Page 179 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

The crane in this room was my best bet. I was on my feet and running to it.

The long arm wasn’t angled over the hole, and the machine was rusted, but a long steel cable with a hook still dangled from the boom.

I had to leap up to reach it, but my body weight pulled it free, the winch rattling and groaning.

I doubted this thing was safe to support my weight, but I didn’t see any other options, I had to get down there.

Just as I reached the edge—the hook at the end clipped to my spacesuit buckles—I was startled when Da’vi stumbled into the room.

There was a huge crack in his helmet and two pointed holes in his faceplate.

He’d hit his head hard, so hard that his horns had broken through the protective plas front.

“What are you doing?” he groaned at me, struggling to free the latch on his helmet so he could see better.

With my heart pounding anxiously, every second lost seemed too much.

I needed to hurry and get to Fierce now.

I explained, “Fierce fell down there. He’s unresponsive, so I’m going to get him.

” It was a good thing climbing and heights had never bothered me, that had helped me down on the planet with Fierce, and it was going to help me now.

Da’vi managed to get his helmet free and glared at the rusted crane, full of mistrust. “Give me that hook. I’ll go.” I shook my head, sitting down on the edge of the borehole with my feet already over the edge.

I checked once to make sure the hook was properly attached. “I’m lighter. I’m going. You need to get to that crane and control my descent.” He seemed a little blurry, but the clear task sharpened his focus.

He shoved fallen crates out of his way—thankfully empty, or at least without anything alive in them—as he made his way over to the crane.

He leapt into the operator’s cabin, clunking noises issuing forth almost immediately, and then a bright overhead light came on at the end of the crane’s boom.

“Ready. Let me see if this thing can spin so you are clear over the hole.”

With groans and creaks, the crane turned on its platform, the boom swinging out over the hole.

I swallowed the excess saliva pooling in my mouth and tightened my grip around the steel cable in preparation for jumping down.

I really hoped Da’vi could control my descent, or this was going to be painful.

I vaguely thought I might be able to use the tiny boosters in the suit—meant for steering in zero-g—to slow my fall.

But I was so not an expert on space suits that I was unsure where the controls even were.

Snarl nudged my shoulder, the medkit I’d used on the animal I’d tried to help earlier dangling from his maw. Grateful, I snagged it from him and slung it back around my body by its straps. I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but I feared that I would, I feared even more that I was going to be too late.

“Ready. I think I’ve got control of this.

On three,” came Da’vi’s gruff voice. He spoke in subharmonic tones, the dual sound lending an even deeper bass to his words.

I wasn’t exactly comforted by what he’d said, but there was no time to dally.

If Fierce was down there bleeding out, I had to hurry to try to stop it.

I did not intend to lose him after I’d just found my place with him.

I looked at Snarl’s anxious face. “You can’t reach him either, can you?” I asked the hound. He didn’t offer any kind of response, as if he didn’t want to dash my hopes. So I counted to three out loud and leaped into that hole, doing for Fierce what he’d done for me once.

*

Fierce

With a groan, I came awake. My head was pounding, and my body ached like it was one big bruise.

At first, I couldn’t figure out where I was or what had happened to make me hurt like this.

There was a bright light shining directly into my face, but it was a lot of effort to lift my arm and swat it aside.

My gloved palm made contact with an emergency light, the metal casing clattering across the floor as the light spun away.

I was in a hole, a deep one. Above my head, I saw the circle of light from the room with the cages.

Adrenaline shot through my body as I remembered that Hina was up there.

I clawed myself into a sitting position, fighting to get to my feet.

Everything spun around me, waving and dancing, my head pounding.

It felt like that time the huge Hoxiam punched me in the head, one of my only losses in the arena.

A concussion was not good, but at least I was fairly certain nothing was broken.

“Hina!” I yelled, but the sound was weak, my ribs aching from the effort.

Okay, so maybe some things were broken after all.

Was she all right? Had the gravity shift hurt her?

The last I’d seen, she’d slammed into a pile of crates and then taken a nasty tumble onto the metal floor.

I hadn’t seen Snarl, had he gotten hurt?

I tried not to let those thoughts chase me into a panic, but it was hard, because this hole I was in was entirely sleek and smooth.

The huge drill they’d used to make this shaft had smoothed out those edges with extreme precision.

I could never climb this, not even when I was uninjured.

What now? My friends could be hurt up there; Hina could be hurt.

And Luka was missing. There was some unknown threat, what if it got to her too?

I picked up the light and examined it. It wasn’t mine, mine was still clipped to my belt. So someone else had thrown it down this hole after me; that had to have been deliberate. Was Hina working to get me out of here? Had she thrown her light after me?

My eyes snagged on the com dutifully strapped to my wrist. I was better at using it now, and Hina and I had deciphered and memorized some of the symbols together.

Should I try to call her? I knew we were supposed to be on what Hina called “radio silence,” so that the Aderian authorities wouldn’t notice us.

Luka had told us they wouldn’t want us to interfere, but they were so bureaucratic—whatever that meant—that any action they took would take forever and a day.

Deciding to risk it, because I really needed to know that Hina was alive, and that help was coming, I tapped my com, and then the symbol sequence that was Hina’s name.

I vaguely remembered that Akri had said that if we did need to use our coms, short range was a low enough risk to take.

Didn’t stone dampen the signal? Maybe I couldn’t even reach her.

“Fierce?” Her voice came over my com in an anxious, breathless tone.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?” she demanded, her voice crystal clear, as if she were standing right next to me.

I tilted my head to look up at the light spilling down this borehole, wondering if I was imagining the shadow in the center or not.

“I’m okay, I’m fine,” I assured her. “And you? Are you hurt? You took a nasty fall when gravity changed.” She’d just tucked that injured Riho into a crate; I hoped that meant the poor guy was at least secured enough not to get further injured.

I’d been so proud, seeing Hina confidently work on him, giving him the medical attention he needed.

“Fine, Snarl too,” she responded. “I’m on my way down.

Hang tight, okay? I’ll have you out of there in no time.

” There really was a slight shadow blocking out the light coming from above.

My heart rate spiked anxiously when I realized Hina was coming down this hole, she was following me so she could rescue me.

The reversal of our situations wasn’t lost on me, and I felt both extremely worried that she’d hurt herself or fall, as I had, and joyous knowing she was taking such a risk for me.

“Fierce,” she said over the com, “I love you. And we are never going to come near holes ever again, you hear me?” I laughed, elated at her declaration and wholeheartedly agreed with her.

She loved me. My mate. She was stuck with me now.

I hadn’t needed the words, though; the fact that she was climbing down this hole to rescue me had said it all.

“I love you too, my mate,” I promised, her shadowy shape growing larger the lower she got.

I could almost see her face, see the shapely curve of her ass, and her slender legs encased in her spacesuit.

She had no helmet on, and as she came into speaking range, she called out my name in relief.

“Hina!” I answered, ending the com call on my device with a flick of my finger.

I struggled to gain my footing, leaning heavily against the smooth walls surrounding me.

“Hina,” I said again, when she dropped with her feet to the ground and I could enclose her in my arms.

There was a ragged sob as she fell against my chest, clutching me tightly around the middle.

My ribs ached from the sudden pressure, but I was too relieved to have her in my arms to let up.

With my hands, I frantically petted her all over, searching for injuries.

I even checked beneath her hair. Like me, her helmet had disappeared, though in my case, I was fairly certain I’d chucked it when rising to consciousness, because it had cracked all over from the fall.

I’d spotted the broken remains in one corner, leading me to think I’d landed headfirst.

“How are you even alive?” she demanded as she felt along the back of my skull and touched an egg-sized lump.

I wasn’t sure, but I did recall an odd feeling during the fall.

I didn’t understand it much, but it had probably been the weird gravity issues that had saved my life.

I was so lucky—so incredibly lucky—to have survived this.

“How are we getting out? Can that cable hold us both?” I asked, tugging gently on the hook clipped to the front of her belt. She nodded, struggling to open it so she could clip it to my belt hooks too. It was going to press us incredibly close, but I wasn’t about to complain.

“Da’vi is going to winch us back up. Ready?

” she asked me, flicking at the com on her own wrist. Her dark eyes focused on mine, so I leaned in and pressed my mouth to her lips, kissing her like this might be the very last time I ever got to do that.

When I pulled back, she was panting, her eyes glazed, and then I pulled her thighs up to clamp them around my hips. “Ready.”

“Da’vi, get us out of here,” she said into her com.

There was no reply, but a few seconds later, I felt a tug on the cable and our feet lifted off the ground.

My entire body ached as I gripped the cable, held Hina for balance, and kept my feet out to prevent us from slamming into the drill hole walls as we slowly inched upward.

But I was alive. I had my Hina. We were going to make it.