Starlander's Myth: Love on the Space Frontier, #1

By Melisse Aires

A Space-Western Romance Novella.

Asteroid miner Jack Starlander stumbles upon the illegal sale of a woman and child with unusual abilities. Jack once fought to free slaves and can't abide slavers. In the ensuing shoot out, two important men die. Jack, Sophie, her daughter, and Jack's close neighbors are forced to flee to safety. Their journey takes them into deadly danger.

An Antiquarian with her own ancient secret, Sophie knows old stories may seem fantastical but have a core of truth. She recognizes the mythic thread in the old Starlander legend. Perhaps his family's myth can save them.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pure Escapism
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501469183

Melisse Aires

Take a shy Catholic school bookworm from Montana. Hand her a stack of her much older brother’s sci-fi and fantasy novels, James Bond books and horror comics. Later, introduce Barbara Cartland and the world of romance fiction.Get her a teaching job or two in authentic, one room Montana schools, ala Laura Ingels Wilder.Marry her off to a great guy, move her to a big city in Tornado Alley, then pop three daughters out of her in twenty-two months (one set of identical twins).Then, make her a jinx. Every great genre TV show she loves gets the ax: Beauty and the Beast, Dark Angel—and Buffy and Spike NEVER have a happy ending! She gets upset about no romance in the world and fires up to write her own stories with happy endings.Throw this all together into a small house in Wyoming, along with a small bouncy dog named Baxter and too many cats, shake constantly and pour it out onto a computer keyboard.There! You have me, Melisse Aires.

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Acknowledgements:

Cover: Melisse Aires

Stock Photo: Dollar Photo Club

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http://www.123rf.com/profile_yorkberlin'>yorkberlin / 123RF Stock Photo

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Blurb

Asteroid miner Jack Starlander stumbles upon the illegal sale of a woman and child with unusual abilities. Jack once fought to free slaves and can't abide slavers. In the ensuing shoot out, two important men die. Jack, Sophie and her daughter and Jack's close; neighbors are forced to flee to safety. Their journey takes them into deadly danger.

An Antiquarian with her own ancient secret, Sophie knows old stories may seem fantastical but have core of truth. She recognizes the mythic thread in the old Starlander legend. Perhaps his family's myth can save them.

Chapter 1

Jack Starlander crept silently over the rocky outcrop to see what was happening on the other side. The newcomers hadn’t been quiet at all. Of course, sounds tended to magnify and distort under the bubble. It sounded like an army of flyers descending, but it was really only four.

Now what is that? A woman and a child, both dressed in the latest frilly fashion seen dirtside, surrounded by a bunch of armed men. Not saloon-style clothes on the woman, either. Her shirtwaist buttoned clear up to her neck, with no bare flesh at all except her face and hands. The child wore a pink ruffled pinafore over her blue dress, her hair was well kept, curled into ringlets, held back from her face by a floppy pink bow. You didn’t see well cared-for kids among the saloon whores. They tended to be wild little beasts in rags, looking to pick pockets or beg for cryst chips.

The woman sat the child down on a large flat-topped rock and watched the men.

These all looked like city dwellers from Hogtie or Abercrombie; well fed, well dressed and well armed, except for two young men. Worker bees. Jack ducked behind a rock. Why was a group of armed men on that empty claim? Were they after him? Records would give his name as being the claim holder of the adjoining property. Why bring a woman and child out to this deserted place?

They didn’t need to know he was overhearing their business. He pulled on his protector hood, not because the bubble had a breach, but because the hood had vision-enhancing goggles and audio amplification.

He crawled back up the rock, keeping his head low, and found a better spot to observe the group. He could see more details now. The woman was young, with golden blonde hair. Her gown had layers of ruffles over the rear, the latest puffed-out style, which he didn’t care for at all. He liked to get a sense of a woman’s actual shape down below. She looked nervous and held the little girl’s hand tightly. Why the heck would anyone bring a woman and child out to a mining claim?

Jack recognized Galto, a mining official who’d approved his claim here on Yonder Beltway 7, the asteroid that the Collingwood Mining Company had bubbled for mining. They’d got lucky here. There’d been enough ice to form wells and pools once they’d heated things up so they didn’t have to import water. Collingwood was making good profits here, but then so was he. He had a nose for cryst. But Galto was not a man to be trusted. Not that any mining officials were. That was why he had half of his haul stuck to a rock in space too small to be noticed by the mining company.

A finely dressed man with a thick gold chain suspended across his protuberant belly, covered in a bright green waistcoat, hobnobbed with Galto. Jewels flashed on his fingers, tie tack, and cufflinks, and he sported a thick white handlebar mustache. Whiskers were all the style but Jack kept his face military smooth with a shave every morning. Army ways were hard to shake. Even Galto now sported a thin mustache, which looked out of place on his well-fed face.

Two simply dressed men rode cheap flyers, the kind that had to enhance their power cell lift with pedal action. Quite tiring on a long journey and this claim was pretty far from the spaceport. They were both big fellows, heavily muscled. Goons. Well armed goons, he amended when he saw their sidearms. The woman and child were the only ones in this little group who were unarmed.

Interesting.

Well, I enjoy working with an educated client, such as yourself, Mr. Galto, the finely dressed man said in a hearty voice. You are so right, sirrah! Traditionally the gryffin hunted gold. But I have trained this young woman myself to find cryst. Let me demonstrate. Please allow Yurgy here to hide these bags of cryst. He handed Galto cloth bags. If you search the bags you will see that some are high grade ore, some are very poor grade.

Come here, Mrs. Farrel.

Not married to the fat man.

The woman got the child down from the rock and the little girl clung to her skirt. The mustached man pulled out a scarf and blindfolded the woman.

Here, friend Galto, please check this cloth yourself to verify that it will blind Mrs. Farrel adequately.

Galto checked the blindfold and appeared to be satisfied.

You, sir. Mr. Mustache waggled his jaw at one of the young armed men who accompanied them. Take these bags of cryst and and drop the bags one by one in those rock hills in the distance. Then we’ll see my girl do what she’s trained to do. He winked at Galto.

He turned to the young man on the flyer. Oh, and, young man? Bury those samples. We all know cryst is rarely found on the ground just waiting to be picked up, don’t we?

The man flew off with the bags and was soon out of sight.

Jack decided the child must be the woman’s daughter. Though their coloring was different, their facial features were alike. The little girl pressed closer to her mother. What was their role in all this? Perhaps she was