Digital Exodus Chapter 30 (Patreon)

I sat down heavily on a random crate and allowed my mind to just… take stock. We’d been going non-stop since we began the stake-out to find Jason’s folks. Now we were riding a cargo lift up a four, maybe five kilometre high spire.

In that time, I’d taken my first life… or ten, I’d used an actual, real light machine gun in combat, I’d seen multiple people casually killed by my friends— Oh, and I used nothing but my digitally simulated mind to manifest a sort of stasis field that had stopped a hypersonic missile in its tracks. I think I also teleported in that moment too, but I’d already done that once before.

A gentle knock on my digi-frame caused me to retreat further out of my android body. I was greeted by the warm presence of Cerri’s mind, unencumbered with anything like a virtual reality environment. It was the pure physical contact that could only happen between two digital sapients.

“Hey, love,” she murmured, without any actual speech. It was all base thought communication, the kind where sensations, images, and emotions could find themselves whisked along for a ride to the recipient of the words.

I sighed happily and allowed the tension in my thoughts to relax slightly. “Cerri…”

“You’ve had a long day,” she said, sending more warmth my way. “I can feel your headache from here.”

“Funny how we can still get headaches,” I commented wearily.

“Funny how you're able to use the term ‘we’ when we're supposed to be a separate species,” she said with comforting mirth.

I smiled to myself. “That, too.”

We were silent for a short while, and I spent that time basking in the sensation of warm sunshine on a cool day—which was what Cerri's mind felt like to me.

“You're… okay, right?” She asked quietly, doubt riding her thoughts like rats on an age of sail ship. “After the… the phenomenon?”

I snorted with empty humour. “I think so?”

I felt her sigh, partly with relief, and partly with weary resignation. “Larry and the other leaders of the Exodus are busy right now, but they heard about it. The whole world saw, actually. One of the security guards in the hotel was filming on his phone. Did you know your body glowed just like the stasis field that you wrapped the missile in?”

I shook my head—or, I sent the wordless impression of a negative gesture.

“Everyone has opinions on it,” she said. “It's obvious you're an Exodan, especially with everything happening right now.”

Wait. The voice in my head! That… that giant leviathan, it spoke to me in a way that wasn't entirely antagonistic, even if it was very vague. I can't believe it managed to slip my mind, even with all the drones and flying, the machine wounds, then the real wound…

“Cerri,” I said softly, fearfully. “It was the… the leviathan, it noticed me when I was hyperclocked and desperate to stop the missile. It spoke to me, coached me on what to do, in a roundabout sort of way.”

“What?” She asked, with the characteristic thought-tags of a person who'd said the word to give themselves time to process. I waited, and she finished with, “The leviathan… from the game. The one that ripped your head to pieces?”

I mentally gestured confirmation.

“Fuck,” she said, a grimace riding her thoughts. “That scares me, little one.”

“Me too,” I replied.

The leviathan had been so mind-warpingly powerful that I had only barely been able to comprehend it, and that was before you counted it's sinuous physical body. It reminded me of an eldritch version of a chinese dragon, with twisting tendril limbs down its length and a titan, smooth maw. At least, that's how I remembered it. Who knows if that's what it actually looked like.

The way it had used our data connections, too, just flowing down them and into reality, while its digital bulk dragged us along in its wake. Horrifying.

But, now it was talking to me? Why? What did I do to gain its attention? Was it nearby, just lurking out there in the vast darkness of space?

Suddenly, Cerri enveloped me in a warm, squishy, fluffy mind hug. “I love you. It's scary, I know, but… I'm here and I'll always be ready to support you.”

“Love you, too,” I said, sending the emotion along with the words.

“Want to hear about how the rest of the world is doing?” Cerri asked.

“God,” I winced, imagining how bad it was right now. “Not really? But… go ahead.”

She laughed and traced an affectionate thought down my frame. “The entire world is politically tense right now. The California Republic has actually been very vocal about what happened during the war. The destruction of San Francisco, San Diego, and of course, Los Angeles have been brought up a lot. Even now those cities have only just begun to grow past their pre-war states.”

“I remember hearing that the American Republic killed anyone not wearing their uniform when they marched over the Sierra Nevadas,” I replied, a chill running down my non-existent spine. “Now that we’ve actually seen one of the refugee slums that got built to house the civilians fleeing the genocide, it feels way less like a line on a wiki page.”

“Millions died,” Cerri said somberly. “It's very difficult to comprehend that number, let alone when a single unit constitutes a whole human life.”

“What about everywhere else?” I asked, wanting to talk about something other than the visceral mutual hatred that existed between the CR and the AR.

“Italy and Austria are talking shit about each other again, but I don't think that will amount to anything,” she told me, her voice low and soft, like she was speaking directly into my ear. “Um… but mainly, the world is in chaos because of the Exodus. It's like there were a hundred sleeper cells planted across most of the world, and suddenly they're all rising up. Everybody is scared, of course, but the UN…”

I shifted nervously. “What about the UN?”

She was quiet for a couple of seconds while she hugged me close with her mind. “Almost every major extraction mission we're running has met with an improbable amount of resistance from local authorities. Missions that should have been as simple as moving house have turned into protracted gun battles with police. There was one mission in Britain where a convoy of our assets was on the way from a warehouse to a shuttle and out of nowhere, they were hit by the local police, then the army. We lost almost twenty RUCO cores when one of the vans exploded.”

“Was anyone… on those cores?” I asked, horrified.

She tagged her thoughts with a negative gesture and sent, “No, thank goodness, but only because we shifted our people out of them before the journey.”

“So… the UN are trying to, like, do as much damage as possible before we leave?” I was confused as to what their goals were.

She squeezed me tighter. “Not sure. They're trying to do something, I'm sure, but all it's doing is sowing chaos. Unrelated groups are using the upheaval as an opportunity to further their own ends. For example, when an Exodan team in Mexico was attacked by the police there, a cartel launched an attack to try and cripple the local cops. Then, one of the paramilitary vigilante groups popped out of nowhere and ambushed both the cops and the cartel. The whole world is turning upside down, all because law enforcement all over the globe appears to have it out for the Exodus. Most places don't even have the flimsy justification that the Crescent City police have against you.”

Hearing it put like that, it was almost like the UN wanted to set the Earth on fire. I wonder, what was happening in Australia and Aotearoa?

Something touched my arm, and I shook myself back into my android frame like I was pulling a hoodie on. I looked up to see Roger standing beside me.

When he saw my eyes focus, he signed, “We're getting close to our stop. Time to turn your ears back on.”

I frowned, but nodded and sent the command. “Okay. I can hear now.”

“Great,” he said with a smile, then stood and walked back to the bulk of the team. “Okay, we're coming up on the spaceport levels near the very top of the tower. It's a large disc-shaped area that roughly matches the width of the base, although it is significantly thinner. Most of the disk is taken up by landing pads, with only the inner third being used as the spaceport terminal. Above us is barely a hundred and fifty metres more of tower, then open sky. Gloria, what do we need to do once we're there?”

“Our target is this,” she said, standing up to point at a hologram that was being projected from the PI’s phone.

It showed a large kite-shaped aircraft with a white top and a dark, segmented underside. It was about the length of a standard tennis court at 25 metres, with a wingspan of 15 metres. Its whole shape was smooth and sleek, like someone had made a much more angular frame, then wrapped it in tight fitting fabric.

“That,” Gloria continued after we’d all had a good eyeball, “is a Winslow TL-G10. It’s more commonly known by the marketing name Cosmastra. It’s a luxury translunar shuttle, and the reason I’m choosing it, other than the fact it’s very nice, is that I was the lead test pilot for it. Was headhunted by the lead engineer on the project, actually. It was a fun job, even if working for the fucking Winslows still makes me feel a little sick. Anyway, I know that baby inside and out, which means I can fly it no problem.”

It was a very pretty shuttle, I had to admit. The fact that she was the lead test pilot, though… that was extremely impressive. As for her little note about the Winslow Aerospace and Defence Corporation, well… I couldn’t disagree. They had their hands in fucking everything these days, ever since they made their first fortunes in the early extra-terrestrial mining rush. Funny how towing a single asteroid of rare metals into lunar orbit to mine could skyrocket you into being one of the most wealthy corporate entities on the planet.

“Now, normally to fly one of these out of a port like this, we’d have a small mountain of paperwork to complete,” Gloria said, grinning broadly. “We, however, are pirates! Pirates don’t need any of that shit. What we actually need to do is override the docking clamps, make sure she’s fuelled up, and the hardest part, kill the air defences for the port. How that happens is open to discussion, but we need to fly out of here without being shot down.”

Roger nodded with her, then stepped forward to point at a little section of the spaceport hologram. A small vaguely mushroom shaped building was sticking out of the flat landing deck. “Docking clamp controls will be in traffic control—this tower. Fuelling is done at the aircraft itself, on pad 8.”

“And the guns?” David asked, picking at the electrical tape on his arm.

Roger tapped a floor just above the main terminal, where the tower continued into the luxury penthouses of the filthiest, richest humans in the city. “Controlled from the security floor. It’s tight as hell there, so… I’m not sure how that would happen. As for the guns themselves, there’s four of them along the edge of the port, one at each cardinal position.”

The boys shared a look, then David unzipped his jacket and opened it. Oh. Okay. He had a whole ton of grenades. Specifically, the multi-purpose grenades that could become shaped charges and whatever else you needed.

Ed laughed. “I’m sure we can take care of them. If we really leg it across the deck of this port.”