Page 184 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Luka

I woke up with a pounding headache, face down on a soft mattress.

When I managed to open my sticky eyes, I noticed that the mattress was completely bare, stripped of sheets and pillows.

I wasn’t tied up, just thrown onto the bare bed, but as I sat up and surveyed my surroundings, I knew instantly that I wasn’t getting out of this one.

“Damn it!” I cursed as I jumped up and started pacing the lavishly appointed suite.

I didn’t recognize this space exactly, but I knew whose taste this was, and I knew that view out the window intimately.

Knew intimately the purple-tinted sky, the silver gleam of the protective dome that covered this place, protecting it from falling ashes.

I recognized the jagged black peaks of the many volcanoes that dotted the landscape.

I was on the Jihari resort, back in my mother’s clutches.

Whoever those two goons had been, they’d been working for my mother.

I spun around to kick the nearest chair, ready to trash this place and vent some anger.

A soft sound brought my attention solidly to my surroundings and out of my miserable mood.

The pinche monkey was sitting on the knob of the wooden headboard, its tiny hands folded around the silvery surface.

Big brown eyes were directed attentively at my face.

“What are you doing here, little one?” I asked it. My fingers went to my belt to reach for my handheld scanner and encountered only empty air. Everything from my belt was gone—anything useful. Bereft of technology to gauge his health, I tapped my finely honed empathic senses instead.

The moment I added a sliver of energy to my aura, the monkey made another soft, but excited, sound and climbed down the bedpost to rush at me. He didn’t look threatening, and my senses told me he was happy, so I moved to catch him as he leaped at me.

“Okay, you seem to be doing better,” I noted as he cuddled against my chest and patted my cheek with one tiny palm. That’s when I noticed the partially eaten xexces fruit in the other and had to laugh. “You know how to take care of yourself, don’t you?”

He stuck the rind between his teeth and climbed onto my shoulder, where he continued eating.

As far as my senses could tell me, he seemed to be feeling much better, with no hunger, thirst, or pain.

He seemed energetic too, and he very much liked me.

Well then, I guess I could use the company.

I felt a little twinge of doubt—this monkey would have been much better off with Fierce—but I was grateful for his presence.

Obviously, I was without my com—my wrist was bare of the device.

It wouldn’t work regardless; Jihara’s strange purple sun, in combination with the planet’s atmosphere, blocked all conventional signals.

Except for the boosted com in my mother’s office, which suites could be routed through to have access for a fee, no signal was getting off this planet.

I was fairly certain that all communication devices inside this suite had been disabled, but I went and checked them anyway.

I checked the door too, expecting it to be locked, but it slid open smoothly.

I stuck my head out and saw—more than sensed—the Rummicaron guard.

We made eye contact, and he grinned widely, revealing rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Cold-blooded, Rummicaron tended to run cold on the emotional scale, too.

Flat, emotionless, cold. It was not a surprise to see one as a guard here; they were a common type of employee for Aderian spas and recreational areas.

Their emotional tepidness meant that, for my race, they were rather pleasant to be around, with less noise and fewer emotions to filter out.

This guy didn’t say anything, didn’t tell me to get back inside, so I glanced at the plushly decorated corridor.

There was a housekeeping hovercart a little farther down, one suite with an open door next to it.

Hmm, maybe I’d be getting fresh sheets this morning.

That would be nice. I had no doubt I was going to be here for a while, and I didn’t fancy sleeping on a bare mattress if I didn’t have to.

As my eyes lingered on the housekeeping cart and the open door, the Rummicaron stepped into my line of vision.

His laughing, toothy grin had transformed into something much more menacing, though he registered exactly the same as far as his emotions went.

I shrugged with one shoulder and made to move back into my gilded cage when I caught a flash of an aura from the open suite—the housekeeper.

It was this bristling, angry, almost abrasive type of energy, though it still held a distinctly female signature.

A slender arm covered in colorful patterns reached out the door, a black-capped sleeve cupping the softly rounded shoulder.

That’s all I got to see before the Rummicaron blocked my sight again, this time physically pushing me back into my own room with one meaty palm.

“You can ogle the pretty maid when she cleans your room,” he said in a deep voice, his inflection going up at the end of his sentence as if he were amused.

His emotions still read exactly the same: cool, disinterested.

As far as Rummicaron went, this one was more than textbook cold.

With a sigh, I allowed my door to slide shut, my hand reaching up to pet the monkey clinging contentedly to my shoulder. The guy had curled his long tail around my neck to help him hold on, and I tried to imagine it was kind of like a hug.

What could I do? How could I get out of here? If I stuck around, a confrontation with my mother was inevitable. What kinds of threats, manipulations, and browbeating was she going to pull out of her hat this time? What did she want from me?

Were my friends on the Vagabond all right?

Had any of them gotten hurt? How were they going to treat the animals they intended to rescue when I wasn’t there?

Five years ago, I was convinced I wanted nothing more than to work at the busiest hospital on Aderia, in the thick of things.

I suppose most physicians like myself, fresh out of school, thought they could handle that.

Three years stuck on a slavership or stationed at an arena to doctor the injured gladiators that cycled through…

that had taught me differently. My empathic gift was too strong for me to face that kind of stress.

I was tired, wrung out from it all. Being aboard the Vagabond with the freed males, treating them only for minor scuffles while I could do research in private in the extensive labs aboard the ship, I’d discovered that’s where I wanted to be.

I was anxious to find out if they were all right and if they were looking for me.

Everything about how Ziame and the males ran the ship told me that they would—that they wouldn’t give up on me.

There was just this tiny kernel of doubt sometimes that I wasn’t really part of them.

I didn’t share in their sense of brotherhood.

Sensing their emotions, I knew none of them resented my presence, that they did like me.

Yet I wasn’t a gladiator, not really, even though the males had made me attend all of their training sessions.

I was in far better shape than I’d ever been.

Surveying the lavish rooms I was stuck in, I concluded there was nothing here that could be used as a weapon.

Not unless I fancied hitting the guard over the head with one of those brocaded chairs, or maybe I could try wielding that heavy stone side table.

That one looked slightly too wide to fit through the door, though.

Pacing over to the huge picture window, I stared out over the beautifully manicured landscape that surrounded the resort. It was all carefully protected and regulated beneath the thick, shimmering dome that covered the place, shielding it from the fine ash rain that regularly fell on Jihari.

It was a planet with several hundred active volcanoes, mineral-rich and supposedly home to strange lifeforms living inside the hot cores.

In the distance, a second, much smaller dome was just visible, glimmering against the blue-gray rock of a huge mountain range.

The scientific outpost that studied these strange, heat-loving beings.

Three years ago, before I was taken from my home and forced to work for the crimelord Drameil, I’d avidly followed the scientific articles detailing the research coming out of this place.

If I were to try to escape, my best bet would be to head for that outpost, to escape on one of the science vessels that came and went with supplies.

There was a landing area just outside the resort dome where guests came and went with shuttle lines from Aderia to here or with private vessels.

I knew the security on that port was extremely tight; my mother would ensure that place was locked down so I couldn’t slip from her grasp.

My skin prickled at the thought of seeing her, so I rushed to get rid of the feeling by taking a shower.

I needed to wash up and get out of this spacesuit anyway; there was no point in wearing it.

I had no helmet for the suit, and when I pulled it off, my fingers located a puncture hole on the back.

I had a matching little bruise on my skin in the same location, where they’d jabbed me with some kind of sedative.