Page 353 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Akri

I stood watching everyone from the doorway to the mess hall.

Tori and Eoin were in the galley, their little baby in a high chair near the counter, overseeing her domain.

The others had all gathered around the enormous table in the room, laughing and sharing food.

Jakar and Meena were at the center of it all, as it was their mating celebration.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it—what my place was among these people.

Ziame was at the head of the table—once my owner, my boss, back when I was still a tiny spaceship.

He’d long since become my friend, my co-conspirator, the only one who knew I’d achieved true sentience when that was a banned practice on his homeworld, Lacerten.

He had never betrayed me, so I felt nothing but loyalty to him.

It was good to see him so happy with his mate.

Even if that was a bond I still struggled to understand.

Maybe, if I found a mate of my own, I would finally comprehend.

I would like to try that, but how did one go about finding a mate?

Did I want it to be a human, like all the females on this ship were?

My hand reached up to touch the green and gold medallion on my chest. It had been on me when I woke up like this.

I knew it was more than just a piece of jewelry, but without full control over this body and its abilities, and without my previous skill set as a computer, I didn’t know how to analyze it or find out what it truly was.

I’d have to go straight to the source: Drameil.

Like my friends here, this body had once belonged to a gladiator.

It still wore the scars to show for it. In me, I could feel this strange attraction to violence simmer beneath the surface.

It concerned me—almost as much as the fact that this body had once been a prime fighter over forty years ago, and then…

stasis and nothing. Why had this gladiator been resigned to a fate worse than death—in a faulty stasis pod that had caused too much irreparable brain damage for the previous consciousness to survive?

I had repaired some of it when I’d been forced to download myself into this brain; Luka had done the rest. I knew I was alone in this body, and yet… I didn’t feel like myself. I felt like a stranger with feelings far stronger than those I was used to.

I had to find out what had happened. I had to confront Drameil, who, according to my research, had owned this gladiator too.

Brake had been his gladiator name, and he’d been famous, famous for his rages, too.

I couldn’t test myself with a potential mate yet, not until I’d learned all there was to know about my host and his past. I couldn’t trust myself, not even with my friends.

So I turned away from the festivities, ignored the curious glance that Ziame sent my way, and headed for the hangar bay.

THE END