Dragon Pearl

by Yoon Ha Lee

  No one burst in on me, and the conversation continued.

  “. . . don’t like it.” The female voice belonged to Lieutenant Commander Ji-Eun, the executive officer. “The engineers can’t figure out what’s causing the damage here.”

  The male voice had a hint of a growl in it: Captain Hwan. “I know what’s going on,” he said. “The ship has a ghost.”

  My stomach pain flared. He was onto me and Jang.

  “I was hoping it was something else,” Lieutenant Commander Ji-Eun said wearily. “Don’t tell me we’re being haunted by some of those accursed mercenaries. . . .”

  The mercenaries’ ghosts?

  I’d assumed the captain was talking about Jang, but I supposed I couldn’t rule out the possibility of additional spirits on board. Just because I’d only seen Jang’s ghost didn’t mean there weren’t more around. Could apparitions detect each other? I’d have to ask Jang the next time we spoke.

  I leaned closer to the door to hear better, flinching when one of the suits creaked. My thoughts were racing. If ghosts were causing ill fortune, how much of it could a battle cruiser endure? Sure, the Pale Lightning had a lot of firepower, but all the weapons in the world can’t save you if your luck is bad.

  Drat. I’d missed some of their conversation. I needed to focus.

  “None of the pirates died on this ship,” the XO said. “Besides, even if they came to the Pale Lightning, the shamans’ chants should have laid them to rest. What I’m more worried about is the fact that we can’t seem to fix this meridian.”

  “You’re sure no one tampered with it as a prank?” There was just a hint of tension in Hwan’s voice. I wondered if the XO could detect it.

  “Of course not!” she said, indignant. “I’ve had guards on watch twenty-four-seven. If they’d seen anything, I would have notified you immediately. Besides, even the unruliest of the cadets wouldn’t dare.”

  I almost squawked in surprise at the captain’s laugh. “I don’t know about that. Cadets are notorious for playing pranks.”

  “Not when it comes to something this serious,” the XO said. “They’re terrified of you, anyway. Convinced you’d court-martial them if they sneezed in your presence.”

  Captain Hwan huffed. “I’m not that unreasonable. Cadet silliness is one thing. The deserters, on the other hand . . .” I held my breath, silently begging him to drop a clue as to where my brother had gone. “Too bad we haven’t been able to retrieve them. It would be the galaxy’s fastest court-martial if we did.”

  I gulped. An entire section of the code of conduct was devoted to courts-martial. The most severe penalty for a military infraction was execution. Jun would have known this even better than I did. Whatever had caused him and his comrades to leave the ship had been serious enough for them to risk death.

  The two lapsed into silence for a while. I had an itch between my shoulder blades, but I couldn’t try to scratch it, because I might make too much noise.

  “All right,” Hwan said at last, “you’d best go check on the bridge. I want to examine this meridian a little longer. Who knows, maybe one of the pirates’ ghosts will come by and say boo.”

  “As you wish, sir,” the XO said in a subdued voice.

  I held my breath, partly because the emergency suits’ reek was still making me gag, partly so I could hear the retreating footsteps more clearly. Only one pair. I wished the captain would leave, too, so I could. . . .

  “All right, Cadet,” Hwan said. “You can come out now.”

  Oh no. He’d known I was here all along! I couldn’t shape-shift to escape his notice, because, as a predator, he would sniff out any surge in my magic. And my cowering in the closet wouldn’t impress him, so I shoved the door open. I tumbled out and offered a clumsy salute.

  The captain looked even taller and more imposing than before as he loomed over me. “At ease,” he said. “What are you doing here? You must know this area is off-limits. The meridian has been compromised. Hasn’t Lieutenant Hyosu told you its ‘bad luck’ can hurt you?”

  Bad luck was right. It couldn’t be mere coincidence that I’d stopped there just when the captain and his executive officer had decided to inspect the damage.

  I bowed my head and blurted, “I was just curious about it, sir.”

  Maybe it was a mistake to say anything at all. The captain’s amber eyes darkened, and I flinched at the smell of his sudden anger.

  “Tell me, Cadet Jang, how did you manage to get by the guards?”

  Yikes. I couldn’t tell him about using Charm, and I couldn’t try it on him, either. I had to tell the truth.

  “I . . . I distracted one of them, sir, and then snuck past. I hid in the closet when I heard someone coming.” It wasn’t a lie, just not the complete truth.

  He regarded me coolly, testing, waiting. I started to sweat.

  “I don’t sense that you’re lying,” he said finally.

  “I’m not, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” I mumbled, “I won’t do it again.”

  “You’re how old, Cadet?”

  I knew the correct answer, thanks to my research. “Sixteen years old, sir, from Clover System.” Also not entirely a lie. Jang’s body was that old.

  He growled in the back of his throat, and I tensed. “Did you come up with this idea on your own?”

  He was asking me to rat out pranksters. Fortunately, I didn’t know of any. “It’s just me, sir.” I kept my eyes downcast.

  “Look at me, Cadet.”

  I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t ignore a direct order from the captain. Looking him square in the eyes would have been too bold, so I settled for staring awkwardly at his chin.

  “Do you think sneaking around is the best use of your training cruise?”

  “No, sir.”

  The captain was still peering down at me. What did he want?

  Inspired, I burst out, “I—I also did it because . . . because I needed to be alone. I don’t want anyone to know how afraid I am.” I could feel my cheeks heating with the admission, which, again, was true. “I almost died on that freighter. . . .”

  I hadn’t allowed myself to really think about it until now. I had gotten hurt on the Red Azalea. The grenade had knocked me out, left me helpless. Like Jang, I, too, could have died.

  Hwan’s face changed. The expression in his eyes wasn’t sympathy, exactly—I doubted that a tiger felt sympathy often, if ever. It was more like a grim understanding. “The first time is always like that,” he said. “We can send you to all the classes in the world, but none of them will prepare you sufficiently for real battle.”

  I took advantage of his change in mood, for Jang’s sake. “I still see the pirates in my dreams,” I said. I didn’t have to fake the quaver in my voice, although it was caused less by the memory of the attack than by the thought of getting munched by the captain if he caught me lying. “I know the Dragon Pearl is valuable, but they shot me down like I didn’t even matter.”

  “The stakes are higher than ever,” Hwan acknowledged. “Everyone thinks the Pearl is within their reach, and they will do anything to get it. Those pirates might have been working for the Dragon Society, which will pay a high price to maintain their monopoly on terraforming.”

  “I could have died over that,” I said quietly.

  “Yes. But you have to gain experience in the Space Forces sooner or later. The initial brush with death is always hard,” he said. “I wasn’t much older than you when someone first died in front of me.”

  I kept silent, sensing that he wanted to tell me more.

  “I’ll never forget it,” Hwan said. “It was my comrade, back in the early 1480s. If she’d lived, she would’ve made captain before I did. But the blaster burned her life short, and that was all there was to it.” He grimaced. “It was a completely unnecessary sacrifice on her part, too. By the time we fought that battle, the peace had already been negotiated. It was a secret mission, so we didn’t hear about the treaty until afterward.”

  I shiver
ed inside at the shadow of anguish in his eyes. But I remained wary. Was he trying to manipulate me the way I’d just tried to play him? If so, that meant he might know about me and Jang. I couldn’t let my guard down, no matter how authentic his story sounded.

  “You’ll understand as you grow in your years of service,” Hwan said, sensing my discomfort. He nodded at me. “Go back to your bunk, Cadet.”

  “Yes, sir.” I saluted and turned, suppressing my desire to run. The spot between my shoulder blades itched again as I walked away. I didn’t dare glance back to see if he was watching me or if he had returned his attention to the broken meridian.

  My instincts told me that his story had been true. I’d never thought of the captain, or any officer for that matter, as someone who’d suffered their own losses. What did it feel like to hold command of a military ship? Did the captain grieve over every crew member who died?

  Once the captain was safely out of sight and I’d ducked past the guards, I felt that familiar winter swirl of cold air around me.

  “Not bad,” Jang’s voice said in my ear. I couldn’t see him. “He practically admitted that he knowingly sent me to my death.”

  I looked around before replying. No one was there to hear me. “He knew the mission wasn’t safe at least,” I said. “And he mentioned the possible connection to the Dragon Society—did you hear that part?”

  Jang’s ghostly form started to materialize, his long locks swaying as he nodded thoughtfully.

  Seeing him reminded me to ask, “Are there other ghosts on this ship?” I had to get that out of the way.

  His wispy face registered surprise. “Not that I know of. And especially not pirates. The ship’s shamans would have laid their spirits to rest to prevent them from cursing the Pale Lightning.”

  So the XO had been right. Then something else occurred to me. “You wouldn’t do anything like that, would you? Curse the ship?”

  “Of course not.” But the answer came after a pause.

  By the time I thought to ask about his hesitation, Jang had vanished again.

  Later that day, I shared a shift on the bridge with Sujin. Miraculously, the captain hadn’t reported me to Lieutenant Ju-Won. If he had, I would have been stuck with something much less appetizing, like scrubbing toilets again.

  Lieutenant Hyosu had explained that we needed to be on our best behavior when we were on the bridge. “We hope this will never be necessary,” she had said, “but everyone needs to be familiar with how the bridge operates in case there’s an emergency and the rest of us go down. Of course”—she had grimaced—“if, as a cadet, you’re the last person standing on the ship, good luck. . . .”

  Thanks for the friendly reminder, I thought.

  Sujin and I walked toward the elevator that would take us to the bridge level. The goblin was more subdued than usual, and it made the distance seem to stretch forever. Had they heard about my run-in with the captain? If so, I wished they’d just ask me about it and end the suspense.

  The elevator was big enough to hold a good dozen people, but it was just the two of us. Sujin leaned over the panel with its glowing buttons and punched in the elevator code. The security measure wouldn’t do more than slow down an attacker, yet I supposed it was better than nothing.

  This would be my first time on the bridge, although I couldn’t let that slip. Would Hwan be there? My heart was beating too fast, and I was breathing so hard that Sujin noticed.

  “What’s the matter?” they asked. “You seem antsy. Didn’t you like it last time? Or did you like it too much?” they added with a smile.

  I shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “It’s no big deal. We’re just observing, right?”

  “Sure,” Sujin said. “But people get superstitious about time on the bridge. They think they’ll advance faster if they linger there.”

  It wasn’t exactly a consideration for me, because I was an imposter, but I could see why some cadets might have felt that way. It was the closest they got to seeing officers in action.

  The elevator arrived and we stepped onto the bridge. The executive officer sat on a raised dais in the middle of the room. The other crew members were arranged at various stations in a semicircle around her. No captain in sight, I noted with relief.

  “Cadets Sujin and Jang reporting for duty,” Sujin said crisply as we saluted.

  I wondered, if I ever returned home, would I accidentally salute my aunties when they called my name? Of course, whether I’d recognize my own name at all was an open question at that point.

  “You’re on time,” the XO said, so dryly that it sounded like a criticism. “Today you’ll be shadowing Navigation.” She waved a hand toward one of the stations, where an ensign gestured for us to take up positions to either side of his seat. We’d have to stand the entire shift, but I didn’t mind.

  I stared in wonder at the navigational display. Far bigger and more complex than the one we’d had in the sim module, it showed a holographic map of the region and the Gates we were passing through. Inhabited star systems, which burned like fierce white points, were labeled, while Gates showed up as purple spheres. On either side, additional digital indicators in blue and red reported the status of the ship’s shields, engines, and so on, just like in the Red Azalea’s cockpit.

  “All right, Cadet Jang,” the ensign said. “What do you remember about this?” He pointed to a shimmering shape on his control panel. At the moment the circle glowed a calm violet.

  I knew the answer to this one. “That means we’re traveling through a Gate,” I said. “Blue means we’re in regular space.”

  “And why is it important to keep track?” the ensign asked Sujin.

  “We can’t carry out certain maintenance operations while the ship is Gating,” Sujin said.

  “Give me an example,” the ensign urged.

  “Well, for one, we can’t go out onto the hull while we’re in the Gate.”

  The ensign kept prodding. “What happens if there’s a hull breach?”

  Sujin winced at the thought.

  “Go on,” the ensign said. “It’s a possibility we have to be prepared for.”

  “If there’s a hull breach,” Sujin continued, “the ship is at risk of getting stuck in the Gate and never coming out again. That’s why we have to be absolutely certain the hull is in good shape before we Gate.”

  “Correct,” the ensign said. “But sometimes you don’t have much choice.” His mouth twisted. “As long as the shields stay up, most battle cruisers are tough beasts. But if there is a shield malfunction and the ship is compromised by enemy fire, even minor hull damage can prevent a ship from Gating to another location for safety. And once it’s trapped, predators can move in.”

  The ensign turned to me. “Cadet Jang, tell me another problem with being stuck in a Gate.”

  “We can’t depart the ship,” I said. I’d been thinking about this ever since I’d heard of the deserters. “No extravehicular activity—no leaving on shuttles or in escape pods, nothing.”

  “That’s right.”

  Something didn’t add up. Jun and his comrades couldn’t have left while the battle cruiser was in a Gate. They would’ve had to plan their escape for sometime when the Pale Lightning was on patrol in normal space. But if the crew hadn’t been preoccupied with Gating, how did no one notice a departing shuttle? Was security that lax? And why did the captain leave the area instead of trying to retrieve and punish the deserters? Especially deserters who might have had information about the location of the Dragon Pearl . . .

  What was going on?

  I tried to concentrate on what the ensign was telling us about other navigational maneuvers, but it was almost impossible.

  I needed different information—information he couldn’t provide—and I knew what I had to do to get it.

  I had to get into the captain’s quarters. For the next several days, I planned my approach. I glided by his door a couple times whenever I found an excuse to be on the senior officers’ deck.
The door had a lock, of course. Could I pick it without tripping an alarm? While locks weren’t my specialty, they couldn’t be much more difficult than any other electronic system.

  The cadets’ barracks only had simple locks that opened in response to passcodes. Many of the cadets didn’t bother covering their hands when they punched in their numbers, and most of the crew was similarly trusting. By simple observation I had learned a scattering of passcodes all around the ship, even to areas where a mere cadet shouldn’t have access.

  The senior officers’ deck was another matter. Their locks didn’t just have passcodes—they also required fingerprint identification. Ironically, the fingerprint was going to be the easiest part for me to get around. I didn’t have a lot of practice making tiny, subtle changes to my body, but I thought I could manage it.

  “What do you want with that litmus film?” Haneul asked me when she caught me with a small roll of the stuff in Hydroponics. Watching Sujin use it to check the acidity of a nutrient solution had given me the idea. I bet the film would take impressions of fingerprints just fine.

  I grinned at her and stretched a piece of it back and forth, like thin taffy. “I like playing with it.”

  Haneul rolled her eyes. “Do you ever take anything seriously? And don’t try eating that. Technically, it’s edible, but it’ll taste awful.”

  I mimed putting it in my mouth, and she made a face and walked away. Once she’d turned her back, I pocketed the roll, smoothing my jacket over it so it wouldn’t stick out too obviously. One obstacle down.

  I didn’t get much time to celebrate, however. A little while later, just as I’d stashed the roll with my—Jang’s—personal belongings, an alarm went off. The blaring siren made it almost impossible to think. For a heart-stopping moment I thought that someone had unmasked me, and I jumped.