Salut, Earthlings ( or whatever greeting you people use). I've been asked to tell you a little about an adventure I had during the Albegensi-Terran War, but quite frankly, I really had to be talked into doing so. Why? Because...I don't like Terrans! Oh, there are a couple of individuals I find...compatible...like Jake, the bartender at the Asteroid Cantina in the Thieves Quarter--great hacker, is Jake--and one Andrea Talltrees, a blonde-haired, adopted Navajo...and the most hard-headed, opinionated, stubborn, and...desirable female I've ever met! And that's the problem....
Introduction? Oh, yeah...my name's Sinbad sh'en Singh--at least, that's the name on the Federation Wanted holoposter. I was christened Andrew Malcolm McAllister, and I'm a Terro-Felidan hybrid, the only one of my kind, smuggler par excellence, if the reward they posted for me is any indication. Wanted on five planets, for 100,000 Credits. Pretty good for an orphaned kid who started plundering at age 15...an American success story!
Back to my problem. You see, I hate the Federation and its inhabitants with as much emotion as the passion I feel for Andi, and there--as Shakespeare once said--is the rub: I love one of the enemy...no, more than that, I worship that little woman!
A little background here: My father was a soldier captured in the Terro-Felidan War, a prisoner of war who fell in love with his jailer's daughter. When Felida surrendered, his fellow Terrans framed him for treason. My mother killed herself, and I-- I was the only witness at my father's trial, a child of three, helping to condemn his parent to a living Hell at Fort Joy--whoever named that place certainly had a midnight-black sense of humor! Well, the Federation didn't know what to do with a half-orphaned hybrid, so they sent me with my father--and forgot about both of us!
The Toxic Zone stretches through Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, a now-deserted plain inhabited by men the Federation wants to forget. In the 21st Century, it was a gigantic asbestos waste dump. but years of blowing wind released its contents into the air. The guards at Fort Joy wore protective suits. We had none. It was like a thousand pieces of glass piercing the skin. Three men a day died at Fort Joy....
...and my 23-year-old father was one of them. That's the place where I grew up, where, at the age of 15, I earned the dubious fame of being the only man ever to escape the Toxic Zone.
However, my story really begins when those fool Albegensi blasted a Terran deep space freighter into micromolecules and started a war they couldn't possibly win. (Personally, I didn't care. War's always profitable for a smuggler!) SOP forced the arrest of any Alien National in residence, and Andi's husband, Tran, was one of them. If only the Federation had known who he really was....
Anyway, Andi's godfather, George Windrider--we have a history that old Spirit Leader and me--sent her to me. God, she was so beautiful--and frightened. I'll admit I'm physically imposing--six-feet-eight, weighing 300 pounds--and I use it! I played it extra tough with Andi--the Big Bad Felidan--snarled, smoked the smelliest cigar I could find, tried to force her to drink beer (her people don't believe in imbibing), then told her the only way she'd get my help was to go to bed with me!
She surprised me by agreeing. Still can't believe a woman could love her husband that much! Made me re-evaluated my opinion of female Terrans...a little.
Nothing didn't happen, of course. She fainted before I could unbuckle my belt, and I let her off the hook, agreed to help her--didn't know I was the one who was hooked!
That sheltered little lady and I had an adventure that took us from Terra to the jungles of Serapis where we had a confrontation neither of us expected. At one point, she even saved my life. Somewhere along the way, she resurrected some gentle emotions I thought were long dead, and when Tran and I at last came face-to-face....
When it was all over, we thought we'd be together forever, but the spectre of Fort Joy reared its ugly head. I've got the same thing that killed my Dad, and I refuse to let her see me die. I sent Andi away, told her I didn't love her.
So now I'm sitting in my ship, the Dream Mariner, getting snocked on Talesian ale, flying high on a roll of Puff mixed with Glow, and it isn't helping a bit....All I can think about is how the sun shone on her hair as we pushed through the Serapian jungle, and how blue her eyes were the morning after we....
Damn it, Andi, that's what killing me--not this disease!
My ship's fueled and ready to go. I can slip past the Coast Guard easily. I've done it a hundred times....
You'll have to excuse me. I've got somewhere to go.
Andi, I'm coming back for you!
(Sinbad's Last Voyage is the first novel in the series The Adventures of Sinbad, published by Double Dragon Publications as an e-book and paperback. It has also been made into an audio book by Books in Motion. The sequel, Sinbad's Wife, is scheduled for release in June, 2008.)
Sinbad is one sexy, pointy eared fellow. I'm glad he could join us on the PFS and introduce himself. Keep bloggin Sinbad!
Great insight! That Sinbad is a complicated "cat"!
The picture reminds ma a bit of a fawn, like in Narnia. They dance in moonlit glades with the nyads and the dryads, and I've always been especially fond of them. But I'm utterly whacked out from the madness of spring, too much gardening, and allergy meds. So I may be hallucinating.
My head's a bit clearer now.
Come on, Toni, where's the come back to my 'fawn comment?'