by K. Gorman
From the pointed snout of the head—visible inside only as a near-impassable part of the bridge floor where it drew too tight to walk—the Nemina’s face quickly flared out to a wide, impressive set of windows whose dark glass currently clashed against their dove-gray casing to give off the impression that the ship was wearing large, trapezoidal sunglasses. Moving back, it boxed out into a shape that, although technically aerodynamic, seemed more like the aerodynamics of a goose rather than a falcon.
Which was misleading. Even with the two removable storage compartments attached to its back end, the Nemina had more kick-per-meter than any single non-combatant ship in the Alliance fleet, and a piloting system that responded like a dream. Only the light fighting craft and the system’s racers could catch her up. She may have been built with a hybrid cargo option, but the Nemina could fly.
Karin still lived inside it. Even though Fallon had offered her larger, more luxurious living quarters—an entire furnished apartment in the command lofts with a view of the valley had been the latest offer—she stuck to her cramped room on the ship. It gave her a sense of normalcy, for one.
With her life on a sudden pedestal and both Fallon’s military and its various central and local governments throwing money and resources toward her and her work trips—she suddenly had a lot more clothes and technology than she knew what to do with—she felt more like a cross between an athlete and a movie star than the regular person she was. Each day was a tight schedule of doctors’ checkups, testing, traveling, and healing shifts. Although they tried to shield her from most of the public light, at her request, and she tried to focus on her job, she couldn’t help but notice the shift in attitude and expenditure that had occurred during the month. Where at the beginning, she’d been in small, hasty venues—a quickly-cobbled series of meeting points arranged by the military going door-to-door in the neighborhoods and organizing spots of folding chairs and tie-downs—it had moved to entire stadiums filled with people.
Lately, they’d taken to cheering when she entered, a kind of half-sporting cry with a mix of religious calls and chants that made her uncomfortable to hear—whatever her files said, she was not a deity. When the camera-drones flashed overhead, it was all she could to do to not grimace.
She couldn’t heal them all. And it would be better for them if they’d just leave her alone. Each minute they blocked her from her job was another two Lost she didn’t have time to heal. Her handlers had been quite strict about that line in her contract. She healed for six hours every day, and not a single minute longer. Reeve had stopped her more than once. Often, she’d left more than a quarter of a stadium unhealed.
They hadn’t cheered for that.
So the Nemina functioned as her bridge back to her old life. It gave off a kind of settler, camper-style feel sometimes, with its cramped quarters and multi-functioning compartments, but she liked it. She also liked her roommates. She and Soo-jin had become best friends, and Marc, whose feelings had strayed into quasi-friend-quasi-crush territory, kept the room right next to hers. His cousin, Cookie, kept them fed with a constant stream of new netdrama and techno updates.
They were also working hard to comb through Seirlin Biocorp’s database. Cookie had planted some sort of ride-along hacking program when they’d ‘visited’ Seirlin Genomics last month and slipped into its system. He’d set the Nemina’s systems to download from their servers in occasional trickles, hiding behind other network traffic so they didn’t trip any detection systems—and it had so far proven useful. Although the Fallon government had cracked down hard on the company when it had found out what it was doing, Seirlin’s headquarters were on Nova Earth. And the Alliance…
…Well, they’d been less than strict.
Which made their secret project doubly effective. Not only were they acquiring their own data and not having to trust Fallon to tell them what had been found, Cookie had managed to tether into a local proxy on Nova and crack into Seirlin’s main servers.
It gave her something to do with her evenings. Moreover, it made her feel useful. In a battle where her healing efforts made only a small, largely ineffectual scratch in the rising tide of Lost, sorting through the files they acquired made her feel like she was going somewhere.
So, as she turned the corner of the aeronautics lab and the Nemina came into sight, its effect was visceral. As if someone had flicked a switch somewhere in her back, the day’s tension began to slide out of her. Her gait changed, steps turning from quick and stiff-legged to something more rolling and relaxed. At the same time, her shoulders relaxed down.
Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few seconds, thinking of all the things that had bothered her that day, then let it out through her lips. The rain from earlier had turned into a light fog that hazed around the lights. All around her, the lot was quiet except for the sound of dripping water. As she ducked under the Nemina’s head, she reached up to give its wet hull a friendly caress, heading for the lowered ramp on its other side.
But then, she caught sight of the open doorway at its top, and her steps faltered.
They never left the door open. There’d been heated ship-board arguments about that, and more than a little cussing. Mostly due to Fallon’s resident mosquito and blackfly population than any security threats—but that didn’t stop the bright flash of panic that shot through her chest.
She was the most-coveted person in the entire system right now. Attempted kidnappings weren’t impossible.
Should I call Nomiki?
She gave herself a little shake. No. That was unnecessary. And her panic was only a result of her other superpower—paranoia. She was a connoisseur of the stuff, having cultivated it over a lifetime of cagey shit. Hells, had the Shadows not attacked, she would have probably continued on like that. No friends. No life. No ability to relax. Just her and netdramas. And not even the good ones since she wouldn’t have befriended Soo-jin.
And there wouldn’t be any chance at sexy times with Marc. Probably not even casual leering. Just a stiff, professional working relationship with professional boundaries.
After a few seconds, she realized she was still standing there, staring at the door.
She rolled her eyes at herself and strode forward.
Gods.
At first, the ship appeared empty. Her boots made loud clunks on the metal floor, and she squinted. The nearest base lighting cut a scalene patch of light across the hall, bouncing up to glint on the metal accents that lined the light, pre-fab walls. Darkness ebbed on the adjoining hallway, making the path to the crew cabins and the bridge on the left invisible for a few seconds before her eyes adjusted, but a faint light came from the right, where the central hallway led to both Mess and Medical and the former storage area that Marc was slowly re-converting into a recreation hall.
Voices came from the right, their tones light and teasing, and she relaxed. Then she frowned as the strong smell of spices came to her nose—what the hells?
When she poked her head into the Mess, her eyebrows shot into her forehead.
By ship standards, the Nemina had a decent-sized Mess. Cramped, yes, and navigable only with some creative squeezing and shimmying in a couple places, but comfortable enough for the four crew. It even had a central table which, although small, was plenty of space for them.
It was currently stacked with meat.
Well, technically, there were some vegetables, and more than a little fruit—Nova Kolkata's markets had much improved in the month she'd been healing people—but the tiny corner of edible greens, wax apples, and mangoes seemed an afterthought in comparison to the butcher shop they'd piled onto the rest of the surface.
“You know, I’m not so sure about the chicken.” Marc, her quasi-former-boss with the tall, muscular build that she'd been casually eyeing for the past month or two, stood to the left of the door with an expression of relaxed, happy bemusement on his face as he watched his cousin touch the sauce brush to the next chicken leg.
Cookie frowned as he pa
tted a leg down on a disposable metal tray. Two other legs lay already spread across it, their skins gleaming a bright red from the sauce. “Are you shitting me? This is Timarian chicken. This stuff is the shit. Plus, this sauce is also the shit.”
“For something that you supposedly love, you sure compare it to shit a lot,” Marc commented.
“What? They didn’t teach you such fine terminology in boot camp?”
“Oh, I’ve heard plenty of terms,” Marc rumbled. “But most of them would apply to you rather than the food.”
Unlike Soo-jin and Cookie, he had been born and raised on Fallon and put through its military. The other two were from Alliance planets.
He glanced over to her, and an electric thrill went through her as their eyes met. “Welcome back. Long day?”
Considering it was turning toward eleven at night, she assumed the last bit was more a polite add-on than an actual question.
“Yes,” she said. “And thanks.” Her gaze wandered to the food on the table, and she let her eyebrows rise up. “So… What’s this?”
Last she’d checked, everyone on the Nemina—except for herself and, possibly, Cookie—was flat broke. Just last night, Soo-jin had been bemoaning the lack of fresh supplies and her inability to spend money at the markets.
Soo-jin already had a wicked grin on her face. “We—” she said, drawing the word out with a posh gesture to the room’s occupants “—got a sale.”
“One sale?” Her eyebrows rose even further. There seemed to be quite a lot more food than a single sale would afford, even if planet-side food was cheaper than at stations.
“Multiple sales,” Soo-jin confirmed. “But from the same buyer, so I figured it counted as one large payment. Unless Fallon tax laws prefer many small payments?” Her voice drifted up at the end as she turned the question to Marc.
He raised his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not an accountant.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Soo-jin said. “I forgot. We only keep you around for your muscles.”
“That’s me. Muscleman.”
Karin hesitated. “Have we already shipped out, then?”
The base had a single mailroom, but she suspected that the ones in the city would be better—except the city-side post outlets were a bit dodgy these days. Thanks to her healing efforts, Chamak had a much lower ratio of Lost in its population than the rest of the system, but that still took forty percent of its people out of service, which had a significant impact on systems, especially since Chamak was still picking up the pieces from before, when nearly everything had been shut down. But, assuming the base or city mailrooms took Alliance shipping boxes, which she suspected they would, it was possible Soo-jin and Marc had sent it off already. “And what did we sell?”
“Remember that gun cache I found on Amosi?” Marc asked. “Turns out Alliance armaments, especially vintage ones, are rare in Fallon nowadays.”
“They pre-paid half up front,” Soo-jin said, answering her other question “And we were waiting for you to get back. They’re on planet, so we all figured we could just drop them off.” She shot Karin a quick grin. “You haven’t forgotten how to fly, have you? That light isn’t eating into your brain, is it?”
“My brain’s just fine. Better than fine, actually.”
It’d been a while since she’d done any serious flying. Reeve had been piloting her places, acting as a chauffeur, which she didn’t mind. He was Chamaki, born and raised, and she had been born and raised on Earth and trained to fly in the Alliance. As far as efficiency went, there was no question as to who had the better skillset.
But the lure of taking the Nemina up into the skies again… she had to resist the urge to turn around and head straight for the bridge. “When are we leaving?”
“Not for an hour. Hence the food,” Soo-jin said. “I made an appointment for one. He’s in Takao, about an hour’s ride, but we—” she spread her arms out to encompass the feast of raw meat and vegetables spread out over the Mess table. “Are going to have a barbecue. Which means we best get started.” She flashed another grin. “Marc? Go get that grill.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and shuffled her way. Karin flattened her body parallel to his to let him squeeze by, but he paused in the door, his head close to hers, and tapped her shoulder. At a gesture from him, she leaned in as he dropped his head to her ear. “Hey, I’d like to find a moment to chat later. Would you mind?”
She glanced up to his eyes, a strike of alarm going through her mind. “Of course. Why? Is something wrong?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” The hand on her shoulder gave her a quick pat. “Later.”
He squeezed past the rest of the way, and she frowned up at his retreating back as he headed toward the junction, a mix of confusion and possibilities playing out in her mind. Was this about them? Did he want to talk about their relationship—or had she been reading him so badly that he really wanted to talk about her continued stay on his ship? As professional scroungers, they really couldn’t afford to stick around and do nothing. Cookie had his net businesses, but she had a feeling those were starting to slide, as well. Soo-jin had done the odd mechanics job around the base before Karin had healed the military’s regular mechanics.
Shit.
Then Soo-jin was pushing a bagful of condiments into her hands and jostling her toward the table.
“Come on. I’ve got old family recipes that require four hands for the job. Let’s get started.”
*
Twenty minutes later, they’d migrated outside and formed a loose cluster around a low, open grill that sat a quarter of a meter above the ground. Four cuts of meat—no chicken legs yet—were sizzling in the heat, producing a thin, blue-white smoke that drifted up and occasionally toward one of them.
Their hodgepodge of stools and lawn chairs teetered in a broken half-circle, making rusty metallic scraping and groaning sounds when they leaned too far forward. Soo-jin waved a happy bottle of Soju about as she tipped back into one of her chair’s armrests, a leg already over the second armrest. She never sat still in chairs—or if she did, she sat at such an angle that didn’t really count as sitting so much as cocooning, either curled up with a netlink or having fallen asleep.
“You know, my mother used to swear by this shit, which is why I buy it sometimes—but it really isn’t half bad,” she was saying. “The rest of my family life might suck balls, but I can’t really complain about their cooking. Or their alcohol.”
“You said shit,” Cookie muttered.
“Yeah? So?” Soo-jin jutted her chin out at him. “You got a problem with that?”
“So, let me get this straight. When you say ‘shit,’ it’s just fine, but when I say it—oh, no, we must make fun of him.”
“You said shit three times in the same sentence,” Soo-jin said. “Of course we had to make fun of you. It’s not like fuck where you can just say fuck any fucking time you fucking want.”
“Yes, it is. You can say shit just as many times as you want.”
“Yeah, well, your times didn’t work. Mine did. I can’t help if I have a higher eloquence in profanity than you.”
Karin tweaked an eyebrow at Marc. He’d sat close to her, relaxing into the frayed backing of his chair with his right ankle hooked over his thigh in a wide cross and a bottle of beer held in his hand. The firelight lit the curve of the bottle’s mouth in an amber glow.
“Are they really arguing about the semantics of using the word ‘shit’?”
The corner of his lips twitched up in a smile. “Well, they aren’t talking about gravity mechanics.”
“You do not,” Cookie threw back, half rising in his seat. “I’m a gamer. We gamers swear like motherfucking pirates.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m a gamer and a mechanic and a damn fine fantastic woman. I’m sorry if you can’t compete at my level.” She stabbed the butt of the bottle in Cookie’s direction. “Actually, scratch that. I’m not sorry.”
Karin leaned closer to Marc. “Is s
he already drunk?”
“Yep.”
“How is that possible? She’s not even halfway through that bottle. And it’s only been thirty minutes.” Actually, being halfway through the bottle in only thirty minutes might be why Soo-jin’s sobriety had made so drastic a switch. She frowned. “What is that stuff?”
“I’m not sure. She picked it off a shelf in the back of a store when I wasn’t looking. Claims it’s Soju, but it ain’t any Soju I’ve ever seen before. No idea what proof it is.”
“And she said her mother used to drink it?”
“You should ask her about her mother some time. She’s got some good stories.”
Oh, Karin didn’t doubt that. From what little Soo-jin had said about her family, there were a lot of good stories, but she got the feeling that most of those stories weren’t as fun and happy as boasting about her mother’s favorite blackout drink.
“What you don’t know,” Marc continued with a pause. “…is that she’s been pre-drinking, too. Finished three beers before you arrived. Three that I saw, anyway.”
“Ah.”
“And three that you didn’t see!” Soo-jin called over, catching the end of Marc’s sentence. “You talking about me over there?”
“Only nice things,” Karin said.
“Of course only nice things. I’m a nice person. And a nice-looking person.” She opened her mouth to say something more, but got distracted by something over Karin’s shoulder.
“Well, doesn’t this look cozy.” Nomiki ducked under the Nemina’s snout and stopped at Karin’s side, her arms crossed over her chest and her head tilting to the side as she assessed their slightly rusted grill and rudimentary complement of kitchen utensils. A large wrench rested on the ground nearby, functioning as a push-stick for some of the sauce cans they’d put on a few minutes ago. “What’s the occasion?”