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

Karree just shook her head. “It isn’t enough. You know
this.”

Quietly, he reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were
small but just as strong as the rest of her. “Please, Karree. At this rate, we
will continue to learn. Even if we continue at a negative like this, we will
manage to last longer than we would have before. We will do this. We will find
a home where we can be accepted. I swore that in my oath when I took command,
didn’t I?”

“You did. So would the commander after you, if only we had
enough time for that.” All the fight was gone from her, her doubts not quelled
but her strength lapsed too much to sustain it any further.

 For now, anyway.

Gently, he patted her shoulder and then released her. “It is
late. Why don’t you get some extra sleep tonight? No, no,” he shushed her,
“it’s something that we all must do at some point or another. I will finish
your nightly rounds myself and brief the morning guards.”

“If you’re sure.”

He bid her farewell, knowing that he’d done the right thing.
If she wasn’t even going to argue with him, she really did need to rest.

When the automatic door swished closed behind her, he
slumped over and put his hands down on the blank part of his console, near the
wheel which controlled the ships directional tailfans.

Honestly, the situation was worse even than Karree knew. The
old commander shared the secret of the ship with him before passing on, and now
it was his alone to bear.

Their food stores were positioned only at the front of the
hold. The same went for the seed stock. The rest of the holds were blank and
empty. Every few days, he accessed them from a secret entrance and pushed the
remnants forward to make it seem as though there was still more in the back.

At this rate, they would starve before the year was out.

And now that the old memories were gone, he was left alone
with this current dilemma all through the rest of the night as he covered
Karree’s guard shift.

At what point did a man responsible for hundreds of lives
break the news that they were all going to die?

One month later and he had the solution to the dilemma. It
came to him one busy evening as his crew rustled around in the lower section of
the command room, far below him. They were running diagnostic, performing the
basics tasks of maintenance that they had either picked up or learned from
programs stocked in the librariums. Most of those actions were just busy work,
not done with any actual accomplishments or purpose in mind, but Eban insisted
that his people were never idle.

Even during their leisurely flights. Just for that purpose,
he had insisted upon requirements for flying that no one would ever have dared
to do before. They included such simple rules that at least two hours a day
must be spent in motion of some kind –not including the mandatory exercise
hours that followed a strict plan- and that an individual must never perch for
longer than 5 minutes during a flight. He knew his people. He knew himself as
well. Idleness was such a trap. They were prone to perching in the rafters,
upon one of the many exercise contraptions he commissioned the building of in
every large hallway, simply watching and observing.

It was the curse of their minds. So much of this was. How
different would thing have been if they a more active species? They would never
know.

But, the solution came to him very suddenly and for no
reason. And it was simply this: he wouldn’t tell them.

When the last meal was eaten, the last sip of water consumed,
he would let all the air out of the ship and suffocate them all. Blissful sleep
would rob them of any agony of starvation and dehydration. It was the only way.

Let them hope until the end.

Bitterness filled his mind suddenly. He turned his head
away, not even certain what emotions played on his face, but certain that he
didn’t want anyone to see them.

“Sir!” a voice came suddenly.

He looked up at the voice coming over the intercom, snapping
out of his thoughts and back to himself. No matter what, he was still the
commander and should act as such. Reaching out, he slapped the intercom button
and spoke into the nearby microphone. “This is Commander Eban speaking. Who’s
calling?”

Karree sounded annoyed. “You know exactly who it is! I’m the
only one allowed on this channel. You said that yourself.”

“Of course,” he said, pretending to be apologetic just to
appease her. “What were you needing, Karree?”

“I think you should come down and see this for yourself.”

Grumbling, he started to stand. “Alright.”

“Hurry,” she urged, and that was what finally reached him.
Hurrying now as she commanded, Eban swung over to the edge of his platform,
grabbed the ladder, and slid down it with his legs free and his hands loosely
gripping the sides. There were some murmurs amongst the gathered crew, as no
one had ever gotten used to the fact that he often went wingless. They thought
he took risks with that ladder but in all honesty, it was a nuisance.

Of course, once upon a time it had been fun, but most fun
things grow old with time.

Landing on the ground, he looked around and quickly pinned
down where Karree stood. She wasn’t at her station closest to his platform. Her
desk and navigation console were empty, the chair tipped over and on the floor.

Instead, she was several decks lower at the single
communications desk. That was normally the station where he placed someone to
punish them, or where he pulled a random name for the day just to have someone
to man it. Honestly, it was a waste of time, resources, and space, but he
couldn’t let anyone see him allow a single thing to be neglected.

Right now however, the lonely little desk was surrounded by
a crowd of crewmembers who had abandoned their own stations. That was shocking,
and sent a tingle of…something…thrumming down his spine. Anticipation or dread,
he did not know, only that it grew stronger when he realized Karree was sitting
in front of the console herself.

Who was supposed to be there today?

He tried and failed to remember. However, the important
thing right now wasn’t the rampant position abandonment, but whatever had
caused his first mate to ask him to hurry.

“I’m here,” he called, and sprinted over to her. The ship’s
low gravity caught his footsteps, turning his strides into leaps. The throng
parted to allow him access, and he glided right through and skidded to a stop
with only a slight bump against the edge of the desk. “What is it?” he asked,
and leaned over Karree’s shoulder.

At first, he saw nothing on the console screen but empty
blips. He didn’t understand and was about to get angry when suddenly, one of
the blips turned green, hung in the balance, and then dropped away again.

And his jaw dropped with it. “By the flighted,” he swore,
and gripped the desk. “A signal? Out here? But, this system is too small to
support life! There are only eight planets here, and a single star.”

Karree shook her head with astonishment, clearly as
surprised as he was. “Technically, there are nine planets. The last one out is
slowly losing its orbit, however. But, this has been occurring on and off for
the past half an hour. I don’t know what to make of it, sir. I thought it might
be interference, or a malfunction, but it’s too regular to be anything but
species-made.”

Eban swore again, and then ran his hands backwards through
his hair with utter disbelief. He could hardly believe this. All the time
they’d spent searching hopelessly through densely-planeted star systems and the
first sign of intelligent life was out here in the midst of nowhere? That was
absurd, and so wonderful that he hardly knew what to do with the emotions
churning in his chest and stomach. And this could not a fluke. Somewhere on one
of these little planets was a civilization intelligent enough to reach out into
the cosmos –and similar enough to the Icari that their signals registered with
the ship! That was even more astonishing.

He struggled to keep his thoughts to himself even though his
mind was racing like crazy. What could this mean for them? Would this species
be friendly? Perhaps, hoping against hope, they might be invited to settle down
and share knowledge. Their lives together would be so beautiful and fruitful,
and all their worries would be gone.

“Can you find it?” he asked. “Pinpoint where it is?”

“I can track it if you go back up and transfer command over
to this console,” Karree breathed, watching the monitor raptly as the green
blip of signal showed up on the screen again. It was the only signal for light
years around, a beacon in the dark and empty. “You still know how to transfer
navigation control, don’t you?”

Some of the others who were gathered laughed nervously,
obviously anticipating one of their commander’s famous outbursts, but he only
grinned widely. Their laughter became genuine as his grin mellowed into a
smile. “I’m the pilot of this ship. There’s quite a bit that I don’t know!”

He left them to their laugher and leapt back up the ladder,
taking the rungs three and four at a time. Once he was back within reach of the
landing, he grabbed it and heaved himself up into a roll that took him all the
way back to his chair. Lurching up, he pulled out the keypad and danced his
fingers in the air over the keys. They lit up beneath his stroking, blue and
then yellow and finally red, and then faded back down.

His screen greyed out, fading into watchfulness as the
navigation transferred over to the very unlikely communications desk. When he
looked over, he saw Karree start to tap coordinates into the screen.

For the first time in forever, the ship filled with whirring
and humming as the engines burst into life. No longer drifting, they headed
across the solar system centered around a young, yellow sun in search of the
answer to their problems.

Chapter Three

Saffron was tending to her garden out on the ranch when the
crash happened. Before that, it was a rather nice day.

Even after that however, it was still a nice day. The crash
didn’t change the clear blue sky or the fall-tinged wind which swirled her
shirt around her. All it changed was her peace of mind. Quite honestly, she had
a great deal of that.

What other women in the world had nine square miles of land
all to themselves before they were even thirty? And to think that she owed all
of it to being a hippy! Well, not really. She really owed it to her mother
being a hippy. Her father was a businessman, but he delighted in her mother’s
apparent strangeness and enthusiasm for things he didn’t understand. Saffron
remembered very fondly the sight of him sitting in his armchair, leaning over
his folded hands as her mother went on and on about connected energies and how
the world ran in a circle. Such things shaped her young mind to an openness
that rivaled even the brightest in the world, but it wasn’t even that which
inspired her so.

No, that was the gardening.

When Saffron was five years old and her family lived in an
apartment in NYC, the only experiences she ever had outside were rare trips to
Central Park. Flowers were a luxury, and trees were giant friends. But, she
mostly knew the grey of city blocks and the wilting shrubberies around her
kindergarten building, so it was quite a surprise on the day when her mother
purchased a windowsill gardening kit.

“Plants inside?” she asked doubtfully, looking up at her
mother as she spooned careful amounts of dirt and seed food into miniscule
pots. “Is that legal?”

That was her favorite phrase of the week, picked up
somewhere she didn’t remember, and it made the adults laugh every single time.
“Of course it is, sweetie,” her mother said, smiling down at her.

And so began her education as the seeds sprouted and began
to grow. They were merely herbs, rosemary and basil and cilantro, but they grew
rapidly and extremely under her mother’s expert guide until they were too large
and growing too fast to be used. As a result, the plants eventually died.

That was two years later however, and around that time
Saffron’s father was given a promotion. They moved, abandoning the city for the
country, and to a small townhouse with enough room for a garden. And so there
was a garden. And so, Saffron was hooked. There was such beauty in plants, such
worth in working the soil, and such absolute satisfaction in consuming what was
grown by your own hands, that she never looked back. Her interests never
wavered. Her life ran on an unwavering path that saw her heading to college to
study plant science.

One thing led to another. Her senior year of college, she
was running some routine tests and stumbled upon a compound that wasn’t in her
textbook. Confused and assuming she’d made a mistake, she saved the sample to
show to her professor.

Only, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it either. He
couldn’t recall such a complicated little link of proteins and DNA in a plant
before, whether it was in the pages of a book or in an actual applied
situation. Several days of searching turned up nothing, by which time the
sample had decayed. Following her train of thought, the professor assumed she
had made a mistake on the assignment and watched her repeat the procedure. And
again, she found the compound.

So began the research, the experiments, the twirling of the
world around her as her professor called in his contacts, and his contacts
called upon theirs. Every day, there were visitors to the lab. The media took
notice. Entire days of classes at the campus were canceled due to traffic and a
sheer amount of travelers for which the college was unprepared.

And still, no one knew what she had found until one day, she
finally managed to extract its basic elements and found it to be the simplest
thing: a natural growth hormone. That was all. It was nothing exciting, and
everyone went away disappointed.

“It must just be a mutation on this strain of samples,” the
professor sighed, fondling the leaves of the lab plant she had been using in
her work. “It’s a shame, really. You were onto something there for a while.”

And it was a mutation, once-occurred and nothing more. Yet,
Saffron couldn’t stop thinking. Even after graduation and acquiring a job as an
agricultural consultant for nearby farms, she buried herself in research at
night to further her education on certain aspects which had been drastically
lacking during her class subjects. Mainly, that was genetic modification. That
wasn’t quite what she had in mind, though. That freak incident had her
thinking. There was such natural potential within plants themselves. Surely she
could somehow harness that to enhance a plant itself? Encourage it to mutate
naturally, to behave in the same way it always did –only faster?

Three years of experimentation, most of it done in secret
upon small areas of her clients’ crops. One day, she added her newest serum to
the earth within which a new crop of corn had just been planted.

The next day, the corn had already sprouted and was pushing
buds up to the surface while the rest of the field remained barren and flat.

Just like that, she had done it. This time however, she let
the world do the heavy work this time. It didn’t take long when all the farms
in the area were suddenly able to produce four different generations of corn in
the same season. Of course, the process left the field devoid of nutrients but
simple rotation solved that problem.