Page 98 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Chloe

The Vagabond had landed at a spot in the spaceport, having received priority clearance to do so.

It was with a pang of homesickness that I watched the familiar lines of the Star Class Cruiser come in for a landing from the safety of Kitan’s arms. On her sides, I saw that the call sign clearly displayed Long Hauler Ever Golden in the universal tongue.

They still hadn’t changed the name on the new transponder, probably not wanting to make such an illegal move while being heavily watched by the Sune military.

Holding hands with Kitan, I walked up the ramp and into the hangar bay.

We’d already said our goodbyes to Kest, promising to keep in touch.

There had also been a flurry of activity to check if a surgeon who could help me was available on Sune, but that had turned out to be a bust. Though Purveyn had somehow managed to source the right implant, surgery on my extremely human—and therefore different from Sune—brain turned out to be a much harder skill to find.

Kest had sent us a list of locations of surgeons capable of working on humans out in the wider galaxy, but that did mean I had to go into stasis as soon as I’d helped Kitan set the course.

Kitan didn’t like that bit, but I had assured him that if I took it slow, the feedback would actually be helpful; it was, after all, something my brain needed now.

In a way, I was an addict; I had a dependency on running the navigational computer.

Inside the hangar bay, we were greeted by our friends, Abby and Ziame, in the lead.

The beautiful, tall woman with her dark skin and thick braids rushed at me and pulled me into a hug.

“God, Chloe! We were so worried! But look at you! Don’t you look badass in your leather pants and that sexy V-neck top! ”

I laughed, delighted to hear her speak English to me, hugging her back and even letting Ziame hug me.

The big, scaly male was over eight feet tall and picked me up like I was nothing, clutching me briefly to his chest and nuzzling his bull-like nose—complete with a golden ring—into my hair.

“Good to see you and that pilot of ours in one piece,” he rumbled as he set me back on my feet.

He picked up Kitan next, crushing him in a hug before setting him down and tapping his sternum with a fist in a gladiatorial salute.

“Well done, Kitan.” I caught the pinkness tinging Kitan’s cheeks at the words, understanding him much better after all we’d been through.

My man was starved for affection and contact of the good kind; he’d found it here with his gladiator brothers.

And I vowed that he’d have it with me for the rest of his life, for the rest of mine.

After that, it was a blur of bearhugs, hands slapping shoulders and backs, as the others came in to greet us.

I struggled to fathom how welcome they were making me feel after all that time aboard the ship, feeling wary and scared of contact with others…

I could now see how safe I could be with these people, especially knowing how loyally they’d waited for us, hoping to find a way to free Kitan and me.

“They were true to their word,” I heard Abby declare loudly. “They came and filled our cargo hold to the brim with supplies—from food to clothing, to spare parts to help fix up this ship.” There was rumbling laughter from some of the males as we were guided by the crowd further into the ship.

“Da’vi is over the moon about that!” Jakar cackled. I turned my head to catch a grumpy look from the Kertinal in question. He rolled his purple eyes at the back of Jakar’s head and crossed his bandaged arms over his chest.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kitan told them. “If we’re all loaded up, then we should get going. There’s no point lingering here, especially not after that media spectacle. Drameil might pick it up and send some mercs our way.”

Ziame nodded, his horned head taking up far too much space in the Vagabond’s corridors.

“Correct, though I doubt they’d be here that quickly.

It should take him some time to mobilize them.

” The thought of Drameil and the mercenaries brought back the memory of Diamed’s taunt as I’d left the shuttle the last time Kitan and I had seen her.

Unease prickled my skin. “Kitan?” I said, noticing that he had the same worried look in his eyes.

Without further communication, the two of us broke into a sprint, dashing ahead of the crowd of happy gladiators.

We ran to the bridge, Ziame behind us, keeping pace while he demanded what we knew.

I let Kitan explain things while I threw myself into the chair behind the nav-console and plunked the comm with the list of possible surgeons down on top of the console itself.

If not for the extreme sense of urgency—the fear that curdled the blood in my veins—I would have sat and basked in this moment, enjoying my familiar spot here behind the console, the only place where I had felt confident and like I had value. At least, before I’d met Kitan.

Rushing through the start-up sequence, I started running nav calculations, my fingers flying across the console.

Though I knew that plugging in would be far faster, I wasn’t going to take that risk just yet—not until I knew there was no other option at all.

Picking the nearest of the top surgeons from Kest’s list of recommended doctors, I started running routes.

At my side, I saw Kitan start the take-off procedure and spared a quick moment to strap myself in.

Leaving atmo, we’d briefly lose gravity before the generator kicked in.

It was always a disorienting moment, and I didn’t think I’d have the time to settle myself.

If my and Kitan’s sudden gut feeling was correct…

it was possible we’d have mercenaries waiting for us the moment we left the planet.

That would make plotting the right course considerably harder, but I had to try.

I was the only one here who could do it.

While Kitan had trained Ziame enough for the big male to fly the Vagabond for short stints, no one else was capable of the extreme flying required to escape when ships were closing in on us.

As it was, I struggled to keep my fingers running over the console as I set the computer to calculate the best options for us to get where we needed to go.

Kitan was taking us up into the air, g-forces pressing me into my seat and making it difficult for my hands to move and do their damn job.

My head was already pounding in pain, and I wasn’t even close to done.

I was feeling a mild panic that I wouldn’t be able to calculate this route in time—certainly not without plugging in.

“Leaving atmo in three, two, one,” Kitan said, and I felt how everything suddenly went weightless.

My hair drifted into the air around me, and my body floated up, restrained by the harness that tethered me to my seat.

I spared a moment to glance at the viewscreen at the front of the bridge, noting the view of the black void of space dotted with stars, Sune’s sun a glowing ball to the right, and a busy spaceport hanging like a big rotating cylinder with many spidery legs above us somewhere.

I was more interested in the Battle Class Cruiser that was bearing down on our position, though.

Its hull was completely black, making it hard to spot on the screen.

Still, I didn’t need to hear Ziame and Kitan cursing to know that this was the Varakartoom.

The mercenary ship was hailing us, demanding our surrender, and Sunder, the Tarkan male, glanced our way with a grim look on his face. “Can we run?”

Kitan groaned, “That damn bitch, Diamed, warned us she’d do this. I thought you guys would have left, and it wouldn’t be a problem…” His golden eyes looked scared and worried as he turned my way. “We can’t risk you, Chloe, outrunning them… It’s going to cost you far too much.”

I rolled my shoulders and shook out my hands.

My heart was pounding in my throat, and my skin had gone clammy, which was a relief from the cold shivers or the raging heat I’d been suffering from for the past few hours.

“Get a stasis pod up here. You’ll have to put me in there as soon as I collapse.

It’s the best chance all of us have got. ”

Briefly, I thought that Kitan would object.

His golden eyes locked onto mine, emotions roiling in them that I couldn’t even begin to translate.

Then he gave me a sharp nod. “You heard my mate.” He shifted his head to look at Ziame.

“Get the doc and the stasis pod here. We’ll have to move extremely fast.”

I eyed the ship heading our way, a great black shadow.

It was a beast of a ship; even for its class, it looked heavily armored and heavily armed.

We could not fight this thing, and I didn’t think the Sune military would be happy if we started a skirmish right here in their space—especially not after the chaos we’d caused to the planet’s entire belief system.

“I love you, Chloe,” Kitan said, his voice solemn. I didn’t like that it sounded as though he was saying goodbye. I reached out a hand to him, and our fingers briefly brushed, sending a spark of heat traveling down my arm. “I love you too. See you on the other side.”

Then I plugged myself in, my world expanding in the blink of an eye.

A kaleidoscope of options cascaded through my mind.

Everything was possible when I was plugged in.

Opening my eyes, I could see the bridge and the others on it: Ziame, Abby, Sunder, and, of course, Kitan.

They were blurred shapes sparkling with colors, and Kitan was the most beautiful of them all, swirling with all the futures that we could possibly share together.