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 a to 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.