Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

Overview

To combat manipulative megacorporations with telepathic technology, two heroes must rebel, overthrowing the enemy's oppressive influence in the first book in this exciting sci-fi adventure

Mega corporations, more powerful than any one planetary government, use their agents to race each other for resources across the galaxy. The agents, or psi-techs, are implanted with telepath technology. The psi-techs are bound to the mega-corps — that is, if they want to retain their sanity.

Cara Carlinni is an impossible thing – a runaway psi-tech. She knows Alphacorp can find its implant-augmented telepaths, anywhere, anytime, mind-to-mind. So even though it’s driving her half-crazy, she's powered down and has been surviving on tranqs and willpower. So far, so good. It’s been almost a year, and her mind is still her own.

She’s on the run from Ari van Blaiden, a powerful executive, after discovering massive corruption in Alphacorp. Cara barely escapes his forces, yet again, on a backwater planet, and gets out just in time due to the help of straight-laced Ben Benjamin, a psi-tech Navigator for Alphacorp’s biggest company rival.

Cara and Ben struggle to survive a star-spanning manhunt, black-ops raids, and fleets of resource-hungry raiders. Betrayal follows betrayal, and friends become enemies. Suddenly the most important skill is knowing whom to trust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780756410162
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	11/04/2014
Series:	A Psi-Tech Novel , #1
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	634,025
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jacey Bedford has a string of short story publication credits on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives a thouand feet up on the edge of the Yorkshire Pennines in a two hundred year stone house. She has been a librarian, postmistress, rag-doll maker, and a folk singer in an a cappella trio. She can be found at jaceybedford.co.uk or on Twitter at @JaceyBedford.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

FLIGHT

I’m dead if I don’t get out of here.

Cara Carlinni stared at the display on the public terminal. She gripped the edge of the console, feeling dizzy and sick. Too many cups of caff, not enough food.

Her fellow workers erupted from Devantec’s packing plant, one or two trying the other terminals in the bay just off the main walkway, and discovering, as she had when she first took the dead-end job, that this was the only functioning link.

She’d scooted out ahead of the crowd to grab it.

Good that she had. At least she was forewarned. What the hell was an Alphacorp ship doing here if not looking for something, or someone? What were the odds that someone was her?

She’d been barely one jump ahead of them on El Arish, and on Shalla colony she’d spotted wanted posters and moved on quickly, thankful that she’d ducked port immigration by hitching a flight with a smuggler.

She’d spoken to a man on Shalla who’d once been a low-grade Psi-Mech for the Rowan Corporation, and who was now living off the grid, with a new identity furnished by an organization that was definitely not the right side of legal. On his advice she’d come all the way out to Station Mirrimar-14 chasing rumors of a breakaway group of psi-techs, but she hadn’t found them. If they were here, they were well-hidden and well-shielded.

She swallowed bile and checked the screen again, focusing on the immediate problem—a light passenger transport—a ship design she recognized as an unmarked Alphacorp Scout. It threaded along the flight corridor toward the passenger terminal, past the heavy freighters lined up for docking in the space station’s commercial bays.

“Hey, Carlinni, you coming to Sam’s with the rest of us?” Jussaro, her packing line partner, broke his stride.

He was always friendly, but she kept her distance outside of working hours. A purple-black-skinned, genetically engineered exotic from the Hollands System, he’d once been a high-grade Telepath until being busted for some misdemeanor he wouldn’t admit to.

They’d killed his implant. He was alone and silent.

Permanently.

He was the thing she most dreaded becoming.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Empire of Dust"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Jacey Bedford.
Excerpted by permission of DAW.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Bedford mixes romance and intrigue in this promising debut, which opens the Psi-tech space opera series.... Readers who crave high adventure and tense plots will enjoy this voyage into the future." —Publishers Weekly

"A well-defined and intriguing tale set in the not-too-distant future.... Everything is undeniably creative and colorful, from the technology to foreign planets to the human (and humanoid) characters. Author Bedford’s world-building feels very complete and believable, with excellent descriptions bringing it all to life." —RT Reviews

"A nostalgic space opera.... Bedford’s prose is brisk and carries the reader quite sufficiently along." —Tor.com

“Space opera isn’t dead; instead, delightfully, it has grown up.... A fine example of a novel which has its roots in the subgenre but grows beyond it.” —Jaine Fenn, author of Principles of Angels

"I’m very, very excited to see where this series goes next. The foundation that Bedford has laid has so much potential and promise. This is an author I will watch." —Bookworm Blues

Editorial Reviews

09/29/2014
Bedford mixes romance and intrigue in this promising debut, which opens the Psi-Tech space opera series. Like other psi-techs, long-range telepath Cara Carlinni has a brain implant that enhances her powers. It also leaves her indentured to Alphacorp, the company that paid for the implant. On the run with data that links her ruthless former boss and lover, Ari van Blaiden, to a deadly pirate attack on a colony world, Cara convinces navigator Reska “Ben” Benjamin to add her to his team of psi-tech troubleshooters. They’ve been contracted to help the fundamentalist back-to-basics Ecolibrians establish a colony on the planet Olyanda, but it won’t be easy. Hardcore Ecolibrians hate psi-techs and punish “fraternization” brutally. Worse yet, Ben discovers mineral deposits on Olyanda that make the planet a target for pirates—just like a previous colony-building job whose failure still haunts him. Bedford builds a taut story around the dangers of a new world, the Ecolibrians’ distrust, and treachery from Ari and Ben’s home office. Readers who crave high adventure and tense plots will enjoy this voyage into the future. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for the Psi-Tech novels:

"Space opera isn't dead; instead, delightfully, it has grown up.... A fine example of a novel which has its roots in the subgenre but grows beyond it." —Jaine Fenn, author of Principles of Angels 

"Bedford mixes romance and intrigue in this promising debut, which opens the Psi-Tech space opera series.... Readers who crave high adventure and tense plots will enjoy this voyage into the future." —Publishers Weekly

"A nostalgic space opera.... Bedford's prose is brisk and carries the reader quite sufficiently along." —Tor.com

"A well-defined and intriguing tale set in the not-too-distant future.... Everything is undeniably creative and colorful, from the technology to foreign planets to the human (and humanoid) characters. Author Bedford's worldbuilding feels very complete and believable, with excellent descriptions bringing it all to life." —RT Reviews

"I'm very, very excited to see where this series goes next. The foundation that Bedford has laid has so much potential and promise. This is an author I will watch." —Bookworm Blues

"The first of a new space opera series that delivers the goods and holds lots of promise of things to come." —SF Signal

From the Publisher