Alpha Guard - Chapter Eight
A sci-fi thriller novel, most easily described as Jack Reacher in space.
Hello alpha-readers, welcome to Alpha Guard!
If this is your first time visiting, here’s a quick rundown of what’s what…
My name is Samuel George London and I’m a writer from Hampshire in the UK. Usually, I write comic books, but this is my first novel. And just so my fellow Brits know, I’m writing in American-English because the main character is originally from the US.
Alpha Guard is a sci-fi thriller novel, most easily described as Jack Reacher in space, but the short synopsis is as follows:
Even after 300-years of colonization, Mars is still a tough place to live - unless you can afford to live in Dome One. However, when the wealthy need to visit out-of-dome, they hire bodyguards known as ‘bugs’ to protect them. Alpha Guard is the best bug on the Red Planet, and when he's hired to escort a VIP around Mars, his skills are tested to the absolute limit.
So, in a nutshell, if you like books by Lee Child, Andy Weir, Mark Greaney and Blake Crouch you will (probably) enjoy reading or listening to this story. And if you haven’t read or listened to chapter one yet, you can do so by clicking here.
I’ll be publishing Alpha Guard on a monthly basis, chapter by chapter, right here for free. So, please be sure to subscribe to stay notified when new chapters are posted.
I’ll never put a paywall on chapter posts, but if you’d like to, there is an opportunity to upgrade to paid. However, it’s only to fuel my caffeine habit. So, please only part with your hard earned cash, if you can afford it.
There is an audio version of this post available, but to give you a heads up, the chapter reading is by an AI voiceover via ElevenLabs. However, when I eventually publish Alpha Guard as a polished novel, I will be hiring a human to read the audiobook.
If you prefer to listen rather than read, Alpha Guard is also available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible or wherever you usually download your podcasts.
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Happy reading and please let me know what you think in the comments.
Ciao for now,
SGL
P.S. If you need to refresh your memory on the previous chapter please click here.
Traveling down the elevator to the basement parking lot, Eric crackled back in my ear, “Where did you go?”
“Meeting Tristan Andras,” I replied.
“Obviously, but you completely disappeared on my screens.”
“His penthouse is surrounded by one large aquarium.”
“That’ll do it.”
“Any ideas to get around it?”
“I’ve got a couple of things to try from my mining days.”
“Cool. I’ll send you everything I captured locally and you can keep me posted.”
“Solid work, Yankee. See you tomorrow.”
By the time we finished our conversation, I’d arrived at the basement parking lot. The doors opened and standing there still waiting was Camila. She let me step out and start walking to my car before she said, “Sorry about insulting you earlier, Alpha Guard.”
“No need to apologize. You’re the client. You can call me all the names you like.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
This got me curious. So, I stopped, turned to face her and said, “Go on.”
“From your meeting just now, I’m sure you sensed that relations between Amrita and Tristan are strained. At best.”
She paused, expecting me to say something. But from hard earned experience, when someone comes to you privately, you should keep your cards close to your chest. So, I kept quiet and waited for her to continue. “Ever since Tristan put himself in isolation, they’ve had limited communication. And I just wanted to make sure you understood not to talk about any of this to the press or anyone else for that matter.”
“My client’s business is their business. My job is to protect, not gossip. No one will hear it from me.”
“Thank you. Enjoy your evening.”
I gave her a nod, opened my car and got in. While the car moved at a snail's pace toward the exit, I used the car’s rear cameras to observe her. Not in a creepy way, but purely to see what she did when she felt like no one was around. You can tell a lot about a person that way.
She walked back to the elevator and sat on the floor. Then letting her hair down from her usual tight bun, she took off her glasses and buried her face in her hands. The word frazzled came to mind. I couldn’t imagine the workload Amrita gave her being anything less than overwhelming.
Just before my car turned out of the parking lot, Camila moved her hands to reveal streams of tears. She then started pulling at her hair and banging her fists on the ground. This jogged a memory I hadn’t thought about in a long time.
Six months after Dad got fired from his Andras factory job, we were evicted from my Mom's house. Luckily, before I was born, his parents died. Not that it’s lucky to grow up without grandparents, but they’d left him with an old farmhouse in New Hampshire. It was worthless and in the middle of nowhere, but it was better than trying to survive in the Government's basic assistance camps in Philadelphia.
A few weeks after we’d moved in, I found a rusty gasoline dirt bike in the barn. It was run down for sure, but nothing a few video tutorials couldn’t take care of. All I had to do now was keep it hidden from my Dad.
After a morning of riding in the woods, I walked the bike into the barn from the side door. Then propped it up against some wooden pallets before filling it up from a well used oil drum with a rotary pump ready for the next ride. The video tutorial I watched for that was well over a hundred years old.
The last thing to do was to cover the bike with the same tattered blanket I found it under. But just as I let go of the blanket, I heard someone behind me say, “What was that?” Turning around, it was my little sister’s silhouette standing in the main double-wide doorway with her hands on her hips.
“Nothing,” I replied while walking toward her. Placing one arm around her, I gestured back to the house and said, “Come on, it’s lunchtime.”
She suddenly ducked underneath my arm and ran inside the barn. Throwing the blanket off the bike, she said “Woah, awesome! Can I have a go?”
“No way José. That thing is seriously dangerous.”
“So, why are you allowed to ride it?”
“Because I can take care of myself.”
“I can take care of myself,” she proclaimed.
“Alright, prove it. If you can pull it up straight and walk it around the barn, you can have a go.”
Satisfied with that deal, she took hold of the handlebars, and to my surprise, she managed to pull it upright from the pallets. Even more surprisingly, she walked it around the barn without a problem. It was impressive for an eight-year old, as it must have weighed well over a hundred pounds.
“Okay, very good,” I said as I slow-clapped her achievement, “time to put it back.”
“But you said I could have a go if I walked it round the barn.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you could actually do it.”
“That’s not fair!” She shouted.
Grabbing the handlebars from in front and looking at her in the eyes, I said, “Life’s not fair. Now, let’s go get lunch.”
She stood firm and shouted, “I want to ride it!”
“No!” I shouted back and pushed her away with one hand. She fell on her butt and screamed at the top of her voice. She then started pulling at her hair and banging her fists on the ground. This continued for a couple more minutes while I hid the bike again. But before I had a chance to grab the blanket, I heard my Father from behind me ask, “What the hell are you doing with that?”
He stormed over, pushed me to the side, grabbed the bike and flung it into the middle of the barn. Taking a sledgehammer in both hands, he stood over the bike and stared at me with a forlorn look on his face.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! In three strikes he completely obliterated the engine and front suspension. Dropping the sledgehammer, he walked over to me and said, “That bike is illegal, son. If you were caught riding it, we’d both be going to prison and your sister would end up in a foster home.”
“I stayed in the woods. No one saw me,” I replied.
His face turned red and putting a finger in my face, he said, “I don’t give a shit if you think no one saw you. Someone is always watching. Next time you do something that stupid, I’ll be using that sledgehammer on you!”
A rage bubbled up inside me so quickly, that before I knew it, I’d punched him on the chin. Jiggling his jaw to seemingly check everything was still in place, he said, “Time I teach you a proper lesson.”
He grabbed the bottom of my t-shirt and pulled it over my head. Stuck in that position, he repeatedly punched me in the ribs and stomach. I couldn’t see anything at the time, but I could hear my sister screaming at him to stop.
I don’t know how long it lasted but when he finished he pulled my t-shirt back to normal then pushed me onto the bike. For a second I thought at least it was over, but right after that I felt a searing pain on the right side of my chest. I’d landed on the broken front suspension fork.
From my awkward position on the bike I slid myself off and sat up to inspect the damage. My t-shirt was torn showing a rough circular cut just above my nipple. Although I was bleeding, it wasn’t as much as you’d think for a wound that was gaping in some parts.
My little sister ran over to me and shouted, “Dad, he’s cut!”
He was almost out the double-wide door when he turned around then looked at my injury and said, “Stay down.”
In defiance of his orders I stood up. And with that, the cut on my chest started gushing blood. Then everything went to black.
I woke up in my bedroom and next to me sleeping in a bean bag was my little sister. I tried to sit up and the pain in my chest made me howl. With that, she woke up and said “Dad said you shouldn’t move.”
“Yeah, well, Dad talks a lot of shit,” I replied.
She laughed and said, “He also told me to tell you he’s sorry for burning you.”
“Burning me?”
“He had to seal the cut on your chest.”
I pulled back the makeshift wet dressing on my chest. Instead of the outline of a circular cut, there was now a burn mark in the shape of a filled in circle.
Putting the wet dressings back on my chest, My sister continued, “We’re not allowed to tell anyone. That’s why he didn’t take you to hospital.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll keep it to ourselves. But from now on, if you do anything that’ll make him angry, you blame it on me. I can take it.”
Splashing water over my face and looking up in the mirror, the bright bathroom lights in my apartment revealed the circular scar on my chest. It’d been almost thirty years since he’d taught me a proper lesson. And for a moment, I wondered what he was doing that very instant. Was he still alive? Did I even care? Pushing those thoughts away, I had to focus. The day ahead was going to be intense to say the least.
It was five in the morning, as I was due to collect Amrita from Dome One at seven o’clock. For the next hour I drank coffee and went over the itinerary several times, followed by a long stretching session. If you cramped up in a mech suit, you were screwed. It’d never happened to me because I stretched everyday and always made sure my electrolytes were topped up. But I knew bugs who weren’t as prepared as me, and it didn’t end well for them.