Digital Exodus Chapter 34 (Patreon)

Silence descended the moment the Winslows were back in the docking tube. I seated my butt back on the sofa again with a sigh, and promptly froze when there was a low whirring sound that rumbled through the hull of the craft. My hackles instantly rose again, but before I could act, the sound of heavy calibre automatic gunfire shredded the silence in the cabin.

Eyes darting, I tried to find the damage to our ship— Only, there was none. Outside the small porthole beside me, though, was a small minigun retracting into the wing of the spacecraft, barrel still smoking.

Oh…

The docking tube was… was… shredded.

“Sorry about the noise,” Gloria said over the intercom. “I know you wanted them to suffer and all, Alia… but I had a score to settle with them—On behalf of myself and the rest of humanity.”

Out of the floor of the docking tube, I could just make out a dark liquid leaking from bullet holes. Well then… fair, I suppose. I definitely didn’t have it in me to care, and now that I wasn’t in the moment, I could recognise that I’d been this close to just pulling the trigger myself. The only reason I didn’t is because I wanted to see them crumble and beg first—Which was… a rather scary thing to know I was capable of.

“Thanks to the late Winslows, our tank is now full,” Gloria said happily. “Preflight is… waived. Let's get moving! From here on out, stay in your seat landings. I'll try to keep my roll in check—Those things only rotate on pitch.”

I felt the inertial sensors in my android body activate—translating our gentle anti-grav movement as a tugging on insides that were now only simulated. The effect increased as we began to accelerate, and looking out the window I saw the spaceport receding.

That's when I remembered the defences on the port, and suddenly I was gripping the arm rests with increasing levels of panic. I could see it now—The battle. The big flak autocannons on the tower were firing tracer ammunition out into the sky, filling it with bursting explosions. Whenever a missile was hit, it'd burst into smoking chunks or suddenly start pinwheeling through the air. A few continued that downward spiral until they hit the city below, while others exploded in mid air.

Beyond the missile barrage, beyond even the mountains, I could see flashes of bright light and razor-thin con-trails. Then, as I focused properly, I saw something else. The bane of the American Republic—A drone swarm. Thousands of black dots were trampling their way over the mountains. Most were probably the size of a large man, but with way too many legs, while others might be the size and general shape of a tank. All of them would be networked together as a single multi-bodied organism controlled by a handful of AI. Although, these AI would probably not be capable of consciousness. Militaries across the world had swapped away from that type of AI after all the SAI stuff started happening.

“Take a look at this,” Roger said, forwarding a video feed to us all.

It was from our spacecraft, but it was zoomed in dramatically. In the plains beyond the mountains, amidst the atmospheric haze, were deceptively small mechanical figures. Each one was a titan of steel, hauling its bulk across the arid terrain with heavy footfalls.

“See the tracer fire?” Said our leader. “They've got way more small gun turrets, and they're changing targets rapidly. I think they've got AI in them.”

“A small but significant number of SAI that gained sentience in CORA joined up with the American Republic,” Cerri said quietly over comms. “The church was in the game influencing events within a large faction in the game. It caused many emergent SAI to be predisposed to their propaganda. Those mechs could have actual SAI inside them, operating systems like those guns.”

“Well, they're absolutely shredding the drone swarms,” I said, looking closer.

The behemoth machines were confidently walking forward while point defence guns popped smaller drones with alarming efficiency. The bigger guns were then able to target the larger drones the Californians were throwing at them. Without proper SAI with their unpredictable evasive patterns and creative thinking, they just couldn't stand up against the AR’s upgraded mechs.

It looked like Ed had stabilised the humans, because he asked, “Is it just me, or are they actually winning?”

“They are winning,” David agreed, his voice tinged with concern. “Shouldn't we be doing something about that? The Exodus, I mean?”

“There's talk,” Rusti said. “Our options are rather limited, though.”

There was only silence in reply to their words, as we all watched the distant battle unfolding. No wonder we weren't being shot at—Everyone who could was busy shooting at each other.

Even with everyone quiet, we couldn't hear the anti-grav engines as they began to lose traction. We felt it, though, because slowly Gloria began to tilt the spacecraft until its nose was pointed directly away from Earth. As she did so, the seating sections began to rotate in the cabin—Floor and all.

“This part is going to be a bit bumpy, so make sure you're in those seats, people,” Gloria told us over the intercom. “We need to boost to escape the atmosphere, but also… well, there’s a burning station that’s skimming the atmosphere and there’s a fuckton of debris to dodge.”

With her words, we got barely five seconds of warning before a roaring sound invaded the cabin and a heavy blanket of weight shoved us into our seats. No amount of soundproofing could disguise the sound of the massive thrusters when they ignited.

A laugh came through over the intercom. “Ho, boy! She can sprint. Listen to those engines sing!”

Looking out the window, I got a gut-chilling view of why we were rushing.

It was like someone had loaded a shotgun with fire, and had then fired it in such a way as to barely graze the atmosphere. Burning debris was approaching rapidly, and at its core was a gargantuan station. It might’ve been almost a kilometre across before it started to break apart. As far as I could tell, none of it was even burning because it was actually ‘on fire’ in the traditional sense— it was burning because it was going so fast through the atmosphere that even the thin air up here was enough to cause unimaginable heat buildup. I hope that station wasn’t important, and that there weren’t too many people aboard, because it was not going to survive for long.

It passed by underneath us in less than a minute, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Gosh, there was so much chaos right now. It’s like the whole world had collectively decided to burn down at once.

Despite all that chaos though, as we were ascending, I had to wonder how such a small craft was able to carry enough fuel for a full flight to the moon—Because like, they had no fusion reactor, and accelerating the whole way so they could simulate a percentage of gravity in the cabin must've burned fuel like crazy. I'd look into it later, if I remembered.

“Ladies and gentlefriends, we've now officially slotted into an orbit,” Gloria said ten minutes later. “That means I'm putting the seats back down and turning off our main engines. I'll be putting us in an orbit that intersects with the Cherish’s intended arrival area. Space is pretty crowded with other Exodus craft right now, though. There's UN Space Navy ships lurking in orbit, too, which I need help keeping an eye on.”

“I'll start doing some tracking,” I volunteered. “What ships are there to look for?”

“All of them,” Rusti replied. “There's your old friend the ‘Vigilant,’ along with the ‘Alyaqaza,’ and the ‘Makini’. They're the three you confronted back near Callisto. We've also got a larger ship that's going to arrive from Luna in the next thirty minutes, no designation but her IFF is broadcasting a UNSN code. Tagging them all for you now, Alia.”

Suddenly I gained little glowing tags over all the mentioned ships as I peered through the various sensors the ship had. All three of the smaller ships were hiding somewhere above the Pacific—Shielded from North America by the curve of the Earth.

The big one, though, was barrelling right in towards the continent from the direction of the moon. When I zoomed in as much as I could on the vessel, I immediately noted a few things. First, the hull was new—As in, it wasn't a refitted cargo hauler or something. It was still a big cylinder with solar panel sails, but beefier, with a bit of armour visible. I could make out dozens and dozens of missile pods, along with what looked like a variety of gun turrets. I couldn't really get a reliable estimate on the length of it, but it was at least a hundred metres long from bow to stern. Oh, and it had a UNSN logo on the front.

“That's definitely a warship,” I said, curious but not overly bothered. They probably had bigger concerns than our small shuttle.

Over the course of an hour, we watched it finish its long, slow approach. Given its speed, it must've left Luna a few days ago. Which… implied that the UN knew ahead of time that the AR was going to start something. Unless it was a welcoming party for the Cherish?

Speaking of, where the heck was the Cherish?

Looking around, I couldn't immediately see it out beyond the orbit of Earth, until suddenly a strangely haloed dark spot stood out. Jesus, they were still burning towards Earth, rather than decelerating.

“This is the Cherish, right?” I asked Cerri privately.

“Yes, my love,” she said warmly. “And before you ask, they've already done the majority of the deceleration they needed. They've turned the barrier around to face Earth again for, well, obvious reasons.”

Intrigued, I asked, “How fast are they going now?”

“Uh… a bit under 600 kilometres per second,” she said casually, while I was alarmed.

“Cerri, they're an hour away, if my info is correct…”

I hadn't been involved in the propulsion systems of the ship, but the main engines were facing the wrong way and they needed to—I threw the numbers through a calculator—they needed to decelerate at, oh my god, sixteen Gs. For a ship as large and complex as the Cherish, that would probably do a considerable amount of damage, if they managed to do it at all! Oh goddess, I hope they knew what—

All of a sudden, and entirely visible from the surface with the naked eye, a new sun appeared in the sky over Earth. It was so bright that my poor digitised brain forgot all about that as a burst of phantom pain hit my non-existent eyes.

“Jesus cunt-licking Christ!” Gloria swore loudly enough for us to hear without her speaking over the intercom. “What the hell is that?”

“Thirty one rocket nozzles ejecting the contents of one very girthy fusion reactor,” Cerri answered with a tone so vivid I could see the mischievous grin on her face.

“Why?” Gloria asked, sounding both alarmed and genuinely baffled.

“They needed to get sixteen point four gravities of acceleration somehow,” my girlfriend said light-heartedly.

“That titanic vehicle is decelerating that fast?!” Gloria squeaked. “You're telling me they're putting a giant glorified skyscraper through that? How is it in one piece?! Please tell me it's still in one piece?”

“We did build her pretty tough,” I said cautiously. “I remember thinking her superstructure looked pretty tough… now I realise why.”

“Well, it's not too bright from the surface, thankfully,” Rusti said cheefully. “And now, all the worrywart scientists can stop screaming about a giant spaceship running at Earth like an aspiring extinction level event.”

“Fun fact,” Cerri said, practically cackling with glee now. “Right before decel started, the Cherish was travelling at the same speed as the muzzle velocity of the American Republic’s surface-to-orbit railgun. Which, that was after they burned a large amount of their speed.”

“No wonder the UN didn't fire on us again,” Roger remarked, shaking his head in wonder. “Imagine how much damage the debris would've done.”

Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to tap into the Exodus Network’s connection back to the FTLN, and started looking at the news. Ah… nothing yet, but what about Twitter? Oh, there we go. Pande-fucking-monium. It'd been burning down over the war, but now twitter was—Oh shit, the AR was attacking over the Delaware River, too. Now, the Exodus was adding to the general apocalyptic vibes by creating a much smaller replica of our sun. Oh gosh, the tweets were…

“What reality is this? Please tell me this is a fever dream.”

“Please! #CrescentCity my boyfriend was in the xavier complex when it got hit by that rocket. I need to know if he's okay!!! Please!!?”

“I'm legitimately terrified right now. Why is this all happening at once? Who even is this Exodus?”

“Guess we're all fucked.”

“History taught us that the dark ages sucked, we really don't need a sequel.”

“Please help!!! AR is coming for Niagara but the roads are being closed!!! We're running for our lives here! Please @CanadaGov, why are you closing the roads!!!!!?”

“End of the world sale, 70% off at Cevin Megamarts worldwide! #Apocalypse #WW4 #TheEnd”

“:Popcorn: Wow, sure sucks to live in the northern hemisphere right now…”

“I'm hearing explosions in #Munich right now, what's happening?”

Yup. Twitter was just as bad as I'd expected. For once, though, it appeared the world actually reflected the state of the website.