The Rise of Shiroi Nami – Chapter 9

My teeth rattle in my head, and I clutch the straps of my seat so tight my fingers ache. The engines scream in my ears.

“Evasive maneuvers! We have incoming missiles,” the pilot shouts. I remember from my initial meetings with Shiroi Nami that this guy was one of their best shuttle pilots, a virtuoso at the controls. Or was that someone else? My brain shakes in my head to the degree that I can’t remember anything right now, not even my middle name.

The shuttle banks left, a sharp jerk, and I’m thrown against my restraints. A missile screams past and fades into the distance.

“One down!” The pilot shouts.

“One? How many more?” My voice cracks, and Mari, sitting across from me, chuckle-cries, a strangled mess of emotions that I think everyone here feels.

“Oh, my God! This world is fucking insane!” Chiéko screams. She pants and closes her eyes. I turn my head slowly to look at Rin, and his expression is grim.

Well, she’s not wrong. A lot of this world is insane on every level. The meritocracy, the wars, the ability to own another person’s contract and hold their life in your hands — it’s all pretty bat-shit crazy.

But there are the common people who just want to live their lives — the people dancing at Club Seiun, the woman I ran into in the farmers’ market with her dogs, Saki’s landlord. They want some normality, some peace.

“You’ll get used to it,” Shintaro yells from down the shuttle.

“I don’t think I want to!”

Aimi laughs, her eyes clouded with tears. I don’t know what kind of upbringing she had, but it must have been intense to be that good with the sword. She closes her eyes and presses her head into the seat. I follow her lead and wait for the second missile. It’ll either scream right on by us, or we’ll be dead. Fifty-fifty chance, right?

The wait seems endless, the tension in my shoulders threatening to bring on a migraine. The muscles stretching up the back of my neck tug on my scalp, and I wince at the pain.

Two, three, five breaths later, and the sound of the shuttle dies off.

The pilot comes over the loudspeaker and says, “We’re almost to orbit. The missile ran out of fuel and fell away about a hundred meters back.”

A collective sigh runs around everyone in their seats, and several of us clasp hands or nod to each other. We made it off Kurai.

My eyes linger on Mari and Jonathan, their hands securely clasped together. I’d ask Chiéko about them if I had any private time whatsoever, but I think I already know the answer to my question. High-stress situations can bring people closer. Look at Rin and me. That’s something no one saw coming, not even me.

Rin reaches out and grabs a cup that floats by.

“That was quite a ride,” he says with a sigh and a smile.

I take the cup from him. “You can say that again. What should I do?” I shake the empty cup.

“Let’s secure everything for the flight across. There are receptacles at the end of the seats for trash.”

“Right.”

I turn to leave, but Rin’s hand lingers on my ass for a moment too long and makes me laugh. I swat his hand away. “Get out of here.”

“Yes, Miss Minamoto.” He salutes and backs away to the bridge to talk to the pilot.

I sigh and ignore the stares of everyone. No one from home has ever known me to be a soft person. I’m a hard-boiled journalist with no feelings. I don’t want to damage my reputation right now, as badly as I’d prefer to just be myself around Rin. So I gather up floating waste, pens, tablets, errant straps, and anything else I can find and stow them in the receptacles.

When I see Chiéko whispering with Mari, Jonathan, and Ryoko at the back of the shuttle, my reporter senses tingle.

I pull myself into my professional shell, the hardened outside I need to deal with any situation. Ryoko has seen some of my vulnerable side when we tried to escape from Aoi Uma’s grasp in Shin-Osaka, but otherwise, these people don’t know any other Yumi than the one they grew up with.

Before I butt in on them, though, I stop to check on Isao. Shintaro is using the shuttle’s medkit to triage the wound on his wing.

“How are you?” I ask, hooking my feet into the restraints next to him.

“I’ll be fine. Thanks, Shintaro.”

“Sure thing,” Shintaro responds, snapping the lid onto a bottle. “I think this will hold you until we get to the surface.”

“Do you know where we’re going?” Isao asks.

I shake my head. “I didn’t think to ask. I’m sure Rin has it under control.”

Isao narrows his eyes and looks towards the bridge. “Yumi, are you sure you trust him? He’s Kiiroi Yama. They haven’t been very receptive to Shiroi Nami over the years.”

I lay my hand on his arm and brush off the feeling of dread. “I trust him, with my life, with my heart.” I bring my hand to my chest. “And you can trust him too.”

I say it out loud, but a niggle of doubt creeps in. This time, though, the doubt is different. In the past, I had doubted Rin’s love and affection. I doubted his loyalty. Yet, he always came through for me. He proved to me he was a man of his word.

Now, the doubt I have is for my new allies. They don’t trust me.

I breathe out through my nose. I need to prove to them I’m trustworthy. I’m a woman of my word, and I keep my promises.

I smile at Isao and try to quell his fears. “Don’t worry. If I can trust Rin, you can trust him and me too.”

“Yeah, Yumi is super trustworthy,” Shintaro says, tossing the bottle of antiseptic into the medkit and snapping it shut. “Right up until she steals your man right out from under you. I clearly had dibs on Rin first.”

I throw my head back in a laugh and then bat my eyelashes at him. “I think you’re mixing me up with you and Takéji.” It wasn’t too long ago that Shintaro started dating the only man I was ever interested in back home. “Turn about is fair play.”

“Bitch,” he says, laughing and poking me in the shoulder.

Isao closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m going to sit on the end and try to sleep. Wake me when we land.” He unstraps himself and moves awkwardly to the other end of the shuttle, closer to the bridge. Watching a man with wings navigate Zero-G is a little humbling. We’re all clumsy in space.

Now seems like the perfect time to interrupt Chiéko and her circle of friends. Everyone looks either despondent or exhausted. Not a favorable sign.

“And that’s it? That’s all you know?” Chiéko asks Ryoko. Ryoko shrugs her shoulders.

“What’s up?” I ask, inserting myself between Mari and Ryoko.

For the first time ever, I detect suspicion in Chiéko’s glare. I press my lips together and try to look as innocent as possible. She sighs and gives in.

“I’m trying to get the lay of the land here,” she says, relaxing a bit. “Ryoko has told us how you were brought to Hikari and delivered to some corporation called Aka Matsuba?”

“Yes, though their corporation has been since disbanded. But many of their top employees are sympathetic to our goals.”

“And what are our goals here? Because from what I see, this is a cock-up of immense proportions. You let some foreign power divide us up and sell us off to the highest bidder.”

The heat of anger rises in my belly. “I didn’t let them do anything. Trust me, I fought hard for our freedom, for my freedom. See this?” I pull back the strands of my short hair and show her the scar on my scalp. “I got this injury when someone blew up a building and nearly killed me. You should see the scar on my leg that almost killed me, too, but I won’t show you because then you’ll have to see I’m not wearing any underwear.”

Mari laughs and breaks the tension.

“My migraines are a hundred times worse here, and I’m losing my memory because I’ve hit my head more times than I can count, and my brain is permanently damaged.”

Chiéko’s eyes widen, and Mari’s smile softens to a frown.

“So don’t tell me I let these people do anything to us. I did what I could. And let’s not even talk about the burning building I jumped from because those memories haunt my dreams. I wish I could forget them.”

“Sorry,” Chiéko murmurs. “We’ve had it rough, too.”

“I know,” I say, softening my tone. “And I don’t doubt it was hard to survive on your own. But they sold you off into slavery like I was. Fucking twice.”

“Yumi…” Her voice breaks, and her shoulder slump. “This is scaring the crap out of me.”

“Good. It should. We’re about to land in enemy territory, and we have little in the way of guns or ammunition.”

I take a deep breath through my nose and let out all the anger and frustration. I have to be more than the petulant young woman I’ve been in the past for these people.

“Am I right that you were trying to gather data on the native’s civilization so you can move forward?” When she nods, I smile at her and gesture to the seats. “Then let’s sit down and have a long talk. I’m going to tell you everything I’ve been through. I’ll show you the data I’ve read, the news stories I’ve watched, and then we’re going to talk about why we need to shut down Aoi Uma’s androids and show these people who they really can be.”

Chiéko tilts her head and grimaces. “I don’t know. I feel like we should stay the hell out of this.”

My grin is almost manic. “Nope. We’re not staying out of this. In fact, we’re going in strong. We’re going to make a documentary about Shiroi Nami and us, and we will convince these people that we’re the best leaders they’ll ever have.”

“Leaders? That’s not our job. Our job is to observe and report. Not get involved.”

I lift my chin. “It’s too late not to get involved. I’m starting my own corporation, and you’re all my first employees.”