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- Herausgeber: Honford Star
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Amid a literal fog of war on a disputed planet, a woman is thrust into battle, forced to fight in her captors' war. With an empire at her back, ready to kill her at the slightest hesitation, this slaveturned- reluctant hero must battle through an unknown enemy, scientific abominations, and truly alien terrain to uncover the truth about her identity and that of her enslaved companions.Chung's novel—told in sparse, evocative prose and expertly translated by Anton Hur—draws on the real history of Korean soldiers who fought and died in a war against Russia on behalf of the Qing Dynasty. Red Sword combines stunning world-building with a thought-provoking challenge to readers: what does it mean to wield power over others?
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Seitenzahl: 253
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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1
Red Sword
BORA CHUNG
Translated by Anton Hur
Contents
1. Ghosts in the Fog
The young man was beautiful. It was underlit and stuffy inside the spaceship, and no one knew what the future would bring, and she, the young woman, was afraid. She spent many days crouched in the dark with the young man. The Imperials did not say much about the enemy, only referring to them as “white monsters” that had invaded the Empire’s territory. What these monsters really were, she knew not. The only certainty was that no answer would be forthcoming should she ask.
What the monsters were wasn’t important. The Imperials said that if they helped vanquish the monsters, the colonized would be given their freedom. She couldn’t believe everything the Imperials said. But freedom—that was a seductive word. A word that upon hearing exuded a whiff of hope. A wisp of a thing that persisted in the air around them once it was uttered, a strand of weak light they fixed their gaze on. A hope.
This was why, along with the other women, she had boarded the spaceship. She called these women “unnis,” for they were like older sisters to her. The unnis told her the Imperials could not be trusted. For all they knew, the colonized in this ship were being sold off to another planet, or even farther out across some 6unimaginable distance, to another galaxy. It wasn’t as if she didn’t suspect this herself; the thought had crossed her mind as well. But they had mentioned freedom. She had to at least try. And if she failed at the attempt, there was always her sword. The Imperials had not confiscated it, perhaps because they didn’t know what it was. The sleek velvet scabbard and the elaborately embroidered patterns on its surface, with the little mirrors sewn into it and the dangling flower and butterfly charms, had likely made them think it was some kind of decorative bauble toted by women. They couldn’t imagine the long and fiercely beautiful blade sheathed within. She had boarded the vessel gripping her red velvet scabbard, the sword hidden inside.
And then the young man had come to her.
Unlike the Imperials, who were rough and menacing beasts, the young man was quiet and gentle. His skin, which had darkened in the sun, returned to its light brown as they spent their long days in the dim bowels of the vessel. He had red hair on both his head and body. She had only known black hair and brown eyes, which made the young man’s red hair and dark hazel eyes surprising, as well as the red hair on his body when he revealed his nakedness, and the young man became shy at her surprise. When she wrapped his genitals with her hands, the young man closed his eyes and opened his lips. His penis was soft, and in her mouth it tasted slightly sour and bitter and soon hardened. The young man, as if enduring pain, screwed his eyes shut, grit his teeth, and gripped her shoulders. When she held out her hand, he grabbed it with his long and rough fingers and threw his head back. Long after those moments had passed, from time to time she would remember the sound of the young 7man’s quick breathing, and a heat would rise up from within her.
The young man’s language was inscrutable to her and he likewise knew hardly any of hers, which was why they eventually came up with a language that met in the middle. His situation wasn’t very different from hers. The Imperials had charged into his village and taken it over. When the young man was born, his planet was already in the hands of the Empire. His father was forced to work the mines, where he was eventually beaten to death by the Imperials, and when the young man’s mother was caught teaching him how to fire a gun, the Imperials had dragged her away to be executed. After witnessing her death, the young man was thrown onto the spaceship for the reason that he knew how to use a gun.
“Never be able to go back home,” the young man said. “No one and nothing for me there, anyway.”
Still, there was a glint deep in the young man’s eye, as if he had hidden a blade there.
Which was why she showed him the blade hidden in her velvet scabbard.
Like the Imperials, the young man knew of guns, but he didn’t know what a sword was. As the long and thin blade gleamed against the dim light reflected against the inner hull of the spaceship, the young man, seduced, held out his hand as if to touch it. Afraid he would injure himself, she grabbed his hand.
That had been the first time. His hand was hard and rough. And warm.
His lips were warm and soft.
Against that cold and dark hull, the young man was led to lay down next to the sword wrapped in velvet. He knew all of 8her wounds and scars and the imperfections of her skin, which was why when she opened her body to him he checked, several times, if he could, if she was really all right with it, and if she truly wanted it. Whenever he did, she smiled and said yes, it was fine, she wanted it. And she embraced him. The young man was passionate and desperate, and he grit his teeth as if the act of taking her was not one of pleasure but of pain. Which was why it was her turn to ask him if he were all right, and he answered that he loved her.
And as soon as the young man disembarked from the spaceship, he was killed.
The world the spaceship had landed on was white. The patch of sky above was an off-white gray, and white fog obscured everything else in sight. It even rolled over the ground, making it impossible to tell what the terrain looked like. Clearly there was an atmosphere, but could humans breathe this air? She took a few experimental deep breaths. Immediately, she started coughing. The fog tasted of iron, and every breath made her throat and chest constrict painfully.
It wasn’t just her. Everyone around her breathing the air as it came through the hatch was coughing. She heard murmurs of, Ugh,whatisthis,I’mgoingtosuffocate.
“Get out!” shouted the Imperials. One of them came up to her and roughly pushed her back. She stumbled out of the hatch, almost losing her grip on her sword. The young man quickly came to her side and took her hand. She managed to regain her balance, and the two of them walked out into the white world outside the ship.9
Their feet disappeared into fog. They couldn’t see more than an inch in front of them.
“I can’t see anything,” mumbled the young man as he looked around. He sounded worried. “I can’t use my gun like this …”
Those were his last words. In the very next moment, a white ray of light cut through the fog and diagonally sliced through the young man, from his shoulder to his hip. The right side of his body slid off his left and fell into the fog without a sound. The left side silently followed suit.
She screamed but even that sound was almost muffled in the fog. She dropped to her knees by the body of the young man, just before another white ray of light flashed by where her head had been. She ducked into the white fog.
The young man’s left eye was next to her. No blood flowed from the sliced body. The cross-section where the light had passed through him had been cauterized. His face was pale, his lips slightly open. She remembered the first time their lips had touched, the first time their hands touched, and the first time she accepted him inside her and how he had closed his eyes and thrown his head back and opened his mouth like it was open now. She remembered but felt nothing. Her mind and her heart were filled with the white fog. She shed no tears, and no more screams came forth. She slowly raised her numb body.
There was a white ghost in front of her. She realized that the form wearing white clothes, surrounded by white fog, was one of the “monsters” they had told her about.
But the monster did not seem anything like a monster. It was noticeably taller than most human men she knew. There were two arms, and while mostly obscured by the fog, two 10legs, and a head on a pair of shoulders, giving it the overall look of a human. But its head was completely wrapped inside something white and translucent, and through that she could not even see a trace of a face. She stared up at where its facial features ought to be.
On top of the white thing around its head was a third “arm.” The arm held a white wand, its intensely white and shining tip aimed at her face. Without a moment to think, she held up her scabbard.
From the tip of the monster’s white wand came a blinding white ray of light, which bounced off the scabbard and hit the monster’s legs. A thick, gray smoke wafted up. The monster looked down at where the smoke came from. And just like the young man had done before, it silently fell into the white fog.
She didn’t hesitate. She struck down at the third arm protruding from the fallen monster’s head. The third arm dropped the white wand it was holding. She snatched it up and leaped backward at almost the same time.
The monster, with its other two arms, tried to get up on its uninjured leg. She pointed the white wand at the monster. The monster froze.
Nothing happened. She didn’t know how to activate it. No matter how much she pressed on the bump on the handle or whipped it in the air, the white wand didn’t respond.
The monster’s translucent helmet made it difficult to see the white face of the monster inside, but she sensed there was something of a smile of relief there.
She stuck the useless white wand to her belt and drew her sword from its sheath.11
The white monster rose. Its left arm went to its back, where it drew out another white wand.
This time, the wand didn’t shoot rays of light. Instead, a white blaze burst upward like the blade of a sword.
Carefully, she covered her face with the scabbard. That white blade was sure to slice her in half like the ray had done to the young man. Would the light also slice through the sword or damage it? She had to keep such possibilities in mind. She only had the one sword after all.
But there was one thing that was as clear as day: that white light ray was a weapon. And when it had hit the mirrors on the scabbard, it had bounced off. The fact that the mirror happened to be angled toward the monster’s legs was just coincidence. Sheer luck.
She held up the scabbard with her left hand, stretched out her sword with her right, and charged at the monster’s legs.
On the monster’s left leg was a dark gray crack, and from the crack flowed a white liquid. Was the monsters’ blood also white? The sight of the white blood made her head swim, and she wanted to throw up.
A quick shake of her head restored her self-control, and she protected her face with her scabbard as she attacked the monster’s legs with her sword. The tip of her sword lodged itself in the monster’s white thigh.
The monster let out a strained scream as it swung its ray of white light down toward her head. She unstuck her sword and quickly retreated backwards. The tip of her sword had broken 12off. It was lodged in the leg of the monster, and this time there was no white blood coming out of it.
The monster trained its ray at her again. Her sword tip lodged in its leg didn’t seem to affect it at all. Perhaps its covering was armor.
If so, her only weapon, the sword, would be useless against it. And with the tip gone, she couldn’t pierce it, either.
She felt a searing burn and let out a scream. The white ray of light had grazed her left wrist. She had almost dropped the scabbard, but she managed to hold onto it and turn the side with the mirrors toward the monster. The pillar of light bounced off the mirror and flew over the monster’s head.
Without giving her a chance to even glance at her injured wrist, the monster pointed the white pillar of light at her as it charged. She stumbled backward. Everything on the ground was covered in a layer of white fog; she had no way of knowing what she had stumbled over.
Amid her confusion, the monster caught up to her and held the white pillar up over her head. The moment it struck down to slice her in half, she leaped toward the monster and sliced it in the belly sideways, jumping away to her left.
The blade of the tipless sword had sliced the monster like paper. White liquid gushed out of the wound.
Still holding the wand that emitted the white pillar of light, the monster stared down at its own stomach.
And in the next moment, it collapsed into the white fog.
She approached the monster. She prodded it with her foot.
The monster slowly turned its head. She could see, through its spherical helmet, the vague outlines of its face.13
She crouched. Wrapping her hands on the helmet, she pulled it off. She wanted to see the monster’s face. To see what she was fighting and what kind of thing would kill the young man.
The monster was a woman. If this species even had such distinctions. The lines of its subtle and smooth features felt feminine to her.
She was breathing shallowly. Her chest was rapidly going up and down, and the lips of her white mouth were wide open. Her skin was so white it had a slight tint of blue, and her hair and eyebrows were all white. Her pupils also looked white at first glance, but they were actually the very light blue-gray of the sky of this planet.
These light blue-gray eyes were looking at her. She looked back.
White liquid spurted from her mouth.
She kept staring.
Soon, nothing came out of that white mouth. The blue-gray pupils of the white woman’s eyes remained fixed on her and no longer moved.
From its hand, she removed the white wand.
The Imperials seemed to set their weapons to biometric information, which made their weapons useless to their enemies if they happened to be stolen. She suspected the white wands worked under the same principle. She tried to take the long gloves off the white woman, but they seemed to be connected to the armor, and there was no seam she could find. She tried putting the wand into the dead woman’s hand.
The wand turned white. When she pressed it, the white ray shone out.
She couldn’t help smiling. For in that moment, she was 14remembering a story the young man had told her about his childhood.
“My mother and I made bullets together. We melted lead and poured it into molds …”
The ground began to shake, and the memory of his story vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. She looked around.
To the right of the body there were five white aliens standing in two lines.
She didn’t move. With her hand still gripping the wand in the dead woman’s grip, she stared at the two lines of whites.
The white standing at the very front pressed a device on their leg, which made the ground vibrate. They seemed to be the leader of the group; whenever they put their hand on the device, it sent vibrations into the ground, which would stop when they took their hand off it. It seemed to be a signal of some kind, but she didn’t understand it.
She stayed still. The white leader pressed the device and made the ground vibrate again. The four standing behind the leader immediately surrounded the body in neat formation. They moved quickly and precisely.
They had to have been trained people. They were nothing like the barbaric and backward indigenous monsters that the Imperials insisted they were.
When one of them seemed to realize she was gripping the white wand using the white woman’s hand, they aimed at her. Still crouched, she held up both her hands hoping that the international Earth gesture for surrender would be understood on this planet as well.
Her sword and scabbard were behind her.15
Her hands still in the air, she sat back on the ground. Keeping herself low but slightly lifting her behind from the ground, she slowly moved away from the body of the dead white woman.
She felt the scabbard bump on her behind. Her sword was a little further back. A little more backward, just a little more to the left …
One of the white figures shot a ray of light. It just missed her, and she grabbed her sword and scabbard and began to run. A white ray grazed her shoulder, leaving a burn. As she screamed, another ray brushed past her leg. She fell.
Three of the white aliens guarded the dead white woman as the other two approached her. Not taking her eyes off them, she gripped her scabbard—that was when she realized her hand was injured. She held the scabbard in her injured right hand and grabbed the hilt of the sword in her left hand, squeezing as hard as she could. One of the white figures aimed their white wand at her. She never looked away.
A bang. The white alien aiming at her veered as if hit on the shoulder. Another shot. They fell.
The white alien left standing looked down at their companion, confused. She quickly got to her feet. Before the remaining white alien could hold up their weapon, she had her sword ready.
“Drop your light weapon!” a man shouted from behind her. “Drop it now, or I will shoot again!”
Her sword still at the ready, she glanced behind her. It was one of the older men who had been in the spaceship with her, aiming a gun at the white aliens. Behind him through the fog, she could just about discern some colorful scabbards.
The unnis. The unnis were here.16
Her sword still up and ready, she started to back toward them.
Just then, the white alien that had been shot got up on their feet.
A monstrous sight. The white alien who had fallen into the obscuring fog had got up and was slowly walking toward them. In a leisurely manner, they extracted the bullet from their chest, then from their stomach. They looked at the bullets as if fascinated and opened a container on their wrist to drop them in. When the bullets were dropped, the container automatically closed.
Then, the white aliens lifted their white wands and aimed at her and her people.
She raised her sword aloft.
“Your swords!” she shouted. “Guns are useless, use your swords!”
As the men stood confused, the women stepped forward.
The white rays bounced off their scabbards and back to where the dead woman lay. This made two of the three white aliens that guarded the body run to them. The four white aliens and the five women with swords each stood their ground, keeping each other’s weapons in sight. She raised her scabbard high.
The ground vibrated, startling the sword-bearing women. She kept her scabbard in the air and signaled for the others to wait and see.
The white alien guarding the dead woman came forth. Like she had done before, they held up their two hands, showing they were not armed. And then, they pressed the device on their leg again. The ground gently vibrated once more.17
The white aliens slowly lowered their weapons.
The women also, slowly, lowered their swords.
Not taking their eyes off the women and their swords, the white aliens picked up their fallen compatriot and disappeared into the fog.
Even after they were gone, it took a moment for the silence to be broken.
“What happened?” said one of the women. The older man asked what had become of the young man.
“Are you hurt?” another woman inquired.
She did not cry. But she couldn’t answer either. She opened her mouth to speak but ended up shuddering instead.
The other women supported her. They sheathed her sword in her scabbard, avoided her wounds as they placed her hands on their shoulders and surrounded her, and walked her back to where the spaceship was.
The Imperials clucked their tongues at the fact that they hadn’t brought back any of the white aliens’ weapons. But the women didn’t bother telling them of everything that had happened to them, and the Imperials only said of their apparent lack of thinking, “Typical women,” and let them go as they shook their heads.
Even after her wounds were treated, the woman kept shivering. The women suggested she eat, but all she could manage to take in was a little water. She couldn’t bear even the thought of food. She couldn’t forget the young man’s left eye as it stared back at her through the fog. The dark hazel had already turned 18black and there was no life in it, and the slightly open, pale lips were as beautiful as they had been when he was alive. The young man had grown up in suffering and had spent six years, a lifetime for a youth, getting to this faraway planet in search of his freedom, but he had accomplished none of what he’d set out to do and died a senseless death. Why did he have to be born, and why did he have to die?
Amid these thoughts, she realized that she had nothing that had belonged to the boy. Which was why she left the spaceship once more in search of his body.
The planet’s sky was a constant whitish gray, making it difficult to tell night from day. As they traversed the black of space, the crew of the vessel she had come in with had observed strict rules where leaving one’s bunk, let alone quarters, during sleeping hours was forbidden. But perhaps because they had arrived at their destination and the battle had already begun, no one stopped her from leaving the ship.
Her arms, right shoulder, and right leg, all places where the white rays had touched, were burning and aching. The smell of metal in the white fog was even more stinging than before. She had no idea where the body of the young man was. Soon, she was lost.
—It’s all right.
It was the young man’s voice.
—I’m here.
She walked toward it. A hand was stretched out, which she grabbed. Rough and warm, just as she remembered it.
“Aren’t you hurt?” she asked. The young man grinned.19
—It hurts very much.
She started to cry. The tears she hadn’t shed when the young man had fallen, when she had killed the white woman, or when the unnis came running to her aid—they poured from her all at once. She gripped the warm and rough hand of the young man and kept crying and crying.
—It’s all right.
The young man kept saying.
—It’s all right.
His words made her cry even more.
The young man waited patiently until she stopped crying. Once she did, he started to speak again.
—Take my gun.
She tried to control her voice. “I don’t know how to use—”
—Take it anyway.
He smiled.
—Who else will ever remember me in this world?
This made her start crying again.
—You’ll survive.
He patted the back of her hand.
—You’ll survive until the end and find what you’ve always searched for.
“But how …” She was whispering through her sobs. “How will I, alone, without you …”
—You can do it. Because you’re strong.
Smiling, he carefully wiped the tears running down her cheeks.
—And you’re with strong people.
“But I’m not strong,” she cried, “I’m not strong without you …”20
And she told him all the stories she had told him before about her wounds and traces on her skin. How she had been born and raised to use and guard the sword, the battle when the Imperials had conquered her village, the violent memories of everyone she had loved being killed or dragged away somewhere, and the other violence endured at the hands of the Imperials, the life of a prisoner of war, the life of a slave. Every time she experienced these violent things, a little bit of her mind and soul would crumble, and she did not feel she was getting stronger. She simply felt more exhausted. The only time in her whole life when she had felt truly strong was the time she had spent with the young man. It was her happiest time.
—It’s all right.
The young man consoled her again.
—You’ll be happy again, and strong again.
He let go of her hand and stood up.
“What do you mean? Where are you going?”
Fear gripped her. The young man, gently, smiled.
—I have to go. Because I’m dead. You’re still alive; I can’t be with you all the time anymore.
“No. Don’t go,” she begged. “Don’t go—”
—It’s all right.
He handed her the gun again.
—And don’t forget my gun.
She took it from him. The gun felt like the young man had in her hand, hard but warm.
The young man smiled and kissed her forehead.
—Kill the Imperials with it.21
Startled, she woke. Tears dampened her pillow. And underneath the pillow was the young man’s gun.
She took it out and stroked it. The surface was rough, the steel was hard, and it was warm like the young man’s hand.
She put it back under her pillow.
KilltheImperialswithit.
She began to think.22
DoubleHelixI
Where does consciousness come from? Does human identity arise from memory? Does transplanting memories into a cultured meat make it human?
These were the original questions.
Snails sensitized to electric shocks showed responses of retracting themselves for fifty seconds when researchers tapped the ground next to them. In contrast, snails that hadn’t received electric conditioning showed only a second of retraction. RNA was extracted from the shocked snails and injected into the unconditioned ones, and when these supposedly unconditioned snails felt the researchers tapping their environs, they retracted themselves for a long time despite never having been shocked.
That was the first experiment.
Could human memories be transplanted?
Many experiments had to be conducted to find the answer to this question.
Some animals died during the experiments while others lost their minds. And some animals didn’t respond to the experiments 24at all. The researchers decided to create animals that were convenient to experiment on. Subjects that could remember and respond like humans, the creation of which might eventually lead to the first completely artificial human being. If we could transplant human memories into a clone, human beings could live forever without losing their spiritual or biological humanity.
The black birds created in the lab attacked them. They didn’t seem to be receptive of the memories of other animals. Not in the way the researchers wanted them to be, at any rate. But it took a long time for them to realize this failure.
The black birds remembered the researchers. They seemed to remember them from the moment the first black bird opened its eyes. It wasn’t born of an egg. The researchers cracked the plastic shell for it, taking it out. After the feathers had dried out and the bird could spread its wings, it looked upon the researchers in a wary manner. But the black bird then was still small, and they hadn’t had a long time to observe it yet. They didn’t know enough about it to determine whether its wariness was from being a newborn life with no mother in sight or the natural anxiety of all small animals.
The black bird could soon move and walk—flying took a little more time and effort. The researchers chalked it up as a success. They made more artificial eggs to produce more black birds. And as the black birds incubated in their plastic shells, they implanted a tracking device in the first black bird and let it fly out into the white sky.
2. Dirty River
They set out at dawn. The prisoners walked, and the Imperials herded them as they flew about in their small flying machines.
They walked through the endless white fog. No one knew where they were headed. Never mind their destination, they could barely see what was right in front of them. The patch of sky ahead was dim and pale, with an occasional cold blue that broke through the cloud cover and shifted into light violet, finally succumbing back to the weak gray cloudiness of when they first arrived. The fog was increasingly dense and moist. A damp chill seeped through their skin down to their bones.
