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.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That might come in handy.”

We constructed makeshift forts to hide behind, leaving narrow gaps between the crates through which we could spot any hostiles. The thought of my comrades firing on people I’d served alongside made my gut clench.

A jangling sense of wrongness pricked at my nerves. And no wonder. Not only was our ship badly damaged, not only was Jang’s presence bringing us ill fortune, but we were making matters worse by rearranging the crates haphazardly. The gi flows throughout the ship had to be going completely haywire. But it couldn’t be helped. I just hoped we wouldn’t be stung by disaster at the worst moment.

The ship’s clocks were down, but the helmet’s air gauges gave me a way to estimate how much time had passed. Scarcely an hour, though it seemed like much longer. The combination of shadows and weightlessness and the unwavering green glow of the chemical light made me feel as though I’d become unanchored from the outside world. I couldn’t give in to that sensation, though. I had to stay alert.

I felt a faint vibration. I took off my helmet and listened. There was a slight hum in the air. I replaced my helmet, then motioned to Chul to get his attention. “I think they’re coming,” I said in a low voice.

The others didn’t question my sharp hearing. The engineer gave us just enough time to take up our positions behind the floating walls of crates, then snuffed out the chemical lights. Violet afterimages danced and flickered in my vision. I heard myself breathing too fast. My attempts at meditation didn’t help, not when the vibrations were getting stronger.

Finally there came the sound of metal screeching, and a clank that I was sure even the others could hear. Captain Hwan and his crew must have breached our hull.

Sweat dampened my palms and trickled down my back. Part of me wished the boarding party would hurry up already. But I knew from drills on the Pale Lightning that they’d be trained to proceed carefully, checking for ambushes and traps as they went.

Clomp, clomp, clomp. Not just one set of footsteps, but several. I held my breath, trying to figure out how many people were coming. The pilot had crouched down and pressed his helmet to the deck in a vain attempt to hear better, which I only discovered when I bumped into him by mistake. Like all fox spirits, I had good vision in low light, but this was no light. In total darkness I had to rely on other senses. And Jang presumably was saving his warnings for real threats so I wouldn’t accidentally blast one of the mercs.

At last the hatch to the hold opened, and a piercing, blue-tinted beam sliced through the darkness. I squinted so it wouldn’t blind me. The pilot and engineer raised their blasters to the shooting holes we’d made.

I waited for shadows to fall across the threshold, for Jang’s warning touch. If we were really lucky, maybe the boarding party would make the mistake of silhouetting themselves against the blue light, making themselves easy targets. It didn’t look like they were going to commit such a basic error, however.

A familiar voice hissed from the corridor: Captain Hwan’s. I’d been expecting him to shout, or roar, but he spoke so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. The effect caused my skin to prickle.

“Scholar Chul,” Captain Hwan said in his deep voice. “And Gumiho.” I couldn’t help biting my lip when he said that. “In a moment I am going to send in a couple of people to accept your surrender.”

My glance went to the engineer, who was shaking her head dubiously, then to the pilot, whose brow was furrowed in concern. None of us trusted the captain. There had to be some kind of trick involved.

Two figures marched through the entrance, their shadows cutting across the floor. A faint, wavering glow in the air told me that they had personal shields. I didn’t know how much blaster fire it would take to overwhelm the armor. We might have to find out the hard way.

It took me a moment to identify the soldiers. They were backlit, and the light reflecting off the crates’ surfaces didn’t do a very good job of revealing their faces, especially through their helmets. But once I got used to the alien-looking combat suits, I knew exactly who they were. The one on the left was Sujin. The one on the right, Haneul.

“No!” Jang cried in anguish, loudly enough to be heard by everyone.

The mercs glanced about wildly, but I had no attention to spare for them.

Neither Sujin nor Haneul was armed. That didn’t make sense. Unless . . .

“I have learned,” Captain Hwan went on, his voice still soft, “that Cadets Sujin and Haneul failed to recognize the intruder in our midst.”

I couldn’t help it. I sucked in my breath and stared wide-eyed at my friends. Former friends, I assumed, since they now knew that I wasn’t Jang. Was Hwan holding them hostage? He wouldn’t. . . .

He would. “Gumiho, if you and your comrades surrender to the cadets,” Captain Hwan said, “you will be treated fairly. As long as you cooperate with our operations.”

Bile rose in my throat. I had a pretty good idea of what Hwan meant by “cooperation,” at least from me. Surely he’d figured out that I was, if not related to Jun, connected to him somehow.

Chul squared his shoulders. I could tell he was tempted by Hwan’s offer. I couldn’t blame him, to be honest. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine this ending well for any of us.

Instead of capitulating, though, Chul signaled to his two comrades, and they raised their blasters. My heart almost plunged to the deck. But they didn’t fire, not yet.

“If you don’t come with me,” Captain Hwan said, “the cadets will be court-martialed for treason. Right here. Possibly even executed.”

What? This was insane! “You can’t do that!” I shouted.

Sujin’s expression was stubbornly impassive. Haneul looked stricken, and lightning crackled around her.

Chul squeezed his eyes shut.

“In deep space, a captain’s word is law,” Hwan returned. His voice never wavered from its eerie calm. “I have to be able to rely on my crew. Any real cadet knows that.”

I flinched.

The engineer mouthed, Should we? at Chul.

Chul shook his head and mouthed back, They’re unarmed. It made me think better of him.

“All right,” I said in defeat. I couldn’t let Captain Hwan kill Sujin and Haneul, who had done nothing wrong.

I heard Jang’s sigh of relief.

Chul reached for my shoulder to hold me back, but I slipped past him. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.”