World Shift

by K. Gorman

  “We sold a shitload of guns. Old guns. Expensive guns. A veritable vintage arms deal.” Soo-jin made a small lunge for the bag next to the leg of her chair, pulling out a bottle identical to the one she already cradled in her other hand. “Come! Get drunk with us!”

  “Not too drunk,” Marc said. “We still have to deliver the stuff.”

  As they spoke, Karin met her sister’s eyes, catching her gaze. She lifted her eyebrows in a silent question.

  Nomiki gave a small shake of her head and moved on.

  So she hasn’t talked to him yet.

  “Deliver where?”

  A brief second of cold touched Karin’s face as Nomiki passed between her and the fire, momentarily blinking out its warmth.

  “Takao. Buyer paid extra for the delivery escort,” Marc said.

  “That was nice of them.”

  “Sure was. I would have done it anyway for free, but it’s always good to let them offer you money first.”

  “Takao, you said?” Nomiki gave Soo-jin a pat on the head as she accepted the bottle, the movement turning into a caress as Soo-jin tilted her head toward her. “North or South?”

  “South.”

  “Want to come?” Soo-jin asked. “We’re going clubbing after.” She poked Nomiki’s arm with one of her fingers. “You look like you’d be fun to party with. What do you say? Girl gang with us?”

  “Girl gang?” Cookie’s head, which had been bent over his netlink, shot up. “What about the rest of us?”

  “Fah.” Soo-jin slapped a hand at him. “You guys’ll be fine. Well—” A spark of mischief entered her face. “Marc will be fine. Not sure about you. You might be on your own. You got a girlfriend on that computer? One of those love AIs?”

  “No.”

  “What about a boyfriend?”

  “I do not have a robot boyfriend.”

  Karin looked askance to Marc. He hadn’t mentioned anything about what he’d wanted to talk about, nor had he brought it up since they’d passed each other in the doorway of the Nemina’s Mess.

  Sitting back into the worn canvas back of his chair, he looked at ease. A lazy smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he took in the back and forth between Soo-jin and Cookie. The fire lit a glow against the deep tone of his skin, playing along the muscles of the forearm that held his beer. His neck gave a well-defined, filled-out view of his tendons, dipping into where his shirt pulled against his collarbone.

  When she started noticing the moisture his beer left on his lips, and the way he seemed to shift and swallow, she realized she was staring a bit too much.

  She jerked her head away—trying to modify the action into a smoother, more subtle version than it had started out as and hoping no one else noticed—and caught Nomiki’s eyes across the barbecue. A small half-smile tugged at her sister’s lips, and she switched her gaze to Marc before glancing back to Karin, her eyebrows rising and her smile growing larger. More catlike. With the same kind of mischief as Soo-jin had earlier.

  Shit. I shouldn’t have teased her about Ares.

  Fortunately, drunk-Soo-jin saved her. Before Nomiki could say anything, Soo-jin went from one-handedly braiding the ends of her dreads to sitting bolt upright in her chair and waving her bottle. “Heey! You! Come on over!”

  Karin spotted the victim about midway across the parking lot to them, walking along the side of the aerodynamics lab. He wore a Fallon uniform, but was too far away for her to make out specifics. Most of him blended into the wall behind him. He’d probably been trying to walk unnoticed. It—Gods, what time is it?—seemed unusual that a soldier would be coming around here now, especially since he didn’t appear to be in any kind of patrol, but it wasn’t unheard of. She’d done plenty of stupid shit and needed to run back to buildings after hours.

  By the startled, wide-eye look on his face as he turned it their way, and how he stiffened up, he looked mortified to have been noticed.

  “I said, come over here!” Soo-jin called again, probably in case he hadn’t heard her the first time. “Come heeeere!”

  Still next to her, Nomiki’s eyebrows twitched as Soo-jin’s tone elongated the last word, making it sound more like a child had said it.

  Frozen for a moment, the man hesitated. Then he made the decision to join them. He walked over, coming just to the edge of where the barbecue’s dim glow reached.

  He was younger than she’d originally placed him, and definitely skinnier than was normal for people on the base, looking more like a stick man under his uniform and with a gauntness to his face that she knew from some of the others she’d met around here. She didn’t recognize him, which didn’t necessarily mean she hadn’t healed him from being Lost at some point—there were too many faces going by these days to remember anyone, anymore—but she’d seen that haunted look in the Shadow attack survivors. The ones who’d won their fight and lived to see their friends and family succumb.

  His gaze flicked around the circle, first to Nomiki, who earned a prolonged glance-over, then to Marc, Soo-jin, and Cookie. He stopped when he got to her, giving her the same curious scrutiny that most gave her nowadays.

  There wasn’t anyone on base who didn’t know who she was.

  Cookie twisted around to flash him a broad grin. “Hey, don’t mind her,” he said, making a gesture with his netlink to where Soo-jin sprawled in her chair. “She’s just super drunk.”

  “I’m not super drunk. I’m only a little drunk.” She frowned at him, her lips pouting. “You don’t want to see me super drunk. I start fights.”

  Nomiki glanced down, one hand still in Soo-jin’s hair. “Really? That could make our Takao clubbing plans interesting.”

  Karin snorted. “Oh, like you’ve never been in a bar fight.”

  “No, but they usually end too quickly to be considered a proper fight.”

  An uncomfortable silence filled the space around the barbecue as they all imagined Nomiki in a bar fight.

  Well, Karin didn’t have to imagine. Nomiki used to bartend. She’d seen some of them.

  “So… what’s your name?” Cookie said. “I think I’ve seen you around here?”

  “Yeah, I work in avionics. Mostly in cataloging and maintenance. Name’s Saia.” He turned his head and gave a vague gesture to his left, back to the side of the aerodynamics lab.

  “That sounds cool,” Cookie said. “So you get to work on ships and stuff?”

  “Among other things, yes. I…” He cleared his throat. “I actually forgot something in there earlier, which is why I was going back.”

  “Well, don’t let us drunks dissuade you. I’m sure you’ve got better places to be at this hour.”

  Saia appeared to hesitate. “Er, yeah. Okay. I’ll… see you around?”

  He appeared to direct that last bit to her instead of Cookie or the rest of the group, which made her sit up a bit straighter and pay more attention. But then, he switched his attention to include the rest of them, as well.

  Maybe he sees me as the leader, somehow.

  “Yeah,” Marc said with a wave. “We’ll see you around.”

  He turned and stepped away.

  “Stop by sometime,” Soo-jin called after him. “You’re kind of cute.”

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought he flinched. His walk speed increased.

  After he vanished around the nose of the Nemina and into the gloom, the rest of them rounded on Soo-jin.

  “You’re incorrigible,” Marc said.

  She gave him a big grin and saluted him with the tip of the bottle.

  “I’ll come with you to Takao,” Nomiki said.

  “Sweet!” Soo-jin crowed.

  Surprised, Karin lifted her gaze to meet her sister’s. “Don’t you have a super-important meeting later?”

  Nomiki shrugged. “A girl’s gotta get off base sometime.”

  Chapter 5

  The sky above Takao had a dense, dark formation of low clouds that appeared to shiver and shake as the Nemina descended, the whine of her engines
lost momentarily in a quick shudder of quick turbulence that pulled a smile across Karin’s lips.

  Gods, it felt good to fly again.

  As stereotypical as it sounded, there was a sense of freedom that came with the act. They were thousands of meters above the ground, dipping and sliding across air currents visible only to those who could read the scan metrics on the holoscreen to her right or who paid attention to the clouds outside. Water flecked the front windows in tiny, wind-pelted balls, streaming back and up along the reinforced plastic-glass.

  As they pulled beneath the clouds, Takao’s urban lights became visible below, forming a mix of packed grid-lines and reaching, underlit skyscrapers toward its center and North-East, slow, curving avenues in its more-affluent West, and, closest to their approach, large, broken blocks of darkness where parts of the docks had shut down for the night. Below, the water of the harbor had a depth to its blackness, like one of Nomiki’s modified carbon steel blades. Only the closest waves to shore picked up the yellow-orange sparkle of city lights.

  It had been a mining colony back in the day—before it had expanded out of the north to form the port. Nowadays, blue-collared industry worked in the back, only half-hidden behind the flush waterscapes and architectural vistas of the new trillionaires who’d stretched and revamped half of its seaport into a marina studded with elaborate and expensive water and hovercraft.

  Marc had filled her in on the history en route. She’d filled in the rest of it en approach. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen such a separation in a location. Even at night, the delineation between the working part of the city and those with the money had a clear distinction. Brighter lights, fancier, more clean-cut designs, towers with that specific glass-shard edge that made them look like blades of ice cutting up from the city streets. On the other side, creeping in like a stain of rust, standard yellow-orange streetlights cast a subdued look on the other half of the city.

  She tracked the Nemina over to the left, watching the on-screen compass shift over. In another window on the holoscreen, the location marker she’d put on the computer’s map swung back around, reappearing past a series of hills where the industry of the working port spread inland and stretched into the city’s original settlement.

  Beside her, Marc shifted in his chair. “I’ve let him know we’re almost there. He should have a welcome party.”

  Isn’t it a bit late for a welcome party?

  Her eyebrows twitched, but she said nothing. Technically, this was the first time she’d helped them deliver a scrounge—to actually do the job she’d signed up for—so what did she know about the habits of their clients? Besides, the Shadow attacks had convinced quite a few people to make a change in their sleeping habits. Graveyard shifts had grown in popularity, in some cases entire markets and businesses switching over. Shadows were a lot easier to face down in the daytime when the suns were lighting up the clouds.

  She eased the Nemina down, feeling the air resistance bumping through the controls. As they descended and the houses and tenements and warehouses below grew larger and closer, she leaned forward and flicked on the downward cameras. Engine data minimized to the left-hand screen, replaced by an image of rooftops racing by underneath. A particular rough patch of air made the entire craft do a hard shimmy, parts of the ship rattling and groaning. A loud clunk sounded to her back, and she had a brief image of Soo-jin’s wrench falling off the Mess table.

  The Nemina spent most of her flight time in space. Her crew tended to forget about preparing for turbulence. They’d also spent the last month grounded while Karin worked for the military. Add in that half the crew had gotten drunk before take-off and they’d stashed all the barbecue leftovers on its table…

  Well, perhaps she’d wait a bit before she walked into the Mess again.

  Marc’s netlink beeped once, and he turned away, frowning at the display. As the outboard cameras caught a visual of the warehouse they were flying to and the computer locked on and synced the data with the on-screen map, a hand pressed down on her shoulder.

  Nomiki leaned forward, eyes on the screen. “Is that it?”

  “Yep.”

  She glanced to the side. While she’d been flying, Soo-jin and Nomiki had been prepping. Her sister’s hair hung in partial layers around her face, threaded through with thin, tight braids—Soo-jin’s doing, she guessed—that gave Nomiki’s dark locks a complicated, asymmetrical look. Dark—almost black—purple lipstick combined with a lighter eyeshadow accentuated the green rather than the brown in her eyes, giving her a look that brought a cybergothic edge to the neo-punk the paint splatters and artful rips in her loose-cut, dark party shirt was going for, if Karin’s limited experiences in system subcultures were anything to go by. She had a feeling she recognized Nomiki’s current shirt.

  “Good. We have a plan for your face.”

  Karin snorted. “A plan for my face? Please tell me we’re not going to a clinic.”

  When Marc let out a chuckle, Nomiki turned her head to him with a sweet smile. “What? Should we come up with a plan for your face, too?”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I prefer my natural look.”

  Nomiki gave him a wink. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us.” The chair rocked as she pushed off. “I’ll let Soo-jin know.”

  Karin eased the Nemina into a slower speed as they arrived. One of twenty similar rooftops in the area, all made of a corrugated metallic pre-fab material, it differed from the others by being a bit larger and with a longer slant to its roofline. Its pastel-orange color faded into a yellow-brown grunge under the nighttime lighting, accompanied by large sea-green block letters that spelled out the warehouse’s code on its front.

  Several vehicles, both land and air, occupied the parking lot as she swung around, and a small gathering of people squinted up at the Nemina’s auxiliary lighting, some throwing their arms up against the glare. After a second, one of them pointed to the large space that had been cleared in the lot.

  The ship’s engines gave a clunky rumble as they shifted over, extending the landing gear. The thin edge of the roof became visible as they went down. The warehouse’s main doors had been thrown open, revealing a large, well-lit interior with a raised concrete sub-floor at the back leading to a single door and what she assumed was a more comfortable living space. Several crates and boxes sat around in various states of packaging. A mechanized power suit stood dormant in the far right, its buffered metal gleaming under the nearest light.

  A small bump nudged through the ship as they touched down, and Karin felt some of the Nemina’s hydraulics and springs accommodate the motion—then they were down, she was disengaging systems, and there was a flurry of activity as the rest of the ship headed for the ramp.

  “See you in a few.” Marc gave her shoulder a squeeze as he left. The notification for the ramp opening came up on screen.

  Karin let out a breath and leaned back for a minute, relishing the busied quiet of the Nemina’s systems and the feel of the ship winding down after its flight. Two people moved within the now-limited range of the Nemina’s downward cameras. After a few slides and shuffles—their crew maneuvering the cargo to the ramp—Marc reappeared on the feed, greeting an older-looking man within the group.

  They shook hands, and Marc’s head followed the older man’s pointing gesture toward the warehouse. They both walked out of the feeds’ reach. She watched the empty camera for a few more lazy moments, taking in the quiet. Then she reached for the jacket she’d draped over the arm of her chair, unbuckled her seat restraints, and got up to join the rest.

  Takao had a more northerly climate than Kolkata, the crispness of the air cutting through any delusions that they were still in the subtropics and making her kick herself for not checking the external temperature before she exited. Even her toes seemed to feel the shock as she dropped off the ramp and onto the concrete pad beneath, curling back inside her shoes.

  Gods, when did I become such a wuss?

&nb
sp; Lights from the warehouse cut a strong swathe of yellow-orange across the lot, putting the loose gathering of people a few meters away in a strong, bright light, and she did a double take—there were quite a few more than the ten she’d estimated from the cameras, and they were much younger than they’d appeared. Teens or early twenties, with a mix of shaved heads and matching tattoos on their right temples, a kind of modern arrow design…. Are we selling to gangsters?

  She gave herself a little shake, chiding the thought. No. That would be prejudiced. And even if they were selling to a gang, what in the ten hells was wrong with that? These were a bunch of old guns that couldn’t even fire.

  Marc seemed at ease, anyway. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, one hand making a gesture as he spoke, leaning into his conversation with what she assumed to be the leader of the place—a somewhat squat, thickset man with wide-set eyes and flat features that reminded her of the city’s mining roots. They were smiling at each other, their voices light and jovial.

  As she jammed her hands into her pockets, Marc’s signature laugh boomed through the air. Cookie and Soo-jin stood to the side, half-outlined against the warehouse’s lights. The crate of carefully packed ancient weaponry floated on a hover skid beside them.

  Her first clue that something was wrong came as a slip of movement to her right. Turning her head, she watched as two men she hadn’t noticed before came into view to flank the group at a distance. A quick glance back showed a third move into place between her and the Nemina’s ramp.

  Well, fuck us.

  She didn’t break stride. Just hunched her shoulders and jammed her hands further into her pockets. Inside, her powers pulled to life, and she squeezed her fingers into tight fists as she gained a sudden, intimate awareness of every light source in sight and attempted to ward off the feeling—it wouldn’t do to make a light show right now.

  Nomiki had also noticed the men. She stood off to the side with her arms crossed over her chest, a mirror image of Marc except for the blatant difference in their physical appearance. As Karin drew closer, Marc trailed off in mid-conversation.