Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

cyberframes. They’ll bring in infomorphs to run them when needed and the frames aren’t costly enough that they couldn’t leave them in place for a while.’
    ‘Right. Thank you, Aden, that’s what I was hoping you’d say. That’s how he’s doing it. That’s his backup.’
    ‘I don’t get it,’ Pierce said.
    ‘That makes two of us,’ Aden put in, looking bemused. ‘This is something to do with this situation at New Moon?’
    ‘Yes,’ Fox replied. ‘I think you’ve managed to give me what I need to get this all worked out.’
    ‘Great, because that place is pretty important right now. Most of the mining companies use it for off-site data backup, and the UN’s helium-three commission is holding all their records there. It was supposed to be the safest place on the Moon for data storage.’
    ‘The UN commission is using that place? I thought it was just an archive.’
    ‘They have the deep archive, but New Moon also does secure off-site data storage and physically secure temporary storage. The commission is due to give out its findings soon and if they were to lose all that data… People could lose a lot of money.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Fox said. ‘ Now this is starting to make more sense. Lenora, we need to talk to Driscoll and the negotiation team.’
    ~~~
    Fox’s virtual assistant picked up on the v-tagged data elements in the operations room, accessed the feeds, authenticated her access, and showed her the imagery Driscoll and Seeforth, the negotiator, were seeing, all in the second it took for her to walk from the door to the two men. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked as she took in the view, which looked like it was being taken from a camera in an elevator.
    ‘They agreed to have a remote frame sent in to handle the communications,’ Seeforth replied.
    ‘You’re going to go in and tell them their demands won’t be met?’
    ‘I’m going to tell them that they can get out of this with their lives.’
    ‘There’s something–’
    ‘I’ll handle things at this point, Inspector. If Driscoll needs advice on handcuffing them, he can ask you about it.’
    Fox watched as a personal message was passed through from Driscoll. He isn’t big on having his publicity shadowed by anyone else. She would have laughed except that political cops were high on her hate list and Seeforth had just been placed on it. On the other hand, if she was wrong he might actually talk sense to Kriel, and if she was right then nothing Seeforth could do was going to change anything.
    The elevator doors opened and the drone they were watching through was being steered out into a corridor. ‘Where is this, and who’s driving?’ Fox asked.
    Driscoll flicked up a schematic of the New Moon offices with a marker showing the drone’s position on the floor below the reception level. ‘They have the main communications and short-term data storage on this level.’
    ‘Uh-huh.’ That seemed to be where Kriel’s team were located, and that made sense.
    ‘Barnes is operating the drone. Looks like they’ve set up their position at the entrance to the vault.’
    ‘My turn,’ Seeforth said as the heavily built form of Kriel came into view on the screen. Seeforth was patching his voice through to the robot’s audio output. ‘Mister Kriel, I’m Captain Jason Seeforth. I’ll be handling communications here.’
    Fox noticed the slight emphasis the man put on ‘captain.’ She had met the type before, mostly in the Army: men who had been handed rank for political or administrative reasons who believed they had earned it. They thought other people would be impressed by it. Fox was fairly sure Kriel would not have been impressed anyway. The mercenary stood impassively, the weapon pod on the right arm of his combat spacesuit resting easily at the ready. He had taken his helmet off, at ease with the situation, relaxed and confident. Behind him a pair of heavy armoured doors stood open: the security doors leading to the transport