Author Description

The StarDrop Corporation emerged from nowhere offering new technologies for fusion power, spaceflight and synthetic life. Petra Schelling, teen chess prodigy, was recruited by an intelligence agency to spy on StarDrop - before vanishing. James Melrose, her controller, is told that losing an agent is regrettable but it happens. But why has Petra now become a high-profile StarDrop agent of influence? StarDrop's Artificial People are suddenly everywhere in entertainment, the media, politics and top jobs. Friendly, attractive and smart, they are indispensable in tough assignments such as the mission investigating an anomaly on the larger Martian moon, where an artefact suggests StarDrop might be of extraterrestrial origin. Élise and Mireille Fossey: two sisters, one a journalist, the other a researcher. For Élise, StarDrop will lead her into more than lethal peril; for Mireille, the corporation may be humanity's finest opportunity... or maybe a deadly, existential threat.