Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  My fists winch painfully tight, skin pulling so taut against my metal that my exo warns me I might tear it. She’s not apologizing. She won’t admit what she did. She’s plowing full speed into the plan she laid out, despite the way it’s already gone wrong.

  “The General Body knew our movement was weak, and that we would be struggling to piece ourselves together in the wake of the tragedy. They discovered that a concentration of our leadership was meeting aboard the starship Reliant, Seventh District.”

  Across the bay, the humans are still as statues, still as the void. As the shuttle slips out of the Reliant’s gravity field and into weightlessness, their unblinking eyes remain fixed on the screens. Images of the Reliant, of the vent, of the four of us running through the streets flicker, cut with the rough strokes of an editor on a tight deadline. Over them, my aunt’s low, furious voice continues to narrate.

  “Blaming the Fractionist movement for the breach of the Aeschylus worked once. I suppose the Fleet’s leadership felt that a more devastating action would work again, even more powerfully than the first time. They sent a team of Scela in a fly-by-night mission to place charges along the Reliant’s hull and vent the entire ship. As part of their treachery, they went as far as to have the Scela alert some of the citizens in an effort to appear like they weren’t behind it.”

  The humans start to murmur. Eyes flick in our direction. The four of us stay frozen, drifting aimlessly in our harnesses. The instinct for self-preservation is overwhelming—all our exos want us to leap out the airlock. But we have to hear the rest of Yasmin’s broadcast. We have to find out what she’s doing next.

  “Fortunately, our informants alerted the leadership to the venting. It broke our hearts to flee, but…” Yasmin delivers a dramatic sigh that almost convinces my exo that she’s telling the truth. “We knew if we seemed to have knowledge of the hull breach, it would be easier for the General Body to pin it on us again. Those who escaped before the ship venting share in my grief over the lives—the families we have lost.”

  You murdered them, I rage, bones creaking against my metal as my artificial muscles strain with fury. You killed them all—you killed Malikah, and now you’re building a lie to incite people against the General Body on the backs of dead children.

  And it’s working. The narrative is set. The trap is laid. All Yasmin has to do now is announce her next course, and the people on this shuttle will be behind her.

  She nods slightly, pulling her composure together before her pause gets overlong—likely aware that her engineers are fighting to maintain their hold on the cast before the General Body wrests it back—then stares into the camera. Her brows lower in determination. “The reason the General Body was so desperate to shut us down is this—they have been lying to you a hundred times over. They maintain the illusion that humanity must still wander the stars, not because we haven’t found a livable world, but because it allows them to keep their absolute power over our entire people. The truth they’ve been hiding, the truth we only just confirmed tonight, is that a livable world is out there, disguised as an Alpha world in their records. The Fractionist movement has obtained the coordinates to this planet. But we can’t take the Fleet there alone. We need everyone, every district to support us, to rise up against the authority that seeks to bend humanity to its will. We’ll take this information to the starship Pantheon, to the governance of the Fleet itself, and we’ll put humanity on a course to its destined home. All we ask is that you stand with us, so that a tragedy like the Reliant never has to happen again.”

  The screens cut to black as the cast ends. Our heads fill with a swarm of confused thoughts. Yasmin and the Fractionists are headed for the Pantheon. The small ships within the Fleet can move independently, but the starships’ Fleet direction is set by a control room in the General Body seat. If Yasmin gets hold of those controls, she can use the data jack we gave her to point every ship at Alpha 37. We can put humanity on track for the planet we were always promised.

  But we’d be doing it with Yasmin at the helm. Yasmin, who’s positioned herself as the Fleet’s savior in the wake of a tragedy of her own making. She’s no more fit to govern than the General Body that did the same to the Aeschylus.

  Today I lost half of what I’m living for. I gave up my body to save Amar and Malikah, and it didn’t matter for my sister. The universe isn’t just. God’s grace can strengthen me, but it isn’t enough to pray to Her, to put it in Her hands and hope for the best. Balances don’t work out because we hope we’ve paid our dues—that’s why we have to act.

  Next to me, things are lining up in Key. She has her head bowed, her focus entirely on the holes in her and what she can do about them. Her conclusions are the same. If the Fleet’s going to Alpha 37, it sure as hell won’t be doing it under Yasmin. Key’s done with being a figurehead, a prop, a tool in someone else’s hands. She’s going to be a revolutionary.

  You’re with me? Key asks.

  You’re in my head. You already know, I reply, and both of us bare our teeth, Scela-wide.

  Murmurs from the other end of the ship shift in tone. Our exos snap our cameras around, narrowing our focus onto the humans. They’re restless, wary, their eyes on us. Of course they are. Yasmin made sure to pit them against us, made sure they think that we’re to blame. But they don’t know that we’re the four Scela who were on the ship before any others.

  Not until one of the dyeworks kids points a little red finger at me and whispers something in her mother’s ear.

  Wooj’s panic is the first to hit the system. He fears if something goes wrong, he won’t be able to control his exo. He might cause even more irreparable damage. He shrinks back against the ship’s hullmetal, folding his arms against himself.

  My audio flares, trying to pick up the whispers and accusations that pass between the humans. A burst of horrified amusement comes from Praava as she counts just how many of them there are. All these people we saved. All of them starting to turn on us.

  Key’s mind whirls with calculations. Her cameras flick to the windows, to the sight of the Reliant’s husk growing smaller in the shuttle’s wake. Then to the airlock doors.

  Oh, don’t you dare. Don’t you even dare, I think, turning my head to face the crowd. They’re just humans. We’re Scela. What could they possibly do to us?

  The snap of a couple stunsticks firing up answers that.

  The four of us are out of our harnesses in a blink. Praava and I pull up our combat protocols, setting our bodies into defensive stances, but before we can even raise our fists, Key’s made her decision. Airlock, now! she blasts into our heads, her will blazing down our spines, nearly as hullmetal as the marshal’s.

  Wooj jams the button and the four of us fling ourselves into the compressed space. The airlock snaps shut just as two humans throw themselves against the doors. They strike with a muted thud, then drift back, their stunsticks held aloft and terror sparking through their eyes. Key’s fingers fly over the controls, and I know exactly what’s running through the humans’ heads.

  They think we vented the Reliant. And now, with the airlock controls in our grasp and our breach suits protecting us, we’re going to vent this shuttle too. I shake my head, wave my hands—as if that’s going to tell them anything. Alerts wail through the airlock as Key brings up the protocol to open the spaceward doors.

  I press my hand against hullmetal and pray for peace in the hearts of the kids inside who, for the second time tonight, think they’re about to die.

  Key pops the airlock open, and the void rushes in. The magnets in our breach suits instinctively go live as the four of us vault out into the vacuum. There’s a moment of breathless flailing before the magnetism catches, but then we land securely on the shuttle’s hull.

  Our relief doesn’t last long. The pilots have gotten wise, and a moment later, the shuttle lurches, our grips straining as the force of the twist tos
ses us outward.

  Try to snag a Seventh District ship. Regroup when we’re all secure, Key thinks. We withdraw into our own bodies—my exo walls away the system, demanding my focus. I let the warming sensation of the machine taking over roll through me as my muscles align and my targeting picks a hull.

  Just as the shuttle lurches again, I launch myself out into the void’s cradle.

  Fuck.

  I miscalculated. The last-minute roll of the shuttle threw off my trajectory, and now I’m sailing through space without a target. I pull up my harpoon and twist it into a spin, my cameras searching for something to latch on to. My momentum has me flying through a gap between the Seventh District starships, but if I can toss my line just right, I might be able to catch one of them.

  The exo triangulates distances, my HUD whirling with the math of it. One ship is farther away but easier to hit. The other is a larger risk but a closer target. My exo can’t pick for me.

  I choose the closer ship.

  I choose wrong. My harpoon shoots several meters wide. I yank desperately, trying to get it back in my hands before it’s too late, but my exo forces me to face the truth. I don’t have enough time to spin it up and throw it again. Horror sinks in the pit of my stomach as I sail clear of the Seventh District tier. Only the Panacea and the distant stars lie ahead of me. Only the inevitable.

  Which is what my exo is trying to keep me from comprehending when a weight slams into my back. A Scela-strong arm wraps around my midsection as we jerk forward, hurtling even faster toward the stars. Then there’s a jolt that does its best to crush the air out of me as behind us, a harpoon line snaps taut.

  Gotcha, Aisha thinks.

  Though it violates every instinct in me, I go limp with relief. Aisha’s hold is tight and sure, and with a jerk of her wrist, we go sailing back toward the ship hull her harpoon is anchored on.

  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think it over and over, but it will never be enough. I have no idea how she reacted so fast—she must have made her next jump and thrown her harpoon the instant she landed.

  She seems a little stunned too. When her feet magnetize and lock on to hullmetal, I feel it hit her in a rush—first the sheer, overwhelming thought of what she just did, and then the why, the reason she threw herself into the void without a second thought. Usually it takes family to get that kind of knee-jerk sacrifice out of her. She’s a little stunned to find that Key Tanaka can do it too. But Aisha Un-Haad has lost enough today. Of course she’d do anything just to make sure she didn’t lose more. As I get my footing next to her, I clap one hand on her shoulder, both for stability and because it’s the only other way I can think of to show her how grateful I am.

  That is, until Aisha lunges and wraps me in a hug that would crush a human. Don’t you dare leave me, the entire system sings.

  You’re gonna rip my breach suit, I groan, but I hug her back anyway. The holes in me barely matter in the face of how this feels. Even if caring about shit fucks us over in the end, I’m starting to think it’s worth it.

  But it can’t last forever—not with the Fractionist revolt stirring and the data we delivered bound for the Pantheon. We pull back simultaneously, our thoughts in parallel agreement. It’s time to get to work.

  Aisha and I regroup with Woojin and Praava on the hull of a Sixth District ship. Both of them are holding back their amusement, along with a healthy dose of embarrassment because they did basically the same thing when they were reunited. Our exosystem prickles with unease. Broadcasts are flying across the Fleet as more and more people respond to Yasmin’s call to arms. The Dread is already mobilizing, every Scela deployed as hotspots of chaos flare up.

  We resist the urging of our exos to go charging where we’re needed most. The orders in our skulls aren’t aware of where we’re needed most. We’re the only ones who’ve seen Yasmin’s true treachery. We’re the only ones who can stop it. This time, no order is going to be enough to override our will.

  So we leap into the void, flying between the districts like we’ve been doing it our entire lives. The terror of our first jumps is long gone, overwritten by urgency that leaves no room for doubt. Even Woojin has his movements under control, and by the time we hit Third District, I’ve stopped worrying every time he drifts close to me.

  It’s exhilarating. I feel like this is what I was born to do, or better yet, what I was made for. True purpose courses through my blood, purpose that’s mine and mine alone. No more Fractionists pulling my strings. No more General Body hacking loyalty into my head. I didn’t choose any of the things that happened to me, but I’m choosing what’s happening now, and it’s making me come alive.

  My enhancements weave fluidly through my muscles with every push and pull. I almost forget that I have eyes when my HUD flares with input from my cameras. It sinks into my bones all at once how incredible my Scela body is. There’s no tragedy in losing the Archangel or losing my humanity when I can leap between starships in a single bound.

  When we hit the Second District tier, I spot the distant, shining curve of the Pantheon’s hull. The Fleet’s head is almost a district to itself, positioned in front of the rest of the ships that make up First District. It’s our guiding light, our beacon, the Fleet embodied.

  I launch myself at it, borrowing a little from Aisha’s quiet rage.

  I’ve made mistakes today. Done things ranging from stupid to downright malicious to cowardly. If I make it through this, a day won’t go by in my life where I don’t regret the actions I took in the past hours. But I’ll never make those mistakes again—or at least, I’ll try my hardest not to.

  I thought I could be the Archangel. I thought I could do what was expected of me, what everyone wanted to fill those missing pieces. But the Archangel was just a prop in Fractionist hands. I don’t think they ever really saw her as a person. She was a tool they used to get what they wanted, a pretty face who could speak well and throw money at their cause. She was an empty thing long before the General Body got its hands on her mind.

  I’m not the Archangel, and I never will be.

  Not with this body that’s been forced on me, not with what I’ve been through in the time since the metal was woven into my flesh. I’ve been focusing so much on the holes in me, trying to make myself fit the past that I lost. But they’re just holes. The rest of me is enough. And it’s time for Key Tanaka, the Scela, from the starship Dread, First District, to move past what she was and what people made her. Time for her to become what she is.

  I crush into the hull of the Pantheon with a now-familiar whump, all my bones creaking as the remnants of my human biology squeal in complaint. Three similar experiences press into the edge of my consciousness as Aisha, Praava, and Woojin land behind me. I tilt my head back for a moment, my cameras zeroing in on the Dread’s hull farther along the First District tier. The intership decks swarm with activity as the Dread belches its shuttles into the void. They stream for different parts of the Fleet, weaving through the hulls. With no sound in the vacuum, the activity seems even more distant, even more insignificant. But the entire Scela force is mobilizing. The Fleet is falling into anarchy.

  I find myself hoping that Zaire’s all right. Praava and Woojin let out quiet bursts of amusement, but Aisha crouches against the Pantheon, presses one slightly magnetized hand against the hullmetal, and prays for him. I don’t share her religion—I don’t really share any religion—but for the first time I appreciate the sincerity of the sentiment pouring out of her. The little nudge of her genuine will is better than anything her God could give me. I push my gratitude into her, and feel her smile the other, rarer sort of Scela smile, soft and barely there.

  When we jumped for the Reliant, we had prepared. Marshal Jesuit gave us a specific airlock to target, chosen from Lopez’s intel. With the Pantheon, we’re flying blind. None of us has been aboard. We have no sense of the ship’s layout, and it tak
es several minutes of the four of us crawling across the ship’s hull in different directions to find an access point. Praava’s the one who discovers it on the underside of the ship’s anterior. The rest of us rush across the hull to meet her, avoiding windows just in case. We don’t want anyone on the interior to see Scela skulking along the hull and panic.

  We pop the exterior door with no resistance from the ship, pack into the tiny space—which was meant more for one human and less for four jacked-up Scela—and a moment later we’re greeted by the blissful, gentle return of sound as air hisses in through the interior door. Once the chamber is equalized, the door slides open, and we spill into a service corridor in a bulky heap.

  I push off Woojin and stagger to my feet. Even though the void jumping was starting to feel more natural, the return to a ship’s gravity feels about the same as it did the first time. Even Aisha, who’s burning to go after her aunt, has to take a moment and sag against the corridor wall, focusing only on her heartbeat until it’s slowed to a reasonable rate.

  But once she’s set, she takes off, dragging the rest of us behind her.

  We keep to the service corridors and the access tunnels like the ones that played host to the Fractionist gathering within the Reliant’s walls. The longer the ship goes without knowing we’re here, the better. The Pantheon’s eerily quiet, the smooth hum of its mechanics barely noticeable, and every noise we make feels blasphemous.

  Our instinct for ship design agrees that the bridge, where the Fleet direction is set, is somewhere on the upper levels of the ship’s fore. Praava swears that she saw a cast about it once, and when she spots something familiar, Aisha picks up the trail. We climb up a narrow ladder—one at a time, because it was clearly designed for human weight—and spill out onto a causeway that runs along the highest deck of the ship. The whole structure rattles in a worrisome way with every step we take, and I spider my hands from support to support just in case.