Page 1 of Alien Naga's Prize

JENNA

“Ireally don’t know why you’re doing this to me!” the well-dressed man protests loudly in his nasally voice. “Don’t you knowwho I am?”

“A pain in the proverbial,” my colleague, Dan, mutters under his breath.

I hide a smile.

“If you’ll just step into the scanner,sir”—I put my hand on my holstered weapon with an easy movement—“then you’ll be on your way. Simple.”

The besuited man glares at me, but his shifty eyes flick briefly to where my hand sits on my hip, and with a huff of breath, he steps sideways into the contraband scanner.

It immediately chimes and the doors slide shut, leaving our latest smuggling client making goldfish faces and banging silently on the Perspex.

“You owe me a tenner,” I say to Dan, turning my back on Mr.Do YouKnowWho I Am.

“The machine hasn’t told you what he’s carrying yet,” Dan blusters.

“It’ll be paraxio.” I reference the current drug of choice among the inhabitants of the Star CruiserBritannia. “And he’llhave it up his arse…” The scanner chimes to interrupt me. “Like the broom handle he had stuffed there at birth.”

One of Dan’s hands appears with a crisp ten-pound credit chip clutched between his index finger and thumb.

“Thank you kindly.” I pluck it from his grip and put it in my pocket.

“How the hell did you know, Jenna?” he says as the security team at the rear of the machine extract our man. “I swear you’d make a great smuggler.”

“You don’t rise to the lofty ranks of security officer,Second Classon the S.C.Britanniawithout knowing a thing or two.” I sigh. “Or without having seen contraband stuffed into every orifice known to humankind and some which are entirely new.” I grimace.

Dan laughs. He’s fairly new to the post, having transferred from the admin section a few months ago. He has yet to see it all, but he will.

I have.

And good god, I am bored shitless. Which is why I’m laying bets on what we’re going to find next. It’s not fair to Dan, but it’s alleviating some of the tedium of my job.

And it’s highly illegal, so I should stop, only part of me seems to be on self-destruct.

“McMahon!”

I swivel as Commander Smythe bellows my name across the customs floor for Port No.3.

“Fuck!” I swear at the console and Dan snorts.

“Sir?” I reply smartly.

After all, I need this job, no matter how boring. The alternative is scrubbing the oxygen cleaners or something equally horrible. Not that I haven’t thought about it, but then there is a rumor one of the American ships has someone looking aftera sentient tentacle.

“Do youknowwho that was?” The Commander strides up to me, all five foot three of him…and his mustache.

He’s a shade of puce I’m not keen on. Given the rationing on board the last best hope for England, you wouldn’t have thought there was enough junk food around to send someone to an early heart attack, but somehow Commander Smythe has managed to get rotund to the point I’d worry about his health, if I cared at all.

“Someone smuggling half a pound of paraxio in his colon, sir,” I respond evenly, facing front and not looking at him. “As per orders, he’s been detained, sir.”

“That was St. John Cholmondeley!”

I shrug. “Doesn’t ring a bell, sir.”

To my left, just out of sight, Dan takes in a breath.

“The Prime Minister’s attaché!” the commander says through gritted teeth.

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