For three hundred years, humanity has been floating in space in a fleet of starships, hunting for a new home following the destruction of Earth's environment. Over the centuries, the fleet stratified and everyone's social position became tied to where they were born in the fleet. Humanity's governing council, the General Body and its Chancellor, are supported by an army of Scela, soldiers who have been mechanically enhanced by merging them with an exo-cortex and mechanic skeleton, effectively turning them into cyborgs. The exo allows each soldier to connect to a network and merge their consciousness and skills into a single whole, whether that be with their small unit of four Scelas, or with larger groups of soldiers. Scelas are strong, deadly, and feared, but they have also given up their humanity and control over their own body to their leaders. Commanders and the Chancellor can override the exo or give it orders that directly contradicts how a Scela feels, but they must comply with it.
The General Body needs these soldiers because elements of the fleet, who call themselves Fractionists, want to split the fleet up to more quickly find a new world to settle on. The Fractionists strongly believe that the Chancellor and the General Body are more concerned with preserving their power than finding humanity a new home, and they have been fighting back through protests and low-level terrorism.
Hailing from the Reliant, a ship at the end of the fleet, Aisha Un-Hadd's parents died in an industrial accident, and instead of facing a life of working in the brutal factories of the fleet, she opted to become Scela, hoping that her salary will provide security for her younger sister and brother. Dedicated to helping her family survive, she's willing to do just about anything, including merging her body with a machine in a procedure that is deadly to many and that cannot be reversed.
Key Tanaka doesn't remember why she became Scela. Her entire past has been erased from her memory, and all she has to rely on are glimpses that are confusing her. She's pretty sure she would never volunteer for such an operation, and her manner of speaking and demeanor seem to indicate that she come from the front of the fleet. She needs to survive training and get a great assignment in the Scela ranks so she can figure out what happened to her.
As the two of them join two others in a four Scela squad and begin sharing memories and feelings through their exo connections, they find themselves in the middle of the conflict between the General Body and the Fractionists, a war that is heating up quickly and that is now causing mass casualties. Will the Scela defend the order they were built to protect, or will they fight for those they left behind despite the terrible costs?
A great dystopian novel, Hullmetal Girls provides a portrait of technology gone wrong.
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