The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller

by Michael Robertson

  The hard pats on Seb’s back knocked him forward a step. When he turned to look at his smug opponent, he muttered, “Well done.”

  A broad grin pushed Gurt’s large chin forward. “It was rather, wasn’t it? And for a moment I thought you might have had me beat in the arena.”

  The victor always wrote history. No matter what had happened during the simulation, Seb had lost. Maybe he shouldn’t have pressed the button to drop Gurt’s bridge. Maybe he should have banged him out cold in the arena. Maybe he should have loosed his zip wire when he had the chance. Maybe he should have done a lot of things. But instead, he behaved like a moron because of his overinflated confidence. And now—in front of the entire complex—his pride had to pay the price.

  After he’d watched Gurt leave the simulation room to be surrounded by many of the spectators, Seb walked out after him. SA remained in the crowd and watched him instead of Gurt. Her eyebrows lifted in the middle, almost like she felt sorry for him. Either that, or she’d been genuinely confused by his actions.

  Before Seb could look at her any longer, Moses stepped in front of him. For a moment, the two stared at one another before Moses spoke. “You could have finished that several times. Don’t show your enemies the same kindness. There are no rules in war. You need to remember that.”

  Shame set fire to Seb’s face and he didn’t reply. Once Moses had walked off, Seb looked at the ground and headed back to his room.

  Chapter 14

  “So why didn’t you just knock him out?” Sparks asked as they walked toward the canteen.

  Seb involuntarily ground his jaw in reaction to Sparks’ question. Sure, it seemed like an obvious thing to ask him; after all, he did have Gurt at his mercy in the arena. Had he sparked him, then everything would have been settled. The click of his and Sparks’ heels fell into line together. The sound bounced off the hard steel walls of the corridor, highlighting his refusal to respond.

  “I mean, we could all see you were toying with him, but …”

  “Did SA see that? Oh, my god, I must have looked like such a prat.”

  When Sparks didn’t reply, Seb looked at her to see she had an eyebrow raised at him. “I think it would take a bit more than that for her to think of you as an idiot.”

  “She said something?” Seb instantly flushed hot. “I mean … um.”

  Sparks’ shrill laugh echoed through the corridor. “Of course she hasn’t said anything. She doesn’t speak, remember?”

  Seb looked at the canteen instead of Sparks. If his face looked like it felt, it currently glowed like a beacon.

  The second Seb entered the room, the place fell quiet. So quiet he could hear his own pulse. The small few who hadn’t watched the simulation would have heard about it by now.

  Seb’s stomach twisted and his pulse sped up as he walked past Gurt’s table. The vulgar creature sat surrounded by sycophants, members of his own species, and SA. To look at her made him want to crawl into a hole and hide with the shame of his own foolhardiness.

  SA didn’t smile, but she didn’t look at Seb with contempt either. Impartial, she silently observed him. He sighed as he took in her long blonde hair, her yellow skin, her iridescent blue gaze. He’d been such a fool.

  After Seb had passed Gurt and his harem, his shoulders snapped to his neck to hear the large creature’s voice. “You could have finished me, you know?”

  Seb stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

  “You had me beat. You could have dropped my escalator into the crevice, but you didn’t. I don’t think you have what it takes.”

  And maybe he didn’t. Gurt didn’t mention that he’d had him beat in the pit. Seb could tell him that he knew about his weak knee and he went easy on him, but he wouldn’t stoop to Gurt’s level. He’d made a choice to behave like an idiot once already, he didn’t need to do it again.

  A long-fingered hand rested against Seb’s back and Sparks spoke so only he could hear. “Come on, let’s go and get some lunch.”

  “I don’t feel very hungry,” Seb whispered to her.

  “Don’t let him get to you. It’s not worth it.”

  That much seemed obvious, but Gurt had burrowed into Seb like a tick, and he couldn’t get the vile creature out.

  Before Seb moved off, Gurt laughed and said, “I think you’re a little mummy’s boy. You should go home and suck on her teat some more.”

  Although Seb felt Sparks try to grab him, he got away from her as he dashed over toward Gurt. One step on an empty seat on the other side of the table from the large beast, and he launched himself at him. As he flew through the air, everything slowed down and he saw SA’s mouth fall open in shock.

  Gurt flinched and raised his arms, but Seb knocked his defence aside and grabbed the Mandulu’s thick throat. His momentum knocked Gurt backwards off his seat, and the pair of them fell to the hard floor. Gurt bore the brunt of the landing as the empty chairs around them scattered and fell over.

  Seb clenched his teeth so hard they ached. He raised his fist, saliva dribbling from his mouth as he drove his hand at Gurt’s bulbous chin. But before he could make contact, his arm stopped. When he looked up, he found Moses over him, every tooth in his wide mouth bared in a fierce warning. The world returned to normal speed and for the first time in what felt like forever, Seb backed down from a fight.

  If it had been silent when Seb entered the canteen with Sparks, the lack of sound in the place had now turned it into a vacuum.

  Moses shouted, the bass note of his voice blurring Seb’s vision and upsetting his balance. “Get off him now!”

  Seb did as ordered, his breathing heavy from the exertion as he stood up and faced Moses.

  With a thick finger, Moses pointed at Gurt, SA, and Sparks. “You, you, and you, I have a mission for you. Come with me.”

  Instead of telling Seb to join them, Moses lifted him clean from the ground by the back of his shirt.

  Seb couldn’t breathe and stars swam in his vision. Before he could pull at his collar to try to free his airways, Moses threw him in the direction of the canteen’s exit. Seb walked with his shoulders slumped and his head dropped. One day he and Moses would fall out. Then he would take back the pride the large man had just stripped from him.

  Chapter 15

  Moses held the door open for the four of them. Seb watched the three others enter before he did. SA led the line. She moved with her usual grace and confidence and walked into the place like she’d chosen to be there.

  Gurt—oblivious to much other than himself and things that needed to be killed—lumbered in next.

  Sparks’ eyes darted around the place, and maybe Seb was the only one to know why. He watched her look at every electrical device and power point. It gave her the edge should anything go wrong.

  Seb followed them in to the bland room, the air conditioning cold enough to pull his skin tight, but not quite give him goosebumps.

  Most of the lights were off and a row of seats had been laid out at the front. A monitor took up an entire wall. The only illumination came from small white spotlights embedded in the floor to highlight the path through the room, not that anyone other than a moron needed the guidance. Predictably, Gurt watched the floor as he walked.

  The space reminded Seb of the cinemas he’d visited back on Danu, sans the reek of sweet food, child sick, and sweat.

  Following the others’ leads, Seb sat down. When the only seat happened to be next to SA, he would have been rude to ignore it. Despite their path through training together, he hadn’t gotten close to her often, and to be next to her now, their shoulders close to touching, elevated his heart rate just enough to make him giddy. She smelled of sweet flowers. She smelled of summer on a planet he hadn’t yet visited, but one he could fall in love with when he found it.

  It took for Gurt to look across, stare down at Seb’s right leg, and let out a low growl for him to realise he sat there with his leg bouncing. The excitement of sitting next to SA did strange things to him. He looked stra
ight back at the large beast and made a point to bounce it more.

  Before Gurt could react, Moses slammed the door, the shock of the loud bang forcing Seb to jump in his seat. The shark-like creature stomped down to the front of the room and pointed at Seb and Gurt. “I’m getting sick of the nonsense going on between you two. You’re about to go on a mission together, so you need to start working as a team. Whatever petty squabble you’re having, it ends now, got it?”

  Seb drew a breath to reply, but Moses cut him short. “Don’t answer that. I’m not asking for your compliance; I’m giving you an order.”

  The entire room lit up from the glow of the large screen when Moses waved his hand in front of it. It showed an image of what looked like a planet. The place seemed dark, like they’d captured the footage of it at night. Moses moved his hands to drag the representation from the screen and hold it in mid-air.

  After he’d spun the image, he stopped it and pointed to a built-up part of what otherwise looked like a sparse planet. “This is the planet Solsans and its only city, Caloon.” Moses zoomed in on the built-up rendering of Caloon. “As you can see, the city has two distinct parts to it.” A large part of Caloon poked up from the ground, elevated from the rest of the dwellings surrounding it. Moses pointed at that part first. “This is the wealthy area of the city. The Crimson Countess’ palace is here. Residents with enough credits in their bank live on this elevated patch of land.

  “And this,” Moses said as he pinched the air to go close in on the dwellings around the bottom, “is where the poor people live. The city is divided between the haves and the have-nots.”

  As if scrunching up a ball of paper, Moses crushed the image in front of him and threw it back at the screen. This time, he used wider hands than before to pull a broader view of Solsans out in front of him. He tapped it so it spun on the spot and showed more of the rural area surrounding the city. “The rest of Solsans is covered in rocky mountains and thick woodland. It’s where a lot of the mines are, but most people don’t go away from the city because of the hostile landscape.”

  When Seb felt Gurt lean forward next to him, he watched the large beast address Moses. “So why are you showing us this?”

  His already broad chest puffed out further as Moses straightened his back with a deep inhale. “For the good of my health. Why do you think, you moron? You have a mission here.”

  ‘Moron’ didn’t sit well with Gurt, and Seb couldn’t help but smile to see him rest back in his seat, his bulbous jaw tight as he clenched it.

  Like SA and Sparks further down the line, Seb kept his mouth shut and waited for Moses to explain.

  “This is a search and rescue mission.” A tap in mid-air brought up the photo of a slightly podgy man with floppy hair. “This is George Camoron.” Moses seemed to take great pleasure in enunciating the ‘moron’ part of his name. “He’s got himself kidnapped by the Crimson Countess. His daddy, a rich tycoon who got to the top by screwing over anyone and everyone who got in his way, runs a commodity company. He owns a planet called Debula. Have you heard of them?”

  “They’re the former politicians turned miners, right?” Sparks said.

  Moses nodded.

  “They use their old political connections to find out which planets have resources worth stealing, go to those planets with the promise of employment and stabilisation, bleed them dry of every commodity they own, and then leave them bereft and unable to support their inflated economy that existed while the mining took place. They’re the galaxy’s parasites.”

  A genuine smile split Moses’ face. “Someone knows their stuff. Obviously, with Debula now being our client, I’d advise holding some of those views back at the risk of causing offence.”

  Sparks nodded.

  “So little George went to Solsans hoping to check out the validity of setting up operations there. As you can imagine, the Crimson Countess didn’t take kindly to that. She captured and imprisoned him. George should have gone in on a covert mission, but it would seem that Camoron’s influence in certain parts of the galaxy had gone to his head. He thought he could knock on their front door and put the proposal to them.”

  Seb looked down the line to his left when Sparks spoke again. “So why are we rescuing this vile creature? Surely he deserves everything he gets.”

  Another scrunching motion to take the red-faced fop from the screen and Moses grinned, revealing his sharp teeth. “Because Daddy has a lot of money. A lot of money he’s prepared to pay to get young George back.”

  The next image showed what seemed to be a female figure. She stood tall and was cloaked in red. “This is the Crimson Countess.”

  “Why can’t we see her face?” Seb asked as he stared at the darkness inside her hood.

  “Very few people have seen it,” Moses explained. “A very secretive woman, it takes a lot to get close enough to get her picture.”

  The recycled air left a stale taste on Seb’s tongue. The image of the woman seemed to bring the bad taste to the foreground of his mouth.

  “Camoron has been there for a few years. The reason we’re only going on a rescue mission now is because the Camorons have sent this to me.” Moses fished a small plastic device from his pocket and held it up in a pinch.

  “A memory stick,” Sparks said.

  “It certainly looks that way,” Moses replied. “But I can’t be sure because we can’t access it.”

  When he showed Sparks the connector on the end of it, her purple eyes narrowed, crushed by her frown. “What the …”

  “I know, right?”

  Seb glanced at SA and Gurt. They looked as confused as he felt.

  Moses turned the memory stick to show the rest of the room. “This connecter is alien to us. To break into the stick to retrieve the data could corrupt it. Our best guess is that the systems on Solsans use these ports on their machines.”

  The chair groaned beneath Gurt’s girth as he leaned toward Moses again. “So we’ve got to go and find a computer to access it? What’s supposed to be on there that’s so special?”

  “The information for the whereabouts of every prisoner on Solsans,” Moses said, “including Camoron. The Camorons had to pay handsomely for this little stick. The smuggler who brought it off Solsans can never go back for fear of a run-in with the Countess.

  Something about the mission sank cold dread through Seb, and when he looked to his left and right, it would appear that his colleagues felt it too. Well, SA looked her usual serene self, but the other two wore heavy frowns of concern.

  “Now,” Moses said with a clap of his hands that cracked so loud it made Seb’s ears ring, “go back to your rooms and get everything you need. We’re leaving for Solsans in two hours’ time.”

  Chapter 16

  Seb and Sparks had left their cube of a room set up as a bedroom. So when they returned to the small space, Seb climbed up to the top bunk and lay down.

  Whenever they left the room unoccupied, the temperature quickly dropped, but before Seb could say anything, he looked over to see Sparks adjust the thermostat in the panel of buttons on the wall. She clicked it up to twenty-four degrees Celsius and pressed the button next to it labeled boost. Within seconds, the room’s temperature rose to the one specified, encouraging him to relax into his pillow.

  A dull throb ran down Seb’s shin from attacking Gurt earlier. He must have clattered into something on his way over the tables.

  The heat of the room combined with his exhaustion turned Seb’s body to lead and he sank into his mattress. He continued to watch Sparks, who paced the room with her screen in her hand. The glow from the tiny device lit up her face and reflected off her glasses. As he watched her, his eyelids grew heavy.

  “What are you doing?”

  Seb woke with a start, his eyes burning and his vision blurred. “Huh?”

  “What are you doing? We need to get ready to go to Solsans.”

  Seb blinked repeatedly to try to banish the sting in his tired eyes. “You might be getting
ready to go, but I ain’t. Moses doesn’t own me. What if I object?”

  “We’ve been through this already. If you object, you go to prison.”

  Although Sparks had spoken to him, she hadn’t taken her eyes off her screen as she walked around the room and gathered up a small bag of things. Without looking, she filled her rucksack with cables and wires.

  “This is bullshit,” Seb said.

  Sparks finally looked up at him.

  “We have to risk our lives on some planet in the arse end of nowhere to save some clueless rich imbecile who deserves to be locked up anyway.”

  “There’s a lot of assumptions there.”

  “Come on, Sparks, Moses told us the guy went there to see if he could mine the planet for their resources. You said their company bleeds planets dry and then leaves them decimated. Can you seriously tell me you want to do this?”

  “Of course not, but we don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “Yeah, prison or mission. And let me tell you, prison doesn’t pay.” Sparks continued to look at Seb, one of her hands on her hip and her eyebrow cocked. “Look, you know as well as I do that we’re going on this mission because Daddy has a lot of money, and he’ll pay anything to get his little darling back. But if you knew what the Crimson Countess was like, I think you’d want to go regardless. Now don’t get me wrong, she scares me more than almost anything else scares me—”

  “More than fire?”

  “I said almost. But this woman needs to be stopped.”

  Sparks crossed the room and held her small computer up for Seb to see. Images flashed across the screen. It showed the slums of Caloon that Moses had shown them—the dwellings that surrounded the rich and elevated part of the city. They lay at the feet of the wealthy’s raised plateau like followers prostrate in the shadow of a deity. “These people live like rats while the Crimson Countess and the others in the elevated city lord it over them. This isn’t pretty, but watch.” Sparks then played a video for him.