Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  “Then how?”

  The marshal’s eyes drop to Zaire. “Tell me, kid. You ever supervised a void jump before?”

  I don’t know what those words mean, but Zaire seems to like them. The nervous pinch of his brows wipes away, replaced by a wicked, wild grin. “Once,” he says, like he’s begging to do it again. His expression is almost Scela in its exaggeration and uncertainty. There’s something oddly handsome about it.

  In the system, Aisha’s sidled up to the marshal’s mind and found the definition waiting. At first she thinks it must be a joke. I’m not doing that, she says.

  Marshal Jesuit scoffs. Lopez spins back to his instruments, pulling up the camera feeds he’ll need to loop to get us out of here. Zaire lifts his eyebrows at me.

  I’m not doing that, Aisha repeats.

  “I’m not doing that,” Wooj says.

  “Thank you,” I sigh, pointing at him. The six of us are packed into our narrow sleeping quarters, and part of me is fidgeting at our four unmade beds in plain sight of the marshal. “There has to be another way.”

  Zaire shakes his head. He’s perched on the edge of Key’s bed, his gaze bouncing nervously among the five Scela in the room. “The only way this information ships across the Fleet tonight is if we do the void jump.”

  Marshal Jesuit nods, leaning against the door frame. “And the only way you make that jump is if you’ve got all four of you. It’s too much of a risk—Un-Haad and Tanaka can’t do it alone.”

  Praava stares at her feet. Our exosystem reels with her confusion, her fear. This morning, her biggest worry was that Ratna was still imprisoned on the Lancelot, still trapped in a cell Praava put her in, unable to continue the work that’s supposed to save the Fleet. And now there’s a planet out there, waiting for humanity. Now there are the four of us barging in on her and Wooj and asking for not only treason but also for her to put her life on the line in a maneuver that could leave her drifting endlessly through the black.

  Honestly, the treason scares her more. Dying in space she could handle. But Ratna’s already in prison in part because of her. If anything worse happened to her sister, Praava would gladly drift into the void.

  So she’s a hard sell.

  Then there’s Wooj. He has his own crop of people to worry about after the Chancellor’s threats, but he’s far more terrified of the jump itself. His control over his body is loose, and if he runs into another neurological glitch like the one on Alpha 37, he could compromise everything we’re trying to accomplish. Even though the marshal says we’ll need him, Wooj thinks that his presence is a guarantee the mission will fail.

  We’ve never had an argument like this clouding the space between our thoughts, and I can barely keep my sense of self in the torrent. On one side, there’s Marshal Jesuit’s hullmetal will, bolstered by Key’s weak-legged fanaticism, and on the other, there are some very solid arguments.

  And then there’s me in the middle. I know what we have to do. I know that we have to do it, and fast—before the General Body gets wind that we have the coordinates. But I’ll take any excuse I can get if it keeps me safely within the walls of a starship.

  So I throw my own tumult into the mix, hoping it stalls us. Every time one side of the wordless argument seems to pull ahead, I drag my mental heels until we’ve circled back to the same place.

  The third time I do it, Marshal Jesuit snaps. “Un-Haad,” she thunders out loud, and Zaire nearly topples backward in surprise. Key throws out a hand to steady him.

  “Sorry,” I huff, but even Zaire can tell that’s a lie. “We’re not getting anywhere internally.”

  “We’re not getting anywhere period,” Wooj groans, slamming his face into his hands with a little more force than he intended. Praava flashes him a sympathetic grimace. “Look, nothing you say is going to get me out that airlock.”

  “For the future of humankind!” Key says. “For humanity’s—”

  “This is the thousandth time you’ve shoved that notion through our heads,” Praava retorts. “And I will say again—for the thousandth time—”

  “That you’re not risking Ratna, we know,” I say.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Marshal Jesuit asks, and in the exosystem she locks us still, forcing us to face her question head on as the backs of our necks buzz gently. “Inaction? The four of you just go back to your duties, following General Body orders?”

  For once, our system slips into alignment. For once, all of us agree. We don’t want that. We don’t want to serve the very people who have lied to the entire Fleet for the sake of maintaining power. We don’t want to be responsible for another three hundred years of wandering among the stars, waiting to discover a habitable planet we’ve already found.

  We do want the same thing. We want to strike at the heart of tyranny. We want to point this Fleet toward something that could be home.

  The marshal smiles, slow and wide, feeling the hum of our agreement. “If you four make this jump, we have a chance of doing just that. Our window is closing. Un-Haad’s man in the Master Control Room can pop doors and cover cameras, but it’s only a matter of time before someone clues in on what’s happening. I need to start heading off suspicion before it starts, and you four have to get off this ship and pointed at the backend.”

  She opens our door and steps through. Report to Assembly. Suit up. Unless you want to start the cycle all over again?

  There’s no need to respond. No need for her to press an order into our minds.

  Wordlessly, we all follow her out the door.

  * * *

  —

  I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  The four of us are once again armored up in our full rigs and suited up in our breach suits. I’d thought I was rid of the stale taste of processed air for the day, but once again I’m trapped in the keen scent of my own breath. I think I can detect the edge of my fear in it.

  Mine tastes better, Wooj thinks, and Praava checks him with her shoulder. The other three don’t seem nearly as nervous about what we’re about to do, and it’s only making it worse. They should be wetting themselves right now, if that kind of reaction were still within our bodies’ capacities. The only ones in this corridor who shouldn’t be wetting themselves are Marshal Jesuit and Zaire, because they aren’t about to jump out of a starship.

  A void jump, as the marshal has explained, is a stealth tactic used by Scela to board ships when they don’t want to be seen arriving by shuttle. Or when shuttle decks are locked down. Or in other extreme cases. It’s rarely put to use, and with good reason—a void jump is the most dangerous maneuver I can think of. A last resort.

  One wrong move and you’re sailing into the black with no way of saving yourself. Drifting endlessly, until your breach suit’s battery dies or you find some other way of creating a quick exit. There’s no room for error.

  At the end of this corridor is an airlock, and on the other side of the airlock is nothing but airless terror. Marshal Jesuit hangs back as Zaire presses forward, activating the datapad by the airlock door and tipping a salute up at the camera in the corner. A moment later, the door gusts open with a slight hiss. The base of the chamber is filled with greasy, dusty footprints from its primary use—letting maintenance workers out to do external work that keeps the ship flying.

  “Right, you four in here,” Zaire says. He hasn’t stopped grinning since the moment we decided that we’re doing this. We tramp inside, our exos organizing us in pairs along each wall. Across from me, Key’s already having second thoughts, but the feel of the data jack in her uniform pocket grounds her in a purpose that’s hard to shake.

  That purpose hums through the system—annoying, persistent, just shy of unpleasant—and I wonder if this is how the others feel every time I pray. Praava assures me it isn’t, just as Key shoots over that yeah, it kind of is. I tighten my jaw.

 
“In the hip of your breach suit is a harpoon,” Zaire continues, oblivious to the back-and-forth happening between us. “Long string with a big hullmetal-tuned magnet at the end, basically. If you start to float off course, toss it at the nearest hull—as long as you’re close enough for it to reach. Once it’s secure, you can reel yourself in and then use the magnets in the fingers and feet of your suits. Your exos should know exactly how to work them.”

  I probe inside the exo to make sure it knows what he’s talking about, but there’s no way to test the protocols until there’s hullmetal within reach. All four of us are slightly perturbed that we never even knew the magnets existed before today. How many other secrets have been built into our bodies?

  “You know the mission specs,” Marshal Jesuit says. The District formation. The target. The access hatch on the Reliant. The marshal drilled all this information into us while we were suiting up. “It’s just point and leap. Keep a tight formation and focus—you’re going to need all four of you to get to the backend.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” we say in unison, our voices crystal clear through the comms in our ears but muffled through the shielding of our breach suits.

  Zaire moves around each of us, checking the weak points in our suits and inventorying the equipment. He pulls a piece of hullmetal out of his pocket and waves it in front of each of our hands and feet, and our exos respond instinctively, switching on the magnetic current and yanking it out of his grasp. When he motions for it back, there’s another instinctive switch flipped, the magnetism drops, and Zaire snatches the hullmetal before it hits the ground.

  All these checks and drills and reassurances are only making my anxiety worse. I feel like a coiled spring, like an engine on the edge of ignition, like every enhanced muscle in my body is winding tighter by the second. Praava urges me to relax, partly for my own good, and mostly because I’m dragging everyone else in the system along with me. Her own thoughts are in a similar sort of turmoil, but there’s a different focus. After her certainty that Ratna was meant to save the Fleet—certainty that drove her to take the metal—she’s not quite sure how to process humanity’s salvation riding on her shoulders. I want to reassure her, but words escape me. So instead I push the intention her way, and Praava grins, thinking of that day on the Porthos when she comforted me and realized that maybe she could live up to Ratna after all.

  Zaire tucks the hullmetal into his pocket and finishes the last of his checks. Then he steps up to the doors and turns back to face us. “All right, fuzzheads, looks like you’re all set. Have a nice flight.” A subtle smirk plays over his lips, and all but one of us are repelled by it. “Key, I had a good time tonight. Let’s do it again sometime,” he says, then darts out of the airlock and seals the door before she has a chance to retort.

  Not a word, she snarls through the exosystem, but we can all tell she’s pleased.

  Now is not the time for distractions, Tanaka. All of you, grab the straps on the wall behind you, Marshal Jesuit instructs. Hold on until the vent’s done and the airlock is equalized.

  I turn and wind my fingers in the plastic straps, clenching them as tightly as the breach suit will allow. Next to me, Wooj rolls his head back. He’s struggling with the full rig, with giving over his loose control of his body to the machine inside him. If it were up to me, I would have left him behind on this, but the marshal insisted, and Lopez backed her up. Wooj is wrapped up in this too, and we need as many Scela out there as possible, as much backup as we can manage.

  In his headspace, he hums in concert with Key. Wooj has spent his whole life turned inward, focused on nothing but his own survival, and he’s been lost as a Scela, unsure what to reach for now that a stable life is a given. He’s a little thrilled to have found something worth risking everything for. Terrified, too, but that’s part of the thrill.

  “Hold on, robots,” Zaire says over the comm. “Lopez, you have a go.”

  I close my eyes, even though the exo screams not to.

  The outer doors open with a gentle whump that gets sucked away as all the air explodes outward and nothingness rushes in to replace it. Across the bay, a sickly feeling pours out of Key as she relives the sensation of the Aeschylus vent, but she puts a stopper on it before any of us can comment.

  “Airlock is clear, proceed to hull,” Zaire confirms.

  I slide my eyes open and turn toward the stars. They shine harmlessly, their fiery light billions of miles away, and strangely enough, the thought of it makes me feel huge. Makes me feel bolder.

  Key and I are the first to exit the airlock, pulling ourselves along by handholds until we edge out of the ship’s gravity field and into the open, weightless void. I immediately slap my hand down on the hullmetal, my magnets switching on as the force of it pushes me back. Though there are magnets in my shoes, the exo suggests using our hands for the hullcrawling. Much finer control, and much less chance of launching us into the nothingness.

  As we wait for Wooj and Praava to make the transition, I dare to lift my eyes from the belly of the ship. The airlock we chose puts us on the front end of the Dread, and from here, I can see some of the other First District ships. The elegant lines of the Pantheon lead us, and for a moment I try to wrap my head around the speed with which that ship guides us through the black. It feels like we’re completely still, but it’s an illusion produced by the vacuum that surrounds us and the distance between stars.

  On the other side of the airlock door, Key stares at the First District and notes how arbitrary it seems. That this set of ships leads, while the backend follows. That this mere formation, necessitated by the engineering needs of the ships, produced rigid social strata over time. That she happened to be born at the top of it, and I happened to be born at the back.

  It’s difficult, but I keep my thoughts to myself.

  “Holy shit,” Wooj wheezes. He’s managed to get himself out onto the hull, and Praava drifts near him, her exosystem filled with a silent vow that she’ll get him to the backend in one piece.

  I lean into the exosystem, searching for Marshal Jesuit’s next instructions, but then I remember the hullmetal that stands between us, impeding the exosystem link. We don’t hear from her again until we’re inside the same ship. The four of us are on our own.

  “Starlight’s wasting,” Key reminds us, and starts her crawl.

  It takes a few minutes to figure out the optimal mechanics for this kind of spacewalking. Praava, the natural, lands on it first. With one foot, she pushes off the hull and extends an arm, her magnets spun up just enough to keep her close to the hull without sticking to it. She skims along the hull by her fingertips, her exo shedding waves of joy at the feeling of flying. Wooj doesn’t trust it—he scrambles along by his hands in a lizardlike motion, his magnets at full power.

  I’m more like Wooj, less like Praava. The thought of what I’d lose if I accidentally launched into the void is too much—it keeps my magnets firmly anchored as I crawl along the surface of the Dread. I’m surprised that Key isn’t trying to outdo Praava. Instead, she keeps her pace conservative, letting Praava arc out farther. It makes sense, I concede grudgingly. Key carries the linchpin of the entire mission. She doesn’t want to jeopardize it.

  We round the hull in a matter of minutes, arriving at the rear end of the Dread, where the ship’s long-inert engines rest. It’s been years since the last time the Pantheon dictated a change in Fleet direction, and the massive thrusters on all our ships have gone cold, leaving us to coast on the momentum of that last burn. As we pull ourselves over the crest of the Dread’s shape, we pause.

  All four of us take in the Fleet as we’ve never seen it before.

  The bay windows on starships and shuttles have offered us narrow glimpses, but we’ve never had an uninhibited view of the ships that have bounded humanity for the past three hundred years. With our headpieces on, our exo cameras weaving their images between us, we can s
ee everything. These ships have borne the human race through the universe, arranged in seven tiers, seven layers, seven districts. Tiny shuttles glimmer between them, dwarfed by the scale of the starships. We bask in the faint glimmers of light and life within, stark against the blackness of the space in between stars. This is our home. This is our pride, the exos sing. This is what we fight to protect.

  Except we’re on a God-given mission to land this Fleet. To destroy this balanced structure as we bring these ships to berth. To uproot the General Body’s control and plant new seeds on a planet we can finally call home.

  And slowly, viciously, we start to smile.

  Who wants the first jump? Key jokes, her cameras flickering to each of us. But that’s not how this is going to work. If any of us veers off target, the only way to correct that is if we’re all in the void together. So we line up along a flat stretch of hull, our toes pointed at the tier of Second District ships directly ahead. A countdown blooms between us as our HUDs zero in on the starship Icarus, our first target.

  I whisper a quick prayer, then give myself fully to the exo, pushing my will against it and letting it do the rest. All thoughts and feelings get swept to the side as the machine in me winds my muscles, pushing me into a squatting stance. Across the system, we align, our bodies adjusting to match each other. The countdown ticks back.

  Three…

  Two…

  One…

  The magnetism in my feet vanishes. My muscles snap outward. We launch off the hull and into nothing. My HUD lights up as it locks on to our target and confirms I’ll hit it.

  Wooj’s flares red. Panic floods the exosystem, but none of us can do a thing about it—any attempt to grab him risks adjusting our momentum, throwing off our course. There’s nothing for him to latch on to, nothing for him to push against to bring him back to us. As we drift, he starts drifting farther away. The Icarus is a massive target, so massive that it seems ludicrous he might miss it. But all the math swirling around in our skulls agrees.