Page 4 of The Naga Princess’s Soldier Mate (Serpents of Serant #7)

Reid

Whatever Erish had said to my angel, it had worked. There she was, sitting at my side, and I hadn’t felt this good in ages. My body felt easier, lighter, and some of the constant burning had faded. When I wriggled my toes beneath the furs, it didn’t cause agony to spike up my spine. Progress: good. Pretty soon, I’d be out of this bed and back in fighting shape.

Thoughts and obligations filtered in now that I felt better. How were the others doing at Haven? Had I imagined Corin and Min-Ji at my side throughout some of my illness? And had everyone safely escaped the chamber we’d been locked up in for over a week? Damn, I was behind on everything. I had no clue what was going on, but those worries faded to the back of my mind when I focused on my angel’s blue gaze.

“God, you’re so fucking pretty. How’d you get to be so beautiful? I can’t believe you’re real.” Those words might have been embarrassing as they tumbled from my mouth, but then I recalled that she probably didn’t speak my language. I’d quickly gotten used to the mated males understanding everything back at Haven, thanks to the mate bond. Then we’d gotten the translator updates. Chen and Erish had gone through that procedure, but I couldn’t expect everyone here to have done the same. They had no reason to...did they?

“Can you understand me? Do you have translator implants?” I asked her, but though her gaze never wavered from my face, she did not reply. Her blue eyes were a mystery to me, and I wasn’t used to being unable to read an expression. Still, I was pretty sure she had not understood a word I said. That only deterred me for a moment; my desire to speak to her, to learn about her, was too great to contain.

“I’m Reid,” I said, and I carefully raised my right hand to tap it against my chest. I did not move my left hand, where her fingers rested gently against my wrist. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d break that contact voluntarily. The soft brush of her scales set my blood on fire, her hand warm and proof that she was really here. She would not slip from my grasp this time. “What’s your name, angel?”

She did not answer, but her blue eyes grew wider in her face, her mouth dropping open in a lovely O. The expression made my thoughts spin straight into the gutter, but I wrangled my wayward feelings back under control with a little effort. Everything she did turned me on, and I was grateful the thick furs that covered my lap hid the evidence. The last thing I wanted was to scare her away again. “Okay, angel it is. It suits you. I felt like you were watching over me before, calling me back to the land of the living. The transition has never been this…smooth.”

My mind flicked to the previous times I’d escaped the clutches of death. The labs had been horrible; they had wrenched my body from the jaws of death and forced it back into their molds, reshaping me until I became the ultimate weapon—a weapon that had been matched against many different aliens who should have been too strong for a normal human to face. That included the Naga here, all their warriors big, powerful. They would joke when we faced each other on the training field, but they always slithered away humbled.

The nanobots coursing through my veins made it so. I touched my chest again, rubbing against the triangles and squares that lay just beneath the surface. I could feel them, and they felt… they felt as if I were supposed to control them, but I couldn’t. It was like something blocked me from accessing their power. The foreign Naga nanobots—they’d done too much damage.

I feared that these weird shapes beneath my skin would be the only evidence that remained of the strength the UAR had once bestowed on me. No, not bestowed—cursed, maybe. I hadn’t asked for it, and it hadn’t been a blessing so far—not until I’d gotten to Serant. Even then, it was debatable. I wouldn’t be in this med bay if not for the experiments the UAR had performed on me.

I hadn’t meant for my thoughts to slip like that, to get caught in the memories again. When my angel shifted her small fingers against my wrist, it pulled me back to the present with a rough shock. Right—med bay, Shamans, my angel, and fire in my veins—not all of it related to my sickness. There was a soft tilt to her mouth, almost a smile but not quite. It occurred to me that she looked sad, and that made my chest ache in new ways. She shouldn’t look so sad; she should be smiling fully, with a cute baby in her arms or one of those pets the girls back at Haven went all gaga over. I couldn’t help but think that maybe she looked sad because of me, because I was still hooked up to electrodes and an IV right now while these two competing types of nanobots duked it out inside me.

“I’m going to be okay,” I said to her, my voice rasping roughly in my throat. “Last week, I was comatose; today, I’m here, talking to you, gorgeous. I couldn’t be better.” When I smiled, she smiled back slowly, just the barest tilt of her lips. There was a scar across her face, bisecting the ridge of her eyebrow, crossing her eye, and digging into the upper curve of her cheek with a little divot—a claw mark. There was no mistaking it for anything else.

My brain grew hot thinking about that, but the mark looked old and well-healed. Naga females fought, that’s what all the males at Haven said—which was why they liked the human girls so much. Earth girls enjoyed their protection, being coddled, hugged, loved, and all that. Naga females weren’t supposed to do any of those things, but I was certain my angel was different. Call me stubborn. Heck, that was my middle name. Still, I was certain that she needed me as much as I needed her right now.

“That’s better,” I agreed with her smile. “Fucking beautiful.” A million stupid, lame pickup jokes suddenly tumbled through my mind, one after the other. The kind of stuff I used to hear Harrington spout when we were on leave. Somehow, it always worked too. I doubted it would work on my angel. Besides, she deserved much better than a “Hey, did you fall from heaven?”

It should have been awkward: me lying there in bed, her sitting quietly at my side while I blabbed on. But it was nice to compliment her, to say the things I felt, because she couldn’t understand. She was so sweet, letting me talk while she listened, keeping me company. Earlier, Erish had exhausted me, but sitting with her had the opposite effect. I felt stronger by the minute.

A sound interrupted the quiet in the med bay: noises from outside—voices talking loudly. They sounded male, but I could not hear what they said. I tried to focus my attention, canting my head for a better angle. The voices went from low, distant murmurs to shouts so fast that my head spun and my ears rang. It was as if I’d turned the volume dial from one to a hundred.

“Ouch, fuck! What the hell was that?” I clutched my hands over my ears, but the sound had already faded back to a barely discernible mumble. My angel hadn’t experienced the same thing; she was sitting next to me, one arm raised as if she intended to touch my shoulder but had changed her mind. There was no discomfort in her face, no hint that sound had just blown up for her like it had for me. Great, so now my ears were fucked up, too.

“I’m okay. It’s better now,” I assured her when she kept looking worried. I reached up, caught her floating hand, and boldly pressed it to the steady beat of my heart. “See? Strong as an ox. I’ll be in fighting shape in no time.” I really hoped so; I hated lying in bed all day. The company of my angel helped, but I wanted to be outside again soon. I needed some sun, a good fight, and, most of all, I really wanted to seduce my angel. I couldn’t do that as an invalid—not when I knew she needed my protection.

“I wish you could tell me what’s going on with you. Are you a Shaman? Why are you here? Why don’t you talk to me? And why do you look scared?” She hid it well, but I could sense her unease anyway—not with me, but with something else. When she tilted her head and glanced at the door, I knew it was to check for danger. She did that often, but in a casual, practiced way. I would say like a warrior, but there was something harried about the way she did it.

I knew I’d lost her when my doctor arrived. Erish slithered into the med bay with precision, his yellow-and-orange scales gleaming under the crystals embedded in the ceiling. Though blind, he pretended not to notice my angel as she fled the room. “Your readings look much better, boy,” he said, pressing his leathery, wrinkled hands to the viewscreen. His claws were gnarled and bent, yet still powerful. He seemed to use his hands to read the data, though it wasn’t like braille—there had to be implants or technology involved. I was impressed. But if they could do that, why couldn’t they fix his eyes?

“So, I can go for a stroll now?” I remarked. I felt strong enough for it. The pain in my nerves had faded to a background hum, and my body felt itchy with the desire to move. Mostly, I wanted to race after my angel, find out where she’d gone and why she’d fled. I wanted to know why she was scared and what I could do to protect her.

“Not yet,” Erish laughed. “So impatient. Look here.” He pointed at something on the viewscreen. It looked like nanobots to me, replicating themselves inside my bloodstream. “They are multiplying, but they are not activating, not pushing out the invading nanobots. They should have begun to fight the foreign force, but they are not. Why?” He turned away, his hands working at the medical machines and his mind clearly elsewhere, not expecting a response.

“Those foreign nanobots—they infected me, but they must have affected the others trapped with me at the time. Are they still in their systems, too?” I asked, but my mind was not really on the answer. How distracted was Erish? Could I test my luck this time and slip away? The pull to follow my angel was beginning to feel all-consuming. She needed me, I was sure of it.

“Yes, yes,” he murmured, “they would have healed the others, then deactivated when they had served their purpose. Nothing but little medical helpers. Unlike your nanobots—they do much, much more, don’t they? Clever little buggers.” I muffled a laugh when my implants translated his excited murmurs as ‘buggers’; it fit the older male, but I could never picture a proud warrior like Zathar saying such a thing.

Sliding the furs aside was easy. Erish did not comment on it; maybe he did not even notice. Then I shifted my weight, and he did not stop me with a clever tail when I planted my feet on the ground. The IV was disconnected with a quick yank. The electrodes had no wires, so I simply left them. Erish was still talking to himself when I started walking, his voice fading behind me as I stepped into the corridor beyond the med bay.

This was the first time I’d seen anything beyond the healing chamber, and I was a little stunned to discover I wasn’t inside a cave somewhere. The med bay in Haven looked high-tech, but the hallways beyond were all stone, carved from the mountain. This was different. This was a ship—a spaceship. There was a gentle thrumming beneath my feet as I padded along the hallway barefoot—a working ship with a running engine. How was that possible?

The Naga civilization had tumbled back into the Stone Age after achieving great technological heights. They had relics from the past—working technology—but nothing like this. This was a planet that made ships crash: big, small, it didn’t matter. Like a magnet, it drew them down to the surface for big, fiery explosions. The gangplank of the ship was down, leading to a massive clearing inside a lush purple forest. The sight that greeted me took my breath away.

At least a dozen serpentine-looking shuttles, short-range vessels meant for ship-to-planet travel or planetary travel. This wasn’t a one-off, the ship I was standing in; this was a whole fleet of them. A small fleet made up mostly of small vessels, but there were at least two larger supply ships too. And if I wasn’t mistaken, that larger, dark shape that sat like a hulking shadow to the side was a warship. It wasn’t some peace-loving, healing ship, but a full-blown war vessel with a bristling weapons array, and it looked to be in top condition.

All the ships looked good—until I squinted a little and brought certain things into sharper focus. Hints of rust, a patchwork welding job on a shuttle, and tinkered parts cobbled together to repair an engine compartment. These ships looked good because they were well-maintained, but they were old .

“It’s something to see, isn’t it?” Elder Chen said. He had sidled up to me from my left with a whisper of his scales against the metal hallway flooring. He did not sound surprised to see me or upset that I’d escaped the med bay and was staring at what had to be one of the best-kept secrets on the planet.

“How long ago did it happen?” I asked, referring to whatever calamity had struck Serant and dropped their society back into the Stone Age. At least, most of their society—but clearly a small part of it had managed to cling to the highlights of the past. Chen crossed his arms over his chest and propped himself against the open hatchway next to me in a casual, relaxed pose. His tail curled beneath him, forming a seat for him to sit on comfortably. He wasn’t planning on going anywhere, which meant he was willing to talk.

“Two thousand cycles of our planet,” he said eventually. “Give or take a few years.” I stared at the ships, baffled by the possibility that they could be that old and somehow still function. Technology was good, and it got better at repairing itself the more advanced a species became, but this? How much careful work had gone into maintaining these ships?

My mind flashed to the Revenants that roamed certain parts of Serant—giant, self-thinking warmachines that still attacked any Naga on sight. Or, closer to home, the robot Vrash: a Revenant shaped like a Naga that had tried to take control of Haven and destroy my friends. That particular Revenant was the reason I was here, sick from the invading Naga nanobots he’d pumped like gas into the chamber where we’d been trapped.

“That’s a long time. Do you know what happened?” I asked, tilting my head to glance away from the center of the camp, where most of the activity was happening. I’d seen no sign of blue other than the old Shaman at my side—no sign of my angel. Impatience simmered through me, itching to go find her, certain she was in danger, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was going to be the only time the Shaman was willing to share anything either.

Chen rolled a shoulder and jutted the bone-white horn that grew from his chin forward. It looked like a goatee, but made of sharp bone, and it put my currently rather wild beard growth to shame. I needed a shave and a haircut, but that would have to wait until after I’d rescued my angel. Maybe Chen knew where she was; that was going to be my next question.

The older Shaman shifted forward on his coiled tail to look at the crowd of Naga gathered beneath a central tent in the middle of the encampment of ships. I could see young Naga and old, all talking together and gesturing as they spoke. It was obvious they were excited, but about what? I didn’t dare focus too closely on them, fearing that doing so would cause my hearing to go haywire a second time.

“Several things,” Chen said in a contemplative tone. “This planet, as far as we can tell, has always had a natural type of EM field that fluctuates through the atmosphere. It makes… flight hard, yes?” I tilted my head up to look at the cloudless, violet-purple sky, feeling the warmth of the strange Serant sun as it brushed against my skin. An EM field? It would explain why ships seemed to crash to the Serant surface with alarming frequency—our shuttle included, which had crashed a little over four months ago.

“Our histories indicate war followed our first successful spaceflight and contact with other alien species. Not, mind you, with those other species, but with our own. Then there was a pole shift, and here we are.” He held out his palms to indicate the camp or maybe the planet in general. I tried to think about what that would have entailed; it wasn’t hard. I knew firsthand how devastating war could be, but I didn’t know what a pole shift would do to a civilization. Was that good or bad? Probably bad—it sure sounded bad.

“But you’re not here for a history lesson, are you, boy?” the Shaman added, laugh lines crinkling around his eyes as he pierced me with a sharp blue gaze. He and my angel were both from Thunder Rock, though Shamans seemed to forgo any alliance to their Clan. “You’re looking for Sazzie,” he added when my restless eyes slipped from him back to the crowd of busily and loudly conversing Naga at the center of the camp. She was not there—I knew it. But where else could she have gone?

“So that’s her name, Sazzie?” I said, testing the sound on my tongue. It felt good, sounded even better, and it suited her. Sazzie made her seem sassy, and now I was dying to find out if she would sass back at me if I teased her. “Is she in there? What are they so excited about?” My legs were starting to cramp from standing upright as long as I had, the kind of cramp that came from muscle fatigue. I knew I’d been out awhile, but not that long, had I? If I wanted to find and help my angel, I needed to get a move on before I made a fool of myself.

Chen shook his head, his kind smile growing into an outright grin. “They’re excited because our recon group just got back—they were investigating a major skyship crash from a few days ago.” I processed the information: a skyship crash. Not strange. Also, not a surprise that the Shamans on this planet would keep a handle on those crashes by investigating them. But it really wasn’t important, was it? I needed to find my angel—now.

“Sazzie is not in there,” Chen relented, chuckling outright as I paced forward, down the gangplank. My impatience was obvious, and I didn’t care if it was rude. I turned to him and urged him on with my hand. “She’s gone to meet with her challengers. Go that way. I will stall Erish.” He laughed when I didn’t even thank him but broke into a run. I was glad he was on my side, but none of his words eased my worry.

Ignoring the surprised shouts and gasps as I dashed through the Naga camp, my legs burned and ached at first, but then settled into a familiar, steady rhythm. I was a fast runner, zigzagging around the shuttles and darting into the woods beyond. Even while dreading the onslaught of sound that had occurred in the med bay, I strained my ears, focusing on any sign of Sazzie and those she was supposed to meet. Challengers? What did that mean? This was why she’d been scared earlier, wasn’t it? Not on my watch.