Haze looked into his kavva. “What about me?”
Mercury held him tight. “Watch what happens next.”
Tai came their way holding her own cup of kavva. Quit trailed behind her, a compact machine in his hands.
“What about Boerdelim Tel-Hazon?” Mercury asked them.
Tai answered, “He died. I just informed the Planetary Protection Department of that. He’d developed sudden and extreme symptoms of trauma exposure having to do with the Fall at Strata, with recovered memories. At the end, he panicked, I’m sorry to say. Ran into the flood.” She took a deep swig of kavva. “Do you mind?”
“The amnesia drug made me less than alive,” Haze said slowly. “I was a hollow shell. No, I don’t mind.”
“Your Department will advocate a search for your body. They are genuinely shocked and sad. Given that an unknown number of looters may have drowned in the flood too, the search for you will be inconclusive. I suspect that Faxen interests and TARC will be glad to have the problem of your inconvenient memories solved once and for all.”
His mouth hardened. “Yes.”
Quit sat down in front of them, putting his machine importantly on his knees. “How would you like to be a Goyan biologist named Haze Griffin? You’re of Faxen rootstock, people that emigrated from Faxe to Goya. Rusty has a new identity too.” Rusty’s ear tilted toward Quit. “He’s from a famous bespoke toy factory in Pandamun on Goya.”
“Recreating an imaginary friend animal from his childhood!” Mercury supplied.
“Oh, good, good.” Quit spoke into his machine.
Haze looked dazed. “You can invent an identity in real time?”
“For a compelling reason, and at great expense, yes,” Tai said evenly.
“Quit used to work in military intelligence,” Mercury told Haze. “He’s as good at what he does as Hopper and Silk. And everyone else. And you.”
Quit asked cheerfully, “Do you two want to be married?”
“Yes!” Haze said at the same time Mercury said, “We do.” They shared a long, intense look that was equal parts understanding each other perfectly and sensing in each other an undiscovered country.
With a satisfied air, Quit said to his machine, “Generate identity. Half an hour, and your new identity chip will be ready,” he told them. “Then we all go up in the tower into space, to our starship.”
“Will you be OK in the transit tower?” Mercury asked Haze.
His hand found Rusty’s back. He looked at Mercury with his green-brown eyes. In the sunlight, his irises had light green flecks, like returning life. “Yes.”
A laugh bubbled up in her. This wasn’t how she’d expected his three days to end. They’d been Skance-lucky and then some! And she’d gained the father of a child to be and someone she couldn’t imagine not loving forever. She would meet that future with open arms, the same way she embraced Haze now. She whispered in his ear, “Welcome back to the stars, Traveler.”
About the Author
Alexis Glynn Latner likes to write tales of romantic adventure that touch readers’ hearts and their minds as well. She also writes nonfiction, does editing, teaches and mentors creative writing, and works at Rice University’s Fondren Library in Houston, Texas. For fun and real-life adventure she is a sailplane pilot.
Her science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, and many print and online anthologies including the USA Today best-selling Pets in Space. She’s had stories in mystery anthologies too. Her science fiction novel Hurricane Moon was published by Pyr (Prometheus Books) in 2007 and again by Avendis Press in 2014 with the sequels Downfall Tide, Star Crossing, and finally Helldive in 2018.
A new romantic science fiction series began with Witherspin in late 2019. Witherspin unfolds in the same invented future as Pastfinders, with new characters who find themselves living in interesting and dangerous times!
To find out more about Alexis’ books and stories:
Also by Alexis Glynn Latner
Mascot, a Pets in Space Story
Pastfinders unfolds before the first novel in my new Starways series, Witherspin—and helps set the stage for it!
Witherspin
Mittens Not Included
Three little kittens have lost their way…
Layth Ali thought he was happy. On board the Sentinel of Gems, he is allowed to run the medical bay as he sees fit, and the crew appreciates his talents. Most importantly, the smugglers don’t ask him questions about his past or pressure him to leave his self-imposed exile. But when a new passenger and her precious cargo get dumped in his lap, it’s all he can do to deflect her incessant questions and keep her at arm’s length.
Meja Aquarone knew she was courting trouble when she stole a litter of kittens from the lab where she worked, but she refused to allow their perceived flaw to become a death sentence. Now she’s on the run, hoping that the crew of the Sentinel can smuggle her someplace safe without her employers catching her. She wasn’t expecting to find someone on board who understood the tiny creatures or who shielded his compassion behind layers of armor, but ten minutes with the ship’s doctor leaves her curious to know more.
Forced to go to the one place he swore never to return, Layth feels the walls closing in around them. With a corporate bounty on their heads, and three cats becoming increasingly difficult to hide, Layth and Meja must decide what they’re willing to sacrifice to gain the safety they desire, and if that protection is worth being alone.
1
Escape always seemed easier in the vids than it was in real life. Meja Aquarone looked around the grimy, portside bar and wondered—for what felt like the hundredth time—if she had made a mistake. She hadn’t, she knew that. But that didn’t make her problems any smaller, or her way forward any more clear.
Not that Dr. Voss would agree with her, but then, they hadn’t seen eye-to-eye for a while.
The few faces that bothered to watch her were predatory, harsh. She could feel them evaluating her on the basis of money and other, cruder payments she might be able to offer. This close to the spaceport, she could assume that the majority of the patrons were part of a crew of some kind. All she needed was a way to hire passage with the safest possible choice.
Meja smoothed the front of her coat and walked to the bar, trying to look more self-assured than her fluttering pulse indicated. When the bartender noticed her, she nodded at him. “Rum. Neat.” It wasn’t exactly liquid courage, but it was a start. And it proved she could make her voice work. Small steps.
“Kanaloan?”
“Of course,” she replied. It would carry a top-shelf price, but the well rum was likely rot gut.
The bartender, his bald head tattooed with an elaborate floral design, set the drink in front of her without comment. The first sip burned its way down her throat like molten caramel, the fumes of alcohol briefly searing away the humid smell of too many bodies in too small a place. If it was Kanaloan rum, she’d sell her own teeth. She’d had the real deal—a benefit of her salary. Her former salary, she supposed. This was a cheap knockoff, trading on the water-world’s reputation.