Resonant Abyss Read online

  J. N. Chaney

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  Resonant Abyss Copyright © 2019 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by JN Chaney

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

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  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from JN Chaney.

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  Resonant Abyss

  Book 2 in the Resonant Son Series

  J.N. Chaney

  Christopher Hopper

  Book Description

  Resonant Abyss

  Resonant Son Series #2

  A high-speed race to the death. A mission gone horribly wrong.

  With a billionaire benefactor backing him, Flint Reed heads off on his first mission to secure rare artifacts spread throughout the quadrant.

  Aided by a cagey assassin, his snarky AI, and a loving attack dog, Flint is poised for success.

  But when a powerful rival organization attempts to kill him, Flint must make split-second decisions to save his team's lives and protect the public.

  The pressure mounts as he is confronted with a nefarious syndicate hitman who holds the key to a trove of ancient and powerful artifacts.

  The only problem?

  The treasures are rumored to be guarded by ancient beings of extraordinary power.

  But they've never met Flint Reed...and he's got killin' to do.

  Pick up where Resonant Son left off on another white-knuckle adrenaline-fueled adventure. If you're a fan of Renegade Star, Escape from New York, Firefly, or Cowboy Bebop, you'll love this epic scifi thriller.

  Contents

  Previously on Resonant Son

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Renegade Star Universe

  Get a Free Book

  About The Authors

  Previously on Resonant Son

  A former ex-cop turned security guard, Flint Reed, thwarted a band of well-armed thieves in their attempts to steal valuable artifacts from the Oragga Complex’s main vault. Having saved over four dozen hostages, and surviving an explosion that blew the tower’s bottom half off Sellion City’s lower platform, Flint gained the attention and the gratitude of the property’s billionaire owner, Min Oragga.

  When Oragga offers Flint a job tracking down more of the artifacts like those in the vault, Flint is skeptical—not much can beat the generous compensation he’s been awarded. But after a separate attempt on Flint’s life nearly kills him, his dog Tiny, and his new accomplice, the mysterious Rachel Fontaine, Flint reconsiders Oragga’s offer.

  Now, Flint, Rachel, and Tiny find themselves on their first mission for the reclusive billionaire. Outfitted with a state of the art starship helmed by an AI named Lars, the trio speeds toward the city of Veradia on the planet of Altan Four. If all goes well, the intelligence they gather will be vital to finding their first artifacts for Mr. Oragga.

  1

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Rachel nudged her chin in the direction of the derelict nightclub just across the street from where the hover cab dropped us off. I understood her misgivings—back in Sellion City, this was the part of town where bodies got dumped after a hit. Investigators would never distinguish the corpses from among the homeless, nor would they pick out the smell.

  Without giving me a chance to reply, Lars answered over our ear comms, “Yes, Miss Fontaine. This establishment matches the location and description that Mr. Oragga provided us.”

  “I think she was asking me, buddy,” I said to Lars, the beloved but sometimes snarky AI. “But we appreciate the confirmation.”

  “And yet, I had the answer, sir.”

  I rolled my eyes at Rachel and then nodded toward the bar. “Not exactly Mr. Oragga’s style, is it.”

  “No,” she replied. “But then again, he didn’t hire us because of our eye for decorating.”

  I placed a hand on my chest in mock offense as we crossed the wet street. “Are you saying we don’t have good taste?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me from beneath a few strands of black hair. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Fair enough,” I conceded.

  We dodged a hover car and then stepped up on the opposite sidewalk. A holo sign flickered above us with the words Gance’s Dances in tacky yellow lettering. The streets this deep in Veradia’s underbelly smelled like piss and grease—no doubt because this is where the upper class dumped both.

  I stretched my back, grateful to be out of the Distant Horizon, even if it was down here in this hells-hole. Being cooped up in a starship for long periods of ti
me wasn’t exactly my usual daily routine. But with my new position in Min Oragga’s off-the-books search and retrieve enterprise, I figured I’d better get used to long hours on a starship—it sure beat running the graveyard shift as a security guard.

  The buildings around us soared upward, disappearing in a haze of clouds that glowed pink in the setting sun. Lars had parked the Horizon on one of the docks near the city’s south end, and then we’d hitched a hover cab down to ground level, or Zero, as the locals called it. The driver had refused unless we coughed up three hundred extra credits. Back on Sellion City, I would have threatened the guy with extortion charges, but here, I supposed it was just how things ran. Damn, I felt eyes on me already.

  “Easy, detective,” Rachel said. She was looking at my hand, which instinctively crept inside my coat toward my shoulder holster. “We are only hostiles here if we give them a reason to shoot.”

  “And showing up uninvited is reason enough where I come from,” I replied. The subsonic pulse of industrial grind music thudded from inside the bar. It was still too early for too many people to be inside, but I suspected that, come nightfall, this place would be total chaos. I looked at the doors and then nodded to Rachel. “Ladies first.”

  She smiled and walked forward. The doors parted, and Rachel made no effort to downplay her entrance. After all, for the next few minutes, she was no longer Rachel Fontaine. Instead, she was Scarlett Mason, underworld elitist with credits to burn and an image to keep up. At least that’s what the file that was distributed across the gal-net near and far said. She spread her arms and let her black jacket flutter in the air. Her long black hair billowed, undulating in waves, and her thigh-high boots moved in time with the beat of the music that enveloped us.

  For my part, I was playing the role of a bodyguard. Dark shades, leather jacket, and black cargo pants and boots. Letting Rachel take lead on this part gave me more opportunity to watch our six. Fine by me. Plus, based on her performance back in Oragga’s Complex, I’d say she had a knack for acting—which only made me more curious about her past that she held so close to her chest.

  Today’s tasks seemed easy enough. First, we needed to secure the services of a cargo pilot named Victor. While Oragga gave me the final say on who we worked with, he asked that his team vet all potential candidates. That was understandable, given the sensitive need-to-know basis of our mission.

  If Victor agreed—and the sum we were willing to pay him would all but ensure that—his freighter would deliver “goods” that we collected and ferry them back to Oragga. This would allow us to stay on task without constantly having to retrace our steps to Sellion City. I had asked the billionaire tycoon why we couldn’t use one of his existing shipping channels, but I figured I already knew the answer. Or at least a form of it. Min Oragga had a way with words.

  “Privacy,” Oragga had said, “is never an accident. Nor is it cheap. Staying out of sight is an expensive business, one that requires creativity and intentionality.” In this case, creativity and intentionality meant buying the services of what looked to be a drunk-ass freighter pilot who was down on his luck.

  “Please don’t tell me that’s Victor,” Rachel said as she surveyed the room. Everyone in the place was eyeing her save for one washed up drunk at the bar who stared into his bottle as if he couldn’t figure out where the beer had gone. Or his life. Hard to tell.

  “He fits the profile,” I said, holding back a grin.

  “That’s weird,” Rachel replied. “Mr. Oragga’s file didn’t say worthless bum on it.”

  “Picky picky,” I replied. “But it did say: able to keep a secret, capable mechanic, and extremely proficient—”

  “At falling off bar stools?” Rachel asked, pointing.

  The man fell off his stool and crumpled to the floor in a flapping of his canvas ankle-length coat.

  “That’s enough for you, Vic!” the bar keep yelled over the music. “Time to go back to your ship!”

  “Yup,” I said. “That’s our man.”

  The second reason we were here, and the more important one, was to meet Falco—though I highly doubted that was his real name. According to Oragga, Falco was an underworld fence who specialized in hard to find minerals. When I asked Mr. Oragga how he knew the man, the tycoon explained that he liked to stay connected to the channels that tried to rip him off. My guess? He probably had some Prodium go missing once upon a time or something. Better to deal with the enemy you can see than the one you never saw coming. It was the same in police work too—that was the whole reason for hanging on to informants, whether they knew you were using them or not.

  “Head to the bar,” I told Rachel over comms. She straightened her jacket and eyed the drunken freighter pilot as he climbed back up to his seat.

  “What’s your poison,” the bartender asked Rachel.

  “Whiskey sour with a dash of egg white,” Rachel replied with an aristocratic tone. The bartender was about to protest when she cut him off. “Gods, you lowlifes don’t have synth eggs down here, do you?”

  “Sorry, lady. Too expensive for our tastes.”

  Rachel made a show of lifting her hands off the bar and looking for a napkin. “Clearly.”

  “How about for your boy in black there?”

  I was about to order a scotch when Rachel said, “He doesn’t drink when he’s working for me.”

  The bartender nodded and went to start Rachel’s drink.

  “The hells I don’t,” I said over comms.

  “We have to fit the parts, don’t we?” she asked.

  “Hey, I can still protect your ass and drink.”

  “Not Scarlett Mason’s ass,” Rachel protested, flicking her hair off her shoulder. “She’s far too demanding.”

  “You got that right.” I nodded to Rachel. “I’m gonna talk to our boy. Hang tight.” Then I moved to lean against the bar beside Victor. He winced as I approached, the bar’s light catching him in the eye.

  “Looks like you’re a little down on your luck there, space rider,” I said over the sound of the music.

  Victor blinked, eyed his empty hands as if he expected there to be a beer bottle there, and then looked back at me. “Getting lucky comes later,” he slurred. “First, I gotta get rid of all my inhabitations.”

  “Inhibitions?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  I chuckled. “I think you’ve taken care of those just fine.”

  Victor blinked several more times, then asked, “How about you? You got any inhabitations?”

  “One or two.” I nodded at him, then lowered my voice. “Listen, is your name Victor Pelmatier?”

  “Who’s asking? Did I win the lottery?” He laughed and punched me weakly in the arm.

  “Depends how much you were hoping to make on the lottery,” I replied.

  That seemed to sober him up, at least a little. “You got a job? Cause if you need a freighter pilot, I’m your man.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  He eyed me, a look of curiosity forming on his face. “What’cha hauling? Dirt? Myst? Romp?” He nudged me with his elbow. “Unless you’re more into the kinky stuff. But I’ll have you know”—he raised a finger—“I don’t do slaves. Even a freighter pilot has litmuses, and that’s mine.”

  “A man with morals,” I replied, guessing he’d meant to say limits instead. “How refreshing.”

  “That’s me. I’ve got morals and then some.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said wryly.

  Victor brought his wrist up and tapped his watch. A holo image of a light class civilian freighter appeared. Her rectangular hull was interrupted by bridge section a third of the way to the aft.

  “Her name’s Deloris,” Victor said, moving his face to within a few centimeters of the floating translucent image. “Ain’t she a beaut? Can carry up to twenty-thousand metric tons of whatever you want getting from one part of the quadrant to the other.”

  “Where’s she now?” I asked Victor.

&nb
sp; He pointed over his head. “In orbit. Alpha Station. Had some repairs to do. But she’ll be ready when you are. What’da you pay?”

  “Credits on delivery,” I said.

  “No good,” he answered, shaking his head. “Credits up front.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. How about thirty-seventy.”

  “Still not good enough. Deloris here is a fine ship, and if you want her to treat you right, you gotta treat her right. You copy?” The man seemed to sober as the conversation went on, especially as we discussed credits. Apparently, his appetite for booze was exceeded only by his craving for profits.

  “Half down, half upon completion,” I suggested.

  Victor thought about it for a second, then said, “Sounds fair to me.” He extended his hand. The truth was, those were the terms I’d originally wanted, but he didn’t need to know that. I shook his hand.

  “Forward me your details.” I held up my new comm watch, courtesy of Mr. Oragga. It sure beat my old one—that thing was a piece of junk. I brought up my contact file and slid it Victor’s way. The image of Deloris vibrated as a new notification appeared, signaling the arrival of my information. He replied with his own contact information.