Page 1 of Serpents of the Night

Chapter 1

Lori Straford, formerly citizen U2386-99-02 of the pleasure arts strata, stared out at the reddish-brown rock of the desert landscape outside of the colony dome. From her vantage point, M285 didn’t look as if it were capable of supporting life. It looked exactly like what Darvel Exploratory Corporation had presented it as—a mineral-rich but otherwise dead lump of rock. Few people stuck within Raza colony or in M285’s other colonies celebrated the fact that the planet had a thriving ecosystem, even if they had to admit that with supplies from Earth being few and far between, starvation might have been a real concern if Darvel had been right.

Although Darvel had officially pulled out of M285—Seshana—two months ago by decree from Earth and the ruling body of the Senthal Planetary Coalition, they left behind the colony of miners forever changed by their exposure to the planet’s atmosphere. Humans, largely made of the undesirable non-gratas class—the significantly large body of non-citizens who made up the serving and laboring class—and a coalition of aliens employed by the company had been deceived and then abandoned. Their fates left to the mercy of an unfamiliar world and the indigenous Seshanamitesh who dwelled there.

For the miners employed by the corporation, these too had been a complete surprise. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone living on M285. Then again, the air wasn’t supposed to contain hazards that would biochemically change those who were exposed to it either. It was tragically irreversible and not even the Coalition could do anything to bring them home. It was a betrayal felt deeply among all those employed and yet it did little to bridge the social gap between the races trapped there.

Tensions were high due to the fact that non-gratas had an overwhelmingly large number of human females in ratio to their male counterparts—mostly due to the fact that the mining was far less hazardous and more suitable to put their contracted women working for them versus some of the more deadly environments where they tended to stack men in higher numbers. This resulted in an extreme gender imbalance that was creating a whole lot of drama between the women fighting over the men, and additional tensions among those aliens that were employed by Darvel who were predominantly male and isolated from females in a mixed group of miners that didn’t... well... mix.

Sex with alien species was not only taboo on Earth but was also illegal. Even on a distant world, disconnected from Earth, the impact of that was being felt in Raza and other colonies on the planet. While some of the alien members of their mining outfit were ambivalent to the situation, those who desired to find a mate among the women found themselves clashing with human men who thought to protect the women within their outfit by deterring advances and setting up segregation perimeters.

The entire situation disgusted Lori, and it was one with which Eddie, her friend and now de facto leader of their little ragtag colony, was in a constant battle over. And last she’d heard they weren’t getting anywhere. Fights were breaking out regularly and the med unit was kept busy repairing minor injuries on a nearly daily basis. She wanted to go find the instigators and slap some sense into them, but the last time she’d threatened to do that, Slengral threatened to keep her nesting with him until she revised her violence-seeking impulses while she was in such a delicate condition.

Lori snorted and rubbed her hand over her small, rounded belly. She was pretty sure that the little one could take it. Seshanamitesh were nothing but tough, and it wasn’t like she was planning on jumping into a real fight. She would happily slap and duck behind Vi if necessary. If anything, it could do wonders for her blood pressure with the way the idiots were pissing her off lately. It didn’t help that many of the human men were taking full advantage of the situation and playing the women stationed there to the point of practically collecting them. It was no wonder women were fighting with each other and hostilities between the males were running high!

Throwing the Seshanamitesh males who had come up from the caverns and claimed the Raza colony into the mix was like tossing a lit perma-match upon a stack of dynamite and praying that it didn’t send them all to hell and back. The Seshanamitesh didn’t give a single fuck about attempts at segregation and weren’t exactly subtle about their interest in courting potential mates. That, paired with the fact that there were quite a few happy human mates among their ranks, and the males’ tendency to mate with women in small groups to better protect them, had lured several women into mating with anywhere from three to five males, which didn’t sit well with any of the male miners.

Then there was the matter of the ruling Seshanamitesh females who ruled in cities, or shinaras, deep within the planet Seshana. Raza colony had little communication from those of the nearest shinara, Aglatha shinara, except for a few brief and tersely worded messages regarding the males missing from the upper caverns of the Aglatha cave system and a tenuous agreement of restricted areas that had been hammered out. They were living in a silent, and largely invisible, truce between their species with minimal contact with the females—until now.

Lori rubbed her belly again and grimaced. It was a damn mess.

“You’re brooding,” Vi called over lazily from where she was sprawled over the couch eating a cluster of the grape-like pinchi berries that grew in the upper caverns. “Brooding is a terrible look for a pregnant woman. You look miserable enough without it.”

Turning from the window, Lori rolled her eyes at her friend. “I thought everyone was supposed to tell pregnant women how radiant and glowing they looked?”

Vi snorted and popped another berry into her mouth. “Nah, that’s the lie they tell women so that we will be eager to pop out a little goblin when they decide to finally grant us a license. You know—whenever the ranks are thinned down enough to where they think they need to breed up a bit. Or however it works for you citizens,” she added with an absent roll of her hand in the air. “It sells better than you look sweaty, constipated, and permanently exhausted. Speaking of which—sit down. Just watching you standing over there like that is making me tired, and I’m not the one cooking a giant alien inside of me.”

Lori’s lips quirked but she headed over to one of the sofas arranged in a U-shaped formation around a low table and sat gratefully. “I’m not that big, Vi. This is still very early into my pregnancy.”

“Fuck,” the other woman replied with a shudder. “No thanks. If that is the early stage of spawning, I want none of it.”

Giving her friend an amused look, Lori sank back comfortably into the couch. “Have you given any more thought to Eddie’s offer?”

Vi made a face. “Don’t remind me. I don’t see why I have to step up to co-command. A fucking thankless job if I’ve ever heard of one.”

Lori smiled sympathetically. “Trust me—I know. Unfortunately, the Seshanamitesh won’t listen to a man, and we both know that most of the miners here are sure as hell not going to listen to me. Besides, you like being in charge and you know it. You have not only the experience necessary but the drive to make this a win-win situation for everyone. And I, meanwhile will be freed up to focus on other things.”

“Other things,” the other woman scoffed humorously. “I certainly wouldn’t mind having that distraction.”

Lori’s eyebrow raised. “I was pretty sure I heard that you’ve had plenty of offers.”

“Yeah, but I’m holding out for a certain one,” she admitted with a shameless grin.

Lori’s eyebrows rose. “You are?”

Vi nodded, popping another pinchi berry into her mouth. “Yep. He’s been playing hard to get ever since I told him to quit running everyone off, but Ehsash will eventually come around to my way of thinking. I have a certain animal magnetism.”

She certainly had something because she drew looks from quite a few people and turned down nearly as many offers... among them Ehsash as far as Lori had been told. She gave her friend a perplexed look. “But I thought Ehsash had already approached you. Kehtal told me that you refused him.”

“I refused to mate with him,” Vi corrected. “I’m not signing on to mate with the first dick that swings in my direction. I’m only tying myself to a very special dick attached to a very special person I can’t live without and can realistically promise not to murder in his sleep. That, at minimum, requires a trial period just to be certain.”

“Oh.” Lori bit back a smile. She certainly couldn’t blame her, but the Seshanamitesh weren’t human and came from a vastly different culture. A very strongly matriarchal one at that. “And you don’t think that Ehsash won’t take your refusal to heart?”

“I have my ways,” Vi replied vaguely.

“By that she means to say that she is attempting to tempt him into disregarding his own interests, and engage with her without giving him the opportunity to enjoy her permission for the right of capture or the comforts of the nest,” Slengral corrected as he undulated through the doorway, his red gaze landing on Vi in a look of annoyance.

Vi sighed heavily and gave him an exasperated look. “I’m not saying a hard no to all of that. But a male can certainly tap the brakes just a little so I can enjoy the test drive before making a decision. I’ve driven terrain vehicles with more give and tractability than him.”

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