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    Night Operations
    Night Operations
    Night Operations
    Ebook306 pages3 hours

    Night Operations

    By Sean Monaghan

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Jimra Jeffs’s blood contains secrets. World-changing secrets. Flis knows that finding the the man should be easy money for a skilled investigator, like herself. But Jimra knows how to hide.In the depths of a Karnish night, Flis and her offsider Grae face the challenge of bringing in their quarry.
    With their competition racing on their heels
    A Karnish River Navigations novel from the author of Athena Setting.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTriple V Publishing
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9781370275298
    Night Operations
    Author

    Sean Monaghan

    Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

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      Book preview

      Night Operations - Sean Monaghan

      Night Operations

      A Karnish River Navigations Novel

      Copyright 2016 by Sean Monaghan

      All rights reserved

      Cover Art: © ********** | Dreamstime.com

      Published by Triple V Publishing

      Author web page

      www.seanmonaghan.com

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

      This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

      This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

      Smashwords Edition.

      ***************fix smart quotes

      ***************fix em-dash

      ***************search for []

      Contents

      Chapter one

      Chapter two

      Chapter three

      Chapter four

      Chapter five

      Chapter six

      Chapter seven

      Chapter eight

      Chapter nine

      Chapter ten

      Chapter eleven

      Chapter twelve

      Chapter thirteen

      Chapter fourteen

      Chapter fifteen

      Chapter sixteen

      Chapter seventeen

      Chapter eighteen

      Chapter nineteen

      Chapter twenty

      Chapter twenty one

      Chapter twenty two

      Chapter twenty three

      Chapter twenty four

      Chapter twenty five

      Chapter twenty six

      Chapter twenty seven

      Chapter twenty eight

      Chapter twenty nine

      Chapter thirty

      Chapter thirty one

      Chapter thirty two

      About the author

      Other Books by Sean Monaghan

      Links

      Chapter One

      Turneith's sky burned with creamy pink streaks from the setting sun. Through the canyon of buildings, Flis Kupe stared up, amused by her predicament.

      Somewhere between ten and fifteen stories high, the buildings boasted dark granite exteriors. All laser-carved into art-deco blocks and curves. Gargoyles adorned the upper reaches, and friezes garlanded the window surrounds.

      The sounds of the streets echoed from the hefty walls. Hawkers shouting for passersby to purchase fish or fruit or fancy shoes. Half-empty buses' engines roared, belching stinking diesel smoke. The swishes and scuffs of hundreds of pedestrians.

      Kerkenwald Boulevard carried three lanes of traffic in either direction. Through the center lay a long strip of park. Green grass, with tall leafy acacias and eucalypts creating daytime shade. Some rotundas and public lavatories dotted the strip.

      The sidewalk felt sticky underfoot. People bustled around her. All kinds. Business people in gray off-the-printer suits. Slick tech kids with Kickers boots and shimmering bodysuits. Soldiers in flickery camouflage, the SCUs struggling with the bland civilian environment.

      Off-duty, Flis guessed. She didn't envy them. The Standard Combat Uniforms were never comfortable. She didn't miss them a bit.

      Right now she had on simple black denim trousers, close to form-fitting. On her feet she had black canvas hi-tops, matching the smart athletic shirt. For color she'd added a graded chinoiserie jacket that ran from deep violet at her waist and cuffs, to creamy-white at the shoulders. Shifting line drawings of dragons and fish-hunting cranes and craggy mountains faded in and out as the fabric moved.

      On the street, people moved around her. Parents with children. Other, older children making their way home from contact school. People in walkers, the electronic exo-skeletons whining. A couple of peach-robed Buddhists conversing with young white-shirt-and-tie Mormon missionaries. A street-performer busking with a steel drum strapped to her waist, tinkling out bright cheerful tunes.

      From the distance Flis heard a dull roar. A big interplanetary ship settling in for a landing at the port fifteen miles away. Most people wouldn't even notice the subtle shift in the air.

      Miss? someone said from nearby. Are you lost?

      She looked around. A dissheveled man wearing gray-brown flannels. Mismatched leather boots, one black and slim, one brown and chunky. Like a military boot.

      He stood taller than Flis. Most people did. She liked that. Made it easy someone to underestimate her.

      Hello, she said. You could use some help?

      She felt a tingle from her arlchip. Way in the back. She didn't need it. She could tell the man had been out there in the conflicts.

      Her chip, embedded back in her military days, had been glitchy ever since she'd tried to burn it out.

      Me? he said. No. I think it's you who could use some help.

      Flis gave a gentle shake of her head. Where did you tour?

      He stepped closer. He smelled of alcohol and bacteria. She wondered when he'd last washed.

      He made an odd clicking sound with his tongue against his lower lip. Cortesse, Blecker-Brown, Seven Sisters, The Sweeps.

      You've seen a lot of action? Flis didn't know anyone who'd survived from battles at The Sweeps. Sixteen gas giants in whipping orbits around a flaring brown dwarf. Nasty, irradiated place.

      Yes, Sir.

      We're civilians now, she told him. No need for deference. She did smile to herself. Despite all her time out, people from the service could still tell immediately that she'd been an officer.

      Even if they weren't chipped.

      The man shrugged. Once military, always military.

      Yuh.

      You're looking for Vets' Support, he said, they're six blocks north. Small office. Part time. Not many of us here.

      Not looking for that, she said.

      No? His eyes widened. You're a Turneith native.

      Yes. Grew up here. Out in the Karnth canal country, but near enough.

      Came back after your tour? Tours?

      Plural, yes. She didn't like to tell him that she'd virtually AWOLed. That she'd screwed up burning out her chip.

      Glad of the screw-up now, but still.

      Spare a coin or two? he said.

      You got a rippletalk? she said. She took hers out. It unballed in her hand and glowed up at her.

      Got a straight walletalk, he said. From somewhere in his clothing he pulled out a beat-up old, thin palm-sized screen.

      Thirty, she said. All I can spare right now. Moments like this she felt on the tightrope between compassionate samaritan and enabler.

      Thirty's good. He held the walletalk up by the corner. Its dull screen shimmered. Damaged. Self-repair doing what it could. There were chips in the color at the machine's corners, and a dull scratch on the screen. Old and well-used.

      Flis thumbed her own account details on her rippletalk and tapped its corner to his walletalk.

      Done, she said. Grae Sinder, her business partner, didn't like her doing this. Said it made her too easy to track.

      Sometimes she just had to do what needed to be done.

      Thanks, the vet said. I might even find a bed. For tonight anyway.

      Good plan. The street has got to be tough, right?

      He gave her a curt nod and turned away.

      Sure you should have done that? the rippletalk said.

      You got his details?

      The whole shebang.

      He might get himself cleaned up, she said. Anyway, thirty Turneith coins was worth it.

      The rippletalk didn't reply. Smart, but not much for repartee.

      Flis didn't think the old vet was the man she was looking for. But there would always be a network. If he came in contact with anyone else, the cliptracker package now lodged in his walletalk would skim data to her. Straight back to the rippletalk.

      Another couple of marks and she could just about sit back and watch the patterns evolve.

      Except that she had less than twenty-four hours.

      A technical deadline for the client.

      So now she had to do some sleuthing on her own. Quickly.

      She made her way along the block, allowing the flow of pedestrians to carry her. Soon she reached the corner. Black and yellow striped poles held standard traffic rhythm lights. After a couple of minutes the traffic slowed. Stopped. The lights changed to allow her and dozens of others to cross the lanes.

      The leafy, floral scents of the park wafted around her while she waited in the middle for the opposite direction lanes to stop for the lights. Fantails cheeped. They darted through the trees, hunting insects.

      Moments later Flis made it across the boulevard.

      Fewer pedestrians on this side. More commercial here. She could see small accountants offices, lawyers, bail bonds, antique stores, a Never-Close convenience store, and a recruiting office.

      Flis searched the passersby. Looking for someone who might fit her profile. Someone who would notice her and not realize she was looking.

      Business people. Parents. Tourists. They all walked with different paces, but the flow continued.

      Thirty or forty years ago Turneith's population had been perhaps double what it was now. Hundreds of thousands had left. Heading out to new colonies. Escaping the humdrum. Escaping the edges of wars damaging some of those core worlds.

      The opening up of dozens of new habitable planets, combined with cheaper transit, faster atmosphere processing and better concerted automatic infrastructure development, had encouraged most of the departures.

      Fresher pastures.

      But Turneith continued to function. The largest city in Karnth. Once Karnth had been one of the wealthiest regions on Paulding. The world was changing.

      Like everywhere.

      Even the outlying Karnish canal lands were turning wild. Pirates and brigands roamed the waterways and land. Farmers and traders struggled to make livelihoods.

      The crowds began thinning. The evening rush coming to an end.

      Flis spotted another likely mark. A busker. Just packing up. Probably made her cash and ready to go spend. Buy a meal, pay off some rent.

      The woman looked early twenties. Dressed in ultra-dark purple leggings and black boots. A black jacket with yellow piping along the sleeve seams. She had close-cropped blonde hair, with a few ragged strands on the left dyed black. Sticking out like antennae.

      She had an old red steel-string acoustic guitar. She had the solid black case open and was in the process of putting the guitar away. On a thin rod of a stand stood a dumb-term walletalk. Just at waist-height. Ready for anyone to tap her over some coin.

      Anyone with a decent talk device would ensure that there was no way to track them back from a simple transaction. Especially simple, casual transactions such as giving a busker a few coins.

      Flis approached slowly. Walking with a slight saunter. The busker didn't look up.

      I thought I heard you, Flis said. From over there. When the traffic quietened. She pointed at the far side of the boulevard.

      You should get off the street now, the busker said without looking up. She clicked the clamps on her guitar case.

      What?

      Go hide in the convenience store. Check the lay of the land.

      Why would I do that? Flis glanced at the store. Gaudy neon signs advertised special prices on gum and soda milk and bioflasks. A teenager wearing a green double-billed Rangers cap stepped out, sucking on a bag of cola.

      There's a team tracking you, the busker said. "Right now. I think they spotted your cliptracker.

      You're watching me?

      The woman continued nestling the guitar into the case. Your last tap over there might have confirmed your location and identity.

      Caution, the arlchip said in Flis's head. Buried deep in her hindbrain, with tendrils through her cortex, the arlchip was her military legacy.

      Yeah, she thought back to it.

      She'd tried to get it burned out. It proved resilient. Despite losing most of its functionality, enough of it had remained after the illicit procedure that it was able to almost grow back.

      Now she didn't mind it so much. Mostly it proved useful. Especially these days when she had to make her own way through the world.

      To the busker, she said, How were takings today?

      The woman looked up. Brilliant green eyes. Striking red on her lips. She smiled.

      You're not concerned? she said.

      Flis gave a shake of her head. Of course I am. I'm just wondering how you're on to me.

      The woman shrugged. With quiet snaps she locked the guitar case closed.

      Help me out, Flis said. On the rippletalk's screen, she keyed in an amount almost twenty times what she'd given the old vet. Reaching out, she tapped the rippletalk to the busker's dumb-term and transferred the coin. What's your name?

      Emjay, the busker said.

      Is that initials or a word?

      For someone about to be shot, you make a lot of small talk, you know that?

      Flis smiled. None of it's small talk.

      Could have fooled me. Emjay flipped the locked guitar case so that it stood on its side with the handle up. She unclipped the dumb-term from the stand. With a snicking sound, the stand folded to a pencil-sized rod. It rolled across the sidewalk and slipped into a slot on the guitar case.

      Flis spoke silently to the arlchip. Can you give me a sitrep?

      No active arlchips or other bioware in the immediate vicinity. No threats in sight.

      It was the most it had said in awhile.

      That made her instantly nervous.

      Do you need me to swing around? she asked it. If she panned across the crowd, the chip would take her visual data and analyze it for threats.

      She didn't like relying on it. Her instincts were good.

      But something was off here.

      Emjay, the busker, for one. Knowing who she was. Knowing what was going on.

      No, the arlchip said.

      Flis smiled. The thing was actually smart enough to know that she should avoid suspicious moves.

      I'll buy you a coffee, Flis said. You can tell me how you're so knowledgable about my situation.

      Emjay shook her head. Her eyes went wide as she looked at her dumb-term's screen. That's a nice piece of change, thanks.

      Five minutes, Flis said. In the convenience store. That's where you said I should go.

      Emjay slipped the dumb-term into a jacket pocket. She shook her head. You're poison right now. Another time, maybe.

      I can double that, Flis said.

      Quadruple, Emjay said. On top of what you already paid.

      Right then, Flis liked her even more. A woman after her own heart.

      Looking out for herself. Never willing to take any half-measures.

      Flis keyed the amount into her rippletalk. Two thousand. Two days wages for a mid-level executive.

      It left a big hole in Flis's funds. She had a feeling she wouldn't even be able to claim the coin back as expenses.

      So went the work.

      Reaching out, she tapped the funds over.

      I like expensive coffee, Emjay said. Already she'd scooped up the guitar. She strode for the flickering neons of the convenience store

      At the door, Flis stopped. Looking back around, she scanned. The sky had darkened almost fully now. A few brighter stars peeked through gaps in the cloud. She let her eyes come down across the lit windows in the buildings opposite. And across the faces of the pedestrians.

      See anything? she whispered.

      The arlchip didn't reply. Busy working on it.

      Inside, the store was a maze of colorful pre-packaged goods, glowing advertising screens, food slots, hissing and gurgling glass machines and racks of dozens of products. The place smelled of coffee and sweet chilli.

      Right away Flis spotted the rear exit. A narrow door behind the counter. She knew how the layout would be. A small room, on wall hidden by boxes of fresh product and blocks of raw proteins and carbohydrates and so on for the food and drink presses.

      Ceiling tiles hid a cavity with services. One of the tiles flickered, its circuits dying.

      Emjay headed for the pharmaceuticals aisle. She found a box of adhesive wound dressings. Looking at Flis, she said, Some nights I've got to bind up my callouses. Holding her hand up, splayed, she showed the hardened, thickened skin on her fingertips. Cracked on her little and middle fingers. Some clear fluid leaking.

      I'll put it on the tab, Flis said.

      Emjay smiled. It's not like I'm using you, she said. Not really.

      Not really, Flis said.

      At the front window they sat at a long genuine wood bench.

      Leather-topped red circular stools on chromed steel posts. The benchtop bore score marks from dozens of buckles and buttons, screens and cups. Some intentional markings. Someone had carved CTwozhere with a blade.

      From between the bench windows a screen folded out. Order details trickled up the face.

      Through gaps in the window advertising and neons, Flis could see the steady but thinning stream of pedestrians. No one paid them any attention.

      Already Emjay had begun tapping her order in. So much for buying her just a coffee. It looked like a full meal. Salad, hoagie sandwich, fries and a biscuit. A sundae chaser. With chocolate sauce and a cherry.

      You having something? Emjay said.

      A latté, maybe, Flis said.

      You should eat. Things might go south soon. You'll need your strength.

      You know a lot. Flis turned to the screen and thumbed in for a latté and a croissant. With cream cheese and chives. That seemed to be the latest thing. The screen offered a special on the combo.

      At least if this all came through to fruition she would have some more coin in twenty-four hours.

      I keep my ears open, Emjay said. That's how I know what's going on.

      Sure. If that's the way you want to play it.

      The screen folded back behind the bench. Flis heard some of the glass machines hard at work. Constructing their orders.

      People came and went through the front door. Topping up their comms, buying gum or reloading their news data. Out on the street someone bustled, running through the crowd.

      A light pinged on the bench with a code. Emjay stood and went to one of the machines. She coded in the number on a mechanical keypad. The slot opened. A tray inside held both their orders. Emjay set it onto the bench between them.

      You made a bit of coin today anyway didn't you? Flis said.

      Sure. But you've more than doubled that. Emjay took a big bite from the hoagie. It was hard to take anything else. The thing was huge. Packed with ground beef, lettuce and tomato and a dozen other vegetables. A ring slice of olive fell back to the tray.

      I guess I have. Flis took her latté. She figured she'd actually more than more than doubled it. Probably ten times what the young woman had taken. If she'd been out playing guitar since dawn.

      Out on the sidewalk someone else bustled through. Two people. Someone stumbled.

      How did you know what I was up to? Flis said. She peered through a gap in the signs. Trying to see what was causing the commotion.

      She didn't get anything from the arlchip.

      Someone paid me to watch you, Emjay said.

      Paid you?

      Don't sound so surprised. Emjay spoke with her mouth still full. You paid me.

      You're some entrepreneur.

      More hurried movement from the street.

      Even without the arlchip's help, Flis knew something was up.

      Tearing her croissant in half, she took one piece with her and went to the door.

      Almost a full-scale panic now. Some people

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