Her lips curled in a snarl, and she hit the gene sequencer, hard. That didn’t help. Keeping her injured hand knotted in a fist, she paced the lab, breathing heavily while she waited for the pain to subside.

Most days the machine’s resistance wouldn’t bother her. Most days. But today, dread and sadness outran reason. They would be leaving in the morning, taking off to rejoin their transport, the Fidanza, which was already in orbit around Adra. A few days more, and she and everyone else in the ten-person survey team would get into cryo, and when they woke up at 61 Cygni, twenty-six days later, they would each go their separate ways, and that would be the last she would see of Alan for … for how long, she didn’t know. Months, at least. If they were unlucky, over a year.

Kira closed her eyes, let her head fall back. She sighed, and the sigh turned into a groan. It didn’t matter how many times she and Alan had done this dance; it wasn’t getting any easier. The opposite in fact, and she hated it, really hated it.

They’d met the previous year on a large asteroid the Lapsang Trading Corp. was planning to mine. Alan had been there to conduct a geological survey. Four days—that was how long they’d spent together on the asteroid. It had been Alan’s laugh and his mess of coppery hair that caught her attention, but it was his careful diligence that impressed Kira. He was good at what he did, and he didn’t lose his calm in an emergency.

Kira had been alone for so long at that point, she’d been convinced she would never find someone. And yet seemingly by a miracle, Alan had entered her life, and just like that, there had been someone to care for. Someone who cared for her.

They’d continued to talk, sending long holo messages across the stars, and through a combination of luck and bureaucratic maneuvering, they’d managed to get posted together several more times.

It wasn’t enough. For either of them.

Two weeks ago, they’d applied to corporate for permission to be assigned to the same missions as a couple, but there was no guarantee their request would be approved. The Lapsang Corp. was expanding in too many areas, with too many projects. Personnel were spread thin.

If their request was denied … the only way they’d be able to live together long term would be to change jobs, find ones that didn’t require so much travel. Kira was willing—she’d even checked listings on the net the previous week—but she didn’t feel as if she could ask Alan to give up his career with the company for her. Not yet.

In the meantime, all they could do was wait for the verdict from corporate. With how long it took for messages to get back to Alpha Centauri and the slowness of the HR Department, the soonest they could expect an answer was the end of next month. And by then, both she and Alan would have been shipped off in different directions.