Authors: Hana Starr
Eban's Command: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Survival Wars Book 2)
Eban’s Command
By Hana Starr
Copyright
©
2016 by Hana Starr – All
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WARNING: This book contains
sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are used in a
fictitious manner and not to be construed as real. Similarities to real
people, places or events are entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Ever since she was a little girl raised by a hippy mother,
Saffron has had a love of plants and nature. Because of that upbringing, she
became an agricultural scientist and has created a serum that can make plants
grow several times their natural rate.
Eban is the captain of the Icari, a species of humanoid,
low-gravity dwelling aliens. Their planet was doomed years ago and the
survivors have wandered the stars ever since, in search of assistance. When
they happen upon earth and hear broadcasts of a brilliant woman who just might
be able to help, Eban knows that he has to descend and ask her to come with
them.
Life moves in circles, Saffron knows. The time has come for
her to move on, and so she accepts Eban’s offer. But, will she really be able
to assist such a laidback group of aliens? And what will happen when disaster
strikes?
“You’ll be the death of us all,” some wingless fool said.
They laughed at him, and his face darkened with rage in the instant before he
turned around and stormed away, back to the fields he was tending. And the rest
of them? They only gathered their wings tighter around them and admired their
feathers, danced with gravity like there was no tomorrow.
Eban remembered that day well. He’d been but a child on that
day but it was ingrained in his memory. Fresh out of training with his own
new-cast wings hooked over his shoulders, his laughter at the wingless fool
with all the others. What an idiot, that man had been. The work would get done
when it was done, not a moment sooner or later. And in the meantime, what was
another couple hours play?
There was always tomorrow.
Until there wasn’t. That tomorrow never came, because the
attack came in the night. None of them were prepared for it, because the night-guards
were tired after a day of mindless flight. And the shields were down, because
the technicians had taken the day off. And the apprentices were more loyal and
determined to prove themselves than their adult counterparts, but the recent
lack of food made them drowsy and they never woke again. In fact, the farmers
had been abandoning their work for longer and longer breaks in the past month;
truthfully, the only ones who were able to eat were those silly men and women
who removed their wings and spent all day with that fool. And then, they were
worn out from honest work and saw nothing before their deaths.
It was a massacre, just at that foolish man predicted. He
neglected his gift for practicality and was shorn down as surely as the rest of
them, but at least he had been smarter in the end.
His mind wanted to shy away from the memories as Eban stood
there at the helm of his drifting vessel, but there was no pain involved and
the action was merely habit leftover from a time when there
was
a great
deal of pain. Now, there was merely want, a desire spurred on by those events.
And so he let his mind wander after checking all his sensors for perhaps the
fiftieth time that hour to confirm that there was still nothing within reach,
no foreign satellites, no civilizations, no ships whether good or bad. The
window showed only blank darkness, devoid even of stars or planets –or hope.
The night of the attack on Daeden, their home planet, it
wasn’t alarms that woke them –they hadn’t been maintained and were broken. No,
it was the screaming. Eban imagined something else had awoken the screamers. A
clumsy attacker who failed to kill with the first blow, or perhaps it was
someone who had been soundly sleeping but awoke abruptly at the splashing of
blood across the tiled floors. Whatever it was, he knew that he himself had
only awoken when everyone else started screaming.
He sat up, confused and disoriented, rubbing sleep-crusted
drool from the side of his face. What was going on? A party, so late at night?
Was there some sort of celebration he’d forgotten about?
Looking around, Eban saw through the darkness that the other
male children of his age were also stirring and clamoring out of their cots.
Reluctantly, he pushed away his soft blankets and put his feet down on the cold
floor. A shiver ran through him as he turned to the boy next to him, who had
already pulled on his foot-wrappings and was heading towards the door. “What’s
going on?” he asked, confused and tired. He’d been having such a good dream,
too. It was about flying. He always dreamed of flight, of physical feats that
he wasn’t allowed to do yet because of his age, despite his talent. “Why are
people yelling?”
“Dunno,” the other boy muttered, and shoved him away
slightly. Eban didn’t get mad. He knew that was how the others liked to do
things. They liked to tussle and fight and roughhouse in the air, when all he
ever wanted to do was drift, circle, and enjoy himself alone. So, all he did
was shrug and figure that he’d find out soon enough. Surely the adults had to
realize how loud they were being? They wouldn’t be able to get mad at him and
the others for being awake at such an hour when they were the ones making it
impossible to sleep.
He fell into line behind the other boy, and they filtered
out into the hallway. What he saw was total chaos. These nurseries where all
children slept, from baby-age to those lank, scary teens who smoked engine
fuel, all connected from various hallways to a communal area where there were
playrooms and a cafeteria. The entrance of that led out to the rest of the
building where their parents slept. And from there, that was outside.
Over the heads of his brothers, he could see the communal
area from here and it stunned him into stillness and silence for a long moment
as he observed that aforementioned chaos. Never before had he seen so many of
his brothers and sisters in one place all at the time tame, and so evenly
mingled. Normally, the boys and girls kept to their own but now they flooded
the playroom with its chairs, tables, books and cards, pressing up against each
other and they moved and fled. Tall and short, they were all fleeing. Some held
the infants, but still more were shoving to save only themselves.
Eban didn’t understand why they were running or where they
were going. They weren’t screaming, just utterly silent. Then, someone bumped
into him from behind and he whirled around to face the boy, an angry snarl on
the tip of his tongue. Then, he saw the other boy’s eyes.
They were wild and white-rimmed, terrified.
Obviously, Eban was holding up traffic but even more than
that he appeared to be simply missing something.
He turned back again and started hurrying to catch up to the
boys in front of him. He didn’t feel afraid yet, didn’t know what there was to
be afraid of. Daeden was a peaceful planet without even an army since there was
no need. What was going on?
Then, he saw it. And once he saw it, he had no idea why it
had taken him so long to notice.
Smoke. Thick, black, ugly smoke, pouring in from cracks on
the roof that hadn’t been there when he went to bed. And as he saw it, the
smoke flooded in even more because the roof was shriveling, curling up at the
edges like burnt paper. He smelled it now, oily and terribly sweet.
A word of advice from his grandfather flashed through his
mind.
Poison.
Anything so sweet that should not be was probably poison.
Every other child either knew that too, or was following those who did.
Eban put his arms out in front of him and ran faster. He was
smaller than a lot of the others his age, and slid easily through the crowd by
ducking beneath arms and between legs while the others struggled and pressed,
forming an immovable blockage around the only exit. But, he saw his opening
between someone’s feet and dived through it, and rolled to his feet outside
with his mouth pressed into the crook of his arm to keep from breathing in that
poison.
It was night, but the sky was lit with an unholy hail of
fire and flame from strange contraptions in the sky. There was smoke
everywhere, shriveling everything it touched. His fellow Icari ran through the
streets, but some of them were bleeding or turning black and falling apart from
inhaling that poison. Bodies littered the street. Buildings were ablaze, roofs
covered in slick fire that was tinged with strange colors. That was where the
poison came from, Eban realized with horror, and started looking for a clear
place to be. Something was happening, those weird things dropping from the sky
were starting poisonous fires, and it was bad.
This was very bad.
He ran away from the throng of people all crowding together
in the middle of town, shouting and screaming and trying to find their
families. No, he turned east and bolted from there as fast he could, heading
towards the outskirts of the neighborhood. There were only factories and
dangerous metal places in this direction, he knew. They were on fire, but not
as thoroughly as this part of town.
Maybe that’s on purpose,
he thought
half-incoherently, lowering his head into the run.
They knew people lived here,
but not at the factories where they make our wings.
But why? He didn’t know, but when he arrived at the first
paddock, he found that the fence had been blasted open and mangled enough to
allow a small boy to crawl beneath. He did, and then instinctively pressed
himself closer to the ground while crawling. Strange, deep voices started to
call, the odd sky contraptions lowering down and releasing dark, bulky shapes.
In hindsight, it was only the instinct to make himself small
which allowed him to survive. Those attackers were the reason for the screams.
This was the second wave of them, the first of which had started all this.
Eban burrowed deep into the side of the factory, pulling
metal scraps around himself to try and block out the world. And he stayed there
for three days, huddled in on himself, until one of the attackers finally
stumbled upon him.
Blearily, he heard a voice and stirred. It had been a couple
hours since he heard anything at all. The sound of other people started hope in
his fragile, starving heart, and he sat up. “I’m over here!” he cried out,
waving his arms.
Too late, he realized that he hadn’t understood the harsh
language, and that the bulky shapes in the distance were too broad to be of his
own kind. The attackers ran for him, both of them drawing weapons as they ran.
Suddenly, two shots of blue light thrummed through the air.
Eban stared as the attackers stopped and fell, recognizing the energy as being
fired from the guns crafted by his people –though he’d never seen one fired
before.
A strange hand grabbed his wrist, and wrenched him away. His
head snapped around, and he blacked out.
And woke up on this exact ship.
“Sir?” a soft voice said, wrenching him out of his memories.
Eban turned around and saw his first mate. Her eyes were
drawn and weary, but she carried herself with practiced rigor. Ever since he
rose up to command of this ship, he cracked down upon his people. Their
idleness was what cost them their livelihood before. Now, though they were
stuck on this ship and in an eternal limbo, he refused to let them fall into
such habits again.
He glanced away, caught the time out of the corner of his
eye, and nodded. She had just come off of the evening exercise hour, a trying
period which sought to maintain upper arm strength. Later in the night, he
would complete his own hour. After all, a good leader did not ask his people to
do anything that he would not do himself.
“What is it, Karree?” he asked.
Karree came to stand up beside him. He admired her supple
shape for a moment, though she’d grown up too close to him for him to consider
her anything more than a sister. She looked at him too though, and he saw
something shimmer in her eyes that wasn’t quite sisterly. “I was just
thinking,” she started, and then stopped.
“What is it?” he encouraged, and then looked around his
command room. “There’s no one else here, if you just want to talk.”
She immediately relaxed. “Eban, I just don’t know about any
of this. It’s the same old doubts I always have,” she admitted. “I think that
we’re going to die out here.”
He reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and
she leaned in against him. She wore her flight harness, though not the wing
attachments. Her back and shoulders were powerful from constant flights,
comforting and solid against his body. “Karree, we will. We have to, don’t you
know that?”
She sighed, and looked out the dark, empty window. “I know.
And trust me, I let no one else but you know my inner doubts.”
I appreciate that,
he thought, and squeezed her slightly
so she would feel his appreciation. And it was true. Though this capable woman
beside him often suffered from extreme fits of sadness and depression, she
always kept the population uplifted with simple, encouraging words even if she
did not believe them herself.
“Somewhere out there, there has to be a home for us,” he
said roughly.
“And then what?” she countered, eyes blazing. From no one
else would he have taken that tone of voice but this was different. These
feelings needed expression, and so he let her go. “We struggle as it is! We’ve
been struggling ever since we got here, you know that. And how many years ago
was that and we haven’t gotten any better?”
Another truth. Twenty years he and the surviving few hundred
from Daedan had been upon this ship. All they could ever want or need for
survival were here. Food stores, jobs, relaxation, water recycling. This ship
was a secret project, a last resort crafted by the government which lay in
hibernation and nonexistence until the attack. And it was one of those
government people who saved him that day. Only because of them had any of them
survived, but it was true that their idleness in the past did not serve them
well here.
To keep the food stores replenished, the ship was furnished
with plots of land and a complete stock of seeds and animal embryos.
Unfortunately, the animals did not live long and the plants did not grow beyond
seedlings before wilting.
“That isn’t true,” he said. “We’ve learned a bit. Enough to
start replacing what we’ve lost.” But, only through trial and error –and mostly
error.