Eban's Command: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Survival Wars Book 2) (7 page)

All the while, the day continued to end. As the lights grew
darker, the participants began to sink lower and alight back on the ground.
Adults filtered away, toting small, yawning children with them.

Her eyes never left Eban though, and she quickly noticed
that he was coming back.

Dropping down neatly beside her without a sound, he reached
out and motioned around. “How did you like it?”

“It was beautiful,” she whispered, surprising herself with a
few tears in her eyes.

“It was like this every day back on Daeden,” Eban said, and
folded his wings with a few neat motions, like a preening falcon. “But, times
change. Yet have you ever noticed that the more things change, the more they
stay the same?”

“I guess I have,” she agreed. His palm was burning hers, her
legs starting to tremble at his touch. He was so close and smelled so good that
she was having trouble thinking. And her tiredness didn’t help. She’d been able
to ignore it for awhile while she was distracted but now that everyone was
heading to bed, she wanted nothing more than to do the same for herself.

When she tried to move away, he kept her in place and looked
right into her eyes. “Saffron? I should like to join you tonight.”

“What?” her mouth fell open in shock. She could hardly
comprehend what he just said, it was so much what she had been wanting all this
time. And yet, now she didn’t think that she could! He was too busy. He had
such a duty to perform and such a following to keep happy, there was no way he
could deal with all that while trying to have a relationship with her. Even if
this was just a one-time offer, she had no idea how doing that would affect his
status.

She couldn’t risk everything he’d worked for, everything
he’d struggled to accomplish. No, daydreams would just be daydreams. There was
no way around it.

Every word from then on felt like she was being torn in
half. “Oh, I’m not sure.” She hesitated, swallowing hard. “I think I just want
to go to bed.”

With any luck, he would just assume that she was being
naïve. The look in his eyes said that wasn’t going to be it, however. He
dropped her hand and back away, his wings jostling against his arms. Every part
of him seemed to bristle with hurt. “Oh. Yes, I see. That’s fine, then. I
wouldn’t wish to keep you awake.” The rejection in his voice was so painful,
each syllable a stab to the heart, and she immediately changed her mind just so
he wouldn’t have to hurt.

But by the time she finished saying, “Wait!” he had shot up
into the sky and was gone.

Some of the Icari standing nearby turned to look at her with
their eyebrows furrowed, but she ignored them. Lowering her head, she trudged
to her room alone.

Eban seemed to have decided it was for the best that both of
them pretended that his disastrous attempt at flirting never happened. While it
hurt to have to pretend, to basically lie to him, that she had no interest,
Saffron knew
that
was really for the best.

In any case, she threw herself as deep into her work as she
could. Deeper than ever before. She wrote out lists of new instructions and
heavily discussed them with the young woman in charge of the bakery. She was
all for it, as Eban had said she would be.

“Now, you’re sure that all this is going to make everything
better?” She blinked up at Saffron from beneath a furrowed forehead, strands of
scarlet hair dangling down in her eyes.

Saffron nodded very eagerly. “It will, pretty quickly. I can
work with you on that, if you want.”

The girl was practically head over heels at that. “You will?
Fantastic!”

From then on, for about a week, she divided her time between
taking samples and teaching the Icari how to accomplish their actual physical
work. Much to her surprise, they caught on pretty quickly and treated her with
a lot of respect. That was surprising, seeing as she wasn’t anyone in
particular, but then she had to remind herself that she wasn’t just another
person to them. She was meant to be their savior.

“I was right after all,” she murmured, changing slides on
her microscope. For the past couple hours, she’d been studying very intently
the inner workings of the cells in order to figure out how to draw out their
full potential. The base of the first round of serum was boiling in a test
tube; much to her delight, she’d discovered that they had the chemicals
necessary and in a very large quantity. All that remained for her to do, once
everything else was just right, was add in a few tweaks to the formula that
would send the plant growth spiraling. In order for her to do that, she had to
know more about the structure.

But, now that she’d broken her concentration, she sat back
and let her thoughts wander a little while adjusting the new slide’s position.
She was important, too. Right now, she was more important than she’d ever been
back on earth. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by all this when
she was trying to make such a big change for people so resistant to changes.

And that was an interesting contradiction right there.
Against her will, her mind wandered away even further. The Icari were so
accepting of small changes and differences amongst their people, but so
stubborn and resistant to something like an addition to daily schedules. She
supposed that made them like most other living organisms, really.

Someone knocked at her lab door. Annoyed at being interrupted
in the middle of the day, she took her time with answering. Eventually though,
when the knock came again, she called out, “What is it?”

The door burst open and the girl in charge of the bakery
practically fell inside, panting and breathless.

“Tullia!” Saffron exclaimed, and ran to catch her.

The young woman was already up on her feet though, and
Saffron realized that she wasn’t terrified. Far from it, she was shaking with
excitement and gesturing wildly. Her wings twisted and fluttered with every motion
of her arms, rising high over her head. “You have to come quickly!” she blurted
out.

“What is it?”

“Eban sent someone to find me, so I could find you. We have
found a planet! The gravity appears to be acceptable, from our initial tests.
We need you present when we send a receptacle down to collect samples. Please
come?”

There was no way she was ever going to say no, so she
hurriedly followed Tullia out down the hall and into the body of the ship. Once
they were there, the girl set off into flight but she was admirably not
distracted by any of the perches or obstacles. Even so, Saffron didn’t have any
problem tracking her. Even if she had, she knew how to find her way to most of
the calandmarks of the ship by now. She didn’t say that out loud though,
because that would be rude.

Eban was waiting for her, poised on his ladder up in the
command room. As she went inside, he slid down a few feet to the bottom to
greet her. “Hello, Saffron.”

There was no amount of familiarity in his voice, which hurt,
but was to be expected. It wouldn’t stop her from giving him the same treatment
right back, though. “Hello, Eban.”

He blinked slowly, expression unreadable. “That will be all,
Tullia.”  When they were alone again, he turned to her and said, “Navigation
has picked up a planet out here in this system that might be habitable. Those
are only preliminary readings based on how our signals react when sent near it.
We would need to get closer to even be able to tell if the air breathable and
the ground workable. The first part can be handled by my own people. The second
part, is where we need your help.”

“I was told something about a sample receptacle?” she asked,
churning her legs through t try and keep up with him as he briskly led her
through a maze of busy workers all tapping at a multitude of screens.

“Yes. It is a detachable miniature pod with an appendage
attachment. Remote-flight-controlled, of course.” He stopped by someone who
only glanced at them before focusing on their screen again. The screen showed a
capsule which looked very much like the one Eban landed on earth in, only with
seven attached flasks to show how small it truly was. It also wore a flight
harness and a pair of green wings, which she found to be somehow adorable. “We
don’t have the energy to waste on second chances. We can spare the flight down
and the flight back up, with enough room for seven samples of whatever you
find. Garem here is the pilot. When we are in position, I will have the craft’s
captured images shone up on the front screen. Guide him.”

“Okay,” she agreed, and he moved away with authority in his
steps. She spared his butt a glance or two before paying attention to the shy
Icari known as Garem, who immediately because submissive and timid despite the
fact that she tried to be gentle when talking to him. If she knew how to
control his panels and everything, she had no doubts that he would hand it
right over to let her do whatever she wanted.

Garem was simply going through the systematics of the little
sample receptacle, checking it over with an extensive list. That wasn’t her
area of expertise at all and she let her gaze wander to the big front window
screen, which was showing the vastness of space and a miniscule amount of
stars.

Are they sure there’s a planet out there?

Then, a few minutes later, she saw it. At first, it looked
like nothing but a humdrum little asteroid. And a bit after that, it looked
like a slightly larger asteroid. The surface was lumpy and misshapen,
surrounded by bits and pieces of broken stones. Light was shining along one
edge, pale from an elder star. Her excitement faded a little bit as she scanned
what she would see, which was not much at all. A vast expanse of solid brown,
covered in craters and mounds. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t a lick of
earth to be found down there and it was consequently of no use to them.

The engines dropped down to just a whisper. Eban’s back,
which was devoid of wings now, rippled as he pulled at the console which
controlled the throttle. They weren’t approaching quite as swiftly now, which
meant as they were snagged in by the little planet’s gravitational pull that
they just began to drift and turn very slowly.

Beside Saffron, Garem finished his preparations. “We’re
ready to go, sir,” he said briskly.

Way down in front, standing amidst a group of workers she’d
been observing, Karree looked up at her commander. Saffron caught the
admiration in her gaze and bristled, but she kept her feeling to herself as the
first mate called out, “Everything’s ready to go whenever you are, Eban.”

“Elevation dropping at the expected rate,” someone else
called out.

The answer came swiftly, “Stabilizing for lock-on and entry
preparation.”

Garem looked up. His voice rang out, startlingly sweet and
pure in her ear. “Receptacle prepped. Drop into position?”

There was silence as Eban stared out at the planet. His
chest heaved, his eyes wide, and then he went still and closed his eyes. When
he opened them again, the mask of calm was back over his face. “Drop.”

“Drop is a go,” Garem echoed, and hit a button on his
screen. Immediately, the view on the window swapped, becoming slightly less
clear but growing in detail as the receptacle dropped and began to glide down.

Meanwhile, Karree was working her way through the rows and
looking over shoulders. “Gravity is a bit high but not out of bounds. Results
on air are coming back. Temperature is higher than we prefer.”

“Out of bounds?” Eban asked. “Should we pull up?”

Garem’s hand adjusted, bringing the receptacle to a halt. It
hovered, bird’s eye focusing on the ground below. With the planet so close now,
they could only see part of it.

Karree checked something, and then shook her head.
“Everything is workable, so far. Garem, adjust your descent a bit though. 4.3%
higher gravity levels than we’re accustomed to.”

“Got it,” he said immediately, sounding a lot less shy why
focused on his work.

“Wait,” Saffron said, trying to follow all of this. “Why?”

Karree glanced at her with an unreadable expression. The
first mate didn’t look very impressed with the new human on board. “Higher
gravity, more pull. More pull, more friction. The last thing I want is for our
only sample-bearing vehicle to catch on fire.”

Her face burning was embarrassment at having missed
something so obvious, Saffron lowered her head. “Right. Got it.”

She doesn’t seem to like me much. I guess she knows
competition when she sees it.
She sighed inwardly.
Not that I’m much
competition.

Even though Garem was supposed to be lowering the speed of
his descent, Saffron could hardly tell. The atmosphere whirled by in a blur,
sparks flashing, dust streaking by. The receptacle trembled, buffeted by the
wind and turbulence of its fall. Then, suddenly, there was a flash of green as
the wings were commended to snap out and the screen went still but for tiny
bobs. Everything was still and silent, but then the descent started again. It
was a low, circular spiral like a vulture lowering towards roadkill, and it
seemed to take an eternity to land.

Somehow, that was okay. The longer it took to reach the
ground, the more she could see. The world below wasn’t fully dark brown or
stone, she saw. There were mountains true, but the craters were soft and
powdery and the flat earth was the color of freshly-ground coffee.

With a sudden powerful yearning, Saffron allowed herself a
ridiculous moment of mourning at the thought that she would never taste coffee
again. Then, the craft hit the ground. She imagined the thump as the sight
shook, and dust fluttered up into the air and simply hung suspended until a
gust of wind ushered it away.

“Okay, Saffron,” Eban said from above. “This is your area
now. Seven samples, each the size of the standard flasks in your lab.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” she said sarcastically, feeling
awful when he flinched.

Karree shot her an angry glare, but she was already slipping
into that place where nothing could bother her. Only work remained.

For the next three hours, she guided Garem around to various
different locations and watched in fascination as the robotic arm unpinned a
flask each time, expertly uncapping, filling, and capping again. Robotics
technology like that on earth was normally reserved for factories, limiting the
need for human workers. The similarities only continued to grow…

But, she forced herself to stay focused the entire time and
took stock of the samples she had ordered be collected while the receptacle
climbed back up out of the atmosphere with a little more difficulty than when
it had entered. Watching all the bouncing around made her nauseous, so she kept
her eyes down.

One in the shade, another out in the open. The third and
fourth were taken at a location from the lowlands and a plateau, respectively.
The fifth took the longest to find, and required nearly an hour all on its own
until she located a section of soil which looked different from all the rest.
Sixth came from a crater. And the very last, Garem suggested be taken from a
lower layer of soil. He preened, fluttering his wings with pride when everyone
congratulated him on his thinking; from there, they spent time finding the
perfect angle where there looked to have been a recent rockslide, exposing
fresh and loamy earth beneath the upper crust. It was the last bit which
excited Saffron more than anything. The dirt looked so fresh and vibrant, there
was no way they would have any difficulties with it!

The receptacle made it back to port, and was sealed in by
magnetism. A technician appeared, summoned by Eban to lead Saffron down into
the hold, where she was given the container with all seven precious samples.

Hugging them tightly to her chest and grinning like an
idiot, she ran to test them right away.

Unfortunately, things never turned out the way she wanted.
They never turned out the way anyone wanted, really. That was part of her mantra,
why she was so often laidback about harsh realities. This was disappointment of
the highest level though and would take quite a bit to get over.