Page 371 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Akri

I woke to the internal timer I’d set for myself, my mind coming to full awareness immediately.

I was sitting with my back flush to a wall, Jenny on her side with her head in my lap.

We’d ended up like that as the hours we needed to wait dragged on, and I’d decided we should take the chance to rest up.

The suggestion had made my body jerk into full wakefulness, remembering vividly the sensations Jenny and I had shared on the supply ship.

At least she had rested, and eventually, so had I, but it worried me that I couldn’t make myself sleep like I normally could.

I was still uncertain about what was happening—especially since my aggression seemed to have heightened so much since I met the human.

And yet, I wouldn’t want to part ways for anything, not even for all the answers I wanted about the species I had become.

“Wake up,” I said, gently touching her shoulder to shake her awake.

I was selfish for trying to keep her with me on a mission as dangerous as the one I was undertaking.

I should have just sent her to a sanctuary planet, and, if I had continued craving her presence, I could have sought her out after this mission was done.

Jenny opened her hazel eyes slowly, blinking hazily at me as she rolled over to look up.

“Hi there, handsome. Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

I furrowed my brow at her, surprised by her words.

Was she ill? We had come here together; how could she forget that?

I opened my mouth to speak, but she reached up and placed a finger over my lips.

“Ah, hush. It’s just a stupid joke. I know I got here with you. ”

My shoulders lowered as the tension left me.

Good, she hadn’t somehow lost her mind while she slept.

It was something I occasionally worried about; considering that, existing as a being like this, there were no backups being made.

Something could just cause permanent damage and erase important memories, and there would be no fixing it.

“Sometimes I really think you meant it when you said you were a ship before,” she added as she sat up and straightened her clothing.

She had doffed the coat but was still wearing a warm sweater, so she was covered up far more than I had come to like.

Still, it was sensible, given the temperatures inside this base.

“I was a ship,” I said, but I could understand how hard that was to believe. I hadn’t mentioned the part where I was an AI—created, not born—but it was probably time. I knew I could trust her. When I tried to put that into words, she cocked her head to the side and listened intently.

“So, AIs are outlawed, but somehow you came to be? Your captain hid your presence and then even installed you in a bigger ship, a freaking Star Class Cruiser, of all things?” she asked to confirm.

I nodded, and my damn tentacles reached for her, clutching her shoulders and exerting pressure to draw her closer to me.

She reached up a hand to pat one of them, shifting around on her knees so she could straddle my legs.

“Okay, and tell me if I got this right: the ship overloaded from an experimental engine and laser fire, so you had to download yourself into this brain-damaged body to survive?” I nodded again.

Yes, she had summed it all up adequately. “How long have you had this body?”

“Four months, sixteen cycles, and seven hours,” I responded, refraining from narrowing the statement down to the exact second; she probably didn’t want to know that.

She clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed, leaning her head forward to press it against my chest. Her scent swirled into my nose, not the musky, sweet one from her cunt, but the one from her skin.

I loved them both, and my body was starting to slip from my control a little more, wanting to return to touching her all over.

I wanted to experience the actual sex part with her.

“Okay, you really were a computer,” she finally agreed, and I realized that it eased something inside me.

She finally believed who I was; that mattered far more than I had expected it to.

She reached up to cup my chin, pressing a kiss to my cheek.

“Now let’s go access that other computer so we can get out of here. ”

I regretted that she got up from my lap, and my tentacles vehemently disagreed, clutching her shoulders, trying to pull her back in.

It was getting harder and harder to let her go whenever this happened.

I hadn’t let on to the massive struggle each time, but she was noticing now.

“Akri, let go. We’ve got to get moving,” she urged.

I had to use my hands to break the grip, my tentacles writhing around my limbs in protest. “I know. It’s not on purpose,” I assured her, turning away so that I wouldn’t have to see any disapproval on her face.

I grabbed her backpack and handed it to her, patting my own messenger bag to reassure myself I had all the tools I needed to get the job done.

“I know, I know, it’s a malfunction,” she said with a laugh, “And I think it’s cute. We’ve just got other things to do right now.” I found myself smiling as I led the way out of the garage break room. She was silly, and she was sweet, and I enjoyed all of the things she said to me.

*

Jenny

I followed Akri back out into the desert with trepidation.

It was full daylight, and the sun was beating down hard on both of us.

On top of that, we had to move fast to avoid cameras.

In seconds, I was sweating in my nice, cozy sweater.

He didn’t make us linger long, and I was grateful that I was in such good shape, both from before, on Earth, and from working so hard in Drova’s bar all year.

To be fair, I hadn’t done as much cardio running around the bar as I would have hiking the woods back home.

We ducked around the corner of one building into a courtyard, where a crystal-clear fountain was clattering merrily in a pure-white stone basin.

This place had to have been built right on top of an oasis, because thick vegetation covered nearly every inch of the walls facing the water.

Trees lined the walkways in the distance.

A whole flock of exotic-looking flying creatures sat in one of them, eyeing us warily with black, beady eyes, their colorful plumage on full display.

Akri didn’t let me linger to admire the place; I didn’t think he even noticed how beautiful it was.

Mission-oriented, he ran straight up to a door nearly entirely overshadowed by a thick profusion of vines with white flowers.

I was too aware of the possibility of cameras to risk lingering, but when I reached him, I tucked myself against his back so I could gaze at the slice of paradise a little longer.

The door hissed when it opened, cool air escaping from inside.

The hallway beyond was stark white, with one of those tiled ceilings.

It honestly looked much like a very plain office hallway, down to the bland artwork hanging on the walls.

Doors lined the place, each closed and with a lock that blinked green.

One look up at the ceiling also showed me the little eyes of cameras every twenty feet, excessive, if you asked me, considering how subpar the security had been so far.

We hadn’t had any issues breaching this place; I hadn’t seen a single guard yet.

Akri was already across the hallway, reaching for a door with his lock-picking machine thing.

Then that door sprang open, and he gestured me inside with an urgent expression.

I dashed across, ducking in first, and paused when I realized we were standing inside a little security center.

See, this was going far too easily. Akri had no trouble getting us in here, and now, it was all over for this place.

He would hook himself up to the system and give us all the access we needed.

“Looping feeds now,” he murmured aloud, his hands clenched at his sides.

The tentacle with the cable softly undulated as he concentrated.

He’d yanked the small length of glass fiber cable from some hidden place on his coat, one of the many spots in which he stored cables.

I watched his eyes with fascination, imagining the way the little specks of light in the black mirrors were an indication of what he was doing.

They gently pulsed, some of them twinkling orange but most staying white.

Did that mean he wasn’t exerting himself?

“Processing blueprints,” he added, and I wondered if he could somehow still ‘download’ information into his brain as if he were a machine. Was his ability to interface with computers through a nav port completely unique in the universe, because he had once been a computer himself?

He was in his own little world, so I took a moment to stare at his face.

I loved the brighter oranges and burnt sienna that highlighted his eyes and cheekbones; it was very dramatic.

It looked a little like warpaint. The long, slender limbs that branched from his head were thick at the base but almost as thin as my finger at the tip.

Stripes and smudges of color highlighted his otherwise dark yellow skin; the contrast made him seem almost golden.

Back on Earth, I’d been bullied all through middle school—for being a sci-fi nerd, for being a little overweight, and for being poor, and later, without a dad.

Kids were cruel, and it was hard growing up with all that hanging over me; I’d only dug in deeper, read more books, watched more movies.

Heck, I had shelves filled with awesome collectibles back on Earth.

Well, not anymore, since I was officially several hundred years in the future, but still.

I’d gotten into shape when I discovered just how much I loved the outdoors and hiking, but part of me still remembered the past.

Akri looked like several of my favorite figurines.

I couldn’t believe I was hanging out with a guy who could do all the things I’d fantasized about as a kid.

On top of that, he was like Pinocchio, a machine turned into a flesh-and-blood man.

It made me giddy to think that it was true.

I knew it was hard for him; he seemed to struggle with strong feelings, but here he’d been helping me, rescuing me from doom.

Now I knew how I could help him in return.

“Granting full admin access,” he intoned, sounding even more machine-like than usual.

The corner of his mouth twitched up, and I laughed.

Oh, he was playing it up now, was he? I sidled closer and slid my hand along his lower back, my smile growing when his free tentacle flung itself around to curl along my arm.

Maybe I knew what was up with those tentacles better than he did, and the thought absolutely thrilled me.

I hadn’t felt like my place was on Earth.

I’d lived the best life I could, but something had always been missing—especially after my mom passed from ALS when I was twenty-one.

This alien abduction thing had been horrible; it had derailed my entire life.

What I’d been through hadn’t been great, but I wouldn’t want to change it.

I didn’t wish I could go back home, and now it felt like I was getting everything I’d ever dreamed of: adventure in space, with real aliens—and the sexiest alien boyfriend.

“Done,” he announced, and his tentacle detached from his nifty little cable thing, twisting to hug me the way its twin was.

“We can now walk everywhere without being seen on the cameras. We need to head three levels down to reach the interface for the supercomputer.” He cocked his head when he looked down at me. “What are you doing, Jenny?”

I wasn’t quite sure, just that I was happy to be here with him, and I adored that little joke he’d made. Rising on tiptoes, I hugged his middle from behind and kissed his cheek over his shoulder. He had to dip down to allow me to reach, but I saw how he was grinning when he did so.

“Just, I like you, okay? You’re like my ray of sunshine out here in space, and I love this adventure we’re on.

I know I’m crazy for liking it, but I’ve always been the odd one out, so I don’t care.

” His starry-sky eyes were very serious as he appraised my face.

One of his tentacles slid up my throat to stroke my cheek tenderly.

“I’m glad you’re with me. I keep telling myself that it’s unfair to put you at risk the way I am…

but I don’t think I could do this without you.

” I liked that he said that, but I knew it wasn’t true.

Akri was very motivated to get in here, and with his skills?

He would have been able to do that with or without my help; I was just along for the ride.