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    Unsettled
    Unsettled
    Unsettled
    Ebook39 pages1 hour

    Unsettled

    By Steve Rzasa

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Ardan Verge doesn't want his family's homestead on Mars to fail. But the dust storms keep coming, and the debt keeps rising.

    He and his best friend have one shot to secure their futures, before a new exodus empties the Red Planet of their dreams.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteve Rzasa
    Release dateMay 20, 2019
    ISBN9781733585149
    Unsettled
    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.

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      Book preview

      Unsettled - Steve Rzasa

      Unsettled

      Steve Rzasa

      Published by Steve Rzasa, 2019.

      This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

      UNSETTLED

      First edition. May 20, 2019.

      Copyright © 2019 Steve Rzasa.

      ISBN: 978-1733585149

      Written by Steve Rzasa.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      Unsettled

      Also By Steve Rzasa

      The condenser broke for the third time in six Martian months. Ardan Verge decided he could live without it.

      After all, the settlement of Ferro Plains had lost eight people in that time, so the need for what dregs of water could be reclaimed from the rusty regolith declined accordingly. He thought lost an unfair term—not to atmo-seal breach, or structural collapse during a dust maelstrom. Not like the men and women of the first-generation settlers.

      No, these eight had simply left. Packed up one day and caught the next torch booster into orbit. From there Ardan assumed they’d shipped to a new home, lured by the fleeting glimpses coming down the transmissions across the light-years.

      As far as he was concerned, the Raszewski drive was turning Mars into a dead planet all over again.

      He spit inside his External Survival suit. Didn’t get the grit from between his teeth. It mingled with salty sweat. Nothing got rid of the red dust. Sure, the ES suit sealed tight enough, but he dragged it through the airlock and invariably into the family hab.

      Ardan couldn’t fault his neighbors for leaving empty habitats, like rabbits on Earth bequeathed warrens. He pulled a superconductor free of the condenser and looked out over the lumps of red dirt arrayed in concentric circles. Aside from a cluster of six-wheeled rovers, and solar panels that followed the anemic sun with unfurling petals, it didn’t look like a community. A couple of colonists in white ES suits worked on the solar panels, accompanied by the rolling, yellow and black checkered spheres of Progress Corporation utility drones. Didn’t matter. He had sixty people, still, who needed the condensers to stay operational.

      Ard? The voice crackled in his ES suit’s radio. Any luck?

      I’m stripping parts off Condenser Four-Seven. We can use them when the other three go down.

      If they go down.

      No, pretty sure it’s ‘when,’ honey.

      His wife laughed. Such a warm, human sound. Nothing like the bleak vista of this, his home world. He shook his head. Thanks a bunch for getting us stuck here, Grandpa. Ard, would you like me to relay that across the settlement channels?

      Let’s keep it to ourselves, Rosie.

      Fine by me. I called to tell you Li Huan left a message.

      Ardan

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