Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  Zaire shrinks a little closer to Key. “She said you were the one who told her to do it. Though she wasn’t clear on why we’re after the coordinates.”

  I shake my head. “But you were the one who was supposed to pass along the order to—”

  Key rolls her eyes. “Un-Haad. He had vague orders. The Fractionists never give someone the full picture. It’s all puzzle pieces. Only the people at the top get to put it all together. Zaire doesn’t know what you were supposed to discover on the planet.”

  She turns to Zaire, slapping a hand on his shoulder.

  “This morning, this ship made a voyage to Alpha 37. It returned early, because a particular squad of newbie Scela found out the world is habitable. Certain interested parties within the Fleet need this information. So we’re here to snatch the planet’s coordinates and declassify them before they’re deleted from the system. Or, at least, that’s what I was going to do.” She lifts an eyebrow at me.

  I sigh. “Yeah, that’s what I was going to do too,” I confess, hating every second of it.

  “Oh” is all Zaire says. At first. His face falls, his brow furrowing as he tries to process what we’ve just admitted. He pulls out of Key’s grip and takes a step back toward the door, then seems to think better of it. His hands start shaking—he clenches them into fists, but it doesn’t help. Something shines in the edge of his eyes as he glances frantically between me and Key. “A habitable planet? An honest-to-spirits, actual habitable planet in our reach?” His voice is even shakier than his hands. “You’re sure?”

  “We breathed its air,” Key says. She keeps her voice low, coaxing him like a spooked animal. “And from the General Body’s reaction…yeah, I’d say we’re pretty damn sure.”

  Zaire takes a deep breath, leaning back against the shuttle door. His hands steady, and he closes his eyes. “Well shit, I guess I really am a Fractionist now.”

  “Good. We’re wasting starlight,” I snap, sinking into the pilot’s chair again and spinning it back to the instrumentation panel. “If you’re going to work with me on this, help me figure out how to access the ship’s logs. We’ve only got so long before the marshal comes looking for us.”

  Key steps up behind me, leaning over the panel as she rests her hip on the edge of the copilot’s chair. From the knit of her brows and the depth of her scowl, she’s just as thrilled about this as I am. “Right, well. Good job on getting the ship booted up. I guess we can start…here.” Her fingers skim down a list of functions on one of the touchscreens, and she jabs something before I have time to read it.

  On my other side, Zaire’s fidgeting with the fob ring, still looking a little dazed. “Nani’s going to kill you for this,” he mutters.

  “She can get in line,” I retort, the exo’s frustration fueling the words that pour out of me. Zaire tucks his hands behind his back, taking a nervous step away.

  “I think this is it,” Key says, sliding herself fully into the copilot’s chair as her fingers fly over the screen. “It’s not coordinates, but it’s the flightpath. The destination’s probably wrapped up in…”

  “There,” I say, smacking her hovering hand out of the way and pointing at the screen. It glows under my finger, and I flick it up, pulling a swath of numbers and letters onto the display. Universal coordinates.

  “Praise God,” I breathe, just as Key whispers, “Thank fuck.”

  Now that we have them, I’m not sure what to do. The only way our exos have ever absorbed information has been through a jack or a download broadcast right into our brains. The coordinates are massive, too big for my organic mind to memorize them reliably. A quick calculation by my exo puts them at 256 characters, without punctuation. I sink back in the chair, searching the data structures for a blank space, a way to commit this information to memory.

  “Got a pen?” Key asks Zaire.

  “Actually…,” he says. He looks like he’s trying to memorize the sequence too, but he breaks his eye contact with the screen long enough to dig into his pockets. “Yeah, right here.” He tosses it over me, and Key snatches it out of the air, baring a grateful smile.

  I frown. Since when has Key Tanaka ever been grateful for anything?

  She pulls up the sleeve of her uniform and starts scrawling along the lines of her enhancements on her wrists with precise, elegant strokes aided by her muscle control. The dark of the metal disguises the letters—from a distance, even with eagle-eyed Scela cameras, they’ll look like a tattoo.

  Zaire snickers. “This is the most low-tech thing I’ve ever seen a Scela do.”

  But it’s devious, I’ll give her that. As Key continues to write the sequence as fast as her hand can manage, my exo presses down the urge to fidget. I almost open my mouth to ask if Zaire has another pen, but my exo prickles at the thought. Have some pride, it whispers.

  So instead I peer out the shuttle windows, scanning the deck outside, and pray for Key to write faster. Once we get the information transferred onto a more stable source, Zaire can run it up to Lopez, and he can transmit the coordinates to Yasmin and the rest of the Fractionists. We’re so close. Everything is finally in my grasp.

  And then the cockpit door yanks open.

  Marshal Jesuit sticks her head in.

  “Zaire. Run.”

  He doesn’t need telling twice. Zaire bolts for the door on the opposite side of the cockpit, throwing it open and nearly tripping down the stairs and onto the flight deck. His poor, spindly little human legs carry him as fast as he can go.

  It isn’t fast enough. The marshal hangs back a second, and I catch the edge of a sly smile—she’s giving him the distance. Like a cat toying with a mouse.

  And when she springs, she moves so quickly I’d need my headpiece’s cameras to properly track her. Marshal Jesuit catches up to Zaire in two strides. She ducks low, snatching his knees together, and hoists him up over her shoulder in a fluid movement that leaves Zaire dangling against her back, blinking like he’s not quite sure what just happened.

  She turns to look at us through the shuttle’s cockpit, and my exo ticks off three full seconds before I wrap my head around how thoroughly fucked we are. My thoughts stutter and snap as we’re both swept into an exosystem with the marshal at the nexus. I wince, scalded by the simmering fury behind the command she slams against us, pinning us motionless in our seats.

  With a stunned Zaire dangling loosely in her grip, she saunters back toward the shuttle, every ounce of her oozing predatory grace.

  Aisha’s the one who swiped the pilot’s keys, I blurt.

  Across the exosystem, a familiar rage rises from Aisha’s headspace. Key was the one who got here first. She’s the one who used to be a Fractionist figurehead before—

  As if you’re not in the pocket of your Fractionist ringleader aunt—

  At least I’m trying to get away from the Fractionist movement instead of running headlong toward—

  Both of you shut up, or so help me I will order your exos to stop you from thinking, the marshal hisses as she mounts the stairs, ducking slightly to keep Zaire clear of the door frame. Back of the shuttle, now.

  Unfrozen by the order, we’re able to follow her obediently through the narrow passage Zaire and I hid in and down into the cargo bay we loaded into this morning. I glance over at the equipment rack, finding the mangled remains of Woojin’s mask. The sight of it just hammers home the exhaustion dragging at my metal-built bones. It’s been a long-ass day.

  The marshal closes the cargo bay door, slips Zaire off her shoulder, and lifts him up by his collar until he gets his feet underneath him. “Sit,” she says, and he sinks obediently into one of the chairs he usually straps us into.

  Aisha and I hold our breath, our racing heartbeats slipping in sync. In the exosystem, I feel her anger coalesce into a burning knot.

  And then she tucks it away. When she speaks again, it’s just t
ired resignation that floods into us. “I have a daughter, you know? She’s a couple years younger than you three. She’s back on the starship Atreus, Fourth District. I haven’t seen her since she was an infant, and she’s never seen me in this body. I chose the metal partly because it was the easiest way to care for her, partly because I was scared shitless that I couldn’t do the motherhood thing. All through the pregnancy, I thought the instinct would come when she did. But I never quite knew how, and it got to be so bad that I decided I had to remove myself from her life entirely—give her a chance at something better. She has foster parents now, two guys who give her everything that I couldn’t. But I still love her more than life itself. Still send all my salary to them to fund her upbringing. And if the General Body has reason to harm one hair on her head, I’ll skin you two alive and rip your exos off your backs,” she finishes, her eyes gleaming with malice.

  “I’m sorry,” Aisha says immediately, bowing her head. “I don’t want you implicated in any of this.” She pushes her own feelings for her family out into the exosystem, letting the marshal see how similarly she burns.

  “But your daughter—wouldn’t you rather she have a better life, one free from the General Body’s control?” I ask. The thought feels awkward, half formed, and I know it came from the part of me that desperately wants to claim my history as the Archangel. The echo of my memory looms—studio lights, camera eyes, and Kellan’s smile glowing in the dark.

  But then it’s gone in a flash, snapped in half by Aisha’s voice. “I want a better life for my siblings,” Aisha growls. “But that starts in the Fleet, not on some distant, undeveloped planet. Do you even get family, Key? You don’t know what it’s like to put your life on the line for people you care about, because you don’t care about people.”

  Wrath burns through me, encouraged by the exo. It urges me to pummel Aisha senseless, to give her bruises that match mine. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about my family, about the parents whose perfect daughter turned out to be a Fractionist collaborator. They were General Body loyalists. I have a pretty good guess as to how they feel about me now. And the way I feel about them? It’s lost deep in my holes, deep in the abysses of what I used to be. The same goes for everyone else in my life before I took the metal—Kellan, the Fractionists, all of them. There’s no one left. Nothing left for me except my exo and this new purpose I found in the fragments of myself.

  Zaire’s pen is still in my hand. My grip winds tighter, threatening to crush it. But before I can translate my fear and anger and confusion into a good, solid punch, Marshal Jesuit steps between us. “Spirits alive, could you two possibly get any more wrapped up in yourselves? Two minutes ago I found you working together to get the Alpha 37 coordinates. Now you’re at each other’s throats again.” She pushes me back, just a nudge on the shoulders that sends me reeling into the wall. “Both of you need to calm down and listen very closely.”

  She waits until we’ve done just that—I can feel her attention on my heartbeat.

  “I won’t say I’m a Fractionist—”

  “I know a guy who could help with that,” Zaire interrupts from his seat, then flinches away from the marshal’s glare.

  “But I do believe there’s some good that can be done if the knowledge of a livable world leaks,” she continues. “And the Fractionists are the ones with the greatest chance of bringing that change about.”

  Aisha’s doubt seeps into the system. She doesn’t know if her aunt is capable of “good”—not after the way she’s been manipulated. I shove her noise back. I’m holding my breath, waiting for the marshal’s next words.

  Marshal Jesuit’s hand slips into a pocket on her uniform. “I have something that will make the data transfer much easier than transcribing the gibberish you were writing on your arm.”

  Aisha moves to take it from her, but the marshal’s fingers snap shut around the little device.

  “No such thing as something for nothing,” she says. “So you three had better tell me exactly what stake each of you has in this and why I should trust you with it.”

  Aisha and I share a look, our headspace reeling as we wage war over who talks first, who explains what, who blames whom for which element of the disaster that’s unfolded over the course of our basic training.

  The marshal is patient, and bit by bit we recount the story, sometimes talking over each other, other times falling into silence when none of us have the right words. When I confess the truths I learned about myself, I feel something click in the marshal from across the exosystem. She understands. She and Isaac were both warned about how to handle me but never about what I was. And she sympathizes. I like the way her pity feels, so I go ahead and tell her about the way my memory unlocked on the Lancelot, even though it triggers a rant from Aisha about why I shouldn’t have gone anywhere near the Fractionists to begin with.

  I steal a glance at Zaire, who’s had little to contribute, anticipating the sight of him looking sorry for me—bracing for it, really. But the only things I read on his face are horror and anger, and somehow that’s so much better than what I was expecting.

  When we finally run out of things to say and accusations to hurl, Marshal Jesuit holds out the data jack. Aisha lunges for it again, but the marshal swats her away, instead offering the device to me. “You get this loaded up. And you two—” She nods at Aisha and Zaire. “See if you can get us an audience with your man in the Master Control Room. Starlight’s wasting.”

  She doesn’t need to formalize the order. We move like it’s burning down our spines.

  * * *

  —

  Three Scela, two humans, and all of Zaire’s personality were never meant to fit into a room this small. I wedge myself into a corner as Zaire lunges forward to clap the middle-aged man sitting at the controls on the shoulder. “Lopez, buddy! It’s been too long,” he crows.

  Lopez fixes Aisha with a cool stare, a long-suffering sigh wheezing out of his nose. “This had better be good.”

  Aisha nods to me, and I pull out the data jack. “Alpha 37 is habitable,” I tell him. “These are the coordinates.”

  He lets out something between a scoff and a laugh, his eyes widening. For a moment, I’m worried he’s stopped breathing entirely. Ironically, it seems to be the kind of thing everyone does when they find out a planet has breathable air.

  But then he does something worse. As he presses a shaking hand over his stubbly jaw, Lopez slowly starts to cry. In the exosystem, all three of us feel our mechanical counterparts recoil at the sight of tears, utterly human and utterly foreign to the exos. Zaire lets out a nervous little laugh, crouching by Lopez’s chair and patting him awkwardly on the back. “Hey, man. Didn’t you send them out to see if the world was habitable in the first place? You knew this might be coming, right?”

  Lopez rubs his reddening cheeks. Somehow it’s even worse that he’s smiling through all this. “I know, kid. Seems stupid to be so worked up,” he says thickly. “But when I was small, I wanted to be an explorer. One of the folks who shipped out on the shuttles to study the planets we found. Instead, I got stuck in this little box the second they discovered my aptitudes skewed toward a job like this. Been here twenty years. And now…” His eyes move up from the jack to find my face. The smile fades, recognition plowing through his joy. “Spirits,” he mumbles. “You’re…”

  “The Archangel,” I tell him. “Sort of.”

  And then the tears start falling heavier. “I’m so glad,” he hiccups. “So glad you’re okay.”

  “Okay” might be pushing it, I almost tell him, but there’s no way in hell I’m giving this man more to blubber over. I try to summon the part of me that Fractionists used to listen to and say, “We need you to broadcast these coordinates to Aisha’s aunt on the Reliant immediately.”

  “No,” Lopez replies. I’m almost certain I misheard him, but then Aisha’s muscles tense. Th
e marshal tugs her back before she can leap forward and carry out her impulse to shake the man by the collar. Lopez pinches back his tears, oblivious. “That shit’s not going to fly. We can’t just blast information across the Fleet at all hours. It’s late at night—there isn’t much communication going out from the Dread to begin with, and certainly none going to the Reliant, of all places.”

  “Doesn’t this qualify as a special case?” Aisha grinds out, prickling internally from the perceived slight on her birthship.

  “Broadcasting those coordinates would expose the network entirely. I’d be questioned. They’d tear through my machines and find out who else I’ve been talking to. Poor Zaire here would probably end up on the Lancelot or the Endymion.”

  “But it’s a planet,” Aisha seethes. “Humanity’s next home.”

  “And I’d very much like to set foot on it someday,” Lopez says, drying his eyes on the collar of his shirt. “Fact remains—we’re going to have to wait. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be able to encrypt it in some data going out to another ship with instructions to deliver it to the Reliant. We can’t put it in Yasmin’s hands tonight.”

  But that’s not good enough for Aisha Un-Haad. The exosystem ignites with her frustration as she draws herself up tall. “I’m not going to sit around and wait. That’s just asking for the General Body to pick up on the fact that we swiped the coordinates. There has to be another way.”

  Lopez swivels in his chair, finding the marshal leaning casually against the back wall of the control room. “There is another way,” he says, catching her eye.

  “A shuttle?” I ask.

  “Can’t,” Marshal Jesuit says. “Too closely monitored. Even with Lopez suppressing the Dread’s alarms, a shuttle’s bound to be noticed once it leaves this ship.”