All Chapters of The Alpha Protocol: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The heavy tungsten projectile left the barrel of my rifle with one ear-powdering bang whip through the silent ash valley. The repulsion rammed hard into my shoulder. On this short distance the shot was absolutely deadly. But the projectile never met its goal. Few centimetres before Lyra's immaculate face seemed the reality itself whimper. It was not a blue energy shield as the elite of the consortium used it had. The air crumbled like the glass of a thick lens. The projectile without effort could crush titanium chips, lost in fraction of a second its entire kinetic energy. It remained hanging in the air for an irreal moment and then fell in the gray ash sand with a dull, completely harmless plop Lyra's feet. Lyra didn't even blink. A narrow, falling smile lay upon her perfect lips. “Rough violence,” she said quietly, and her voice wore an absolute, devastating Arrogance in itself. “Like primitive. You stayed in time while we were have rewritten laws of the universe.” S

The dust at the gates of Ouroboros swirled in dense, gray swaths, winds up from the constant, whistling wind of the Eurasian Ödlands. The echo of the stars still floated quietly and threateningly over the desert. The silver land ferry rested on the ground, surrounded by the army of stars. They formed. No tanks, no plasma guns. Only rows of in flowing White dressed warriors with glass spears, the rusty gates the Megacity marched. I lay flat on the belly in the dirt of an old, dried-out sewer, about fifty meters in front of the city gate. The stench of rotten iron hung hard in my nose. Next to me, Silas cheered, his face bleached, his hands tightly around a cloby, hastily joint-welded switch panel clamped. from us, hidden under old, camouflaged plans, our masterpiece lay: The Chaos Disruptor. He consisted of four gigantic warning vessels coupled to a rusty steam boiler and a mountain of bridged copper cables. He looked like a bunch of garbage – and that's exactly what he s

Lyra leaned on her trembling arms and slowly set up. The grey Ash dust sprinkled from its formerly flawless white robe. The Contrast between her aristocratic attitude and the dirt on her face was almost painful to watch. She looked around. Her invincible army was disarmed and disorientated in the dirt. In the meantime, the ear-powdering noise of our disruptor was a quiet, mechanical sums declined, but the signs of the echo remained offline. Lyra's ice-blue eyes met my eyes, then Kael's. It was no insight into to find her look, just an infinite, cold abhorrence. “You are barbarians,” she whispered, but in the sudden silence her words wore far. “You choose the decay. You choose the disease, dirt and transience, instead of accepting the gift of absolute order.” “Ordnung ohne Leben is just a cemetery, Lyra”, I replied hard. “And we have enough tombs seen in the world.” The primas tightened their shoulders. She turned and walked, so dignified Dust allowed to return to the li

Five years later. The wind over the roofs of Ouroboros was no longer cold and biting. He wore the scent of flowering apple trees and wet earth through the wide, sun-filled streets. The city of scrap and silver breathed. I sat on my solid self-welded desk on the veranda our workshop. Before me there was a thick roller bound in dark brown leather. The pages consisted of recycled, handmade paper, the Betty and I in for weeks produced from the old pulp stocks of Bunker Gamma had. I put my copper wire spring into the ink-black oil pigment and pulled the last line of detailed drawing. It was a schematic representation our water-steam system for greenhouses, complemented by precise instructions for sowing tomatoes and onions in ash-containing soils and safe construction of turbulent chicken trunks. It was more than just a diary. It was a survival guide for the next Generation. “You don’t blink anymore,” a deep, familiar voice came out of my mind. Concentration. Kael stepped

The detonation of the thermit charge was adorable. A column of white annealing plasma and liquid polymer shot from the Gorge empor, accompanied by an animalic, mechanical circle that in me vibrated the bone. The heat sweeped over us like a glowing oran, and ripped me off my feet. I hit hard on the slippery vibrating roof of the Steel lungs on. The thick canal that had wrapped around our front axle, slept abruptly and fell steaming to the ground. “She softens back!” Silas cried out from the cabin. “The extreme heat destroys its neural polymer strands!” “Stop!” Kael’s voice swept through the Intercom. The Rover hit violently. Kael had the heavy lever for the steam Overdrive torn forward. The huge shovel wheels are grooming in the ashes, cast dense fountains of gray dust into the air, and the steel lungs shot with a broken jerk backwards from the danger zone. I clinged to the upper railing while the heavy colossus and with full travel towards the endless Ödland plain of