Heavy Time

1991

Bird and Ben were two of the increasingly rare independents working Sol Belt dreaming of the strike that would make them rich, when they hear a distress call coming out of a region where Company has told ships not to go. They decide to go and retrieve the mysterious survivor who is down to (or just past) his last bottle of oxygen. As they travel back to Mama, staying out their usual time so they don't alert Mama to their sneak trip into forbidden space, the rescuee babbled continuously about ships pulling impossible manoeuvres.

Back on station, they find Dekker has high contacts amongst Mars Corp - the largest of the Company's subsiduries and when his mother found out about his mis-adventure she pulls strings to find out what's going on. Company ain't happy about this and tries pulling down the shutters on the incident, but Meg a Rad friend of Bird and Ben uses her own contacts to beat the attempted blackout.

What they find is the prototype of the great carriers that was planned to carry the War to the rebelling Scientists on Cyteen who had declared independence from Company and it was this that Company found it really did not like!

Amongst all the confusions that had been whipped up by Dekker's mother and Meg's Rad friends, Mama is put under direct military supervision and a web of corruption leading all the way up to the Corporate Board is uncovered!

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