Page 99 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

As always, it was a struggle to bring myself to the task at hand, even with the urgency pounding through my body. I knew plenty of nav horror stories about navigators who had lost themselves to the void, plugged in so deeply that their minds never came back to their bodies.

Setting my brain the task of calculating our routes was exponentially faster than using the ship’s computer.

What I’d struggled to accomplish with my fingers on the keys only moments before was done in seconds with simply my mind.

I plugged in our route, trying to calculate several switchbacks in case the Varakartoom was going to try following us.

On a side tangent, I started feeding Kitan’s console data on how best to get out of the system, setting our ship into an unpredictable pattern of swoops and dives around the many other ships, the space station, and the merc ship closing in on us.

It was, as always, a thrill to see how quickly Kitan picked up on my suggestions and sent the Vagabond spiraling onto the suggested course I’d laid out.

Of course, the merc ship had a nav/pilot pair that was incredibly gifted.

They seemed to almost intuitively know what we were going to do.

It was a good thing I was trained at intercepting vessels as much as they were.

I couldn’t believe I was thinking it, but thank God my time with the pirates had given me the experience I needed for this.

Adapting our course on the fly, I sent the new info to Kitan, running the calculations for our FTL jumps at the same time.

This was the opposite of taking it easy; I could feel the strain, the heat it was putting on my faulty implant.

There was already something wet dribbling from my nose that I was steadily ignoring.

Plugged in, it wasn’t like I cared all that much anyway.

I had settled on a single point of exit from the Sune solar system that I was basing my FTL calculations on, and I had to make sure we got there right as I finished them—without giving that precise spot away to the Varakartoom.

If they knew it, all would be lost. I was too far in now, too damaged to restart the calculations from a different spot.

But Kitan was an amazing pilot, and he executed all my moves with such dramatic flair that it distracted even further from our path.

I think he knew, just as I did, how important it was that they didn’t realize just where we were headed out of the solar system.

I’d already locked in the first FTL drive jump.

It would only last two seconds, all I dared to risk right now.

I was going to try for three more FTL jumps of that length or even shorter—just enough to throw us further out of here and zigzag our course. Hopefully, not enough to kill me.

The Varakartoom was still right on our tail, but they hadn’t managed to get in front of us.

There was an open com connection to their vessel, and though their captain was not in view, we only saw a Rumicaron com officer with a huge mouthful of teeth, comfortingly reminding me of Old Basra.

My connection to the ship’s computer somehow made his body light up with colors beyond the spectrum I could normally see.

I vaguely heard how Ziame and a low, rumbling male voice were trading taunts and barbs over the open line.

The captains seemed to enjoy this butting of heads as we ran for our lives.

“You can run, but you can’t hide for long,” their captain was saying.

“This makes the chase all the sweeter, doesn’t it?

” There was a loud chorus of growls in agreement coming from the enemy bridge.

When Ziame roared back in turn, they all fell silent.

“Board my ship,” he said in a dangerous tone.

“And I will burn each and every one of you to a crisp. I was untrained when Drameil caught me that first time, but I’m not now.

” I grinned, tasting blood on my lips. Yes, Ziame was undefeated.

The connection was cut to the Varakartoom the next moment, and Sunder made a loud growling noise, stretching out wings that shimmered with beautiful, iridescent patterns.

No, hang on—that was just my connection to the ship talking again.

I sent Kitan into a tight curve around a moon, just letting our ship skim the gravity of the celestial body.

The Vagabond trembled a little from the forces exerted on our hull, which made me grateful that I was still strapped in from our exit from the planet.

So close, I had our route locked down. I was getting ready for that first FTL jump.

The true test: would we be able to make it through the three micro jumps I’d planned?

“Locking FTL jump,” Kitan declared. “Making final approach. Doc, get ready.” There was a firm warning to do as he said.

He was on edge but determined. I was fairly certain that he thought I would do one short jump and then step back.

I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The pilot and nav aboard the Varakartoom would be able to follow our first jump, but each rapid jump after would drastically reduce the chance that they discovered which way we were going.

I needed to hang in there long enough to jump us at least three times. Five was better.

We came around the moon with the Varakartoom hot on our tail, and instead of sending us out of the system straight ahead of us—the logical course—I had Kitan double us back.

There was open space glinting at us from between the rings of a gas giant that, for most pilots, would be absolute madness to attempt an FTL jump through.

With wavy colors coalescing all around me, I turned to Kitan, just so that I could imprint the sight of him punching us into FTL on my brain.

It might be the very last thing I ever saw.

I couldn’t regret a single moment I’d spent with him, aboard the Vagabond or down on Sune.

I loved this male, and I’d do anything to see him safely out of reach of both Sune and the crimelord they’d escaped slavery from.

As he punched us into the FTL course I’d laid out, I lost my sight. My mind was entirely consumed with watching our course, keeping us stable as we rode Faster-Than-Light through the universe. It was only two seconds, but for me, they stretched out like hours.

Contrary to what it might seem, FTL wasn’t a dark place for me.

Behind my closed eyelids, I saw all the colors that existed, saw more than a human brain was capable of understanding.

When I unplugged, I would forget the fantastical reality that was FTL; my brain couldn’t store it.

I’d remember only the feeling of knowing everything in that moment, of being everything.

When we dropped out of FTL, Kitan was already spinning our vessel and gunning us full throttle out of the uninhabited solar system we’d landed in. I’d locked in the next jump, my head pounding and my neck soaked; the pain was nothing.

“FTL in three, two, one,” Kitan said, but it sounded like he was talking while I was underwater. His voice was wavery and distorted. With a groan, I let the FTL jump rush through me, and I rode it for a second that lasted a lifetime.

I was panting, my breaths coming hard and fast, punching out my sternum, but I queued the next jump relentlessly.

We weren’t out of the woods yet. While there was no sign of the Varakartoom following us to where we’d landed, that didn’t mean they couldn’t find us.

“No,” I heard Kitan growl—the sound of a hand angrily slamming against a console banged like doldrums through my brain, reverberating over and over.

“FTL in three, two, one!” Kitan snarled so furiously that my heart filled with such heat and love that I thought I’d simply drift away on the FTL light with this third jump—like I was spooling out of my body, unraveling from the inside out, and drifting into Kitan instead, where I’d be safe and loved forever.

No, I shook myself out of this jump, biting hard on my lip to use the pain to focus.

“One more!” I growled, hearing Kitan start to unbuckle, ready to get up and drag me bodily away from the nav-console.

We punched into the jump without a countdown, as if Kitan couldn’t even bring himself to say those words he was surely hating by now.

My body was shaking apart; this jump was harder than the last. Each jump made my taxed brain struggle more and more.

I wasn’t sure what came first in that agonizing last stretch.

It felt like I was pulled to pieces for more than an hour—no longer unraveling and drifting into Kitan, but pulled apart from inside my head.

Did I end the jump myself, or did I simply collapse?

The last I was aware of was everything going dark: my vision spun from millions of colors into a shadowy bridge, and hot agony seared through the back of my skull.

Trails of fire dripped from my nose, my ears, my eyes.

I could see what had to be Kitan’s pointed snout in hybridform—the red of his fur and the glittering of his teeth.

I heard the roar of voices around me, and saw Luka in triplicate. My consciousness was fading fast, but I had a moment to wonder why there was a Ferai beast on the bridge, sitting at my feet and staring with burning eyes into mine. Then everything went mercifully black.

***

Kitan

My heart just about burst out of my throat when Chloe insisted on a fourth FTL jump.

Her face was covered in red, her pale skin streaked with the evidence of the strain she was putting herself through.

Even as I swerved the Vagabond into the required position, I eyed the doc.

Luka looked extremely grim as he knelt at her side and undid her harness. I don't think she even noticed.

As I punched us into FTL, I could only watch my mate—not the swath of blackness on the viewscreen that enveloped us for the second we were racing ahead of all light.

As we dropped out of the jump, I wanted to rush to Chloe’s side, but instead, I checked our route and punched it in, locking the autopilot.

We needed to get her to the surgeon, and this was the route she had calculated.

It was our only chance to get there. If we drifted and changed our position even a little.

.. we would be lost, and she would never get better.

The moment autopilot engaged correctly, I was out of my seat and on the floor next to the Doc as he worked on stabilizing her as much as he could.

To my great confusion, Fierce and Da’vi had entered the bridge with the stasis pod for her, but they were accompanied by the mindbroken Ferai beast. Certain my fear was making me see things that weren’t there, I focused on my mate instead.

Taking her hand in mine, I rubbed her soft skin, hoping she knew I was there even if she couldn’t see me.

Pain stabbed at my chest at the fear that she’d overdone it, and there was too much damage to save her.

With her going into stasis, this was possibly the last time I would touch her skin for a long time.

“Okay, let’s get her in the pod,” Luka said, his empathic gift reaching out to me with a comforting, steadying presence.

I shifted and gathered Chloe into my arms, her body frail, light, and so very, very fragile.

This was my heart; it had somehow drifted out of my chest and into hers, and I would never be the same again if she didn’t make it through this.

Settling her into the stasis pod felt all kinds of wrong, as if I was putting her into a coffin. The Doc was rushing to hook her up to the internal systems correctly, while Da’vi was using one finger to jab at the controls, rushing it through its starting cycle.

When the pod filled up with fluid, the blue liquid encasing her as the system suspended her body in time, I looked away.

I couldn’t continue watching it, I couldn’t have her face covered in blood and viscous blue be the last thing I saw.

I wanted to remember her proud determination as she strapped in and flew us to safety, yet again.

I wanted to remember the love in her eyes, the determination to survive.

She would fight, she had something to come back to know.

Please… Please… just let that be enough.

Let me be the anchor that held her to this world.