Dragon Pearl(59)

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.