Unmade (34 page)

Cade's mother landed on top of the small red-haired woman, and she used that to her advantage, pinning her. Though she was larger than Unmother, in any other moment she would have been weaker. But with Cade on the floor, hurt, she was supercharged.

And she had a weapon, a slick, short knife she must have grabbed off a dead Unmaker. Quicker than a gasp, the blade disappeared into Unmother's chest.

“And who are you supposed to be?” Unmother asked, through the rising thickness of blood.

Cade waited for her mother to answer, but instead she collapsed. Her head found the glass and the rest followed. She flickered in and out of spacesick like a radio, the signal too weak, uncatchable.

“The explosives!” Lee cried. “Move!”

Unmother's life could be measured in blood. There had to be more sliding on the glass than there was left in her small body.

Cade crawled to her mother's side, curled into an unclosed circle, sinking into softness and warmth.

Lee screamed. “I mean it, move!”

Cade wouldn't do it. She stuck fast, not caring that Lee stood over her now, pulling at her, face raw, volume rising.

Her mother stared, lips drooping because the smile couldn't hold. She turned to Lee. “Take her, please.”

It was Firstbloom all over again, a variation of the first unbearable loss. Her mother would go and Cade would be left behind.

“No,” Cade said. If she couldn't save her mother, she would stay here with her.

But Lee wasn't having any of that. She wrestled and kicked at Cade to wake her back to fighting. And then Cade remembered that Lee wasn't some faceless scientist. Cade's mother wasn't abandoning her.

This time Cade would have to do the leaving.

She picked herself up, dressed in Unmother's blood. There was no more time for decisions. There was no such thing as goodbye.

Cade sprinted.

She stole one more look at her mother as the room burst into a crescendo of red.

Cade's screams were lost in the explosion. A closed door wasn't enough to stop the force. Cade and Lee ran, and it tossed them. They picked each other up and ran again, slamming doors behind them.

Warning lights flared red. The composition of the air changed. The good, breathable stuff was slipping away.

“The hull,” Cade said.

“We're double snugged,” Lee said. “Back to the bay?”

“That's last-stand talk.” Cade wasn't giving up after all of that, not after Xan and Renna and her mother.

Her mother.

Cade felt the loss, round and whole, for the first time in her life. It had always been there, waiting for her to feel it. But she had pushed it down, and now it would have to be put off one more time.

“Can we put the ship on an auto-course?” Cade asked. “We'll head for the surface and lock down the bay.”

Lee shook her head. “I thought I told you to never—”

“—land a ship on an auto-course? Well, I would tell you never to blow a hole in the side of the ship, but that would be a waste of oxygen.”

Cade and Lee raced to the control room, keeping their breath as shallow as they dared. When they hit the panels, Earth stared at them through the window, empty-white. At best, Cade and her crew were going to crash-land and live out the rest of their short lives on the unfriendly surface.

But it was no use thinking about that. Lee focused on coordinates, speeds, vectors. Cade stretched a finger onto the crumpled chart and picked a spot. It would have been a coast, back in the days when Earth boasted oceans. Now it would be a flat strip of land near a crater. Cade would deal with the deadness of Earth when she got there. For now, all she could do was set the course.

The longer it took, the harder it got. Breathing turned from an auto-action into a chore.

“All right.” Lee slammed a final button. “Let's . . .”

“Drain,” Cade said, and it took every wisp of air in her chest.

Cade and Lee staggered out of the control room, in the direction of the bay. Moving and talking got easier as they went. There was more good air out here, but it wouldn't last long. They would have to lock it in or lose it.

“Umm, design flaw,” Lee said, clamping her lips. “Someone has to shut the door from the outside.”

Cade's answer came out fast. Pre-thought fast. “Not you.”

“Don't you snugging dare,” Lee said at the same time.

There was only one other person caught on the wrong side of the lockdown. Cade closed her eyes and reached for Matteo's song. It was fading. But he didn't have to fill the universe with sound. He just had to push a button.

Cade stumbled back toward the control room.

“That's the wrong way!” Lee cried. “As in, what the hell are you doing?”

Cade didn't stop, and Lee sighed and pounded after her. Once Lee saw Matteo, hand pressed to his wounds, face in the farthest reaches of pain, she seemed to understand. Cade kneeled at Matteo's side and hauled him up.

“What's this about?” he asked, the words held together by ragged strings of breath. Cade and Lee carried him between them. They stumped, fast and awkward, toward the bay.

“One more favor,” Cade said.

“Short version?” Lee asked. “We need your help.”

“There's . . . something . . . wrong with
Everlast,
” he said. “Isn't there.”

Cade gave him a quick rundown without any gloss.

“I'm a historian,” Matteo said with one last stab at a chuckle. “Remember? Going down with the ship is . . . not in the job description.”

“You're a captain,” Lee said as they reached the bay. “And a fine one.”

Matteo looked from Cade to Lee and back again. “You girls are . . . something I've never seen.”

They propped him against the wall, within reach of the control pad that would lock down the room.

Cade and Lee saluted, then ran. The bay was sweat and chaos, lit by patches of white Earth-shine.

The door sealed behind them.

“Find Ayumi,” Cade said to Lee. “Make sure she's safe.” For that, she got the best thank-you smile in the universe.

Cade searched for Moon-White's glow.

She had a song to finish.

 

Mira rushed Cade, the guitar strapped to her back.

“What are you doing?” Cade asked, horrified to see her in the thick of the fight. She tried to cover the girl, but Mira ducked under her arm. She lashed out with her short knife, practiced and smart.

“I know how to fight Unmakers,” she said, looking up at Cade with her best
Are-you-stupid
eyes. “Remember? I was one of them.”

Cade fought to the front of the bay, Mira behind her. As soon as Rennik caught sight of them, he carved a path with the double blades. It stunned her how well he could fight even with so much worry on his face.

“I thought you were—”

“What? Ditching my own party?” Cade asked.

An Unmaker dodged at them. Rennik clapped Cade to his side and fought one-handed. “Cadence, I thought . . .”

She let the words settle. “Yeah, well, now you know how I felt every minute of the last three months.” She kicked an Unmaker away from Rennik's heels as he fought off the one in front of his face. “How many minutes
is
that?”

“Thirteen thousand or so.”

Rennik swung, calm. For the first time since Renna had died, it didn't feel like he was venting an unbearable heat. An Unmaker struck, and Rennik ticked the blade to the floor with ease.

Rennik and Zuzu and Gori took down Unmakers as fast as they could, but it was easy to see the truth.

“They're winning,” Zuzu cried.

“One more set,” Cade said.

The guitar found its rightful place against her body. It wouldn't be easy to fight her way back into the song as the battle rang around her and the ship burned a path toward Earth.

It was her mother's death that scared Cade the most. She had started the song because of her mother, dreamed up most of it just for her. The music had always been strongest in the presence of her glass.

What if her death was the end of the song?

Cade tried to focus on her crew, her friends, but they were smothered in the thickest moments of battle.

All she could do was stare.

At Lee, forced to her knees by the battering of blows, and Ayumi behind her, a few bad strikes away from being undefended. At Mira, tossing herself into the path of Unmakers, close to fearless. At Gori, putting all of his old, violent skills to use even though the universe had told him not to. And Rennik, checking every few seconds to make sure Cade was safe, without breaking the swing of his blades.

Cade kept looking for her mother.

What she found instead were words.

 

come back and know the shape

of things

come back and find

the face you left

behind

 

The chorus.

Cade was almost there. To the end of the song, the surface of the planet.

Everywhere, spacesicks blinked clear. Unmakers went down, the plastic molds of their false bones cracking, their robes inking the floor. Some stopped fighting and clutched their heads. The music must have found its way in.

Gori tried to catch Cade's eyes across the room. His arms waved and his wrinkled lips stretched around words she couldn't hear. He blazed forward, looking worried and certain at once. Gori's self-imposed rules were being tossed so he could tell her something.

Cade fumbled a note, regripped the guitar. She'd come this far. It didn't matter what Gori thought the song was going to do. Cade trusted Ayumi and Moon-White. She trusted the music. She didn't know where it was coming from, but she had to keep going.

Her fingers sketched patterns. Her throat reached, raw.

 

here is ground as good as skin

underneath the staring sky

a breeze for breath

everywhere, hands

eyes

 

come back and know the shape

of things

come back and find

the face you left

behind

 

The last note spread into silence.

The light changed from a wash of white to a gentle blue-green. Even before Cade turned, she felt it, the way a person always does. Deep, and sure, and rooted.

An unshakable sense of home.

The planet outside the window had changed. It was the crisp blue of Ayumi's drawing, the green of Mira's eyes. White curls of cloud pricked the colors bright, making them stand out. The surface drew Cade in. This was the right Earth, the real Earth, and they were about to slam into it.

Cade jolted as
Everlast
cracked atmosphere. “Everyone hold on!” she cried.

“Hold on to what?” Mira asked.

They had picked the bay for its openness, the lack of obstruction. Cade's eyes circled the room. “Whatever you can find.”

All they had was each other.

One of Rennik's arms found Cade's waist and the other hooked around Lee, who had a firm hold on Ayumi. Cade tucked Mira against her chest.

She kept her eyes open as they all fell.

Sand.

That was the first thing Cade felt when she staggered from the ruined shell of
Everlast.

Sand under her feet, smoke in her face.

But the sand was fine, not sticking-gritty. And the smoke was starting to clear. And when Cade looked up from her feet—water.

This was the ocean.

Cade turned back to
Everlast
and found it framed in green. Trees rose twice as high as the wreckage, turning the air thick and perfect. Cade's lungs were in love. She wanted to run to the water, wash the crust of blood from her cuts. She wanted to walk into the forest, let the sun reach for her through the leaves. This was the place her song had promised, and Cade wanted to learn every stroke of it.

But not alone.

“Rennik! Lee!” Cade ran back toward the ship. Survivors leaked onto the beach in thin streams.

The ship was destroyed, metal bent at strange angles. Cade had walked out of a hole scraped in the hull, which tipped up, almost facing the sky. The shuttles docked on the far side had been crunched like paper by the uneven landing. There would be no return trip to June and the fleet.

But that worry disappeared, like stars drowned in daylight. Right now Cade needed to find Rennik, Lee, Ayumi, Mira. She didn't know how she'd been thrown clear of them during the landing. All she remembered was opening her eyes and wandering out of
Everlast,
onto the beach.

She climbed the face of the ship, the metal hot with held-in sun. The hole was a door that had been torn off during the crash. Cade kneeled over it and looked down at the slide of the hall toward the bay. There was Lee, one arm around Ayumi.

Struggling up. Hair knots still intact.

A smile cracked her face as soon as she caught sight of Cade. She threw a hand out and they made a chain, Cade pulling Lee, Lee pulling Ayumi. They perched on the face of the ship.

“So this is Earth,” Lee said, taking it in. The blue, the green, the goodness of the sun that would paint her skin with freckles.

Ayumi tapped Lee on the shoulder. “It's real? Really?” she whispered. “What does it look like?”

Lee settled her face on Ayumi's shoulder and closed her eyes.

“Perfect.”

Then Rennik emerged from the hole in the ship, and something that had been knotted in Cade let go.

He stood looking at the distant point where the water became the sky. Rennik never knew how to deal with new or strange, so Cade decided to help him. She threw herself into his space and waited for his arms to close around her.

“Hello, Cadence,” he said, and he didn't sound surprised at all.

As more survivors spilled out, Cade scrambled back to the torn-off door. She caught sight of Zuzu headed for the waterline, Gori shaking sand from his robes. But there was someone Cade didn't have wind of yet.