Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  Yasmin’s eyes narrow. “Retribution.”

  “For the Aeschylus?”

  “You must know that wasn’t us—the General Body’s been spinning the casts to make us look like monsters, when they orchestrated the hull breach. They pinned it on us, but we had nothing to do with it.”

  Yasmin is telling the truth—or at least the truth she knows—that the Fractionists weren’t involved in the breach of the Aeschylus. My suspicions were right. But there’s something sinister about the way she says it. Something that sets my instincts bristling, the same instincts that made me question the Aeschylus vent. “Yasmin, what are you putting in motion?” I ask again.

  “We’re going to flip the narrative. Use the General Body’s tactics against them. Get the Fleet on our side. We’re going to avenge the Aeschylus. And we need your help to do it.”

  It’s all I want. All I know I want for sure. My fingers slip open, and before I can second-guess myself, Yasmin plucks the data jack out of my hands and sweeps to the nearest table. She plugs it into a datapad, and with a few elegant twists of her fingers, the data distributes to the other Fractionist devices at the table, which ping with the incoming information. “With this,” she says, “we can convince the people of the General Body’s deception. And after tonight, it will be nigh impossible to side with our so-called benevolent leaders.”

  “What happens tonight?” Praava asks. Our wariness twines together in the exosystem.

  “Tonight, as far as the Fleet knows, a squadron of Scela deployed to the Reliant on an unauthorized, off-the-books mission. The General Body had been alerted to a gathering of Fractionist leaders on the ship, which every single one of us can vouch for.”

  “But we’re not—” Woojin begins. The rest of us hush him.

  “With the blow dealt to the Fractionists by the Aeschylus vent, the cause was clearly weakened. One more drastic measure might eradicate them entirely. So the General Body decided to use those horrid Fractionists’ tactics against them, to punish them for their destruction of the Aeschylus. They decided to vent the entire Reliant and wipe out the cause once and for all.”

  Alarm and fury burn through our exos before any of us can fully grasp what she’s just said. “That’s— You can’t—” I stammer. “People will die.”

  “Not if you alert them all first.”

  A sudden, horrible stillness settles inside the exosystem as we wrap our heads around what she expects us to do. The Fractionists’ ruse is ruined if they go running through the streets, urging the ship’s population to get to their breach shelters. But if four Scela do it…

  “You’re a monster,” I snarl, fully aware of the irony in that statement.

  Yasmin draws back, her face written with genuine shock. “I thought you were with us, Archangel.”

  “I don’t…It’s not…”

  “It’s not your place, is what it is,” Yasmin snaps. “You did well getting the information to us tonight, but you’ve only ever been a mouthpiece.”

  Her words knock me silent. Something else surfaces from my empty spaces—a deep, unavoidable familiarity. This is the same sinking feeling that enveloped me when I was sitting in a chair in front of a camera, reading words that were written for me. My own head swirled with ideas, with opinions, and none of them mattered. All I was supposed to do was look pretty and read the cue cards.

  I remember Kellan’s apology suddenly, and resentment flares hot and heavy in my thoughts. He said he dragged me into this. Did I let him? Follow him? Want to impress him? Ever since I woke up in the metal, I’ve been turning myself inside out to prove myself to the people around me. The exo’s been telling me all along—that’s who I am. That’s what I do. And all at once, I understand what made the Archangel. The exo wipes away the impact, urging me to stay grounded in the present, but the sour aftertaste of the realization remains.

  I wasn’t an icon. I wasn’t a figurehead.

  I was a tool.

  And nothing’s changed.

  Before I can get my wits about me, I find myself swept to the side as raw fear rises from Aisha. She lunges forward, towering over her aunt. Yasmin meets her cameras coolly. “This Fleet goes nowhere without sacrifice. If we lose the Reliant, we gain a world. The charges are in place, and there are too many of them for you to stop us. Everything’s already in motion. In thirty minutes, we breach the hull, so you’d better get to—”

  Aisha’s hand snaps out, grabbing her aunt by the throat. Yasmin yelps and squirms in her grip. The Fractionists at the table move for their stunsticks. As the crackle of electricity fills the air, we flock against Aisha’s back, pushing our wills through the exosystem to restrain her as she urges her fingers to tighten, to crush Yasmin’s neck into nothing. It’s not worth it, we tell her. We’re outnumbered, and we’ll get dropped by the stunsticks. We’ll be just as bad as her. It won’t stop what’s started.

  “Aisha, please,” Yasmin begs, her tiny human hands scrabbling against Aisha’s massive enhanced ones. “You have to understand—”

  “I don’t have to understand anything. I only need one thing from you,” Aisha snarls. Yasmin’s feet lift off the ground. A deadly intention curls through the system. None of us are sure if we can stop it. Aisha pulls her aunt close until her headpiece is pressed into her forehead. Yasmin’s terror reflects in the lenses of Aisha’s cameras as she rumbles, “Where is my sister?”

  I should have snapped Yasmin in half.

  The regret pounds through me as I race through the sublevels of the Reliant. It wouldn’t have solved anything. My sister would still be in the dyeworks, the Fractionists would still have charges placed around the ship’s hull, and we still would have been utterly helpless to stop the chaos that’s about to descend on the Reliant. But it would have felt so good to take the fury boiling inside me out on her. I don’t care that she’s my mother’s sister. Our blood ties have never mattered to her. Now they don’t matter to me either.

  At least I’m not like Praava. Our exosystem is full of fear and panic right now, most of it mine, but I’m not dragging the other three along with me on my mad rush to Malikah’s side. Instead, they’re running through the streets and upper levels, warning the Reliant’s residents to get to their designated breach shelters. My exo reminds me that I ought to be with them, maximizing our reach.

  But I don’t care if my destination is inefficient. My sister is in the dyeworks, and I won’t rest until she’s safely tucked inside a breach shelter.

  Twenty-eight minutes and counting, the exo reminds me.

  The underbelly of the Reliant is where the ship shows its age. Up above, it’s hard to believe we’ve been flying for over three hundred years—everything gets rotated, polished, patched. The signs of wear get swept away. But down below, where only the forgotten go, the signs of wear are inescapable. It’s damp and cramped and rusted, and the whole corridor is filled with noisy rumbles.

  Down here is the dyeworks.

  It sounds fairly innocent, and I think that’s half the trick. But the truth is a Fleet doesn’t fly for hundreds of years without intense resource management. Meticulous recycling. And nowhere is that process more brutal than in the textile plants in the bowels of the Reliant.

  I round a corner, throw open a door, and balk as the heat of the place washes over me. If it weren’t for my breach suit—already sealed, just in case—the smell of molten plastics and old rags might knock me over. I stare out over the dyeworks, and the dyeworks stare back. Hundreds of red-handed children fix their eyes on the monster who’s just thundered into their midst. But none of their little red hands stop moving. They have quotas to fill, far more important than the threat a Scela might bring.

  I throw the exo’s power into the strength of my voice and shout, “The Reliant is in danger of hull breach. Get to your designated shelters immediately.”

  “What’s going on?” a
pale, sickly looking woman shouts back, staggering from her perch on the overseer roost. “There aren’t any breach sirens.”

  I grit my teeth. “All of you out, immediately.” I don’t have time for humans playing games—not when my sister’s life is at stake. Twenty-five minutes. My cameras flash through the faces in the crowd, the exo trying to pin down the one it knows.

  “They aren’t going anywhere unless I give the say-so,” the overseer replies.

  She’s awfully high and mighty for a backend dyeworks hag, the exo sneers in my head, but I push its voice to the side. Its nastiness doesn’t have any place in a situation this dire, especially with none of the children moving from their stations.

  “I said now!” I thunder back, trying to channel the marshal’s hullmetal will with nothing but my voice. “Evacuate these kids—there isn’t time to argue.”

  My cameras flash. They’ve found her. I whirl, my focus zooming in on a bench by a mechanical loom, on one girl in particular. Malikah’s keeping her head down and her fingers moving, just like the kids around her. I storm over, my exo tuning out the protests of the overseer. “Malikah,” I say, kneeling by her. “We have to go.”

  Her hands are ruby red, covered in the dyeworks’ marks and more than their share of blisters. As my little sister whirls to face me, I’m almost knocked backward by the defiance in her eyes. “But the mistress said—”

  “I don’t give a damn about what the mistress said,” I growl, grabbing her by the shoulders. “If the rest of them won’t come, I’ll get you out of here.”

  “No!” she shrieks, reaching out for the loom as if it’s a tether. I feel a tug on my shoulder pieces that must be the overseer, but I ignore it, staring down at Malikah as I try to process her resistance. “It’s not fair if only I get to go. We all should go,” my little sister insists.

  Unbelievable, the exo shrieks, but I can’t help my exasperated grin. I’ve always loved my sister for her kindness, encouraged her to be just and fair. She has all the makings of a General Body representative who could do some good in the Fleet. Of course that instinct within her would work against me now.

  I turn on the mistress, drawing up to my full height, and satisfaction curls through me as she shrinks back. “You’ll get every last one of these children out of here, or I’ll beat you until you won’t be seeing anything but red.”

  “Production—” she starts.

  I snap my headpiece back, unveiling my snarling, metal-threaded face, and the mistress has the sense not to say anything else. My lungs burn as my nostrils flare. The dyeworks’ smoke sears my eyes, but they’ll never tear up with my new Scela biology. “Give the order. Halt production. This ship is about to vent.”

  The last drops of her resistance evaporate under my monstrous glare. She shuffles back to the overseer tower and throws switches in a frenzy. All throughout the dyeworks, machines clatter to a halt—possibly for the first time in days, though with the accident rate down here, that’s not likely. An eerie calm descends as the silence melts into the noise of hundreds of shifting, confused children. “That will be all for today. Evacuate to the breach shelters,” the mistress announces into a loudspeaker.

  Twenty-three minutes.

  The children move like a Scela unit, filing in even ranks toward the narrow exits. I try to grab Malikah again, but she jerks and thrashes when my fingers close around her wrist. I let her go without a fight—I’m too scared of breaking her. “If I carry you to the shelter, it will be faster,” I urge.

  She glances around at all the other kids that surround her. None of them have Scela siblings offering to rush them to safety. “Get all of us out, Aisha,” she says, defiance sparkling in her dark eyes.

  Damn her courage. Damn her justice. I straighten, then sprint to the doors, weaving through the lines of trudging kids. “Let’s move!” I yell, and at least this time they listen to me. The kids start running, streaming out into the corridors, little red fists pumping up and down as they hurry.

  Dread sinks down my spine as I watch them go. The Reliant was supposed to be primarily transport, with a textile district in the rear of the ship’s body. Population imbalance set in after a few generations, and the ship’s industry was forced lower and lower to make room for all the new people. But the ship’s structure never adapted to match. The lower levels simply weren’t built for this kind of capacity.

  And their emergency systems never changed. The dyeworks have only a handful of breach shelters, meant for scenarios where a couple maintenance workers might be trapped down here. The nearest large-scale breach shelters—the ones that can accommodate all these kids—are a few levels above us. And the corridors are so, so narrow.

  In the distant reaches of the exosystem, I feel Key’s terror. She didn’t expect to be reliving the horrors she experienced on the Aeschylus. She didn’t expect to be the direct cause of them. We’ll make it to the shelters, I snap, as if my thoughts can make it so. There’s time—twenty minutes.

  This would be easier if you were pulling your weight, she accuses me.

  The thought lances through me like a needle. Someone had to warn the dyeworks, I fire back.

  Great, she growls. And we’ll just handle…the rest of the entire fucking ship.

  “Faster!” I shout, exasperation nearly cracking my voice. I’ve lost track of Malikah in the crowd, but we’re so close to the breach shelter that already I feel as if a great burden is lifting off my shoulders. These kids are all going to make it.

  But then a sudden torrent of klaxons hits Praava, then Wooj, then Key, and a second later, the alarms are in this corridor too. Shrieking, wailing sirens, flashing lights, and underneath them, the petrified screams of the children around me.

  The breaches have already started. The Reliant is venting.

  No. It’s too soon. We have to—

  My exo slams my headpiece back down, the breach suit’s seals snapping in place as reprocessed air floods my lungs. I’m surrounded by the crush of smaller bodies, and I do everything in my power to avoid hitting them. I scan the faces rushing past for Malikah, but my cameras can’t find her in the crowd. Is she ahead? She must have made it into the shelter already.

  Steady, Key warns in the back of my mind. She’s surrounded by the chaotic whip of escaping air, and it’s too much for her—she’s sunk down on her haunches in the middle of the main street, trying to block out the screaming world around her by slipping into mine. Praava and Wooj are sprinting somewhere in the upper levels, running alongside people who still have time to make it to a shelter.

  Unable to do anything for herself, Key directs her will into me, forcing me to focus with a gentle hum. If I don’t do something, more of these kids will die.

  A little boy stumbles over his own feet, and I bend down and scoop him onto my back before he has a chance to get his wits about him. The shelter’s within sight ahead. Other kids are getting the picture—I feel the little red hands finding purchase on my back and shoulders as I wade through the crowd, weaving back and forth.

  I plunge through the shelter’s doors, and immediately the weight drops from my back. There might be a small chorus of thanks, but the exo tunes it out until it’s nothing but buzzing in my ears. It needs me sharp. It wants to save more. I rush back out into the corridor.

  But then there’s a change in the pressure of the air around me. A subtle whump, and suddenly the wail of the sirens is bending in pitch as the air rapidly thins. The doors of the breach shelter slam shut, an automatic reaction to the inevitable truth. The Fractionists have breached down here too.

  My cameras switch off, my audio cuts out, and the exo goes dead against my spine. It knows I can’t take this. It has to protect me. I thrash against my enhancements, but my skeleton is locked in place by the metal. I have to move. I have to find Malikah. I have to make sure she made it inside. But I’m powerless against the preservation
instinct controlling my body. I’m trapped in a blackened, claustrophobic world with nothing but my fear and my guilt and my hatred.

  It’s for your own good, the exo insists, but just because it’s right doesn’t mean it has to do this to me, has to leave me not knowing. I’m frozen and useless, and all I can feel is the rush of air against my breach suit as the vacuum pours in around me.

  Aisha, Praava thinks. It’s going to be okay. My mind floods with images from the breach shelter she’s in, surrounded by humans. But I can’t help but notice how much extra space there is around her, how few people have made it, considering the Reliant’s overstuffed population.

  I got a lot of people in here, Wooj offers. He’s in a different shelter, this one a little fuller than Praava’s. He notices a cast camera filming, and for a moment the exosystem braids with four parallel desires to crush it. Everything is playing perfectly into the Fractionists’ hands.

  Key’s still crouched in the middle of the street, her cameras fixed on the ground and her hands curled over her head. Her exo is urging her to get up, to be proud and tall and Scela, but her will is unshakable. She can’t find any pride in being one of the direct causes of the chaos that surrounds her. She reaches out to me—me, the other reason for all the air being sucked out of the ship—and after a moment of hesitation, I let myself join her. My mind detaches from my body, from my circumstances, from everything but the system that twines through my consciousness.

  It isn’t fair, that we get to retreat into our minds like this, that we get to ignore what’s happening around us. But the alternative is to purposefully wound ourselves, and after what Key went through on the Aeschylus, I can’t see any point in doing that.

  So I let my exo blind and bind me. I stop fighting. I wait it out.

  When my cameras snap on at last, after ten full minutes of utter darkness, I’m immediately stunned by the brightness of the lights. I keep my gaze fixed on the ceiling of the corridor as I take my first steps. My soundless footfalls confirm the vacuum that surrounds me. My exo tells me to turn my head, and a moment later, I understand the reason why. Through the window of the breach shelter, I can see dozens of children milling about. Children I saved. The exo wants them to be the first faces I see. For a moment my heart lifts.