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    Failed Frequencies: Vincent Chen, #3
    Failed Frequencies: Vincent Chen, #3
    Failed Frequencies: Vincent Chen, #3
    Ebook128 pages1 hour

    Failed Frequencies: Vincent Chen, #3

    By Steve Rzasa

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    About this ebook

    There's no place like homeworld…

    Vincent Chen would rather stay far away from his birthplace.

    But when he's called back to Tiaozhan, it's his job that's on the line.

    His superiors at MarkTel don't like the publicity his adventures have brought the company, which holds the monopoly on galactic communications. Vincent dutifully promises to keep quiet for the duration of his stay.

    Except his younger brother has other ideas.

    Martin Chen is mixed up with dangerous smugglers, who're furious he's encroaching on their business, and they won't let him simply walk away.

    It'll take all Vincent's savvy and a partnership with a legendary law enforcement officer to keep his brother—and himself—alive.

    And his family intact.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteve Rzasa
    Release dateOct 4, 2018
    ISBN9781540137265
    Failed Frequencies: Vincent Chen, #3
    Author

    Steve Rzasa

    Steve Rzasa is the author of a dozen novels of science-fiction and fantasy, as well as numerous pieces of short fiction. His space opera "Broken Sight" won the ACFW Award for Speculative Fiction in 2012, and "The Word Reclaimed" was nominated for the same award. Steve received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University, and worked for eight years at newspapers in Maine and Wyoming. He’s been a librarian since 2008, and received his Library Support Staff Certification from the American Library Association in 2014—one of only 100 graduates nationwide and four in Wyoming. He is the technical services librarian in Buffalo, Wyoming, where he lives with his wife and two boys. Steve’s a fan of all things science-fiction and superhero, and is also a student of history.

    Read more from Steve Rzasa

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      Book preview

      Failed Frequencies - Steve Rzasa

      Chapter One

      05 January 2614

      Tiaozhan Star System

      Tiaozhan, Western Province

      I didn’t want to come back here.

      Yet, here I stand, facing the permacrete and sandstone walls that failed to keep me safe from all the galaxy’s evils. The walls of the Chen family compound.

      There’s still time to boost my skipjack shuttle craft into orbit. It sits on the glazed soil tarmac, a 10-meter man-made bird of prey ready to leap from the ground. Steam rises from the ion engines as they cool in the crisp morning air. Tiaozhan’s rising sun splashes ruddy hues across the landscape, turning the skipjack’s white fuselage and the pale green grass a stubborn pink.

      It’s too early. I lose track of time when I’m aboard my comms ferry tender, RMS Marconi. She runs on Galactic Standard like every interstellar craft out there, so when I made the tract shift into the Tiaozhan System a few days ago, it didn’t occur to me I’d be at the Chen household close to dawn when I made planetfall.

      Finches tweet madly among the stunted aspens clustered in the hills overlooking the compound and its adjacent tarmacs. Other than the unseen avians, my only companion is Copper. He’s one of the twenty-four robots who crew Marconi, and the one who drew the short straw, as it were, to accompany me to the surface. I can disconnect, but only so much.

      Copper’s a tiny brassjacket who can fit into the palm of my hand. He reminds me of a dragonfly, albeit a pudgy, metallic version with four miniature turbofans in place of wings. A black stripe encircles his frame.

      He beeps twice. Three yellow lights blink. The question [Proceed?] appears on my wrist communicator’s screen.

      Copper’s a bit of a pest. I can’t tell if he’s asking for orders or trying to prod me out of my reticence. If it were any of my other bots, I’d guess the former, but Copper is the oldest unit aboard Marconi, and the one whose operating system resists updates these days. I tap the key for [Stand by and follow] in hopes it will keep him docilely hovering over my left shoulder.

      I hoist my duffel bag over the other shoulder. Yeah, I could make it to the skipjack’s cockpit and ignite the fusion-ion drive before anyone makes it to the gate. But who am I kidding? Perimeter sensors embedded in the walls have already alerted Father. If his habits remain the same—and why would they change?—he’s been up since the first finch opened its trap.

      This is ridiculous. I’m an Interstellar Communications Ferry Development & Maintenance Specialist. If that doesn’t sound impressive enough, people call me Captain. Or people would, if I had human crew. Bots aren’t much for titles. I’ve withstood months of solitude in distant star systems, managed the malfunctions of expensive communications gear that’s vital to all worlds of the Realm of Five, and I’ve endured way more than any MarkTel employee should in the name of a paycheck.

      To be fair, this job doesn’t require getting myself captured and subsequently freeing captive settlers, nor does it require helping spies foil data theft, but any way you look at it, they were my duty.

      Instead of letting those accomplishments and trials buoy me, I stand here like a vac-head, forcing myself to choose between buzzing in at the vehicle gate for visitors, or DNA swiping the family door to the right of that gate.

      This would be a lot easier if childhood were full of happy memories. Don’t get me wrong. I can smell Father’s baking and hear Mother’s singing as surely as if they happened an hour ago instead of ten years.

      But this is also the place from which Uncle Ethan was dragged off in binders almost twelve years ago for the crime of possessing the wrong document. And the wrong faith...

      Mother embraces me.

      I’m screaming and crying, until my throat is raw. My brother whimpers next to me, like a pet who’s been kicked one too many times.

      The Kesek constables drag Uncle Ethan to his feet. Ethan Chen, you are under arrest for violating the Charter of Religious Tolerance and willfully disseminating a text-in-violation, namely the Gospel of Luke.

      Leave him! Father’s in tears. It is my document! He had nothing—

      Sam, no! Uncle Ethan twists around to stare in the faces of the Kesek constables. It’s mine, you understand? They had nothing to do with this. Leave them be. I bought the Gospel text. I was the one who introduced them to it. My brother and his family knew nothing of what I had planned.

      The older of the two constables rolls his eyes. I don’t really care. Charter says we get ourselves a culprit, so we get a culprit. There’s no room in the back of the groundcar for more than one, anyway.

      They yank him to his feet and jostle him through the door.

      Why are they taking him? I ask Father. You said it was the Good News.

      Good News to us. His hand rests trembling on my shoulder. Folly to all others.

      But I didn’t tell anyone we were reading today. How did they find us?

      Our neighbors, Mother says. It could have been anyone who saw Uncle Ethan coming and going.

      That’s not right. They’re our friends!

      When people are afraid, Vincent, they follow the wrong path ...

      The sounds of people shouting and scrambler stun weapons shrieking fades into the insistent tweeting. Finches flit overhead. I’m back, feeling the morning sun warming the back of my MarkTel-issue black jacket, not raising my fists against officers of the king’s secret police in our compound’s basement.

      I glance downslope. There’s fifty compounds along the plain these days, several more than when I left. Ten-story agro-towers poke up from their midst, gleaming sides revealing myriad crops inside. Should be a homecoming sight.

      Instead I wonder how many turned on each other to escape Kesek’s wrath.

      Even as I’m catching my breath from the unbidden return of those memories, the family door slides open.

      Father smiles at me.

      Some people daydream about what they’ll look like when they’re older or, if they gave access to the tech, run a med-scanner analysis to produce a hypothetical rendering. I have no need. The aged version of Vincent Chen walks toward me, hair jet black, too, but fading through gray to white the closer it gets to his ears. His expression is a lined, bemused version of the one I see in the mirror, but skin tanned by the outdoors, and eyes the color of emerald-streaked storm clouds. He’s wearing the plum colored shirt he favors with the sleeves rolled up. How can it be anything but threadbare after all these years? It isn’t, so he must have finally gotten a new one. Mustard-brown clay smears his forearms and his brown trousers; his fingernails are caked with the stuff.

      All this way, he says, his voice the smooth, steady tenor I have to admit I’ve missed. And you’ve forgotten which door to use? Deep space must have terrible effects on one’s memory.

      I chuckle. Such is the humor of Walter Chen, Assistant Chief of Hydrology, Western Province. Hey, Father.

      Hey, indeed. Father grasps my shoulders. "It is good to see you home. Hong quan."

      "Hong quan." I’ve never had a better embrace.

      Hong quan isn’t our traditional greeting. Tiaozhanese add it to their vocabulary once every 54 months. It roughly translates as Magnificent Return. It’s a time when all Tiaozhanese citizens, no matter where they live, celebrate our planet’s founding.

      Why 54 months? That’s the time elapsed between the first colony ship’s departure from Earth and the day our first child—a girl—was born on this planet.

      So it is that during the Magnificent Return, which lasts 54 days, millions of Tiaozhanese from across the galaxy come home, streaming through the sundoors that connect our star system to four others.

      I kid you not, I could have walked from the Shacheng sundoor to the fourth planet—the only one supporting an Earth-like environment—by stepping from stern to bow of all the cargo vessels and passenger starships cramming space. Six-braces, navastels, feluccas, galleons, liners, ore haulers—Marconi’s Nav system had splattered more pips throughout the gorgeous spherical display screen encasing the bridge than I could handle. Made me think it’s a pirate’s dream come true.

      Except the Tiaozhanese Navy took no chances. All four sundoors are patrolled by trireme gunboats, three-engined in-system craft built to chase down most misbehaving interlopers. What they can’t catch, they leave to six flotillas of seahawks. Tangle with one of those Raszewski drive-equipped destroyers, fast and heavily armed, and you’ll wish you never made the tract shift, because they’ll hunt you clear into the main trade route linking the Realm

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