Digital Exodus Chapter 32 (Patreon)

We piled through the door on the other side of the concourse like a pack of riotous foxes, and as we did so, I turned and closed it, then pulled one of my tools from the cargo shorts I was wearing. It was a small hand-held plasma torch. The kind that, in Digital Galaxies, had a functionally infinite battery life, but that in reality could hold the heat for maybe a minute before it ran out of juice. Nobody used them over the more mundane alternatives, because quite frankly, they were a gimmick. Here and now? I melted the locking mechanism to slag in a matter of seconds.

“Why exactly are we changing plans?” Roger demanded as we left the hallway and pushed open a door into the maintenance and cargo hangars of the space port terminal. There wasn’t a single worker in sight now, and the local security were just as absent. It was full of random ship parts in one area, and baggage robots across the region we were about to traverse. They were big, bulky things with far too many arms, and rubber treads for their method of locomotion.

“Because the American Republic is rolling over the border into California as we speak, and ahead of them they’re sending… they’re sending walls of missiles.” Cerri explained, awe and shock riding shotgun in her voice.

The party was silent, and eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

Ed spoke for us all. “What?”

“We don’t know any more than that!” Rusti said, still sounding stressed, even if they were no longer doing a squeaky toy impression.

“Right,” Roger said, swallowing nervously. “Okay. Yeah, I’d say that calls for a new plan. How do we get the ship released from its docking clamps, though?”

The door down the hall that I’d just welded shut shook on its hinges like the skin of a drum, and I turned from it, then towards the large hangar doors and the smaller people-doors beside them. “We have explosives, that’s good enough!”

“Right, of course,” Roger remarked when I began to lead the way across the huge open floor of the large logistics room.

Twenty metres across the floor was a baggage bot, and it suddenly shuddered to life with a whirring of motors. It began heading the opposite way to us, ignoring the whole party like we didn’t exist. Another one of its brethren booted up, then another and another.

“Those are me, I’m going to try and slow the heavy-infantry bots,” Rusti said over comms.

“The sky is getting really hot,” Elissa interjected. “Please hurry.”

“The humans need medical attention, too,” Jason said, Henry cradled in his arms. All three of them were bleeding from their ears and unresponsive now. Fuck, those ‘less than lethal’ guns the robots had were really testing the limits of that phrase.

Finally, we shoved our way through an access door and got our first look at the open landing pads. Spacecraft of all types were sitting neat and tidy in their docking cradles, boarding tubes attaching from either the circular terminal in the middle, or the access ring terminal that ran around the edge of the spaceport.

The moment we left the excellently sound-proofed terminal building, we gained a more complete audio picture of the current situation. Which is to say, loud and intensely frightening. The rolling susurrations of the port’s cannons became a cacophony of cracking booms that merged together into a single sawtoothed sound. Occasionally, a larger thump would be heard, and oh boy did I hate that sound even more.

“Marking target ship,” Elissa said in a clipped tone.

The party got moving again, but we’d taken no more than ten steps when we all flinched away from the sky. Black shapes blurred overhead, followed by an even worse sound that tore apart the air, like a thousand circular saws all ramping up at once.

Ed cleared his throat. “We’ve been officially downgraded in status and importance. Those were navy fighters.”

“Aw, hell,” Roger grimaced, then waved us forward again.

Twenty more metres over the ground-team accessways between the landing pads, and we heard more booms, gunfire, and explosions from behind us. For half a second, I was worried that security had finally caught up to us, but the sounds were way too heavy for that.

The landing pads caught my attention as we moved. They were big flat surfaces of fire-resistant grey polymer with all sorts of markings painted on them. There was nothing about them to suggest the complex nest of thick articulated arms that lay beneath. The pads that held ships, though, were my main focus. Each arm was as thick as my android body, with exposed hydraulics, wires, coolant lines, and servos. At the ends were big rubber-coated electromagnets that were locked firmly onto red-painted designated sections of the ship that they held aloft.

Electromagnets. I wasn’t even going to need the explosives. I could just cut the power lines.

Our ship came into view as we rounded behind a much more bulbous and bulky ship. Goddess, it was even more gorgeous up close. Sleek, aerodynamic curves, perfectly fitted thermal tiles on the bottom, and oh, the engines. Beautiful.

The boarding tube that extended out from the terminal looked downright unsightly beside our new ship— hold on, if the boarding tube was up there, how were we supposed to get in?

“Alia, take care of the clamps!” Gloria called, ushering the rest of our people around to the opposite side of the ship. Ah, underneath the ship, I could see the struts for a set of boarding stairs.

I moved towards the first of the four clamps when Gloria turned quickly and shouted, “Oh, don’t disable the whole clamp! Just the magnet! We don’t want to damage the ship by dropping it into the cradle.”

Rolling my eyes, I shooed her away with a wave of my hand and knelt to look at the big chunky cradle arm. It was actually pretty complex when I looked at it up close… Which cable was power?

Reaching in, I twisted cables one by one, looking at the faded black text written along each one. Nope, that one was data, and that one was coolant— There, the black and red ones. They were tucked into a protective plastic cable tube, and they led all the way up to the magnets at the top. Phew, now…

I was so frazzled from everything that’d happened—Cops attacking us, innocent bystanders dying, me actually killing cops, and then the whole matrix missile moment—That I almost forgot something rather important. My wire cutters were around the first cable when I noticed how damned thick it was, and following on from that, I remembered just how much power was flowing through those innocuous cables. I quickly pulled my arm away.

Um… this was a bit of an issue. I think. Maybe it’d be fine?

A hand thrust into view, and in it was a spool of strange orange and black striped wire. Looking up, the hand was attached to Ed, and he was grinning. “I was told you might need this.”

Taking it, and then the extra funny little yellow tubes he offered a moment later. I stared at them, turning the items over in my hand until I saw the labels. Detonating cord and blasting caps. That… made sense. Easiest and safest way to cut the wires, I guess.

“Thanks,” I said, and looked back into the exposed inner workings of the clamp.

“Sending you the app that connects to the caps,” he said, and a second later I got a file transfer request. I took it and sent it to my android body for installation.

He left me to it, and so I went around wrapping the power cables of each clamp in det cord, then I’d attach a little blasting cap to it. It was simple work, and I was done quickly. From there, I stood back near the embarking stairs and placed my mental finger over the button.

There was a loud bang and all four docking arms shuddered and spewed smoke. There was a tortured groaning sound from one of them, and the whole spaceship sagged slightly towards it, grinding the embarking stairs along the ground as it did so. Oops.

“Good work, Alia,” Gloria said over the comms. “I’m showing the clamps are released, and don’t worry, the tilt won’t be an issue.”

Ascending the stairs into the ship, I had to ask myself… why wasn’t this our plan the whole time? I mean, sure, the tower’s cannons would’ve still been an issue, but storming the security area and all that? Completely unnecessary.

As soon as I was through the door, the stairs began to slide into the craft and the door hissed shut behind me. The interior was pretty much exactly what I’d expected from a private translunar shuttle. Four groups of plush seats were set around small tables, and around each set, the carpet had patterned edging that indicated where the whole floor would rotate. Since the people of Earth still hadn’t come close to figuring out artificial gravity, translunar shuttles and other craft like it would use the continuous thrust of their engines to give some semblance of down to their passengers. Of course, that ‘down’ would be towards the rear of the plane, rather than the belly, so the whole ship had to be built to seamlessly transition between the two versions of down.

“Beginning pre-flight checks,” Gloria said. “Hang tight everyone. Also, Elissa reckons we fly straight up and away from the conflict that’s lighting up my radar.”

Sitting down in one of the soft, plush chairs, I sighed heavily and looked over at where Jason, Ed, and Roger were tending to the three humans. The poor, abused flesh-and-blood people were at least conscious and moving now, even if it appeared that none of them could hear a thing. I sighed again, and began to relax. From here on out, I was only required if things went terribly, horribly wrong… and boy, did I really hope they didn’t.

Bang!

Oh no… what was it now?