One thing about taking a writing course, often you write multiple entries for any given assignment, submitting one, discarding others.

During my first writing course, I wrote four different stories for the final assignment. We could only submit one. This is one of the ones I chose not to submit.

Man, we never even got started. Sam didn’t say it out loud. Jamie had heard it enough already. Still, it burned.

Just two weeks shy of Grad: All those SATs, stupid personal letters and essays, trying to nail exactly what some unseen authority would desire; All the anxiety and fear displacing excitement as the waiting dragged on.

Then a slew of rejections, and finally, acceptances. Plans had been set, unfettered futures just barely glimpsed…

Then the damned Dilettante showed up and wiped it all out.
Jamie was taking up a lot of Sam’s attention tonight. He wasn’t sure how much he really owed her. They were barely a couple, had only really had sex that once, the day after they announced the Dilettante. He wasn’t even sure that counted.

But she chose to be here, with him, now, up on the roof. That counted, for a lot.

He pulled a beer from the cooler, pulled the pop-top and chucked it over the edge of the roof. Have to pick that up before Dad mows the lawn, or he’ll be mad. Sam caught himself, but that’ll never happen.

He offered Jamie the beer first, knowing she hadn’t acquired the taste yet. She sipped, crinkling her cute little nose, handed it back.

There was an undeniable spark between them, a promise. They just fit; her snug on his lap, for all eternity. It wasn’t love, not yet. But this was all they’d ever have, so it had to be enough.

The damp May evening was a little chillier than they’d expected. Sam’s varsity jacket had slid off Jamie’s shoulders and she was shivering ever so slightly, fighting the chill, putting on a brave face for this crazy guy she’d somehow ended up trusting with her death.

He pulled the heavy jacket back into place. Honestly, a simple windbreaker would’ve been enough, but he wanted the jacket with him. He was too young to have many other prized possessions. Around her shoulders was the best place for it.

Besides, with the jacket set like that, he could steal a caress, even through a layer or two, of her nipples. She gave him an embarrassed ‘what are doing’ look. He whispered, “No one can see.”

But he stopped anyway. Tonight wasn’t about that.

Below, the gate between the driveway and the backyard clanged open, then didn’t clang shut. The ladder rattled as someone touched it. The others had arrived. Sam patted Jamie’s butt to let her know he needed to get up.

“I’m not climbing that ladder,” Sara announced her presence. Lots of strange pairings these days, Sam thought. Cats and dogs, Dale and Sara.

“What if I fall and break my leg?”

“Then we leave you there.” Sam called down. “What? I’m not missing this. Imagine being stuck in an ER when the Dilettante comes? What a fucking waste of a life.”

Sara often called Sam a ‘potty-mouth.’ He saw it as being more mature, more comfortable with adult language. Honestly, if they had made it to college, Sam was pretty sure he’d have left most of his friends behind. Only Dale was close to functioning at his level, maybe.

“Hey, Sam!” Dale called up from the backyard. “Joe Mendle said ‘You can kiss your ass goodbye!’ Live on air!”

Maybe not.

“What’re they gonna do, fire him?” Sam could just barely see that there was a third person there. “Oh, hey…Billy? Didn’t think you were coming.” He pointed into the darkness of the backyard. “Grab those lawn chairs.”
Sara stood two steps up the ladder and relayed the lawn chairs up. Sam pulled them the rest of the way.

“It’s getting cloudy. We even gonna see what happens?” Sara’s head cleared the rain gutter. Two more rungs and she could step off the ladder onto the roof.

Jamie offered a hand, didn’t let go until Sara found her balance on the sloping black tar shingles, much cooler now that the sun had set.

“Joe Mendle said the clouds would blow off just before, that we’d get a spectacular view, if we dared look.” Sam wouldn’t have gone to all this effort otherwise. He opened a lawn chair, set it firmly among the tiles.
Sara sat in the chair, fumbled with her over-sized purse. “I really don’t think he wanted to be on the air tonight.”

“Would you?” Jamie replied, helping Billy come up. “He’s got family.”

“Last I heard, he’d put on Dark Side of the Moon, side one.” Dale added as he climbed onto the roof, waving off Jamie’s help. “He’s probably home by now.”

“Hope so,” Jamie curled back into Sam’s lap, drawing Dale’s attention to the chair. “Hey, you got a frickin’ La-Z-Boy up here?” Dale chuckled. No rickety lawn chair for Sam. That was such a typical Sam move, a brazen, pointless gesture.

“Why not? Don’t have to worry about getting it down.” Sam popped the cooler’s lid and offered Dale a beer.

“How’d you get these?” Dale asked as he took the can.

“Like anyone’s checking ID today.” Sam lied. Even now, he wasn’t going to admit that his old man was cool enough to give him the beer.

Dale popped his can, took a swig, surveyed the valley downslope from them. He nodded toward a dark patch in the otherwise uniformly lit suburb below. “Remember that night we watched the fireworks up here through the fog? You couldn’t even see Union Park.”

“Yup.” Sam remembered. It was his inspiration for tonight.

“And the music?”

“Got it right here.” Sam tapped the Apocalypse Now Soundtrack cassette case sitting on the boombox.

“We just need the one song.”

“I know. Tape’s set.”

Sara pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels out of her bag, waved it for attention. Jamie saw it first. “Nice!”

“Unopened. Dad keeps a few in the garage, thinks we don’t know.”

As night took a firm hold of the valley, neighbours started setting off bottle rockets and dahlias, screeches and small bangers, portends that riled up all the local dogs too soon. Burnt sulphur mixed with the dew, wafted over the roof.

“Gotta use ’em up tonight, I guess.”

“Maybe,” Billy winced as another firework flared and extinguished in the sky. In that brief moment of light, Sam saw tears streaking Billy’s face. “Maybe being here is wrong. Maybe I should…be with my mom.”

“That old hag? Ow!” Sara punched Dale in the shoulder for saying it.

“Come on man,” He continued, “We’re your family, so much more than she is.”

“Yeah, but she’s alone.” Billy’s short, almost hyperventilating breaths revealed the panic they were all valiantly suppressing. “I didn’t think I’d care, but she was crying. I should go.”

Dale started to rise, but Sam waved him off. Let him go.

In his haste, Billy half slid, half fell down the ladder, then ran out the yard.

It was a good four blocks to his house. “Hope he makes it in time.”

“We expecting anyone else?” Dale asked. When Sam shook his head, Dale kicked the ladder away from the roof.

“It’s just us, now.” Sam approved. He met each friend’s gaze, resting on Jamie’s beautiful brown eyes, reflecting the fireworks. “We’ll do.”

They passed the whiskey around. After a few turns, Jamie pulled a joint out of Sam’s jacket pocket, held it up with mock surprise. Once Sam lit it, that too got passed around.

Sara took a long pull on the ever-shortening stub, passed it to Dale.

“What do you think the Dilettante thinks of us?” She asked, not expecting an answer so much as wanting to break the silence.

“We’re in the way.” Dale’s bitterness was punctuated by puffs of smoke.

“To where?”

“Wherever comets go, I guess.” Dale tried to pass the stub on, but Sam waved him off, beer in hand.

Sam’s other hand, slowly caressing Jamie’s back, felt a spasm jolt her spine.

“Guys! Across the valley, is that…” Jamie didn’t want to say ‘the Dilettante.’ Her voice cracked, almost failed. “Fireworks?”

No one needed to answered. A glow was building beyond the far ridge-line, getting brighter by the second. Pittsburgh, twenty miles that way, never cast so much light.

Dale pulled Sara onto his lap.

Jamie buried her face down into Sam’s shoulder. “Is it going to hurt?”

“For a moment, yeah.”

“Then what?” She pleaded. Sam bit back a sarcastic, ‘then we die.’

“Don’t know.” He settled on. “Whatever comes next, I guess.”

He stared as the sky flared, willing himself to witness every last moment. Not that Mendle will ever know, but I dared.

The clouds blew off, as predicted. The stars, even the crescent moon, disappeared in the wash of brilliance that followed. A shockwave pulsed through the ground, subsonic vibrations shaking the house, joist and joint, followed by a staccato rending of earth and rock.

Jamie moaned and clung to Sam’s chest. Sam kissed her on the forehead, reached down beside his chair, and pushed play.

The sky was too bright to look at. Sam buried his fave in Jamie’s hair, smelt the strawberry conditioner for the last time.

On the boombox, the sitar started its slow, hypnotic pulse, barely audible over the death screams of the world. Even as the boombox bounced into oblivion, Sam heard Jim Morrison’s melancholy voice kick in, “This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.”

I doubt it’s a surprise that I’m working on a book. I’m actually working on a lot of them – a duology, a stand-alone novel, a novella and a five-novella sequence. Oh, and a few short stories, too.

The five-book sequence follows the crew of a ship as they get into a series of escalating adventures. I’d like to introduce one member of the crew here. Her name is Char Osbaldistan, and when we meet her here (in a flashback), she’s a smuggler, freshly captured by the Interplanetary Union (IU). But when we actually meet her in-universe, she’s a full-fledged member of an IU crew.

Char was first mentioned (but not seen) in the short story Dee, For the Win which you can read here.

Let’s meet Char Osbaldistan:

—

It was an office, why an office, Char didn’t know. Usually court rooms looked more like, well, court rooms and not offices. Yet there he was the tired old magistrate sitting behind a pompous desk, flanked by an inquisitor. The room was plush, velvet and wood against gold highlights. It spoke of power and authority, order and rigidity.

The inquisitor spoke first. “How many identities do you have? Your ship … what’s it’s name?”

“Why do you ask?” Char chafed against her bindings. There was a very comfortable chair in front of her, but sitting in it like this would be awkward.

“Your ship, for one, appears to have four different registrations.” Char bit back a smile – there were seven, but they’d only found four. That was good.

“For the record, what is your ship’s name?”

“What do you want it to be?”

“Don’t play with me, girl.” The judge’s contempt spoke of impatience. So, time to go slow.

“Woman. Twenty-seven. Clearly, I’m a woman.”

“I have grandchildren your age, child.” The judge dismissed her response with a wave of his hand.

“Still, woman.”

“You, yourself,” The inquisitor ignored the exchange, “appear to have five different identities, all of whom,” He spoke in an aside to the judge, “pay taxes, by the way.”

“Seriously?” Char always left the money laundering part of the operations to the experts. All she knew was that she got paid her share, and it was a nice share.

“Yes, it’s an efficient way to look legitimate – pay taxes on income earned from fictitious jobs to cover that it was actually earned illicitly.” As if he needed to explain it to her. No, he was stating it for the record. This was being recorded, surreptitiously.

“I pay my taxes. Still, you arrest me?”

“You pay taxes for five people, at least four of whom are fake. Before we finish, you will tell us exactly how and from whom you got those identities.”

She chuckled. “Probably not.”

“What’s with her ship?” The judge asked.

“It’s a little planetary system slug modified with a hyper drive.” The inquisitor read from a note screen. “Slugs are everywhere, working boats that might move cargo pods, align construction segments, move a hulk around. They often hitch rides with cargo carries from one system to the next. It’s so common, and so universal, that a new one in a star system would never raise suspicions. It’s the perfect smuggling vehicle.” He turned back to Char.

“From your vessel’s logs, we’ve learned that you’ve worked in the Hadriatik Republic, the Triple Alliance, the Non-aligned territories and around Melakka. The ship’s history appears to suggest that it originated in Melakka, which would tie you to the identification of Char Osbaldistan.” The inquisitor nodded toward the judge. “Thus we have determined that for the purposes of this hearing, you will be identified as such. Miss Osbaldistan, do you object?”

“Of course.”

“Then what name would you prefer?”

“No, any name will do. I object to being captured. I object to being tried. I object to my ship being confiscated. I object to it being the bloody useless Interplanetary Union that arrested me and not some respectable government. This isn’t a real judiciary, you have no authority. This is a kangaroo court.”

“Char Osbaldistan, you’re charged with illegal operation of a vehicle, four counts of impersonation, smuggling, piracy and theft. You will learn to respect this court’s authority and you will do so quickly.”

“Oh, please.”

“What?”

“You want me, you want people in general, to respect your authority? You don’t know the difference between smuggling and piracy.”

“Both act outside of the law.”

“So does speeding. You don’t equate it to piracy … bloody kangaroo court, full of amateurs.”

— 30 —