Red Noise

by John P. Murphy

  She didn’t hurry back to the hotel despite the overwhelming urge to run. She tossed the bloodied cloth in a corner, checked that it hadn’t re-soiled her fingers. The rear doors opened for her and the couple of toughs hanging out there perked up but let her pass. She went straight through the still-milling crowd of toughs and soldiers awkwardly chatting each other up, to Feeney’s office. She knocked once and let herself in.

  Feeney looked up from his desk, surprised and blinking.

  “Well?” she said, sounding impatient. “What’s up?”

  “I… Done already? By God, you do fast work–”

  She frowned. “No, I’m not done. You called me back. What’s up?”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “‘Come back. Just you. Trouble. F.’” She read from her message screen. “It’s from you, or at least it says it is. You didn’t send it?”

  He stood, wide-eyed and alarmed. “No!”

  The Miner swore loudly and turned to run.

  THEY’RE ALL DEAD

  Screwball tried not to look at the bodies on the floor and tried not to step in the blood and tried not to laugh at Ditz, stoned and pathetically fighting off the cleaning robot with poorly placed kicks.

  “What the hell are you doing? Stop that, you idiot,” Feeney snapped, and then paid Ditz no more mind. He went back to staring down at the three dead people on the deck and the huge pool of stinking blood. That was one of the new guys right off the transport ship. Duff, Screwball was pretty sure he’d been called, when he forced himself to look. And the chick was Siobhan. Shiv. He’d slept with her once. Feeney had collected Screwball and Ditz and three more of them, plus the lady with the sword, and brought them straight to this carnage. He’d made them go through the bodies’ pockets for credit chips, and then had just began staring.

  “Well?” the old man finally snapped at the swordswoman, Jane. “What is this?”

  She looked at him blankly. “They’re dead.”

  “Brilliant, Holmes. Any other deductions?”

  She stared down at the bodies, and looked as blank and dumbfounded as Screwball felt. The old man had been giving the corpses a suspicious look. After a long uncomfortable silence, Feeney clucked his tongue against his teeth.

  “I’m disappointed, my dear Mick. I really am. Hand me your sword, will you?”

  Screwball saw her hesitation even if the old man didn’t. She fiddled with the release at her belt while looking up at Feeney and the rest of them with an expression that made him want to be elsewhere. Then, after another moment where he wasn’t sure he was breathing, the sword was up and away from her hip, still sheathed.

  Feeney took it without really looking at her, and instead examined the weapon in its black fabric sheath. He weighed it in his hands, then used it as a stick to lift Duff’s arm away from the mace and drop it again, and then to nudge the knife still embedded in the poor bastard’s throat. It made his whole head wiggle.

  “I’m getting tired of traitors,” Feeney said in a mild tone, almost conversationally. Screwball felt a chill go down his spine, and even Ditz seemed to sober up. He kicked the cleaning robot again, but didn’t put much spirit into it. Feeney stared down at the bodies, his face pale and his lips pursed tightly so that they were white. He didn’t look up to see the effect his words were having on his bodyguards. He ignored them all, poking his dead soldiers with the sheathed sword.

  He stood a long while with the sword wedged under Shiv’s arm. Screwball found himself staring into the reflection of the overhead lights in the dark glistening blood, and he jumped when the old man let the woman’s dead arm fall. He returned the sword to its owner without comment, and she hung it on her belt.

  “This fellow killed the others,” Feeney said, louder than before, and confident. “Got the drop on that one, what did you call him, Squealer? Must’ve figured he couldn’t take you and them together, Jane, even if he got the jump on you.”

  “He wouldn’t have got the jump on me,” she said, and from the look on her face, Screwball believed her.

  Feeney went on like he hadn’t heard her. “If he’d pulled this off he could have hidden the bodies and we’d have assumed all three of them dead, and you the last to see them. He’d have gotten a nice bonus from that witch.” He sneered.

  “Witch?” The swordswoman looked confused. “Angelica?”

  “Of course Angelica! My God. All these new people, it must have been only too easy to bribe one to pretend to join up. I should have tried it myself. Damn. Not a brilliant plan, mind, but not bad. No, not bad.”

  She gave him a wary look that Screwball couldn’t quite understand. It looked like she was reacting to unexpected good news, almost. “So she was trying to frame me for this?”

  Feeney sighed. “Well, I didn’t hire you for your brains, did I. She was trying to frame you, surely. Homicidal witch must have thought she could set me against you and kill two good soldiers in one stroke. But for this fine lass...” He nodded his chin at Shiv, then let out another great sigh. “There’ll be a reckoning for this, believe you me. The witch’s little spies want to play rough? Well, I was playing the hard game before she was born, winning it. Let the robots have them,” he barked, turning on his heels. “We’ve no use for corpses. Come on.”

  A VISIT TO FINN

  The Miner finally let herself relax. “Homicidal witch must have thought she could set me against you and kill two good soldiers in one stroke,” Feeney went on. “But for this fine lass...” He nodded at the twitchy little knife fighter, who seemed to have become a heroine in death just like the guy with the mace had become a villain. The Miner wondered what they’d have made of their posthumous roles. Probably preferred they not be posthumous.

  “Let the robots have them,” Feeney said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “We’ve no use for corpses. Come on.”

  The five bodyguards he’d brought seemed all too glad to step away from the blood and the stink. The stoned one grudgingly let the cleaning robot get by him, and it gleefully plunged into the mess, splashing and guzzling into some internal tank. The Miner stayed put.

  “I’ll be along in a bit,” she said. “I still need to talk to Peder Finn about his donations.”

  Feeney looked at her with a kind of wonder. “Aye,” he said finally. “That you do. I’m glad someone’s got their eye on the bottom line. Why don’t you take two...” He looked nervous then, and glanced up around them. They all seemed to have felt suddenly very aware of how far they were from the hotel. Feeney looked relieved when she shook her head.

  “I’ll do it on my own this time. If he’s not feeling generous I’ll drag him out here for some inspiration.”

  Feeney raised his eyebrows at her. The bodyguards looked a little put off, themselves. “You’re a cold one, my girl,” he said, and it sounded like respect. “Don’t kill him.”

  Big white tanks lined the walls of the enormous space the map marked as Finn’s place. They hung from the ceiling, looming metal cylinders that tapered down to tapped points, each with a readout and controls, and each big enough to shove a person into. They dripped and the place stank of malt and alcohol, a heavy molasses fug that was oppressive in the humidity. The low hum she’d heard in the passageway had grown to a rumble as she got closer, and inside the room she felt it through the floor.

  She walked softly, peering in and around the various tanks, looking for labels but finding none. The tanks were numbered, but that meant nothing. The smell grew strong enough that she wondered whether she was getting a contact buzz just from inhaling the fumes. A dozen steps into the long room and she stopped. She took her sheathed sword from her belt and rapped the hilt against one of the pipes. Droplets of blood flew and splattered the walls. The deep clanging echoed, and a moment later a familiar short wiry guy poked his head in from a side door, his bald dome beading sweat. His eyes went wide on seeing her.

  “Hello, hello,” he said, looking like he was about to bolt. “I didn’t, ah, I didn’t hear you come in.
”

  “I’m quiet,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the low rumble. “We met earlier, at Takata’s bar.”

  His expression took a moment to register recognition, like he was on a time delay, but then his nervous face split into a crooked-toothed grin. “Yes, yes, yes. Hi! Did he send you?”

  “No,” she said casually. “Feeney did.”

  The brief relaxation turned to obvious panic. She held up a hand to calm him, the one not holding the sword.

  “I don’t care what he wants,” she said, keeping her tone friendly. “I’m not going to do anything to you. But I’m curious why you stopped paying him off.”

  “Well...” He still looked like he wanted to jump and run. He looked around the room instead of answering her, like goons might spring out from between the tanks. “Truth is, truth is I’m broke.”

  She frowned. “Didn’t Takata just buy some vodka off you?”

  “He did. He did. Good stuff. But ‘buy’ isn’t the right word. Barter, you see, barter. He’ll make me dinner sometimes, give me some beer. I really do get tired of vodka, even drinking it. I tried mixing it with a bunch of stuff, but it never comes out very good.”

  “Like the gin?”

  He made a face full of resentment, but didn’t dispute it.

  “So Feeney won’t take payment in booze?”

  He looked surprised. “It never came up. He buys it back off me with the credits he makes me cough up.”

  The Miner rubbed her chin. “Lot of people bartering these days?”

  “Everyone, everyone. If you keep too many credits on-hand, Angelica or Feeney come tax you. I think the security guy tips them off. The Company Rep’s letting us pay our rent a little at a time, and she doesn’t know how much space I’m using now. If we ever have too much money, we can buy stuff off Mr Shine.” He turned and waved at a shelf full of electronics and tools. The Miner frowned at it.

  “What do you need a radiation-hardened multimeter for?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. But Mr Shine’ll buy it back, pretty much same price. And he won’t tell, probably because of the chicken pox.”

  She blinked. “...chicken pox?”

  “Yeah, yeah, he said Feeney and Angelica had chicken pox. It was weird. I thought it was weird.”

  She tilted her head and looked at the little man. If he was having her on, he had a damn fine poker face. “Do you mean he said, ‘A pox on both your houses’?”

  “That’s it. Yup, yup. So he won’t let on when I have cash.”

  “So why aren’t you under his protection?”

  Finn looked bashful all of a sudden. He scratched the back of his head. “It’s complicated. Complicated, you know.”

  “You used to work for Feeney, too.” The flinch told her she’d scored. “And you and this guy Shine didn’t get along.”

  “That might be, it might.” He gave her a hard look. “So you’re collecting for Feeney, that it?”

  She shrugged. “Yes and no. I can’t go back empty-handed.”

  “So what, you’re going to beat me up again?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. I was more thinking... What happened to that batch of gin?”

  He looked horrified for a second, then grinned.

  “But I do have a price,” she said. “I want to talk to this Mr Shine.”

  SHINY

  The Miner stayed at the back of the hotel lobby and watched the newcomers mixing awkwardly. She was curious what Feeney meant when he had promised to “show them the ropes,” and was only a little disappointed that it turned out to be mostly Feeney waving away complaints that their fancy guns had been taken away, and making grand promises. Then pretty much everyone got drunk.

  The evening wound on and got drunker and rowdier. They toasted their fallen heroic comrade, whose name turned out to be Siobhan, and booed the makeshift villain, whose name turned out to be Dopp or something. She never did find out the other poor jerk’s name. Some twitchy little creep was trying to get people interested in helping him get the printers to make him a chainsaw. A few patrol shifts staggered out, in bigger groups now and heavily armed; they came back blooded and thirsty. The Miner wasn’t offered many drinks; she took a few to be friendly and poured them out into the fake plants without making much effort to not be seen. Nobody seemed to care. The acrid odors of various pharmaceuticals afire crossed her nostrils and she moved a couple times to avoid a contact high or worse. They pretty much left her alone, and she was fine with that.

  When she judged them at about the right spot for it, she unveiled the gin. Feeney had groaned, but accepted her earnest explanation that Finn had no cash, and when she pretended to be proud of herself he didn’t have the booze-soaked heart to not write off the debt. Mary stood by and smirked, a nice bonus.

  The welcome party wound down when Feeney went upstairs out of exasperation with the sudden uptick in puking; pairs and trios gave each other suggestive looks as they wandered off to dark corners, a few fistfights broke out and ended in mutual exhausted collapse, and others just passed out wherever they happened to be. The Miner wasn’t tired – her implants could keep her up for days if she let them – and anyway she had finally gotten the ping from Finn.

  She slipped out the back without too much trouble. There were guards asleep in easy chairs at the service entrance, behind makeshift barricades of tables and gym mats. There was another watch point by the stairs, that was new. It was also abandoned already. She thought she knew which directions the patrols went, but didn’t put it past Mary to hide some of them. So she went quietly, but maintained an air that she had every right to be where she was.

  Feeney’s crew had simply destroyed the cameras around their territory; the Miner had pieced together that the alternative was to be spied on by either del Rio or McMasters or both. It was six flights down before she saw one intact and with a lit power indicator. She stopped and watched it a while, thinking. Feeney wouldn’t know about her visit, but who else would? In the end, she decided that this close to Shine’s territory it was here with his blessing, so destroying it might cause complications. She willed her legs back into movement, and continued her descent.

  Down in the bottom decks the pipes were bigger and louder, and the conduits were as thick as her leg. Outside of the stairwells and in the maze of passageways, the Miner felt like she was in the digestive system of a giant, an unpleasant sensation not helped by humidity so high water beaded on the cold water and gas pipes, or by the various smells like combustion and fermentation. Finn’s instructions hadn’t been the best, but it was hard to get too lost: just go down, and they’ll find you.

  She could hear footsteps on the other side of the pipes as she walked. Scurrying movements, sudden. She kept walking, pretending to pay them no heed even as a chill ran down her back. Whispering from ahead. A white-haired head poked out briefly, then ducked back behind the ductwork.

  “You lost?”

  She turned, cursing herself for not having heard someone come up behind her. He was a big guy, heavyset and middle-aged but in good shape. He wore dirty coveralls and had a badly-shaved head that left little tufts here and there in the hard-to-reach places. His broad stubbled chin jutted out like he was about to object to something. He held a good-sized shotgun in his thick-fingered hands. Something about his heavy frame, his level incurious gaze, and the way he carried himself reminded her of a bull. He’d worn a tuxedo before, and was the guy she’d come looking for.

  “You’re Mr Shine,” she said, only partly a question. Behind him, people began filling the corridor. They came from hatches she hadn’t seen, in the walls, in the deck, in the ceiling. Lined faces, some gray or thin hair. Grim expressions, and hands holding wrenches and pipes and guns. She could hear them shuffling in behind her, too.

  “I’m the SOB they call that,” Shine rumbled. “I hate that nickname.”

  “Sorry. That’s what Takata called you.”

  He frowned, and moved his jaw forward even further. “Kenichi Takata?” />
  She bit back the impulse to ask if there was another one. “That’s him. What do I call you?”

  “My name is Mohammed Shinagawa, but I think that ship has flown. Shine’ll do. From what I’ve been hearing and the vids they’ve been sharing round, you must be Mick. Or Jane.”

  She nodded, and continued looking him over. The shotgun hadn’t wavered while they were talking, not that she was necessarily planning to take it away from him. The pipes vented something humid and effluent, but it didn’t seem to bother him so she didn’t let it bother her. She’d come looking for him, but having found him, he had the look of someone who had something to say.

  “You’re a pain in my ass,” he said after ruminating on it, cocking his head. “A shit-stirrer. I don’t like you.” Some of the faces behind him nodded, but she mentally filed away the fact that some didn’t; some looked troubled when he said it.

  “I didn’t ask you to like me.”

  He snorted and the tip of the shotgun’s barrel dipped and rose a finger’s breadth. “You came within arm’s reach. That’s asking me to like you.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “You going to shoot me?”

  He looked surprised, then faintly sheepish. “Not planning to, just... I don’t know, making conversation. Keeps things friendly. What do you want?”

  The Miner folded her arms and studied the man. He cleaned up well, she knew that from the pictures around the hotel. He was pretty imposing in person. Maybe he still had the tux. “You ever think about running this station?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a dangerous question.”

  “There’s a dangerous answer to it.”

  “There aren’t any answers to it that aren’t dangerous, I’m thinking.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted. “Then there’s no special harm in any one of them.” He still looked like he had something to say, but this time she cut him off. “Feeney and Angelica aren’t stable, Shine. They both think they’re clever.” He snorted again at that, but it wasn’t disagreement. “They both think they can win. And that’s not going to end well. I figured you knew that when you came down here. I figured they knew it.” She pointed with her chin at the small grimy crowd behind him, and they seemed taken aback at being acknowledged. “So let me be blunt. I can clear those two away. But if I leave a power vacuum, will you fill it, or just let things go to hell?”