Red Noise

by John P. Murphy

  He didn’t answer right away. “I’m a casino man,” he said at last. “I understand risk, and I’m comfortable with it. They’re not. Del Rio thinks risk is something to be stamped out. John thinks you grab hold of the most interesting risk and go along for the ride. Neither one’s right.”

  “She’s too cautious, he’s too incautious. I’ve noticed.”

  “I bet you have. Me, I know that risk is something to be evened out. You’ve got to lay your bets if you want to get ahead, but you don’t have to go all in. You just have to see things for what they are. For example, I don’t trust a hired gun who uses words like ‘incautious’.” He grinned to show he was kidding, or to pretend he was. “A brain behind a trigger is another risk to my mind, maybe a big one.”

  “She might notice you didn’t answer her dangerous question, maybe?”

  He lapsed back into silence. “Do I ever think about running this station? I do run this station. We do. We keep the children from playing the games that might get too dangerous. They’ll stab each other and shoot each other, but they won’t get into the air or water, they won’t destroy the food supply. Tom McMasters won’t touch us. Even the Company Rep and the station master don’t bother us.”

  “You’re helping it grind on,” she said, aware now that she wasn’t just addressing him. “If it grinds on long enough, this place’ll die.”

  “No it won’t. Some powerful people don’t want it to. We don’t want it to.” He leaned the shotgun back against his shoulder and jutted his chin out. “What you’re really asking is, do I want to run the fun bits? Not just the casino, but the long games and the salvage ops, the light touches and the old man’s other little enterprises. You want to know if I want to be called ‘boss’, is that right? Balls to that. I just want my casino back. And I’ll get it back if I’m patient. Fortunately for you, being patient means not shooting one of Feeney’s people, even if I think she has it coming.”

  If the Miner didn’t understand herself to be dismissed, she got the message when he turned and left. He didn’t have to shoulder his way through the Morlocks, but they closed ranks behind him. That wall of grimly-determined bodies, and the noises behind her of the corridor emptying out, made it clear which direction they wanted her to go, and she obliged. Anyway, that was the answer she wanted.

  THE SPIDER IN HER WEB

  Angelica del Rio sat upright in her bed. By the time she woke all the way up, the jolt of adrenaline was just starting to wear off but still left her heart pounding and muscles tensed. The first thing on her sleep-addled mind when the alarm went off was that her brother was in trouble. When she calmed down enough to shake off the panic and look at the monitor, though, it had been a different alert – someone was in the stairwell behind Feeney’s hotel going down to the Morlocks.

  She frowned at the image of Feeney’s new fighter, alone. Angelica was sure it was the same woman who started the fight in the galleria, wearing the sword she’d killed Chuckie with. Why was Feeney sending her down to talk to Shine in the middle of the night? She’d seen Mary once or twice, obviously going to try to persuade him to switch allegiance. But this woman was a fighter, by all accounts, not a diplomat. Was it an assassination attempt?

  Angelica got out of bed and pulled on her robe. She hated that robe. It was nice silk, scavenged from a clothing store left empty when the owner fled, but it wasn’t hers. Hers was still over in the hotel where she’d left it six months ago. Hers was warm and fluffy and she’d had it for years. She had the sudden mental image of the old man wearing it himself out of spite, and chuckled without meaning to.

  The fighter walked past the stairway camera without acknowledging it; probably didn’t know it was there. And then she was gone, down the stairs where Angelica didn’t have access to any video feeds. All she had was an unchanging image and a quandary.

  “Tea,” she said aloud, drumming her fingers on the desk. “I need tea.”

  It would take someone a couple more minutes to get to the lowest decks by stairs, and a while longer to actually find Shine – unless they were meeting by appointment. She frowned down into her dwindling stash of tea leaves. Not the real stuff, she hadn’t had that in months. The bioengineered hydroponics stuff wasn’t bad, and it had caffeine, but she was even running out of that. She needed the use of her brain just then, though, so she shook a few leaves into her mug – Mr Shine’s mug, really, stolen when she commandeered the casino and still tasting faintly of his coffee and cardamom – and dispensed hot water into it.

  The warm steam and gentle grassy aroma relaxed her, helped her to think. She’d promised Shine she wouldn’t spy on him, so just contacting him and warning him was out. Anyway, if this wasn’t an assassination attempt, he’d resent it. Nor could she simply send people down; he’d see it as an invasion. Doing nothing and waiting didn’t sit well with her.

  She glanced through the other cameras, looked for the handful of night owls prowling the corridors around her various assets in the lower decks. A crew of four, looking drunk, that was all. An ambush might work, but she’d seen firsthand what had happened to the last group that had come upon that swordswoman. They had probably been sober, too. Some of her crew might flat-out refuse to take the woman on, and if they started refusing her orders, things would go south fast.

  Angelica sipped her tea and thought, scanning the monitors idly. The old frustration rose up in her, felt like acid in her throat. All these stupid games, all the wasted money and sleep and opportunity. Shine used to call her “loss averse” and laughed and said he made a lot of money off people like her. But she’d done well so far, damn it all, carved out a lot of territory and kept the old man back on his heels. And let them think she wouldn’t take risks – if Raj’s little gamble paid off, she might just sweep the table.

  A nervous-looking trio caught her attention. Not too far from the swordswoman, and not too far from backup. A seven-on-one fight might…

  She frowned. She didn’t recognize them. She tapped on the face recognition, but it came up blank: they weren’t any of hers. Morlocks? Not seedy-looking armed punks like that, and not so close to her territory. What was Carter’s plan? Go for the foot soldiers and get them mad at the new woman? Four drunks and the element of surprise, that could do the job. Nothing major, just a little sucker punch to keep morale up while they waited on Raj.

  Angelica pushed the talk button, enjoyed for a moment the look of shock at her disembodied voice on the four tiny faces on her video screen, and rapidly laid out her instructions. Then she let go of the button and watched them hurry out of view. She could watch the fight, maybe, if there happened to be a camera nearby or if one of them had a lapel cam. Watching seemed like the responsible thing to do. Or the thing Raj would do, which was usually the opposite of responsible. She found herself repulsed by the thought of watching, though: some general, she just wanted this damn fight over.

  She finished her tea, took a sleeping pill, and went back to bed.

  DOC-BLOCKED

  The Miner didn’t dawdle heading back to a part of the station she could more easily justify her presence in. Shine had given the answer she’d wanted to hear: nobody who wanted to run Station 35 should by any means be allowed to do it, was her opinion, and he passed that test. She had gotten back to the hotel without too much trouble, and was thinking of returning to her stolen room to read when some kids stumbled through the hotel doors, bloodied and beaten up. Two of them dragged a third between them, and while the two doing the dragging didn’t look so hot; the third looked downright bad.

  They evicted a snoring drunk from the couch and dumped their buddy on it. She’d been beat up pretty thoroughly. Both eyes were swelled shut and a stream of pink saliva stretched from her mouth. Her black clothes shone with blood, though the Miner couldn’t see an obvious wound.

  “Why didn’t you take her to the doctor?” she asked. Mills wouldn’t treat the gangsters – and anyway it was a hell of a walk down to his office – but there was that clinic right off t
he galleria. One of the girls had gone over the evening before, and Mary had tersely explained “payment” when the Miner gave her an inquisitive look.

  The shorter goon grinned at her, his teeth slicked with blood. “He’s busy dealing with the damage we did, hey?”

  “Angelica’s assholes pushed us off,” grumbled the taller one as he swabbed gingerly at a bloodied nose. He didn’t bother looking at her as he talked. “They’ve got the door guarded.”

  The Miner considered that. She was weakening Feeney’s side to try to force a confrontation, but she didn’t want them so weak they couldn’t fight at all. Anyway, she could have need of a sawbones herself.

  The girl bleeding on the couch coughed a red spray and groaned. The Miner went back to examining her. After some prodding and some “that hurt?” “shit yes it hurt, motherfucker!” back and forth, she decided the kid had a broken leg, a couple cracked ribs but probably not a collapsed lung, broken teeth, and a concussion. Maybe more than that; that was about the limit of the Miner’s dim recollection of field medicine.

  “Don’t let her sleep,” the Miner said. “Keep her awake and don’t give her any booze or downers.”

  “Meth OK?”

  She gave him a blank look, started to answer, stopped, then went back to the broken leg. “Get me something long and straight.”

  “I got something long–” The short goon stopped talking when the taller one slapped him upside the head.

  “For the leg, asshole,” the taller one said, then walked off muttering. There was a sharp crack and a moment later the Miner was being handed a hollow plastic barstool leg. Its chrome-like finish splintered and crumbled where it had been broken off. She rubbed off the splinters then tied it to the girl’s broken limb, tested it gently.

  “Fuck! Goddamn it!”

  She tested it as gently as she could be bothered to, and after some adjustment pronounced the splint sturdy.

  “All right,” said the Miner. “She’s set for now. Come with me.”

  She dimly remembered where the other doctor’s office was, and walked straight there flanked by the two bruised goons. “Uh,” said the shorter one when the office came in sight, just a modest entranceway right off the eastern spur, uncomfortably close to security, but they seemed closed up for the night. “Dr Joff Philippe, MD” read the neat blue letters on the frosted window. The discreet thing to do would be to have her two wingmen stick close and try to be unobtrusive. Finish this quickly before attracting notice, two would be plenty.

  “Get backup,” she muttered. “Have them hang out just outside the galleria so nobody comes up behind me.” That would be indiscreet enough, she decided, but still defensible. Now the second part.

  Three of Angelica’s soldiers loitered by the open door, looking about as haggard and hungover as Feeney’s crew; they noticed the Miner’s approach and drew an assortment of makeshift weapons. Only one had a proper weapon, a drawn military-style sword like her own, though chipped and scarred. Second-hand, then, a tidy euphemism for a weapon scavenged from some vet down on their luck or dead. The other two had club-looking things, deadly enough if they could land a solid blow.

  “Piss off,” growled the swordswoman. She held her sword two-handed with a grip tight enough her knuckles were white.

  The Miner shook her head, but didn’t draw her weapon. “Doctor’s neutral ground.”

  “Not anymore. Get out of here.”

  The Miner shook her head again. “Can’t.”

  Someone behind her said “uh”, but she couldn’t afford to turn and look. She’d just have to trust them to fuck it up.

  “Piss. Off.”

  “Hey doc!” the Miner called out. “You have a patient in there?”

  A skinny man in a tatty white lab coat hesitantly poked his head out of the door behind Angelica’s goons. His protruding eyes were fried-egg wide, and he stammered a consonant-free reply.

  “Shut up, doc,” said the swordswoman, not looking at him. She had nerve, the Miner had to admit.

  Being shushed seemed to remind the guy he had a few vertebrae, and he used them. “I’m seeing a patient, yes,” he managed. “Don’t kill each other out here. For God’s sake. We’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  “Fine,” said the Miner. “When you’re finished, these folks will leave, then you’ve got another one coming. She’s next.”

  “The hell we will,” the swordswoman said. “The hell she is.”

  The Miner put her hand on her sword for the first time, gently resting it on the grip. Angelica’s goons tensed like she’d drawn on them, and the doctor fled back inside. “If you don’t leave he’ll have three more patients. And you’ll have to wait your turn.”

  A club-wielder sneered from his position behind the woman with the sword. “You’re pretty goddamn sure of yourself.”

  “That’s right.”

  She saw the attack coming. The woman might have fenced, probably VR, but wasn’t a proper sword fighter. Still, she didn’t waste time waving her blade like a stick, and she came in low to use her center of gravity well. The Miner drew with plenty of time; brought her weapon up one-handed, parried by simply slapping the other sword away, and then down two-handed while stepping to the right. Her blade met the other woman’s arm as she tried vainly to correct for the Miner’s practiced and augmented quickness; the Miner sliced through flesh and struck bone.

  It was over before the other goons on either side could react. The Miner held her sword with the point down, dripping blood onto the deck, ready to bring it up if anyone else had bright ideas. The swordswoman shrieked on the ground, her chipped sword forgotten beside her while she clutched at her right forearm, blood gushing between her fingers. Wound like that, fighting style like that, she’d be out of the game for a month at least. Suited the Miner fine.

  “Stings, huh? Should have listened.”

  When someone behind her said “uh” again, she did turn. A group had formed behind her; two groups in fact, maybe four or five goons in each, all trying to watch each other and watch her at the same time.

  The doctor reappeared with a dazed, pale, tattooed young man trailing him, and knelt in the blood to administer aid. Angelica’s other fighters stood uncertain with their makeshift clubs hovering at the ready but not ready enough to be an obvious threat. The Miner pulled a handkerchief and wiped down her blade with a show of nonchalance.

  “If I’d wanted to kill you three, I would have. But this is neutral ground.” She raised her voice, not too much, but she wanted to be heard.

  “All right,” snapped the doctor. “You’ve made your point. You, I’ll treat. The rest of you, get out of here. Will your friend last another half hour?”

  The Miner considered then nodded.

  “Good, come back in half an hour.”

  She stepped away, putting some distance between herself and Angelica’s goons. That gave her a view of the crowds facing off, and she looked at them speculatively. If she joined Feeney’s side in that one, the other side would probably melt away. “Doc?”

  “What now?”

  “You’re going to be busy.” She turned and left past his office, walking away from the crowds.

  FEENEY WATCHES THE FIGHT

  Screwball peered out at the galleria from the hotel windows, squinting against the dim light. He’d been woken up still tipsy and pressganged into helping carry Tara to the doctor to get bandaged up. The doc had been pissed off about something, but Screwball hadn’t paid much attention because of all the noise from the galleria – maybe two dozen people were out there yelling and jeering at each other from across the row of trees. He couldn’t see Angelica’s crew real well, but the fighters from Feeney’s side looked hungover and confused, and he decided that “I’d better report back” was the better part of valor.

  He hadn’t been the only one. It was either too late at night or too early in the morning – it was just the wrong damn time of day for that kind of thing, for his kind of people, and a lot of Feeney’s crew s
tumbled around groggy in the hotel lobby, those who could actually be roused.

  “What’s going on, eh?” Screwball jumped at the old man’s peevish question. He turned and Feeney’s unshaven face stared at him with bloodshot eyes.

  “Some kind of fight,” Screwball ventured.

  “I know that. What of it? What’s the matter?”

  “Tara, Bull, and PJ were coming up from guard duty at the cookout and got jumped by some of Angelica’s gang. Tara’s leg got broke, but when they got to the doctor, Angelica’s guys were already there and wouldn’t let them in.”

  Feeney made an annoyed sound. “Doctor’s neutral ground. Even that traitorous bitch Angelica knows that.”

  “Yeah, but they got reinforcements or something, and it was really early so nobody else was up. So Bull and PJ got that chick you hired, with the sword, and she pushed them off.”

  “Did she now?” The annoyance in his voice went away, and he sounded pleased. “Well, someone’s earning their pay. What’s that got to do with the fracas down there?”

  Screwball scratched his head and studied the crowd for a moment. A couple of people had weapons out and waved them unsteadily, but most of them seemed to have wandered in empty-handed. “I think they went out to see what was going on, mostly. But it was some of them and some of us, and none of us are going to be the first ones to leave.”

  “Damn right,” Feeney said distractedly. He elbowed Screwball aside and examined the crowd, frowning. “But what are they going to do?”