Page 92 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

When suddenly trees loomed up on either side of me, I breathed a sigh of relief.

We’d made it this far—would we manage to shake them in the cover the trees provided?

I sincerely doubted it. We’d need a miracle for that.

How could we possibly get away from here when I could hear the sound of engines droning in the air at my back?

They were following us. They knew our heading. Kitan would tire long before they did.

Leaning back a little, I tried to get a view of just what it was that was chasing us.

Could we take one down? Use it to escape?

They wouldn’t be expecting that. It was hard to get a glimpse of the drones in the air through the canopy of the trees.

I could see their searchlights and hear them, but it wasn’t until Kitan galloped through a small clearing that I spotted what was after us.

Dozens of one-man flyers—round little spheres with a rotor and jets for propulsion and steering—zipped through the air.

They had a mounted gun at the bottom but were not heavily armored.

These were meant for recon and scouting.

We had two of them stored in the hangar bay aboard the Vagabond.

I knew enough about them because I had sat at Old Basra’s side more than once while he tinkered with them—a stroke of luck I wasn’t going to ignore.

Leaning close to Kitan, I unclipped the laser gun strapped to my belt with one hand, jostling precariously now that I had only one hand to hold on with.

“Get us to a spot where they might try to get in close. I’ll shoot one down,” I yelled at Kitan. The rushing air from our speed ripped the words away from me the moment I spoke them. I saw how he swiveled two of the four large ears at the back of his head my way, so I hoped he’d caught my plan.

Wiping blood from my nose with the back of my sleeve, I tried to steady my breathing and my pounding heart.

There was a roaring in my ears that had more to do with the rush of adrenaline and blood in my veins than with the drones chasing us through the air.

If we could get into one of those drones, I knew Kitan could outfly them with his eyes closed.

We needed to get ourselves to a more populated area, where they couldn’t risk being seen chasing Kitan with brutal force.

When we suddenly broke out of the treeline, the wood was bisected by a dry riverbed.

Kitan swerved to the left instead of dashing across and into the cover on the other side.

I realized he was doing what I wanted: allowing the drones to spot us and close in.

I was shaking too much, jostling about on Kitan’s back, and my legs were by now so exhausted and strained that I was only just managing to cling on.

When the riverbed swung into a turn, hiding us briefly from the sight of the drones, I yelled, “Stop!” Sliding off his slick back when he’d barely started skidding to a stop, I dropped into a crouch behind a fairly large boulder the moment my feet touched the ground.

Ignoring the aching in my legs, I balanced my arms on top of the cool stone to steady them and sighted down the barrel.

The first drone soared over the trees with a low buzzing sound, its searchlights angled ahead of it and briefly blinding me when they crossed straight over my position.

I held my breath, aimed, let out a deep exhale, and pulled the trigger.

The darkness below the light beam lit up with a red streak that collided with the bottom of the propeller at the back, causing the drone to drop to the ground a good distance away.

My second aim was meant for the pilot. I’d already swerved in anticipation, only…

a dark form swooped through the round drone’s side door and, with a crash, unseated the pilot.

A second drone came from around the bend of the riverbed, opening fire with its mounted gun with zero discretion.

With no choice now but to lay down cover fire, confused as to just what had happened, I repositioned and aimed at one of the new drone’s propulsion jets, cursing when my first shot went wide.

You got this, Chloe, I told myself. Breathing deeply, I aimed again, fired with sure precision, and blew up the mounted gun at the bottom of the small vessel.

It shook, careened wildly off course, and went up in a ball of fire.

“Shit,” I groaned. I hadn’t meant to actually harm the pilot in that drone.

No time to worry about it now. I spun and tried to figure out what had happened to the drone I’d tried to drop low so I could hit the pilot.

It was on the ground, its plexiglass sphere gleaming, a spiderweb of cracks covering a portion of it.

There was no sign of a pilot, but I heard the sounds of a scuffle not far off and the sounds of more drones farther away.

We had no time to lose; Kitan and I needed to get that drone into the air.

Ducking while I ran, just to present a smaller target, I rushed for the downed drone and looked inside.

There was no one, but I could see a shadow rise from between the rocks and hurry towards me.

Shaking, fingers trembling on the trigger of my weapon, I aimed it at their torso—only to sigh and hurriedly lower the weapon when I realized it was Kitan.

He was completely naked and in his skin-form, gleaming pale in the starlight, his burnished red hair wild around his face.

With a feral grin, he jumped into the sphere-drone’s seat and ran his hands over the controls, flicking switches.

“Good job, Chloe,” he told me. “Get in and hold on tight. This is going to be a rough flight,” he warned.

I did just that. On shaking legs, I crawled into the sphere and onto his lap.

Tightening the harness straps around us both—some of them broken, forcing me to use makeshift knots to piece the thing together—it was an extremely tight fit.

I had to unhook the backpacks and pin them between our legs.

Right now, I was feeling silly for even taking them.

What were we going to need blankets, clothes, and food for?

We’d be so on the run that we wouldn’t have time to rest; they were just extra weight that I shouldn’t have bothered with.

Only, there was no reason to toss them now.

Stuck between our legs but with the drone doing all the work, that little bit of extra cargo wasn’t going to matter.

With his arms bracketed around me, Kitan was finished with his check of the vehicle.

Letting out an excited yelp, he clutched the yoke and yanked it back, taking us up into the air at breakneck speed.

From the corner of my eye, I saw two drones approaching.

Their searchlights were turned off, and they were heading our way with purpose.

That meant they saw us, and they were trying to intercept us.

There was a whirring, clicking noise before I saw the gun mounted at the bottom of the drone detach and spin away into the depths.

Kitan had dumped it in exchange for speed, and maybe he wasn’t comfortable with shooting at those chasing us, either.

They were just misinformed grunts; they didn’t know the truth of Kitan’s situation.

Eyeing the console, I tried to figure out how to decipher the display showing the area we were flying over.

Here, despite being a nav, I was rather useless, as these small vessels didn’t require one to fly.

They were more of a close-range vehicle, and on top of that, I knew stars and solar systems, not the individual topography of a planet.

As near as I could tell, Kitan was taking us on a route toward what seemed like a major city.

With the throttle open all the way, we were covering a lot of distance at a rapid pace, the air whistling harshly through the open hatches on the sides.

My hair was whipping around my face, some strands cutting into my skin, but I barely noticed that.

My focus was now on the drones I could see trailing us.

Thankfully, Kitan was a master at flying, dipping us low into gullies or darting us between trees at breakneck speeds.

My heart was in my throat, my entire body tensed up as if preparing for the inevitable crash.

No one could fly like this and not get us killed.

Yet Kitan was grinning from ear to ear, looking almost deranged with excitement, and he was calm and confident as he controlled the vessel.

I was along for the ride; there was nothing I could do now. And if we did go out in a ball of fire? At least we did it while being free.