Speculative Fiction Showcase: The Taste of Home (In Love and War, Book 12) by Cora Buhlert

Monday, October 22, 2018

The Taste of Home (In Love and War, Book 12) by Cora Buhlert

Release date: October 9, 2018

Subgenre: Cozy space opera, Science fiction romance

**About The Taste of Home:**

A story of family, memories and food.

Once, Anjali Patel and Mikhail Grikov were soldiers on opposing sides of an intergalactic war. They met, fell in love and decided to go on the run together.

Now Anjali and Mikhail are trying to eke out a living on the independent worlds of the galactic rim, while attempting to stay under the radar of those pursuing them.

Mikhail is on his way home, an anniversary present for Anjali in his pocket, when he suddenly finds himself irresistibly drawn towards an unremarkable storefront and comes face to face with his past.

Meanwhile, Anjali is preparing a special anniversary dinner for Mikhail, only to find that he is late to come home.

This is a novelette of 9300 words or approximately 32 print pages in the "In Love and War" series, but may be read as a standalone.

Excerpt:

Captain Mikhail Alexeievich Grikov, formerly of the Republican Special Commando Forces, now a wanted traitor and deserter, walked down a quiet street in the city of Vaino on the rim world of Gustainis, headed back to the small apartment by the spaceport docks that he shared with his lover and partner Anjali.
Mikhail walked quickly, eager to be home, for today was the one year anniversary of their partnership, theoretically at any rate. Because anniversaries were difficult for him and Anjali. And so the anniversary of their first meeting, on a terrace high above the oceans of Brahimi Prime, had passed nine days before, unremarked by either of them.
Mikhail had certainly remembered the day, remembered how he’d watched her from across the dancefloor, as she talked and laughed and drank with her comrades, intoxicatingly beautiful. He suspected Anjali remembered the day as well, though she never said anything.
Because Mikhail had been someone else back then, a Republican spy operating under an assumed name, ordered to capture her and bring her in. And he had obeyed that order, albeit reluctantly. He had taken Anjali prisoner and fully intended to hand her over to the Scientific Council, even though he knew they were going to kill her — painlessly, as his commander had assured him, but kill nonetheless. He hadn’t done it, in the end, but that day still was an anniversary of shame, not worth celebrating.
This day, however, was. For today was the anniversary of the day Mikhail had decided to set Anjali free, orders be damned, and place himself at her mercy. And in a miracle that Mikhail still couldn’t quite believe, Anjali had decided to forgive him, in spite of everything he’d done to her, and go away to the rim with him. All that had happened exactly one year ago today. And that was an anniversary well worth celebrating.
And so Mikhail had a spring in his step, for in his pocket, there was a small box, a present for Anjali. Inside the box was a garnet studded golden bangle, manufactured on Anjali’s homeworld of Rajipuri, which was famous for its fine jewellery among other things.
There was a small community of Rajipuri expats here on Gustainis, refugees from some bloody uprising fifty years before. Mikhail had been to the Rajiprui neighbourhood with Anjali to buy some of the rare ingredients that were apparently absolutely essential for the delicious meals she always cooked for him. While there he’d spotted the golden bangle in shop window and had gone back to buy it for Anjali, blowing money they couldn’t really afford on this gift.
Anjali was probably going to protest that the gift was too expensive and that gold and garnets weren’t appropriate for a peasant girl like herself. But Mikhail didn’t care about the idiotic class distinctions of the Empire and their stupid rules regarding who was allowed to wear what when. He liked the shimmer of gold on Anjali’s brown skin and he liked garnets, because they reminded him of the necklace Babushka used to wear for special occasions.
And though Anjali would protest at first, she’d wear the bangle anyway, just like she wore the gold and garnet necklace Mikhail had given her last year, shortly after they’d decided to forsake their respective lives and governments and stick together from then on.
He never knew just what it was that compelled him to turn a corner onto a smaller street. It might have been a snatch of a familiar melody, mournful and sad, or a scent that brought back memories long lost and buried.
But whatever it was, it prompted Mikhail to deviate from the path that would take him back to the apartment by the spaceport docks and Anjali who was waiting there for him, probably with a delicious dinner, and turn onto a quiet sidestreet, chasing ghosts and memories.
The compulsion to follow this hunch was so strong that Mikhail immediately became suspicious. He was a wanted man, after all, with a prize on his head and bounty hunters as well as the Empire and his former comrades of the Republican Special Commando Forces on his trail.
The years spent as a Republican agent operating in enemy territory had taught Mikhail to be cautious and trust his instincts. And now those very same instincts were both drawing him onwards, while simultaneously screaming that he might be walking into a trap. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time.
So Mikhail kept his hand hovering near his blaster, ready to draw and fire at a moment’s notice, as he ventured into the sidestreet. True, the street might look deserted, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t an ambush waiting for him.
But when Mikhail took a few steps up the street and absolutely nothing happened, he gradually relaxed. He looked around. The street was lined with upscale apartment blocks in tasteful pastel and cream hues. A few steps up the road, there was a small park with trees, benches, flowerbeds and even a statue of a stylised naked woman. At the far end of the street loomed a gilded dome, probably a museum or theatre or a church of some kind. All in all, this wasn’t exactly the sort of place where you’d expect an ambush. Quite the contrary, this neighbourhood looked almost deceptively genteel. But then looks could be deceiving.
And still Mikhail felt the almost magnetic pull that had drawn him to this street. It lured him past the little park and towards one of the apartment buildings. There was a door, a plate glass window offering a glimpse of chairs and tables, a sign, so understated that Mikhail almost missed it. The strange compulsion he’d felt had brought him to the doorstep of a restaurant.
Mikhail laughed with pure relief. So this strange compulsion was just hunger and an empty stomach, nothing more. His nostrils had detected the scent of food and led him here. All right, so he didn’t have Anjali’s genetically enhanced senses, but his own were good enough. And old instincts, born of a childhood spent in a camp for war orphans where there was never enough food, died hard.
Mikhail was about to turn around and head back towards home or what passed for it. Anjali would have food waiting for him — good, hot spicy food — and she’d apologise a dozen times that all she had to offer him was simple peasant fare, until Mikhail assured her that there was absolutely nothing wrong with peasant food, considering he’d spent the first few years of his life on a farm.
He took one more look at the restaurant with its understated sign. “Restaurant Demirdova,” it said, in a script that very few people in the galaxy could read these days.
Mikhail froze. All of a sudden, he knew exactly what it was that had drawn him here.

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About the In Love and War series:

About Cora Buhlert:

Cora Buhlert was born and bred in North Germany, where she still lives today – after time spent in London, Singapore, Rotterdam and Mississippi. Cora holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen and is currently working towards her PhD.

Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. She is the author of the Silencer series of pulp style thrillers, the Shattered Empire space opera series, the In Love and War science fiction romance series, the Helen Shepherd Mysteries and plenty of standalone stories in multiple genres.

When Cora is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher. She also runs the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene and contributes to the Hugo-nominated fanzine Galactic Journey.

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