Dragon Pearl

by Yoon Ha Lee

  “Jun?” I whispered in spite of myself, glancing quickly around the room for any sign of him. Nothing. Yet the trace of fox magic was undeniable.

  I tracked the smell. It wasn’t strong by any means, given the weeks that had elapsed, and the general cleanliness of the room—just the faintest trace. I doubted anyone else would have been able to detect it.

  Jun had touched the sword’s hilt. Despite the oils sunken into the leather, and the captain’s own intimidating musk, which had undertones of fire and metal, I could still pick up Jun’s scent on it.

  My alarm grew. What had Jun been doing with the sword? Had he just been fooling around? Or had he threatened the captain with it for some reason? My mouth felt dry. Could Jun have been trying to defend himself . . . ?

  Another possibility came to me—something I’d seen in holodramas, during ceremonial moments. Had Jun sworn an oath on the sword? An oath to the captain? But if that were the case, why had Jun deserted? And why would the captain take a cadet into his confidence in the first place?

  The captain’s predator smell was everywhere, and it made my skin prickle with nerves. I needed to get a move on. Jun’s scent trail didn’t extend beyond the office, so I guessed that any other clues would be in here. They had to be.

  I started with the desk drawers. At first I thought they’d be locked, too, but no. All I had to do was hit the buttons on the latches to make them slide open. Like the bolts holding all the furniture in place, the buttons must have been another precaution, in case everything got tossed around during combat.

  I was surprised to discover that the captain kept some old-fashioned paper logbooks. They were nestled in the top drawer, along with some pens. The other drawers contained various personal effects. A faded, fraying handkerchief embroidered with a magpie for good luck. A stained calligraphy brush with splayed bristles, although there were no inkstones. And the most technologically advanced item—a photo frame that was either broken or out of power. I wondered what these things meant to the captain, but I doubted I would be asking him anytime soon.

  I dug out the notebooks and sniffed again, giving thanks to my ancestors for my fox heritage. I tried to detect traces of Jun’s scent, and also something more—emotion.

  The captain’s scent was all over the notebooks, of course. But I could tell that some had been handled more recently than others. One in particular reeked of desperation. I snatched it up and leafed through it, skimming the passages of vertical text. I hadn’t seen this kind of writing since the aunties had taught me old-fashioned calligraphy, as part of our “cultural heritage.” Back then I’d thought it a waste of time. Most humans didn’t learn it anymore, because everyone used digital slates. Now I was glad I could decipher the writing.

  The captain had legible handwriting, but it looked like he wrote quickly, with heavy strokes. A passage caught my attention because of the texture. He’d crumpled the page at some point.

  The Dragon Pearl is vital, Captain Hwan had written, but not in the way those fools in the Pearled Halls think. The scholars would lock it away and study its religious significance, while the Dragon Society would use it to make the wealthiest worlds even wealthier. I doubt they would allow it out of their hands to benefit others.

  My hand spasmed, and I carefully unclenched it to avoid wrinkling the page. The thought of the Pearl being used to make the wealthy core more fertile, more vital, made me scowl.

  The Pearl could win wars for us, he went on. As a weapon, it would be the ultimate threat, able to devastate an entire world as easily as it could make it blossom.

  I didn’t like where this was going. I’d always thought of dragon magic as benevolent. But deep down I knew it wasn’t that simple, as Haneul could have told me. True, you could use dragon magic to terraform worlds so life could flourish on them, or make the weather pleasant, or encourage crops to grow. That same magic could, as the captain suggested, destroy worlds and turn them into wastelands. It made sense that Hwan would think of the Pearl’s benefits in military terms.

  The next several pages contained terse notes about disciplinary matters on the ship. Under other circumstances I would have lingered over them, but I had more important things to worry about than gossip.

  Then I found another passage about the Dragon Pearl. And this one revealed an interesting detail.

  The cadet is a fox. He will be useful.

  I bit my tongue against a gasp. It had to be Jun! But why had he revealed his gumiho heritage to the captain? And “useful” how? I didn’t like to think of my brother as a pawn.

  I continued flipping through pages, looking for more mentions of Jun or the Pearl. Another sentence jumped out at me: I can’t make a direct approach to the Pearl’s site until the ship is in good repair.

  So Captain Hwan knew where the Dragon Pearl was! That explained why the Pale Lightning was lingering in this area. But we couldn’t land anywhere yet. Last I’d heard, the engineers were still working on Deck 3’s damaged meridian.

  If only I had more details about the location. Myung was only able to tell me so much before her untimely demise. It’s a pity her family didn’t know more about their ancestor’s plans.

  Could Myung be the comrade Hwan had mentioned to me earlier? I remembered the captain’s words: The blaster burned her life short. Whose blaster? Had she known too much for her own good? Was her ancestor the shaman who had vanished with the Dragon Pearl? It all sounded very fishy. . . .

  The next words caused ice to run through my veins.

  The fox cadet is aware of the risks. Short of myself, no one has a better chance of helping the team survive.

  Jun and his comrades hadn’t deserted after all! The captain had sent them on a secret mission.

  The investigator had implied that Jun had shamed our family. I had to find my brother and bring him home. Then Mom would have her son and the truth.

  I flipped ahead a few pages, didn’t see anything more about the site, then backtracked. My heart skipped a beat when I read a line I’d missed the first time.

  We are reasonably certain Charm will work on the dead.

  The dead? Ghosts, I realized, with a sickening feeling.

  This could only mean one thing. Captain Hwan had sent Jun down to the world from which the entire Ghost Sector took its name. The Fourth Colony, better known as the Ghost Colony.

  And if I wanted to retrieve my brother, I’d have to go there after him.

  Heart hammering, I flipped through the rest of the notebook. I didn’t spot anything else obvious in the writing. But a folded sheet of paper had been slipped into the back. I took it out, opened it, and saw that it was a sketched map. The captain had written a set of planetary coordinates on it. He’d also marked a landing site, and a destination.

  For a moment I was tempted to take the map with me, but the captain would notice if it went missing, and I didn’t want to make him more suspicious. Anything that caused him to step up security would make it harder for me to do what I needed to. I studied the sketch with narrowed eyes, committing it to memory.

  My vision grew blurry, and nausea was starting to creep in. If the captain caught me in his quarters, my throwing up all over his carpet wouldn’t help my case. Time to get out of there.

  I made sure to gather Charm around me like a cloak of whispers. I’d hate to have gotten this far only to get caught now. I replaced the notebook in its drawer, making sure the latch closed properly, then padded across the expanse of carpet and out the door.

  When the panel had closed behind me, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I wanted to lean against a bulkhead, maybe even nap standing up, but I couldn’t stop, not there. I forced myself to keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other as though I were walking a tightrope.

  I must have been in worse shape than I thought, because a crew member hurrying through the passages with a crate stopped dead a few feet from me and frowned in my direction. Sweating as I drew upon Charm, I thought at him, I’m not here. There�
�s nothing interesting to see.

  He slowed and shifted the crate in his arms, glancing this way and that. His eyes didn’t focus, though, even when he was looking right at me. He gave a puzzled headshake and continued on his way.

  After what seemed like hours, I slipped back into Medical. They’d given my bed to someone else while I was gone. I hoped they didn’t keep track of who went where during the confusion of battle.

  I recognized the head physician with her white-streaked hair. She was busy consulting a chart, and she had one stylus tucked behind her ear and another in her hand. I eased my way across the room until I came to an empty pallet, and climbed up onto it.

  I had only dozed off for a few minutes, when someone prodded me awake. I sat up and mumbled, “Ma’am?” out of habit. For a second I thought I had missed the morning reveille and was going to get lectured for sleeping through an exciting session of scrubbing floors, or possibly helping out in the galley. The thought of the latter made my stomach protest, and I barely kept myself from retching.

  “Don’t sit up,” the physician said, half a second too late.

  Gratefully, I sank back down, feeling miserable.

  The physician was studying her slate. “You’re Jang. But I thought . . . No matter. We’ll just have to give you your dose a few minutes late. More than a few minutes. I wonder . . .”

  “Dose of what, ma’am?” I asked to distract her from the question of scheduling. My voice came out as a croak. I didn’t want any medicine in my system, even though I would have welcomed relief from the nausea.

  She smiled thinly. “More painkillers. I keep telling those fools in Engineering that they shouldn’t be asking cadets to enter Trance without a lot more training. Open your mouth.” I did, and she dropped a couple of foul-tasting orange pills into it. “Here.” She brought a cup of water to my lips.

  I faked swallowing, and, as soon as she turned away to make a notation, I spat the tablets into my hand. Quickly, I stuffed them into a pocket. I’d just have to live with feeling awful.

  I said, “It was an emergency at the time.”

  The physician harrumphed. “It’s always one emergency or another in Engineering.”

  That sounded like a long-standing argument, and one I didn’t want to get involved with. “Please—is Cadet Sujin all right?”

  The physician relented enough to say, “They’re healing nicely. Don’t fret about them. You should get some rest yourself, Cadet.”

  She moved off, and I closed my eyes again. Although I meant to plan my next move, I fell asleep.

  Some time later, I woke to a familiar voice. Not Haneul’s or Sujin’s, or even the physician’s, but Byung-Ho’s. I opened my eyes and peeked in his direction. He was propped up in a nearby pallet with a tray of rice gruel before him. One of the human medics was fussing over him. He had obviously recovered enough that they could remove him from the healing pod. Or maybe they needed the pod for someone hurt even worse.

  I almost called out to him before remembering that he wouldn’t recognize me, not in Jang’s guise. I used my keen sense of hearing to eavesdrop on what he was saying.

  “You were in a healing coma for quite a while,” the medic informed him.

  “I appreciate all the help, don’t get me wrong,” Byung-Ho was saying to the medic, “but there was someone else on the Red Azalea with me. A girl about so high.” He held out his hand to indicate height. He went on to give a description, which didn’t sound like me. Then I remembered that I’d been going around as Bora. I wondered if half the reason my mom was so dead set against using Charm was how hard it was to keep track of all the details.

  The medic shook their head in bafflement. “Sorry,” they said. “You’re the only one who made it.”

  Byung-Ho’s face sagged. “If only you’d shown up a little earlier . . . Not that I’m complaining about the rescue, but she was too young to die like that.”

  The medic’s face cleared. Comforting people was something they were used to. “That’s always hard,” they said automatically and launched into a standard soothing speech.

  It made me squirm inside, realizing that my welfare was the first thing Byung-Ho had asked about upon waking. Without his help, I would never have made it this far. I wanted to let him know that I was all right. On the other hand, I didn’t want to blow my cover.

  I waited until the medic moved on. Then I gathered up some Charm, which was getting easier with practice. I got out of my pallet, focused on convincing everyone in Medical that the bed was still occupied, and tiptoed over to Byung-Ho. My nausea had passed, and I was so hungry that even his watery gruel smelled tasty.

  “Hello,” I said.

  The Charm I was using made him look not at me but at a spot over my shoulder. “Hello,” he said distantly.

  “The medic, they were wrong. The girl from the Red Azalea . . . she didn’t die. She’s all right,” I said, stumbling over the words. It felt weird talking about myself as though I was some stranger.

  Byung-Ho frowned. “I got her in trouble.”

  More like I’d gotten myself into trouble. I was honest enough to admit that much. “She’s fine,” I assured him.

  “That’s good,” Byung-Ho said slowly, as though he was having difficulty concentrating. He smelled faintly puzzled. “Say, if you get a chance, there’s something I didn’t get to tell her. . . .”

  I’d been about to head off, but he’d piqued my curiosity. “Yes?” I said, trying not to sound too eager.

  “Tell her she should pursue engineering,” Byung-Ho said. “Wherever she learned how to do repairs, she’s good. Really good. A talent like that shouldn’t go to waste.”

  I couldn’t help blushing. Back home, my family had taken my tinkering with machines for granted. But this was the third time someone on the Pale Lightning had complimented my skills. I silently thanked my father for them.

  “Don’t think about her anymore,” I said in a choked-up voice.

  “All right,” he said, his frown easing.

  I made him forget so he would no longer feel guilty about something that wasn’t his fault. As I watched his face relax, I experienced a pang, like I’d lost a friend. But it was too late to change what I’d done. I smiled nervously and returned to my pallet.

  A couple of hours later, a loud tone came over the sound system. I sat bolt upright as though someone had zapped me with lightning. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  The corporal in the pallet next to mine yawned hugely, then cracked her knuckles, making a show of not caring. Her entire leg was in a cast, and I wondered what had happened to her. “Battle must be over,” she said. “If the chief physician isn’t yelling at everyone, the situation can’t be that bad.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. She’d vanished into her office earlier in response to a call from the captain and still hadn’t emerged. I kept eyeing the door nervously, wondering what they were discussing.

  The corporal must have seen me flinch, because she laughed, not unkindly. “Don’t be so nervous, Cadet. Any battle you live through is a good battle.”

  The physician chose that moment to come out. Her brows lowered. “You,” she said to the corporal, “should take things more seriously.”

  Silently, I urged the corporal not to argue with the physician, who looked like she was in a bad mood. I could understand why a doctor wouldn’t enjoy seeing so many people injured. Had anyone died? I hoped not, but I might have missed something while I was sneaking around in the captain’s quarters.

  As if my thought had summoned him, I heard the captain’s voice over the announcement system. “All hands, stand down,” he said. I glanced at the clock on the wall, and my eyes widened. The battle had lasted almost seventeen hours. And I had been unconscious for a good chunk of it.

  When the physician turned to examine the corporal, I felt cold air whoosh against my skin. Jang.

  “Captain Hwan thrives on combat,” he whispered in my ear. “Other captains wouldn’t have fought this
long and risked more casualties, or losing the battle entirely.”

  “We have prevailed against the hostiles,” the captain went on. “Fortunately”—his voice deepened into a purr that made my hair stand on end—“we have captured some of them. I do not anticipate any further threat at this time. However, we will need to put in for repairs. Our next stop will be the shipyard at Abalone Spire.” He went on in this vein for a while.

  I was thinking that our good luck was the captives’ bad fortune when the captain’s words penetrated. Repairs. That meant we weren’t headed directly to the Fourth Colony.

  What did the captain expect to find out from the captives? Were they after the Dragon Pearl, too? If so—my pulse quickened—then I wanted to learn what they knew.

  Captives would be kept in the brig. I’d never been stuck in it, thank goodness, but I knew where it was. I had to get down there.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said to the physician. It would be better if she discharged me so I could save Charm for what was to follow. “I’m feeling a lot better now. Do you think it would be all right for me to go back on duty?”

  The head physician smiled humorlessly at me, but she obliged me with a quick examination, long fingers testing the air above me as she traced the meridians to check for any lasting damage. She followed that by poking and prodding my body with quick, impersonal touches. “You recovered awfully quickly,” she said. My heart seized up, thinking she might have detected my use of fox magic, but she didn’t seem to be suspicious—yet. “You’re cleared to go.”

  Behind me, I heard the corporal say, “Must be nice to be so young and eager to go back to work.”

  “I could swear you broke that leg on purpose,” the doctor retorted. “Do you like it here that much?”

  “No better place for a nap,” she was saying as I left them behind. I was starting to understand the physician’s irritation.

  I guessed that I was supposed to report in to Lieutenant Ju-Won. Would the head physician tell Ju-Won to expect me? Or would the doctor, trusting that I’d go where I was supposed to, send the report later, after she’d dealt with the rest of the casualties? I gambled that she wouldn’t prioritize telling the lieutenant about a single cadet—me—when she had a lot of other patients on her mind.