Anagrams and translations were always a welcome means of obfuscation. So even though Solanine Aubrionne’s name was build from the same building blocks as Nina Leos O’Brien’s, no one made any connection between the two. No one ever made the connection between her assumed name and the toxin in deadly nightshade (as well as potatoes), either. She laughed at that sometimes, before realizing how few people in the Rim had ever seen a potato.

Then again, it was nice to be able to hold onto a small part of that silly girl who’d worked 80-hour weeks in a coffee shop to fund a lifestyle she couldn’t afford, even if it was obscure. Sol had made a more or less definitive break when she’d walked out on her job and her apartment and hopped a shuttle, but the long hours and utterly alien environment of her new life made contemplative nostalgia a daily phenomenon.

“Scan for fuel sources.” The words were muffled by Sol’s environment suit.

Globe shot toward the rusty and hulking ruin ahead. “You know that it’s not a scan, right? It’s basically Geiger counting.”

“That doesn’t sound as cool.” Globe was a bog-standard prospecting assistant drone, but Sol had installed an aftermarket personality simulator and tweaked its settings so she’d have an occasional bout of faux conversation.

Globe vanished into the hulk. It was a relic from the old first-wave homesteaders, abandoned planetside when it became clear that the toxic spores in just about everything couldn’t be easily terraformed away. Thrown out with power sources still intact…it was hard to imagine an age that had been that wasteful. Then again, people had thought that mined unbihexium would never run out, and had no idea that commercially synthesizing it would be so impractical.

Sol could sympathize. She’d once thrown out a perfectly serviceable life and was still struggling with the decision years later.

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