Empire of Dust

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.

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, "Artisan". She has three books due from DAW in 2014, plus a short story collection from Speculicious. Jacey Bedford can be found at jaceybedford.co.uk.