Tandem: a better story

Earlier this week, I asked for writing prompts, and the inimitable Emil Minchev responded: “Remember Solo? Do the opposite”

Okay, so…IN THE DISTANT FUTURE, IN THIS VERY GALAXY…

A wealthy, middle-aged woman named Foong Tandem stays on her comfortable, safe, well-lit planet, where she joins the Rebellion.

She and her partner — a small, hairless, squeaky alien whose language everyone but Tandem can understand — are assigned to accompany a group of highly moral roving law-enforcers in a mission to prevent a train robbery. The mission is a success and nobody dies. Or if they do die, it’s meaningfully.

Rebel leadership is thrilled, and sends our hero — paired up with a handsome older man whom she has never met before — to the glittering and clean campus of a tech startup. There, they recruit an engineer of high-speed space ships, who happily lends our hero his own ship.

Tandem, the most careful pilot in the galaxy, gets the ship safely past a white hole. After pausing to take pictures of the local wildlife, she arranges a mutually beneficial arrangement with a fuel-processing plant, ensuring a stable and dependable supply for the Rebellion. There are no damn robots.

The climax comes when Tandem’s team runs into those train-robbers again, who, dramatic reveal, are actually Imperial agents! There is a standoff, which Tandem’s team wins because of the strong ties of trust they have made with each other on the course of the story.

Tandem’s mentor wishes her and her love-interest good luck as they fly off on their next sensible adventure. “Squeak!” Says the alien. You got that right, Crispy.