Dragon Pearl(45)

In its way, redirecting flows was like sewing—gathering up the lines of gi and guiding them to their proper channels. When I’d mended clothes at home, my mother had often criticized the crookedness of my stitches, much to my annoyance. Here, I sweated to make the flows as even as possible.

In my imagination, the ten ships crowded closer to us. I listened for explosions, waited for the deck to shake beneath my feet. But no alarms went off; the ship sounded remarkably normal. I almost wished there were some evidence of the attack. It was hard to take it seriously when I was walled up in Engineering with no view.

Then I heard shouting and a string of curses. Sujin jumped back from their workstation, clutching their side. An enormous burning line of light had seared the goblin from the neck all the way to their waist, as though someone had slashed them with a whip of fire, severing their safety harness in the process. Sujin struggled to remain upright, then slumped to the deck, unconscious.

Without thinking, I rushed over to my friend. The status indicators in their station flashed a garish red. “Cadet Sujin needs help!” I cried.

“Take over Sujin’s work for now,” the engineering chief said tersely.

As I sat in Sujin’s chair, I could hear the chief calling Medical for assistance. I hoped they’d be able to revive the goblin and do something for those burns, which stank of charred flesh. Meanwhile, my engineer mentor swore and assumed the functions I’d been overseeing.

I could tell at once what had happened. Something had damaged Meridian 3, and the resulting backlash had burned Sujin along the corresponding meridian of their own body. Suddenly I appreciated how dangerous engineering work could be. By taking up Sujin’s station, I was risking my life in the same way. But I was acting the part of Jang, and I couldn’t let down my friends, or the rest of the crew.

The next minutes passed in a haze as I frantically wrestled with the lashing currents of gi. I kept flinching from the task, remembering the livid burns inflicted on my friend. It didn’t help that I could hear their ragged breathing behind me.

Yet the longer I managed the flows, the more natural the task felt. Whenever I wasn’t sure what to do, I just trusted my instincts. Sure, it might have been dangerous, but it was producing good results. I could almost see the flows as a tapestry I was weaving.

Finally, an orderly arrived to take Sujin to Medical. I could only spare the goblin a glance as the orderly hoisted them onto a hover-pallet. Don’t get distracted, I told myself.

As I became more confident in my work, I was able to listen to the others’ terse conversations with half an ear.

The chief engineer was in constant touch with Captain Hwan on the comm channel. “We’ll either have to run soon, or figure out some clever way to outfight the remaining nine ships,” she was saying. “The gi is stable for now, but I can’t guarantee that the current state of affairs is going to last.”

“You’re going to have to do your best,” Captain Hwan said from the bridge. “We need to take them alive if we can.”

“Take them—?” The chief engineer swore at him. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

“Do your job,” the captain said calmly.

“You requested this mission,” the chief engineer said bitterly. “Even knowing this entire sector is bad luck, and it’s only going to worsen the closer we get to the Fourth Colony.”

“I said, do your job,” the captain repeated, more menacingly, and the chief engineer shut up.

I flinched as if Hwan had addressed me. The gi currents bucked and trembled, and I scrabbled at the controls, worried that I hadn’t reacted in time. But the flows steadied, and I sighed in relief.

I’d relaxed too soon. The gi snarled again like fouled thread, knotting up dangerously. What had I done wrong? I gasped as my insides clenched, feeling as though someone had punched me in the gut. Not just that: A burning sensation roared up through my body, and my vision swam.

Luckily, one of the warrant officers had been keeping an eye on me—probably because she didn’t trust me to get things right, but at the moment I didn’t care about that. She ordered someone to key in an override from another station.

“Stay alert!” she snapped at me. I had to remind myself that my embarrassment was unimportant when the ship’s safety was at stake. “That wasn’t your foul-up,” she went on. “That was an attack getting through the shields. And if the shields are going down . . .”

I swallowed. Had that burning sensation meant that the ship was in real trouble?

“You feel the connection, don’t you?” the warrant officer said in a low, relentless voice. “That’s good. Give yourself over to it.”

The chief engineer started arguing with the captain again. The racket was giving me a headache. Nevertheless, I forced myself to focus on the warrant officer’s words.

“You were starting to go into Engineer’s Trance,” she said, “synchronizing your gi with the ship’s so it’s like a part of your own body. See if you can do it again.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?” I asked. “Cadet Sujin just—”

“Sujin wasn’t in control,” the warrant officer cut in. “For you it would be different. You seem to have a knack for this, and you’d be going into a trance deliberately. It’ll make guiding the gi flows come more naturally.”