This year for April Fools, I’m posting a few outtakes from my Cassi Requin novels!

These scenes were written in early drafts of my novels First Command, and Fractured Command. And as a special bonus, I’m including an outtake from the new novel Lost Command (coming soon). Each brief scene is just a fragment, possibly embellished from the original goof.

Enjoy.

Zipper Drive

On the second full day of its space trials, while the Steadfast looped out past the eighth planet in the Avalon system, four of its six zipper drives died. They were online and then… not.

“Engineering, what is wrong with my zipper?” Carrideon demanded.

Lieutenant Commander Mantha looked at his terminal, then at Cassi.

Cassi ran through the same diagnostics the engineering chief was looking at. “I think I see the problem, sir.”

“Would you care to elaborate, Ensign?”

Cassi bit her lip, straining to hold the smile back. “Your zipper’s down, sir.”

She couldn’t hold it back and more. Cassi buried her blushing face in her hands and laughed.

As everyone else on set laughed, Mantha looked around. “What’s funny about a downed zipper drive?”

Red Dwarf

“There’s one more thing,” the commanding officer of the Steadfast said. “Master Astronaut Raddock?”

Raddock looked around and wiped sweat from his brow. “Yeah, um… time,” he said. “If the threat of the remaining pieces of our spacecraft breaking up ain’t enough, we’ve got another time constraint here.”

He cleared his throat. “Our remaining power core is at ninety one percent of its maximum capacity. As long as we hold on to the Red Dwarf, it’s gonna keep climbing. We only have a couple hours to make this work. Otherwise, we’ll have to disengage.”

“Don’t you mean the Red Twilight?” Duschene said.

“Yeah. That’s what I said. ‘As long we hold on to the Red Twilight, it’s gonna keep climbing.’”

Sankova covered her mouth in an attempt to hide a giggle. Her face turned pink.

“What?” Raddock asked.

 Cassi closed her eyes grabbed Sankova’s shoulder and turned to the signals terminal. The two of them held each other up, trying not to let tears out.

“You said Red Dwarf the first time,” Pelly explained.

“Yeah. So what? Ain’t that like a planet or something?”

Destiny

“Sir, I think I know what the problem is,” Pelly said.

“Go ahead, Mr. Pelly.”

The kid took a deep breath. “We can’t get a fix on our galactic coordinates because the density of the spiral arms are all wrong.”

“What do you mean the destiny is all wrong?” Bauer asked. “We were in the gravity well for a while, but it couldn’t have been so long the galaxy evolved. Could it?”

Everyone on the bridge stared at him.

Bauer put his hands on his hips. “Could it?”

“Of course it couldn’t,” Cassi said, forcing a straight face. “That wasn’t its destiny at all.”

Bauer slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

Physics

“Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!” the navigator shouted. “Kinetic rounds launched. Incoming times four.”

Four? Cassi ran through some math. If those slugs had the same shield disruptor technology that was used on the armored freighter, they would get through.

Jetti’s first shot slammed into the Red Twilight’s shields, the charged particles deflected by some mysterious physics that the author planned to figure out later. The spacecraft rolled in response.

Cassi looked up. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you a physicist?” she asked.

It was National Novel Writing Month. The point was to get the story down now and edit it later.

Underwear

“You alright, Zurbling?” Cassi asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No. Seriously.”

He looked up from the relay he was testing, hesitation in his eyes. Something was wrong.

She double checked that they were on a private radio channel. “Feel free to talk to me,” she said. “You’re on my team. If there’s anything bothering you, you can talk to me about it. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He looked down at the circuit he was working on and took a deep breath. “Someone stole my underwear. Ma’am.”

“What?” Cassi nearly fell over backward.

“That’s the line,” Zurbling said. “See? It’s right here in the script.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be undersuit?” Cassi asked.

“It says underwear,” Zurbling answered.

“It’s a good thing you’re wearing pants!” Quinton called from off-screen. “I thought I was the commando around here.”

Bauer

On her way back to the bridge, Cassi passed the spacecraft’s armory, where the marines slept in cryostasis.

Quinton’s pod was up front with the other officers. He lay there, perfectly still, in suspended animation with his eyes open, staring up into space through the pod’s polymer window.

Someone had taped a picture, face down on the window. Curious, Cassi flipped it up.

Bauer had printed his own smiling face.

“Oh my God! Bauer!”

Quinton bit his lip and giggled, trying to hold still.

“Don’t you start,” Cassi said. “You’re supposed to be in stasis.”

“Hey, I gotta look at that.”

She looked off camera. “Did you seriously put this here?” She read the words scrawled in black marker. “Good Morning, Sunshine? Seriously?”

“Who wouldn’t want to wake up to that?”

“Unbelievable. Here I am… this is like one of the most dramatic moments in the book and you’re all like ‘look at my face.’ Just unbelievable, Bauer.”

Hank You

Cassi lunged at the sentient megaflora—blade first.

She slashed at the main neural network of vines branching off from the cluster. Cassi cut and hanked as hard and as fast as she could, plunging the blade hilt deep in the fleshy cellulose. Not quite wood, but not quite green vine either, the blade stuck.

Cassi looked up. “Hold on. I hanked as hard and fast as I could? How do I even do that?”

Quinton’s muffled voice came from off screen, behind the pressure door to the Red Twilight’s bridge. “It’s a typo. It’s supposed to say Wanked, Cassi.”

The marines laughed.

Cassi’s glare burrowed through the pressure door. “I’ve just been shot like three times. I’m barely alive here. Be serious.”

“I am serious. And don’t call me—”

“Quinton!”

The bridge of the Red Twilight went quiet.

Another muffled marine voice. Thatcher. “You’re in trouble now, mate.

Impressions

Cassi turned and hugged Quinton, deeply and without really thinking it through, she kissed his cheek.

As if she had crossed some kind of line, Cassi pushed away from him, but he was so solidly planted to the ground he didn’t budge and she took a couple steps backward stumbling, the skin on her face a little warmer than it should have been.

The Rhino was waiting, and she didn’t want to make a bad fist impression.

“Wait. What?” Cassi said. “How exactly would I make a bad fist impression?”

In the Hole

Cassi helped Taura drag Lapoint right up to the hull, away from the ejection port.  The three of them curled up into tight little balls, pressing their bodies up against the torronite.

Pelly shouted. “TIRE IN THE HOLE!”

“How’d you manage to fit it in there?” Bauer shouted from off-screen.

Pelly looked up. “Huh?”

Taura leaned back. “You said ‘tire’ not fire.”

Still in the Hole

Cassi helped Taura drag Lapoint right up to the hull, away from the ejection port.  The three of them curled up into tight little balls, pressing their bodies up against the torronite.

Pelly shouted. “WIRE IN THE HOLE!”

He was already giggling when Taura stood up.

“Pelly!” she shouted. “We’ve got to get through this scene. I have other things to do, you know.”

The kid shook stifled a laugh. “You’re right I’m sorry. Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole.”

Taura rolled her eyes.

In the Hole… This Time With Feeling

Cassi helped Taura drag Lapoint right up to the hull, away from the ejection port.  The three of them curled up into tight little balls, pressing their bodies up against the torronite.

Pelly shouted. “TAURA IN THE HOLE!”

Taura jumped up, her hands balled into firsts.

Everyone else on the set laughed.

Taura shook her head. “This is a serious piece of science fiction literature. We’re nearing the climax of the story. This is our big moment. I want to be called back for the sequel.”

Pelly looked off screen. “Wait… there’s a sequel?”

Tactics

“Congratulations, Mr. Pelly.” Mantha leaned back in his seat and checked some readings. “You found a rock.”

He turned his attention to the captain. “Sir, we’re a sitting duck out here. We need that third reactor on-line and those drives operational.”

The other spacecraft flew behind the celestial body, obscured from view.

“They could be using that planetoid to hide some kind of manure,” Pelly said.

Carrideon gafawed, black coffee spit from his nose.

Mantha fell back off his chair.

Pelly shook his head. “Maneuver. Maneuver!”

Cassi laughed. “No no, I’m sure they do want to hide their manure.”

“I wouldn’t have screwed it up if he used the Canadian spelling!” Pelly crossed his arms and stared at the author.

Alezia

“Ready to disembark,” Hazgor ordered. He shouldered his way to the head of the ramp.

There was something of a ceremony to first setting foot on a new planet. Hazgor, as the ranking officer, had a duty to be the first off.

Cassi stood beside him, under the tail. Rain flew sideways and hit her helmet. Droplets collected on her transparent face shield.

Zurbling backed to the side of the ramp next to Hazgor and slipped.

“Ahhh!”

His arms went up in a flair and he tumbled off with a shriek, a roll and a face plant.

“Zurbling?” Cassi called. “Zurbling! Oh my god. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Hazgor answered, rubbing his helmet. “I think he scuffed my face shield though. Is this going to ruin my closeup?”

The young mechanic pushed himself up off the ground. Dark mud clung to his hard-shell suit.

“Sorry. Sorry. My fault.” Zurbling picked him self up, now covered in mud and limping.

“Walk it off. Walk it off.”

Hazgor shook his head. “What if I were to pull off my helmet and then rip off my jacket to show, you know, how as the party leader, I’m not afraid to expose my masculinity to this planet. I would show off my abs. Cover shot!”

“Ew. No.” Cassi said.

“Well hold on,” Emica argued. “We could at least try the scene that way. See how it looks?”

Cassi rolled her eyes. “I’m taking lunch.”

“Great,” Hazgor said as he dashed off the stage. “I’ll get the baby oil.”