A Story in the Percy Holmes - Detective Universe
"My name is Kate Holmes. I am the ex-wife of detective Percy Holmes and mother of his children. I am also an alcoholic." And that was how my day, every day that I was in prison ended, with an AA meeting. I was serving 10 years for drug possession and prostitution. Well I guess I'd better start at the beginning so you understand my story.
A Swarm Cycle Story
A Veil of Steel descended between the Middle East and the rest of the world over the Sa'arm incursion. "Denied areas" such as the Middle East are soft spots in Earth's defenses. Lieutenant T. E. Lawrence wheels and deals to erect an armored umbrella over this soft spot.
14-year-old English cabin boy Nathan is shipwrecked off the coast of Aden in 1881 and makes his way to the city. His choices are to starve and be taken in the streets of the city and done to death as handsome European boys are roughly used in Aden or to at least use his body to make money for passage home. He consigns himself to a male brothel, hoping that Arab clients will not use him up before he can return home. It's an Englishman who uses him the most cruelly, though.