Page 264 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Arianna

Jogging down the hallway, I pulled on the bottom of my alien wool sweater, fluffing my hair out of the back.

I’d rolled out of bed only minutes ago to the sound of an alarm blaring over the ship’s intercom.

It wasn’t the sound of the proximity alarm, the kind for meteors or debris about to hit this wreck.

I’d gotten used to that one and the rattling, shaking the ship did when it shot down whatever object was about to hit it.

Skidding onto the bridge in my bare feet, I frantically scanned the many blinking lights that lit up the consoles.

Despite Da’vi’s efforts, we had not managed to turn any of the screens to English, which, apparently, his ship could do.

So, I still couldn’t read a thing, but I had become more adept at guessing some of what it said, thanks to plenty of practice over the past few weeks.

On the weapons console, I saw lights blinking on the grid display.

I knew that the one at the bottom—the biggest of the dozens upon dozens of blips—was the portion of the ship I was on.

All the way at the top of the screen, a red blip had appeared, and it was sliding down across the screen, approaching. Was that a ship?

My heart leaped into my throat. Was it the Vagabond? Was that Da’vi? When we’d hung up last night, he hadn’t said anything about arriving tomorrow. He did occasionally give me updates on their progress, but as I quickly counted down the days in my head, I worried that this wasn’t him.

Darting to the com station, my fingers flew over the symbols confidently; I’d done this many times by now.

“Da’vi, pick up, please. Are you there?” I asked when the beeping tone ended a few seconds after I initiated the call.

I had a bad feeling about this. Da’vi would have let me know if they were almost here, this was someone else.

“Arianna, you’re early,” he answered, his deep voice vibrating down my spine, instantly calming me.

I took a deep breath, my eyes snagging on the viewscreen at the front of the bridge.

Da’vi had explained that it wasn’t an actual window, just screens that displayed what was at the front of the ship.

On it, I could see the pieces of wreckage floating around me, but also, in the distance, a dark shape with red blinking lights.

I’d never seen that before, it had to be the approaching blip.

“I’m seeing something approach. That’s not you yet, is it?” I asked. “Can you access the ship’s sensor readings?” When he responded with a loud round of cursing that wasn’t translated—sounding alien and strange to my ears—I knew. This was bad news. This definitely wasn’t Da’vi approaching.

“Got it, fuck!” he growled. “It’ll be there in a couple minutes.

Can you hide? You need to hide, Arianna.

Now!” I had never heard him sound that worried, that urgent.

It sent a spike of adrenaline through my system, my hands shaking at my sides.

Hiding places? Where would I go? I’d explored this place from top to bottom over the past three weeks.

My food was down to the last two bars, but I hadn’t told Da’vi about that yet.

“Who is it?” I asked. “And how long until you’re supposed to get here?

” Wetting my dry lips, I looked around the bridge.

There was an office and a meeting room leading off it, but both were in bad shape.

The interior was trashed, so there were next to no hiding places inside.

The cargo bay I could access was a barren place, except for the crates and the stasis pods.

I could crawl into the old pod and pretend I was still asleep…

but the thought of doing that made me physically ill.

“I suspect that’s a very bad man, Drameil.

You can’t let him find you,” Da’vi said.

“Stay away from the cargo bay; he’s probably there for the pods.

” Everything about his voice conveyed worry and fear, and the fact that Da’vi was scared of this ship approaching spurred me into action.

I rushed from the bridge, running as fast as I could to the small crew quarters I’d been using.

In record time, I tidied the space so it didn’t look like someone had lived there, hiding all the discarded food and drink packaging.

“You’ll have to make sure all the doors that should be closed are closed,” I yelled as I worked.

I was pretty sure Da’vi hadn’t hung up yet, he’d be listening in as long as he could.

I hadn’t missed the part where he didn’t answer me about how far out he still was.

That meant too far, he wasn’t going to make it here before this Drameil.

Silly hope, anyway, and what good would it do?

I didn’t want Da’vi and his friends ending up in a space battle just to rescue me.

“I will,” he said quietly, his voice issuing from the ship’s intercom, following me along the hallways.

I had a good hiding spot in mind, but it was a little difficult to get to.

I had to pass half a dozen doors that hid dead bodies, for one.

They didn’t stink because they had turned into nothing more than bones and dust, but that just made it all the more frightening.

How long had I been asleep in that stasis pod?

I also had to jump over a few exposed wires that sparked and hissed like angry snakes.

The first time I’d tried that, to explore on the other side, Da’vi had spent a good ten minutes berating me for doing something so dangerous.

That he didn’t say anything about it when I leaped across this time just drove home how urgent this was.

With my bare fingers, I yanked free the loose floor panel I’d discovered.

Underneath had been a couple of dusty bottles of some kind of liquor and a wrapped package that stank—musky and kind of moldy.

I’d left both those things and only taken the three ration bars that had also been there.

Da’vi had called it a smuggling hatch, so it was safe to assume that the musky package was what was left of some type of drugs.

Barely big enough for me, I rolled inside, swallowing a cough as I pulled the heavy floor panel back on top of myself.

This was worse than tucking myself back into a stasis pod.

The space was even smaller, and it stunk.

Good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic. I kicked the bottles as far down into the space as I could so that I could lie down, but it was still a very tight fit, with my knees scrunched up tightly.

My eyes were trying desperately to adjust to the near-complete darkness, with only the faint outline of the panel above me providing a sliver of light.

“Doors are all closed. Not a peep, Arianna. Stay hidden. I’m coming for you,” Da’vi assured me, his voice muffled by the panel above me.

The silence that followed felt empty, he’d broken the com connection to avoid detection. Now I was completely alone.

I barely dared to breathe, pulling in shallow little breaths as quietly as I could, blood rushing in my ears.

I was going a little faint, but I didn’t dare change a thing, Da’vi’s warnings had driven home just how bad it would be to be found by this Drameil.

I just needed to stay quiet; nobody had looked in this hatch since the ship had ended up here.

Judging by the dust, this was a good hiding spot.

While it felt like a really long time, it was only a minute or two before I felt the ship rattle and vibrate.

Was that another ship docking with this one?

I was pretty sure I had discovered a working airlock, Da’vi had agreed when I asked him, likely the only one that could access the portion of the ship I was in.

It wasn’t too far from my hiding spot. Would they walk right over this loose floor panel?

The answer was yes. I heard the footsteps, at least four pairs.

Low voices talked in an alien language I couldn’t understand.

They were making quite the ruckus, but I still held my breath as they passed right over me.

The footsteps were punctuated by the sharp thwap of something hard striking the metal panels.

I couldn’t tell what it was, but each time it struck the deck, I flinched.

The ship wasn’t silent now; I could still hear them once they’d left the hallway I was in.

Muffled sounds of voices, the grunts of physical labor, and thuds and thunks echoed as heavy objects were moved about.

Was it strange to them that gravity was on?

Suddenly, my heart was racing with worry about that.

Would they think it was strange? Start looking for someone?

Stupid, I should have told Da’vi to turn that off too!

They crossed above my hiding place eighteen times; I counted each time they passed, though only the last time were the footsteps accompanied by the strange, sharp striking sound.

They had hauled something from the cargo bay to their own ship, it had taken multiple trips.

That could only mean one thing: the stasis pods.

During each trip, the alien voices talked with each other, exchanging banter.

I could recognize the type of talk, even if I couldn’t understand a word they spoke.

I could even tell when it had turned vulgar; there was just something about the way guys sounded when they did that, a universal trait, it seemed.

Then a new voice spoke, and I just knew that was the one responsible for the tapping sound.

It was sibilant, with hissing undertones.

If a snake could talk, this is what I imagined it would sound like, and it triggered my lizard brain’s primal fear response hard.

Struck with a deep, atavistic drive to survive, I had to clamp down on my reflexes to resist the urge to flee.

Flight was not the correct response in this situation, but it was a hard reflex to subdue.