Back Office, Six Mountains is a novel by Lewis Balentine.
Six Mountains is a bit of a spy story. It begins when a special operations team try to capture a finance manager for an international terror group. They do not get their man but they do get his laptop computer that is thought to contain a wealth of intelligence data. There are two problems with the laptop: first it is rigged to explode, second it is encrypted with an unusual scheme based on crossword puzzles. They deal with the explosive bit but they have to call in two field officers from the ‘back office’ to deal with the encryption. After the information is retrieved from the computer a plan must be devised to make use of the data. This novel introduces the ‘back office’ agency and the city-state of ‘Six Mountains’.
A introduction to the book is available here in Web format (htm/html, 43 KB).
A introduction to the book is available here in Acrobat format (pdf, 254 KB).
The introduction contains the table of contents and the first chapter of the novel. The complete novel is available at Amazon.com as a Kindle book.
KISS (Keep it Super Simple):
Some of files used to generate the illustrations in the novel may be downloaded below. Unless otherwise noted all files are PNG format and contain the embedded comment: “copyright: Lewis Balentine, 2013, all rights reserved”. I have no problem with anyone using any of these files for their personal private use but if they are used in a commercial environment/setting then I want to be compensated for that use.
Cover: Six Mountains Novel
Figure 1: AK-47
Figure 2: Makarov PM Pistol
Figure 3: Six Mountains Logo
Figure 4: 9mm Ballistics
Figure 5: Six Mountain’s Suppressor
Figure 6: Kel-Tec Sub-2000
Figure 7: Dragunov Riffle (NDM-86)
Figure 8: Six Mountains Layout
Figure 9: Zone Bravo Six
Figure 10: House Plan
Figure 11: Sig 226
Figure 12: Sample Puzzle
Figure 13: Portuguese/English Puzzle
Figure 14: ASCII Table (7 Bit, 0-63)
Figure 15: ASCII Table (7 Bit, 64-127)
Figure 16:
Figure 17: Carolina Rig
Figure 18:
Figure 19: The Beast Computer
Figure 20: Program Parameters
Figure 21:
Figure 22: Ammunition Cartridge Comparison
Figure 23: Minute of Accuracy
Figure 24:
Figure 25: New Security Room Layout
Figure 26: Steyr M1912
Figure 27:
Figure 28: Late Bronze Age Sword
Figure 29: Sample Puzzle 1 Solution
Figure 30: Sample Puzzle 2 Solution
Other:
Ruler files used to give visible scale of cartridge illustrations:
File used to generate ASCCII Table:
The author declares the following six “ASCII Table” files to be public domain with no rights reserved.
(begin public domain file list)
(end public domain file list)
This book was written on a computer running the Windows 7 Operating System.
The original manuscript was written in Microsoft Word for Windows 2010. Per MS Word this novel is just over 126 thousand words. It was uploaded directly to Amazon as Word Document and converted to the MOBI(AZW) format by Amazon’s on line KDP (Kindle Desktop Publishing) software.
The cover illustration was created with Adobe Photoshop Elements version 5.
Kindle does not seem to handle tables very well (at least not for me). For this reason the tables and crosswords puzzles were converted to PNG images to be inserted into the documents as pictures. Hopefully at some point the Kindle/MOBI format will be upgraded to offer better support for vector graphics such as the open SVG format.
The illustrations of various ammunition cartridges in this novel were drawn using DraftSight. Dimensions for most of the cartridges were taken from online tables of the Permanent International Commission(the CIP) for the Proof of Small Arms. The dimensions for the 20x110mm Hispano Suiza, 25x163mm Japanese and the 20mm Vulcan rounds were ‘guestimated’ from pictures.
Illustrations of the various firearms in this novel were created using the Draftsight while referencing assorted pictures of the firearms. They were then exported as to the SVG format and loaded into GIMP to be shaded and converted to PNG files that would be compatible with Kindle. Some of the illustrations were further processed with PAINT.NET that has a rather good filter system. These firearm illustrations are NOT dimensional accurate. At best they might be classified as artist interpretations.
All of the original illustrations in this novel were drawn with the 64 bit Windows version of Dassault Systèmes (SolidWorks Corporation) Draftsight two dimensional CAD software. The Draftsight software (Windows, Linux or Mac) can be downloaded and used free of charge by anyone after a simple one time registration. The URL is:
http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/free-cad-software/
This software (Draftsight) is highly recommended by the author.
As a side note:
There is also a three dimensional version of this CAD software published by the company Graebert GmbH as ARES® Commander Edition. A rendering program is available for the 3D CAD software. That software looks very interesting. This 3D image of a 50 caliber BMG round (click to view image) was created by the author with the ‘trial’ version of that software. The ‘trial’ version does not allow file saving or printing. The URL is:
http://www.graebert.com/en/arescommanderedition/arescommander
