Alpha Guard - Chapter Six
A sci-fi thriller novel, most easily described as Jack Reacher in space.
Hello alpha-readers, welcome to chapter six of 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.
“Well, that took longer than expected,” Camila said as we all sat down in the car back at the Chambers’ parking lot, “Next time, can’t you just fly us over the crowd?”
“That would require a state of emergency,” I answered.
“And that would be a joke, Robo-Guard,” Camila came back with.
“I like this chick,” Eric said in my ear, “I’ll have to keep that one in my back pocket, Robo-Guard.”
Not that it bothered me, but Amrita attempted to defuse the insult by staring down Camila and saying, “We very much appreciate you getting us here safely, Alpha Guard.”
“Just doing my job, Amrita,” I replied as I approved the car on my HUD to start our journey back to Dome One.
“Now we’re on our way, let’s discuss tomorrow,” Amrita began, “With Pandu joining us in the pods, Tristan would like to employ an extra pair of hands to keep us safe.”
“I work alone,” I said.
“Tristan knew you’d say that. But he thinks you’ll reconsider if you see what he has in mind back at The Diamond.”
Eric chimed in, “Did she just confirm Tristan Andras is in The Diamond?”
“So, Mr. Andras is in The Diamond right now?” I asked out loud.
Amrita leaned forward and said, “Keep it to yourself, but yes. Would you like to meet him?”
“I knew it,” Eric remarked.
Ignoring his overly eager input, I replied, “There are still some incomplete preparations for tomorrow, but I can spare twenty minutes.”
A few years after my Mom died, the insurance payouts stopped and Dad had to get a job. Having not worked in ten years, there was only one place to get steady hours. Andras Corp did a million things, but he ended up on the production line at one of their weapons factories.
At first he seemed to enjoy it. But six-months in, he came back one night seriously drunk, singing at the top of his lungs, “We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die! Joy to the world, we’re all going to die!”
Fortunately, my little sister was a heavy sleeper, but unfortunately, I wasn’t. Trudging downstairs, I found him in the kitchen eating straight out of a cereal box. Then rubbing my eyes to adjust to the bright overhead lights, I asked, “Dad, what are you singing about?”
Slurring every other word and just about staying upright, he replied, “The end of the world boy, that’s all.” Then raising the cereal box as though he was toasting with a glass of champagne, he gave a sarcastic, “Woohoo!”
Trying to be the responsible one out of the two of us, I said, “You need protein. Let me cook you some eggs.”
He suddenly dropped the cereal box, which scattered across the floor, and grabbed me by both arms. Staring at me with the same fearful face after my Mom died, he said, “I’m not joking, son. I’m not meant to tell anyone, but what they’ve got us making at that factory is gonna destroy humanity.”
Pushing him away from me, he stumbled back, tripped and hit his head on the countertop. Splayed out on the floor, his head began to gush and the growing pool of blood started to collect pieces of breakfast cereal.
Standing there like a deer in headlights, I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Thankfully, we were still in the expensive house my Mom bought. So, it had a fancy AI safety system. In a placid female voice, it said, “Injury detected. Do you need emergency services?”
I snapped out of my daze and replied, “Call an ambulance.”
“They’re on their way. Please apply pressure to any bloody wounds.”
Grabbing a tea towel, I held it to his head and then remembered how drunk he was. So, I put him in the recovery position. Lucky I did, because just before the paramedics arrived, he puked his guts out. With Dad semi-conscious from the puking, the paramedics bandaged his head, placed him on a gurney and took him to hospital.
He was back home the following afternoon. But it took him until that evening to tell me he’d been fired from his job for disorderly conduct. From that moment, it felt as though I’d become the head of the household. And whether it was embarrassment or resentment, he never looked at me the same.
Leaving Camila in the basement parking lot, Amrita and I traveled up to the top of The Diamond in a private high-speed elevator. The doors opened up to a compact hallway with smooth white walls on all sides.
Amrita stepped forward and I followed. Then she turned to face me and said, “Before we enter, I have to warn you, Tristan has spent the past several years in near isolation. So, he’s developed a few… quirks.”
I nodded and she placed her right hand on the wall directly opposite the elevator. A green circle illuminated her hand and the entire wall moved upwards to unveil what appeared to be an aquarium tunnel.
A few steps in, I messaged Eric, “You seeing this?” But there was no response. I tried poking one of his pet peeves. “U c dis?” Again, no response.
As far as I knew, we could get around every known jamming technology. So, this must have been some sort of new one. But assuming I was relatively safe, I decided to go with the flow. And focus on the bizarre fact I was walking through an aquarium on Mars.
After ten meters, the tunnel opened up to a large living space, surrounded by the rest of the aquarium. Shaped like the underside of a dome, it was full of tropical fish swimming through coral. There were also stingrays, reef sharks and some sort of large sea mammal.
It was similar to a manatee but not quite. So, I selected it on my HUD to find out what it was. A message flashed up, “No connection.” It was trivial information but the whole, not being able to communicate with the outside world thing had me on high alert.
Not wanting to give away I knew I was off-grid, I asked Amrita, “What animal’s that?”
“A dugong,” she replied.
“Never heard of it. Is it real?”
Watching the dugong swim by, I heard a familiar male voice announce, “Oh, it’s real. The dugong is actually the most important part of this ecosystem.” I spun round to see Tristan Andras walking out from another tunnel on the other side of the penthouse.
Most people rapidly decline after eighty years old. But this guy had basically stayed the same since that promotional video was given to schools twenty years ago. Same all black suit, same physical build, just a few more grey hairs. From what I could tell, he was one of these people who was going to live well into their hundreds.
Longevity science had come a long way over the past century. With the oldest person ever, making it to one-hundred and forty nine. Global life expectancy was half that three-hundred years ago. However, with all of the scientific advancements since, it’d gone up to one-hundred and one.
Tristan stopped halfway across the penthouse and said, “This is as far as I go.”
I looked at Amrita and she clarified, “He’s in a closed hygienic environment. The desire to become the oldest human ever comes at a cost.”
Looking more closely, I could see a glass wall running down the middle of the penthouse. Alongside being clinically clean, the way it was inline with the floor tiling and masked by the aquarium above, the glass wall was near invisible.
“Forty-two,” Tristan blurted out.
I turned to Amrita for clarification again but she was seated in a corner of the penthouse doing something on her smart glasses. So I ambled up to the glass wall in front of Tristan and asked, “Pardon me, Mr. Andras but forty-two what?”
“Million.”
“Forty-two million?”
“Liters.”
“Liters?”
Putting his hands in his trouser pockets, he looked up at the aquarium above and smirked. Finally the penny dropped. He meant there were forty-two million liters of water. Then another penny dropped. He wasn’t using a new jamming technology. He was using the oldest jamming technology there was. Water. Without a series of relays, there was no chance of establishing an external connection. Especially when there were forty-two million liters of water surrounding me.
Sensing I’d cottoned on, he said, “Now you know why you can’t communicate with Mr. Green. Let me take a proper look at you.” Looking me up and down, he said, “Fascinating. Did you build this mech-suit yourself?”
“Joint effort with Mr. Green,” I replied.
“And where is Mr. Green?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve never known the location for his side of our operation. Ignorance is bliss, so to speak.”
“Yes. Ignorance can be bliss, but it can also be one’s downfall. Don’t you agree, darling?” Tristan called over to Amrita.
She swiped away whatever she was doing on her smart glasses, stood up and made her way over to us. I didn’t know what to make of the stare they gave each other. But it didn’t feel like the love between a husband and wife.
Aiming to keep the meeting short, I cut the tension by saying, “Amrita mentioned you’d like to employ an extra pair of hands for tomorrow. I can assure you that won’t be necessary. Any other bug you’ve got in mind will just slow me down and get in the way.”
Tristan threw back his head and laughed very loudly. Then he said, “Classic Alpha Guard. ‘I work alone. I’m super-tough. I don’t need anyone else.’ I wonder where this loner issue comes from. Well, you needn’t worry because technically, you won’t be working with some-one. You’ll be working with some-thing. Let me introduce you to ARES.”