In the early 2020s, two young, genius computer hackers, Elizabeth
Santiago and David Schwartz, meet at MIT, where Schwartz is sneaking
into classes, and have a brief affair. David is amoral and out for
himself and soon disappears. Elizabeth dreams of technology and space
travel and takes a military job after graduating.
Nearly 10 years later, David is setting himself up to become a
billionaire by working in the shadows under a multiplicity of names for
international thieves, and Elizabeth works in intelligence, preventing
international space piracy. With robotic mining in space becoming a
lucrative part of Earth's economy, shipments from space are dropped down
the gravity well into the oceans.
David and Elizabeth fight for dominance of the computer systems
controlling ore drop placement in international waters. If David can
nudge a shipment 500 miles off its target, his employers can get there
first and claim it legally in the open sea. Each one intuits that the
other is their real competition but can't prove it. And when Elizabeth
loses a major shipment, she leaves government employ to work for a
private space company to find a better way to protect shipments. But
international piracy has very high stakes and some very evil players.
And both Elizabeth and David end up in a world of trouble. Space pirates
and computer hackers...James L. Cambias' Corsair is a thrilling
near-future adventure!
