Dragon Pearl(37)

“They probably just heard a rumor about the Dragon Pearl’s location, got greedy, and struck out on their own,” Sujin said. “But if that’s the case, it’s odd that the captain didn’t try harder to locate them. . . .”

The more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. If Jun had known something about the Dragon Pearl, he should have told the captain. Unless he couldn’t trust Hwan for some reason. . . . I winced involuntarily.

Luckily, Haneul misinterpreted my expression. “We shouldn’t keep talking about mercs in front of Jang,” she said to Sujin.

“It’s all right,” I said hastily. “I’ll double-check any personal shield I use in the future!” I meant it, too.

In the back of my mind, I heard Jang’s dry chuckle. So he was somewhere nearby. I wondered what he thought of this conversation.

Sujin wasn’t done talking about the deserters. “The other strange thing,” they said, “is that we should have been able to track the shuttle pretty easily. Shuttles can’t outrun a big battle cruiser like the Pale Lightning, and they shouldn’t be able to hide from one, either.”

I hadn’t thought of that before, but the anomaly bothered me, too. Had someone covered for their escape? If so, they must be lying low. No wonder Captain Hwan was touchy about the subject.

For the rest of the baduk match, those questions distracted me. Haneul defeated me handily, which meant that I had to pick up some of her chores. I didn’t care—I was too busy dreaming of ways to dig up more information.

Afterward, I made my excuses and went back to the barracks to think. For a change, no one else was there.

No one, that is, except Jang.

“Hello,” I said awkwardly. “I’ve been making progress. Did you hear what Lieutenant Hyosu said about increased merc activity—?”

“You made me a promise,” he said. Cold air whirled around him, making me shiver, and his long, ragged hair fell about his face. “You keep getting distracted by the deserters. I don’t care about them.”

I suppressed a growl. Jun wasn’t a distraction. He was the whole reason I was there! But I had to appease Jang. “Yes, I understand,” I said in my most soothing voice. “I won’t let you down.”

“You’d better not,” he said, “or you’ll regret it.” He laid his hand on mine, then vanished, leaving behind a chill that went all the way to the bone.





At mess the next morning, I accidentally dropped my chop-sticks on the floor, and while I was retrieving them, I knocked my head on the table and spilled my gruel.

Sujin asked, “What’s wrong with you today?”

Jang’s threat weighed heavily on me. I needed answers for him and had no more time to waste. “The mercs who almost fried me,” I asked, “how much do we know about them?”

“None of them survived, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Haneul said. Her eyes softened as she regarded me. “This has been bothering you for a while, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, which was close enough to the truth. At the least, it was bothering Jang—the real Jang. “These pirates looking for the Dragon Pearl . . . are they all working together?”

“Oh, there’s no chance of that,” Sujin said. “If the pirates joined forces, they’d be a real threat. But it’s impossible for individual merc captains to trust each other. They’d rather sell each other out for a quick profit. That’s what our officers always say, anyway.”

“Why were they foolish enough to attack that freighter,” I asked, “when they knew we were in the area?”

Haneul stirred her gruel, thinking. “They might have thought its captain was another pirate with new information about the Pearl.”

Byung-Ho, a pirate? Just in time, I stopped myself from saying that out loud. I didn’t think he had it in him.

But then I remembered something: All those crates that had been stacked in the hold. Were those smuggled items? Could one of them have contained the Pearl? He hadn’t wanted me to see them. . . .

Sujin and Haneul were staring at me, because I’d been quiet for too long. “Yeah. They must be desperate for leads,” I offered.

“I’ll say.” Haneul glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Hey, we’d better clean up if we’re going to make it to class on time.”


That day’s lessons were on engineering. Afterward, Hyosu took me aside. My friends shot me worried glances as they left me behind.

The lieutenant peered down at me over her glasses. I tensed, thinking I was about to get lectured, but instead she said, “You’ve been studying hard, haven’t you?”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” I stammered. What was I going to say, no?

Hyosu beamed at me. “Well, keep it up. You’re doing much better than the last time we discussed the subject.”

So engineering hadn’t been Jang’s strong suit. I wondered what he had been good at. It really didn’t matter anymore, though. I had to get by with my own strengths and weaknesses now.

I thanked her and made my way toward the mess hall, where I had KP duty. I took one of the less frequented corridors. “Jang,” I called softly. “You around?”

He appeared, his hair even longer and more disheveled than the last time I’d seen it. Maybe it was my imagination, but the unnatural breeze that usually accompanied him didn’t feel as cold as usual.