Interstellar Intrigue

The jin-mei capsuleer sat at her desk, scowling at the small casing for the electronic version of Tomb of Talocan, by one Rebecca DiAngelo. One particular paragraph on the blurb had burned itself into her mind and kept her scowl firmly in place.

It always starts with a dame. Today, race starlet Kayleigh Jamieson in tears, and in trouble.

They made her sound like some helpless little woman, who couldn't get by without the help of Jude. It was made-up from one end to the other. Not to mention bad literature, too.

Except... Whoever had thought to link her and Jude, of all people? True, Jude was one of her pilots in Scuderia Dragonstar, but so were many other men. Could it be someone out there had got wind of his crush on her in the past? It had been an innocent thing, and of course he hadn't acted on it, seeing as she was unavailable to begin with.

She looked up the author's name again. Could this woman have heard gossip from one of Jude's confidants and turned it into tasteless fiction? A search in public records showed one pod pilot with such a name, as well as many planetside dwellers. The pod pilot was Amarrian, though. Surely such drivel could only come from bad Gallentean authors, no?

Even so, she checked the pilot's affiliation. Looking at the founder of her current corp. The name made her scowl even more, slanted grey eyes sparkling angrily. Cosmo Cyrano. You better have absolutely nothing to do with this, you little wretch.

But then she thought better. Speaking to Cosmo was an exercise in translation as it was, so uneducated was her speech. She couldn't possibly have contributed to anything literary, even something as bad as this book.

Sigh.

Then she noticed the search held more book titles. As she perused her scowl disappeared and she guffawed. With a guilty flush to her cheeks, she ordered a copy of Princess of Pator. She wondered if Elsebeth would laugh or chase her with guns blazing through the next race track if she asked her for an autograph.