Contraband

Joe 'Skid' Marak, aka the Pilot, is a compulsive smuggler. For profit, adventure and the sheer hell of it - it's more a way of life than a way of making a living. His home is the abandoned spire of Manhattan's TransCom Building. His friends are outcasts from a city fallen into decay and draconian bureaucracy. And his days are numbered. For it seems the freetraders of the world are disappearing, victims of a mysterious force known only as 'Bokon Taylay'. On his ECM-pak - a laptop mishmash of scramblers, sensors and sat-nav systems - the Pilot watches as his comrades vanish from the screen. His only clue is a smuggled message instructing him to track down a man called Hawkley: reputed author of the Smuggler's Bible, the only person who can crack the Taylay code - a man who may not even exist. As the Feds close in and the Wildnets shut down, the Pilot and an oddball bunch of companions embark on a desperate quest to save the last free trade on earth. Together they will travel a darkening world ripped by plague and repression, smuggling the only contraband worth carrying... human freedom.