MadFishermans Daughter

By Nina M. Osier

Explorer ship Captain Kate Landay is on her way home from what should be her final mission when she becomes caught up in a sector-wide coup. She is accused first of insubordination, and then of treason, for refusing to sacrifice her ship and her crew to cover up a superior officer's actions.

ISBN 1-59431-150-1 Science Fiction / Gay / Futuristic Romance

Cover Art by Maggie Dix

Also available in HTML and RTF formats.



Chapter One

"'Somewhere East of Suez?' What the hell kind of name is that for a planet?" The ticket seller cocked her head, roused (for the moment) from her boredom. She looked the traveler over from behind the remote spaceport's counter, where people paid for passage when they didn't have access to the Empire's credit transfer system. Or when they didn't want to leave tracks.

"It's the kind of name an ex-soldier would give it, when he'd found a place to settle down and make a home for his family. That particular ex-soldier was one of my great-grandfathers." The traveler shook her silvering brown head, and smiled faintly. Distractedly, as if her mind had already rushed out across the light years and reached the world of her birth. She wouldn't say it was "at home" there, though. Not for half of her lifetime had Christabel thought about Somewhere East of Suez in those terms.

"Oh. I see." The seller went back to being bored.

"Not many people read the ancient Terran poet Kipling these days. The line's actually 'somewheres east of Suez,' because it's written in dialect. It means a place where society's usual rules don't apply." The traveler leaned across the counter to look at the monitor for herself. "So from here I can make a straight shot? Great! Thank you."

"As long as you don't mind traveling by freighter, yes. And you're welcome, Ms.--Christabel? You don't have a second name?"

"Where I come from, humans don't." The traveler wouldn't mention that for the past decade and more she'd been using an adopted one. This far out toward the frontier, she didn't need her identity verified in order to conduct business. Or to do anything else, either. "Do you have any messages for me?"

"Maybe. I can check, if you want."

The traveler sighed, and drew out another of the untraceable credit transfer strips with which she'd paid for her passage. She put it down on the counter, because she knew better than to hand it over. That could open her up to charges of offering a bribe, and the seller to accusations of accepting one. Out here such "gratuities" were only customary, and both parties knew it; but they also knew that the laws of the Empire still technically applied.

Those laws still protected Christabel, for now. They would go on protecting her until she set foot once more on her native soil. But after that, all bets were off, because she was barely going to make it "home" ahead of the coming Ast annexation.

"You're crazy, do you know that?" her lover, Sienna, had yelled after her one last time. As Christabel Tyrone, Esquire, left their comfortable apartment on a not particularly overcrowded planet (one with plenty of park land, and reasonably clean air and water) within a sector's distance of the Empire's capital. "How can you change anything from there, when you already know you can't do it from here? Because when you tried, you got shot down in flames!"

"I don't know what I'll be able to do, but I can't stay here and wait it out," Chris remembered answering, from the sidewalk where she stood waiting for an aircab. "Dad hates to ask anyone for anything, but he says they need me. And if I don't go now, I may never see my family again."

"I thought you never wanted to see them again. That's what you've always told me!" Sienna trailed after her partner, down over the old-fashioned stone staircase at the apartment building's entrance, so she could deliver her parting shot at something less than a shout. "At least you could take me with you. Dammit all!"

"No, love. I can't." The cab was coming. Chris turned, and held out her arms. "Sienna, please. I have to do this. Can't you just let me go? And maybe even wish me luck?"

Sienna shook her head, and said again: "You're crazy." But when the cab touched down, she helped Chris hoist her travel bags into its cargo space; and then she kissed her.

"Will you be here when I get back?" Chris asked, her voice forlorn now.

"Of course I will." Sienna gave her partner a fierce squeeze, with the strong arms of a veteran peace officer. "You be careful out there, Justice. Hear me?"

"Yes, Chief." Damning the expense of the waiting cab, Chris clung for a moment and then collected another kiss. Then she turned away, climbed into the automated craft's tiny cabin, and didn't let herself look back.

When she left this place, this stepping off point for her long journey's final leg, she wouldn't look back, either. She was nine weeks' travel time away from Sienna already. When she arrived at Somewhere East of Suez, she'd have been more than twelve weeks on the way.

"No messages," the ticket seller announced, with a grin that showed several gaps where teeth were missing.

Christabel forbade herself to bristle. The "gratuity" had, after all, been for checking messages; not necessarily for finding any. Instead she asked, "May I wait here? It's not long until the orbital shuttle leaves, and I really don't want to waste credit on getting a room."

"Suit yourself. It's not very comfortable, but at least I can promise you it's safe." With another of those gap-toothed grins, the other woman indicated half a dozen dilapidated benches in the open chamber opposite the counter.

Christabel swallowed her sigh. In spite of the ticket seller's words, she didn't feel the least bit easy about doing what she desperately needed to do right now--which was go to sleep. The waiting area might be deserted, but in order to enter it she'd had to walk past a truly bizarre collection of aliens, part-aliens, and disreputable-looking fellow humans who were lounging on the cobbled street outside its (as far as she could see) only door. For a moment she let herself wish that she had Sienna, complete with weapons belt and stinger, beside her after all.