The attack itself had made no noise, but then we heard a bang from the engine room. My stomach dropped when the musical thrumming of the engines sputtered, then stopped. “What was that?” I whispered.
Byung-Ho blanched. He didn’t hide the truth from me, which I appreciated. “Maneuver drive’s down. We’re just drifting now, thanks to inertia. They’ve herded us away from the Gate, and they’ll be boarding us next.” He triggered a command, and the hatch to the ship’s midsection slid closed. It would give us a little time. “Quick—do you know how to use a blaster?”
I hesitated at the thought of killing. On the other hand, I didn’t want to die.
“Point and shoot—that’s all there is to it,” Byung-Ho said. “With our luck, they’ll have personal shields, too. But I refuse to roll over for them.”
He unholstered a blaster from his belt and handed it to me. “That toggle is the safety. Point it away from me when you flick it off—yes, like that. I keep it fully charged, but in a firefight you may run out of juice.”
“What about you?” I demanded. After all, he’d just given me his gun.
“Don’t worry about me,” Byung-Ho said. “I’ll use the plasma rifle. It’s temperamental. A beginner’s better off with a simple blaster.”
He retrieved the rifle from a compartment behind the pilot’s seat. It looked so large and bulky that I doubted I could have wielded it well, temperamental or not. I was strong for my usual size, thanks to all the menial labor I did, but I wasn’t going to win any wrestling matches. I had good reflexes, though. Maybe that would help.
While we waited for the intruders to arrive, I glanced out the viewport, suddenly resenting the distant stars and the colorful smudges of nebulae. We continued to float along peacefully. The mercs, knowing we couldn’t escape, had stopped firing. Byung-Ho had guessed right—they’d get more valuable scrap out of the Red Azalea if they didn’t shoot it up too much.
Then the ship shuddered, as though something had bumped into us at low speed.
“That’ll be the boarding party,” Byung-Ho said. “Crouch behind the seat and get ready to fire if you see anything.”
My sharp ears picked up the sounds of the mercs aligning one of their ships with ours and forcing the hatch open, then the whine of the airlock cycling. I tensed up. How many of them would come for us?
“Stay steady,” Byung-Ho said. “All that matters now is taking them out and hoping that friends arrive soon.”
He didn’t have to tell me that the situation looked dire. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to let my quest end here, not if I could help it. My palms started to sweat, and I shifted my grip on the blaster.
The mercs were eerily quiet. In the holo shows, boarding parties always yelled threats or fired randomly ahead of themselves. I hadn’t expected this total silence.
That didn’t last long. The smell of ash and sparks and scorched metal caused me to wrinkle my nose, and I peeked out from behind my seat. I heard a thump, then stared in fascinated horror as the mercs started torching their way through the hatch. A cutout panel fell forward with a clang, showering white-hot sparks.
I spotted a flicker, a shadow edging into the Red Azalea’s kitchen. Without thinking, I brought up the muzzle of the blaster and squeezed the trigger. The blast shot out, a straight line of fiery red. Someone with a deep voice snapped orders in jargon I didn’t understand.
The shadow pulled back. Byung-Ho grabbed my arm and dragged me down behind the copilot’s seat. Great timing: A bolt sizzled over me, where my head had been just a second earlier. My heart jumped up into my mouth as I realized how close I’d come to being barbecued.
While I could shape-shift into an inanimate object to fool the mercenaries into thinking Byung-Ho was alone, I didn’t want to abandon him mid-combat. It would only delay the inevitable anyway. Being stuck in the shape of a crate or wrench wouldn’t get me where I needed to go.
Two more bolts flew over my head. I peeked around the side of the seat and fired once at the first shadowy figure I saw. I heard a yelp. Five more people joined the first. Hastily, I withdrew behind cover again before the hostiles could roast me.
Byung-Ho’s rifle bolts crackled down the length of the Red Azalea, throwing up sparks whenever they hit home. He was trying to force the intruders back. There were more of them than there were of us, though, and we were pinned in the cockpit.
Still quiet, the mercs advanced. I wished they would yell curses or threats, mock us, anything. In their sleek jointed suits, they scarcely looked human. One of them darted out and flung a small spiky canister at us: a stun grenade.
Byung-Ho yelled, “Duck!” He shoved me to the side. I hit a wall and yelped as all the breath was knocked out of my lungs.
Seconds later, the grenade went off. The flash blinded me, but I remained standing. I fired wildly, again and again, as I heard Byung-Ho’s bubbling scream.
This is it, I thought. I’m going to die in the middle of nowhere and Mom will never find out what happened to me.
I heard a noise. I aimed at the source of the sound and fired, only to hear the blaster give a discouraging whine. It had run out of power.
Still, I’d hit someone. I heard a curse followed by a dark chuckle. I’m done for, I thought, and then I slid out of consciousness.
I woke in an unfamiliar, well-lit room. I smelled antiseptic and herbs: a medical bay. Someone had transferred me off the Red Azalea and placed me on a cot. I shoved off the blanket and sat up, then winced as all my muscles protested. My skin itched as though I’d gotten sunburned all over. And then I remembered the grenade. Oh no, what had happened to Byung-Ho?
“You’re not dead,” a hollow voice remarked.
I almost leaped out of my skin. I hadn’t realized there was someone standing next to my bed. It was a boy, maybe fifteen years old, in the dark blue uniform of a Space Forces cadet. His name tag said bae jang. Three things about him were off, though. He had no smell, for one. Also, his face flickered as though it were a kaleidoscope of shadows. Finally—the real clue—his hair hung in long, disheveled strands around his face.
My injuries might have affected my sense of smell. The shadows might have been a trick of the light. The hair, though—no one in the Space Forces would have hair that long.
Not unless they were a ghost. In the tales, they always had hair like that.
I scooted back on the pallet, heart thumping in my chest. I remembered the stories my aunties had told me. Ghosts weren’t necessarily unfriendly, but many of them became vengeful over time, especially if the unfinished business that bound them to the world of the living went unresolved for a long period.
“What do you want?” I asked in a low voice, wary. Curtains shielded the rest of the medical bay from my view, but I could hear doctors and nurses speaking authoritatively.
“It was such a stupid way to die . . .” Jang said, almost as if he hadn’t heard me. “I got winged by a merc just as my personal shield failed. No one had seen him hiding.” He smiled sardonically. “Faulty equipment, just my luck.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, still cautious. Would fox magic work on a ghost? Shamans exorcised ghosts as part of their job, but I didn’t have their powers. And I wasn’t sure if trying to Charm Jang would only make him mad. On the other hand, since he had appeared to me, I assumed he wanted to make a bargain. I remembered that much from my aunties’ lore. “Do you need something from me?”
His smile twisted. “We were saving you and your friend when I got injured. The physician tried his best, but I died just half an hour ago.”
My heart fluttered. “We didn’t mean to get you killed.” But we wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for me, I thought guiltily.
“You owe me,” Jang said. “The mercenaries are all dead, but my training cruise is over.”
I thought fast. “What ship are we on?”
“The Pale Lightning,” he said.
The Pale Lightning! What were the odds that I would end up on Jun’s ship?
But how had I gotten here? Jang and the rest of his team had boarded the Red Azalea after the mercs, I guessed. I didn’t remember that at all. I had passed out by then.
I had to take advantage of this stroke of luck. “We can help each other. I need a reason to stay on this ship”—no need to go into detail, as I doubted a ghost would care—“and I can do that if I pose as you. I can continue your training cruise for you.”
Jang’s eyebrows shot up. “How are you going to manage that?”
I cast my eyes down. “I’m a fox.” It felt odd admitting it to a stranger.
“Huh,” he said after a moment, looking thoughtful. “Never heard of a fox in the Space Forces, but why not?”
Interesting reaction. Maybe ghosts were more open-minded than the living.