Dante’s Command: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Survival Wars Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

then, het let as much drain away as possible.
     
    He did regret getting Mariella involved in this, and knew
she would struggle even more than the rest of them, but it was a risk he could
have to take.
     
    When it was all over, he slumped back in his chair and
heaved a great sigh.  Eventually, one of his men wandered over.  “What shall we
do now?” he voiced worriedly, gesturing.
     
    Dante glanced at his team of twenty-four, the brave souls
who unanimously agreed to join him.  They had put all their faith in him, and
suddenly he was determined not to let them down.  He looked up at the man, at
his disheveled hair and too-weary face, and gave as much of a smile as he could
spare.  “Figure it out for yourselves.  I will need two of you to stay behind,
to continue to pilot the ship, but I want everyone else to shut off their
screens.  We will rotate positions, save some energy.  Everyone else must
sleep.”
     
    “Are you sure?” the man asked worriedly.
     
    They were all of them tactical and loyal, but they didn’t
know as much as he.  Even if they were in leisure, eating or talking quietly,
it was still too much waste.  If they slept, they would use up less air.
     
    But, he did not say that out loud.  He did not say that
Mariella breathed very quickly, like all humans, and would tax their systems. 
He did not say that even her insignificant weight had shifted the balance
irreparably.  And Dante most certainly did not say that he was afraid they
would now never make it home.  Furthermore, he kept these thoughts hidden from
his men and just kept smiling.  “I’m sure.”
     
    They filed out of the room, all of them, even Mariella’s
guard.  Two stayed to watch their screens, shoulders tense and eyes hazy.
     
    Mariella was doing no better, and he hated to see the
glossiness over her sharp mind.  “Are you okay?” he asked, leaning over a
little to look her in the face.
     
    She frowned at him, and when she spoke her voice was
slurred.  “I just have one question.”
     
    “Ask anything of me, and I will answer,” he assured her, as
was their way. 
     
    She squinted a little.  “Venus has a day cycle that lasts
longer than its year.  How is solar energy supposed to help you?”
     
    He knew exactly what she meant, that they could not rely on
an energy source which would disappear for nearly as long as it was present. 
“I don’t know,” he admitted.  “And I never said we would use solar power, as
you have.  I asked for power.  That is all.  In any form at all.”
     
    Mariella opened her mouth as if to argue, but then her eyes
rolled back in her head and she passed out.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    In time, she came to know these people.  And she named them,
because their words for themselves wouldn’t translate into English.  And she
came to call their colony the Hive, and she named them Drones, after the male
worker bees. 
     
    Even at the pace of the ship, it took a few days to reach
Venus.  That astonished her.  Even as sluggish as she felt, with the oxygen
just barely enough to satisfy her starving lungs, she sometimes spent hours
pestering Dante over questions of technology.  Ever the willing host, he sat
there and explained things over and over until she understood. 
     
    Her frustration at being so miserably inadequate was
tempered by a lack of energy to keep up with that feeling, and most of the time
she was just miserable.  Still, she enjoyed those conversations with the man as
he described his reactor engine and the various fuels it ran off, most of which
were nuclear reactions of some kind. 
     
    And when she wasn’t talking, she was either sleeping back in
that private room where she woke up, or staring dully at the screen on the
front of the ship.  Seeing as how the ship itself had no windows, these screens
were the only way to see outside.  Most of the time, it was black and
shapeless.  Dante piloted the ship during those