Unmade (31 page)

His weariness was in full effect. “I feel that I must.”

Cade didn't love the idea of Gori standing over her, a chaperone sent by the disapproving universe, old as stardust, shaking his head at every note she sang. But she couldn't tell him to stay behind when everyone he knew was leaving.

Matteo crossed to Cade, looking even more solemn than Gori.

“You have to take
Everlast,
” he said. “With those numbers, you'll need it.”

“But—”

Matteo held up a
no-need-to-argue
palm. It was puffed and hatched, a reminder that Matteo had lived the longest life of anyone Cade still knew. But he wasn't old, not properly ancient, not even close.

“We're coming with you,” Matteo said. “You'll need us, too.” Cade knew he was right. She also knew, from the stunted cough at the end of his sentence, that he was getting emotional.

“I'm going to stay,” June said, capping her enormous decision with a tiny nod. “Someone has to watch things on this end.” June knew how to work the operation like a machine—an imperfect, human-run machine, but still. She had turned from a chore enthusiast into someone who could head a fleet.

“I'll berth with the Rembran ships,” she said. “They have a good handle on things. We'll set up a new command center and keep in touch, as long as we can.” June drained fast, before she could change her mind.

“We have another issue,” Zuzu said. “There are names missing from that tally.”

Cade fast-flicked the pages. “What names?”

“Spacesicks,” Zuzu said. The ones that were too far gone to make the choice.

“I can speak for my mother,” Cade said. “She's coming with me.” She wished that she'd been able to get to the bay, to sit with her mother one more time before this new trouble knocked the fleet down. There were other spacesicks, too many others. Cade couldn't leave them to fight their own quiet battles.

Lee waved an arm and stole all the attention in the room. It curled around her in the easy way that Cade had never mastered.

“I can speak for the rest,” Lee said. When Cade's eyebrows dug in, deep and questioning, Lee whispered, “Ayumi told me what you did for me that one time, with the singing. You didn't think I would wake up on the wrong ship and let it go without a little investigating, did you?”

Lee marched up to Matteo. “Whatever crazy thing Cade is doing woke up the worst spacesicks in the fleet. I happen to think that sounds better than sitting in the bay in a state of pre-rot.”

“Vote?” Zuzu asked.

Hands scatter-shot the air. An overwhelming vote to send the worst of the spacesicks with Cade.

Things moved double time after that, driven by the need to get everyone in place before the fleet cracked in half.
Everlast
lost some crew members, and replaced them with new ones. The wide windows of the control room had the sort of view that couldn't be turned away from, so everyone was forced to watch when a blue-white ball of fire connected with a small transport ship. No one could escape the moment when it blew apart, to a fine grit of metal and glass.

Cade kept moving, kept working, pausing long enough to say, “Universe keep them.”

Matteo shook his head at the glittering-dark spread of wreckage. “Universe keep
us
all.”

June came back and threw herself into a round of fierce hugs before she departed for the last shuttle. After years of service on
Everlast,
she carried away what she could fit in a canvas sack.

“If this works, I'll get word back to you,” Cade said.

June sprang at Cade and held her tight, Cade's face buried in braids, and then she was gone.

Lee and Mira took over June's workstation, collaborating on diagrams for defensive strategies. Lee had a lifetime of keeping ships safe from nonhumans, and Mira's working knowledge of the other side could finally be put to use. Lee set her chin to her fists and listened as Mira outlined a life of spacesicks thrown out of airlocks, feelings beaten out of children. Matteo and Zuzu took charge of making sure no one else took the kind of hit that the transport ship had. Gori tried to rapture in the corner, but every time he puffed a few inches, Cade elbowed him out of it.

Rennik was still missing.

Cade wanted him at her side—but she couldn't drop her plans and half of the remaining human race to go find him. Besides, she needed his trust, and that might take some time after their last conversation. Cade fought to stay where she was.

“All right,” she said. “Let's burn black.”

Everlast
peeled away from the rest of the fleet, and a set of three Unmaker ships followed.

“Perfect,” Cade said.

She checked to make sure Unmother was with them. The new song was there, even louder in contrast to the rough silence of the non-songs around it. Unmother had lost her footing. She'd walked a tight path of not-caring, but now she was driven by hate for Cade, throbbing with a single human emotion.

“We're not
inviting
them on this little expedition, are we?” Lee asked as the Unmakers scudded close.

“Hail those ships,” Cade said. “Tell them we're headed for Earth.”

“Why?” Zuzu asked.

The crew waited for Cade to offer a sound, strategic reason, and that's exactly what she did.

“It's going to make her furious.”

Unmaker ships stayed tight on
Everlast,
and so did their fire.

“Keep them out of range,” Cade said. When Zuzu tossed up her hands, Cade added, “As much as you can.”

The map table became the new focus of the room as Cade tried to chart the best road to Earth. It wasn't one wide, straight black highway through space, but a badly drawn, complicated web.

Cade lifted a huge sheet of paper by a corner. “Someone thought this was useful?” she asked. “As a map?”

“It was made as part of a mining operation near Earth,” Matteo said, “but their interests differed from ours. It was focused on confirming the locations of natural resources, and Earth had none to speak of.”

“Also, this was four or five hundred years ago,” Zuzu added.

“We might be able to use the information from Ayumi's notebooks to pin down the location,” Lee said.

“Good idea,” Cade said. “Get on it.” She trusted Ayumi more than some four-hundred-year-old miner.

Zuzu hit the panels. “Our friends are on the move.”

Cade checked the windows and the scans. The Unmaker ships had pulled wide and shot ahead.

“Good,” Cade said. “If they're obsessed with getting there first, they're not firing at us.”

Zuzu almost pulled the heavy ball in her eyebrow straight out of her face. “The Unmaker ships have dregs for defense, but they're lighter and, therefore, fast.” She penciled a few calculations, but Cade knew the outcome.

“She's going to beat us to Earth.”

“This isn't about who wins the race,” Cade said. “It's about what happens when we get there.”

Hours settled into a regular pace, instead of the expand-and-pinch that came with battle. The choreography of the control room tightened. Cade had almost convinced herself they were flying a simple run with no real danger clouding it, until Mira collapsed on the panels.

Water flew everywhere.

“She hit the emergency sprinklers,” Lee said, diving across the table to cover the charts.

Lukewarm bullets hit Cade as she ran. Mira had knocked her forehead to a bright cherry, but she wasn't bleeding. Her hands looked wretched, though, knotted tight, fingers bloated and red.

“Crashing,” Mira said. She held up one hand and her fingertips danced a sick, fast series of twitches.

“The biochip?” Cade's fingers went to the back of Mira's neck.

Mira leaked a whimper-scream. Her back arched without her permission, hands scrabbling at her own scalp. Every time Cade unstuck one hand, Mira's nails set a new course back to her face, until she was patched with raw skin and sticking blood. It was bad enough to watch from the outside, but Cade ached for whatever Mira was feeling. She wondered if the Unmakers could kill a person this way.

Mira rocked against Cade as she lifted the girl.

“Dry off and keep flying,” Cade said.

Mira's hands shuddered against the back of her neck. Cade smoothed the girl's hair, clasped her tighter.

The walk to medical had never seemed so long before.

 

Cade bribed a nurse for the last painkillers in the drawer. She pulled a thin curtain and sat Mira down on a white bed with a paper rustle. Mira's whimpers had grown longer, more drawn out. Cade took out her knife and swabbed it with al­cohol.

She tried to talk to Mira through it. Talk herself through it.

“This is going to hurt,” Cade said, “but probably not as much as having the Unmakers dance on your nervous system all the time.”

Cade dug into her. Mira kept her head still and her hands tight. She didn't complain.

“What is Unmother sending you?” Cade asked.

Mira winced up at Cade. “She really, really, really doesn't like you.”

Cade drew a clean angle around one corner of the chip. “I've known that since the night Unmother came after me. She hates me so much that she put her own plan in danger. It's enough to make a girl feel special.”

“We don't believe in special,” Mira said, her breath coming in great, broken chunks. “I mean
they
. They don't.”

Cade teased the chip out and held it up. It was dark, and set in rigid patterns.

Mira unloaded a sigh and straightened her neck. Her pinched fingers reached for the controller. Cade handed it over, glad to be rid of the thing. “I can't do much about the one in your brain, but—”

“This is enough,” Mira said. “If they try to send new intel, it won't have anywhere to go.” She fastened herself to Cade. “Thank you thank you thank you.” Her words sank into Cade's shirt. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with warning. “I don't want you to fight Unmother. She's too dangerous.”

The bed paper crinkled under Cade's legs as she satdown. “I have something to go on this time.” She tried to explain it in her mind first, so she could get it across to Mira. When she had it worked out, she said, “If Unmother thinks emotion can only make a person weak, then it will always make her weak.”

“You think it makes you strong?” Mira asked.

“Maybe it can be both things, the way a planet has two faces. One in shadow, one in sun.”

Mira went stubborn-quiet. She pulled Cade down by the elbow and said, “I worry about love.”

Cade raised her eyebrows, and went looking for something to patch up Mira's neck.

“It seems like the bad link in the whole business,” Mira said, kicking her legs, restless already. “Doesn't love always go wrong?”

Cade still couldn't lie, even when it would make things easier.

“I don't know.”

She let the thoughts of Rennik come—the softness of his eyes, and how they took so long to shade into a new feeling. The way his hands were always working, and his face offset the motion with calm.

Cade stuck a slab of thick white cotton against Mira's neck and held it in place with a snippet of white tape. “There'll be a scar.”

Mira jumped off the bed and cracked the biochip under her heel. “Worth it.”

 

Cade didn't have long to plan for the most important show of her life. She had most of the lyrics and an idea of the melody.

There were two more things she needed.

Cade headed back to her cabin and cut straight for the closet. There wasn't much in there: a set of clothes so worn and patched and worn again that Cade had tossed them aside, a few pouches of vanilla-flavored protein that she'd pocketed in the mess, and in the farthest corner, half-buried under an old bandage, the glow of a white guitar.

The second part involved Rennik. She checked his room, the control room, the mess. Panic trailed the thought that he might have ducked onto a shuttle before the fleet split, but when she checked the manifests, she didn't find his name. The docks stood quiet now, the shuttles either gone for good or put to bed.

Cade had an idea, and she didn't overthink it. She let her feet turn the steps and her fingers travel the buttons.

The dock to Ayumi's shuttle swirled open.

Rennik sat on the floor against the mild curve of the hold, his long fingers capping his knees. He didn't notice Cade at first, and she wondered if he was stuck in a memory. This shuttle had been locked onto Renna up until the day she died. Maybe Rennik could trick himself into thinking that the next time the door opened, she would be on the other side, gleaming and impatient.

Cade wanted to let him believe it, but she worried that the longer this went on, the more it would hurt when it ended.

She planted her knees in front of Rennik's face. “I need to tune this,” she said. “I think you know how.”

Rennik stared at the guitar with a variation on his all-the-emotions look. Love and pain and a scattering of nerves.

He touched the high E and grimaced as the guitar released a pitifully thin sound. He brushed the other strings with a thumb, but had to still them when he heard the notes, loose and rotten.

“It's part of her,” Cade said. “And so are you. So, I thought maybe . . .”

Rennik turned his whole body to the task. Cade held the base of the guitar as he sank his attention into the tuning pegs. But Rennik melted from hard work into soft remembering, his gaze far off, and Cade thought he had stranded her alone in the present. She stood up and palm-dusted her knees.   

“Give me a minute,” he said, without taking his eyes off the smooth white. “It's been a long time.”

“Right,” Cade said. “Sorry.”

Rennik put his ear to the hollow. “What do you need the guitar for?”