by Stella Cassy
Snatched By The Alien Dragon
Galactic Alpha’s Conquest: Book 7
Stella Cassy
Contents
Hey There!
1. Rethryn
2. Talia
3. Rethryn
4. Talia
5. Rethryn
6. Talia
7. Rethryn
8. Talia
9. Rethryn
10. Talia
11. Rethryn
12. Talia
13. Rethryn
14. Talia
15. Rethryn
16. Talia
17. Rethryn
18. Talia
19. Rethryn
20. Talia
21. Rethryn
22. Talia
23. Rethryn
24. Talia
25. Rethryn
26. Talia
27. Rethryn
28. Talia
29. Talia
30. Talia
Free Prequel!
Snatched By The Alien Dragon
Hey There!
Cosmic Collector delves into the past, offering a glimpse of Tarion as a hatchling after the death of his birth mother. Through the alternating perspectives of Tarion's sire, Silea, and Alana, a human woman that captured his heart, readers will gain a deeper understanding of the Hielsrane dragons, from their possessive tendencies to their battle-hardened exteriors.
Click here to download your FREE Prequel, Cosmic Collector, by signing up for Stella Cassy’s Insider Club!
1
Rethryn
Rethryn
Money.
Why did it have to be money?
It wasn’t like I’d been sent to take money, or even earn money. No. They’d sent me to borrow it. Me, a Hielsrane and a royal prince, sent like an inferior trader to go hand outstretched and ask for a loan.
They could have given me a fleet and sent me to raid a space station or to bring fire down upon some bucolic planet and plunder their riches. But no. They gave me a ship — a single, solitary ship with just six members of crew — and sent me off begging.
“Crew one, switch to visual display.”
My first officer, Thrantok, obeyed my command immediately, using the talons of his right hand to stab at his control console.
The large view screen in front of me shifted from its generated map display to a live feed of the view ahead of us. We were now close enough to our destination that it should have been visible.
The screen was resolutely black. I swished my caudal in annoyance. My dragon rumbled inside me, angry.
“Where is it?”
“Sir, it’s… there.” Thrantok gestured to the center of the screen where a small dot glowed. “Shall I magnify?”
“That’s it? That’s Minapolis?” I began to pace up and down the bridge, eyes flicking between Thrantok and the screen.
“Sir.” With quick adjustments, the first officer enlarged the image. “It’s a small planet.”
“That’s no planet. It’s a rock. A rock full of cowardly, good for nothing middlemen.”
Minapolis had developed as a trading hub, its surface covered with a myriad of trading posts, supply stations, auction blocks and all the rest of it. It was not a place for warriors, it was a place for people who thought battle was fought in balance sheets and profit and loss accounts.
“Turn it off. I don’t want to see any more of it until I have to.”
“Sir.” The screen switched back to a visualization of our position in relation to the destination. “I’m picking something up. Another ship is rapidly approaching.”
A flutter ran down my spinal frill as hot blood coursed through it. Would we get to fight? Perhaps we would find some treasure of our own.
“Who is it?”
“Analyzing… Sir, it looks like a Pax patrol ship.” On the screen an image appeared. It was not a live view of the ship as it was too far away, but a generated representation of it based on what my ship’s scanners could detect, correlated with our database of known ship designs.
“Defender class.” My voice rumbled deep. A Pax Defender class patrol ship seriously outmatched the Envoy class scout ship I had been assigned. If it had been one of their own scout ships displayed on the screen, I would have brought them to battle immediately.
But Defender outgunned us ten to one, and our puny weapons systems would do no more than scratch their toughened hull. Actually, they wouldn’t even do that. If we engaged them in combat, we would be destroyed long before we were in range with our own weapons.
“Yes, sir.”
There was only one good thing about my Envoy class ship. Its propulsion system. It could outrun almost anything.
“Sir,” Thrantok said, the barest hint of pitch-change audible in his tone, indicating the worrying possibility that he was nervous. “A message has been received. They’re ordering us to cut our engines and prepare to be boarded.”
“The little fur balls want to take my ship? Well they're certainly welcome to try."
"We are going to fight?"
I paid careful attention to his tone, trying to discover whether there was a hint of fear in it. And if there was, what I was going to do about it. Fortunately for him, I did not detect anything.
"Much as I would like to teach the little furballs a lesson, the ship we have been assigned is woefully lacking in armaments. We shall just toy with them instead. Cut propulsion.”
The first officer did as he was told, and in short order the ship was merely drifting, its momentum still carrying it forward toward our destination, but our velocity no longer increasing.
On the screen an additional marker was added to designate the approaching Pax Defender ship. It was making rapid progress toward our position.
“Sir, they are within weapons range now.”
“Ours or theirs?”
“Theirs.”
“Good.”
The six members of my crew were all assembled on the bridge. They lapsed into silence as we all watched the screen, the dots of our ships rapidly converging.
“They will be upon us in moments. They have now switched to reverse propulsion to slow their approach.”
I rumbled a growl of approval. If I’d been given a real ship, I could have been earning another Pax kill for the Hielsrane right now. But with this puny ship, all I could do was play with them.
“Estimated arrival time fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven…”
Hot breath escaped my lips, the dragon inside me stirring.
“…five, four…”
“Crew One. Full power to propulsion. Get us to Minapolis immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
At the same time Thrantok’s countdown would have reached one, we braced ourselves as the ship’s engines relit and rocketed us forward. Our inertial dampers were overwhelmed by the sudden acceleration, and it caused an exciting jolt as we lurched forward at a sprint.
The Pax ship had larger engines, but they would need a massive distance in which to reach our speed and then begin to catch up. We would be at Minapolis well before then. Over a short distance, the Envoy class ship could beat just about anything.
“We have received another message.”
“Something nice?”
Thrantok looked up at me, his watery orange eyes peering at mine to try and work out whether I was serious.
“It says we will be destroyed.”
I snorted, hot invisible vapor shooting from my nostrils in amusement. “Let them try.”
“Missiles have been launched. Estimated arrival in… five, four…”
“Launch decoys and chaff. Initiate avoidance maneuvers.”
The crew on my bridge knew what to do. The
y’d been trained since the moment they joined the fleet as junior cadets, and operating this ship was fledgling play compared to a real battleship.
“Missile one… destroyed. Missile two… destroyed. One missile remaining. Impact in three… two…”
The ship’s pilot worked the controls in front of him, activating the side thrusters that on larger ships could only be used for docking purposes. On this little tin can of a vessel they could be used to fling it around at jolting trajectories a real ship could only dream of.
There was another lurch as our ship dodged to the side, the maneuvering thrusters having a gratifyingly sudden impact on our direction.
“It passed us. Targeting missile with laser system…”
I watched the first officer slam his fist into the control panel. “Destroyed! We are now out of range of their weapons systems.”
Stretching my wings out, I gave them a small twitch, basking in our success. It was no battle victory, but with what I’d been given it was the best I was going to get.
“Bring us down to Minapolis.”
“Shall I put it on screen? We are much closer now, sir.”
“No.”
I no longer had the desire to see any more of this merchants’ planetoid than I had to. The sooner we were back off this rock and back into space the better.
Minapolis looked a whole lot better when it had been a tiny dot on a black screen than it did up close.
Its sun was too bright, its air lacked sulfur, and it was inhabited entirely by merchants, civil servants, and those who served them both. There was not a warrior I could see among them. Some of them no doubt made passable thieves, though that could hardly be called a saving grace.
At the port authority, a small Nish appeared to register my ship as soon as we descended to the surface.
We stood at the bottom of the gangway which had lowered from our ship, while the civil servant approached holding a handheld electronic device. He walked in a robotic way with lumbering steps and barely had any expression on his face when he presented himself before me.
He did not kneel. He did not bow. He did not crouch, nor did he use any of the other myriad ways different species and races show respect. He didn’t even call me sir, let alone your highness.
When I glanced over my shoulder at my ship again, I could kind of see why. It didn’t look the ship of a prince.
“Who’s the captain?”
Since I was standing at the front of our small assembly, the other six members of my crew several steps behind me, the question was absurd.
“I am.” My voice was low enough that it should have served as ample warning that I did not appreciate the ignorant tone of the worker. “Prince Rethryn of House Hielsrane and captain of this vessel.”
He didn’t even look up. The Nish just shoved the device toward me.
“Put the details in here. Give it back to me when you’re done.”
I growled a deep warning and stretched out my wings, giving them a half-flap that sent a gust of wind over the worker. There is a level of respect that a captain of a Hielsrane Fleet ship and a prince in the royal family deserves. And this little jobsworth was nowhere near it.
“Do you need me to do it for you?” The Nish pulled the data-tracker back toward his chest. “Fine. Prince Rez was it?”
“Rethryn! One more mistake and I’ll unleash the fire of a Drakon upon you. I’ll render the fat from your flesh and char your bones with dragon fire.”
“No, you won’t—”
I flexed out my wings to their full width. My dragon was crying out to burst free. I hadn’t shifted since we began our mission and now, I was aching to unleash the beast within me.
“—This form before you is a remote puppet, sir. My physical form is in my office, over there.” The Nish — or the puppet of one as had now been revealed — stretched out an arm and pointed to a distant building near the horizon. “If you want to roast me, you’ll have to attack a very well-fortified building with significant security forces. After you fail, you will be billed for the damages.”
Breathing out a plume of smoke into the puppet’s face, I itched to try him. Why not soar over there and burn it down? Why not rip the little weakling out of his office and tear him limb from limb in the air, conflagrating the remains before they hit the ground?
Money.
That’s why.
I had a mission to carry out. If I was successful, I would be rewarded with treasure enough to purchase a better mate than the low-ranking female I was currently lined up to join with.
A better mate would mean a better ranking in the line of succession. Move me up. Put me closer to the throne itself. Every rung up the line of succession was one closer to the big chair. It was a distant dream, a long shot, but you don’t go far without taking chances. I was willing to risk it all.
Even if it meant putting up with annoyances like this to complete my mission.
“Don’t you have things to do? You came here for a reason, didn’t you?”
I snatched the device from the puppet’s hand and tossed it to Thrantok. “Deal with that.”
I turned back to the Nish-puppet.
“You better hope I don’t pay your office a visit.”
Expressionless, he just stared straight ahead, waiting for the formalities to be completed.
When Thrantok was done, I shoved the data-tracker back into the Nish-puppet’s hands.
“Welcome to Minapolis.”
My dragon burned inside me, urging me to crisp the dockworker, whether he was just a robot-puppet or not.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
The seven of us stalked our way toward the capital, and Minniku National Holdings, the bank which we had been tasked with asking for a loan.
I flicked my caudal again in irritation. Money.
2
Talia
Talia
When I graduated with a 3.95 GPA (fuck Professor Hoy and Physics 201 for ruining my 4.0) from Princeton, there was definitely a pretty good chance I’d end up working for a bank.
Or being the CEO of one.
Just not at Mister Magoo Holdings on the planet Minapolis.
Actually that isn’t its real name. It’s really called Minniku National Holdings. But the idiots who run it are so short-sighted that I have a little pet name for it that I keep to myself. Not that they’d get it anyway, obviously.
Oh yeah, and I thought I’d have a corner office, a company car — maybe even a driver, and probably a yacht once I got fed up with having to ask Dad whenever I wanted to use his.
But that’s not how it is at Mister Magoo Holdings. I’m not a CEO. I’m not a VP. I’m not even a manager, or analyst or even a fricking bank teller.
I’m a goddamn slave.
Not a wage slave, not a slave for ‘the man’, not a slave to capitalism. A literal slave.
Like, I have an owner, and a collar around my neck and no legal rights. Oh and the pay is what you’d expect — zero. Still, at least they give me some sweet housing. Just kidding. The slave-quarters suck almost as much as the job itself.
Annoyingly, it was a beautiful morning. I say annoying because when you’re kidnapped and enslaved you’re pissed at the world — strike that, pissed at the universe — and when something that is kind of nice occurs, like a beautiful morning, it ruins the whole I hate the universe vibe you’ve got going.
But my second to last morning on Minniku was a beautiful one. I was in the office of Tytrik, my Nortian boss. I mean, owner.
The whole building was made of a local white stone that was somewhat like marble, though with tiny little veins of bright pink running like rivulets throughout every last inch of it.
Up above were countless skylights which let the sunlight pour in, lighting up the walls and soaring columns with a rosy whiteness. The whole building would have been a modern Great Wonder back on Earth due to the sheer beauty of the white-rock walls in the light. Here, it was just a branch of Minniku National Ho
ldings. Oh, and my home. They weren’t big on separating their work and living places, so the office and the lavish living quarters of my boss were all located inside this building.
At least the commute was short.
“Master,” I said, because I wasn’t allowed to call him by his name, “if I may make a small suggestion?”
Tytrik glared at me. He always did when I spoke first. Slaves weren’t supposed to speak to their masters unless they’d been directly addressed, but I had earned just the tiniest smidgen of leeway in that regard. At least when no one else was present in the room.
It wasn’t about to last much longer though.
“What?”
“The Krillian account.” Krillian, a local merchant who specialized in maneuvering thruster parts, had just left the office, and Tytrik had been exceedingly harsh on him.
Tytrik gave me a look that seemed to say this better be good or I’ll beat your ass.
“Instead of cutting him off, why not take a part of his business? Maybe give him the loan he asked for but take thirty percent control. Maybe even forty if you want to be harsh. It’ll get him back on his feet — and we— I mean, Mister Magoo— I mean, Minniku will earn a constant stream of revenue from now until eternity.”
Tytrik stood up from behind his desk and walked over to me. Towering above me, the blue skinned Nortian stared down, a foggy look of incomprehension in his glassy eyes.
“Don’t ever try and talk about business again. You are a slave.”