Digital Exodus Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Sorry for the wait on this one! I've been going hard on Kaia. Anyway. Hope you enjoy this interlude! Muuuuuuuuuuch worldbuilding.

Interlude, Athe's perspective, several hundred light years from the Sol system and the Exodus' struggle.

"Prisoners," the woman said calmly.

She stood at attention, ramrod straight while her eyes roamed the crowd. She wore a black cape that danced lazily in the wind, while the harsh midmorning sunlight cut shadows across her angular face.

The sun on this planet was so orange it was making it difficult for my eyes to gauge things like depth. It was also far too close to the planet for comfort. That was also why all the shadows here were so… strange. Light didn't disperse the way I expected it to after growing up on Phoe.

"Prisoners," she repeated. Her scowl was… severe, but what prison warden didn't despise their charges?

She took a deep breath once she was sure we were all listening and began what was obviously a well-used speech. "You are prisoners of war. Our gracious kings have deemed that we will treat any prisoners of war with dignity and respect. As such, they set aside this marginal world specifically to house you. It is far from the frontlines, and the system has only one rail out into the web of stars."

“The planet beyond the prison is harsh. The wildlife here is poisonous to those of us who share a common ancestor from mythical Gê. You have been warned.” She said the last with a stern glare towards the Jax, who were notoriously stubborn as far as Gaen subspecies went.

“You will each be given a small standard living unit, which includes a bathing cubicle, a toilet, a small cooking and living room, and a bedroom. The living units are monitored by an advanced anti-tampering sensor suite. Do not attempt to modify or destroy your units in any way. There will be repercussions. You are responsible for keeping your units clean and orderly. Failure to do so will result in repercussions.”

“You will be given two meals a day in the meal hall, plus materials to cook your own third meal. There are various recreational facilities in the complex that you may use until curfew. You will be required to work to help maintain the complex, this is non-negotiable—”

The woman droned on and on, telling us all the rules and shit, but I was still amazed to be alive at all. Everything my government had told us about the Milatians was just… not true. I mean shit, the little living units were mini apartments! We were prisoners of war, by Resep’s boiling scrotum. Why were we being treated better than the people of the high slums on my home world?

It was true that this was a prison— In the distance, I could see a huge guard tower complex that was basically a fortress in its own right. Much closer to where I stood now, drones hung in the air, their repellers silently keeping them aloft while they scanned the small crowd of prisoners. It was small because space combat didn’t lend itself very well to survivors. Boarding actions like the one I was captured in were relatively rare and extremely difficult to pull off. Usually, a ship’s command crew would detonate the core before it could be captured. Which begged the question… Why didn’t they blow it up when my ship was boarded?

So many questions, but nobody was going to tell a random prisoner anything. It was probably best if I kept my head down and tried not to engage with anyone.

When the warden was done outlining all the rules with her speech, we were given these tiny flexible handhelds and told to go and find our assigned cabins. My cabin was labelled ξ-φξα. It was time to get walking… because if there were over 500 cabins like the designation implied, I had a long way to go.

The 'standard living units' as they called them, were five paces by eight paces of floor space, with all the prior mentioned amenities. They were straight edged things made of cheap polymer sheets with aluminium for the frames. Judging by the apparent two handspan width of the walls, I suspected they contained some insulation and gadgets to keep the prisoners honest. Insulation would be a novelty for me, as far as houses went anyway.

The units were stacked four high on top of each other, with an open steel stair well that provided access to the upper units. At the base of the unit were little vegetable gardens… and I could see some prisoners were out tending to them. Strange. Why would they risk giving us even basic tools like that? It had to be a risk. A trowel could easily be sharpened on the pavement and used as a shiv, or attached to a haft for use as a spear. Milatians made no sense.

My unit was the uppermost one in my block, and I entered it alone and confused. It was cramped, sterile and without adornment… but quite nice. If it weren’t for my confinement in an infinite sea of other identical units, I’d have been overjoyed to live in such a place.

Still… what did I do now? Apparently there would be no orientation, no guide or mentor… this was just my life now.

Sitting down on the small kline, I gazed about the room until I spotted the cheap polymer remote. Huh. Picking it up and inspecting it revealed it controlled many of the computer operated features, including a large makstela.

A makstela was something I’d wished for when I was growing up so I could watch all sorts of shows and theatre, or play games. Now I was in prison and I had one.

When I turned it on, the thin screen slid out of a slot high on the opposite wall. When it was flat out, I was able to select the function I wanted. The selection was very limited, as far as I could tell anyway, but I was happy to just turn on a current events channel where a woman was speaking while graphics of some ancient ruins hovered in the background.

“...ruined ancient’s ecumenopolis was shattered in some ancient war. Scientists are hoping this will give some further insight into the Adversaries and who they might have been—

One moment.

We have breaking news coming in. Oh my. It appears… yes, Kamros has fallen.”

She halted for a few moments while someone spoke in her ear, then she looked back up at the camera.

“The siege of Kamros has ended with a Phoekan victory. The orbital defences have been broken. Experts are saying this is one of the bloodiest battles in the long six years of war with the Phoekan Empire. Estimates are putting the total casualties on both sides at an estimated three hundred thousand souls and five hundred ships.

As the occupation of the planet commences, reports from the ground on Kamros are grim. Many are putting the civilian death toll on the planet in the millions while fighting rages through all major cities. Phoekan military spokespeople urge those on the ground to surrender before their naval lords authorise the use of orbital bombardment…”

I turned it off again. Good word. We took Kamros? The siege of the Milatian world had lasted for almost two years! I hadn’t even been conscripted when our navy defeated the outer system defences and blockaded the webrails that connected it with the wider galaxy.

Orbital bombardment, though? I had only ever heard of one world falling since I was forced into the navy, and the settlers on that fringe milatian colony world had surrendered without a fight. Kamros was, if I recalled, much more important to the milatians, but surely it wasn’t worth forcing the hands of the naval lords.

My stomach churned at the thought that someone could order the deaths of millions, regardless of the planetside batai death toll. I wasn’t the most patriotic of Phoekans, but surely my people weren’t that horrible, right? We weren’t like the adversaries from antiquity, or any of the other hundreds of brutal empires that’d existed in this region of space over the many strata of galactic civilisation. The sector was already littered with dead and ruined worlds. We didn’t need to add to history’s brutal death toll with more senseless civilian deaths.

Risking any remaining faith I had in my people, I turned the makstela back on and found the same woman moving on to a different news story.

“In other news, relations between the h’shaa and the FSR have soured after the FSR began accusing the h’shaa of attacking a scientific research station in the Bevh-34 system. The h’shaa have denied any knowledge of the incident, but recovered footage from the remains of the station appear to show a large biological starship as the attacker.”

Oh, that wasn’t good for the milatians. If they had infighting amongst their allies, then they might need to redeploy forces to their border with the FSR in case some of the phoekan’s—our—allies got any bright ideas. If the milatian-phoekan war roped some of the bigger powers into fighting… only the gods would be able to save this sector from another stone-age reset.