Red Noise Read online

  PRAISE FOR JOHN P. MURPHY

  “John P. Murphy’s Claudius Rex is a particular standout. A cyber-noir-humor mystery, the novella combines flawless plotting with provocative technical speculation to introduce a pair of detectives whose snappy banter and dauntless verve will remain with you long after you’ve turned over the last page.”

  Ken Liu, author of The Dandelion Dynasty series

  “John P. Murphy’s Red Noise is a snarky, grungy, hyperkinetic space romp that reads like a Neal Stephenson novel collided with a VHS copy of A Fistful of Dollars at high speed. The pacing is taut, the characters are vivid, bad-ass, and zany, the dialogue is razor-sharp, and the whole thing is just plain fun.”

  Marko Kloos, author of the Frontline series

  “Stylish, funny, action-packed, cinematic, Red Noise is the wise-cracking, gravity-defying, bullet-lasering Yojimbo-in-space you’ve been waiting for. John Murphy is a master of tight plots and unforgettable characters.”

  Ken Liu, award-winning author of The Grace of Kings

  “Murphy skillfully transports spaghetti western tropes to a lawless space station in this action-packed debut… This fast, fun space western is pure entertainment.”

  Publishers Weekly

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Liar

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

  Unit 11, Shepperton House

  89 Shepperton Road

  London N1 3DF

  UK

  angryrobotbooks.com

  twitter.com/angryrobotbooks

  Tick Tick Boom

  An Angry Robot paperback original, 2020

  Copyright © John P. Murphy 2020

  Cover by Kieryn Tyler

  Edited by Eleanor Teasdale and Paul Simpson

  Set in Meridien

  All rights reserved. John P. Murphy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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

  Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.

  ISBN 978 0 85766 847 9

  Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 852 3

  Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To everyone who just wants to be left alone

  CONTENTS

  The Miner

  The Welcoming Committee

  Dockmaster’s Tour

  The Substitute Welcoming Committee

  Welcome to the Galleria

  On the Shit List

  Doc Mills

  You Can’t Win

  You Can’t Break Even

  You Can’t Quit the Game

  Screwball Spies Raj

  McMasters Gets a Shot

  Job Application

  Job Interview

  Angelica’s Crew Have a Plan

  Porcupine

  Supplies

  Killing Rings

  Getting Even

  Maybe More Than Even

  Four’s Kind Of a Lot

  Listening In

  Angelica Pays Attention

  A Tour of the Facilities

  Reinforcements

  Murder, Maybe?

  Geronimo Rommels

  A Job

  They’re All Dead

  A Visit to Finn

  Shiny

  The Spider in Her Web

  Doc-Blocked

  Feeney Watches the Fight

  Thirsty Work

  Aftermath

  Free Agent

  Ditz and Screwball Take a Stroll

  Feeney and Angelica Drop By

  Change of Plans

  Working for Angelica

  Feeney Puts On His Thinking Cap

  Raj and the Miner Visit Sparks

  Screwball Lists the Options

  Medical Assistance

  Screwball Takes a Shortcut

  Feeney Has Regrets

  Playing Defense

  Mistakes Were Made

  Spacewalk

  Kaboom!

  Fiddling

  Long Time Coming

  Midnight Rendezvous

  Nice Day For It

  Six Months and a Bunch of Dead Bodies Ago

  Takata’s in a Good Mood

  Okonomiyaki

  The Bride Wore Red

  Après, le Déluge

  Aftermath

  Housekeeping

  Let’s Play Find the Sniper

  An Old Friend

  The Real Sniper

  Rejected Advance

  Horse Trading

  Utility Functions

  Time to Blow This Scene

  Report

  Getting Even

  Exeunt

  Angelica, Alone

  No Good Deed

  Say Again?

  A Turn of the Screw

  There’s a New Sheriff

  We All Fall Down

  Peace

  Drunken Lullaby

  When Death is on the Line

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  THE MINER

  Station 35 was a dot on the nav screen. It meant ore buyers and fuel sellers, necessary transactions and unwelcome human contact. The Miner needed the first and dreaded the second, but cash meant freedom and she couldn’t eat rock. So she set her course, made sure her dwindling fuel would get her there, and then thought no more about it.

  She laid eyes on Station 35 a week later, loaded with ore and low on everything. It was big and ugly and damn near deserted.

  She first met one of its inhabitants in orbit, a vacuum-mummified corpse tethered to an orbital path marker and clutching a sign that read, “NO FIREARMS. WE MEAN IT.”

  So it was that kind of place, then.

  She’d been waiting patiently in a holding orbit for five hours, listening for the OK to dock. At least, she’d waited as patiently as anyone could as her fuel burned down below the one percent mark, past the point where the engineers who’d built her spacecraft expected any sane person would still be operating it. The station crew knew she was there; they’d scanned her half a dozen times. They just hadn’t given the OK. Or signaled why they wouldn’t. Or said anything at all. She tapped her fingers on the pilot’s console, had the computer run another radio equipment diagnostic, cranked down the gravity and temperature control a little more, and that all still counted as patient, in her opinion.

  There had been plenty of opportunities for her to curse herself over the fuel squeeze, and she’d made use of them efficiently on the long trip from her claim. Even with a hold full of asteroidal nickel-iron to sell, it had been so easy to stay one more day, and then another. No people in a million clicks, just silence and work, her plants and her books. She’d stayed too long, and then she was low on fuel, low on water, low on cash to pay her claim fees. Another week and the government would seize it for non-payment. Of course, long before then the fuel would run out, and when the life support, power, and grav plating all ground to a halt in turn she’d asphyxiate, floating, in the dark.

  The station looked abandoned. It was a big gray monstrous thing, chunky and ugly. Burrowed into the side of an asteroid, it looked like a giant spider clutching its bloated egg sac. The big round hab complex had a set of windows that glowed with a venomous green
light that flickered red. It had been military once; most of them had. All along its gray steel skin, wherever some rating with a paint nozzle had found room, it bore the number 35 at all angles and configurations, except for the one spot with a 53. Converted to commercial use, someone had at least been bright enough to remove the great big sub-C cannons, leaving flat round patches where the emplacement had once wielded armament capable of flinging mass hard and fast enough to obliterate even the best-armored cruiser. There were probably still some junky little lasers for zapping trash and other projectiles, but she couldn’t see them from so far out.

  The comm light blinked, and she slapped it before she could register that it wasn’t the dockmaster. A big round face filled the small comm screen, unshaven and with a swollen red nose that had been broken for him pretty thoroughly, leaving bruises rimming bloodshot eyes.

  “Mining ship Cincinnatus,” she said automatically. It was redundant, since he could see her identifier on his screen just as clearly as she could see “Transport ship Cassandra” below his beat-up face. She just didn’t feel like saying “Hi.”

  “Hey,” said the trucker, his voice muffled for obvious reasons. “Glad I caught ya. You ain’t aiming to dock here, are you?”

  She bit back a remark proposing an alternate reason she might have sat in a docking orbit for five hours. “I am.”

  He was already shaking his head. “I’d push on to the next station if I were you. Ain’t far to 36.”

  “What’s the matter, is the place abandoned?” She felt her hand tighten involuntarily on the arm rest. There might be fuel and water in an abandoned station, and there might not, but there wouldn’t be money to pay the patch fees.

  “Might as well be. Anyone decent up and left a long time ago. All that’s left is the assholes who did this.” His hand flicked into view to indicate his broken nose.

  She glanced at the ad beacon, which still offered ore-buying as a station service. She frowned.

  “They still buying ore and selling supplies?”

  He blinked like she’d flicked him in the face. “Yeah; I mean, I guess. The provisioner’s open, anyway.”

  Her shoulders released some of their tension, and she sat back in the pilot’s chair. “Then I’ll be fine, thanks.” When it looked like he was about to say something, she interrupted, “Is there something wrong with the port? Almost all the berths are open, but I’ve been waiting for the clear to dock for hours.”

  He shook his head. “Portmaster’s crooked as hell; probably playing chicken. He got me with a two hundred credit fine for docking without permission, when I thought my radio was busted.”

  She winced.

  “Listen,” he said. “This place is bad news.”

  She sighed, hopefully not too obviously. People. “Thanks for the concern, but I don’t have the food or fuel to make it to 36. I’ll keep my eyes open, don’t worry.”

  He looked skeptical. “Hell, if it’s fuel you need, I can spot you some. I’m about at the last marker buoy, I can stick around–”

  “No thanks,” she said, and tried to make it sound polite. There was no way. Either she’d have to kill a would-be pirate using fuel as bait, or worse: she’d be in debt to a stranger.

  “I just don’t want blood on my conscience.”

  “If there’s blood, it won’t be mine.”

  They stared at each other until he looked away. “Your call. Just keep an eye out for their ‘welcoming committee’, goddamn little shits.”

  “Will do.” The faint memory of manners tugged at her conscience. “Thanks for the warning. Safe flight.”

  “Safe flight.” He nodded and the picture blinked out.

  The Miner rubbed her face with both hands and glared at the comm system, which still showed her dock request pending.

  “Ship, auto-accept dock permission,” she said aloud. “Notify me immediately.”

  “OK, boss!” the ship computer’s chipper voice replied, and she was up and out of her chair.

  She went to the plant room, the bunk she’d converted. Two plastic shelves of orchids and another with three bonsai trees filled the small space with a heady, earthy atmosphere. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. It was warm and humid with the ship’s cooling systems cranked down to save power. It felt nice, even as a trickle of sweat crept down her neck. The hatch closed behind her, leaving her in the dim light of plant room night – she was so far out of daytime sync with them it wasn’t even funny – but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t make out greens and purples and pinks in the low light, but she knew they were there. That was the point; wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she knew they were there. She had a center.

  “Hey boss, the fuel level is down to zero point five percent. You instructed me to–”

  “I know,” she interrupted, and then swore. Two hundred credits was a lot of money to her just then. Her whole cargo would only go for maybe thirty, thirty-five grand. But a tow could be much more expensive, assuming they even had a working tugbot.

  She pulled the hatch open and stepped into the upper corridor of her small ship, glanced into the opposite hatch and thought again about selling her service rifle that hung uselessly above her bunk. She couldn’t fire it onboard without risking a hull breach. There was really no point to keeping it. Nor the sword that hung beneath it. Or any of the other mementos.

  “Docking permission accepted, boss.”

  The Miner snapped out of her musings. It took some doing to maneuver her heavily-loaded ship, but she wrestled it around to its final approach. Then she collapsed in her seat, feeling the weight of the last few sleepless nights and the stress of the low fuel gauge.

  A half-empty station wasn’t so bad. Ideal, in some ways. Sell the ore. Pay the debt. Don’t attract attention. Get the hell out of there. No problem.

  THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE

  Screwball and Ditz stood outside the main port hatch feeling exposed and foolish. At least, Screwball did. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to grip the brass knuckles he’d had printed, glad for their reassuring weight. Shithead Preston, taking his best pistol away. He leaned against the wall under the big Welcome sign and glared at Ditz, who was waving his hands around like some kung fu shit and saying “ha!” and “wa!” and otherwise living up to his nickname.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” He finally got fed up and embarrassed enough to ask.

  “Getting my head in the game, Screwy man. Psyching my fine self up. Ha!”

  Ditz flailed his leg up in a way Screwball figured was meant to be a high kick.

  “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  Ditz spun with his fist up suddenly and Screwball froze as that fist came to a halt right in front of his nose. The rings on Ditz’s jacket jangled loudly and their eyes met. Ditz’s pupils were blown.

  “In the game,” Ditz whispered, staring into his eyes. His wet breath stank. He turned after a long silent moment and started flailing again.

  “I knew you weren’t going to hit me,” Screwball lied.

  “Uh-huh. Ha!” Ditz punched the air hard, lunging like with one of those skinny fencing swords.

  “How long’s it take to dock a stupid spaceship, anyway?”

  “They got to scan it first,” Ditz said matter-of-factly, not looking at him. “Checking for you-know-who. Make sure the old man doesn’t sneak him back.”

  “Nah,” Screwball said. “Nuke’s dead. He’s got to be.”

  “Says you. Anyway, Preston looks for contraband and shit, too.”

  “So he can take a cut, you mean, or see if there’s anything worth stealing.” Screwball still felt sore about losing his gun. Not just feeling defenseless – that was an expensive pistol and it ate him to think of that scrawny asshole hoarding it or selling it. This place was supposed to be a fucking goldmine for a guy who wasn’t afraid of a fight, but instead he just got stolen from and paid shit and made to hang out and try to recruit anyone else dumb enough to dock at the universe’s asshole.

 
; Ditz punched the air one more time, then turned and shrugged. He was breathing hard. “I don’t tell the old man how to run his… Shit!”

  Screwball spun to see where Ditz was looking: at a tall, good-looking dude with a shaved head and an easy grin, almost a leer. He squinted before realizing that the bald head wasn’t painted at the temples but gene-modded with some sick-looking scales, all shimmery in the light.

  He took his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms, intending to look tough but forgetting the brass knuckles. “The fuck are you?” he managed.

  “The fuck am I?” The bald guy turned to a bony chick who Screwball didn’t know either. “I don’t know. Shit, Ditz, who the fuck am I?” If the bald guy wasn’t intimidated, that worthless jerk Ditz sure was. He ran his hand over his yellow-dyed hair.

  “Come on, Raj, he’s new. He doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Well I guess I’m Raj then, brother,” the bald guy said to Screwball. “So if I’m Raj, then who. The fuck.” Screwball backed into the wall and Raj poked him hard in the chest. “Are you?”

  Screwball resisted the urge to rub his sore sternum. “I’m the guy who’s, uh, asking who the fuck you are.”

  Raj stared hard at him. His breath stank, too. “Never mind. I think if I knew your name I’d lose an IQ point.” The girl behind him laughed. He stepped back and lazily waved a hand. “Now push off, brothers, I have work to do.”

  Ditz gave Screwball a worried look. “Hey, Raj, sorry for the disrespect and all. You know I like you, man, but they agreed, dude. This is Feeney’s patch. We’re the welcoming committee, right?”

  “New arrangement,” Raj said. He folded his arms and looked pleased with himself while his pal leaned against the wall where Screwball had been, looking pleased with herself, too.

  “What new arrangement?” Screwball was getting pissed off. He’d been promised money, drugs, and ass when he came to this godforsaken station, and all he’d gotten was a lot of bullshit.

  Raj uncrossed his arms, gave Screwball an appraising look, then punched him right in the face. Screwball staggered at the sudden stinging pain and flailed his arms out. Adrenaline and shock fought, and for a moment all he saw was red.

  “The new arrangement, my brother, is I punch you until you fuck off, savvy?”