Free Fade Away and Radiate by Michele Lang Page A

once craved the solitude and the silence of
this stony, dead planet, Anika knew she couldn’t live in this
frozen hell forever.
    “ How did you find me?” Anika
forced the words past the lump in her throat. She would rather die
than cry in front of Billy Murphy. She’d already done too much
crying in this man’s presence. She didn’t dare do it
again.
    Billy laughed louder, and pulled the
fingers of his gloves one by one with his straight, white teeth to
get them off. “Bet you wanna know how I cracked your
code.”
    He was like a tiger transformed into a
man, pacing the little room in his armor, sizing up her potential
as a meal. Both of them knew she was no warrior.
    The floor shook under his boots as he
walked, cracked his knuckles, and wiggled his fingers to get the
circulation into them again. “Glad to see you’re still in one
piece.”
    For now, Anika couldn’t help playing
out what was going to happen next, going at 100x speed in her mind
like an end-of-life experience. The return to Earth. Her attempted,
re-attempted, and then final resignation from FortuneCorp – that
place that had made her career, the place that wanted her soul
along with her employment. A world corporation that intended to own
this galaxy, that didn’t let the little cogs in its mighty machine
just break away.
    So she would spurn the company, walk
unaffiliated, unprotected, in New York. And one fine afternoon,
walking along Broadway or riding the helobus, or reading newsfeeds
in Petraeus Park, the end would come for her at last. A murderer
would poison her, or kidnap her, or just wipe her out. It happened
to genetic and nuclear scientists all the time. It had happened to
Roberto. And if Billy was anywhere around, it would happen to him,
too.
    His expression softened when he saw her
stricken face. “Listen, I made you a promise,” he explained. “At
Roberto’s memorial. I swore, and I swore it to Robbo first. If
anything happened to him in country, I was coming back after to
watch out for you. You and I ain’t got nobody else.”
    “ I don’t need watching.”
Anika cringed inside at the huskiness in her voice. She cleared her
throat and stood straighter, not willing to yield to his charms. It
was the same way she stood up to the fears that still stalked her
every night. “I’m a big girl, and I’ve managed to survive just fine
on my own all this time. I don’t need your help.”
    Billy crossed his arms over his big,
armored chest, and he shifted uneasily on his feet. It was as close
as she’d ever come to seeing him losing his cool. “You’re a good
girl, and I know why Roberto loved you so hard. But you’re lying to
me. You’re not surviving out here. You’re lingering.
Okay?”
    The silence rose up like a ghost, and
they stared at each other through the suddenly too-little space
closing in between them.
    Anika felt the damn tears coming, but
she refused to shed them. Instead, she walked across the little
room in three steps to her cot, and the blaster hidden
there.
    “ I know you’ve traveled
pretty far just to get here,” she began.
    “ That would be an
understatement.”
    She couldn’t help smiling at that, at
the way Billy tugged at her heart. “Yeah well, I think the best
thing for you to do, Mr. Space Man, is stay the night, have some
grub and stock up on provisions. And head right back out in the
morning. I’m assuming there’s a craft in orbit waiting for you. No
way you could head out to this quadrant all alone.”
    Billy laughed again, more gently this
time. His thick, black hair stood on end, all messed up from his
helmet. He pushed the buttons at his wrist points, and the
exoskeleton of his suit softened. He pulled the suit down and
stepped out of it, looking like a man now and not a robotic
killer.
    He looked vulnerable.
    But Anika wasn’t fooled. She knew what
Billy really was, what Roberto had been before he’d gotten
snuffed.
    K-Ops. Genetically modified soldiers in
the United States Army,