Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  My exo informs me that there’s a protocol for events like this, the marshal continues. When we depart from this planet, we’ll be handing ourselves over to the starship Lancelot.

  My limbs lock up, a chill running down my spine. After so long fighting to be some of the Fleet’s best defenders, we’re being ordered to surrender to the ship that carries its traitors. Not to mention that among them is a boy who seems to be blocked from my memories but keeps escaping into my dreams. Isaac’s warning echoes in my mind, and a storm of protest rises in me.

  Tanaka, the marshal warns, and my spine straightens, my metal snapping to attention. This order’s not the kind you can disobey.

  A thought bursts from Aisha before she can clamp down on it. I have to tell Yasmin. She walls herself up the moment our scrutiny swings around. My sister. My brother. I need to—

  The marshal cuts her off. You’ll do no such thing. We talk to no one until we’re on the other side of this. Whatever’s going on, we’ll clear it up on the Lancelot. But her thoughts slide to her own family, to the daughter she left behind on the starship Atreus. Marshal Jesuit lifts her chin, pressing down her agitation like the expert she is. I need your focus. Can you promise me that?

  The four of us nod.

  Then buckle up. Marshal Jesuit flicks a bit of her consciousness toward the ship’s controls, passing her orders along to the pilot. We settle into our seats and pull the restraints over our shoulders.

  The moment we’re settled, the marshal flips a switch, and our exos go dead.

  I try to move, but the weight of my rig is so great that I can barely twitch my fingers. Panic spirals from my brain, expecting an outlet in the exosystem, but it’s gone. I’m alone in my skull, no machine keeping my mind in line.

  I won’t be trapped. I won’t be stuck in this metal with no explanation and then have my control taken away with just a switch. That clawing, twisting sensation comes scrabbling out of my holes again, and this time my exo isn’t there to combat it.

  The others are stone-still around me. I clench my teeth, trying to beat down the tumult on my own. But the only thing that interrupts my spiral is when the shuttle’s thrusters fire at last and the soft sound of Aisha praying rises beneath the rumble.

  * * *

  —

  Our exos are still dead when we finally dock with the Lancelot. With my vision locked straight ahead and no internal time, it’s only the jolt of the airlock sealing that lets me know our journey has reached its end.

  A pair of humans darts into the shuttle the moment the door slides open and begins unstrapping us. Outside the Fleet ship’s gravity, we float limply as they line us onto a rack where we hang in file by the napes of our necks. A robotic arm extends into the shuttle and drags us into the Lancelot’s gravitational field. My rig collapses against me, and I struggle to keep my thoughts in focus as the metal presses down on my lungs.

  Without my exo’s control, my cameras have gone static and my field of vision has reduced to almost human levels. I can’t turn my head. I can’t even open my jaw. I’m trapped in the horror of my body, in the monster they made me.

  They?

  The thought is so visceral, and yet I can’t place what I mean by that one little word. Who’s they? A burn aches in the back of my throat. I fight the feeling, but I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a solitary brain. I can’t do it. I can’t stop these thoughts.

  “Tanaka,” Marshal Jesuit murmurs through her wired-shut jaw at my left. “Tanaka, stay with me.”

  I wonder how she noticed, but then I realize the way my lungs are pumping. My chest expands and collapses so fast that it’s a wonder I haven’t passed out. More likely, it’s a miracle of the way my body’s been reworked.

  Every time I move, I can feel the metal around me, against me, inside me. Isaac’s warning burns stronger and stronger in my memory.

  “Tanaka,” the marshal grunts.

  I breathe in. I hold it, my swollen lungs straining against a biology that doesn’t feel right. I breathe out, which helps. Only a little, but it’s enough to get my heart’s thunder under control. I wish it were the fresh, crisp scent of the planet’s air, but I don’t think I’ll ever smell that again at this point.

  Corridor after corridor scrolls past. We’ve been loaded onto the back of a truck that rushes through the Lancelot’s halls. Not along the cellfronts, thankfully. I don’t think my mind or body could take it if I saw the boy from my dreams again.

  Somewhere to my right, Woojin starts giggling.

  “Great,” Praava mutters.

  “You know how to pick ’em,” Aisha says, and the two of them share a quiet chuckle. I try to bury myself in their laughter, try to lose myself in it, but without the exosystem, I’m grasping at nothing. I’m alone with my holes.

  Instead I count my breaths, but even that seems harder with no machine in my head. And with no exo to mark time, I’m left to guess how long it takes to deliver us to a cold, sterile room where we wait for another indeterminate stretch. Woojin’s giggles keep bubbling up, and roughly ten fits later, the door slides open and a lone person steps in.

  Whoever it is doesn’t enter our field of vision. We’re pointed at the far wall, all our cameras fixed on its sloping plastics. The door whispers shut again, and for a moment all I hear is the hiss of five Scela breathing.

  Then a tired-sounding voice says, “This really isn’t necessary.”

  The exosystem snaps between us, and all five of us jolt together in a confused jumble. There’s a rush of relief in our minds relinking, but for me, the relief is that the exo is humming against my spine once more, soothing every terrible thought that rises in me. My muscles relax, and I’m unsurprised to feel an ache kneading itself into them.

  But something’s off—something’s strange. An electric crackle—almost like the threat of a hanging order—infuses the metal on our backs. My cameras whirl around, the HUD flaring in my vision as I turn to face the room’s sixth occupant. The relief dissolves in my stomach.

  Facing us with her arms folded is Chancellor Vel.

  No one reacts quite right. Wooj lets out a laugh. Key tries to salute. Praava’s hands twitch into fists. Marshal Jesuit inhales sharply through her nose and almost snorts. And I convulse in my rig, trying to wrench my head around to get her cloaked figure centered in my vision.

  Chancellor Vel.

  The woman who’s held power over the General Body for most of the time I’ve been alive, who has dictated our very way of life. I’ve only ever seen her in casts or at a distance—I always assumed they used the cameras to make her look taller. In the training room she was a far-off shadow looming above us. But here in person, she towers without the assistance of heels or an exorig—nowhere near as tall as Scela, but impressive for a human. The elegant robe that marks the Chancellor’s rank shines as bright as starlight, a stark contrast to her richly dark skin.

  A sacrilegious thought flickers through me. Scela may be built with Godlike strength, but this woman looks the part. The eerie buzz hovering on the back of my spine gets keener. None of us are sure what to make of it. It’s like our exos are primed to receive an instruction, despite the fact that so far, none has been given.

  “This isn’t necessary either,” Chancellor Vel says, and a moment later the clamps on our necks snap open, dropping us unceremoniously to the floor. Marshal Jesuit is the only one to land squarely on her feet.

  Straightening and turning, she pulls the rest of us with her as we get our legs under us. When all our cameras fix on the Chancellor, Vel smiles.

  It isn’t a kind one. My cameras pick up on the little human subtleties that sour her expression, then flick to the techy-looking manacle locked around her wrist. The exo seems to know what it is and what it does even before she raises it. It clamps down on a shudder of anticipation, and the uncomfortable hum on my back sharpens to a bla
ded edge.

  Chancellor Vel flicks her hand, and all five of us drop to our knees in unison.

  “Remove your headgear,” she orders.

  The back of my neck ignites. A ripple rolls through my exo, and before I know what’s happening, my headpiece is retracting from my face, ripping my cameras’ sight away. My systems press down my panic, reassuring me that there’s nothing wrong with the way she’s controlling me, that the Chancellor, by nature, wields full control over Scela.

  That I belong under her command.

  No, I rebel internally. My autonomy’s been ripped away like it’s nothing, and I can’t ignore that. I try to push back against her control, try to bring my headpiece back down, but my exo locks me in place. A tinge of alarm washes out from me, joined in the exosystem by Wooj’s heady wave of fear. He chose the metal to avoid confinement. And the Chancellor’s pinned him with a mere flip of her wrist.

  This is nothing like the marshal’s orders. Not even like Praava’s override of our system. That was gentle, a tug on the hand compared to the intensity of the Chancellor’s will yanking us into place like beasts on leashes. Praava understood us—she was Scela. But now we’re at the mercy of a mind that can’t possibly understand our bodies, our brains, the way we mingle with the machines on our backs. The Chancellor sees us the way humans do, the way I used to see Scela. We’re tools. Weapons. Things to be wielded with force.

  “I want a report of what happened on that planet,” Chancellor Vel says, nodding to Marshal Jesuit. “Spare no detail.”

  She turns her back to us. Strapped to the base of her neck is a device with wires that plunge into the underside of her skull. My exo identifies it as a neural transmitter in communication with her cuff. A master node in the Fleet-wide exosystem. No communication flows into it, but through it, the Chancellor can bend all of us to her will.

  We don’t get her thoughts through the conduit—only her orders. And I nearly thank God out loud, because she doesn’t get our thoughts either.

  Marshal Jesuit falters, but we all feel the moment the Chancellor’s command rips her speech away from her control. Words pour out of her mouth, her intonation flat and lifeless. In the system the marshal fights to stay calm as the facts rush out of her.

  She tells the whole story with no breaks, save for a moment of hesitation when she tries to describe what went wrong with Wooj’s exo that caused his fall in the first place. She settles for the word malfunction, a compromise from the exo’s preferred glitch.

  When the marshal finishes, Chancellor Vel closes her eyes. I can’t read any sort of intent in her expression, and the exo has to corral the terror that grips me. She could kill us so easily. She could probably do it through the freakish device on her wrist.

  But when Vel speaks next, her voice is soft and almost friendly. “The pilot never found out?”

  “We made sure the pilot saw nothing. He no doubt wonders why we returned so abruptly, but he hasn’t been given any reason to suspect that…”

  “That Alpha 37 is habitable,” the Chancellor finishes. “Which, unfortunately, it is.”

  The confirmation hits our exosystem like a lightning bolt. It’s true. There’s a livable world out there. Humankind’s great purpose has been fulfilled. The urge to fall to my knees and praise God is tempered only by the cynical wave that overtakes me from Key’s end of the system. The Chancellor confirmed it too easily.

  Which means either she trusts us to keep the secret, or she’s not letting us leave this room.

  None of us think it’s the former.

  Chancellor Vel meets each of our eyes in turn with an even stare. “The Scela are the pride of the Fleet,” she says, beginning to pace back and forth along our line. “Now it seems the Fractionists have made their most insidious disruption yet. They’re using our own protectors against us.”

  My walls are up in an instant, even though I know Vel can’t read my thoughts. I pray the others are too focused on the Chancellor to pay attention to the way I’ve snatched myself abruptly away from the rest of them.

  “You were never meant to carry out your assessment on Alpha 37 in the first place,” she continues. “That planet’s been removed from the approved sites. It appears a Fractionist hack swapped the target into your flight plan. We’ll find its source soon enough.”

  Zaire’s warning yesterday. I can almost see Lopez’s smug little grin as he brags about his control of the Dread. No doubt he was the one responsible for making the switch. I was supposed to investigate Alpha 37’s secret and pass the information along to the Fractionists.

  So much for that.

  “Fortunately,” Vel continues, “the coordinates themselves aren’t accessible outside the shuttle databases—otherwise we might have a much larger crisis on our hands. I’m deeply sorry that you got caught up in this. I want to thank you,” Vel says, breaking off from her pacing. “For your honesty. And for your continued discretion.”

  I never dreamed the word continued could make my legs feel like they’re about to melt from sheer relief. She’s letting us live. The tension in the air lessens as understanding sweeps over us. The burn at the back of my neck goes cool.

  Then Wooj snaps. “How the fuck do you justify this?” he yelps, lunging to his feet. The rest of us gape, stunned that this is what he chooses to do the second her hold loosens. Chancellor Vel waves her hand, and he collapses on his knees again, utterly in her thrall.

  She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even blink. Maybe that’s why she’s been able to keep her position for so long. She hasn’t once looked at the messy knots of skin around our protruding enhancements or shrunk back from the sheer power that rolls off the rigs. The woman who stands before us is fearless.

  “Woojin Lih, is it?” she says, lifting her chin.

  “Yes, Chancellor,” he replies, but his voice is hollow and forced.

  Her voice drops to a dangerous whisper, her words crystal clear in our audio sensors. “I have the names of every single person in the starship Orpheus’s underbelly who has ever shown you kindness. All those people who took you in, who gave you jobs, who helped you claw your way out of a life of nothingness. Raise a hand to me again or breathe a word about Alpha 37’s true nature, and I will cull them from our population.”

  Terror blasts out of Wooj as he stares unblinkingly up at the Chancellor. When he speaks again, his words are genuine, filled with as much emotion as his exo will allow. “It won’t happen. I swear.”

  “Good.” Chancellor Vel pivots, her eyes settling on Praava, who ducks her chin slightly under the weight of the Chancellor’s attention. “Your sister is already imprisoned on this starship. Don’t give me reason to move her to a tank on the Endymion.”

  Praava shakes her head. “I won’t,” she says immediately.

  Then the Chancellor’s gaze lands on me. Outwardly, I stay Scela-blank, but inside I’m struggling to keep my composure. I’m the reason we ended up on the planet. I’m the reason we found out that God’s promise of the next good world has already been fulfilled. I’m the reason my squad is being threatened and forced into silence. All because I’m trying to—

  I almost start laughing. The Chancellor’s impending threat is so predictable. So inevitable. They know exactly where my salary is going. They know exactly what my pressure point is. And since Amar and Malikah’s lives already depend on me, it’s not like her threat is anything new. I’ll endure it. I’ve been enduring it.

  But when the Chancellor opens her mouth, it’s not the words I’m anticipating. “I don’t expect we’ll have much trouble from you, Aisha. I’m sure you, of all people, know exactly why we cannot have the rest of the Fleet aware of Alpha 37’s status.”

  My throat goes dry. “I don’t—”

  “You should understand better than any of them.” The Chancellor pauses, and my exo recognizes the moment of quiet, thrilling anticipation
before a blow comes down. “You know firsthand what panicked people do in close quarters.”

  She has her hand raised like she’s going to snatch my next words away, but there’s no need. I don’t have any words left, because she’s right.

  The memory hits like a sucker punch. Two years ago, a rumor started circulating on my birthship. People said the General Body had decided the Reliant’s population overgrowth had gone too far, and they were going to cut off its food support. It wasn’t true, but it lit a fast-burning fire in people. They packed the streets, crushing anything in their path on their way to empty the granaries. I still remember the noise of it—the constant clamor outside our windows, the snap of stunsticks in the streets below, the screams and shrieks, the heavy thunder of Scela footfalls. It took two days for the noise to quiet down. Two days for the streets to clear. Two days for them to identify my parents’ bodies.

  “Riots,” Chancellor Vel continues, “benefit no one. And that’s what this Fleet faces if word of this world leaks.”

  I can see it. Exactly how it unfolds every time.

  Crowds sprinting and pushing, seething masses of people pounding on hullmetal, screeching for a freedom they’ve felt entitled to their entire lives. I see the thousands of children who will have to know exactly what I went through two years ago. Another little girl on another backend district street, waiting at the window for the inevitable as the noise in the distance grows louder and louder.

  I nod. My heart feels torn and raw, but the exo soothes it into an even beat.

  “When our ancestors lived on Earth, it was as a fractured people. The Fleet gives us unity and we have found our strength, our common ground. If the Fractionists get their way, we fall back into the chaos that we left Earth in. That is humanity divided. Humanity turning against itself. Humanity’s final extermination.”

  I bow my head. Earth was Paradise unearned. Humankind wasn’t ready for God’s grace, and we had to leave, to travel, to become worthy. My exo cringes at the Ledic teachings pouring from my memory, but Chancellor Vel doesn’t notice.