Page 370 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Sunder

I jogged to the bridge just as Kitan and Chloe dropped us out of FTL on the edge of Ovt’s solar system.

The twin suns permeated this part of space with visible purple light; they heated the two planets in the Goldilocks zone to high temperatures.

One planet was a desert rich with minerals and ores.

The other was a tropical jungle with high humidity that only a few species preferred, species like the Sythral, such as Drameil.

Aggy was standing at the comms console, her feet braced to absorb the changing speed.

Her long brown hair hung in thick, luscious waves down her sweater-clad back, and the simple leggings she wore lovingly clung to her curvy behind.

My tail twitched at the sight, my eyes lingering on her ass just a little longer.

“Sunder!” Ziame greeted me, and I jerked my eyes off my mate to look at the captain sitting in his chair on the bridge.

He’d called me to let me know we were arriving.

Now, it was up to me to figure out what the situation was down on the planet.

I tapped my closed fist to my chest in greeting and nodded at the pilot-and-navigator couple, sharing a heated look, as usual, lost in each other.

“Let me get in touch with my contacts,” I announced, hurrying past everyone so I could curl both wing and arm around my smiling mate. “Hi, beautiful,” I said to her, tipping her chin up with a claw so I could kiss her. “Let’s go rescue our wayward AI.”

With her eyes on me, I was extra aware of doing a good job, the urge to preen for her rising, as though I were a powerful youngling.

Then my own youngling came racing onto the bridge, followed by his adopted sibling.

Respectively gray and blue, the two were a striking contrast to each other, and greatly differed in size as well.

With Jet and Amar watching me with complete admiration on their faces, I couldn’t help but add a little flourish to each touch of the console, sharing a wink with my son as I did so.

“I have something,” I announced after only a few minutes.

A store that Akri had visited had lit up in my searches, and a contact I had on the planet had given me the lowdown on what clientele it catered to.

“This has to be the store that made the amulet Brake was wearing in stasis. Akri visited the shop; he must have hoped he could decode the data on it with their help.”

Aggy shook her head. “More likely, he hacked into their system and took all the information they had on it. He wouldn’t have asked.

They wouldn’t have given him what he wanted, if they had it anyway.

” She pointed a graceful hand at my display.

“Look at the names of their clients your contact supplied; those are all shady people, including Drameil.” She was right.

“So now we know why he came to this planet,” Ziame said.

“Do we know if the authorities managed to arrest him?” That was a worry we’d all struggled with over the past few days, but Da’vi had gone above and beyond to give us extra speed for this journey.

We’d halved our time, in part by risking a dangerous smuggler’s route past Serant, home to the barbaric Naga.

“My search so far indicates that he and an escaped human slave are still on their most-wanted list,” I announced. The words were met with a cheer from everyone present. Jet bounced on his feet, flapped his wings, and hugged Amar to let his younger sibling know that Uncle Akri was being a badass.

Thorin was the only one who hadn’t responded to the news. He was hunched over the tactical console, a deep frown on his elfin face. Just as I looked at him, he jerked upright, the leather of his jacket creaking. “Oh shit, I spot Drameil’s warbird in orbit over Ov’Korad. He beat us here…”