Voidstalker by John Graham

Author:John Graham [Graham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2017-10-08T06:00:00+00:00

THE TEMPLE

Kingpins of industry and finance like Jezebel Thorn dominated much of the interstellar economy; and Aster, like everyone else she had known growing up, regarded them and the other fleeksters with a mixture of envy and contempt. Being roped into one of their schemes was galling.

The children entertained themselves and each other in the back of the sky-taxi, oblivious to the turmoil that occupied their mother’s thoughts all the way back to the apartment. Madam Jezebel would never harm her own grandchildren, but taking them from the medical centre was clearly intended as a message to Aster personally.

Above all, Aster regretted her impulsive decision to go snooping around Lawrence’s office after explicitly telling Felix not to. And now, thanks to that incriminating video, she had no choice but to go along with Jezebel’s blackmail, or risk being framed as the mole.

Given what Jezebel Thorn had insinuated, her mole had to have been Lawrence himself. Who else would have thought to plant a camera outside his office? Why else had he hidden an industrial-grade data chip in his office in a place where most people wouldn’t think to look? And how else would Madam Jezebel have gotten her hands on the video?

Still, the makings of a counter-plan were starting to form in Aster’s mind. She had blurted out how the data chip she had taken was blue in colour, and Jezebel seemed to accept that as fact. If she gave Jezebel a blue data chip and convinced her that it was genuine, then handed over the red data chip – the real one – to the DNI, she could get official protection by the time Jezebel discovered she had been duped.

The sky-taxi alighted on the nearest public landing pad, and the Thorn family walked the short distance back to the apartment. Aster ushered the children through the front door and locked the door behind her, heaving a sigh of relief once she had done so. The children were glad to be home, too, and raced to the living room. After piling onto the couch, they began fighting over the wireless data-glove that controlled the holo-TV.

“Holo-TV, on.” Aster enunciated as she walked into the room.

Responding to her voice command, the holoscreen activated, covering the opposite wall with the projection. The channel happened to be the news.

“…stock price collapsed by an eye-watering 27% after unconfirmed reports that its labs were raided by the DNI. Chairman Darius Avaritio hasn’t been seen in public for…”

Aster plucked the data-glove out of Orion’s hands and slipped it over her own hand, dismissing the news report with a swipe of her fingers and flicking rapidly through the hundreds of channels in search of something other than the evening news.

She found a decent family movie to watch and snapped her fingers with the data-glove to select it. The children moved over to give their mother some room on the couch and she sat down with them, removing the data-glove and tossing it onto the coffee table.

As the movie began to play, Aster was too distracted to pay attention.

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