Rimworld- Stranded…

Well, since everybody ‘else’ is doing it, I figured I’d cross genres too…

 This is a little Mil Sci-Fi short story that a ‘number’ of folks have been prompting me to do. It’s my equivalent of sticking my toe in the water and seeing if anything is going to bite it… For $.99 on Kindle, I figure a few folks might take a look…
As always, click on the cover to go directly to the Kindle copy on Amazon.

Senior Sergeant McDougal wasn’t a combat troop, he was a maintainer. He was good at it, proud of his status, and on his first planetary detachment as the lead maintenance troop for an outpost.

But, when he got stranded on Regulus Four, a Rimworld and one of the clusters that formed the DMZ between the Patrol and the Dragoons, his status didn’t mean a thing…

Improvising, adapting, and trying like hell not to panic, he did his best to fulfill the Patrol’s prime directive to destroy the portable stargate, and still get himself off the planet in one piece before the Dragoons got to him.

As always, honest reviews/comments are appreciated!

Comments

Rimworld- Stranded… — 18 Comments

  1. Was Daniel Gallery’s “Fatso Giannini” novels in your mind when you wrote this, Jim? Sergeant McDougal sounds like he would have been welcome in Fatso’s incinerator compartment. 🙂

  2. So, does this mean you can get on with publishing the next Grey Man novel?

  3. Robert- I ‘might’ have read Dan Gallery’s novels… 🙂 But I like writing imperfect characters, and I was a maintainer for a few years.

    Fargo/LL/Rev- Thanks!

    Daddy- It’s going out to alpha readers this week 🙂

  4. Bought it at 1:15 am, read it. Now when are you expanding it into a full book and series?

    C-90

  5. Purchased yesterday and read this morning. Most enjoyable.

    However, at the risk of suffering the same fate as the meatspace Joe Buckley, two typos and a question, please?

    In the dedication, should “… enemies butt.” read either “… enemy’s butt” or “… enemies’ butts”, and should “… clamored into the suit” read “… clambered into the suit”.

    I can’t find the word “stacer”, which in context is a high tech crampon, in the OED. I can’t think what other word might fit there, and so wondered if it might a high-tech US neologism that the dictionary’s compilers haven’t caught up with?

  6. PM- THANK YOU! I’ll never complain about constructive criticism… 🙂 A stacer is a compressible device that collapses in on itself for some ‘length’ and can be extended by releasing a lock over the end of said stacer. Used extensively in sonobouys, currently they are made out of polymer or fiberglass…

    • Thank you for the explanation; always interested in broadening my horizons, as to which, a wider internet search revealed (to me, at least) that the name is an acronym (Spiral Tube & Actuator for Controlled Extension/Retraction) and that there’s an Australian boat manufacturer of that name:).

      Regards

      PM

  7. PM- That’s it, and I should have explained it was an acronym… My bad. And I’m not going to red shirt you either…LOL