Two years 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. Contrary to 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 to get involved in 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 cousin 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 surprisingly efficient for being so clunky. I swept through it, updating and fixing as I went. I should pitch a complete revamp of Kalumbu’s defences to Briarra at some point. That would give me the opportunity to hide better loopholes than the ones I was currently building. Even so, I was confident none of my colleagues would be able to spot them. They didn’t have the same knack for code as I had.

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 looked at the people at the neighbouring workstations to make sure I wasn’t being watched, then opened a window on the bottom right corner of my screen to check the contents of the shipment. As I’d feared, it was live cargo. More victims for the Trials. The poor fools would have no idea where they were once they woke from cryosleep. Knowing the game makers, they would have been poached from unexplored planets or captured from their ships by pirates. I engaged a subroutine that would document everything I looked at, saving it onto a secret drive that was biolocked to me. Even if I was discovered, nobody would see just what data I’d stolen from the station.

Not that I feared discovery. My colleagues were too stupid to see past the scary persona I played. They saw that I was a naga, glanced at my venomous fangs, and assumed I was the baddest of the bad. A criminal like all of them. They would never suspect that I wasn’t what I seemed.

I scrolled deeper into the cargo’s data. The cryopods had 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.

Hacking into one of the camera drones, I commanded it to follow the cargo transport to its destination. Through the glass at the top of one of the pods, I got a glimpse of one of the females. Only her face, nothing more, but I felt the coils of my body stiffen. The roots of my fangs ached with the need to bite.

Fuck. That female was mine.

Not my property. My mate.

My one and only.

I knew it in my bones.

It took all my willpower not to slither down there to free her this very moment. If I’d been less well-trained by the IGA, I may have made a fatal mistake and exposed the entire operation. But no, I knew better, even though every scale on my body seemed to itch with the urge to wrap myself around my mate.

With another glance at my co-workers to make sure I remained unobserved, I started writing lines upon lines of code, embedding a timer so the programme wouldn’t start until my shift had ended. That way, even if someone discovered what was happening, nobody would suspect me. My mate had been in cryosleep for years. She could wait a few more hours to see me.

***

It was cold in this part of the station. Very few inhabitants 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.

I’d hacked into three workers’ schedules to make sure I wasn’t going to be disturbed. Still, I was as quiet as I possibly could while making my way to the storage room where my mate’s cryopod was kept. 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.

The door slid open with a hiss. A waft of icy air hit me. I shivered again. I had a few clicks at most before my body started shutting down. Fuck. I had to hurry.

Rows upon rows of cryopods lined the walls, each holding a female. I gave them only cursory glances. I couldn’t help them all. My mate’s pod was at the very end, where I’d watched it be stationed through the camera drone. Despite the urgency, I approached slowly. This was a special moment. Of all the ways I’d imagined 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.

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. Rows upon rows of cryopods lined the walls, each holding a female. I gave them only cursory glances. I couldn’t help them all. My mate’s pod was at the very end, where I’d watched it be stationed through the camera drone. Despite the urgency, I approached slowly. This was a special moment. Of all the ways I’d imagined 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.

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 homeworld. 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 excuded a slightly euphoric scent, which is why you’d often find young nagas curled around these trees, getting a natural high.

My gaze swept over the rest of her, but I pulled my attention back to her face. She was naked. As much as I wanted to see all of her, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to take advantage. And once I got us away from Kalumbu Station, I’d have many chances to really admire her body.

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.