The Departure Audiobook (Free)

The Departure is the first book in Neal Asher’s near-future, science fiction Owner series.

The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Globe. And from this secure range, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. You can find too many people and too little resources, and they want twelve billion to expire before Earth could be stabilized. So corruption is normally rife, people starve, and the indegent are policed by mechanized overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already dread the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, acquiring carnage to a new level.

This is the globe Alan Saul wakes to, venturing in a kennel destined for the Calais incinerator. How he got there he doesn’t understand, but he remembers discomfort and his tormentor’s encounter. He also offers company: Janus, a rogue intelligence inhabiting forbidden equipment in his skull. As Janus shows Saul an Earth stripped of hope, he resolves to annihilate the Committee and their program. Once he’s uncovered who he was, and killed his interrogator .