RICHIE DE-BENHAM

Counterweight Maneuver is a fast-paced science fiction novel set in 2025. With the USA set on a Cold-War-style collision course with China and the East, cutting-edge technology and political opportunism combine to give a near-future glimpse of the whole world in peril.

Small-time journalist Bradley Wilcox is furious when his scoop gets pulled from the Oakland Tribune, and follows every lead to find out who killed his story. Tech-savvy waitress Shana Grey assists him as the clues start pointing to the Federal government.

​

Programming genius Oswald Carrington is abducted from his parents’ home. He can’t understand why he’s been targeted or how his attackers got past his robotic security system. Has he been smoking too much weed, or were they… aliens?

​

Behind both events is steely war veteran Ronald Hawk, the President’s chief advisor. Hawk belongs to the Brotherhood of Thelema, a secret society which firmly believes in True Will and that mankind has entered the Aeon of Horus, in which people will take control of their own destiny. Their Counterweight Maneuver aims to correct the imminent destruction of natural resources, lazy thinking, and the West’s consumeristic overreliance upon the East.

​

Using secret advances in elevator technology, programming and robotics, combined with the military expertise of Colonel Forge and his covert army, Hawk stages a series of “alien invasions” to spread panic and fear across the world, assassinate the President and Cabinet, and assume the Presidency. The attacks are launched from Orbit Station, connected to Earth by a lightning-fast space elevator, all hidden from sight using advanced light-bending materials including holo-graphene.

​

Carrington is employed by Hawk to build Super-Droniks (advanced search-and-destroy robots) and Highly Specialized Remote Control Monitoring Devices (which can launch attacks in multiple places from an untraceable source). Hawk has an algorithm that can hold the world to ransom, and uses Carrington’s willing genius to complete his clandestine scheme.

​

Bradley and Shana’s lives are in danger as they start to uncover the truth. They are helped by Christine Sheen, the sole surviving Cabinet member who had long suspected Hawk and managed to escape him just in time. They have a cloned version of Hawk’s algorithm, a laptop and state-of-the-art holographic jacket, but are definite underdogs.

​

Bradley falls in love with Shana, but doubts whether he can ever trust her when he discovers she’s been in Sheen’s employ all along. However, his motive ultimately switches from saving his reputation as a journalist to thwarting Hawk for the sake of the planet – and Shana.

When the technology is perfected, Hawk decides that Carrington has outlived his usefulness, but Carrington wages a violent drug-induced rebellion in Orbit Station. With Hawk distracted, Shana and Bradley discover his hidden lair and travel up the Space Elevator to join the fray.

​

A final-chapter showdown results in partial loss of Orbit Station, thwarting Hawk’s immediate plans; near-death experiences for Bradley and Shana; and an ingenious escape on the part of Carrington. The crazed computer nerd returns to Earth to unleash his enhanced and fearsome Droniks.

 

AVAILABLE AT AMAZON