by Yoon Ha Lee
“They can’t fire at us so close to their own hull,” the pilot said, rapid and breathless, “but I can only keep this up for so long.”
I started to ask what he recommended doing, then realized he wasn’t talking to me.
“Well, you’re going to have to buy me a few more minutes,” the engineer’s voice snapped from the internal comm channel. “You don’t want us botching the Gate.”
I had an idea. “Put me on the channel to the Pale Lightning.”
To my gratitude, the pilot didn’t argue. He punched another button without looking at me. Good thing, too. I wanted him to concentrate on what he was doing.
I thought of how much Captain Hwan intimidated me. I could use that same predatory presence to my advantage. “This is Captain Hwan,” I said, pitching my voice low, and adding a growl for good measure. “Stand down immediately.”
I heard bewildered murmurs and gasps on the other end. “C-Captain?” someone said.
“Ignore them!” Hwan snapped. “It’s an imposter.”
The murmurs quieted. I imagined the scene on the bridge. While I didn’t think the captain would face an out-and-out mutiny, any hesitation or confusion would work in our favor.
I had thought the pilot would harangue the engineer to hurry up. Instead, he kept silent. I was impressed by his discipline. It made sense: The more he distracted her, the harder it would be for her to get the job done.
In the meantime, I had a part to play as well. “Don’t listen to the real imposter,” I said, torn between taking pleasure in toying with Captain Hwan from a safe distance and feeling guilty about tricking the cadets and crew members. “Don’t you know he’s deliberately been sabotaging the ship? You need to stop him.” I deepened my voice further on that last sentence.
“Not bad,” the scholar said, softly, so the crew on the Pale Lightning wouldn’t pick up his voice.
Our ship’s internal comm channel crackled to life. “Ready,” the engineer said tersely.
The pilot stabbed the channel to the Pale Lightning closed in the middle of Captain Hwan’s answering tirade. I felt a vengeful glow of satisfaction, like when I had slammed the door on my mom’s lectures when I was a kid, except better, because this time I was going to get away with it. I hoped.
“Go,” the scholar breathed.
The pilot didn’t have to be told twice. He pushed the joystick again. I bit my tongue as the ship suddenly rocketed away from the Pale Lightning.
The battle cruiser opened fire on us. Our ship swerved, and the pilot grinned fiercely as his fingers danced over the controls. “Thank all the heavens for advanced electronic countermeasures,” he said.
He was jamming the missiles’ tracking mechanisms. I watched in tense fascination as the missiles swerved away from us, fanned out, then doubled back on the Pale Lightning. I caught my breath, not wanting the projectiles to hit the battle cruiser and hurt my friends.
My heart clenched. I wished there had been another way for me to find out what had happened to Jun. Could I have gotten help from Haneul and Sujin without lying to them about who I was and why I cared about him?
Too late now.
As we plunged through the silent cacophony of missiles exploding off our starboard bow, the Gate bloomed open before us, a hole of whirling pearly blue-violet light in the black depths of space. The colors captivated me despite the danger we were in. My breathing slowed in rhythm with the pulsing of the light.
The pilot whispered what I recognized as a spacer’s prayer that heaven would see us safely through the Gate. The scholar repeated it a heartbeat later. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the Gate’s swirls still appeared behind my eyelids. I was dazzled briefly by visions of dragons and tigers chasing each other across a sky in which lightning flickered and crackled.
With effort, I shook myself free of the Gate-visions. For a moment I wondered why my body felt so heavy and unfamiliar; then I remembered that I was still impersonating Captain Hwan.
Since I certainly wasn’t fooling anyone in the ship we’d escaped in (whose name I still didn’t know), I shifted back into my own human form for the first time in weeks. A sense of pressure I hadn’t even been conscious of eased from my bones. I couldn’t relax, exactly, but I felt more comfortable.
I’d forgotten I had an audience. The scholar, Chul, was watching me with intent, curiously bright eyes. “I’d heard the old tales,” he said, “but I never would have thought that a fox would care about terraforming.”
He was referring to the powers of the Dragon Pearl. Once, I would have snapped a retort, thinking of the way plants struggled to grow on Jinju, with its unrelenting dust and its infrequent rain. I didn’t trust Chul enough, though, to reveal anything to him about my past. I merely said, “Maybe foxes are more complicated than you think.”
The pilot cleared his throat, then called the engine room. “How soon before we can make another Gate, Sh—?” His eyes flickered to me; then he clamped his mouth shut.
Foxes didn’t have the ability to use people’s names against them, at least not that I had heard of, but I couldn’t blame the others for taking precautions. Chul hadn’t shown any concern over the fact that I knew his name, so I guessed I didn’t possess any magic in that area.
At first all I heard from the engineer was a clattering followed by a string of curses. Then she laughed breathlessly. I wondered if she was quite right in the head.
I peeked over at the pilot’s displays, silently thanking Lieutenant Hyosu for her lessons. I might not have the full training of a genuine Space Forces cadet under my belt, but I’d picked up the basics.
We had emerged not far from a star ringed by a massive planet, likely a gas giant where even dragons wouldn’t be able to survive without magical protection. Jun had taught me about such things when we were children, spinning stories of all the worlds we’d explore together. While I couldn’t see more than a faint ruddy disc in the scan display, I longed for Jun to be sitting in the cockpit, looking at the planet with me.
A station orbited the planet, and readouts indicated that ships were docking and taking off from there. A light flashed: The station was hailing us, waiting for a response. I glanced at the pilot, but he shook his head.
“All right,” the engineer said through a burst of static. The laughter had drained from her voice. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“All the news,” Chul said.
She snorted. “The good news is that we can manage two more jumps.”
“And the bad?”
“That we can manage two more jumps.”
I thought furiously. “One jump to get us to the Fourth Colony,” I guessed, “and one to get us away. Then we’re stuck until we can recharge the Gate drive, and that’s when they can attack us.”
The pilot arched an eyebrow at me. “Not bad,” he said grudgingly.
“We have to try it anyway,” Chul said, rubbing his eyes. “As much as I’d prefer to make a run for it, we made a bargain”—he eyed me—“and we’re out of money. If we succeed in retrieving the Pearl, we’ll at least be able to scare up a loan at whichever station we escape to.”
I fought back a spasm of disgust, not just because of his interest in the money, but because of my own. While it was easy for me to judge him, was I really much better? Chul sought wealth on behalf of the people depending on him. I was doing the same thing, just on a different scale. Sure, I could talk about bringing prosperity to Jinju, but I longed for some of that prosperity for my own family. My mind flashed back to Nari’s luxuriously appointed office in the gambling parlor, and how I had thirsted to have something like that for myself.
The pilot and the engineer were arguing over some repair that the latter had jury-rigged. “You realize our luck is going to be bad, the way our gi flows are wobbling right now,” she was saying.
I stifled a flinch. The disturbance in the gi flows could be the result of damage the ship had sustained, of course. It could also be due to Jang’s presence.
“It can’t be that bad if we’ve gotten this far,” the pilot said. “Anyway, we shouldn’t linger here. The station is getting suspicious.” He grinned at me, not in a friendly way. “Ready for another jump?”
“The sooner the better,” I said. Once it was fully repaired, the Pale Lightning, with its bigger, more powerful Gate drive, would be able to jump more times than us before it had to recharge. Worse, they knew where we were headed. Our only hope was to retrieve the Dragon Pearl first so we’d have a bargaining chip.
“I agree,” Chul said.
He was going along with everything too easily, even though the three of them could easily overpower me now that we were on their ship. Was this a trap? Was there an angle I hadn’t thought of? If he was making me nervous, he undoubtedly felt the same way about me.
“Is there anything you can do to improve our luck?” the pilot asked me. He was meeting my gaze with an effort, as though he was afraid I might leap out of my seat and eat him.
“I don’t have that kind of power,” I said. I didn’t like revealing even that much about fox magic.
My guess was that Chul would know if I lied. Could he also sense that we had a ghost on board? Wisely, Jang had not revealed his presence other than the occasional wisp of cold air at my side. If the scholar could resist Charm, he might know ways to harm fox spirits or ghosts, too. I didn’t want to find out.
“We’ll just have to take our chances,” Chul said, “and hope the Pale Lightning is not already waiting for us at the Fourth Colony.”
I doubted it would be, after my additional sabotage, but I kept that to myself, too.
The engineer said, “Things are as good as they’re going to get on my end. Do it.”
I caught myself holding my breath and forced myself to inhale and exhale normally. It wouldn’t do for the others to figure out how nervous I was. I’d come so far from Jinju. I wasn’t about to let Captain Hwan stop me now.
“Here goes nothing,” the pilot said. His hands moved over the controls, and the ship veered away from the station. One of the lights on his panel was still blinking, indicating that the station was still waiting for us to identify ourselves. I didn’t say anything. They were going to have to live with never knowing who we were or what we were up to, and if they reported us to the Pale Lightning after we were gone, well, that wouldn’t come as any surprise.
As the Gate drive activated, the ship vibrated enough that my teeth chattered. It hadn’t done that the last time, and I hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. My fingernails dug into the arms of my seat as I prepared for a rough jump.
The first sign that something had gone wrong was the color of the Gate itself. I’d gotten used to the beautiful purplish swirls of light. This time, the Gate was a white sharper than snow, keener than knives. It stabbed my vision. Even though I closed my eyes, I was terrified that all I’d be able to see forever after was that piercing white abyss.
I peeled one eye open, then the other. The pilot had paled. Despite his calm face, Chul’s hands were clenched on the armrests.
“Let me guess,” I whispered. “It’s not supposed to look like that.”
“Good guess,” the pilot said.
Normally I would have reacted to his sarcasm, but I couldn’t blame him for his anxiety, not when I shared it.
Through the viewports all we could see was that uncanny white light. Shadows were hard-edged, shapes reduced to riddles. It was so bright I could barely distinguish colors from each other anymore.
Then the light shuddered out, and we emerged near the Fourth Colony, home of the ghosts.
We shot out of the Gate into orbit around the Fourth Colony. The planet curved beneath us, its surface violet-green. Whirling, eerie white clouds hid some of the land and ocean from view. If those were storms, I didn’t want to get caught up in them.
The black backdrop of space and its scatter of stars looked innocent enough. I let out a sigh of relief over the fact that I didn’t spot the Pale Lightning’s bulk, even though I knew logically it wouldn’t be there.
That jump wasn’t so bad.
The thought didn’t last long. Suddenly, sparks sizzled and leaped from every display in a shocking cacophony of light and foul black smoke. I caught a glimpse of the monitors blackening and cracking, and I cringed from the sound. Then everything went dark.
We’d been hit. I was sure I was dead. I’d made it almost all the way to the Fourth Colony just to be smudged into oblivion by a missile. I was torn between terror and outrage at the unfairness of the whole situation. No wonder ghosts lingered to haunt the living with their complaints.
Then the smoke irritated my lungs and I began coughing and wheezing. Tears streamed from my eyes and I wiped my face furiously. I was pretty sure the dead didn’t suffer runny noses, either.
“Oh no,” Jang’s thready voice said in my ear, accompanied by a freezing blast of wind. “This is all my fault.”
A lump rose in my throat. Mine as much as yours, I mouthed, trusting that he’d be able to understand me.
“Status,” Chul said before he, too, started to cough.
“The Pale Lightning beat us here,” the pilot said hoarsely. It sounded as though he was speaking through a hand over his nose and mouth. Good idea—it reduced the effects of the smoke. “We must have been stuck in that warped Gate for so long, they got here first by using different Gates. And they seeded the area with EMP mines.”
Electromagnetic pulses. The Pale Lightning had shielding against EMPs, but this ship didn’t, apparently. And I hadn’t seen any sign of mines . . . but then I remembered one of Lieutenant Hyosu’s lectures on the subject. In space you wouldn’t necessarily detect any glow. The first time you’d know was when you ran into one and all your systems fizzled out.
The darkness—both inside and outside the ship—unnerved me. On a planet, even on a clouded night, you still had faint hazy light filtering from the sky, and of course the domes and settlements had artificial lighting. Out here in space, near a dead colony, there was little for us to see by. In this region there wasn’t much in the way of starlight.
Also, we had no artificial gravity anymore. I hadn’t noticed it at first, because I’d been too busy trying to adjust to the darkness. But my stomach and inner ear complained, and I was overcome by nausea. Good thing I hadn’t eaten recently. I was pretty sure puking in null-gee was even more disgusting than doing it was in normal gravity. Just the thought made my gorge rise.
I growled slightly at the clomping sound of magnetic boots, then caught a whiff of mixed smoke and sweat and realized it was the engineer. She tapped the bulkheads as she went so she wouldn’t bang into things. I heard her rummaging around and wondered what she was up to. Then something crackled, and a pale green chemical light flooded the cockpit.
“These light sticks might make it easier for any boarders to find us,” she said as her shadow loomed against the deck, “but it beats hanging around in the dark unable to get anything done. Let me guess”—she nodded at the pilot—“mines?”
“We emerged in one of the standard lanes, and they were waiting for us,” the pilot said. The green light made a bizarre sickly mask of his face.
We got out of our seats to retreat from the billowing smoke, but we couldn’t escape it entirely. The first order of business was to get suited up. The EMP attack meant that our life support system was down, too, and if intruders breached the hull, we’d lose atmosphere. I was grateful for the shielding on the suits’ locker, which ensured that the suits’ old-fashioned boots hadn’t been demagnetized.
According to the engineer, with the four of us on board, we had about twelve hours before the lack of power to the air recyclers would become an issue. I could extend that time a little by taking on an inanimate shape, like a table, but that meant I wouldn’t be able to help the others. Once we put the helmets on, the suits themselves would provide us with enough air to last for twenty-four hours, with two backup canisters apiece. The dubious silver lining was that none of us
believed the Pale Lightning would leave us alone for that long.
“That’s it, then,” Chul said. His voice sounded calm, but I could smell his bitterness. “We’re floating here without power of any kind and Captain Hwan can capture us at his leisure. I doubt he’ll be merciful this time around.”
I felt a stab of guilt. If it weren’t for my plan, the mercs wouldn’t be in this position. Then I reminded myself that they’d already been looking for the Dragon Pearl. They would have run into Captain Hwan anyway.
The engineer knelt and popped open a locker I hadn’t spotted earlier. She drew out a toolkit. “I can’t do much with the tools when we’re in this condition, but we might as well arm up.”
She also pulled out a blaster, which she holstered in her belt, then a second one, which she gave to the pilot. “Sorry,” she said to Chul, who remained empty-handed. “I know how bad your aim is.”
Chul gave her a pained smile. “I’m not offended.”
The engineer presented the scholar with a miniature welding torch from the kit and showed him how to use it. “This may come in handy in a fight,” she said. Then she added, “If you burn your face off, don’t blame me.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
It irritated me how, even now, they consciously avoided addressing each other by name around me. I’m not the enemy, I wanted to say.
On the other hand, for all they knew, I’d been working with the captain all along and had set them up. No wonder they were paranoid.
I noticed, too, that they hadn’t offered me any weapon.
I wasn’t the only one who saw that. “Should I surprise them so you can grab one of the guns?” Jang whispered in my ear. “I could spook them good.”
I considered it, then gave a tiny headshake. I didn’t want to start a firefight with my so-called allies. If we faced hostiles, the mercenaries were likely to have better aim than I did. Besides, I had fox magic and they didn’t, so I wasn’t defenseless.