Elly hated the Unity.

She hated the white floors and the crimson molding. She hated how smoothly it flew without any sort of turbulence or tipping or power shortages. She hated the high-tech bedrooms with their flat screen media stations. She hated the ship’s seamless, easy-to-use intercom system and the way it carried over wirelessly to all their phones and tablets. She hated the on-board gym and the actually-pretty-cool-but-wildly-unnecessary observation deck and the rec room with all the videogames she secretly wanted to play. She even hated the fact that the Unity had enough escape pods to save every member of the crew in the event of a catastrophic emergency.

Surprisingly and almost inexplicably, the only thing that Elly didn’t hate was the doctor. She actually kind of liked Seo Hyerin and when Elly wasn’t working (that usually meant standing in the cockpit and telling Sooyoung that she was doing something wrong), she found herself in the infirmary.

She and Hyerin didn’t always talk much but the doctor truly didn’t seem to mind the company. Occasionally, Elly would ask questions, usually about whatever it was Hyerin was doing.

“What’s that thing for?” Elly had asked on the Pandora girls’ third day. She’d spent the first two days locked inside her new room, sulking about the loss of her ship and mourning the hundred million dollars she swore she’d never get to see.

By day three, while Sunny and Moonbyul made friends and helped pull their weight, Elly explored the ship. When she got to the infirmary, Hyerin was standing over some lifelike, flesh-colored dummy wearing goofy-looking goggles that fully covered both eyes.

Though Hyerin very clearly couldn’t see her and, therefore, hadn’t seen her coming, she didn’t jump or appear frightened in any way.

“This is Terry,” she said matter-of-factly, “my SmartDummy.”

Elly considered that.

“Did you name him Terry or did he come like that?”

There were nondescript tools in Hyerin’s hand, a stylus and what looked like some sort of drill, and they were aimed inside of Terry’s chest.

“I named him Terry,” she said and then paused her ministrations. “To whom am I speaking?”

Elly was holding onto the doorframe, looking slightly pitiful with dirty hair and sad, tired eyes.

“Elly,” she answered meekly. “Captain of the once great Pandora.”

Gesturing with the stylus to pause her simulation, Hyerin lifted the goggles off of her head and set them aside.

“You hungry?” she asked. Elly was taken aback by the question but responded affirmatively anyway. For the first forty-eight hours, Elly had sustained herself on the crackers and jerky she’d taken from the charred and shattered remnants of the Pandora’s kitchen. Hyerin smiled and nodded her chin to the hallway. “Yoona makes a mean bowl of soup,” she said. “It’s the only mean thing she does. Let’s go bug her for some.”

It turned out Yoona was extremely nice but Elly resented her on principle. She was another shining example of the Unity’s wealth and their easy, luxurious lifestyle, and Elly hated everything she represented. Some days, the Pandora girls couldn’t even afford a hot bowl of noodles but the Unity had their very own live-in chef.

How was that fair? It wasn’t. But she did make good soup and so Elly sat and ate and bonded with Hyerin over several bowls of gamjatang.

Hyerin was nice but not in the sugary, overly-friendly way that Yoona was. Hyerin wasn’t bursting with sweetness or compliments. She wasn’t fake and she didn’t have to try. She was just… pleasant to be around.

She was witty. She had an ability to make a joke out of anything. Her sense of humor was dry, quick. She deadpanned and even as bad as things felt to Elly, she always found herself laughing when Hyerin was in the room.

When she wasn’t joking around, when Hyerin was working or studying or talking about medicine, she was a complete and utter professional. It was very clear to Elly that Hyerin loved what she did and took the furthering of her education extremely seriously. She had lot of resources at her disposal – her SmartDummy, her learning software, her tricked-out operating room – but she didn’t take any of it for granted. She completely lacked the sense of entitlement that Elly associated with other rich people, making Elly believe that Hyerin hadn’t always been wealthy.

When she spoke of anything – space, politics, movies, even Solji – she was articulate, almost poetic. She possessed a certain way with words and she knew how to make just about anything sound interesting. She and Elly liked the same music and the same shows, but they rooted for opposing hockey teams and supported different political parties, giving them room for intelligent debate.

When it came down to it, Elly was comfortable around Hyerin. But the rest of the time? She was very, very uncomfortable. She was on an unfamiliar ship with a bunch of strangers and for the first time in several years, she wasn’t the captain. She wasn’t the boss. She wasn’t even a co-pilot. She didn’t get to fly or help make big decisions and if she wasn’t with Hyerin, she mostly just wandered around.

For the first time in a long time, Elly was bored.

The Unity was on its way to Gangcheol, an industrial planet on the edge of the Cosmos System where Jiyong’s father had once owned property. On one of their first days together, Solji had gathered the teams, presented the information that Yuri had gathered from the universe’s dark-net and put it to a vote.

The decision to fly to Gangcheol had been unanimous but it didn’t make Elly feel any better about her lack of control. She’d gotten very used to being the captain, gotten very used to calling the shots, and now she was just along for the ride. She had never been a particularly bossy captain and she’d always asked Sunny and Moonbyul’s opinions before making big decisions but damn it all, Elly just liked being in charge.

Being the captain made her feel collected and steadied. Moonbyul like to joke that Elly was only happy when she was in control but Elly knew that it wasn’t a joke – it was the God’s honest truth.

Life in space – especially her life – was tough. Trying to keep the Pandora alive and in the air while still making enough money to feed herself and her crew was challenging. Just trying to pilot that damn ship without veering off into an asteroid belt or exploding spontaneously was a struggle.

(Frankly, and Elly wasn’t quite ready to admit this to herself, the loss of the Pandora might’ve been more of a blessing than a curse. For the last few months, just trying to sustain that ship had been killing her. Trying to find the funds to fix things was giving her anxiety. Because her appetite was gone, she’d been losing weight and she hadn’t been sleeping for more than a few hours before she’d wake up in a cold sweat about the fuel pump or the landing gear.)

Just knowing that she was in control of the situation lessened her woes and made her feel like things had the possibility of getting better.

But now Elly was a guest on a foreign ship and she felt like the walls were closing in on her.

One afternoon, still about two days from Gangcheol, when Hyerin was busy patching up their handywoman, Elly found herself exploring. She borrowed a fancy pedometer from the gym and started taking laps around the ship, peeking curiously into glass windows and open doors.

She’d gotten very good at spying.

Sunny and Moonbyul didn’t share her antisocial tendencies or her unnatural, unhealthy connection to the Pandora and, as such, they were actually working and making friends.

Sunny had taken an immediate liking to Yuri, the Unity’s tech analyst. Elly had seen them together in the kitchen and popped a squat outside the door so that she could observe. (Hyerin caught her lurking outside the doorframe and called her a creep but then moved on to do doctor things.) Sunny and Yuri had the exact same sense of humor and nearly indistinguishable personalities, though Yuri was a little louder and more outgoing than the redhead that Elly would describe as almost reserved.

Sunny had always been one to sit back and watch, waiting for her moment before she dropped a hilarious one-liner. She was endlessly sarcastic but she was subtle about it. Her humor was very dry but she also had a hidden fondness for puns.

Every time Elly saw Sunny and Yuri together, they were laughing.

That afternoon in the kitchen was no different. They were at a table, sharing a plate of fries, hunched over one of Yuri’s laptops and laughing like hyenas. Elly couldn’t really understand what it was they were talking or laughing about but it was bittersweet to watch. She was happy that Sunny was making friends but she was just a little bit jealous. Elly had gotten very used to having two best friends by her side twenty-four hours a day, and it to feel alone while her more personable counterparts were branching out.

Powerful sleuth that she was, Elly didn’t miss the way that Yuri made goo-goo eyes at Yoona every time she managed to drag her gaze away from the screen. She guessed that Yuri didn’t mind the chef’s undying sweetness and from the loving way that Yoona stared back at her, she figured Yoona admired Yuri’s edge.

Elly had spent a lot of time on ships and in dorms. She was very familiar with the way people tended to hook up. Something about close quarters and stressful working conditions made smart, talented women gravitate to each other and fall in love. (Sometimes, if they were lucky, they’d just fall into bed – no commitment, no feelings, no worries.)

With all that experience under her belt, Elly had a knack for picking up when two people were more than just coworkers and on this ship, the chef and the tech analysist were doing a lot more than just trading recipes and computer tips.

Elly couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d hooked up with anybody and that might’ve made her just a little bit jealous, too.

Moonbyul, meanwhile, was trying to make a love connection with the Unity’s engineer.

That didn’t surprise Elly in the slightest. Even in her shock and awe following the Unity’s crash-landing on their ship, Elly had noticed the way Moonbyul was looking at Solar. The dark-haired engineer was exactly Moonbyul’s type and even then, Elly idly wondered how long it would take Moonbyul to actually make a move.

She didn’t see Moonbyul and Solar as much as she saw Sunny and Yuri. She figured that Moonbyul and Solar spent all their time in the comfort and privacy of the engine room, either tinkering with small machines or doing something else entirely.

Elly didn’t know and Elly didn’t care.

Of the three of them, Moonbyul was definitely the most extroverted and the most charming. She’d never had any trouble getting people wrapped around her finger and the girls of the Unity were no exception. They all loved her and it turned Elly into a pouty, petulant, jealous child because she loved Sunny more.

But at the end of the day, Elly thought she’d found a true friend in Hyerin and that was one silver lining in the dark cloud that was her life. (And that was about as optimistic as Captain Ahn Elly could make herself be at this particular crossroads.)

And on that afternoon, still two days from their destination, Elly’s tablet chimed as she passed by the rec room. She saw an incoming call from Solji, saw that her location was, of course, the cockpit and begrudgingly accepted the intercom request.

“What’s up?” she asked, faking amicability.

“Captain,” Solji greeted generously. “Can you come up to the cockpit for a minute? Sooyoung and I need your help with something.”

“Is this a pity offer?” Elly asked, turning on her heel so that she could head back in the other direction. The rec room and the cockpit were on opposite sides of the ship, meaning the number on Elly’s pedometer was going to keep growing. “You feel bad that I’m sulking around your ship so you’re going to throw me a bone?”

In the cockpit, Solji snorted.

“No,” she said. “Sooyoung and I need a tiebreaker. We’ll explain more when you get up here, okay?”

Though she couldn’t see her, Elly nodded and disconnected the call.

Even if it was a pity offer, it felt nice to be needed.

When she got to the cockpit a few minutes later, Solji and Sooyoung were in their usual seats, the former leaning with her hands wrapped around a panel of the dashboard and the latter sitting with her long legs folded beneath her.

“You rang?” Elly prompted and Solji smiled when she saw her, gesturing with her hand for Elly to come closer and join her at the panel.

“We need a captain’s opinion,” she said and then glanced at Sooyoung. “Isn’t it nice to have a third pilot onboard? Finally, someone to settle all our arguments.”

Sooyoung didn’t seem impressed, though it was possible she was just still afraid of Elly after all the shouting that had happened at their first meeting.

Elly stepped forward and looked out the front windows of the cockpit, her eyes moving through the windshield to gaze out at open space. Though the screens, panels, buttons and windows of the Unity’s cockpit were set up very differently than those of the Pandora, this was still Elly’s favorite view. She loved the way the bright, powerful technology of the ship’s dashboard contrasted the dark, beautiful totality of deep space.

“What’s happening?” she asked, pulling her eyes away from the galaxy long enough to remember why she was there.

“A sizable comet smashed into the side of small planet,” Solji explained. “Both of them splintered into a million pieces of metal and space rock and now there’s a mess of debris right in our path. We could go through it, risk getting a little dinged up, or we could go around it. Going around it will put us behind at least half a day but, since we don’t know how big these comet pieces are, going through it might damage the ship.” She nodded to Sooyoung as if reminding Elly that she was there, too, and then said, “What would you do?”

“I’d go around it,” Elly said, instinctually moving closer to the dashboard to trace a light finger over one of the buttons. “Sure, you’ll have to eat that half-day but if you go through it and a watermelon-sized asteroid rips off a booster nozzle?” She shook her head, clicking her tongue. “Any big repair will bench you for a lot longer than that.” Solji was staring back at her with intense eyes and Elly shrunk slightly beneath her gaze. She shrugged her slender shoulders and said, “As a general rule, I like to play it safe. But it’s your ship, lady. That makes it your call.”

Solji stared at her for a few more seconds, nodding as she considered Elly’s words, and then she smiled.

“See, Sooyoung?” she said, leaning around Elly to glance at her copilot. “She sided with you. Told you she didn’t hate you.”

“That’s not exactly what I said,” Elly murmured. “But, in this very specific instance, yes, Sooyoung is correct. Go around the rocks and save yourself the trouble. Use the extra half-day to do some more research.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Solji said, offering Elly a respectful bow of her head. “Sooyoung, please work your magic and take us around the rock storm. I’m gonna check in with the other girls.” Sooyoung just nodded, inching up to the edge of her seat so that she could start programming the new orders. Solji pressed the green call-button at the edge of the dashboard, waited for the resounding beep, and then said, “How are we doing, cyborgs?”

Elly recognized Sunny’s laugh.

“Not cyborgs,” she corrected. “Just wildly talented hackers.”

“Sunny is better than I am,” Yuri conceded playfully and Elly rolled her eyes, remembering that day in the kitchen. “We’ve got something exciting to share but we need a little while longer to iron it all out.”

“Call us back when you’ve got something concrete,” she said, “and keep up the good work.” Solji pressed a button on-screen and then hit the call-button once more. “And how are my engineers?”

“Extremely attractive,” Moonbyul sang confidently. “Even if we’re covered in grease.”

“Making any progress?” Solji asked.

“Mostly just making a mess,” Moonbyul continued. “Solar is trying to help me make sense of this behemoth of an engine. I’m pretty sure your engine alone is bigger than my entire ship. A lot nicer, too.”

Loudly and dramatically, Elly cleared .

Smirking, Solji said, “Yeah? Your captain is here with me and I don’t think she’d agree.”

After a beat, Moonbyul said, “Anyway, Solar is an excellent teacher and I’m learning a lot.”

Solji laughed.

“Is that true, Solar? Are you an excellent teacher?”

Giggles were heard from the engine room and then Solar replied, “I’m doing my best. Moonbyul is…” More laughs and whispers could be heard as Solar’s voice trailed off and Solji shot Elly a curious glance. “Moonbyul is a very good student. She’s a fast learner. Very talented.”

Elly snorted.

Knowing Moonbyul, she’d probably gotten to second base by now. That in itself was one of her talents.

“Okay,” Solji said, dragging the word out into several syllables. “Keep me posted, I guess. I’ll check in later.”

“Roger that,” Solar said, her tone light and airy as she disconnected the call. Moonbyul’s hands were on her shoulders, a massage that had started before Solji called down, and Solar swatted her away, still laughing. “This is very unprofessional, ma’am,” she said but was completely unable to feign any sort of anger or authority. “You need to stop.”

“You were very tense,” Moonbyul said. “All that back-breaking labor is breaking your back, unnie. I’m looking out for you.” Still, Moonbyul released her shoulders, leaving Solar’s desk to go look at a diagnostics manual on one of the other tables. “Hey, which brand of air-drill do you use?”

“I use a Blair-600,” Solar said. She was sitting in her desk chair, a red, leather thing on wheels that had all sorts of levels for height and comfort adjustments. She’d been jotting down measurements in a notebook when Solji called and once she finished, she put down her pen and spun to face Moonbyul. She tucked her arms comfortably behind her head and stared back at the younger engineer, her eyes questioning. “Why?”

Moonbyul shrugged, hoisting herself up so that she could sit on the table and let her legs swing.

“Just wondering,” she said. “When we find Jiyong and cash in, I want to buy knew tools. I had a decent tool kit but we needed the money and I pawned it. Then I had my crappy tool kit but your friend Sooyoung squashed my engine room and now I have no tool kit.” It wasn’t meant to be an especially funny story but Solar chuckled and that brought a smug smile to Moonbyul’s lips. Having not been able to spend much time playing the field lately, Moonbyul was out of practice but it was good to know she could still make a pretty girl laugh. “You seem to have good taste. I trust your judgment.”

“The Blair-600 is lightweight and powerful,” Solar said, chewing on her bottom lip as she swung back and forth in her chair. She was clad in a pink sweater and tight, oil-stained jeans, her dark hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. Her beauty was very simple and very obvious and it made Moonbyul’s heart flutter and race. The way she was sitting now, with her legs crossed and her arms behind her head, she looked graceful and soft. She was very feminine and very small and Moonbyul loved the way it contrasted with the dirt, grease, grime and metal of the drafty engine room. “I think you get the most bang for your buck with the Blair but a lot of people prefer the Enzo model.”

“Why?” Moonbyul asked. She didn’t really care. She already knew the answer. With all the repairs that the Pandora had needed in recent months, she’d had a lot of time to sit around refueling stations. She used that time to research tools. She knew the Blair-600 was more powerful but the Enzo was built to last. The battery life was better and it didn’t break screws like the Blair could. She just wanted to hear Solar talk.

Unfortunately, the older engineer saw right through her.

“You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” she teased but Moonbyul only shrugged.

“I like to get second opinions on things,” she said.

Solar tried to hide her smile and she stared back at Moonbyul like she knew everything she was thinking. That didn’t bother Moonbyul. If anything, she would’ve wanted Solar to read her mind. That might make things between them happen quicker. There had been a connection, a fire, a chemistry between them ever since that first day in the kitchen. The more time they spent together, the stronger that spark became. Moonbyul could feel it and she knew that Solar could feel it, too.

She just wasn’t sure if Solar was ready to make that next step.

But Moon Byuli was a patient woman and so she wasn’t all that worried about it. She could sit around, graciously awaiting the inevitable for as long as Solar needed.

“So you think we’ll find Jiyong, then?” Solar asked, changing the way that she was sitting so her hands were folded in her lap. “Since you’re already counting our winnings?”

Smirking arrogantly, Moonbyul shrugged again.

“I think the odds are in our favor,” she said. “I mean, I was already pretty confident that we’d find him when it was just me, Sunny and Elly. Now that we have a whole extra army on our side? Seems kind of inevitable.” She hopped off the table and walked back towards Solar’s desk, each step purposeful and alluring. She wanted to get Solar’s attention and it was working. “That’s the thing about inevitabilities,” she continued smoothly. “When you realize something is truly meant to happen, there’s really no stopping it.” She dropped to a crouch under the guise of getting closer to Solar’s notes but really she was just trying to get closer to Solar. She rested her arms on the desktop and her chin on her arms. “You forgot to mark the diameter of the alternator. Rookie mistake, unnie.”

Swallowing hard and grabbing the pen to correct herself, Solar said, “Right. Good catch.”

Nodding, Moonbyul pulled herself back to her feet, casually planting her hands on Solar’s knees as she did. It was a very soft, very innocent, very calculated move that had Solar biting the inside of her cheek and glaring up at her with accusing eyes.

“You know what else?” Moonbyul said, leaning against the edge of the desk and locking onto Solar’s gaze. “About inevitabilities?” She looked at Solar expectantly but the older girl didn’t say anything. “Once something is meant to happen, it’s all set in stone. Nothing can get in the way. Nothing can stop it. Stuff like that happens in space sometimes. I mean, you’d have to ask Elly or Solji about it but when a flaming comet is heading your way, there’s not much you can do about it, right? If it’s gonna hit you, it’s gonna hit you.”

“Unless you have a missile,” Solar said lightly.

“Do you have a missile?” Moonbyul countered, leaning just a little closer with narrowing eyes.

Cheeks growing pink, Solar said, “I think there’s one around here somewhere.”

Moonbyul chuckled and when she moved in just the slightest bit more, nothing but the worst intentions swimming in her head, Solar cleared and jumped away, reaching for her toolbox on the other side of the desk.

“What do you have in the way of scales?” she asked, her words rushed and hasty. “It’s important to, you know, weigh things. It’s important to have an accurate scale. Good to know how much things weigh.” She pulled out a handful of tools, most of them grimy, some of them slipping from her grip and hitting the floor with a loud, metallic clatter. Immediately embarrassed and with cheeks the color of ripe cherries, she covered her face with both hands.

“I think I’m good on scales,” Moonbyul murmured, reaching through the space between them to tuck a piece of dark hair behind Solar’s ear. “But it’s cute that you care.”

“I don’t care,” Solar retorted, dropping her hands back to the desk and sitting up straighter in her chair. The grease from the tools had gotten onto her hands and now a thick, black smudge was smeared across her left cheek. Moonbyul laughed out loud and Solar grimaced, halfway flustered. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” Moonbyul said, “have grease on your face.” She dropped her hands down to the armrests and jerked the chair so that they were face-to-face, eliciting a squeak of surprise from Solar. Slowly, smoothly, Moonbyul her thumb and leaned in close, gently wiping the grime for Solar’s skin. “You’re very hot when you’re dirty,” she continued quietly, “but I like you a lot better when you’re clean.”

Solar swallowed hard, her eyes falling to Moonbyul’s lips. She felt magnetized, like she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to, like this was the only thing in the world worth looking at. She couldn’t deny the draw she felt towards Moonbyul, couldn’t swallow the complicated feelings that swam in her head and her chest when they were alone in the engine room.

They were supposed to be working together, two gifted minds collaborating to make the Unity’s engine stronger, but when they were alone, tools and gears were the last things on Solar’s mind.

This wasn’t supposed to have happened.

When Sooyoung the brilliant bonehead crushed the Pandora, Solar never could’ve imagined this outcome. She never expected to be sharing a workspace with a beautiful, talented, arrogant woman and she certainly didn’t think she’d be getting hearts in her eyes after only a week together.

But here they were, together again, Moonbyul leaning over Solar and gazing down at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the entire universe. Solar couldn’t tell if she was the one moving or if it was Moonbyul but before she could figure it out, their lips were millimeters apart and Solar felt like she’d float up, up and away, right out of the ship and into the cold depths of space if something didn’t ing happen already.

But before it could, there was a beep. It sounded like it was lightyears away but it was actually right there on the desk, coming from Solar’s work tablet that was still linked into the intercom system.

“Done!” Yuri’s chipper voice bellowed from the speaker and Solar leapt back, wheeling her chair away from Moonbyul so hastily that she almost flipped it. “We did it. We have important things to share. Who’s ready to hear the secrets of the universe?”

“I am!” Solar shouted towards the tablet. “I am! I’ll be right up!”

“We can just do this over a conference call,” Solji said. “We don’t need you to–”

But Solar was already out the door.

Moonbyul laughed as she pushed Solar’s chair back under her desk and picked up all the tools she’d spilled onto the floor.

“I swear,” she said, speaking to absolutely no one but the engine, “the pretty ones are always bonkers.”

By the time Solar got up to the cockpit, Hyerin and Yoona had joined the group, the former sitting in Solji’s lap and the latter sitting cross-legged on the floor. She figured Wheein was somewhere, probably injuring herself as she listened to the conversation on her own tablet.

“Okay, I’m here,” she said, winded from the way she’d sprinted the length of the ship. “What’s up? What’d I miss?”

“You’re really out of shape,” Elly noticed aloud.

Solar would’ve come up with some witty retort but she didn’t have the lung capacity.

“Can we tell you what we found now?” Yuri asked over the speaker. She and Sunny were still in her office, close to their computers where they could do the most damage and be the most helpful. “We’re not getting any younger in here.”

“Yes,” Solji said. “What’s up?”

“So,” Sunny began, taking a deep breath like she was readying herself for something big, “as you may or may not know, the Cosmos went to great lengths to erase Jiyong from the internet. You can’t find his old social media pages, you can’t find any of his official records, you can’t really find anything. What we do know about Jiyong comes from other people who’ve somehow slipped through the cracks, right?”

“Right,” Solji said.

“But what the Cosmos, in their infinite wisdom, seems to have missed is that Jiyong has a pseudonym.”

“A pseudonym?” Hyerin asked. Solji’s arms were around her waist, her chin rested comfortably on her shoulder. They were always liked this, tangled up, one picking up where the other left up. Elly found it equal parts sickening and adorable.

“Like most badass, hipster activists,” Sunny began, “Jiyong had a codename that he used when he was getting done. So did all of his little buddies. The Cosmos wiped everything on Kwon Jiyong but they didn’t manage to erase G-Dragon.”

Elly snorted.

“G-Dragon?” she asked. “That’s cute, I guess.”

“He’s an activist?” Solji asked, choosing to focus on the more pressing part of Sunny’s statements.

“Yes, ma’am. It turns out our little Jiyong is quite the Berm preservationist. We found an archived version of his website from about a year and a half ago. There was some literature but it was mostly vlogs. Jiyong had a lot to say about saving the Berm, changing the public view on the Berm, doing whatever we can as a people to protect and admire the Berm. But, and here’s where it gets weird, he also has a whole thing about wormhole conspiracies.”

Solji, Elly and Hyerin all made the exact same face, all cocking eyebrows in confusion and glancing at each other like there was something just out of reach that they were still missing.

“Wormhole conspiracies?” Solji asked.

“Conspiracies, theories, just general rambling and ranting,” Sunny said. “It was like seventy-percent Berm stuff, thirty-percent wormholes.”

“But we weren’t nearly smart enough to decode any of that,” Yuri said. “Sooyoungie, what does your big brain know about wormholes?”

All eyes suddenly glued to her, Sooyoung shifted in her seat.

“I know a little,” she said. “Wormholes are basically like portals, like a passageway between two spots in the universe. Some people, the multiverse theorists, think that it’s a bridge between dimensions but much more likely, it’s just a shortcut between two faraway places in the same universe.”

Nodding and thinking deeply, Solji said, “Do they exist?”

“Nobody’s proven it,” Sooyoung went on, “which, of course, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It just means that we haven’t gotten that far. Not officially anyway. Various people in the scientific community claim they’ve found one at least every other month but nothing’s been substantiated.” After a beat, she nodded her chin to the speaker and added, “Jiyong thinks his group found one?”

“Apparently,” Yuri said. “I’ll forward you the videos and you can draw your own conclusions but put a pin in the wormhole thing for now because we have more.”

“More?” Elly prompted.

“We hacked some emails!” Sunny said cheerfully. “There’s a member of Jiyong’s group who goes by T.O.P. but his real name is Seunghyun and the geo-tags on his emails put him on Jaesan.”

“Jaesan,” Elly parroted quietly, concerned. Jaesan, a small, rocky planet was the first in the Jesamgi System, the neighboring solar system just a few hundred lightyears from Geum Haneul.

It was something like the Las Vegas of the ‘verse, a planet known for bright lights, intense gambling and shady characters. It wasn’t somewhere Elly would’ve spent much time but she had once known someone with extensive ties to players on Jaesan. It wasn’t as bad as, say, an outlier rock but because it wasn’t under Cosmos regulation, it tended to play by its own rules.

And those rules tended to be a little rough.

“In his emails,” Sunny continued, “Seunghyun talks extensively about Jiyong, but he always refers to him as GD and makes sure to disguise any times or locations.”

“All of the locations mentioned have been subbed with places from Game of Thrones,” Yuri huffed, irritated. “We’re still working on figuring out what they actually are.”

“But here’s where it gets even weirder,” Sunny said. “There are three emails that we haven’t been able to read. One is from six days before Jiyong broke out of jail, one is from the day after Jiyong broke out of jail and one is from two days ago.”

“Why can’t you read them?” Moonbyul asked from the engine room.

“They’re encrypted,” Sunny said. “Like really encrypted. They’re basically written in some bull top-secret code and we don’t have the algorithm necessary to crack it.”

“Yet,” Yuri amended.

“Right,” said Sunny. “Yet.”

“Why would it be written in code?” Elly asked. “Are they in elementary school?”

In the office, Sunny shrugged.                                                                            

“Remember my badass, hipster comment?” she said. “Nothing says hipster hacktivist quite like a secret code.”

“So what do we do, team?” Solji asked, though her tone made it seem awfully rhetorical. She was still holding tightly to her wife, staring off into space and speaking like she was just voicing her thoughts to kill the quiet. “Do we keep on our path to Gangcheol?”

“May I offer my two cents?” Sunny asked politely and Solji smiled.

“Please do.”

“I think that we should go to Jaesan.” (Elly had really, really been hoping that no one would suggest that.) “That’s where Seunghyun is. It’s another two or three days in the air, sure, but by that time, Sooyoung will know everything about Jiyong’s wormholes and Yuri and I will have cracked Seunghyun’s code. We’ll have all the information we need and we’ll be able to bust down his door and have him fill in the blanks.”

There was a long pause.

“And if he doesn’t feel like answering our questions?” Moonbyul asked.

“We’ll cross that wormhole when we get to it,” Sunny said.

Completely on instinct, Solji turned her head to look at Hyerin. She craved any question, comment, opinion or validation that her wife had to offer.

“What do you think?” she asked softly.

“I think our new friend Sunny is right on the money with this one,” Hyerin said. “And even if they crack the code early and it turns out this Seunghyun character isn’t on Jaesan or isn’t as helpful as we think he’ll be, we’re one step closer with our intel. And it’ll take us right past Gangcheol so even if we do change our minds, we can get right back to the original plan. I think it’s the right call.”

There was another moment of thoughtful silence and Solji chewed the inside of her lip as she turned everything over in her mind. Elly recognized her expression, that steely, focused look of a leader about to make a decision that affected everyone.

Though she knew it was sick, Elly couldn’t help but be a little jealous of Solji’s current, crushing responsibility.

She wanted to be the one to call the shots.

But there was something else on Solji’s face, a twinge of concern and apprehension, and it would’ve been irresponsible for Elly not to address it.

“What’s on your mind, Red?” she asked.

For the first time this conversation, Solji looked up and caught Elly’s eyes directly.

“We have a great team,” she said. “We have a lot of big brains and a lot of great skills but we don’t have any muscle. We don’t have any real weapons. We never really needed them. We have absolutely no pull on Jaesan, no connections, no inside scoop. And Jaesan is a rough and tumble place. I just feel like we’re unprepared. I feel like we’re in danger of biting off more than we can chew here. I don’t want to get us into more trouble than we can handle.”

Solji was staring rather intently at Elly and Elly really, really hoped that the other captain didn’t notice the way the color drained from her face. This was what she’d been dreading. This was what she’d been hoping to avoid ever since Sunny had mentioned the word Jaesan. This was why her stomach was tied into several knots of varying size and degrees of tightness. This was why her heart was thudding erratically against the inside of her chest and her fingers and toes felt cold.

She clenched her fists at her side, trying to expel the pins and needles that were sparking inside her skin and took a shaky breath. She could keep it to herself, sure, but she was part of a team now. The Unity girls had broken her ship and kind or, sort of ruined her life but they were good people and they’d taken her in. They wouldn’t find Jiyong unless all of them pulled together and did their part and that included Elly.

Even if it hurt.

“I know someone,” Elly said and as soon as the words left , she was glad that she, Sunny and Moonbyul were in different rooms. She didn’t want to see their faces when she did this. That would’ve made it hurt a whole lot worse.

“You do?” Solji asked. “Who? Why? What do you mean?”

“I know someone who could help us,” she said. “She’s a bruiser, a brawler, just an all-around tough guy. She has muscle. She has weapons. She has extensive ties to the right kind of people and she has connections on Jaesan.”

“Unnie,” Moonbyul warned, her voice high and frantic. “What are you doing?”

“Stay out of it, Byul,” Elly snapped, looking to the speaker the way she would’ve looked to Moonbyul had she actually been in the room with her.

“And you think this person will help us?” Hyerin asked curiously.

“She hates the Cosmos more than anyone,” Elly went on, “and I’m willing to bet anything that she’s already looking for Jiyong herself just so she can take some of the government’s money and spend it on guns. If we explained to her what’s going on, if we tell her what we know, I think she’d be willing to help us.”

“Elly,” Sunny said, her voice low. “Are you sure about this?”

Elly didn’t miss the concerned glances shooting around the cockpit but she ignored them, forcing them down into her stomach where acid and ice swirled and pooled and made her feel sick.

“Okay,” Solji said, eyes wide. “Who? Who is she?”

Elly closed her eyes, feeling a flood of memories hit her like one of the asteroids the Unity had avoided on their new flightpath.

“My ex-girlfriend,” she said. “Kim Hyuna.”