Page 68 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Kitan

To set aside my frustration at risking Chloe was hard, but once I’d done it, I couldn’t do anything but love the thrill of the high-speed chase.

I loved the thrill of working together with such an excellent nav—a port nav.

There was nothing like it in all the galaxies.

A port nav could work the FTL at easily thirty percent more speed and perform navigational calculations with their brain as the computer instead of the shipboard system.

That allowed for near-instantaneous data processing and made the flying so smooth, so fast, so challenging.

Chloe was everything I had hoped she’d be when working in conjunction with me.

We were a team, in a way I’d never even come close to experiencing with any other nav; and I’d worked with so many, both portless and ported.

It was a revelation. Too bad this came at such a high cost; I’d rather never experience this beautiful pilot-nav symbiosis than risk losing her.

But she was right too; she was the only one who had a chance to outfly these merc bastards with me.

Diamed and I didn’t work this well, and the portless Sune nav didn’t have a chance in hell to get us a route fast enough through this debris-littered scrap yard.

We needed Chloe if we wanted to get away from here and save everyone.

As I worked the controls, I slipped my cast-covered arm from the sling and gripped the yoke with both hands.

There was no twinge of pain, even if the cast made things clumsier and slower than they should be.

Still, with Chloe supplying the perfect route, all I had to do was fly it.

I could do that; in fact, I liked to think I was born for this kind of flying.

Screw what my parents and Sune society said my destiny should be.

The deeper we made our way into the vast scrapyard that lay beyond Strewn, the closer together the wrecks floated.

Some of it was so scavenged and broken to pieces that it resembled a cluster of particles so dense we couldn’t fly through it without clattering against our hull.

It wasn’t something we could risk without our shield generator, and I wasn’t banking on Da’vi getting that up and running anytime soon.

With our speed, I could see the three ships fall behind.

It appeared that they were trying a pincer move of some kind.

Unless their navs knew something we didn’t, we were going too fast for that to work.

Chloe’s route options were flashing across my screen, letting me know what to expect and how to roll the ship between the wreckage in ever-faster moves.

I worried she was working too fast. I could keep up; my body was roaring with the thrill of the flight.

But could she? Was she burning out? When it appeared the three ships had fallen behind, I risked a glance at her face.

Her eyes were unfocused as she worked internally on the data she processed.

Her face was pale, but then it always was since she hadn’t seen true sunlight in twelve years. There were no signs of strain—not yet.

Relieved, I drew in a deep breath and focused on eking out more distance between us and the three merc ships.

We needed to get beyond this scrapyard, beyond the floating debris, with enough distance between us and our pursuers so that we could jump to FTL and hide our tracks.

Almost there, too—I’d risk a single FTL jump with Chloe; we needed to time this right.

At Chloe’s calculated suggestion, I dipped the Cruiser down below the floating wreck of a behemoth of a ship—once a huge freighter of some kind.

Giving it more throttle, I shot us forward and zigzagged between three smaller vessels that appeared to be relatively whole shells of their former selves.

Open space loomed beyond them, a vast black canvas that glimmered only distantly with other stars.

My skin prickled with triumph. Sensors showed the three merc ships were still struggling their way through the field now stretching out behind us.

They were even risking angering the Stewn head honchos by blasting some of the debris out of their way in hopes of making up time.

It wouldn’t be enough. We had made it. I was waiting for Chloe to lock in our first FTL jump; we were clearing the last debris now.

The bridge doors slid open, and I sensed—more than saw—that Diamed had stepped inside.

She didn’t say anything, nor did she approach the nav-station.

I didn’t give a flying fuck, either, about what she thought of Chloe flying instead of her.

I just hoped her presence didn’t distract Chloe from her concentration for this last, most important bit.

Diamed wasn’t alone; Abby and Ziame were with her. They unobtrusively took their normal seats on the bridge. I felt strengthened knowing Ziame was there; he and Sunder would keep an eye on the displaced nav.

There, I curved the ship easily through a final gap, and then open space stretched out all around us.

Immediately, I saw the blinking light indicating the FTL jump was locked in, and I was just about to give the ship the full go-ahead when a dark vessel shimmered into existence, right in front of us.

For a heart-stopping moment, I thought it was a ship with something as elusive and fabled as a cloaking device.

But Chloe hissed, “A ship dropped out of FTL right on top of us, damn it!”

The transponder readings of the ship told me this was a mercenary vessel that sometimes dabbled in bounty hunting.

It went by the ominous name of Varakartoom, which I knew meant She-Who-Hunts.

I had heard of this particular ship before and knew the captain ran it with a very tight fist. More importantly, the nav-and-pilot duo were a set of Asrai twins, telepathically bonded, which meant they were an unbeatable force when it came to flying their massive Battle-Class Cruiser of Strewn design.

We had very little time to respond, but still, Chloe’s eyes gained a brief moment of focus as she met mine.

I wasn’t sure what she’d read in them—my fear, which was close to despair?

My utter terror that she’d do the unthinkable to save us?

Did she know that she meant far more to me than should be possible in the short time we’d known each other?

Her hand came up to briefly stroke the side of my face, and I knew what that meant.

“No!” I snarled at her, but her eyes had already rolled into the back of her head as she gave herself up to the data processing through her brain at impossible speeds.

Immediately, the scent of burning flesh permeated the air, hitting my sensitive nose.

Too late. To stop her now was to make her sacrifice be in vain. With a roar, I clenched my fists around the sensitive yoke of the ship, my muscles shifting and swelling with the force of my rage, the cast along my arm creaking and splintering.

I didn’t even take a single moment to evaluate whether I could do what Chloe’s processed data was telling me to do.

I sent the newly christened Vagabond into the spiraling maneuver she dictated, dipping the nose of the ship down below the Varakartoom at the last moment.

Alarms blared, indicating the ship was hailing us on all frequencies and warning us that they were loading their front lasers and preparing to shoot.

Around me on the bridge, chaos reigned as Ziame roared at the Varakartoom’s captain on the coms, letting the merc captain know, in no uncertain terms, that surrender was not an option.

Abby was already risking moving across the bridge to get to Chloe, despite the strain I was putting on the artificial gravity generator with the extreme maneuvers.

She was calling for Luka to get to the bridge, too.

Then there was a green light flashing, indicating that shielding was suddenly operational, and Sunder lunged across the deck to slam them online just in time for the Varakartoom’s first shots to glance harmlessly off them.

It was enough—just the time we needed, the time that Chloe’s maneuver had required.

Doing the completely unexpected, instead of finishing my dip below the merc ship’s belly, I performed a near-complete turnabout, spinning the Vagabond in a tight loop and shooting us back toward the debris field.

The other three mercenary ships were just emerging from it, but they weren’t expecting us to come right at them.

I opened the throttle all the way, swung us to the left at the very last moment, and then hit the FTL drive, jolting us into a jump in the most illogical direction.

Chloe was running the drive despite the scent of burning flesh permeating the air.

It had to be strong enough now for even Abby’s flat nose to pick up.

Her calculations indicated she’d planned to run it for nearly ten seconds, but I slammed us out of FTL after a bare four.

“Get her unhooked now!” I roared at Abby, not caring a bit about how it might come across.

My only concern was to get Chloe to stop incurring more damage.

Abby didn’t flinch. Her dark eyes flashed my way once, but she moved immediately to yank the plug from the back of Chloe’s head.

I didn’t want to see the damage, but I couldn’t look away during the brief moment the port site was exposed.

It looked blackened to me, and there was blood coming out of her ears, nose, and even the corners of her eyes.

My heart felt like it was clenched in the tightest of fists, and at that moment, I honestly didn’t know whether to scream in anguish or howl out my pain and fear.

None of those things would help her. She was breathing, but was she still Chloe after what she’d done to her brain?