Page 318 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

My spine was naturally straight and my posture confident as I ventured further into the mine.

There was no map to use in here, and I worried with each branching tunnel that I was making the wrong decision.

No advice was forthcoming from my surprisingly silent escort; I wasn’t sure whether that made me feel more worried or relieved.

All I did know was that we didn’t have a lot of time, so I followed my ears toward the noise of work and hoped I’d find who I was looking for.

After a sharp twist in the tunnel, the area became wider, and light from several lanterns made it much easier to see the row of men working with plain old pickaxes.

A much more sci-fi set of minecarts hovered nearby, and a single guard stood propped up against a nearby wall.

At the sight of us walking around the corner, he straightened, a startled look on his purple face.

I had no clue what kind of alien that guard was, other than that he was big and purple.

I did immediately spot the human man standing about halfway down the tunnel—big as a mountain man—rivaling the two big Xurtal males flanking him in size.

Our eyes met across the space, his going wide and startled at the sight of me, just like the guard looked.

The guard was scrambling to pull his laser rifle from around his shoulder, having somehow gotten it stuck behind a strap of the leather harness he wore to carry his gear.

I had my pistol up much more quickly than that, and my well-trained voice was pitched to carry with a commanding note to it.

I imagined I was a warrior queen, a part I was playing on a stage.

“Drop your weapon. Do it now, and I won’t shoot you in the gut and let you die a slow, agonizing death.” I had no clue where those words had come from, but I wasn’t sorry for saying such a violent thing—not even when I heard Aramon try to muffle a little chuckle.

The guard stared at me, flicked his eyes over my shoulders to look at Aramon and Solear flanking me, and dropped his hand from his rifle. Then, at my order, he tossed the weapon to the floor and raised both hands in the air in surrender.

“Unlock their pain collars, do it now,” I ordered when Solear had retrieved the rifle from the floor.

It was mean to think it, but I didn’t think we should trust any of the men forced to work here with a weapon until we knew them better.

Although I did think that freeing all of them was the right thing to do.

Come to think of it, hadn’t Eoin said something along the same lines?

I was pretty sure he’d said to free all of them, not just the human.

“Hi,” I said, waving at said human while watching like a hawk as the guard began to approach him to release the hated pain collar. “I’m Tori, formerly from New York, and I’m here to rescue you. What’s your name?”

The man’s mouth opened for a moment, his blue eyes wide beneath shaggy brown hair, a wild beard covering the lower half of his face.

From the unkempt sight alone, I had to believe that he’d been awake for a little while already, possibly the whole three weeks since we’d heard of his existence.

Even then, the beard was quite impressive.

“You’re here just for me?” the man said, his voice a little husky, but his American accent unmistakable.

When I nodded, he continued, “I’m Oliver.

It’s much appreciated.” As soon as the collar dropped from his throat, he shouldered around the purple alien guard and came my way.

I saw how the guard hesitated behind his back, so I ordered him to continue.

None of the other aliens forced to work here seemed as eager to meet us as Oliver was.

Once their collars dropped away, they hovered near the back wall, watching us distrustfully.

I didn’t think they believed I wanted to save all of them, but the moment the last one was freed, it was Aramon who took the next step.

He knocked the guard out so quickly and suddenly that several people gasped in surprise, myself included.

With some kind of gadget that he took from his belt, he tied up the alien’s hands behind his back.

It looked, to me, suspiciously similar to a simple pair of cable-tie handcuffs.

“Let’s go, all of you lot. We’ll drop you off on Rakex, where, as you must all know, slavery is not allowed. ”

I reached out to fold my hand around Oliver’s dirty, slightly bloody, and deeply calloused hand. “Come on, we haven’t got much time,” I explained, tugging him along with me to the mine exit. Solear stuck to my side, but Aramon brought up the rear, urging our nearly a dozen rescues to greater speed.

Oliver’s rough fingers held tightly to mine, his big body lumbering gracelessly along, stumbling over rocks.

Sheer exhaustion was written in every line of his body, and of the many alien species following behind us, I was certain he was no exception.

This group was worn to the bone, malnourished, and scared.

They weren’t sure yet if they could trust us, though I felt certain that for my fellow human, it helped to see a recognizable face.

Staggering out of the mine shaft and into the daylight made most of the men squint and throw up an arm protectively to shield their faces.

They acted almost as if they hadn’t seen sunlight in months, not hours, and I worried just how long the days had been for them, forced to work in such abysmal conditions.

It was shockingly inhumane, and I was suddenly, fervently grateful for how my space abduction had turned out.

I’d gotten a beautiful baby out of the deal, even if I did miss my big family back home.

It quickly became apparent that the climb back up to the compound above was a struggle for most of the men.

They were stumbling and falling; some of them seemed close to passing out from the exertion.

Had they been ferried up in wagons by the guards each night?

This path was hard to walk on, with deep ruts, uneven and steep.

I worried we wouldn’t get all of them up the slope before reinforcements started arriving, and that would be really bad.