Far Flung

By Laura Montgomery

In the very near future a seastead offers consumers a choice in governing systems. Navy Capt. Adam Tenney's daughter takes that offer, but what can he do for her when pirates threaten the seastead, the U.S. refuses to recognize it, and he is trapped in a desk job on land?

A novelette.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ground Based Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386941286

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Barb Bernstein, Autumn Killingham, and J.M. Ney-Grimm for their help with getting this story ready.  Thanks so much, everyone!  You’re all awesome.

Equally awesome are you dinerzins who helped with the armament question:  Andrew, Eric, Gray, James, Jason, Ray, Richard, Seamus, and William.  Thank you!

More Fiction by Laura Montgomery

In the Ground Based Universe

Far Flung

Erawan

Manx Prize

Early Spaceports

No Longer A Mystery

The Sky Suspended

Mercenary Calling

Waking Late Books

Sleeping Duty

Out of the Dell

Or, sign up for her newsletter at lauramontgomery.com to learn of new releases. 

FAR FLUNG   

Land

A lot of children said it.  A lot of children meant it; and Captain Adam Tenney, U.S. Navy, like most parents, didn’t believe it when push came to shove.  And push was definitely coming to shove.

Under normal circumstance he would proudly agree that his daughter could take care of herself.  Betha was an adult.  She had advanced degrees in marine biology and electrical engineering, and she had played soccer and sailed as a kid, with only the regular panoply of bruises and trauma to the ego and a femur.  His wife had panicked over Betha from time to time, but Tenney had always known she would come out of things all right.

It was well established that Betha could take care of herself.

It was different when Betha sat with only a few hundred other souls on an ocean-going platform that had declared itself independent from the United States and was now surrounded by pirates with two ships.

Adam Tenney, a heavily freckled man of brown hair and middle height, knew of his daughter’s situation because he was stationed at the Pentagon, and he was allowed to be part of the discussions with Betha, who was, she had informed them all earlier in the afternoon, the secretary of state for the moment because everyone else was really busy.  Everyone else on the platform was in the militia.  For the moment.  Usually, they had regular jobs.  When she wasn’t playing at being secretary of state, Betha worked on energy storage and the development of an air-breathing battery.

The U.S. response team, in which Tenney strangely was allowed to participate, was gathered in a small situation room in the Pentagon.  They had a video teleconference set and an alcove hidden from the VTC where the military personnel worked while the State Department officials talked to New Oregon.  Caroline—please, call me Caro—Donner, a foreign service officer at State, had brought a lawyer with her, one Donald Blankenship.  Tenney supposed the situation was novel enough to call for legal counsel. 

The two from State occupied the sweet spot for the camera.   Caro Donner, although not young enough to make anyone stupid, was attractive and shapely with big eyes and lips.  Her suit hugged her curves, and her legs would flash back and forth from under the table.  Her attorney was a tall crow of a man, complete with the lantern jaw that lawyers always had in cartoons.  They made an interesting tableau for the camera. 

Betha’s facilities looked much more cramped.  The Americans could see her head and the pink wall immediately behind her, but she was on an old converted and renovated oil-platform.  There wasn’t a lot of room. 

Betha looked tanned but tired.  She looked so young, with her freckles reaching from cheekbone to cheekbone across her nose, and her light brown hair bleached by too much sun.  Betha was pretty, and Tenney could press her ear against his heart when he hugged her.  It had been too long since he’d done that. Tenney detected no fear in his daughter’s eyes.  He never had been able to. 

Julie Alan was the other Navy captain in the situation room, and Tenney could tell his own presence made her uncomfortable.  If she had been commanding the action she would likely have asked him to leave, but it wasn’t her decision.  If it had been Tenney’s, he would have chosen differently himself.  The wrongness gnawed at him, but the weak human side of him, the side that was Betha’s father, was stupidly grateful. 

The lawyer from the State Department told the FSO—the foreign service officer—from the State Department to ask Betha if there were children on board and whether they were in the military, too. 

The children were in the interior, New Oregon’s secretary of state said, over the central supports, and were not in the military. 

Tenney had mixed feelings about the FSO.  She was of respectable years and rank, but she wasn’t even a deputy assistant secretary.  Although New Oregon’s (and Betha’s) secession from the United States gave him heartache nightly and he thought it was crazy what she had done, and that everyone out there was behaving as stupidly childishly as his daughter, he still