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.
“Status,” Chul said before he, too, started to cough.
“The Pale Lightning beat us here,” the pilot said hoarsely. It sounded as though he was speaking through a hand over his nose and mouth. Good idea—it reduced the effects of the smoke. “We must have been stuck in that warped Gate for so long, they got here first by using different Gates. And they seeded the area with EMP mines.”
Electromagnetic pulses. The Pale Lightning had shielding against EMPs, but this ship didn’t, apparently. And I hadn’t seen any sign of mines . . . but then I remembered one of Lieutenant Hyosu’s lectures on the subject. In space you wouldn’t necessarily detect any glow. The first time you’d know was when you ran into one and all your systems fizzled out.
The darkness—both inside and outside the ship—unnerved me. On a planet, even on a clouded night, you still had faint hazy light filtering from the sky, and of course the domes and settlements had artificial lighting. Out here in space, near a dead colony, there was little for us to see by. In this region there wasn’t much in the way of starlight.
Also, we had no artificial gravity anymore. I hadn’t noticed it at first, because I’d been too busy trying to adjust to the darkness. But my stomach and inner ear complained, and I was overcome by nausea. Good thing I hadn’t eaten recently. I was pretty sure puking in null-gee was even more disgusting than doing it was in normal gravity. Just the thought made my gorge rise.
I growled slightly at the clomping sound of magnetic boots, then caught a whiff of mixed smoke and sweat and realized it was the engineer. She tapped the bulkheads as she went so she wouldn’t bang into things. I heard her rummaging around and wondered what she was up to. Then something crackled, and a pale green chemical light flooded the cockpit.
“These light sticks might make it easier for any boarders to find us,” she said as her shadow loomed against the deck, “but it beats hanging around in the dark unable to get anything done. Let me guess”—she nodded at the pilot—“mines?”
“We emerged in one of the standard lanes, and they were waiting for us,” the pilot said. The green light made a bizarre sickly mask of his face.
We got out of our seats to retreat from the billowing smoke, but we couldn’t escape it entirely. The first order of business was to get suited up. The EMP attack meant that our life support system was down, too, and if intruders breached the hull, we’d lose atmosphere. I was grateful for the shielding on the suits’ locker, which ensured that the suits’ old-fashioned boots hadn’t been demagnetized.
According to the engineer, with the four of us on board, we had about twelve hours before the lack of power to the air recyclers would become an issue. I could extend that time a little by taking on an inanimate shape, like a table, but that meant I wouldn’t be able to help the others. Once we put the helmets on, the suits themselves would provide us with enough air to last for twenty-four hours, with two backup canisters apiece. The dubious silver lining was that none of us believed the Pale Lightning would leave us alone for that long.
“That’s it, then,” Chul said. His voice sounded calm, but I could smell his bitterness. “We’re floating here without power of any kind and Captain Hwan can capture us at his leisure. I doubt he’ll be merciful this time around.”
I felt a stab of guilt. If it weren’t for my plan, the mercs wouldn’t be in this position. Then I reminded myself that they’d already been looking for the Dragon Pearl. They would have run into Captain Hwan anyway.
The engineer knelt and popped open a locker I hadn’t spotted earlier. She drew out a toolkit. “I can’t do much with the tools when we’re in this condition, but we might as well arm up.”
She also pulled out a blaster, which she holstered in her belt, then a second one, which she gave to the pilot. “Sorry,” she said to Chul, who remained empty-handed. “I know how bad your aim is.”
Chul gave her a pained smile. “I’m not offended.”
The engineer presented the scholar with a miniature welding torch from the kit and showed him how to use it. “This may come in handy in a fight,” she said. Then she added, “If you burn your face off, don’t blame me.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
It irritated me how, even now, they consciously avoided addressing each other by name around me. I’m not the enemy, I wanted to say.
On the other hand, for all they knew, I’d been working with the captain all along and had set them up. No wonder they were paranoid.
I noticed, too, that they hadn’t offered me any weapon.
I wasn’t the only one who saw that. “Should I surprise them so you can grab one of the guns?” Jang whispered in my ear. “I could spook them good.”
I considered it, then gave a tiny headshake. I didn’t want to start a firefight with my so-called allies. If we faced hostiles, the mercenaries were likely to have better aim than I did. Besides, I had fox magic and they didn’t, so I wasn’t defenseless.
“Are we splitting up or staying together?” I asked. As much as I wanted to be involved in the decision-making, I had to defer to their judgment. I didn’t know their ship’s layout, so they’d have a better idea of how to defend it. Plus, they were mercenaries. They’d had more experience with boarding actions.
Chul, at least, took me seriously. “Ordinarily I’d say we should stick together and prepare to ambush boarders,” he said. “I could be used as bait.”
The engineer rolled her eyes at this.
“But this time we have the advantage of a fox on our side,” he said, raising his eyebrows at me.
“If you’re thinking I can trick them with magic, forget it. They’ll be expecting as much. I revealed my heritage the moment I impersonated Hwan.”
“Do you have any other suggestions?” Chul asked.
I did have one. “Do we have time to set traps for them? Or at least make it look like we did? If they’re led to believe that any random crate or seat could be hiding a vicious attack fox”—the pilot snorted at this—“that might slow them down. . . .”
“Not a bad idea,” the engineer said grudgingly. “Let’s get started, because we don’t know how much time we have before they show up.”
We all put on our helmets. Now we would all communicate via headsets that we could switch on or off. I didn’t like the way it deadened my fox hearing.
“You still willing to help me?” I whispered to Jang with my headset turned off. “I know the Pale Lightning is your former ship, but something’s clearly rotten with the captain. And if my mission ends here, so do your hopes of getting more answers.”
“I know.” Jang sounded torn. “I’ll do what I can as long as no one gets killed.”
I was about to retort that I didn’t want to hurt anyone, either, but then the engineer gestured for me to follow her, so I shut up.
Rearranging crates in the ghastly green light gave me the creeps. I kept expecting ghosts to jump out of the shadows. Which was ridiculous, because I was already accompanied by one. Every time I saw a flicker out of the corner of my eye, I wondered if Jang was about to say something to me.
“Can ghosts see in the dark?” I whispered to him.
“Yes,” he answered softly. With cold air he nudged my left shoulder, then my right. “I can warn you which direction they’re coming from.”