Unmade (10 page)

Ayumi shivered. “That's a happy little speech.”

“You know what I mean,” Lee said. “We have to be ready for anything.” She slapped her palms together. “But Andana first.” Cade's desert home came to her in all of its awfulness. She could feel the memory of the sun on her cheeks, sweat pushing down her arms.

“It's a slummer-filled planet.” Lee flicked a glance at Cade. “Sorry if that sounds harsh.”

“I think you're giving it too much credit.”   

If Cade was really going down to Andana, she needed the warm-up. She still knew how to fight, technically, but she hadn't done it since before the black hole. Cade had all these people to save, and she wouldn't do them any good if she got sliced clean through.

“Today, we'll train for a planet-side fight,” Lee said. “Starting with hand-to-hand, and knife work.”

For the first matchup, Lee paired herself with Rennik.

Cade tried to shake the feeling that it was more than an easy way to get started. She couldn't count all the times she'd seen the two of them together, Lee boiling with fake anger and a very real blush.

Rennik and Lee met in the center of the cabin, shook hands, and circled. Slowly at first, then with a swell of momentum. Lee came at him, all spitfire, hard-slamming kicks and sharp angles. Rennik stepped around her in patterns, graceful. He made fighting look like some kind of elaborate dance. They had known each other so long that there was a simple harmony to the two of them together. In skill, they were well matched—until Lee stepped out of it, panting.

“All right,” she said. “Show me what you can really do.”

Rennik frowned. “Is that necessary?”

“This is the fight of our lives,” Lee said.

“
For
our lives,” Ayumi corrected.

Lee circled him again. “Do you really think it's the best time to hold back?”

Rennik went to his room and returned with two long, leaf-shaped double blades that hung from his hands, the weight making itself obvious. Cade had fought a lot of people, human and non, and she'd never seen anything like them.

Lee homed in on Cade's interest. “Hatchum ceremonial blades.”

Rennik stood at the center of the cabin, flipping the handles a few times until he found their balance. Then, without any intro, he swung so hard and fast that the blades blurred, more like traveling light than long knives. The work was effortless. A crowd of people standing in his way would have been cut down.

“All right,” Lee said. “That's enough.”

Rennik let the blades swing to a stop. “I'm glad it meets your approval.”

Lee sailed a playful punch to his shoulder.

She moved down the line and found Gori raptured as big as a pillar. “Really?” she said. “That's your defense mechanism?” She poked him in the vague area of what were probably his ribs. “Dead. You'd be dead. Moving on.”

Lee slid down the line to Ayumi. “Hit me,” she said.

Ayumi winced, and no one had even thrown a punch. “I can't . . .”

“All right,” Lee said. “Hit Cade.”

“How is that—” Cade was about to say
different,
but a fist connected to her face. “Ayumi!”

The Earth-Keeper hid behind one hand and pointed the other at Lee. “She told me to.”

“All right, then.” Cade pushed up her sleeves and drew Ayumi out of the line like a magnet.

As soon as Ayumi lost the element of surprise, she lost the fight. Cade came at her with a series of moves that she'd more or less invented in the Parentless Center and perfected at the clubs. Andana had been a terrible place to live, and a first-class place to fight.

Still, Cade could feel that she wasn't half as good as she used to be. Her strength needed building up, but it was more than that. There was a relentless pull at her center, and it ruined her balance.

Having a black hole there wasn't the same as having a boy.

“All right.” Lee waved them apart and set a hand on Ayumi's arm. “We'll work on it.” Ayumi nodded like she'd known that all along. She ran back to the line, shaking off nerves and energy.

“You need help too,” Lee said. So she could tell that there was something different about the way Cade fought now. Something
less.
But Cade couldn't add one-on-one training to the endless list of things she had to do to save the human race.

“I've got this,” Cade said.

Lee gathered all of her doubt in a dimple. “Try it against Mira.” Cade's eyebrows did a quick
you-can't-be-serious,
but Lee stuck to her decision. “You need to practice, and I need to see what she can do.”

“I'm not fighting a little girl.” Cade had all kinds of noble reasons, and they leaked into her stomach, churning together with memories of fighting when she was Mira's age. For everything. Food, soap, guitar strings. All she'd had to her name was a seven-blade knife and a stubborn unwillingness to die.

It didn't have to be like that for Mira.

The little girl bounded into the ring. “I'm not scared,” she said with a rubber-band smile—stretched wide, then gone. “Are you?”

Cade would go easy on Mira. Easier than easy.

She shook the girl's small hand and circled her once, twice. Mira slashed with her arms, drove with her knees. She fought cold and constant. When it became clear that Cade was gaining, and would win no matter what, Mira pushed harder. It was just a practice fight. Maybe she knew she wasn't going to get hurt. Maybe she could feel Cade's hesitation, the pull-back when she worried a punch would land too hard.

Cade's muscles kept up the work but her mind went further, trying to see into Mira and figure her out. People had never been Cade's strong suit, but now she had a shortcut. Mira's thought-song would teach her more than a lifetime of small talk. Cade chose her moment, closed her eyes, and cast herself into the space right in front of her shifting feet.

She listened.

But Mira didn't have a song.

Just silence, a not-song so obvious that when Cade sailed across it she noticed, like hitting a patch of bad atmosphere. It had a shape to it, weight, different shades of silence like all the hues of dark.

The absence smacked into Cade, and now Mira's arm flew and hit Cade's nose. Hard.

It ran thick with blood as she blacked out.

 

Cade's face throbbed an evil rhythm.

Lee had cleared the rest of the crew out of the main cabin. She stood over Cade, one foot planted on either side and a clutch of cold towels in her hand.

“I told you to fight her, Cade. I didn't think she would
win.
What is she, some kind of violent prodigy?”

Cade tamped fingers to her face, and her nose groaned against the pressure. “Worse.” She got up and dragged Lee into the mess, sweeping the area to make sure it was Mira-free. “You were right.”

Lee crossed her arms. “It's the natural state of things.”

Cade swiped a cloth and set it on the place where the pain bled over into her cheek. “Consider the universe back in order, then.” Mira's non-song stuck to Cade like sweaty droplets of fog. When Cade told Lee about it, she shivered, and it was only half overacting.

“What does that mean?” Lee asked.

“I don't have that part worked out,” Cade said. “I was too busy getting punched in the face.” Lee did an impatient shuffle-dance while Cade thought. “The way the thought-songs work . . . every species is like a frequency band. I tune in to the human part of the universe.”

“So she's
non?
”

“I don't know.” The pain in Cade's nose light-speeded around the rest of her head. “There are exceptions, like if I'm standing close to someone I know. I can hear Rennik's song.”

“What does he sound like?” Lee asked.

Cade managed a micro-shrug. “Like you think he would.”

“Neat? Precise? All little boxes and well-kept rows?”

“Right.” Cade kept the rest to herself—the chaos she felt under the table of Rennik's neatness.

Lee squared Cade's shoulders, as though the next part was very important. “What do
I
sound like?”

Cade closed her eyes and tapped in to Lee's song. The wild highs, and the plummets that should have bottomed out into sadness but caught updrafts and flung themselves high all over again.

“You sound like flying.”

Lee's posture sparked, a sure sign that she loved the answer. For the first time, Cade's mind ran into the question of what her own song sounded like. Would it be the same now as the day she was born? Had it morphed since she cleared her own personal sand-hell and found Renna and the rest of the crew? What about the black hole? What had
that
done to her song?

“What does Ayumi sound like?” Lee asked.

“We don't have time to do this for everyone on the ship,” Cade said. “We have to deal with Mira.”

Lee plunked herself into a chair. “Right as radiation.”

Cade didn't want to believe that Mira's non-song had a dark meaning, but she couldn't ignore the possibility, either. “We need to know if Mira's a danger.”

“What category of danger?” Lee asked, switching to instant Express mode. “She's not here to start a fight. Your nose aside, she's pretty amateur.”

“She could have a tracker,” Cade said.

“The only way to tell, without a specially rigged light, is to do a manual check. An
everywhere
manual check.”

Protection took a strong hold. Cade knew what it was like not to want strangers puncturing your space with unwanted hands. “You mean strip-search a girl who told us she hates being touched?”

“I mean get creative.”

 

“This is not normal,” Mira said, her voice muffled through the wall.

Cade and Lee had stuffed her in one of the tunnels and were crouched on the other side, in the main cabin.

“Don't worry,” Lee said. “Renna knows what she's about.”

Like most of the plans Cade and Lee formed together, this was half bold, half unstable. They had built it with the knowledge that Mira liked the ship more than she liked any of the crew.

“Renna will do a full-body scan,” Cade said, “and then you're official. It's like having a uniform, but more . . .” She dove for the right word and came up with “unique.”

Cade and Lee had asked for Renna's help, and after a twitch of hesitation, she'd agreed. Lee had stamped an old dead tracker against the wall so Renna had a basis for comparison.

“How does she scan me?” Mira asked.

“Just sort of roll around,” Cade said.

“Right,” Lee muttered. “Because that sounds official.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Cade whispered. “Because any second before now would have been a nice time to bring it up.”

Lee shrugged. “Desperate times call for weird measures.”

They divvied up Mira's old clothes, checking for any information about the girl who was drumming her skin against the wall. Cade hoped that Rennik wouldn't pass by and question them with that amused look of his.

“Both of you have done this?” Mira asked, mid-thump.

“Oh, sure,” Lee said. “Once a year since I sprouted teeth.”

Cade tended to stumble all over herself if she veered too far from the truth, so she kept as close as she could. “I'm newer to the ship than Lee is. Grew up on Andana with no one. It was me and sand and more sand.”

“No parents?” Mira asked.

“No.” Mira's shirt was neater than Cade would have thought—no niggling-loose threads or chewed hems. It held no clues that could lead Cade to a new understanding of the girl. “No parents, and slummers used to call me nonhuman every chance they got. Not that it would be a sour thing, if it turned out to be true. But people got some kind of sick gossip-thrill out of it.”

Mira's voice came through the wall like a cold shove. “So?”

Cade closed her eyes and prodded at the non-song. It was still there—or painfully, noticeably not there. Cade needed to know what could do that.

“If someone was nonhuman I wouldn't care,” she said.

“Me neither,” Lee piped.

“Obviously,” Mira said. “You both look at that Hatchum pilot like he spins the suns.”

That shut Cade up. Lee didn't seem to care; maybe her feelings were so obvious she had no fear in broadcasting them. Cade wondered what that felt like, and if she would ever get there. With Rennik. With anyone.

Lee finished rummaging through Mira's clothes and looked at Cade with a shrug. “
Clean,
” she mouthed.

Cade didn't know where to go from there. She still had doubts—and Mira stuck behind the wall.

“Hey, did you ever get knocked on the head?” Lee cried. “A solid sort of thump that could really clear it out?”

Cade grimaced at the quality of Lee's idea. Lee mouthed, “
Worth a shot.
”

A pierce of sound cut through the wall.

“Renna, stop! Stop!”

Cade ripped the panel aside and found Mira's arms crossed tight across her chest, fingers stuffed into her armpits.

“She was tickling me,” Mira said.

Cade shook her head and Lee patted the wall. Mira came out a minute later and Lee tossed her a set of clothes. It became clear that they used to belong to Lee when Mira tugged them on. The waist pinched one size too skinny, and the legs trailed three sizes too tall.

“Now you're officially official,” Lee said.

Renna rippled the wall, cheering.

Cade's nerves eased down from high alert. She didn't know how much she'd wanted to be wrong.

“Don't see why it mattered,” Mira said, rolling the pant legs into cuffs. “Renna has been treating me grand since I got here.”

“She's the best ship in all the systems,” Lee said. “But don't worry if she grumbles at you. Her language is grumble-based.”