heard this alarm go off during drills.

Somehow, the two of us found the strength to pick up the speed a little and get our asses moving toward the shuttle bay.

Our luck somehow held nearly all the way there.

I knew it wouldn’t last, and I had calculated the most likely places we’d run into someone, but it still shocked me when the door to an armory suddenly slid open to our left and an entire squad of soldiers stood gaping at us.

I did the only thing I could think of: I slammed my hand back on the door panel, forcing it to slide shut.

Then Thorin was pressing the lock breaker against it, hissing and stumbling into the wall as he lost his balance.

His focus never wavered from the small device as it ran through a few dozen symbols and then flashed blue.

Panting through clenched teeth, he said, “That should hold them for a while. Let’s hurry. ”

There was just no way he could hurry. He was at the end of his rope, and his broken leg was bleeding from the wound in his thigh again.

My improvised splinting was hardly sufficient, so each time any kind of weight was distributed to that leg, it had to be absolute agony.

I mentally recalculated as fast as I could.

There were medkits everywhere on the ship. Where was the nearest one?

A few steps later, I spotted a door to a locker room for the gym next door.

I slammed the door open and helped Thorin inside to the nearest bench.

Then, I eyed the trail of blood leading right to the door.

Finding a towel, I wiped some of it off.

Then, I returned to him and got to work with the medkit, trying hard to stem the steady flow of blood from his leg and find a better way to splint the break so we could move faster.

He was keeping his lips pressed tightly shut, trying to assist as best he could.

I stuck the rifle in his hands and told him to keep an eye on the door.

He was getting in the way more than he was helping.

Probably not my brightest idea to give the guy woozy from blood loss an armed weapon, but. ..oh well.

Then a massive shock rolled through the ship, with everything rattling around us. I had to spread my legs to keep my balance, feeling like I was riding a wave. Thorin managed to stay upright by grabbing the edges of the bench, which was thankfully bolted down.

Wide-eyed, we looked at each other. “What the hell was that?”