Her Brother's Keeper - eARC Read Free

Augustus poured himself another, larger drink. He took a long sip from his glass before speaking again. “I was proud, Catherine. I wished so badly that your mother could have been alive to see it. I didn’t want to end your career that way.”
    Before Catherine could complete her midshipman cruise on a Space Forces ship, the Avalonian High Council rescinded a ruling that allowed women to serve on board combat vessels. That ruling had been a desperate wartime expedient dating back over a hundred years, to the Second Interstellar War, but it had never been reversed.
    Much to her own surprise, Catherine struggled to maintain composure. “Then why?”
    “I was pressured by the Council. I wasn’t the only seat holder with an unmarried daughter, you know. There was concern that you would start some sort of revolution. At the time, the Women’s Legal Reform Coalition was pushing the Council to change the laws of primogeniture.” For centuries, women could not legally inherit titles or lands under Avalonian law. After the war, the laws were changed so that a first-born daughter could inherit if there were no suitable male heirs, since so many had died in the Maggot onslaught. “The Reformers wanted equal inheritance rights for sons and daughters.”
    “How dreadful,” Catherine commented dryly.
    “Yes, well, at the time, the Reformers were quite popular with the commoners. Once the press caught wind of you graduating at the top of your Academy class, you were on your way to becoming a folk hero.”
    “Really?”
    Augustus chuckled. “Indeed. You were too busy with your training and your studies to pay any attention to the media, but my people were being bombarded with requests for interviews with you. I…well, I’m afraid I suddenly found myself under a great deal of scrutiny from the Council, and a great deal of pressure. They were worried about the precedent you were setting.”
    “I was hardly the first Avalonian woman to serve on a military vessel.”
    “Indeed you weren’t, but you were the only female officer in living memory serving not in the Women’s Auxiliary but in the actual armed forces. The old fools on the Council, including this old fool, allowed too many activists and lobbyists to whisper into our ears. They told us of the social unrest that would inevitably occur if this sort of thing was allowed to continue. They warned us that first, women would be serving on combat ships, then daughters would be inheriting Council seats, and after that, a movement to institute elections would begin. Avalon, they said, would fall to the same social unrest that has plagued so many other colonies, and it would all start with you.”
    Catherine raised an eyebrow. “Elections? I was hardly intent on starting some ill-conceived democracy movement. I’ve studied history, I know where that sort of thing leads. I was never a political crusader.”
    Augustus took another sip. “I know, my dear, but I was under such pressure. The other Council Families were plotting alliances behind my back, threatening to marginalize me, to undermine the authority of the Blackwood name.”
    “Since when does Augustus Blackwood bow to such pressure?” Catherine asked.
    Her father winced as if the words had physically wounded him. “I…I was wrong, Catherine. I was wrong to let those bloody dinosaurs sway me. I was compromising, I told myself, just like a responsible councilman should. All my so-called compromise did was embolden the vultures the next time they wanted something from me. It caused me no end of grief.” Augustus looked contemplatively into the brandy in his glass. “And cost me a daughter. Forgive me, child. Forgive me my shortsighted pride.”
    Catherine’s practiced command presence was the only thing that kept the tears back. This was the first time she’d heard her father apologize for anything since her mother had died. She took another sip of her own drink to keep her composure.
    “Yes, well…what’s done