Unmade by Amy Rose Capetta

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.
    â€œYou’re telling me we’re looking at a warship?” Cade asked. “An honest-to-universe warship?”
    â€œOne that hasn’t been used in over three centuries,” Ayumi said, “but—”
    â€œYeah,” 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.
    Â 
    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.
    â€œYou must be knee-deep in the battle,” Lee said.
    â€œOh, 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.”
    â€œBut 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.
    â€œI 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?
”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œWe 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