My Big Scaly Alien Naga (Starlight Monsters #3)

Chapter 1

Venom

Two rotations ago

I hissed at the Kardarian who'd stepped on my tail. He flashed his fangs at me but then bowed his head and hurried off before I could take this confrontation further. Unlike Kardarians, I was at the top of the food chain.

I curled the tip of my tail under my coils where it couldn't be stepped on by distracted idiots.

Sometimes, I purposely tripped my co-workers to start a fight, but I had a deadline and couldn't afford a brawl.

Maybe tomorrow. I hadn't established my dominance in a while.

It was always good to remind everyone why nagas were feared across the galaxy.

Turning back to my screens, I grimaced. Whoever had written this code was an even bigger idiot than most of my colleagues.

It was easy to attract brainless grunts to work on an illegal space station, but finding qualified, educated individuals was almost impossible.

It's why I'd been able to rise through the ranks so quickly.

If the head of my department hadn't been a niece of Jarra, the Prime Game Maker, I may have been in charge of the entire division by now. But as things stood, I'd reached the end of the ladder, at least for as long as Briarra was alive.

I may keep her that way. For now, she was useful to me. She hadn't got this job because of her skills, but because of her connections, giving me free reign to do whatever I wanted as long as I pretended that it had been her idea in the first place.

Code flowed across the screen, turning into colourful images before my inner eye.

Where others only saw letters and numbers, I saw a story.

I saw roads that could be followed and doors that could be opened.

In all my studies, I'd never met anyone who reported to perceive code the way I did.

To them, it was a job. To me, this was the voice of a friend speaking to me, telling me stories of all that was happening on the station.

I focused on the shields surrounding the planet.

They kept any nosey visitors from flying down to Kalumbu's surface while at the same time shielding us from the authorities' eyes. Jarra spent a lot to bribe the Intergalactic Authority, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. The game makers didn’t save on security expenses, which is why I had no qualms charging the hourly rates that I did.

The code was inefficient but surprisingly robust. I swept through it, updating and patching. I should pitch a full redesign to Briarra soon – give myself the chance to hide even better loopholes than the ones I’d already built.

An alert caught my eye. A new shipment had arrived and was automatically being transported to the cargo bay. Wait, no. Not to cargo. There was a diversion in the code to have it moved somewhere else. A part of the station that I was sadly very familiar with.

I glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then opened a discreet window in the lower corner of my screen.

Live cargo. Fuck.

Another batch of victims for the Trials. Probably poached from unexplored planets or hijacked mid-transit by pirates. I activated a subroutine to log everything and store it on my secure, biolocked drive. No one but me could access it – not even if I was caught.

Not that I worried about discovery. Everyone here saw the naga, the fangs, the coils – and assumed I was just another predator. A criminal like all of them. No one questioned my loyalty. No one suspected I wasn’t what I seemed.

I scrolled deeper into the cargo's data. Thirty cryopods. They’d been on a long journey, travelling for many intergalactic years.

They'd changed hands so often that I couldn't see what planet they'd originally come from.

Somehow, they'd made it to the Kalumbu space station, sold to the game makers by a trader specialising in live cargo.

The captives were designated as female Peritans.

I'd never come across that species before.

Later, back in my tiny cabin, I'd read up on them, but right now, I didn't have the time for research.

I hijacked a surveillance drone, sending it to follow the shipment. Through the glass top of one pod, I glimpsed a face. Female.

My body went rigid. My fangs ached.

Mine.

Not property. Not prey.

Mate.

My one and only.

I knew it in my bones.

I forced myself to stay still. To keep breathing. If I hadn’t been trained by the IA, I might’ve blown my cover right then. But I couldn’t afford a mistake, even though every scale on my body seemed to itch with the urge to wrap myself around my mate.

She’d been in cryosleep for years. She could wait a few more hours.

I began to code. Line after line. A program to monitor her pod and every mention of her and the other females. Subtle. Hidden. Safe.

I’d see her soon.

I slithered into the storage chamber an hour after my shift, sensors cloaked, scent masked. The air in the room was sharp with frost, humming with the low vibration of cryopods stacked in towering rows.

I gave them only cursory glances. I couldn't help them all. One pod was open and empty. Had the Peritan died? I made a mental note to follow up on this later.

Only one female was important right now. Mine.

Her pod was positioned at the back, buried behind two others that had been shoved in haphazardly. Typical. These game makers didn’t see value in their victims. Just product. Entertainment.

Very few workers ever came down here. A shiver ran over my scales. I wouldn't be able to stay for very long before my muscles turned sluggish and my brain fogged up. I hated the cold. Hated the thought that my mate was kept in such an inhospitable place.

My hearts beat faster the closer I got. I didn't really know what I'd do when I got there.

I'd come up with a hundred different plans and then discarded them again.

Freeing her from the pod was easy. The problem was what to do after.

There was no way of getting her off the station, at least not right now.

I could smuggle her into the next transport ship by changing their inventory system, but I couldn't come with her.

Not until I'd completed my task here. As much as I craved being with my mate, my duty couldn't be ignored.

Despite the urgency, I approached slowly.

This was a special moment. Of all the ways I'd imagined meeting my mate, this wasn't it.

She had no idea I was even here. It felt wrong that I was able to see her, yet she was frozen in time, so deeply unconscious that she wasn't even dreaming.

At least that's what I had been told about cryosleep.

There were no pods suited for nagas, so I had never experienced it myself.

I brushed a speck of dust from the glass window above my mate.

She was so tiny.

The pod was made for aliens of all shapes and sizes, and she looked like barely a child in that metal monstrosity. They hadn't even put a sheet beneath her. Her frail body was lying on nothing but cold titanium.

I focused on her face first. So unlike my own. Her skin had no scales, fur or even hair, except for a few strands of curls the colour of the night sky that were almost entirely hidden under the straps that held her head in place.

Her two eyes were closed, hidden beneath silky lids.

A cute little nose stood above voluptuous lips that I craved to touch.

Her colouring reminded me of the mala trees on my home world.

In the fire season, they bloomed a fierce red that stood in sharp contrast to the soothing browns of their trunks and leaves.

The flowers exuded a slightly euphoric scent, which is why you'd often find young nagas curled around these trees, enjoying a natural high.

I leaned closer.

“Hello, mate,” I whispered.

Her lips didn’t move, but I thought I saw her eyelids twitch. Still under. She wouldn’t wake for a while yet. The pod was keeping her in stasis.

I ran a scan. No major injuries. Cryo-burn at minimal levels. Metabolism intact. Whoever handled her prep had done it right. Rare.

Gently, I rested my hand on the glass above her chest.

“I’ll get you out,” I said. “Not just from this pod. From everything. I promise.”

Her body didn’t stir. But I imagined she heard me anyway.

A strong shiver ran all along my body, reminding me that it was time to go. I'd be back as soon as I could. And I would come up with a plan to save my mate. We'd be together, somewhere far away from Kalumbu, somewhere safe.

I ran a fingertip along the curve of the pod, then forced myself to leave.

I had work to do.

One rotation ago

I watched her every day. She always looked the same, preserved in a single moment by the cryopod.

Her hair didn’t grow, her scale-less skin never changed.

She seemed peaceful, the ghost of a smile playing around her pale lips.

Sometimes I saw the tiniest twitch at the edges of her eyes.

Was she dreaming? I'd been told it was impossible, but she was a rare species. It might be different for her.

Peritans. That's what her kind was called.

I had not found much intel on them. A barely developed species on a backwater planet in a little explored part of the galaxy.

Every time I looked at her, I wondered how she got here.

Peritans had space travel, but they'd barely made it out of their own solar system.

Not far enough to encounter space pirates.

Maybe she'd been abducted from her planet.

It happened. Slavers, crazy scientists, organ traders, other criminals who didn't care about intergalactic law.

On Kalumbu Station, I was surrounded by them. My mate, innocent and beautiful in her eternal sleep, was who kept me going.

I kept my tail extended further around my workstation than I usually would.

If anyone got too close, I’d feel it. But even with that precaution, I forced myself to only look at her every few clicks.

I had work to do, trying to finish the job as fast as possible.

No matter that my bosses refused to listen to me when I told them that I wanted out.

I wasn’t known for listening to authority.

But not much longer and I would have gathered enough evidence.

I’d complete the assignment as agreed, free my mate, and then it was up to them if they wanted to sack me or not.

I had siphoned off enough credits to hidden accounts for my mate and I to live in relative prosperity on some faraway moon where property was still cheap.

But first, I had to free her. I still hadn’t figured out the best way to do so.

My latest idea was to blackmail my employer into helping both of us escape.

Right now, the exit strategy only included me, but if I withheld crucial data from them, they might budge into creating a way for both of us to leave.

But for that to happen, I had to continue to work in the shadows, keeping my head down and staying focused.

If I got distracted, it would take longer for us to escape.

Yet I couldn't help but visit her as often as I dared.

And always, always, she was on my mind, burned into my soul.

One month ago

I stared at the instructions, my hearts beating furiously. The next season of the Trials would include Peritan women as damsels in distress.

They'd been sleeping peacefully for almost two rotations. Three had died during that time because their cryopods failed. I thought the game makers had forgotten about them, but no, they'd simply been biding their time.

Five females had been chosen as the first victims. I compared their identification numbers in the system to the files I'd created on every single female.

I'd started with a file on my mate, then continued recording the others' details.

I would pass the information on to the authorities.

Maybe that could be used to return them to their homes.

Although I wasn't sure they'd want to go home when they found out how long they'd been in cryo.

I dreaded having that conversation with my mate already.

They'd chosen some of the weakest females. Not even one who was a warrior or athlete or survival expert. The game makers clearly didn't want anyone who might stand a chance. And one of the five was my mate.

I was so tempted to change the game makers' instructions.

Every cell in my body screamed at me to protect my mate.

I couldn't let her be sent to the planet's surface.

It was a death sentence. Yet I couldn't risk it.

The game makers had chosen these females.

They might remember who they chose and why. Any changes would be noticed.

I would have to let it come to pass. But that didn't mean I couldn't help. I had done that for other Trial participants, the ones that might stand a chance to win.

Hacking deeper into the data didn't take long.

The first couple was a female called Fay and an orc named Vruhag.

She was a lucky Peritan to have been paired with such a strong warrior species.

I switched to the camera view of his cell.

He was struggling against his restraints, his muscles bulging beneath thick green skin.

He would be a formidable contestant. And with a bit of help, he might keep her alive for long enough.

A few more commands and I'd set myself up as an anonymous sponsor. I paid a ridiculous amount of credits to allow the orc the choice of a weapon. Orcs had natural weaponry, but a good sword or axe would increase his chances. There was nothing I could offer the female. Except...

An idea sprang to my mind. Yes, that could work.

It was time to contact the chii.