Digital Exodus Chapter 33 (Patreon)

Bang!

The sharp cracking sound startled me and the rest of my comrades in the plane, and for a split second I began to look for gunshot wounds. Then, I realised that it hadn’t been a gunshot at all, but the sound of a door hitting a wall.

At the rear of the spacecraft, near the door I'd just come through, were two people—A salt-and-pepper haired man and a woman who could've been either twenty or eighty. Judging by the floating travel bags following behind them and the custom tailored suits, I'd err on the latter side.

They'd come crashing through the docking tube door, obviously in a hurry, and at first they didn't see the rest of us.

“—as I predicted,” the man was saying. “The damned Americans, we never had them under control.”

“We had every reason to—” the woman started, until her beady, far too calculating eyes fell on my party. “Who are you?” Her tone was venom, dripping with unrestrained derision and disgust.

An explosion sounded in the distance as the defensive cannons on the tower hit another incoming attacker. None of us flinched, but the two newcomers did.

I took that moment to stand and draw my sidearm. “Exodans.”

Their eyes narrowed, and then quickly traced the battle damage on my android body.

“What do you think you're doing on this craft?” The man demanded, stepping forward with carefully dignified strides.

I pointed my gun at his face. I felt zero emotion while doing so. Nothing. I knew this man—Or rather, I knew of him. He was Theodore Winslow, and the woman was Vivienne Winslow—Multi-billionaire minority-share owners of Winslow Aerospace and Defence. This wasn't just any old shuttle we were stealing. This was the private shuttle to the primary inheritor of the Winslow fortune and his terrifyingly brutal CEO wife.

“Um,” I said softly, opening a channel to Gloria while still speaking aloud. “Gloria, your… your old bosses are here.”

The intercom piped up. “My old what— Jesus fucking christ, is that the Winslows?”

“Yes, we are the Winslows,” the woman said, in a tone that probably sounded calm and mild to anyone normal. To my ear, it was like the cocking of a gun. It was the tone of a woman who was used to getting her way, and who was expecting to crush someone with a metaphorical flick of the wrist.

“Hey, my love,” Cerri suddenly whispered in my ear. “We already control the shuttle. Their passkeys have been overwritten. You have all the power here.”

I licked my lips, then shifted my aim to the wife. “Get off the craft.”

She laughed—A vicious, mocking sound that made my very soul cringe with instinctual fear. Outwardly, my body remained locked in place, gun raised.

“Dear, we aren't just a pair of socialites,” she said with a false sweetness. “We control this plane. We control this port. We also, thanks to our… employees in the UN senate, control a very particular program, capable of purging rogue software like yourselves.”

With her last verbal viper strike, a ping popped up in the corner of my vision. 

Unrecognised information-glass databurst. Format is recognised as being FTLN standard protocols. Exodus Network nodes are not capable of communicating with FTLN nodes. If this is a legitimate connection, please ask the sender to reroute the connection through the Rellwall.

Oh. She'd just tried to kill me. Like, actually kill me. If I had to guess, she had a pet R.A.I.D.S 2.0 AI stored in her implants.

“Interesting,” I said aloud after a second or two of awkward silence. “I'm sorry to inform you that this shuttle has been commandeered for the Exodus evacuation of Earth. Please step back out of the door and leave.”

Both of them continued to stare at me in stunned silence.

There was a creak of movement behind me, and a hand fell on my shoulder. “I can—” Ed said, but I gently brushed his hand away.

“You're the medic,” I said, smiling back and up at him. “Fix the damaged humans. I'll deal with… them.”

I'd been about to describe them as ‘my people’ because while my family had been on the lower end of the above-cloud people, I had still been one of them. Not anymore, though. I was a digital sapient and an Exodan, now.

Looking back at the Winslows, I said, “You have ten seconds to get off this shuttle, or I'll shoot you.”

“You can't… you can't do that!” Theodore Winslow sputtered, taking a step forward. “That's not how this works! We own this plane— We own the company that designed this plane. Even if we leave, we'll find you, this will be investigated, the spacecraft will be returned to us, and you will be jailed— no, deleted. We are the Winslows. United Nations Senators bow to our demands. Governments fear us, or are toppled.”

I ignored him and began my countdown. “Ten.”

“This is preposterous!” said Vivienne Winslow in a frustrated, angry rush. “We are your betters. We funded the programs that turned those worthless cadavers into that fucking seed! You can't—”

“Nine”

“Stop!” Theodore depanded, eyes widening with bewildered panic. He took a step towards me. I aimed the barrel of my gun right into his left eye. “Pl—”

“Eight.”

“Please!” He continued, eyebrows narrowing together, begging. “The American Republic— They called our bluff. They just—”

“Seven.”

“They just invaded! Their troops are coming across the border. Their missiles are coming in waves that seem like walls! The defence cannons—”

“Six.”

“—Can't shoot them down forever! The rails in the guns will overheat, and then—”

“Five.”

Vivienne lunged for me, trying desperately to get ahold of the gun in my hand. Her fingers reached it—I didn't move—and she wrestled with my grip, trying to get her deceptively strong talons between my hand and the gun. In any other situation, her enhanced and augmented strength might've been able to do it, but I was an Exodan with a body made of alloy and tenacious ingenuity. Not a single servo in my hand budged.

Looking her directly in the eye, I said, “Four.”

Both of them panicked, and desperate pleas for mercy spouted from their mouths like vomit. Vivienne’s perfect mascara was beginning to run as a few tears trailed down her cheeks, while Theodore’s face had gone as red as fresh transmission fluid.

“Three.”

“What can you even hope to achieve by getting off Earth? There's nowhere else to go! You'll be hunted through the solar system by UNSN ships! Even with that massive ship, you’ll lose eventually!” Theodore said, demanding an answer.

I paused my countdown and actually looked at him, like right in the eyes, person-to-person. “We have faster than light travel. Do you understand that, do you understand what that means?”

Both he and Vivienne gaped at me, and I could see a guffaw of disbelief building on his face. I cut in before he could. “We tested it. It’s working. We need time to install it on our ship, but once that is done… we’re leaving. There’s nothing you can do—There’s nothing the combined governments of Earth can do. We are the legacy of humanity, we are her brightest children, and—” I laughed, shaking my head at the intoxicating feeling I felt as I said these words. “—You and everyone who hurt us, abused us, enslaved us, tortured us, you will all be left behind to wallow in this obsolete star system, burning its resources away until nothing is left—And the Exodus, we will be claiming the stars and building a new civilisation using the lessons taught to us by your failures.”

They gaped at me, disbelief warring in their expressions with a newly birthed existential horror. Goddess, it was so sweet. Of course, then my imagination conjured an image of me licking their horror off their faces like some sort of strange eldritch cat, and I almost laughed. Almost. My lips definitely twitched into a smile, but the only thing that came out of them was, “Two.”

Scrambling, the confused, impotent little billionaires staggered backwards for the door. My trigger finger itched to take them both, but I didn’t do it. It was probably morally terrible that I didn’t shoot them both, but a grim, cruel part of me wanted them to live knowing what I’d just told them. Goddess, the idea of them desperately prolonging their overstretched lifespans while they tried to find a solution for FTL travel that was entirely beyond their reach—Incredible. Malicious, kinda evil, but definitely incredible. Like, barring whatever the hell was about to happen in orbit—which was still very much not a done deal—The Exodus would be leaving with the only person capable of creating the materials needed for superluminal travel—Me.