Eban's Command: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Survival Wars Book 2) (10 page)

The wailing of furious alarms awoke them.

Saffron leapt to her feet and grabbed her clothes, and was
halfway dressed before she even realized what she was doing. Beside her, Eban
was doing the same.

She panted, “What’s going on? What alarm is that?”

“I don’t know,” he growled, his lean face stark with worry.
His hair was irreparably mussed and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes,
visible in the low light of the ship’s early morning hours. “I have not ever
heard it before. Not at all. I have to get to the command room. Come with me.”

“Okay,” Saffron agreed, finishing pulling on her pants. There
was no time to straighten herself or even fasten the pants correctly. Eban was
already hurrying out the doorway. The other doors down the sleeping halls were
opening, other members of the Icari also stumbling out in equal states of
disarray. Many of them were grumbling and incoherent, but the others were
bristling and brandishing far more weapons than they’d had prepared for the
invader attack.

Just seeing the light flash off so many dull kitchen knives
made her heart hurt for them. That attack was such a loss of innocence. The
bakery was even in a current state of hiatus, the family reeling from the loss
of Tullia. The farming plots had also taken a hit; as much as Saffron tried to
grab the reigns, she had no idea how to manage anything and was thoroughly lost
on where anything was or even what Tullia had been doing as far as keeping
track of growth and output. No one seemed to know where her records were, or
even what state they’d been or how they were written so that she could try to
keep a new record until the current ones were found. No, she just had no idea.
It had been just one tragedy after another, and now this?

Someone bumped into her, and she fell back a little bit.
Eban’s head bobbed ahead of her, and she could still see him, so she didn’t really
mind when he disappeared down the halls without her. She wasn’t going to argue
with him at a time like this, but she was still a little hesitant in the back
of her mind about just showing up uninvited.

Then again, she had to remind herself
still
that she
wasn’t just one of them. She was more important than just another average
member of the Icari, and her presence in the command room would only upset
Karree.

Much to her surprise though, she nearly ran into Eban when
she ran out into the atrium. He caught her in his arms, scanning her up and
down very quickly. “Are you alright?” he asked briskly. “Stay with me, okay?”

She was about to answer but all he did was snag her hand and
start off again. He was much faster than her. If they had been back on earth,
she would have fallen flat on her face but in this low gravity, her feet glided
out from underneath her and he could very literally just tow her around behind
him as much as he wanted.

Once they reached the command room though, he dropped her
hand and ran ahead to have the doors open automatically so they wouldn’t both
have to pause and wait. “What’s going on?” he called, visibly forcing himself
to be their calm commander and not a distressed member of society.

Karree dashed up, her mouth open, but she clamped it shut
when she saw Saffron hanging back. She straightened up and her whole demeanor
changed, stiffening and closing down. “What’s she doing here?”

“Karree!” Eban reprimanded her, clenching his fists. Other
than a sharp voice and those tensed fingers, he gave no sign of anger but it
didn’t take a professional mindreader to pick up on their bodily cues. They’d
had quite the altercation, probably about his relationship status, and Saffron
wanted no part of it so she just stayed where she was in the doorway. Behind
her, the motion-activated door was still open and she was half a mind to escape
right back through it to see if she could help calm down the general
population. Even with so much distance between this room at the front of the
ship and the middle atrium, she could hear them. Such terrible weariness even
in their fear…

If looks could kill, Saffron would have dropped dead when
Karree pierced her through with a stare. As much as she didn’t want to get
involved, Saffron just looked back. She tried to keep her expression neutral,
even though she was distinctly aware that the other woman was about a million
times stronger and perfectly capable of snapping her neck, or shooting her, or
stabbing her with that knife at her belt…

Eban stepped between them, his head lowered like a bull
about to charge. “That’s enough,” he said angrily. “She is here because I trust
her. Everyone here is, and I don’t see you trying to threaten Garem. Focus and
we can all discuss this at a later point in time.”

Please, no. Let’s not.

“Fine,” Karree snapped. “And for your information, I have no
idea what’s wrong. By the flight, why is everything falling apart at once?”

This was the only time in Saffron’s life that she refrained
from launching into her customary speech about everything happening as it was
supposed to. Tullia had accepted it, but this was neither the time or place
–and definitely not the right person- to be explaining her philosophy to.

“That’s what we need to figure out,” Eban said calmly. “Why
can’t we see what’s wrong?”

“Are you kidding me?” Karree said, incredulous. “Were you
simply not present for the explosions? We had only just begun to
clean,
much
less repair! Half of our monitors are out of commission. And only a few of the
screens that will show up are even capable of registering the system.”

“So, we follow protocol,” Eban replied, still utterly calm
in this time of emergency.

Karree shook her head. “What protocol, Eban? We don’t have
any procedure for this.”

“So we treat this like any other disaster!” he insisted. “I
don’t care how you do it but summon all active, resting, and volunteer members
of security for crowd control. Have them keep all members of the Icari within
the center of the atrium. Block all halls and exits. No one must fly.”

“Got it,” she said. “After I dispatch them?”

“Then come back,” he growled, and then pointed past Saffron.
“Go!”

The other woman raced past, head down and face grim with
determination. She didn’t even look up or pay any attention to Saffron at all
as she went by.

“Saffron,” Garem called. “Come over here!”

Eban gestured for her to go, and then he turned and dashed
up his ladder. With nothing else to do, she gladly grabbed onto a chance to
have something to do and so went straight over to him. “What is it?”

He thrust a soft, supple brush into her hand. “Be careful.
Help me start clearing some of this ash away from the uncleared monitors. The
ash is poisonous though, so try not to breathe in any of it.”

Only a few minutes after that, her lungs lightly aching but
not at any dangerous sort of level –or so she grimly assumed, anyway- there
came a call from high up above. It was Eban, his face tortured and pale. “I
found the problem.”

Saffron tried to catch his eyes for moral support but he
wouldn’t look at her. He wasn’t looking directly at anyone, just gazing out
over her head.

“Well?” someone called, just as Karree entered. The first
mate noticed what was going on and stood stock-still, poised and waiting like
all the rest to hear what their beloved commander had found.

“It was our sensors that have sustained damage. They are
offline, completely in-operational. Basically, the whole ship is down. We
didn’t notice the change in engines, because we normally drift anyway.”

“What does this mean for the ship?” Karree called up. “Can
we mend it?”

Eban looked stricken, like his mind had broken even worse
than it had at the arrival of the invaders. “We can, but we cannot fix
the…collateral damage. Without our sensors, we were incapable of detecting a
majority of major problems. Ah, that is…to say…”

Oh, no.

“I managed to access our systems through a side channel,
rather than taking a direct route through the sensors. I checked all of them.
It isn’t good. Our fuel ports were damaged and leaking this whole time. That
is…we have none left. Our backup stores are safe but the energy the ship takes
up just operating the lights will quickly drain that. That means…eventual
darkness. No water, unless we fetch it by hand from the well store. Our air
system will eventually fail.”

His voice broke, and that was the end of it. Everyone sat in
stunned silence, taking the information in and mulling it over. Saffron looked
around, stunned and disbelieving, and noticed again that strange bitter
weariness all around the room. It was almost as though everyone had already
accepted this fate, had anticipated it coming long, long ago.

“What are we going to do? We can’t give up!”

Everyone turned to look at her. She tucked her head down,
hiding shyly, but she could still feel them watching her.

“What do we do?” Karree laughed hysterically, and then burst
into tears. She put her face in her hands. “We wait to die!”

Eban clapped his hand, bringing attention back up to him. “Those
of you who have working monitors, bring your system’s operation down to the
lowest level possible. If it isn’t part of mandatory life-support, shut it down
completely. And everyone must turn off their monitors afterward. There must be
no unnecessary waste.”

After that, silence fell again. No one broke it, but for
labored breathing.

Saffron kept watching Eban. As soon as the attention turned
away from him, he sank down on his chair heavily and put his face in his hands.

Her heart snapped in half like a stressed rubber band as she
realized what this meant for him. Once upon a time, he had been so worried
about how he would tell his people they were running out of time.

That was his reality, now. The public awaited reassurance
out there and he was doomed to bring them death.

Her knees gave out. Dropping down to the cold, hard floor,
she put her face in her hands and wept for everything she’d come to know and
was now about to lose.

With the entire Icari ship running in a state of perpetual
dusk, it took two months for the water system to shut off. That was manageable,
though incredibly inconvenient. The ship was rather flat, so the water stores
were wider and flatter in the belly of the hold than it was deep, but it was
still an annoyance for everyone and made keeping the farming plots watered
correctly a near impossibility.

On the plus side, Saffron discovered Tullia’s management
notes. Unfortunately, the lights were so dim now that the plants all died
anyway. There was no hope of even saving them.

The first of the elders began to die, though not even an
autopsy at the medical bay could determine why. Something in the air, the food?
Was it simply old age, an illness, or depression? No one knew, but by the end
of those two months there was only a single mated couple left alive.

At the third month, the lights went out entirely. A full day
of darkness saw all their eyes adjusted but no one was happy about it. It
signaled the end of unnecessary movement, and the halt of any number of
dangerous, manual jobs which required a clear view to be able to accomplish.

Eban tried valiantly to rouse his Icari to movement, to keep
them healthy, but now many of them simply sat in one spot and prepared to die.
Their slender frames thinned to skeletal levels.

During the fourth month, a child died. They went for a
flight in the dark, missed a leap from one perch to another, and fell from the
rafters. That saw the installation of a new rule that no one should fly at the
risk of severe punishment.

When Eban announced that, the mother of the dead child began
to weep and scream. “Damn you!” she howled, clawing at her own face as her
husband leapt forward to restrain her. “Damn you and that clipped human!
Punishment? What punishment could be worse than this?”

As she was pulled away and shushed into tormented silence,
Saffron knew that she was right but Eban was doing his best to act as though
nothing had changed. For once, it was he that was resisting change and his
people who had accepted it.

As far as she knew, they were still mated. He slept in her
bed most nights, though she didn’t know where he was on the nights that he
didn’t. Probably wandering around, weeping in secret as he so often did now.
Either way, she had lost all her appetite for sex and so had he.

Six months, two weeks, and six days, the food ran out.

“I give up,” Eban whispered before he announced it, leaning
his head dejectedly against Saffron before heading out of the command room to
stand in the entrance of the hallway right where it joined at the atrium.

“My people,” he said blandly, not bothering to call out.
They would spread the news, and Saffron knew with a pang that her mate hadn’t
eaten in several days. He was already weakening, already starving.

I did the same thing, though. We’ll all die together.

“There is nothing more to eat. I’m sorry. Say your prayers
and think of home.”

There was no response to him, no outrage. Everyone had
already accepted their fate. No one was even moving, their heads bowed. The
dead could not be separated from the alive in that moment, and so it would be
for good in only another week or two.

“Saffron?” Eban whispered.

She turned to face him. His arms wrapped around her, holding
her against his hollow chest as his heart struggled to continue. “Yes, my
love?” she whispered back.

He gave a short, watery bark of laughter. “I suppose I never
did get to tell you that I love you.”

“You didn’t have to. I knew.”

They kissed, but there was no comfort in it. Her whole body
felt so empty that she couldn’t register any sensation or emotion outside of
hunger.

“I never thought I would actually have to ask this, but now
the time is upon us, isn’t it?” Eban took her hands. “Where would you wish to
die with me, Saffron? Where shall it be?”

She didn’t even have to think about her answer.

It took the last of her strength to climb Eban’s ladder. The
gravity was going, and the air would soon follow. They curled against each
other, their lips touching as they lay in each other’s arms. Saffron was
shivering, or was that Eban? It was impossible to tell anymore.

And there was no telling how much time passed. Consciousness
fluttered in and out of her mind. She thought she heard explosions at one
point, but that might have been just a memory. And she thought that she fell
and hit something hard, but it might have just been a dream of that fall she
took –a version where Eban couldn’t save her and she hit the ground. If there
were voices and crashes, if the dark world spun dizzily in front of her eyes,
and if her whole body started to scream with pain, she thought it was probably just
part of dying.

Her circle was coming to its close, her life about to end.
Her whole world, narrowed down to darkness and gasping breath and aching jabs
of agony at her spine.

She hadn’t often thought of dying, not even when her parents
passed away, and she hadn’t the mental powers to spare for it now.

“Saffron?”

“Eban.”

Her lips moved, shaping the name of the commander whom she
loved, but her eyes were closed and she couldn’t hold on any longer.