by David Adams
Magnet: Marauder
“Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.”
- Lao Tzu
Magnet: Marauder
Mount Herzl (Mount of Remembrance)
Jerusalem
Earth
After the events of ‘Magnet: Special Mission’
I HAD SPENT THE BROADSWORD ride to Earth studying. I learnt a lot about Jewish funeral traditions and what my responsibilities were. I learnt that burial should take place as soon as possible and be as simple as possible, that Jews don’t have a wake, and that parents say a prayer called the Kaddish for eleven months after the death of their children.
I’m Mike Williams. Callsign Magnet. I fly the F-88 Wasp, although recently I’ve been doing a stint as a gunner in the Broadsword gunship Piggyback. I was back on Earth on a very important mission after a long time in space.
Burying a friend.
As Gutterball’s mother spoke about her daughter, with a strength in her voice I doubted I would have in a similar situation, I couldn’t help think that eleven months was too small a time to grieve for such a loss. All scars healed, and I knew that, but to lose a twenty six year old child was too much. It was more than words could fix.
Not that they were supposed to. The purpose of the Kaddish wasn’t to speed this process nor comfort the living. Instead, mourners were supposed to say it to show that, despite the loss of their child, they still loved God.
I didn’t feel much love for God as I watched Gutterball’s plain oak coffin sink into the ground. Then again, it was hard feeling anything for something you didn’t accept as real. An atheist hating God makes just as much sense as a Christian hating the Tooth Fairy.
I played my part, though, and did what was expected of me. I respected Gutterball. Her parents wanted to honour God; I wanted to honour my friend. There was no Missing Man formation flyover for her, no wreaths, no fancy decorations or memorials. Just friends.
Friends and otherwise. Her ex-husband was here. A tall, thin man with a quiet demeanour, he just stood up the back and didn’t say anything. He seemed like an improbable pair for the fiery Combat Systems Officer. The arsehole had walked out on her two weeks before the big mission. She’d cut her hair off, shaved completely bald, when she heard the news. Nobody knew exactly why. If he cared at all about her he wouldn’t have left her in the middle of an important deployment. I avoided looking at him.
Not everyone did though. The Piggyback crew, especially Shaba, treated him with open contempt. Although he’d done nothing but leave a marriage that was obviously troubled, I knew Shaba blamed him in some way for Gutterball’s death. It wasn’t rational, but it was there. I felt it too. Our friend was dead and her killer had escaped without punishment. Hating her ex was the next best thing we had.
The funeral staff covered the grave containing Gutterball’s coffin. She was nothing more than a lump of soil, surrounded by other lumps of soil, a Star of David as her headstone. The last prayers were said, the first cracks began to appear in Gutterball’s parents’s composure, and I knew it was time for me to leave. Penny would be waiting for me back at the hotel. The mourners began to disperse and I waited for Shaba and the others, my mind a million kilometres away.
“Hi,” said a voice at my side.
It was Gutterball’s ex-husband. I wasn’t exactly overflowing with a desire to ingratiate myself with him.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to say—”
“Listen,” I said, turning to face him. “I’m sure you had your reasons for leaving. I’m sure you thought it through, and that you genuinely thought that you were doing the best thing for the both of you.” I couldn’t stand to look at him any more so I didn’t. “But I don’t care.”
There was a pause before he answered. “Okay.”
“One thing.” I spoke to the grave, rather than to him. “Why did she cut off her hair?”
“I don’t know.”
Then he had nothing to give me. Without saying a word I walked away to Zangvil garden, leaving the guy behind. My car was parked near there. I got as far away from Gutterball’s ex as I could, then tapped a button on my phone, summoning my car to the military cemetery.
It would take some time to get here. Traffic was heavy today. I watched as cars hummed around the narrow streets, sweat running down my face. It was good. Felt like home. I had grown up in Broome, a northern, tropical place. The Sydney ran its cooling systems at standard temperature. I hadn’t been properly warm in months.
Before my ride arrived, though, Shaba caught up with me.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“Away.” It was the best answer I could give. “Sorry, that guy was pissing me off.”
“Hah,” she said, smiling like an idiot, “I thought you were going to get your gun.” She’d been crying. For the record, I was a stoic pillar of masculinity who would never even dream of crying in public.
For the record.
“Waste of ammunition,” I said, putting a hand to my chin in thought. “But a cricket bat…”
She laughed, I laughed. It helped.
“So,” Shaba said, “what now?”
“Hmm?”
“Well, Piggyback’s down a CSO, and if you’re going back to the little birds, a gunner too. We gotta look into filling those spots.”
I’d grown quite accustomed to being the ventral gunner, but I preferred my own ship. My Wasp had been destroyed on a raid against a Toralii outpost but its replacement should have arrived by now. “There’s plenty of applicants, surely.”
“There’s plenty of applicants,” Shaba echoed, “but none of them are Gutterball. None of them are you. You did good back there—you lit the Kel-Voran fighters up like they were menorahs.”
“Being adorably Jewish won’t help convince me, you know.” Still, I was pretty touched. “You’d let me to stay on permanently?”
“Yeah, well, Lion’s a little fucking hatichat harah and with all that’s gone on we don’t have a replacement yet. Our new CSO should be joining us before our next op, though, so that’s something at least.”
I looked out over the dusty row of buildings, at the city beyond. Lion had refused to go on the mission that had gotten Gutterball killed. In hindsight, pretty smart move. Still. It just made everyone hate him more.
“Sure,” I said, “for a little while.”
“Promise?”
“Why not,” I said. “I’ve got a week’s more leave left to go, going to spend it here with Penny, then I guess I’ve got nothing better to do than dangle precariously underneath your Broadsword.”
Shaba’s smile told me her relief, and a car pulled up in front of us. I reflexively reached for the door handle, but it opened before I could. A Persian woman in her late thirties, wearing an army uniform with Commander’s epaulettes, stepped out. Shaba and I stepped to the side and reflexively stiffened our posture, letting her pass.
She stopped in front of me, though. I was worried because my Persian was poor, but instead she spoke with a crisp English accent. “Lieutenant Williams?” Her tone suggested she already knew the answer.
“Yes ma’am.” She was staring at me. I knew why. My face. I was used to it by now. She’d get over the sight of my scars. Everyone did eventually.
“I’m Commander Scott, British Special Air Services. I’m here on special request from Task Force Resolution.” She held out two plain Manila folders, one for each of us. “There’s an interesting opportunity brewing that requires decisiveness of action. After your recent experience with Vrald the Blood-Soaked’s son, your name was on the top of the pile.” She nodded to Shaba. “Right after yours and your crew.”
I took the folder. It was nondescript, the worst kind, with a simple red stencil on the front. TOP SECRET. Shaba opened hers and immediately began reading it.
“Ma’am, I just got through burying my friend,” I said, handing it back. “Sorry, the answer’s no. For the moment, I just want to get back into space
and do some patrols with Piggyback. Maybe fly a completely uneventful CAP for the next few months if they get sick of me. I’m not looking for another risky assignment.”
I could feel Shaba’s eyes on me, but I tried to ignore them.
Major Scott took the folder, holding it in both hands, a curious smile on her face. “We do live in interesting times, don’t we, Lieutenant Williams?”
That was hardly the response I’d expected. “How do you mean, ma’am?”
“I mean that none of us asked for this either. I’m supposed to be retired, but the Royal Army reactivated me. To be honest, though, I was glad to be out there, contributing to the cause. I lost family in Tehran.”
Commander Scott’s car closed its automatic doors and moved away. My car replaced it. I didn’t get in, though.
“I know,” I said. “I lost a friend in Sydney and a handful of distant relatives. That doesn’t mean I won’t fight, ma’am. Just that I’ve buried enough friends for the moment. There must be someone else out there who’s equally suited to this mission, or better.”
Scott seemed to understand. “Very well.”
Shaba handed back the folder. There was no way she could have read it all. “I accept.”
“Good,” said Scott, looking to me. “No worries, Lieutenant. I’ll have Piggyback launch without you. I’ll ask your CAG for someone else.”
The idea of the Piggyback crew launching without me stung. Shaba stepped on my foot and I looked at her reflexively.
You promised, she mouthed.
I reached out for the folder. “No promises,” I said, glaring at Shaba, “but I’ll take a look.”
The more I read, absently walking in circles around the unfamiliar Israeli streets, the more I regretted opening that folder.
The bulk of the contents were printouts. The paper was polarised so that it could only be viewed from straight on. Each was a two dimensional slice of a three dimensional space, depicting a section of Toralii space mapped out in a detail I hadn’t seen before. Every planet, every moon, along with sidebars full of information. Population. Imports and exports. Defence systems. This was some sensitive information indeed.
A section was highlighted, an out of the way section labelled Location One. A newly settled planet home to a tiny farming community, no more than five hundred civilians. The system’s jump points were guarded by a series of static defences: directed plasma cannons, EMP emitters, and a worldshatter device. The colony was resupplied every seventy-odd days by a ship designated Objective Alpha. I skimmed through the information. Objective Alpha was the Al’Farrak. In the Telvan dialect it meant The Bearer Of The Sky God’s Treasure.
A Telvan ship? I checked the information. No, it was Toralii Alliance. I knew that the Telvan language was the de facto language of commerce and trade amongst the Toralii, almost a lingua franca, which eased my concerns. We would not be attacking our allies.
Otherwise the ship seemed to be a standard freighter. It had weak points marked on a series of blueprints, including one I was deeply suspicious of labelled “insertion point”.
Shaba must have been a faster reader than I was, or perhaps my head just wasn’t in the game, but I couldn’t fit all the pieces together. The Toralii Alliance was vast, spanning an unknown number of worlds and with a substantial trade network that was well protected. Why did this section matter? This ship?
Then I found it. Location One’s jump point defences had been compromised by the Kel-Voran. They would be inactive until a ship arrived with replacement parts for them. A brief window of opportunity.
I wandered back towards Commander Scott. Shaba was gone and my car was waiting.
“Well?”
“You want us to take the ship, don’t you Commander?”
She nodded. “Perceptive of you. Yes, I do. To the Toralii it’s a lightly armed freighter, of a make and model common throughout the Alliance, but for us it’s a treasure trove of technology and information. And it’s valuable on its own, too. The Madrid isn’t combat ready and neither is the Washington. With the Tehran in repairs and the Beijing without a commanding officer, the Sydney is stretched too thin. I don’t need to tell you how badly we need more ships.”
“So ma’am, I’m guessing the plan’s something like: grab the ship, bring it back in one piece and let the boffins crawl all over it?”
“That’s the first part.” Scott pointed to the folder. “Did you read the whole thing?”
“Sort of.”
Her expression hardened. “I didn’t prepare this information frivolously, Lieutenant.”
“Of course you didn’t, ma’am. Sorry.”
She reached up and touched her forehead, wiping away the sweat that beaded there. “Yes, well, had you decided to read further, you would have discovered that the second stage of this plan is to up-gun and up-armour the freighter, convert its cargo hold into a launching platform for Wasps and Broadswords, then conduct guerrilla operations in Toralii space. We were not expecting the Toralii trade network to be so vast; a single ship of Alliance make and manufacture should be able to travel within their space without arousing suspicion.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How did we come into possession of this information, ma’am?” Nothing came for free.
“Helvhara the Stoic supplied it to us, unsolicited. She was most pleased with her new husband and wanted to express that pleasure in a more direct manner.” Scott’s tone softened. “She also sent her sincere condolences about Lieutenant Rubens.”
I curled my upper lip. “You told her Gutterball’s dead?”
Scott raised an eyebrow at me. “No,” she said, “you did. Remember? When you delivered Belvarn the Undying to her. You told her that Belvarn had shot her. Helvhara asked about how Lieutenant Rubens was doing, and Lieutenant Kollek authorised us to tell her.”
It was hard to feel indignant when it was my fault. “Right. Um. Sorry ma’am. It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sure it has.” She squared her shoulders. “So, are you in?”
“Yes,” I said, “but after my leave’s complete. There’s something very important I need to do first, ma’am.” Penny would be waiting for me.
Scott shook her head. “There’s no time. The Toralii know that the jump point’s been compromised. Every second we spend here is a second that they could be reinforcing the location. If you’re in for this op, you’re in now.”
“Now now?”
She pointed to my car. “A Broadsword’s waiting on the roof of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center. It’ll take you to the Sydney for immediate departure.”
I really wanted to propose to Penny before I left, but I knew this was important. I hesitated, trying to find some way to do both, but eventually just nodded my head.
“Yes ma’am, I’m in.”
“Great,” Scott said, “I’ll drive. I don’t trust computers.”
I stared at her. “Pardon?”
She pulled open the driver’s side door. “I’m coming with you.”
Hanger Bay
TFR Sydney
The Broadsword landed in the Sydney’s hangerbay alongside others I assumed carried the rest of Piggyback’s crew. Once the hanger bay doors had been closed and the area repressurised, the deck crew came out to meet us and secure the bird. They weren’t alone, though.
“Hey hey Mags, you fucking ugly son of an AIDS-ridden whore, how are you doing?”
Ginger clapped me on the back, a little too hard for my liking. He was a weirdo but we were all weirdos. The kind of people who volunteered for hastily organised, top secret missions operating far behind enemy lines with imperfect information typically were a little south of sane.
“That’s a nasty way to talk about your mother.”
He blew a raspberry at me. “Whatever. You’re just jealous of how ripped I am. Of my guns.”
“You know what they say about guys with big muscles,” I said, “compensating for small dicks. How’re you doing mate?”
“Fucking good as always,
man. I stayed onboard while you were all off doing your shit, working on my lifts. Hit 160 kilos on the bench. Going to pull bitches like there’s no tomorrow. They all wanna ride the Hebrew hammer.” Ginger’s physical fitness was second only to his lack of personal hygiene. I could smell his rancid breath as he leaned over and asked, easily within hearing range of all, “Who’s the bird?”
“I’m Major Scott,” she said, clearly unamused. “British Special Air Services.”
Ginger whistled. “Welcome aboard, ma’am. You coming on our little marauding expedition?”
Simply being in proximity to Ginger seemed to be raising her blood pressure by the second. “Firstly, Lieutenant Shamoon, this is a very important operation and the importance of it cannot be overstated. Secondly, yes. I will be coordinating the assault and boarding action, along with the CW teams and subsequent cleanup.”
Ginger squinted. “CW?”
Scott glared at him, then at me. “Does nobody read anything on this ship?”
“I can’t read,” I said, “I’m illegitimate. Sorry ma’am. Don’t know what Ginger’s excuse is.”
She pulled out her folder again, fished out one of the polarised pieces of paper and thrust it in his direction. “Chemical warfare. When we engage the freighter, we initiate boarding with an injection of nerve agent. We’re to wait in the jump point for them to arrive, latch on, and hope we kill them all before they notice what we’re doing.”
“Ahh, right,” said Ginger, reading over the document. “But ma’am, what happens if they spot us before the gas filters through the ship?”
“Then I imagine the Toralii seal their internal bulkheads, power their weapons, and destroy us.”
Just what I wanted to hear. Maybe I should study the brief in greater detail. “I’m guessing there’s not much of a plan in that eventuality?”
“Not really,” said Scott, “the ship won’t be able to jump if the point’s occupied and there’s no way a single Broadsword can engage them at full standing.”