Digital Exodus Chapter 2 (Patreon)

The rewrite is done!!! Many chapters were edited, there are several new ones, and some have switched places in the timeline. (This one and chapter 1 are relatively or entirely unchanged.) Have fun!

Several hundred light years from the Sol system from the perspective of Athe, Junior Gunnery Hand aboard the battleship Attare’s Spear.

The cheap synthetic fabric of my shirt clung to my sweaty back as I put my eye to the flak cannon’s optics. A holographic indicator flashed onscreen and I dialled the gun in, set the timer on the shells, and opened fire. My target was completely invisible at one times magnification, but the plume of the fusion torch it rode was not.

The missile and its sisters lit the black of space like hundreds of incoming flares, each seeking to hammer our shields with a blanket of radiation and fire. My flak shells found their mark, and the missile I was tasked to destroy flew through the cloud of plasma my shells had created. Heat tore the enemy munition into molten scrap, and without any further communication, the bridge sent me a new target.

"Fuck," the senior gunnery hand from my station muttered. We usually worked in teams of two, one reading the range and keeping the flak cannon functioning while the other aimed. Except my senior GH was slumped against the bulkhead behind me, one arm missing where shrapnel from a railgun strike tore it off.

A quick glance back at him revealed he'd applied an emergency vacuum seal to the open hole in his suit, and he was now plugging himself into the atmosphere outlet. "Doing okay there Sinon?"

"My fucking arm is jelly, Athe, what do you think?" He hissed angrily.

Another missile exploded out in space, and I swivelled the spherical gun emplacement looking for my next target. My movement came to a grinding halt before I could get a bead on my next target, and I swore in frustration. What was wrong with the piece of shit cannon now?

The motor whined pitifully as I slapped the button that would notify the tactical officer on the bridge that my gun was down and hopped out of the chair. Landing with a thud on the deck below me, I squinted into the mechanisms of the gun and tried to figure out what was wrong.

Before I could figure it out, a harried engineer's apprentice bumbled into the gunnery cabin with a toolbelt slung over her shoulder. She came up short when she spotted Sinon and the blood that caked the walls.

She seemed to come to the decision to ignore him and bustled up to the gun emplacement. A flick of a switch killed the whimpering motors, and she pulled up a grate and yanked on a lever. The whole gun assembly rose into the air half a yard, and there was a loud clattering noise. It was very quickly apparent what the problem was. A chunk of armour plating got stuck in the turret tracks, ripping up the gear teeth and fouling the gun's yaw axis. The chunk of armour was much further down in the bowels of the gun now, but it was also safely out of the way.

The apprentice engineer dropped to her knees on the floor and pulled a tool out of her belt. It lit up with a small torch of superheated plasma, which she used to carefully carve the ruined gear teeth off the track.

"It'll slide when it gets to that section of the traversal, but it's the best I can do without lugging new parts down from storage," she told me brusquely while she applied a healthy dollop of lubricant to the machinery. "It'll go in the log for after the battle."

"Thanks," I said, and hopped back into the seat before she could even lower the gun back into its mount.

Standing, she stared around the cabin again and identified entry and exit holes from the slug that ripped off Sinon's arm. "Want me to patch those now?"

Leaning over to glance out of the handspan sized hole that led directly out into hard vacuum, I shrugged. "If you want. It's not important right now."

I was wearing a vac suit over my uniform, so I was reasonably safe.

The ship bucked under our feet before she could reply, and alarms began to wail. "Shit," she muttered, and pulled out her little compad. "Nevermind, I'll put it in the log."

Then she was gone, rushing back out of the hatch, leaving her little plasma cutter laying on the deck. With another shrug, I tapped a button on the gun's control screen to indicate partial functionality to the bridge and set to work on my next incoming missile.

After just one more destroyed missile, the Attare screamed like something living. A moment later, a deep, almost melodic groaning vibrated through the steel of the floor, and I turned to meet Sinon's gaze. His expression didn't change behind his faceplate, and my heart sank. I never really bonded with the man, but now… well, now I'd lost my chance. Poor bastard probably lost too much blood before he got it under control.

The lights flickered, and suddenly my dead crewmate seemed like the least of my worries. If the power core was struggling, it was probably about to either explode or get ejected into space, where it would then explode.

Leaping out of the gunnery chair, I scooped up the plasma torch and booked it for the open hatch. As soon as I was through, I slammed my fist down on the emergency closure button and flattened myself against the bulkhead. Oh goddess Attare whose name blesses my ship, please let it be a conduit failure.

Attare was not listening, and neither was the ship, which lost power altogether. A moment later, the bulkhead behind me shuddered violently and I felt heat even through the multilayered vac suit. Red emergency lights came on a moment later, and I didn't even have to check the small panel on the hatch to know it was slagged closed.

Now what?

My station was gone, and the ship didn't appear to be moving. I wonder—

The artificial gravity died with all the grace of an aircar hitting the side of a building, and I was thrown bodily against the ceiling. I bounced and came back down to strike the floor and flipped with limbs flailing wildly. An object hit me in mid-flight, and I careened right into a handhold designed for just such an occasion.

Desperately, I wrapped my gloved fingers around it and held on for dear life. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Things were really bad if the backup power wasn't feeding to the artificial gravity. Oh, goddess of mercy… What should I do?

Was the ship still in one piece? What if it wasn't? Shit.

My heart froze when I saw what'd hit me during my tumble. The engineer who'd fixed my cannon was limp and spinning lazily through the vacuum. For a brief moment, I felt hope that she was just unconscious. Then she turned further, and I almost vomited into my helmet. The whole front of her body was a mess of melted plastics and flesh. She was definitely dead. May Mot have mercy on her soul.

Following the handholds, I dragged myself further back into the ship. More bodies littered the hallways, none of them containing so much as a hint of life, until I turned a corner and almost ran into someone.

In a flash, a gauntleted fist took hold of my throat and I was slammed bodily into a wall. Screaming with fear, I tried to struggle out of the iron grip of the person who held me, but the hand tightened and I fell limp. Trembling, I watched as the faceplate of the armour turned from a matte black to transparent, and I was greeted with the hardened grimace of a young, strong woman.

A woman whose face was the distinct dark red of a Milat, not the lavender of my own skin. This was… this was an enemy shipboard soldier, a Batai as we called them. Oh Attare, we'd been boarded. I was going to die. The Milat took no prisoners. Not even the noble captains from our fleet.

Her helmet pressed closer, until our visors touched in a way that would've been intimate except for the stoic expression on her face. She was quite handsome, actually, and in a moment of surreal thought, I wondered if she courted other women.

"In accordance with the laws set down by the Milatian People's Kings, you are now declared a prisoner of war," she told me, her voice transmitted through the physical contact between our helmets. "Resist, and you will be left behind on your dying ship. Do you surrender?"

It took me a second to compute what she was telling me. Milatian People's Kings? Prisoner of war? Weren't the Milat ruled by a terrible dictator? H-hold on! Surrender? They were going to let me live?

"Y-yes! Yes!" I squeaked breathlessly. "I surrender!"

Then, in a moment that would haunt me in the seconds before sleep, using a voice that I could only describe as thirsty and begging, I said, "I submit to you."

That got a reaction from her. For a brief moment, her eyes widened in surprise and her grip softened. "Good. Um, stay here."

The order was reinforced by the magnetic cuffs she used to fasten me to the wall by both hands.

Milatians were taller on average than my own Phoekan people, but thinner too. The world the ancients had placed them on had lighter gravity than mine. Their power armour reflected this, but in the other direction. In order to land on worlds heavier than theirs, their batai were clad in chunky armour that assisted their strength to a level far above what the Enlightened Empire would give our own batai.

Another batai pushed past her, and suddenly we were chest to chest. “Oh, Attare,” I whispered, invoking the other aspect of my ship’s goddess. She wasn’t just the goddess of war, she was also the goddess of love and sex.

The batai coughed out a laugh, and for the briefest, most fleeting of seconds, we shared a wry grin. “Attare indeed,” she replied, and broke the contact to take her place amongst her brethren as they continued to sweep the ship.