by Yoon Ha Lee
Even steaders like me knew the basics of space travel. In order to cross vast distances, you had to use a special stardrive to punch your way through a local Gate. Each Gate only connected to a handful of nearby ones, so voyages could involve a lot of hopping. Plus, starships had to be recharged between jumps. For this reason, spaceports had sprung up near Gates to cater to travelers. Jinju’s Gate didn’t see much activity; right then I was grateful it existed at all.
“I’m warming up the jump drive,” Byung-Ho added.
“How bad will it be?” I’d heard stories of what it was like to pass through a Gate. Some people got sick. Others were tormented by dreams that were reputed to be half prophecy, half nightmare. Seasoned spacers got used to the visions over time, though they tended to become superstitious about them. Certain Gates had reputations for causing more unpleasant experiences than others. Jinju’s Gate was supposedly one of the worst.
Byung-Ho shook his head. “You’ll see soon enough. Try not to be too loud, if you’re a screamer.”
“I never scream.”
He wasn’t paying attention. “Drive’s ready.” He pointed to the blue flashing indicator on his panel.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that the battered freighter was eager to make the jump. In the old stories, older even than the Thousand Worlds, a humble carp could become a dragon by leaping up a waterfall. If a fish could dream of upgrading, I didn’t see why a starship couldn’t, in its secret crystal heart, have ambitions, too.
“Here goes nothing,” Byung-Ho said. He pulled a lever and the ship surged forward.
At first I thought nothing had happened. The ship seemed to freeze in place. Then a great swirl of shimmering rainbow colors, like on an abalone shell, spun around us. I closed my eyes, but the colors followed me, as though they had seeped behind my eyelids and pressed their patterns into my brain. If I concentrated on the patterns, I could almost read them.
I saw faces, indistinct at first. Then one of them drifted close, smiling sadly. I gasped as I recognized it from the silk portrait I’d lost earlier that day. Dad! He opened his mouth as if to say something, and I leaned forward, eager to hear it.
Instead, his mouth gaped wider and wider, and his teeth grew longer and sharper, like knives. His face sprouted fur with orange and black stripes, and his brown eyes turned amber. He’d morphed into a tiger. He lunged for me with a snarl.
I shrieked and jerked back.
“Bora?” Byung-Ho said.
So much for my not being a screamer. I opened my eyes and stared out the viewport. “I’m okay,” I said weakly. No trace remained of the gorgeous swirling colors, or my father’s face, or the ferocious tiger. Instead, there was only a dead staticky gray. Just nerves, I told myself. Still, I couldn’t help wondering if the vision had been a warning.
While we were Gating, we wouldn’t be able to exit the ship, not even to make repairs. Gate space was harmful to living creatures. I hoped the Red Azalea wouldn’t choose now to break down. There had to be repair robots on board in case of an emergency, but I didn’t want to have to find out.
“Bora!”
Byung-Ho had to say it twice to break me out of the trance, because I still wasn’t used to going by my cousin’s name. “Good,” he said roughly. “I was starting to worry.”
“About what?”
“Some people get lost in the patterns,” Byung-Ho said, “and they don’t come back. It’s not as common as the rumors claim, but it’s worst the first time you enter a Gate. You looked like you were drifting away.”
I shivered, remembering the tiger about to bite my head off.
“Well,” Byung-Ho said, “we’ll be recharging for a while now. While we wait, let me show you around the rest of the ship. Maybe you can make yourself useful.”
I should have known that even in space I couldn’t escape chores.
I’d already seen the cockpit. The Red Azalea also had a tiny office in the ship’s midsection, which Byung-Ho said I wasn’t supposed to enter; cramped living quarters with bunks for four; a kitchen and a dining area; an engine room, which I also wasn’t supposed to mess with; and a cargo hold in the rear.
The stacks of crates in the hold made me curious. Byung-Ho hustled me past them and set me to scrubbing the deck in the dining area. I stifled a groan, especially since some of the marks on the floor and walls weren’t dirt. They looked like blaster burns, and I was pretty sure no amount of elbow grease would get rid of those. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to volunteer to paint the whole deck, either.
I scrubbed at the scuffs and stains for an hour, until my back hurt so much I couldn’t take it anymore. Byung-Ho didn’t check on me the entire time. At home, someone would have nagged me about doing a better job. It was nice not to have to live up to my relatives’ standards anymore. But I would have preferred to spend the hour learning how to operate the ship. I guessed Byung-Ho didn’t want me to know too much.
I returned to the cockpit. Byung-Ho reclined in his chair, snoring peacefully. I slid into the copilot’s seat and took the opportunity to explore the help system. I knew I couldn’t master everything overnight, but I had to start somewhere.
In the middle of puzzling out the engine-status symbols, I, too, slid asleep. I couldn’t help it. I was used to working long hours, but today had been longer than most, and it had included way too much excitement.
I dreamed of dragons snaking from red to blue and back again, of worlds spinning topsy-turvy in the deep black of space, and of the Gate swallowing us in a swirl of pearly colors. The dragons led me down to a planet wreathed in white mist, making me shiver even in the depths of sleep. White was the color of death and mourning. I glimpsed Jun at a cliff’s edge in the distance, staring up at the sky, and I ran after him, shouting his name. He turned and waved, but I never managed to get any closer. . . .
Despite my disconcerting dreams, it would have been a refreshing sleep if I hadn’t woken to an alarm so loud it gave me an instant headache. “Go away, Bora,” I mumbled, forgetting that I was supposed to be Bora.
My annoying cousin would have been an improvement over reality. “Wake up!” Byung-Ho said, sounding worried. “The first hop went without any problems, and we’ve just completed the second one.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I said. My strange dreams must have resulted from our entry into the second Gate.
He gestured at the sensor panel, which showed four rapidly approaching red dots. “Not likely. We’re stuck in-system until we’re charged up, and unless I’m mistaken, those are mercenaries. I hope you spent some time familiarizing yourself with the weapons system.”
“I couldn’t, because—” My retort died in my throat when Byung-Ho suddenly jerked a lever and the Red Azalea shuddered to one side to begin evasive maneuvers.
“Too late now,” Byung-Ho said. “You’re going to have to learn on the fly.”
Byung-Ho was busy with the ship’s controls after that. “At least they’re shooting to disable, not destroy,” he muttered. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he added, “Don’t get too comfortable. They’ll zap us both if they board.”
My stomach clenched and my palms felt clammy. Four ships against one were bad odds if they caught us unable to Gate. Even I knew that. And the Red Azalea wasn’t exactly a battle cruiser. The fact that the enemy fought as a quartet was a bad omen as well. Four was an unlucky number—it signified death. Mercenaries went around in groups of four to strike terror into their victims.
“Can we signal for help?” I asked.
“Already done,” Byung-Ho said. “There ought to be a battle cruiser on patrol near this Gate. I just hope they’re not busy elsewhere.”
After scanning the onboard computer’s help guide, I located the cockpit controls for the Red Azalea’s defense systems. They had to be better than nothing. As far as I could tell, I would just need to flip some levers, tell the system which target to prioritize, and let the computer do the calculations.
“This isn’
t so bad,” I said to Byung-Ho when our defenses took out an incoming missile in a bright flash. Even though I knew better than to expect to hear anything in space, it was mildly disappointing when the explosion was silent. The scan system only emitted a sad little blip to mark the occasion.
“Check our ammunition level,” Byung-Ho said tersely. “The Red Azalea has upgraded defenses, but mercs are faster and meaner. They can afford to wait for us to exhaust our antimissiles. At least they’re not likely to destroy us—a bucket like this is worth more to them intact.”
So we were sitting ducks. My hands clenched and unclenched as I searched the dash for a display that would tell me how much ammo we had left. Found it! To my dismay, the bar was draining toward empty at a frightening rate.
“Don’t we have any shields?” I asked.
Byung-Ho hesitated. “We do, and they’re on, but they’ve tended to glitch ever since— Yikes!” He shoved a lever to one side. Dizziness overcame me as the Red Azalea veered away from the latest burst of fire. The ship’s maneuvers got worse before they got better. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the sudden accelerations.
“Oh no!” I cried as a burst of violet fire hit us in the side. Several alarms went off, deafening me. Five different emergency status screens came up on my control panels. I inspected the reddest one, which claimed that our life support had been hit.
Byung-Ho swore when he saw that. “We’ll have to do some quick repairs. Go back to the engine room and get the computer to help you put it into Emergency Mode. The automated diagnostics will take it from there. I’ll tell the system to give you access.”
At least the name “Emergency Mode” would be easy to remember.
“And use the handholds, or you might get knocked about. Good luck!” After that he had no more attention to spare for me.
I gulped as I unharnessed myself from the safety restraints. I didn’t know what scared me more: the Red Azalea getting blown up, or our being boarded. If only I could will the ship to fly faster, away from the mercenaries’ clutches.
My head swam. Our artificial gravity was fluctuating. And I’d magicked up regular boots, not magnetic ones, out of habit. While I could have fixed that, I didn’t have time to get used to walking in magnetic boots.
I caught one of the handhold straps just before the ship moved again, but still got bruised when I was abruptly flung into a wall. I concentrated on gripping the handholds and placing my toes in the footholds so I didn’t get knocked around some more. My clothes were drenched in sweat by the time I made it through the ship’s midsection to the engine room at the back.
A hatch separated the room from the rest of the ship. Behind it I could hear an almost musical thrumming. I pressed my palm against the keypad, worrying that it wouldn’t accept me. It would be ironic if I couldn’t do my job because I couldn’t get in. Byung-Ho had been as good as his word, however. After a hair-raising shriek of metal on metal, the door slid open.
The engine room was the loudest part of the ship, although not in an unpleasant way. I almost released a handhold because I was gawking at the fantastic arrays of crystals and the rows of glowing display screens like the ones in the cockpit, only more elaborate. The crystals gave the ship the ability to open Gates and protect itself while in Gate space. The more mundane fusion reactor powered the maneuver drive and everything else on the ship, including life support.
“Computer,” I said, “how do I put the engine in Emergency Mode?” I clung like a burr to the side of the room as the ship rolled. I was starting to get used to the sudden maneuvers, though that wasn’t exactly a good thing.
One of the panels lit up. “Damage has occurred to the life-support, shield, and navigation subsystems,” the computer said in a friendly voice. “Which subsystem would you like to prioritize?”
“Life support, please,” I said.
Another alarm joined the ones that were already going off. I could barely hear myself think. “Uh—could you make those less loud?”
“I’m sorry,” the computer said, still in that friendly voice, “alarm volume parameters are fixed according to Thousand Worlds starship standards by the Fifth Accord of—”
I was sorry I’d asked. “Never mind,” I said. “Just tell me how to deal with life support.”
The computer jabbered a list of procedures to follow. I had to tell it to slow down and give me an overview of what went where. I hated the delay, but randomly pressing buttons wouldn’t be useful, either.
Captain Hye, or Byung-Ho, or whoever normally dealt with the engine, had stowed a toolkit in a side compartment. I opened the kit eagerly and hooked it to my belt loops so the tools wouldn’t drift away or, worse, rain down on my head during maneuvers. Most of the gadgets looked familiar. For the first time, I was grateful for all the things around home that had always needed fixing.
I narrowed down the problem to one regulator that had been damaged by the mercs’ fire. The details were a little murky, but the more I tinkered with the regulator, the more I realized the basics weren’t so different from those of the ecofilter system we used in our dome back on Jinju. Given how often it had broken down, I’d had a lot of experience with it. Maybe I wasn’t a qualified technician, but I knew a few tricks.
I wondered if we’d ever escape the mercenaries. My work settled into a nerve-racking routine. Every time something broke, I’d follow the computer’s instructions, tunneling down through menus, rerouting damaged functions to backups, and so on, all the while hanging on so I wouldn’t get smashed when the ship jerked. My fingers ached. Still, I couldn’t afford to relax.
The comm system crackled to life. “Good work,” Byung-Ho said over the speaker.
I appreciated the compliment, but I wasn’t under any illusions that I’d fixed everything wrong with the Red Azalea. I’d just bought us a little more time. Whether it would be enough for help to reach us was another question.
“What would have happened if I hadn’t?” I asked Byung-Ho.
He didn’t answer, and I gulped. Had something gone wrong in the cockpit? Were we now drifting aimlessly, easy pickings for the mercs?
It didn’t take me long to make my way back to the front of the ship now that I’d gotten used to moving around in flickering gravity.
Byung-Ho waved a hand when he heard my approach and sat up straighter. He kept his attention fixed on the screens. I retook the copilot’s seat.
“I managed to turn on the shields again after they glitched,” Byung-Ho said. “That’ll keep the mercs at bay for a while.” He turned to look at me. “Seriously, good job back there. You sure you’ve never been on a ship before?”
I glowed at his praise, but we didn’t have time for chitchat. With my fox’s nose I couldn’t escape the rank stench of his nervous sweat. He was trying to mask his fear—for my sake.
“Has anyone responded to our call for help?” I asked. Communications frequencies were much slower than travel via Gate and only reliable for reaching people in the immediate vicinity, which was why long-distance messages were conveyed by courier. The local space station should have heard us and relayed the distress signal, but it was an open question as to whether anyone in a position to help had detected it.
“No luck yet,” Byung-Ho said.
That “no luck” sealed our fate.
Another blast took the Red Azalea from behind, according to the displays. The shield strength indicators flickered red, then plummeted almost all the way down to zero. Through the viewport I glimpsed sparks flowering out ahead of us. If our situation hadn’t been so desperate, it would have looked beautiful.
The attack itself had made no noise, but then we heard a bang from the engine room. My stomach dropped when the musical thrumming of the engines sputtered, then stopped. “What was that?” I whispered.
Byung-Ho blanched. He didn’t hide the truth from me, which I appreciated. “Maneuver drive’s down. We’re just drifting now, thanks to inertia. They’ve herded us away from the Gate, and they’ll be boar
ding us next.” He triggered a command, and the hatch to the ship’s midsection slid closed. It would give us a little time. “Quick—do you know how to use a blaster?”
I hesitated at the thought of killing. On the other hand, I didn’t want to die.
“Point and shoot—that’s all there is to it,” Byung-Ho said. “With our luck, they’ll have personal shields, too. But I refuse to roll over for them.”
He unholstered a blaster from his belt and handed it to me. “That toggle is the safety. Point it away from me when you flick it off—yes, like that. I keep it fully charged, but in a firefight you may run out of juice.”
“What about you?” I demanded. After all, he’d just given me his gun.
“Don’t worry about me,” Byung-Ho said. “I’ll use the plasma rifle. It’s temperamental. A beginner’s better off with a simple blaster.”
He retrieved the rifle from a compartment behind the pilot’s seat. It looked so large and bulky that I doubted I could have wielded it well, temperamental or not. I was strong for my usual size, thanks to all the menial labor I did, but I wasn’t going to win any wrestling matches. I had good reflexes, though. Maybe that would help.
While we waited for the intruders to arrive, I glanced out the viewport, suddenly resenting the distant stars and the colorful smudges of nebulae. We continued to float along peacefully. The mercs, knowing we couldn’t escape, had stopped firing. Byung-Ho had guessed right—they’d get more valuable scrap out of the Red Azalea if they didn’t shoot it up too much.
Then the ship shuddered, as though something had bumped into us at low speed.
“That’ll be the boarding party,” Byung-Ho said. “Crouch behind the seat and get ready to fire if you see anything.”
My sharp ears picked up the sounds of the mercs aligning one of their ships with ours and forcing the hatch open, then the whine of the airlock cycling. I tensed up. How many of them would come for us?