Cade pulled Mira to the edge of his bunk.
“This is Gori. He doesn’t say much. Well, he says the same things over and over, and you don’t have to pretend they make sense.” Cade inspected his dark-orb eyes. “If he knows how to cry, I’ve never seen it.”
“Darkriders do not—”
“—cry, on pain of death, I’m sure,” Cade said.
“Darkriders do not form bonds with children,” he said, looking Mira over with disinterest. “Childhood is the shortest phase in a Darkrider’s life.”
“How long does it last?” Cade asked.
“Seven days.”
“Never seen one of these,” Mira said, prodding at Gori’s midsection.
Gori flashed murder-eyes at Mira, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy stubbing a finger at his raisinlike feet. Cade leaned in and whispered, “He’s boring for the most part, but if you keep touching him, he might kill you.”
Mira’s eyes went wide and a little bit gleeful. She experimented with how close she could hover at the foot of Gori’s bunk, while Cade headed down the chute.
She ran into Lee at the bottom.
“Making new friends?” Lee asked.
“No,” Cade said. “The ones I have are enough trouble.” Lee perched her fists on her waist, clearly taking it as a compliment.
Cade wanted to get back to her mother and try a few more songs out before they ran into the last set of ships, but Lee didn’t budge. She was staring at Mira, her eyes cranked narrow. “There’s something odd about that one.”
A prickle spidered up Cade’s back. “She’s a little girl.”
“Right,” Lee said. “A severely odd little girl.”
“She doesn’t have to scream normal to you,” Cade said. “You grew up with things she didn’t. Family. Friends. Regular meals.”
“Right, the glamorous life of a Human Express kid. Feet in your face every morning, the desperate hopes of humanity resting on you by mid-afternoon. And don’t even talk to me about the slop we ate at night. It made grain-mash look like steak cooked in butter and dry-rubbed with gold.”
Cade watched as Mira climbed into her new bunk, folded small. “So you’re saying she’s lucky?”
Lee shook her head. “I’m saying none of us are.”
“Mira will be fine,” Cade said. “We’ll all be fine.” But she heard her own doubtful undertones. The raw pitch of what she wanted to believe.
Cade had barely gathered her mother and Moon-White and found a place to sit when Renna clenched. Cade thought she was sending a warning and then remembered—this was the signal. She set the guitar down with care.
Cade corkscrewed up the chute. By the time she made it to the top, her guts were twisted, palms slicked.
Rennik, Lee, and Ayumi stood in the starglass. The entire view was filled with old, gray, crusted metal.
A ship. So big that it took Cade a full minute to understand what she was looking at.
“Is that . . . ?”
“It’s human-made,” Ayumi said. “Normal human. Not Unmaker human.”
Cade let out her panic in shallow gulps. “Next time? Mention that part first.”
“I got so caught up in looking at it,” Ayumi said, putting up a hand to the image of the ship. It was spotted with lookout towers, cannons pointed like fingers in every possible direction. “It’s so—”
“Brilliant,” Lee finished.
“Impossible,” Cade added. “That’s not what I heard. I heard four tiny ships.”
Or at least she’d thought she heard four tiny ships. Maybe what she’d actually heard were four people, spread out and moving all over one huge vessel. Still, even if that was true, “Humans don’t make ships that big,” she said.
“Not for centuries,” Ayumi said. “But they did. During the nonhuman wars, when they still had big hopes for curing spacesick. My father . . .” She chased the coarse note out of her voice. “My father took me to see one of them when I was little. There were only two . . . or maybe three left in the whole universe. The Persephone was the one I saw. And there was the Greystone, and the Everlast.”
A word slid into view along the bottom of the ship. The paint had thinned in a few places, but the letters were unmistakable.
“You’re telling me we’re looking at a warship?” Cade asked. “An honest-to-universe warship?”
“One that hasn’t been used in over three centuries,” Ayumi said, “but—”
“Yeah,” Lee said. “We are.”
Cade ran for the com, but she didn’t take her eyes off the starglass. Her dream of gathering the rest of the human race had a shape, and a name stamped in white letters on time-eaten metal.
Everlast.
Cade and the rest of the crew ran for the dock and pulled themselves together, although Cade had to admit that after weeks of running at top speed, and a bare minimum of showers, they looked dreg-poor.
The dock swirled open. The woman who greeted them on the other side wore an official-looking flight suit and braided twists of light red hair. “We’re so glad you found us,” she said, pressing hearty handshakes on all of them. She even hugged Cade. “I’m June.”
She led them across the dock, into the body of the massive ship, where so much metal curved around them that Cade felt like she’d been swallowed.
“You must be knee-deep in the battle,” Lee said.
“Oh, not me,” June said. “I’m in charge of tasks and organization. I keep things in ship shape.” She pressed hard on the pun. When it was met with silence, she added, “Mostly I maintain a chore roster.”
“But this is a warship!” Lee cried. “A beautiful, cannon-bristly warship!”
June scrunched her forehead and kept walking, leading them down long metal halls crossed with structural beams. Lee touched everything she could reach. Ayumi drank in the details, then poured them out into a notebook.
June’s voice bounced around the near-empty ship and came back without losing a bit of chipper shine. “Everlast has four levels—engine, operations, crew, and flight. With a protective sounding-hollow above to absorb blasts, and a triple-thick hull. All of the glass on the ship was made from sands of the Wex system, which are known for their . . .”
June went on about the building materials and their near-magical properties. Cade grabbed Rennik’s arm and pointed out empty bedroom after empty bedroom. There were even fresh sheets on the bunks.
Perfect for unloading passengers.
June pounded the stairs from the crew level to the flight level. A man met them at the entrance to the control room with more handshakes. He had dark skin, easy-to-meet eyes, and the first rumblings of a stomach. Gray hair clung in stubborn tufts to his scalp. He looked a little old to be captain of the Everlast, but maybe that meant he had lots of years of captaining behind him. Maybe that was a good thing.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see some life out here,” he said. “You’re the first people we’ve run into since those hellish attacks. Sorry, introductions first. Difficulties later. Matteo Campbell. Head of the Everlast Preservation Society.”
Lee almost choked on her own spit. “You’re historians?”
“I’m afraid so,” Matteo said.
Lee hadn’t been the only one hoping for a fully armed, defense-ready Everlast. But a floating museum of a warship was better than no warship at all.
Cade sat June and Matteo down, and laid out her plan to gather the rest of the human race. She didn’t go into the details of the ex-quantum-entangled side effects that made it possible. But she sketched them. Lightly.
“We can’t get to all of the survivors ourselves,” she said. “Not with one ship. We need to spread the word, establish com patterns.” She saved the most dangerous part for last. “There are some planet-side rescues to run.” Matteo raised his peppery eyebrows. “Short version? We need your help.”
Matteo nodded. “Everlast will give you everything she can.”
Cade sighed, and even returned June’s hug.
It might have worked out in Cade’s favor that these were historians instead of crust-hardened, military types. Lee, on the other hand, was still looking them up and down like she might have to throw a neat little coup and install herself as captain.
“This is your entire crew?” Lee asked.
“There are two more,” Cade said. She’d heard four thought-songs.
“Right,” Matteo said. “Four in each team. We rotate with other teams . . . or we used to . . . to keep the chances of spacesick low. And the ship sits in planet-dock for half the year so people can climb around on it, see what life was like on one of these old monsters during the wars.” Matteo patted Cade’s shoulder and leaned in. “I’ll admit, I was never too eager to find that part out myself.”
Chapter 7
The survivors had ten minutes to gather their things and say their goodbyes—not that many had gotten attached to living on a ship that was also alive. The children loved Renna, especially Mira, who Cade caught running up the chute like a cut-loose animal. But the rest seemed itchy to leave for the known comforts of metal walls that don’t talk back.
Besides, there was plenty of room, near-endless supplies, and a good welcome on Everlast. Cade decided not to mention that it was crewed by soft-in-the-stomach historians.
Matteo stood with Cade and her crew at the dock and watched the survivors pour in. June kept a list of names scribbled on her chore rotations.
“It’s not too many, right?” Cade asked.
“Are you kidding?” June said. “The ship is outfitted to carry seven hundred into deep space and keep them alive for years.” She consulted a list on an old-fashioned wooden clipboard. Everything Cade had seen served as proof of the ship’s age. “This is going to help so much with the mess shifts. And oh! Window cleaning.” June scribbled harder.
Another rush of survivors pulsed across the dock. Cade sorted them to make sure her mother hadn’t gotten mixed into the crowd.
But what if she did? What if Cade’s mother disappeared into the clean, waiting rooms of Everlast? Cade had impossible amounts of work to do, and she could collect her mother when the fleet came together. Rennik would see the reason in her choice. Gori couldn’t get his shriveled brain around the idea of “mother” in the first place. Renna needed a bare minimum of passengers to keep flying. But Cade worried that a new wince would crowd Ayumi’s light brown eyes. She was the only one who knew that Cade’s music might be able to cure spacesick. And Lee—would she wonder what all that searching was for if Cade gave up on her mother so easily?
Two new people in flight suits rattled the nearest stairs and came to meet them—a thirty-something man with beige skin and a blaring bald spot, and a girl with short white-blond hair and metal in every pierceable sector of skin.
Matteo waved them over.
“This is Green, our specialist on tech both ancient and modern. And Zuzu. She’s in charge of weapons.”
Lee’s eyes went bright at the mention of weapons. She rushed Zuzu so fast that she almost toppled backwards.
“So what’s the missile-per-minute capacity here? How much gunfire can the hull take? What would you do to arm a small civilian ship if you wanted to add it to Everlast’s defense matrix?”
Zuzu twirled a silver ring in her lip and fired answers. “Twenty-three. Up to a thousand direct hits per sheet per week, double that for indirect. Rig the blast-wipers to fire small projectiles. Just as an idea.”
Lee clapped her hands to her heart.
Ayumi cleared her throat and said, “We really should be helping with—”
“What? Survivors? They know how to walk across a dock.” Lee turned back to Zuzu. “We’re going to have a fleet soon, and we need them armed.”
“Oh, right,” Zuzu said, tugging at an ear stud. “I’m used to thinking about weapons. Not so much actually using them.”
“Well, things are about to get really hands-on,” Lee said.
Ayumi looked four different kinds of upset.
The last of the survivors from Res crossed the dock, and on the other side, Renna let out a full-ship sigh.
She wasn’t the only one who liked things quiet. Cade had spent years kicking people out of her dressing room, slapping threats on anyone who stared at her for too long. Her new urge to bring the human race together wasn’t the same thing as wanting them all within touching radius.
Cade took a walk, admiring the acoustics of the emptied ship. She was so tuned in that she heard the dull knocking right away. It was coming from the common room, behind one of the cushions that survivors had been using as makeshift beds.
Cade pushed aside a wall panel and found Mira, knees shoved to her face. She stared out, all green eyes and defiance.
“What’s this about?” Cade asked.
Mira pulled her crossed arms tight and Cade noticed the places where they were still dotted with baby fat. “I don’t care about that other ship. I like it here.”
Rennik and Lee had been doing a maintenance round, and hooked around the door frame at the sound of voices.
“Who are you talking to, Cadence?” Rennik asked.
She stepped aside to reveal Mira.
Lee didn’t look surprised.
“We’re still close enough to Everlast,” Rennik said. “We can hail them and have them here in—”
“No!” Mira sprang out of the panel. “Please.”
“She has no reason to go with them.” Cade’s own past rose again. Andana, in all of its anti-glory.
“The girl needs to speak for herself.” Lee retied an errant hair knot and did her best to look wise. “State your case.”
Cade got the feeling anyone with a semi-functional heart wouldn’t be able to turn Mira away once they heard her story. Wanting to know what had happened to her was like wanting to hear a sad song—Cade got the feeling it could drag her under, but it would also scrape her against something she needed to feel.
Mira didn’t pour out a story, though. She kept her eyes hard and put a hand to the wall. “Renna let me stay.”
Renna was the ship—she had the first and last word on the subject.
That was enough to take the air out of Lee’s objections. Under normal circumstances, Rennik would have let it go at that, but he was still sizing up Mira as if every pound she added to the ship had to be worth it.
“If you want to stay,” he said, “you’ll be counted on to help.”
Mira nodded like he’d handed her a hot meal, a birthday present, and a kitten all at once. She skittered out of the common room and turned back when it became clear that no one was following.
“All right, then!” she said. “What do we do?”
“We,” Lee muttered. “Universe help us.”
Cade didn’t bother hiding her smile.
Mira’s first job was to grab tables from the storage closet and set them up in the control room to help turn it into a center for the finding and gathering of the human race. She rushed, a blur of pale brown hair and bright eyes, so eager that she brought five more tables than Cade needed. Lee unrolled charts of all the known systems. Ayumi tore blank pages out of a notebook, which Cade patched with tape so that the huge sheet laid flat, taking up a good portion of the floor.
She kneeled in front of it, pencil in hand. Rennik claimed the starglass. Lee and Ayumi manned the charts. Mira sat across from Cade, ankles tucked under, and watched.
Cade didn’t know a better feeling than having her strange little band assembled.
She snapped from the soft brightness of Renna’s control room into the song-strewn dark. It was easier to do this time—leave the ship, press through the silence, find the humans. But Cade had new challenges. With the nearest ships located, it became a matter of getting to everyone else, pinning them to specific spots in the universe. Figuring out how to reach them fast, before the Unmakers did.
“What is she doing?” Mira asked.
“I’m listening,” Cade said in a low, even voice.
She balanced the song-map in he
r head with the realness of the room around her. The smooth floor under her. Lee and Ayumi’s footsteps. The pencil twirling.
Her wrist flicked, and the pencil landed over and over. Cade marked down the locations of songs, paying special attention to how far the clusters were from each other, how fast they moved. The first piece of information would make it possible to match her sketches to the charts of the known systems. The second would tell them whether the survivors were space-bound or planet-side. Some darted, or moved in strong, fast lines. Others sat, almost still, but when Cade focused she could feel a curved inching, the slow nudge of orbit and rotation.
“How many planets?” Ayumi asked.
Cade found one, then kept it in a loose mind-grip as she moved on and counted the others.
“Three,” she said. “I think.”
“Can that be right?” Ayumi asked. “Not that I know anything about how this works, besides it being incredible, but—”
“It doesn’t sound right,” Cade said. Of all the human outposts, only three had survivors still clinging? Cade washed her mind over the songs again, but that was all she felt.
Lee’s voice wormed into the dark. “Where are the Unmakers in all of this?”
“What are Unmakers?” Mira asked.
Ayumi shifted closer to the girl. “That’s our name for them. The people who attacked.”
“People?” Mira asked. “You don’t mean humans.”
“Bet your brass we do,” Lee said.
Mira’s voice twisted and tightened. “Oh.” Then she went quiet. How was Cade supposed to explain to a little girl that her own kind wanted her dead?
“So?” Lee asked. “Where are they?”
The pressure of the songs rose, and Cade felt like her jaw might snap. “I don’t know,” Cade said. “I can’t care about that right now.”
“They’re coming for us, whether you care or not.” Lee’s words were too loud. They pushed hard, toppling the balance in Cade’s head. When she opened her eyes, the light in the control room attacked them.
Unmade Page 5