Welp. I can’t let them catch me at this! I thought. I’d better study hard.
I was going over rank insignia, muttering under my breath as I tried to memorize them, when someone behind me said disapprovingly, “Shouldn’t you know all that by now?”
I squeaked involuntarily. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Haneul chuckled. Maybe she had a sense of humor after all. “I didn’t know your voice could go that high!”
If only you knew, I thought. “I just wanted to review a few things,” I said, hastily closing the handbook file.
Sujin came up next to Haneul. “You haven’t been studying, have you?” they asked. “Isn’t it enough that we have classes all day? This is leisure time. You’re supposed to be doing something fun.”
I wavered. I had so much to learn, but I was getting awfully tired. Surely a break wouldn’t hurt. “Any suggestions?” I asked.
Sujin grinned slyly at me. “You could help me with another taste-testing.”
Uh-oh. If this was a regular occurrence, it would look fishy to turn them down. “Why?” I asked, stalling for time. “What do you have in mind this time?”
“It can’t be any worse than the last concoction,” Haneul said to Sujin. “I don’t know what possessed you to combine spinach with plum tea!”
I made a sour face just thinking of it. “Maybe something that doesn’t have spinach in it?” I suggested.
“Aww, you’re no fun,” Sujin said. “You’re not willing to taste my cinnamon-spinach-egg masterpiece?”
“Um . . .” I looked pleadingly at Haneul.
She crossed her arms. “You’re going to have to get out of this one yourself, Jang.”
“C’mon,” Sujin said. They produced their spork and waved it right under my nose.
The spicy fragrance of cinnamon mingled with the smell of sodden spinach and fried eggs wafted from the spork. I gagged and leaned away. “Uh, I’m not so sure. . . .”
Sujin withdrew the spork, smiling even more broadly. Haneul’s eyes twinkled. I realized they were both teasing me. On an impulse, I stuck out my tongue at them, and we all dissolved into giggles.
After dinner, when I got another moment to myself, I went through Jang’s personal effects for clues about his family and friends. Jang materialized and looked on, his eyes dark and sad. He came from a large family on one of the more important space stations. I found a digital photo frame that cycled through pictures of smiling people in formal clothes, each person helpfully tagged. I memorized their faces. It had to be a wealthy family, if they could afford professional portraits.
“You must miss them,” I said, tilting the frame so Jang could get a good view of the pics.
As a ghost, he was trapped between the world of the living and the world of the dead, unable to visit loved ones in either realm. Most ghosts were bound near the site of whatever had felled them, although I wasn’t sure how that worked when he’d died in space. Before he could move on to his eternal rest, he needed to know what had happened to him.
Jang reached out with insubstantial fingers. They passed through the frame, and he grimaced. “I knew I was signing on for a long tour, but I don’t want it to be eternal.”
“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. I felt bad for ever thinking of him as a distraction.
He drew himself up, and the chilly breeze that always accompanied him swirled by me in a rush. “Just find out more about who killed me.” He gave the photo frame one last look, then vanished.
The next day, I was back to scrubbing toilets again. I’d failed morning inspection for not making my bed properly. I was getting the distinct impression that Lieutenant Ju-Won didn’t like me.
At least I had a helper this time: Sujin. The goblin had gotten caught fiddling with the seasonings in the galley. As Sujin had put it, “The officers don’t appreciate experimental chemistry.”
The chore seemed a lot less tedious when there was someone to talk to. “Tell me, Sujin,” I said as I stretched my aching back, “why is it that on one of the Space Forces’ most modern battle cruisers, as Hyosu is so proud of pointing out, we have to scrub things by hand, instead of relying on robots to do the job?”
“Don’t you know?” Sujin asked sarcastically. “It’s supposed to ‘build our character.’ ”
“How does becoming intimately familiar with the restroom make me a better person?”
“It’s a process,” Sujin said. “Work hard, and maybe someday you’ll graduate to scrubbing a different part of the ship. Then you can become intimately familiar with that instead.”
“Do I dare to dream that big?” I asked with a sigh, and we both laughed.
After a brief silence, Sujin said, “You haven’t talked about it at all.”
I had to keep from wrinkling my nose at the smell of their worry.
“Talked about what?”
“The attack.”
My stomach twisted. All this time I’d been so preoccupied with trying to impersonate the Jang everyone knew, I’d never stopped to consider how the experience on the Red Azalea would have affected him if he’d survived. I’d been trying to act normal, to fit in. I hadn’t wanted to seem like a coward, or to draw attention to myself. But now it looked like that plan might have backfired.
While I didn’t know anything about what Jang had experienced in his final moments, I did remember how afraid I’d been when the mercenaries came for Byung-Ho and me. “I was sure it was going to be the end,” I said with perfect honesty. “I try not to think about it.”
“If you ever do want to talk—”
I made myself smile at Sujin. I was tempted to reach out and squeeze their hand in thanks, but I’d learned from observation that people in the Space Forces didn’t casually touch each other. “I’m fine, really.”
“That’s good,” Sujin said, although they didn’t sound entirely convinced.
Now for the tricky part. It was finally time for me to test our friendship. I nudged Sujin with a bit of Charm and asked, “Did anyone ever find out anything about that cadet who took off with his friends? You know—Jun?”
Once again, my timing was bad. The restroom door opened behind me, and Sujin scrambled to their feet. The goblin jabbed me in the ribs, then snapped a salute. “Captain Hwan!”
Hwan? Where had I heard that name before?
I turned to see a tall, bearded man with amber eyes regarding us with a frown. I saluted, too, gulped, and tried to keep the panic off my face. The ship was so big, and I was so lowly, I never thought I’d run into the captain. Yet I had—in the restroom no less—and I was impersonating one of his cadets.
And something else was putting my nerves on edge. He smelled supernatural. Specifically, I detected the prickly scent of . . . tiger.
Then I remembered. One of the guards back in the Market District had mentioned a tiger captain. This was him!
“Cadets,” Captain Hwan said. His voice was low and rumbling with a hint of a growl in it.
I straightened in spite of myself, wishing I hadn’t caught a glimpse of his teeth as he spoke. They didn’t look sharp, which surprised me, but they were unnaturally perfect and white. Like most other supernaturals, tiger spirits could assume human form whenever they wanted to. They sometimes adopted the guise when they were hunting, to fool their prey. But they couldn’t shift into other things the way foxes could.
Captain Hwan fixed me with his stare. “How have you been feeling, Cadet Jang? Lieutenant Ju-Won informs me you’ve been distracted lately.”
Oh no. I’d performed so poorly that I’d come to the captain’s attention. If he figured out I was a fox in disguise, I’d be in real trouble. And I knew better than to use any additional Charm around a tiger. Given his predator senses, it would be a dangerous proposition.
“I’ll work harder, sir,” I said, hating the way my voice trembled.
His brows drew down. Next to me, Sujin held very still. “Cadet Jang,” Hwan said, “what do you think serving in the Space Forces is about?”
“Protecting the Thousand Worlds,” I said. Not an original answer, but a safe one.
Hwan smiled wryly, as if he could read my thoughts. “That’s one of our functions. We spend most of our time defending our territory against the Jeweled Worlds. But we are also tasked with keeping the peace within our own worlds.”
I nodded, not sure what he wanted me to say next.
“Sometimes local rulers seek to grab power,” he went on. “They rarely do so openly, of course. Even the rashest members of the Dragon Council or the Pearled Halls know better than to risk getting caught if they want to play such games.” He leaned closer and pointed a finger near my chest. “There are plenty of mercenaries, though, who will carry out raids for anyone who can pay them. Haven’t you wondered why we were patrolling this area when we came across the rascals who wounded you?”
An odd chilly dizziness gripped me. “Listen closely,” Jang’s voice whispered in my ear.