Dragon Pearl(72)

It wasn’t Jang. It was someone else I knew.





Sujin figured it out before I did. “Cadet Jun!”

My brain finally caught up. “No,” I whispered. My heart sputtered in my chest, and for a moment I was afraid it would stop beating entirely. “Jun, you can’t be . . . can’t be . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word, as if doing so would make it real.

The captain had told me that he’d stowed Jun away somewhere. Did he not know Jun was . . . ? Or had Hwan lied to me?

Tears pricked my eyes. How long had Jun been like this? Silently I berated myself for all the time I’d wasted getting to the Fourth Colony, all the hours I’d spent doing silly chores on the Pale Lightning while impersonating Jang. If I’d acted sooner, could I have saved my brother from this fate? My stomach clenched with guilt.

I fleetingly thought of the stupid bet I’d made with my cousin Bora about Jun coming home. I’d lost. We’d all lost.

How would I ever tell my mother?

The tears started rolling down my cheeks, and I reached up to scrub them away. Haneul awkwardly patted my shoulder. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Sujin made soft comforting noises. I didn’t know how to thank either of them, but I was glad for their presence, warm and solid and alive.

My brother half smiled at me. I forced myself to study him closely. His long hair, the spectral flames, the way his body faded out from the waist down so I couldn’t see his legs . . . I couldn’t deny the truth, no matter how much I wanted to.

“Yes,” Jun said. “I’m sorry, little sister. I no longer dwell in the world of the living.”

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth against a howl. To come this far only to discover that I was too late, that it had probably been too late before I’d even set out. All my dreams—his dreams, our dreams—were over. We would not serve together in the Space Forces. We would not save our planet or travel the Thousand Worlds. Who would I look up to now?

“What happened?” I asked at last. It was difficult to breathe.

“I agreed to work with Captain Hwan to get the Dragon Pearl away from the ghosts and bring it back,” Jun said. His tone was eerily matter-of-fact. “I came down here with a landing party from the Pale Lightning. We didn’t survive the experience.”

“So it wasn’t desertion,” Sujin said.

“I knew it,” said Haneul. “Captain Hwan misled us all.”

None of this was a surprise to me. I’d read about the captain’s plan in his logbook. But something Jun had said bothered me. I made myself think, despite the stabbing feeling in my heart. He’d said agreed to work with. Captain Hwan had claimed Jun proved to be less than cooperative. Those two things didn’t add up.

Jun’s next words interrupted my train of thought. “Come on,” he said. “The rain doesn’t bother me anymore”—his simple acceptance of being dead made me feel even worse—“but we’ve got to get the three of you to shelter. I can take you to our landing site. Staying in the shuttle will be better than using the few survival items you’ve got, and we have extra supplies as well. If you need to, you can use the shuttle’s comm gear to signal for rescue.”

I glanced nervously at Haneul and Sujin. With Hwan looking for us, signaling for help was the last thing I wanted to do. I was about to say so, when Sujin said, “Show us the way.”

I didn’t argue. Why bother? We could discuss the situation once we got there. Details like this felt insignificant when I’d made it to the Ghost Colony only to discover that my brother was one of the ghosts.

Jun floated ahead of us, his phantom flames lighting the way. I couldn’t help wincing at every flicker. They couldn’t hurt him anymore, but they indicated how he’d died.

Died. As we sloshed after Jun, my eyes stung. How had it happened? If the shuttle was still intact enough to provide shelter and supplies, then he couldn’t have been killed in a crash landing . . . I thought, trying to console myself.

“The rocks are going to be slippery,” Jun warned as we approached a faint trail zigzagging up a hill. Water ran down it in glistening rivulets. We splashed onward. I was pretty sure my toes resembled wrinkled prunes from being soaked for so long, and the rest of my skin wasn’t much better.

Haneul only nodded. If she and Sujin were having any dire thoughts about being lured to their deaths by a fox spirit, as in all the stories the humans told about my ancestors, they were keeping them under wraps.

As we crested the top of the hill, my question was answered. We saw the ruins of a shuttle, half-crumpled, part of it buried beneath layers of upflung earth. A sob of anguish tore its way out of my throat and I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t stay there, the site of my brother’s death.

Lights emerged from the crash site. Six spirits, including my brother, floated up and surrounded us. All of them had long, tangled hair and were outlined by unnatural fire.

Spooked, Sujin jammed their cap on their head and disappeared. Haneul and I stood back-to-back. My legs trembled with exhaustion, but I knew I couldn’t give in to weakness, not now.

Jun turned to face a taller woman—did height mean anything when you didn’t have legs and hovered in the air?—and saluted. It was the first time I’d ever seen him do so, and it underscored how little I knew about his life after he’d left home.