Jamirr (Badari Gladiators #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Samyra always enjoyed prowling through the market on her off days.

She never knew what she’d find—maybe another new exotic animal for her collection, although Darryl, her right-hand man, invariably protested they had too many and the care and feeding took too much time away from training.

He was right, she admitted to herself he was, but she didn’t care.

Freeing some poor terrified creature from the vendors’ clutches and taking it home to safety gave her a rush of happiness nothing else could provide.

Not even a victory in the arena, although she certainly relished those.

But today she was walking through the slave market, Darryl at her heels, Tazur, her Denebian leopard at her side.

Tazur condescended to wear a jeweled leash for these excursions but she and Samyra both understood the restraint wouldn’t hold her if she was truly provoked.

Fortunately the leash law on this planet was badly underwritten when it came to exotic pets and injuries to bystanders and Samyra loved to push the limits on these things.

The merchandise manager trotted at her heels. She was an important customer and he wanted to satisfy her but so far nothing he’d been able to show her had been right.

Samyra needed a new member for her team of gladiators.

She had a small cadre of men she’d trained, who could also be trusted to stage fights the way she wanted and ensure the outcomes were the ones her sponsors approved.

Life out here in the Hinterlands was rough and she’d fought and killed and clawed her way to a certain level and didn’t intend to ever lose what she’d gained.

Lindax, the best of her team had finally earned his freedom and she’d been glad to give it, although she was going to miss him in the lineup.

No one else had his flare or his good looks, which did nothing for her, pretty boys not being her type but the audiences at the arenas loved him.

Samyra had offered him a straight up contract to stay with Samyra’s Slayers and continue his career under her tutelage but he’d had his mind set on making it in the Five Systems and off he’d gone.

And good luck to him.

Obviously she wasn’t going to be able to replace him with someone new from the slave markets.

Anyone good sold for prices way above her purse but she hoped to find a man with potential she could mold into her kind of gladiator.

In the meantime her other five active fighters would have to step up their efforts and her trainees needed to work harder to get ready.

She stopped in front of a cage, attention caught by the sheer size of the man inside.

The manager had gone ahead and now had to retrace his steps.

“Oh this one’s not for you,” he said apologetically.

“He’s useless. Had seven owners we know of, killed one of them, couldn’t be trained.

The medical staff think he had a bad cryosleep reaction at some point and suffered severe damage.

He looks impressive but that’s all.” He checked his handheld.

“Yes, I see here he’s going out in the next shipment to the mines and that’ll be the end of his story.

Sad waste of potential but what can you do? Shall we move on?”

Tazur made a funny noise deep in her throat, between a purr and a growl and left Samyra’s side, yanking on the leash to do so.

The cat sat against the bars of the cage and rubbed her head, making tiny mewling sounds.

The man, who’d been sitting in the far corner, arms around his legs, face averted, uncoiled and crawled to the bars.

The cage wasn’t big enough for him to stand.

Before Samyra could utter a warning, he’d put his hands through the bars to scratch Tazur’s chin in exactly the right spot and then between her ears as the giant cat licked his face with her rough tongue.

Samyra stared in astonishment. Tazur settled in front of the cage as if she never planned to leave and the man ran his hand over her soft fur. “Pretty one,” he said in badly pronounced Basic.

“There is one other possibility for you to evaluate,” the manager said, touching her elbow and shrinking back as she glared at him. “This way.”

Samyra was reluctant to leave the giant but Darryl was already moving on so she pulled at the leash and spoke sharply to the cat.

The slave patted the soft fur one more time before putting his hand under Tazur’s chin and speaking softly to her, after which the cat yawned and rose to her feet as if it was her idea and walked away, the leash pulling on Samyra’s arm.

She glanced back as she went to catch up with her companions but the slave had already retreated to his corner, hidden by the shadows there.

The next candidate the manager had for her had possibilities and Samyra entered into a long negotiation, ending up at a fair price that was still less than she’d budgeted. As she filled in her information on the forms, she said, “How much was the mine slave?”

Instantly Darryl protested but she shut him down with a glare.

The manager rubbed his chin and considered. “No returns. I’ve told you he’s untrainable and violent.”

“Yes, I heard all that but I want him as an animal keeper, not a fighter.” Although she’d damn sure do her best to transform him into one.

A man that size with those muscles would be an instant draw in the arena.

In the meantime, he’d been a natural with Tazur so she figured he’d be good at taking over the feeding and cleaning duties for her small menagerie.

No matter how bad his cryosleep reaction had been he should have the mental acuity left for the simple tasks.

The manager added the second man to the bill of sale for slightly more than he would have gotten selling him to the mines and clearly considered it a good bargain.

Samyra left Darryl there to arrange for transporting the two new men to her compound and she and Tazur moved from the market to browse the weapons bazaar, which was more to her taste than dealing in human and humanoid slaves.

She’d learned everything she knew from her father, who’d been a renowned gladiator in the Hinterlands for decades, and had inherited the compound, the stable of gladiators and its House of Kulcannon title from him.

One of the unavoidable aspects of the business was its reliance on a constant supply of new bodies to fight and excite the blood thirsty crowds.

She did her best to train them and equip them with high-end weapons and she believed she was a fair person, never mistreating those in her line up.

She survived the only way she knew how after being raised by her father and spending all her formative years in the backstage areas of arenas large and small.

Her own training had been extensive and brutal and now she was one of the most deadly fighters on the circuit.

The one thing she’d taken as her guiding principle was never to rest easy. If things were good they could turn on a knife blade in an instant. Never get comfortable, never let anyone get close, look out for herself.

A few hours later…

He was clean, having been given access to a community shower/refresher room at the compound of his new owner, and had been given a uniform of sorts—cargo pants and a blue tee shirt emblazoned with the symbol of her House—to replace the filthy rags which had been his only cover for a long time.

He had shoes, which his feet were going to have to get used to after going barefoot for so long.

There had been food, filling and nutritious.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a full belly and forced himself to eat sparingly.

He took a portion of the fruit and bread with him to his room, which amused Darryl, the man in charge of him currently.

but Jamirr had learned the very hard way a slave couldn’t count on food.

Now he was in his room, which had a small cubicle for the sink and toilet, a bed with an actual mattress, a lamp, a small table and a medium sized trideo and holo viewer bolted to the wall.

He wasn’t curious enough to turn it on and see what entertainment he had access to.

Not yet. He was still absorbing his change in circumstances and wondering what the price was going to be. And whether he’d pay it.

This was the best his life had been since the first time he awoke from cryosleep, groggy and confused, with almost no memory of his previous existence.

He used to get flashes of his past sometimes and would waken from dreams with tears drying on his cheeks, but both occurrences had gotten less and less frequent the longer he’d been enslaved, beaten, starved and abused.

Now he grinned and had there been anyone in the room with him they might have been frightened because his fangs lengthened and his claws extended.

He was a very bad slave as several owners had learned to their cost.

He considered the woman who now owned him.

What would she demand of him? He hoped she wouldn’t ask for things he refused to do, clinging to a sense of conscience and morality left over from his previous life, engrained in him at an instinctive level.

He wouldn’t hurt a woman, or at least not a human woman (and he puzzled for a minute or two over the fact his mind suggested there were alien females he loathed and would fight.

A vision of bright red hair crossed his mind’s eye and he shuddered but nothing else surfaced.)