Free Fade Away and Radiate by Michele Lang

Fade Away and
Radiate
     
    By Michele Lang
     
    Copyright 2013 Michele Lang
    Artwork by Dara England
     
    Smashwords Edition
     
    Smashwords Edition, License
Notes
     
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    “ Fade Away and Radiate"
first appeared in the Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Running
Press, Robinson UK 2013). Please check out the other stories in the
collection!
     
     
    The only woman on an uninhabitable
planet listened to the wail of the nightwind, alone in a research
hut in the dead of the night. She studied her data outputs, and
tried like hell not to think of Roberto. Because thinking of
Roberto got her thinking about why she’d come to this desolate
place. And thinking of her self-exile made her think of the man she
was running away from…
    There was a knock on the
door.
    It was the moment she had imagined a
million times with dread, and yet now that it had come, she wasn’t
ready. With a gasp, Anika Bowman jumped from her chair, but before
she could make any further moves, the door to her field lab swung
open.
    She glanced across the hut, to where
her blaster lay hidden under her flat foam pillow. Her fingers
itched to grab it, but it was too late now. Anika had bet her life
on the simple fact that she was too far away from the rest of
humanity to be murdered. If she survived the next few minutes, she
would never make such a stupid mistake again.
    Anika forced herself to look at the
hulking figure filling up her doorway. Far away, outside the
geodome in which she’d built the hut, the nightwind howled, hungry,
unrequited. The haunting sound still pierced her heart.
    “ It’s me,” a muffled voice
said, crackling over the spacesuit’s interface.
    For a single, agonizing moment, she
imagined it was Roberto, come back to her across infinity. That
behind that mirrored helmet, Roberto was speaking to her now, that
somehow he’d come back to her as he’d once promised.
    A miracle. But, no.
    Roberto was dead, just another casualty
of the Glass Desert war. Roberto hadn’t come back to her in a box,
or an urn, or even on a memory stick or a download with a farewell
message. He’d just gotten vaporized, as if he’d never existed in
the first place.
    Whoever this warrior was, hidden in his
spacesuit, it wasn’t her husband. Roberto was never coming back.
She was sure of it.
    Big square hands encased in spacegloves
reached up to remove the domed, mirrored helmet. She took a
half-step back, her heart pounding so hard in her chest it shook
her with every beat.
    Anika saw the man’s face. She staggered
backwards in her shock. Roberto would have blown her away
less.
    “ Billy Murphy, it’s you,”
she managed to gasp. “Never thought I’d see your face
again.”
    Captain Billy Murphy grinned and looked
her up and down in a single glance. It was him: that thick,
uncontrollable black hair (much longer now since the last time
she’d seen him). The deep blue eyes, the spare, effective body.
That face, even more appealing for the marks inflicted by all the
trouble he’d survived.
    “ Yep, me,” Billy replied,
and he laughed. “Took long enough for me to find you, amirite? Like
you didn’t want me to find you.”
    She stared at him in wonder as he shut
the door behind him, clomped into the research hut, took a look
around. Didn’t take more than a quick scan for Billy to see all
there was to see.
    The truth be told, she was relieved.
Her life in the hut was over, no matter what happened now between
her and this man, the last one to see her husband alive. And no
matter how much she’d