Engross yourself in the science fiction novel O-Vega-K by G.Peter Matthews
and the battle to survive
Engross yourself in the science fiction novel O-Vega-K by G.Peter Matthews
and the battle to survive
About O-Vega-K
The novel
O-Vega-K is a short novel written in the late 1970's, and rediscovered by the author G.Peter Matthews in 2024. It is science fiction much closer to what could be possible, and inter-twined with relationships in a hostile environment.
Can the space scientists survive?
Find out in this absorbing story for 15 year-olds and above (younger people might find it too realistically scary).
Please donate
Get your free* copy by donating £10 (€12, $13) or more to one of the author's favourite charities.
Just click one of these links :
- St Petrocs, working to end homelessness in Cornwall and Devon, UK
- MSF ( Médecins sans Frontières , Doctors without Borders), saving people's lives in conflict zones, natural disasters and epidemics
- East Cornwall Bach Choir music scholarships, paying for instrumental or singing lessons for ambitious young musicians in Cornwall and Devon, UK
Once you have made your donation, give the receipt to the author or email it to matthewsgpeter@gmail.com within two days (see Legal), and include your postal address.
*The author will pay printing costs, and where necessary
postage to readers in the UK (Royal Mail Tracked 48 hr).
For other countries, you will need to pay postage costs, please,
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A copy of the novel will then be posted to you within 5 working days,
or, if a new print run is required, within 15 working days.
An e-book version is also available on request.
Start reading here !
Chapter 1 begins...
The corner of the bunker was not for sitting in. The rough-cast concrete walls dug into his shoulder blades and the floor sent cramp pains stabbing through his left leg. Clete had been hunched up like this for hours. He'd stared at every hollow in the wall and every botched irregularity left by the army engineers. There could surely be nothing more dismal and intimidating than reinforced concrete.
Another explosion roared savagely overhead. Clete folded his arms over his head and jammed his knees closer to his chest. Three seconds later the blast thundered across the room and smashed into him like a sledge-hammer. His head whipped back against the bulkhead wall. Slowly he reeled sideways and slumped unconscious to the floor.
Forty kilometres to the east, there formed in the sky a giant mushroom, its billowing underbelly glowing an angry red as it reflected the fire-storm destroying all life beneath it. The only barriers to the spreading flames were the seared acres left by neighbouring explosions and, to the south, the boiling sea. The population of Cornwall had added its name to the roll of Europe's dead. The survivors numbered only those who, like Clete, were entombed in shelters deep below ground. Safe too lay a sinister bedfellow, ready to wreak devastation on another continent. By the irony of war, the terrible metallic aggressor lay unscathed, snug in its camouflaged silo.
The inhabitants of the south coast had become used to the environment of the clay workings - the white powdered landscape, the milky streams and the china-clay beaches. On the moor there were large circular settling tanks nestled together, surrounded by high wire fences and searchlight gantries said to be for the safety of their children. Even from the air, the only unusual feature was the one tank that was always empty. Hidden from view below its dummy bottom stood an intercontinental cruise missile, complete with megaton atomic warhead. At the base of the missile, in a control bunker forty metres below, lay Clete. Someone was hitting him on the forehead.
`OK, OK, I'm awake,' he groaned. `There's no need to hit so hard.'
With tremendous effort he forced himself to sit upright. He opened his eyes and looked around. There was no-one there. As his mind cleared, the realisation came that the knocking on his forehead had been caused by his own drumming headache, and inexplicably the truth made him vomit on the floor beside him. Afterwards, though, he felt the better for it, and walked unsteadily the few paces to the instruments and consoles which occupied most of the small room. The teletype clattered into life, and amazed that it was still working, Clete craned over to see what the machine had written. It had printed out the time, 17.24.00, as it did every minute to show that the radio receiver and decoder were still operating. He hurriedly looked over the rest of the teletype sheet. Yes, there were the time checks for the hour when he had lain unconscious, but his heart sank as he realised that there were still no Defence Ministry bulletins - there had been none since nine o'clock that morning.
`Not surprising,' Clete thought bitterly to himself, as he donned headphones and mechanically went through the procedure for verifying that the receiver was tuned in properly. `God knows what London looks like now.'
A vision of his sister's home in the suburbs began to mask the banks of dials, and sorrow, despair and bitterness welled up inside him. Not one to allow emotions to take a hold, Clete sprang up from the console to shake away the agitated feeling in his chest. Snatching off the headphones, he strode resolutely to the steel door of the bulkhead. In the next room were the other two members of the missile crew, and his first priority at the moment was to check that they were unhurt. Neither had been through to find him, and Clete feared the worst. He made short work of freeing the jammed locking bars of the door with the steel leg of his chair, and battered it open away from the distorted door frame. The control room was chaotic. The chairs, tables, tool-racks and every other moveable item had been flung around the room as if by a maniac. By the entrance door the armour plating had buckled open and past it the hurricane shockwave must have blown. This Clete had feared and anticipated, but as he gave the room a second look he started. For there were not two slumped figures but three, and curiosity made him rush to the stranger first. The man was sprawled face down on the floor, and as Clete turned him over he looked at the badge on his arm.
`A blasted MSA - that's all we need. What a time to do his rounds', he muttered bitterly.
The Moral Stance Adviser groaned.
Extract from Chapter 6
Now, however, far from being seated in his office, Monaghan could be seen clinging grimly to its roof with his feet braced against two small boltheads on the curved wall. Sweat was pouring down his face and clogging his grey-streaked beard. His efforts were clearly hampered by the pull of a lead-weighted belt buckled around the middle of his huge frame.
An attractive girl of twenty-eight walked into the office and alarmed at this spectacle asked, ‘What’s wrong? Are you alright?’
‘Yes thank you, Nina,’ panted Monaghan, betraying at once his West Coast origins. ‘Just practising my overhangs. You see, if I reach out over the air-conditioning duct I can do a couple of hand jambs, swing my weight across...’ - he grunted as he carried out the moves - ‘...and bring my right leg up to that light bracket there. Then I’ve done it - it’s jugs all the way to the doorframe.’