Page 254 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Da’vi

Pacing across the cluttered engine room floor, I tried to ignore the half-dozen Strewn mechanics currently wreaking havoc.

Calm down. This wasn’t the end of the world; it was just a little overhaul, and it was even on my recommendation.

We needed this. Stars, I’d been looking forward to digging into these major repairs on the Vagabond. Why couldn’t I enjoy it now?

I knew why: that blasted female voice was messing with my head.

I had spoken to her last night through the outdated com device I’d scavenged from Drameil’s safe.

I should have just called her back as soon as I knew, but the information wasn’t going to be what she wanted to hear.

It was making my stomach ache, and I didn’t understand why.

Why should I care about a single female who’d gotten herself stuck somewhere out in space?

It wasn’t my problem. But it was a problem; a big one.

There was nothing around her location, just some meteor fields that had been mined long ago.

Traveling to her from Strewn to help would take us months, even with Chloe risking several of her longest FTL jumps during the journey.

That was the case for pretty much anything surrounding her location. She was in a complete dead zone.

“No! Not like that,” I interjected, spotting one of the Strewn mechanics about to make a grave mistake. They were supposed to be the best in the galaxy, but this was crazy; that was the third time I’d had to interfere this morning.

Stepping over several bundles of cable and dodging another mechanic who was carrying a large structural panel across the room, I finally reached the foolish mechanic.

“You were about to electrocute yourself. Here, like this.” I pulled the fragile part from his hands, turning it around so that it was plugged into the correct polarities.

The Asrai tilted his face up to me, displaying the dark black and white markings that formed his ‘deathmask.’ His mouth pulled into a wide grin, showing far too many teeth to be polite.

“Why, thank you, Chief Engineer Ertague. You saved my life.” The bright golden eyes held an expression I couldn’t read, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t feeling anywhere near as grateful as he should.

Sneering, I shook my head. “Right, just like the last two idiots I saved this morning. What is this? A test?” Like I didn’t have enough on my mind already, with the female stuck out in a dead zone. She shouldn’t be my problem, but my mind was just not letting it go.

The male shrugged. “Why would we do that? It’s not like we’ve got a job opening or anything…

” My belly clenched at the casual comment.

So that was it, huh? They were testing my skills, trying to find out if I was a fit.

Had they heard about what I’d been up to during my time in the Kertinillian Army?

The thought alone made my blood turn to ice in my veins.

No. I was never doing that again. Not even for all the money in the galaxy.

Babbit made a low sound when he suddenly popped out of one of the hatches the cleaning bots normally used. It was a mix between a hello-chirp and a disgruntled yowl; he didn’t like how much of a mess the ship currently was. Couldn’t say I blamed the Riho.

He adeptly wove his way through the horde of mechanics and ship pieces to reach my pant leg.

Then, he had no qualms about using his claws to scale me like I was a tree.

In seconds, the heavy weight of a full-grown Riho male settled on my shoulders, his furry blue and black head right next to my face.

“Prrrr,” he said, and his chest started rumbling in what Camila called the manliest purr she’d ever heard.

I saw how the golden eyes of the Asrai male shifted from a calculating look to one of open amusement.

So I sneered a little more—like I gave a shit what they thought of my companion.

It wasn’t like he was pink or called Fluffy.

Although Fluffy did seem to enjoy following Babbit around enough for these males to have seen her.

I scratched at the base of one of my horns in annoyance.

Maybe I should give Hina a call to let her know Fluffy wasn’t welcome in the engine room for a while.

That was believable, with the engine lying in pieces on the floor.

There was a bit of laughter coming from some of the others working around me, but as soon as I looked, they turned their heads away.

Returning to the station that I’d been working on, I tried to get my head to focus on the massive amount of work still to do.

As soon as I was in the thick of things, my thoughts strayed.

Soldering delicate wires into contacts to hook up the upgrades should have taken all my focus, but the task was repetitive enough.

I needed to figure out whether that female was who she said she was, lost, confused, and alone.

What if it was a trap? I wasn’t going to risk my brothers and their mates on a fool’s errand.

But what if it was real? What if there really was a female stuck out in the dead zone?

I didn’t think my conscience would allow me to abandon her to her plight.

We still had at least a week’s worth of repairs to go before the Vagabond could fly again, and that was if I did the remainder of the work myself en route.

I didn’t think I could convince my brothers—let alone Ziame, the Captain—that it was a good plan.

We’d been limping around in a barely functioning ship for months; it was about time the Star Class cruiser got the overhaul she deserved.

“So, you are the famous Da’vi Ertague,” a voice suddenly drawled from behind me.

I jerked upright, banging the tips of my horns against the inside of the open panel.

Who the fuck was that? I hadn’t heard anyone approach, and while I had been stuck in my head, I never lost awareness of my surroundings.

Spinning around, I froze in place at the sight of the robed figure towering over me from only a few feet away.

Even when I rose to my full height, this figure still had a good foot on me, and that was saying something.

Kertinal, as a rule, were not small; I was pretty used to being the tallest in the room.

Well, anywhere except aboard the Vagabond, because my gladiator brothers were all giants like myself.

The robed figure was just a black shroud, a hood drawn down over the head so that the face was cast in shadows.

There had to be some kind of technology implemented to create a blackness that was impenetrable even for eyes like mine—or those of some of the many other alien races that could see well in the dark.

I couldn’t see a face and didn’t smell any kind of new scent; it was as if it were just a floating cloak and nothing else.

“And you are the Master of Strewn,” I said, taking a guess at the identity of the visitor.

A suspicious hush had fallen over the entire engine room, broken only by the quiet noise of tools being used.

All the chatter and banter the mechanic crew had been filling the air with had halted.

As my eyes darted over them, I could see each head bent low over their task in the deepest concentration, pretending their boss wasn’t there.

“So I am,” the voice drawled. It was deep, low, holding echoes within it—a kind of reverberation similar to the deep harmonics my own voice created, yet different too.

A metal claw slipped from the folds of the robe, pointing its sharp tip at my chest. “I have heard many things about your career. Too bad nobody realized who you were when you were sold to the gladiator ring. Things would have turned out very differently for you then.”

The claw dropped from my chest to point at the metal prostheses that encapsulated my hands. They protected overly delicate and sensitive, burn-scarred skin, and provided strength where extensive nerve damage had rendered my fingers useless.

I clenched them into fists. I was not ashamed of wearing these and needing them.

At first, I’d been angry when it had happened, it had felt unjust, and it had rendered me useless.

The prosthesis had changed all that, and if not for the damage to my hands, I would still be stuck in a gladiator stable, fighting for entertainment with a slave collar around my throat.

I shrugged, ignoring the indignant grumble Babbit made when that forced him to readjust his perch around my neck. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Is there anything you want? Your crew is doing their job, even if they do seem intent on killing themselves.”

I really didn’t like this visit. That the Strewn Master was here could only mean I had piqued his interest. The last thing I wanted was to draw the attention of someone directly involved in building warships.

That was the whole damn reason I’d resigned my post in the Kertinillian Army and sought out a lowly position as a mechanic on a trading ship.

There was a sound that resembled a chuckle, the hood of the Master of Strewn tipping up as if he were throwing back his head.

It didn’t fall off but stayed perfectly around his face, shading it completely black—definitely a hologram of some kind.

“Kill themselves? I doubt that,” he said, once he was done laughing, his hood tilting to look at each of his workers.

They never moved, never responded, just kept their heads down and kept working.

Of course, he doubted that, because he and I both knew that they hadn’t been trying to kill themselves at all.

They’d been testing me, and it had been on his command, there was no question about that.

I was actually glad that particular charade was over.

I hated that they’d been playing me, and I really hated that they’d been testing my skills when I wasn’t even interested in any kind of recruitment.