Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  But I’m the one in front of the camera. The one who’s poured her heart into dozens of speeches performed on hastily arranged sets as the techies in the background jockey to maintain their hold on the Fleet-wide cast system. The one they paint into the guise of an avenging angel, some kind of ancient and holy retribution for three hundred years of wrongs.

  I’m the face of the Fractionist movement. The voice that announces its message throughout the Fleet. I’m the Archangel. I’m—

  “—Tanaka. Tanaka, look at me.” Scela hands jostle my head unkindly. The voice keeps repeating my name, and I feel myself being rolled over and pushed upright, my back propped against the cellfront. Every muscle in my body feels raw and sore, like my integration’s brand-new again.

  My head spins, my exo doing its best to guide me back into the realm of rational thought. I’m on the starship Lancelot. I’m sitting outside the prison cell of a boy I was in love with two months ago. I’m still made of holes, still empty inside, still missing so many of my pieces. But now I know why that is.

  Finally. Finally, finally, finally.

  I was a rebel. I was a Fractionist collaborator, and the General Body stripped me down and rebuilt me into their weapon. They gave me this exo to quash my loyalties and my memories, to bend me into obeying them without question. They took away everything that mattered from the girl in that memory. All because what? Because I dared to be the movement’s face? Because that stupid First District girl got in over her head? Because she was dumb enough to get caught?

  It’s so difficult to see myself in her, even if the exo weren’t running frantic damage control, twisting my thoughts away from the missing year inside me. The Key Tanaka who was willing to help the Fractionists sounded so hopeful, so idealistic. Maybe my cynicism is a side effect of being stuffed in Scela metal. Another symptom of being made from blank spaces.

  And suddenly my memory floods again, not with my lost pieces this time, but with the people who lost more. The bodies going limp around me on the Aeschylus, Fractionists who were there to give voice to what they believed in, not to do any serious harm. They just wanted answers, justice, to find the information that was promised to their ancestors when they boarded these ships three hundred years ago.

  There’s a world out there. A world they should have stood on.

  “I’m going to fix this,” I mumble. I’ve never been more sure of anything since the moment I woke up in this body. My eyes slide open, and I roll my head to find Kellan crouching next to me, his fingers splayed across the plastic dividing us.

  “Key,” he breathes, and I clamp down on the flurry of memories, terrified of what might happen if I chase them again. In concert with the exo, I force myself to stay empty. No more of the past. I’ve seen enough. Felt enough. Any more than that one memory might tear me apart the way Isaac promised. But I know what it means and what I’m supposed to do with it. There’s a future for me ahead, and I think I finally know the shape of it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell him, my voice growing stronger.

  “You—I’m sorry. I dragged you into all this. I had no idea they would…” I see love in his eyes. I see horror. I don’t know if I deserve either.

  Kellan deserves an explanation, but right now all I can give him is a promise. “I’m going to find a way to make it right.” I may not be his Key anymore, may not be their Archangel, but I’m Scela now, woven with the strength to rip through hullmetal. What good is it if I don’t use it?

  I grin, Scela-wide.

  Then I look up and find Aisha Un-Haad glaring down at me.

  “I can’t believe what you’ve done,” I snarl the moment I’ve dragged Key into the service elevator, away from any ears that might hear us and any cameras that could pick up the words I’m thinking of screaming at her. I thank God that Lopez has taught me the ins and outs of dodging most ships’ security measures—the main elevators are always monitored, but the freight ones have made for convenient rendezvous points with Zaire.

  My skull’s still rattling from the blocker installation, but Key seems twice as disoriented. I wish I were linked to her, just so I could slam the weight of my fury into her brain. I have to settle for locking my hands around her wrists and squeezing them as tightly as the exo will allow, forcing her to face me as she sways on unsteady legs. The elevator doors slide shut behind us, but with no buttons pressed, we go nowhere.

  “Yeah, well, you believe a lot of wacky things, Un-Haad,” Key drawls, but there’s venom behind the casual lilt of her voice.

  “Shut up. You’d better thank your spirits that I found you instead of the marshal or worse.” I wrench my grip a little tighter. If she feels the pain—She must, my exo insists—she doesn’t show it. “What were you thinking? What happened?”

  “Fuck off,” Key snarls.

  “Tanaka.”

  “Un-Haad.” She knows she doesn’t have to answer to me, even if I were able to hit her with my will. She can match me blow for blow—she’s been in my head long enough.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing. What’s at stake for me if they suspect—my aunt…” I break off, my exo warning me. It can help with the barriers in my mind, but it can’t stop me from spilling the truth through my lips. I’m the one who ordered it to keep this secret. But if Key’s going to understand, maybe she needs to know exactly what’s going on.

  She needs to know exactly why we ended up breathing Alpha 37’s air together.

  “My aunt is a Fractionist leader. In exchange for my siblings’ care, I’ve been feeding them information—including what we found out when we arrested Ratna. They must have found the Alpha world to target from the data in Ratna’s lab, and they arranged for our field test to go there, hoping that I’d be able to confirm its nature. And thanks to them, with this whole habitable planet thing happening, we’re under even more scrutiny. There’s probably no way we’ll ever get assigned above patrol, so I’m probably never going to get my siblings away from Yasmin, and if we step out of line, the General Body has zero qualms about using them against me. And knowing we’re being watched, knowing how it would look, you literally just went straight to a Fractionist prisoner the moment you had the chance!”

  “I didn’t tell him anything,” she mumbles. Her hands twitch in my grip, and her eyes avoid mine.

  “Looked like you two were plenty friendly.”

  “Because he knew me,” Key retorts. She twists her arms, snapping free from my hold. I anticipate the shove that sends me flying into the elevator wall, but not the dent my massive body leaves in it. “You can snoop in my brain all you want, but you’ll never know what it’s like, missing the core of who you used to be. You don’t know what it’s like, having to guess at what’s supposed to fill those holes, at why I’m suddenly seven feet tall and wearing Scela metal for no fucking reason. Seeing him, hearing him…it unlocked one of those memories. It nearly killed me—I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t pulled me out. But now I know what’s buried in my head. I know…” She trails off, giving me a wary look.

  “Know what?”

  Her lips twitch, and her eyes dart to the elevator doors.

  “Either you tell me now or I force it out of you the second we’re back in the system, I swear.”

  “Fine,” she mutters. “What’s one more Fractionist in the squad anyway?”

  Something must be wrong with my audio processing—she can’t have said what I think she just said. But then Key starts explaining, and my mind goes numb. This is just perfect. On top of everything else, suddenly we have a brainwashed Fractionist leader in our squad? It’s so outrageous that half of me wants to reject it outright. But then there are the parts that make too much sense to ignore. No wonder the Chancellor herself came to observe us at the start of basic. No wonder Key was sent with me to Yasmin’s—she was sent to be seen. To send a message.

  And thi
s Key Tanaka in front of me—this flustered, ranting lunatic so unlike the cool, hateful girl I know—she’d have to be a Fractionist nutcase to believe half of what she’s spouting.

  I inhale sharply when she finishes. “First things first, I’m not a Fractionist. I’m being used by the Fractionists—it’s not the same thing. And you…Well, clearly you’re not the Archangel anymore—”

  Key’s mouth opens to protest. She gets out a strangled sound, then closes it, and it tells me everything I’d know if we had the exosystem between us. Her eyes drop, betraying her uncertainty.

  I can’t afford any doubt. “This Archangel was a Fractionist conspirator. You were trying to rip the Fleet apart. First the Kronos, now the Aeschylus—”

  “Don’t talk to me about the Aeschylus.”

  I snap my headpiece back, forcing her to absorb the wrath that’s simmering in me. “What?” I seethe.

  “Don’t. Talk. To. Me. About. That. Ship.” The exo brings out the animal in her, enough that she finishes that sentence with teeth bared.

  Unbelievable. “So you want me to ignore the tragedy that just—”

  “At least you weren’t a part of it!” she roars. “You didn’t watch them die—you didn’t mercy-kill them, and you have no idea what…how powerless…” She breaks off, hissing. “If there had been any way I could have saved them, I would have. I should have. But now all I can do is make it up to them. So maybe that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna be the Archangel they deserved. And I’m not gonna let you get in my way.”

  My blood runs cold. I have to shut this down—whatever’s gotten into her head, it can’t be allowed to leave this elevator. “Can you even hear yourself right now?” I snap. “The Fractionists caused the breach. They’re dangerous, and they have to be stopped before more tragedies like this happen. What’s next? The Reliant? That First District palace ship you’ve sloughed off? I can’t stand by when people like…like her have their way with the Fleet. With our lives.”

  I want to go on, but something in her expression makes me pause. Something’s wrong with what I’ve just said—there’s something she wants to correct me on. If I were linked with her, I could reach into her head and try to force it out, but with nothing but air between us, I have to wait. My distant consciousness prickles—I know I’m ignoring the marshal’s orders to bring Key back to the shuttle. But I don’t move a muscle.

  “I don’t think the Fractionists caused the breach on the Aeschylus,” Key confesses at last. Her eyes flick up to mine, sharp and wary. Her body’s gone still and steady.

  Those memories must have really warped her. I shake my head and brace myself for whatever bullshit she’s about to spew. We don’t have much time, but she clearly needs to get it out of her system before we return to our squadmates and the uncertain fate awaiting us.

  “We were warned about the threat of breach before we left the Dread and had time to suit up. There were First District camera crews in breach suits on the Aeschylus before the vent happened, when it was only supposed to be a riot. I think the General Body might have caused the vent. Think about it. Why would the Fractionists vent at the location that would cost them the most? Why would they vent at all?”

  I groan. “Because they were losing. Because their aim is chaos in the Fleet. They want humanity to turn against itself, to doubt itself, to rip itself apart.”

  “Their aim is to break the General Body’s hold on the fate of the human race,” she snarls back.

  “Where’d you hear that one?” I scoff. From the confusion that flickers over her face, she isn’t quite sure. Maybe the Archangel is surfacing in her again. The notion is terrifying. If she could come all the way back from what the General Body made her, what would happen to her? A true, righteous Fractionist in Scela metal—what would she be capable of?

  “Look, you saw that planet. You know what they’re hiding from us. You don’t think that—”

  “I also saw my sister’s hands dyed the color of her blood. I gave up my body to protect her, and turns out I also dropped her right in the hands of a woman who’s using her as bait to force me into a revolution. The General Body knows she’s my weak spot, and if you think for one second I’m going to risk her safety for some idealist’s cause—”

  “What kind of world do you want her to grow up in, Aisha? One where people die the way your parents did?”

  Key’s fully expecting the shove—she almost welcomes it. I throw her back into the elevator wall, my exo urging me to go further, to rip her throat out, to spill her no-good, traitorous blood. “Say another word about my parents and I’ll tear the exo right off your back, you worthless Fractionist piece of shit.” I keep her pinned to the wall, my face inches from hers. Our breathing is out of sync, mine hitching with fury.

  “Answer the question,” she replies.

  “What?”

  “You’d resign your sister to a life in this Fleet?”

  My hands clench tighter around her shoulder pieces. I pour my will into the exo, forcing my eyelids back, making my stare unblinking and unyielding. In place of language, it feels natural to resort to this kind of posturing. Maybe we’re more animal with the metal. I grasp for the right words, the ones that give me an upper hand.

  But the Fleet’s been downright cruel to girls like me and Malikah. Maybe on a planet’s surface, with stars above and dirt below our feet, with a new order no longer dictated by ships and tiers and three hundred years of precedent, we could have a better future. A future where Malikah’s brilliant little mind could grow with her hands unstained.

  There’s a good way to answer Key’s question, the exo insists. A loyal way.

  But not a truthful one, and I think Key sees it in my eyes. She jams a finger down on the buttons, and I rock backward as the elevator starts moving. “That’s what I thought,” she says.

  I punch her. I’d never thrown a punch before becoming Scela, but the exo has the movement locked and loaded, and it unleashes with force that would be lethal if she were anything near human. Key’s head snaps to the side, my knuckles meeting the edge of her exo with a dull thud. She gives me a second—I know she’s giving it because of the way the wicked smile creeps over her face—to realize what I’ve done.

  Then she strikes back.

  We’re raw and rattled and ragged. It doesn’t matter. She slaps a blow across my face that makes me see spots. I dodge the next one, and my exo does the smart thing, flipping my headpiece up. It slams down over my vision as I swing blindly, waiting for the HUD to engage. It’s no surprise that my strikes miss, and when my cameras flicker on, it’s just in time to catch Key’s returning blow. I sweep an arm up into an instinctive block that catches her fist on my forearm plating. She transfers the momentum into a whirl that doesn’t seem possible in the narrow confines of the elevator, and my exo berates me for not looking down in time to catch the leg that knocks my feet out from underneath me.

  I hit the ground with a force that has me checking the elevator’s carrying capacity in the back of my exo’s information, but apparently it’s built to handle several times what we can produce.

  Before I can recover, Key grabs one of my arms and twists. I try to yank it from her grasp, feeling the full rig’s power cells depleting little by little. At this rate, we’ll drain them. More accurately, I’ll drain them first. The move doesn’t seem to be costing her anything, as my exo helpfully points out. I writhe and twist, my face planted firmly on the elevator floor.

  She plants it deeper with a foot jammed into my back.

  “Yield,” Key Tanaka breathes.

  I don’t budge.

  I won’t.

  All my life, people like her have done this to people like me. Knocked us down, pressed us into the floor, and demanded that we give up. That we roll over. All my life I’ve had to go along with it. I had no power to stop it, no power to take back what belongs to
me. But now I have this body. Now I’m a living weapon.

  I’m just as Scela as Key is. And she’s just put herself off balance.

  I jam my knee up into the leg she’s not using to pin me down. The motion would have shattered my old human body, but my strength and flexibility are limited only by the enhancements woven into my muscles and the metal attachments that make up my outer skeleton. Key tries to anticipate, tries to shift some of her weight back onto it, but it’s not enough to stop me from buckling her.

  Her grip loosens, my arm pops free, and I immediately twist over, lunge up, and catch her by the throat. Key manages a strangled grunt around my fingers, her arms swinging as her legs snap rigid, but when my grip tightens on the tender, unenhanced flesh I’ve managed to catch, she holds up her hands in defeat.

  Serves her right for not equipping her headpiece.

  Serves her right for thinking she could say anything about my family. The callous mention of my parents plays through my head again, and the exo draws all the rage and grief into the tension of my muscles as I draw my fist back.

  “Don’t,” Key chokes, but it’s as good as telling me to do it.

  Several things happen all at once. The pieces of my arm enhancements flash a final warning as the power cells sputter. I ignore it and ram my fist into Key’s face once. On the second time, it’s accompanied by the pneumatic hiss of the elevator doors opening.

  On the third time, I punch Key in plain sight of Marshal Jesuit, with Wooj and Praava at her back.

  * * *

  —

  The shuttle ride back to the Dread feels like it’s never going to end. With our exosystem unlinked, we’re left stewing in our own heads. I sit in the fore of the ship, my deadened, powerless arm limp at my side. Key’s hunched over in the back, her fingers alternating between worrying at her throat and picking at the stunstick burn on her forearm. Wooj and Praava slump together in the middle, occasionally throwing us worried glances. Marshal Jesuit sits across from them, her arms folded, her headpiece still covering her face.