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    Magnet: Special Mission: Lacuna
    Magnet: Special Mission: Lacuna
    Magnet: Special Mission: Lacuna
    Ebook56 pages1 hour

    Magnet: Special Mission: Lacuna

    By David Adams

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    About this ebook

    Pro tip: Never volunteer for anything. That's the first thing they told me in flight school.

    It's 2037. I'm Mike Williams, but you can call me 'Magnet', and I'm a fighter pilot on the TFR Sydney. Our flight leader, Iron, has a mission: Volunteer only. It's the usual gig. High risk, lots of unknowns, an opportunity to make history or die trying. Hopefully the former, but sometimes it's a little of column A, a little of column B, you know?

    The mission's going to a place no Human's been, hoping to earn ourselves some desperately needed allies. Pretty simple on paper. Fly out to a rendezvous at a distant world, pick up an alien and take him to his blushing bride.

    Although, come to think of it, I don't know if psychotic waist-high reptilians can blush.

    A 13,700-word story in the Lacuna universe, set after the events of Magnet but suitable for reading as a stand-alone story.

    Parts of the Lacuna universe:


    - Magnet
    - Magnet: Special Mission
    - Imperfect
    - Faith

    The Lacuna series:

    - Lacuna: Demons of the Void
    - Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi
    - Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion (New Release!)
    - Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity (coming 2013!)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Adams
    Release dateSep 22, 2012
    ISBN9781497742628
    Magnet: Special Mission: Lacuna
    Author

    David Adams

    David Adams served as an Officer in the Australian Army Reserve, trained alongside United States Marines Corps and Special Air Services SAS personnel, and served in the A.D.F as a Platoon Commander of Military Police. He has worked alongside Queensland Police Officers and held investigative roles with The Commission for Children and Child Safety.

    Read more from David Adams

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      Book preview

      Magnet - David Adams

      Magnet: Special Mission By David Adams

      Copyright David Adams

      2012

      Magnet: Special Mission

      Spouse: someone to help you through all the trouble caused by your spouse.

      - Kel-Voranian Proverb

      Pilot’s Ready Room

      TFR Sydney

      Orbit of Mars

      After the events of ‘Magnet’

      I eased into a vacant seat, gripping the table to keep steady, wincing slightly and trying not to stretch my bandages.

      Deal me in.

      I’m Mike Williams, although most people around here called me Magnet, or Mags. No, check that—exclusively Magnet.

      When someone got wounded they’d end up in one of four places: stuck right back on duty, stuck in the ready room, stuck in the hospital, stuck in the morgue. I recently had a hole put in me, courtesy of the Toralii anti-fighter batteries, and it was still healing. I was stuck in the ready room.

      The pilot’s ready room. A sacred hall for military aviators and aviatrixes. Our off-duty room, pub and private sanctum; a place of cigarette smoke, spilled alcohol, sweat and unwashed bodies. Where rank didn’t matter, neither did position nor title, not even names. We used only call-signs; calling someone by their real name meant something seriously bad was going down. We drank, gambled, smoked, bragged, fought and relaxed there. It was an anti-church, a den of debauchery and hedonism, and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.

      The scoreboard, a floor-to-ceiling monitor, sat on the side farthest away from the door. It was moved there pride of place opposite the hatchway after too many drunk pilots stumbled into the touch-screen and broke it. Removing the mounting brackets was a colossal pain, but eventually the techs tasked to regularly replace the screen found moving it worth the inconvenience. The kill tally dotted the screen next to the names of each gunner and pilot, tracking their progress. The more aliens blasted into atoms or vented into space, the higher the scores climbed. So far the marks were all Toralii.

      I’d gotten one kill. Not bad, but our CAG and flight leader, Iron, got three. He needed five to be an ace. Everyone knew Iron was gunning for it... then again, we all were. Aces had a small ace of spades next to their line and the techs painted one on their cockpit too. It was a coveted status symbol, one of the few that earned anyone any respect around here.

      A line went through anyone we lost. Thirty six lines and nineteen kills overall marked the scoreboard. Not too bad a ratio, given how badly we were outmatched by our enemies, but I couldn’t help feel for two of our rookies who bought it. Both died with a clean row.

      Sometimes I wondered if the nineteen enemies we splattered all over space had been Toralii rookies. Fuzzy aliens straight out of flight school thrown into a dogfight with humanity to die. Maybe their families experienced the same things when they were given the equivalent of a folded flag and a box of medals. Was there a Toralii scoreboard somewhere with nineteen lines through it and thirty six kills? And was some Toralii pilot eagerly looking forward to bagging himself three more Humans?

      Gutterball, an Israeli Broadsword commander, dealt the cards. Mace, Shaba, Smoke, Ginger, Lion, and Bobbitt were crammed in around the well-scuffed table. Gutterball raised an eyebrow, her jade-green eyes watching me with the same hawkish glare she got whenever I was late for anything, which was often. She kept her black hair short, almost a buzz-cut really; a style she adopted after her husband walked out on her nearly two months ago. She hadn’t said what the hair had to do with anything and nobody had been brave enough to ask.

      As I got comfortable, she turned her attention back to her cards. Fortunately the game hadn’t really started yet and was still in the betting round.

      Gutterball was the Combat Systems Officer; a combination navigator, electronic warfare specialist, coordinator, commander and team mum. Ironic considering

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