DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) by Niall Teasdale Page A

Don’t worry, Marie. It’ll work.’
    Fox winced. ‘Well that’s not jinxing it at all.’
    22 nd June.
    Fox scanned over the crowd in the theatre as she walked out to centre stage backed by the Palladium logo on the big screen. She could see a number of cops in the front couple of rows, including Helen Dillan at the front on Fox’s left. She caught a flash of copper hair toward the back, but could not identify the owner.
    ‘Kit, run over the attendance list and see if they’re here, please.’
    ‘Of course, Fox,’ Kit replied, but what she immediately did was supply Fox with her first cue card as the noise from the audience died away.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, and members of NAPA,’ Fox began, and there was a rumble of laughter, mostly from the cops, ‘welcome to the Palladium and MarTech presentation on future investigative technology. It looks like about half the audience should know who I am already, but for those who don’t, my name is Tara Meridian and I’m the Chief Investigative Officer of Palladium Security Solutions.’
    Checking in-vision that the screen display behind her was transitioning into a slideshow of historical events which were vaguely related to Palladium, Fox gave her virtual card a glance and went on. ‘Palladium was formed in twenty fifty-seven to internalise security for MarTech’s worldwide facilities. It handles facilities and building management in concert with MarTech Services, and it supplies security systems and personnel working with MarTech Technologies and Defence Technologies to do that. However, until I joined the team earlier this year, Palladium had only an ad hoc investigative capability, depending primarily on the basic talents of its security staff. Some of them have done an excellent job in difficult circumstances, but our management team decided that something a little more formal was needed.’
    She looked out at the audience and smiled. ‘And obviously I’m a detective on a par with Sherlock Holmes,’ – another rumble of laughter – ‘but even I have my limits. One person can’t cover the world, even the part of it MarTech calls home. More than that, if the resolution this conference was founded around is voted into law, we are about to see a massive change in the way policing is carried out. Even if the metro areas shipped every detective they have out into the protectorates, we would not be able to cover all the ground adequately. Palladium needed a way of easing that burden, and I had a great idea about how to do that.’ She smiled again. ‘Of course, when I mentioned it, it turned out I was slightly behind the times because I have a genius on my board of directors. Let me introduce him to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Jackson Martins.’
    There was applause as Jackson walked out from behind the curtained-off area to the left of stage where Marie would be working, and Fox joined it as she reversed off to stage right where Marie was waiting with Terri and the harness. Marie looked nervous, but that kind of worked for the presentation and Terri was looking confident. Fox knew the latter had been tweaking the interface to her new AI for the last few days to make sure it would work well for this event.
    ‘Everything okay?’ Fox asked, keeping her voice low.
    ‘I’m nervous,’ Marie replied, ‘but it’s more worry about screwing up the demo.’
    ‘Which you won’t,’ Terri stated. ‘If I’ve done my job, and I have, you won’t be allowed to screw up as long as you do what the system says.’ She smiled. ‘Poppa’s always been good at making these things sound exciting.’
    ‘It’s because they excite him,’ Fox replied. ‘He believes in technology. He believes it can make a better world. I’m just glad he doesn’t let that run away with him too often.’
    ‘Not wishing to make you nervous,’ Kit said, ‘but your parents are in the audience.’
    ‘Yeah… Thanks, Kit.’
    Out on stage, Jackson was winding up his initial talk. ‘It’s a