Page 363 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Vagabond

Chloe

Kitan dragged me onto the bridge by my hand, his booted feet thudding onto the metal deck with each hurried step he took.

“Come on, we’ve got to get going!” he urged me, a wild grin on his face that I loved to see.

As soon as the ship had been hit with the news of Akri’s location, he’d been so excited he’d shifted into his hybrid-form, triple tails wagging.

The fox-like snout made his grin even more pronounced, his gold eyes sparkling with joy.

I felt some of the same excitement. Akri had gone missing shortly after we had rescued Jakar and Meena, on the day they’d loudly and happily celebrated their mating.

We’d been searching for him ever since, and this was the first time we had an actual location to go to.

The nav port at the back of my head almost seemed to tingle; soon, I’d be plugging in so I could navigate us to our friend.

“Ov’Korad, how long will that take us?” Ziame asked as soon as we entered the bridge.

The huge Lacerten male was standing in front of the captain’s chair with his hands on his hips, gazing at the viewscreen at the front of the bridge.

Someone had put the footage of Akri and the unknown human girl up on it.

Probably Sunder, who was hovering over the communications console with his mate, Aggy, tucked beneath one wing.

“Let me run some quick calculations,” I said firmly. Once, I had been pretty scared of just how big the green-scaled male was, but you simply couldn’t stay scared for long when you saw him with his mate, Abigail.

I dropped into the navigator seat, half my attention on Kitan, who was loping around the bridge to slap each of his brothers on the shoulder in eager greeting.

“We found him. We’ll get him back, Ziame,” he said to the Captain.

Ziame was closest to Akri; he’d been the one most worried about the missing AI.

Reaching for the plug to my nav port, I watched Kitan as my vision shifted.

Mundane colors became a kaleidoscope of rainbows, dancing along each surface.

Like this, I could see Kitan in all shapes, all at once, my brain easily understanding and interpreting the millions of possibilities.

He was beautiful, he was impossible, and I adored every inch of him.

“Two weeks,” I said, my first rough estimate of our coming journey already forming. The announcement caused a hush to fall over the bridge. Two weeks was a long time, even if it was a relatively short journey when you considered how vast space was.

The deep, dual-toned voice of Da’vi came through over an open com channel.

“Just give the order, Ziame. I can have our engine upgrade live in a couple of hours.” Da’vi’s engine upgrade was one hell of a ride to navigate, requiring me to calculate with even more speed and precision during each FTL leap through space.

While the others eagerly agreed because it would bring us to our friend more quickly, my heart leaped for another reason.

It was incredibly amazing to travel at those speeds.

“Hey, beautiful,” Kitan said next to my ear, his large body thumping into the pilot seat at my side.

“Ready for another adventure?” he asked.

He always seemed to mute some of that exuberance of his when he talked to me just before a leap.

He knew he was my anchor when I navigated, and he’d never failed me.

“Yes, with you. Always!” I replied. My fingers found one of his hands, holding on tight as I sank into the task of finding us the fastest way to Akri.

Ziame’s deep voice behind me rumbled his assent to our mechanic, but it was Kitan, when he counted down for the FTL leap a moment later, that had my full attention.

“This path will take us past Serant, if we want to be fast,” I said for Kitan’s ears only.

We’d visited the planet once before, and it was notorious for making ships drop from the sky.

Only the bravest and the best pilots took the quicker route past the planet.

Kitan was definitely the best; he just grinned as if I’d said something silly.

“Engaging FTL in three, two, one!” Then we took our first of many leaps.