'Chapter One'

Good Afternoon, Fellow Readers and Authors,

I hope you are enjoying the weekend, wherever you were in this world. As chance would have it, we are enjoying another of those wonderful Bank Holiday weekends, as we were in my last article.

I can report that so far, so good on the weather front, and we as yet haven’t seen a drop of rain. However, anyone who is familiar with the British climate, especially on Bank Holidays, knows only too well that can change in the blink of an eye.

With this short break in which to enjoy family and friends, I am going to try an experiment with one of my novels. It will deliver two things.

Firstly, the popularity of my book in real time, and secondly, I can close down this laptop, and head for the beach. I hear you laughing, but at least I am being honest.

Seriously now. Last June I published ‘Inara’ the third novel in my Science Fiction series. To date, my novel has 24,750 people having placed it on their shelves to read. Below, I have pasted the first chapter, which I hope you will enjoy.

My curiosity has been irritating me, as to how so many books can these shelves take before they break? Perhaps we will find out in the course of the next week or two.

Link - https://tinyurl.com/vs496tbn
Link - https://tinyurl.com/ydvsmh26
Link - https://tinyurl.com/yc3xewcf
Link - https://tinyurl.com/yz5nuwv8

In the meantime, may I offer our sincere thanks once again, to those of you adding one of the ‘Our Blue Orange’ series to your Goodreads bookshelves during the course of the week.

You now have an opportunity to read the first chapter from one of them.

Thank you for your support, it is much appreciated as always.

Stay safe, and keep reading and writing, and most of all, follow your dreams whatever they may be. 😊

Best Wishes

AR

Chapter - 1

It was a Wednesday morning, on his way to a meeting with the President on the one hundredth floor of the Ministry. It was a day that was branded in his memory, and a moment in time Jack Marsden would never forget until the day he died.
Traversing the polished marble floor of the corridor leading to the presidential suite, he caught sight of her leaving the President’s office. Clad in her black leather jacket, brass buckled belts stretched across each of her shoulder’s. They stretched down to her hips, both clipped to the belt on her leather jeans. The defining hallmarks of her profession were missing though. Safely stowed in a locker in the main reception, out of harm’s way, and with the safety catches on.
She approached him, and Jack’s pace noticeably slowed as he stared at her, gliding towards him on his left side. He was mesmerised by her beauty. Her blond hair decorating those perfect features of her angelic face and lips. She was simply perfection.
And then came her eyes, crystal blue, the likes of nothing he had ever seen before. They were focused on him, her stare cutting right through him, and the wall beside him like a knife through butter. They were lifeless and void of emotion, as you would expect in any assassin.
As they passed by each other, Jack stopped and looked back at her, and to his surprise, Miranda Short did exactly the same. For a moment that seemed to last forever, they stood motionless. Staring through the time and space between them. The usual traffic in the corridor filtering past like vague unimportant memories. Then Jack broke the spell. He smiled at her.
Miranda offered up no gesture. No smile in return, nor any acknowledgement, that the man she had locked eyes with, had just fallen for her. She instead slipped into an open lift without looking back, and was gone.
As Jack returned to reality he snapped into action, and approached a security guard adjacent to the lift lobby.
He quietly issued an order. ‘Call the control room. I want that elevator stopped for three minutes. Then deliver it to the basement parking,’ he said.
Within moments, he was in an neighbouring elevator hurtling down to the basement himself.

As the lift door’s opened, Miranda Short sauntered out beneath the coffered ceiling of the tower above them. The air held a chill from the sprawling mass of concrete, and it matched her disposition. There was no surprised look, nor an indication of annoyance, that her destination had been detoured. Instead, her eyes were focused on Jack, just as they had been in the corridor far above their heads.
‘Rumour has it, your name carries weight around here in the colony Jack Marsden,’ she said. ‘Enough to stop an elevator, and have it delivered here as well I guess.’
‘Rumour has it,’ Jack said agreeing, beaming a smile as his eye’s glowed for her.
‘I know who you are Jack Marsden,’ Miranda almost whispered.
‘And I you, Miranda Short,’ he replied.
Their conversation drew to a conclusion, as the doors of another elevator opened. Two black suited security guards exited, and approached the leather clad female assassin.
‘We were asked to return these to you mam,’ said one of the guards, handing Miranda her weapons.
Turning and entering their elevator silently, they were gone.
As Miranda holstered her identical laser pistols, and strapped down the buckles that secured them, she glanced up again at Jack. ‘Now, if there’s nothing else you want from me Jack Marsden, I’ll be on my way.’
‘We need to talk Miranda, simple as. There’s a cold wind blowing in on this colony,’ Jack said motioning his head at the floor pan above them. ‘Having someone to watch one another’s backs would be a good idea I think.’
‘I watch my own back. I always have,’ she told him flatly.
Jack approached her and smiled at her again. ‘I know who you are Miranda. I know where you live on the rim of the desert, in that deserted mining town. The couple that raised you and taught you how to survive. The less than savoury task’s you perform for the President, removing obstacles in his way.’
Miranda drew a shallow breath. Her eye’s had stayed focused on him as if he were her quarry. ‘So, you can read file’s. You probably remember the names of those I’ve dispatched, and the time and place as well.’
‘We are both the same people Miranda,’ he said in a low voice, his smile fading away. ‘There are things I have done, serving this colony. Thing’s I deeply regret.’
‘I know Jack. I can read file’s too,’ Miranda said. ‘Area 21 comes to mind.’
Several yards away, stood a gloss black hover cycle. It was a state of the art vehicle only the very wealthy in the Colony could afford. Miranda strode across to it and took up the helmet on the saddle, patiently awaiting her return. She slipped it over her blond bob and fastened the strap. ‘There was only one shuttle you regret sending into the desert Jack Marsden. Why would I join forces with you? I could end up suffering the same fate,’ she questioned.
‘Rachael was a long time ago Miranda. I had no choice at the time,’ he offered back.
‘Well, I have a choice now,’ she shouted above the whirring of the turbine blades as she started the motors on her ride.
Jack approached her and flicked the ignition switch to off. The turbines slowly returned the silence that the carpark had offered them before. ‘If you could turn back the clock Miranda? What would you do differently?’
‘No one can turn back the clock Jack. Not even you,’ she hissed.
Jack had a smile about him. The sort of smile that could win the hearts of the masses in an election, or make the female office staff fall at his feet without hesitation. At this moment in time however, his present company was far from doing either. ‘You are wrong,’ he said, slipping back the sleeve of his suit jacket. ‘You are so very wrong.’
It was the first time Miranda had cast her eye’s upon the XXL. As the event’s in the colony began to unfold for both of them, it was not to be the last.