Free Aevar: Trekkers (A SciFi Alien Human Military Romance) by Terra Wolf, Juno Wells

looked at Ivy, but she adamantly shook her head. “I'm not leaving you! Nice try, though.”
    She turned around and put her blaster up, stalking down the hallway. “What level are we on? How much further to the bridge?”
    A scream ripped through the air. “Should be up only one more level and down to the left. Let's go!” Aevar said to them as they took off through the hallway toward the screaming. They found another staircase at the end of the hall and ascended it slowly as the screams continued. Whoever they were torturing, he wasn't going to make it.
    Aevar was at the back of the pack this time, with Raelor taking lead. He had his hand on the metal door and opened it just slightly, throwing a smoke bomb into the open space in front of them. A loud boom rattled the staircase that they were in. Aevar switched his oxygen mask to diffuse the smoke in the air as it came into his suit. Raelor pushed the door open in front of them and they heard shouts and yelling from all directions.
    Blasters went off to Aevar's right multiple times and he felt the floor shake as one of the creatures fell at his feet. Ivy took off in front of him, directly disobeying his orders to always stay behind him. Not that it surprised him in the least.
    He followed her and watched as she took down two of the creatures in front of her. He couldn't wait until all this was over and he could get her back into his bed. Watching her with that gun in her hands and a black jumpsuit that hugged every curve of her body was more than he could handle.
    He looked behind him to see Raelor with both blasters going at once. A couple Harvesters descended upon him but he took care of them with ease. Ivy found herself against a metal door and she looked to Aevar for permission to push it open. At least she had enough sense to not go completely off on her own.
    Aevar nodded to her and helped push the massive door open, which led them into the bridge. Only one man stood at the helm, the bluish creature that the man on Goya had described.
    “I see you found our little station,” he said without turning around.
    “Drop your weapons and surrender!” Aevar yelled, his blaster pointed at the man’s head.
    The man turned around. He was dressed in all black, with a collar that went all the way up to his blue chin. Buttons were placed every couple inches all the way down to his knees. Black pants then went all the way to the floor. It made the blue tint to his skin stand out even more.
    “Surrender? Why would I do that?”
    Aevar could feel Ivy seething just behind him. “Because you're sucking the lives out of people! I don't know what you've been told, but we don't really eat people in this galaxy.” Aevar looked over his shoulder at her; she still had her blaster up, ready to strike. Good girl.
    “We do what we need to do to survive.”
    “Is that what you're doing here? Because I could've sworn you were building an army,” Aevar said as the realization dawned on him. They weren’t subduing these people in order to feed on them, they were doing it to give them the plague. See who would survive and turn into one of the Harvesters. Anyone that had been eaten was already disposed of.
    “An army?”
    Ivy also shifted her eyes in Aevar's direction. “That's why all those people are downstairs sleeping. You're going to give them the plague, to make them like your other minions. What did you do with the bodies of the people that you ate?”
    The man laughed. It was a high-pitched cackle that made Aevar’s skin crawl. “We floated them long ago! Don't worry. None of them were your beloved Jubarians. They're all still downstairs.”
    “Why are you building an army? What is it that you want?”
    The man walked around the control station, dragging his finger along the metal. “Complete control. Though we will have to start somewhere new after you've ruined my space station.”
    Ivy shook her head. “You're not starting somewhere new! You're going to die.”
    And that