Courting Disaster: What's With the Helmet?

As promised in my last post, here's the scene from my upcoming release, Courting Disaster, where Captain Navene Jagger, a top tier military captain on the cusp of a big promotion to command a newly commissioned battleship, is struggling to make sense of his interim assignment...

...and the helmet he's been issued to go with it. 

If you missed my earlier post about an excerpt from the opening of Courting Disaster, you can find it here.

_______________________________________________

Jagger stood at the docking bay entrance, trying to find any positives in this gigadam boondoggle. He’d be flying solo, he reminded himself, just like the glory days of slicing through space in his Rimmcraft Stiletto. It might not be all bad. That thought tumbled and burned the moment he caught sight of the shipwreck at the end of the boarding passage.

He checked the bay number again. Yes. Right bay. He just couldn’t believe what was berthed there.

The Sheeban’s battered two-deck carcass could’ve been a clunky, mid-ranged compost hauler that had seen its best days centuries ago. They wanted him to transport an ambassador’s daughter through a very treacherous region of space in this wreck?

What was the story here?

And his newly requisitioned civilian attire? A worn set of coveralls, untailored, drab gray, and lacking any insignias. People were going to take him for a second-rate mechanic in these faded greaseskins instead of a top-flight Carduwan officer.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The garb came complete with a battered helmet and face shield. What was he supposed to be—a pilot or a test-flight dummy?

Judging by the look of his vessel, it was the latter.

The admiral couldn’t be serious about this. Maybe this was Kareek’s idea of a joke? Or an elaborate hazing meant to take him down a peg or two before he was presented with command of the Meritorious?

He glanced at the small packet the quartermaster had pressed into his hand. “There’s a purser’s safe under the pilot’s console,” the non-com had told him. “Use these lock codes to open it once you’ve cleared station and are on course for the Rift. It contains your classified directive from Command.”

This “directive” would hopefully shed a lot more light on the situation. Jagger gave the aged ship another skeptical once-over. It was always an option to refuse a mission, but—he heaved a weighty sigh—that had Career Ending Catastrophe stamped all over it. 

_____________________________________

Thanks for stopping by to read a bit more of my upcoming release. 

I'll be taking a short hiatus from now until the New Year (hey, where did 2023 go, anyway?), but I'll be back with more posts in January. 

Have a wonderful holiday!

Courting Disaster is at the Top of my 2024 Resolutions!

Hmm, that may have sounded a bit like a prophecy of doom, but in reality Courting Disaster is my next project with a hopeful Spring-ish 2024 release date.

The original story was published as a part of the Pets in Space 2 anthology (when the series was still young), but the new incarnation is a much revised story with new, changed and expanded scenes. It's weighing in at roughly twice the word count.

Truth be told, although Courting Disaster was my second StarDog story in the Inherited Stars series, it's the one that required the most enhancing and tweaking because it's an important precursor to the grand finale of this timeline. (And yes, I'm an admitted perfectionist and that has sometimes pulled the rug out from under my schedule. I'd say that I'd try harder to be less of a perfectionist, but really....what reader really wants that?)

In hindsight, it actually will work out well with Courting Disaster being the final StarDog story released as a standalone, because it's the perfect segue into the novel that will wrap the timeline, Inherit the Vengeance. 

So in other words, it's all good.  :)

Let me leave you with an excerpt of the opening, where the reader meets (or gets reacquainted with) the hero, Captain Navene Jagger. If you've read the anchor novel, Inherit the Stars, Jagger might not have seemed like hero material....but there's a lot more to the man than his swagger. 

[But why is he wearing a helmet on the cover, you ask? Check back for the next excerpt where Jagger asks the same question. ;) ]

Here's a first look.

__________________________________________________

Captain Navene Jagger smiled as he gazed out the viewport of the immense space station. Talstar. Home of the Universal Flight Academy, orbiting the lush blue world of Veros. Good memories here. Heady times with his fellow cadets during the three calendars it had required to earn his wings. He’d left the program with salutatorian honors.

But without Drea.

His smile slipped. Not every recollection of Talstar was a good one. The broken engagement. The devastation in Drea’s eyes. Watching her walk away for the last time. It had been his greatest defeat—Hades, his only defeat. And he had no one to blame but himself.

He’d left Talstar the day after graduation, stripped of his plans to test her father’s Mennelsohn prototype, and promptly joined the Carduwan military.

That had been ten calendars ago. Ten very long calendars. He’d spent the first seven trying to apologize to Drea for the unforgiveable, trying to prove to her he’d changed, trying desperately to win her back.

Then Sair happened. Drea had fallen in love with an escaped slave. A nobody. Or so he’d thought.

That was when he’d finally grasped the scale of the wedge he’d driven between them by his foolish, ego-driven folly. He’d done this. He’d destroyed their relationship. Not Drea. And, gods knew, not even Sair.

That realization had sparked his transformation. He’d reinvented himself, stopped being a ladies’ man, stopped being anything other than a dedicated officer married to his career. He didn’t have love…but at least he had pride. And purpose.

_____________________________________________________

More excerpts will follow soon.