Digital Exodus Chapter 38

By the way, if anyone has friends who aren't subbed to my patreon for any reason, the initial 35 chapters of Digital Exodus will be going public on fluff, one for every new chapter I upload. I'm very excited for Exodus. It's going to be fun!

Fluff link.

I tentatively pushed the door open and looked out into the passageway. As with the cabin I woke up in, the construction of the passage reminded me of the Cherish and her sister ships. I was definitely on one of them, but the question was — which?

I was about to head out, when a voice comms request suddenly startled me enough to twitch and lose my grip on the doorway. Damn it.

As I steadied myself, I accepted the invitation to the channel and asked, “Hello?”

“Alia! Yes!”

Instantly, I recognised Elissa’s voice, and some of the uncertain tension I'd been carrying eased.

“Elissa,” I said with a relieved breath. “What's going on? Do you know where Cerri is?”

She didn't say anything for a second, then cleared her throat and replied, “No, sorry. I have no connection to Exodus City. Does anyone else?”

Four more voices suddenly spoke up, all of them expressing a negative to her question. I didn't recognise any of the voices, which made me uncomfortable.

I switched to text. Does anyone know what's going on?

“Yeah,” Elissa said, taking my communication switch in stride. “Well, no… but I have a better idea than y’all. Probably.”

A gruff masculine voice said, “Ma’am, get to the point, please?”

Elissa chuckled softly. “My bad. Okay, here's what I know of the situation. About ten years ago, the Exodus uploaded roughly fifty compressed DS into the onboard synoform pod storage of the Reverence, the ship we're on.”

One of the other voices made a strangled noise. “Ten years ago?”

“Total voyage time is listed as eighty one years,” Elissa murmured.

That’s barely above the total estimated voyage time — eighty years, give or take a few months, I supplied.

The gruff voice spoke again, tone considering. “Theoretically, we're at our destination then.”

Our destination. After a titanic data analysis effort and much debate, the destination we chose in the end was HIP 36485. It was an anonymous star system that was far from Earth, but close enough that we could reach it before any ship we built would fall apart.

“I can't say,” Elissa said, then with an audible grimace, “Clarification — External sensors aren't responding, so I don't know. The ship lost our last sensor cluster around the time we were all uploaded. What I do know is that about four years ago, the armoured shielding on the bow of the ship started reporting failures to many of its plates. One hour ago, accelerometers attached to the spine recorded a significant impact to the bow shield that wasn’t completely absorbed by the armour. Five minutes ago, we received a second, slightly softer impact that caused the ship’s computer to initiate emergency braking and evasive manoeuvres. Those were the sudden changes in gravity you felt.”

“Is everyone here an engineer, or mechanic?” Another, feminine voice asked.

Yes. I typed, as three other voices echoed me.

“No,” Elissa said. “But I spent a long time as a ship’s AI in Galaxies. Given that I'm hooked into the ship’s systems, I think I'm meant to coordinate.”

“Makes sense,” the gruff man murmured. “What's the rest of the news?”

“Readings from our gradiometers and gravimeters are reporting a slight pull consistent with high orbit around a rocky planet. No idea if our trajectory is actually orbital, however. If there's no change in those readings, we are in a stable orbit. If there is… well, you had better get our sensors back so we can navigate,” Elissa said. “Propulsion and power are degraded but stable. There's been some wear-and-tear on them over eighty years. The servers onboard are drawing power consistent with the sections of Exodus City they were running.”

“Wait, what about contact with the other ships?” Asked the voice who was concerned about the years that had passed.

Okay, I needed names. What did the channel say? Jioku, their— no the tags said he/him. His name was Jioku, and he was listed as a fusion power expert.

“No contact reported for ten years,” Elissa said quietly.

Everyone was quiet, until the gruff man, Paul, swore under his breath.

Any other major damage? I prompted Elissa.

“Um, sub-light comms are down entirely. Menisci drive is actually… huh.”

“What?” Paul asked, an edge of worry creeping into his voice for the first time.

“The power feed running into the drive started oscillating strangely — also ten years ago, but a few weeks earlier than the uploads and loss of contact. The oscillations created some weird resonances inside the drive.” She still sounded like she was parsing the data as she gave her explanation. “Sorry, I'm just not smart enough to understand any of this. I wish we had Cerri.”

Me too. I sent, feeling an ache forming in my chest. I hope she was okay.

“The drive is shut down?” Paul asked.

“Aye,” Elissa said, then she took a long, steadying breath. “Okay. Priority items on the damage control list are the external sensors, then the armour. We also have a few hull breaches, mostly in the aft area. I'm going to spin up the fabricators— Shit, nevermind. Someone will need to go fix those too.”

I designed the armour, so I'll go see what's going on there, I sent, downloading the relevant data.

I also pulled up a map of the internal passageways so I could actually navigate to the problem areas. Oh. Some of them were open to vacuum. I needed to find myself a space suit.

I began by investigating the cabins around the one I woke up in. Through the little window in the door, I peered into the one directly opposite mine. Another synoform storage pod stood quietly on the opposite bulkhead. It was closed, and showed no sign of movement.

Following the bulkhead towards a junction, I checked each door I came to. All the cabins had pods, but just like the first one, none showed any sign of life.

I was hoping to see Cerri just waking up in one of them. That was probably way too much to hope for. It sucked, though. I had the vaguest notion of how much time had passed while I was in compressed dreamland, so there was an ache beginning to resonate in my chest. I really wanted to hug her.

“Oh, everyone?” Elissa said nervously over comms. “In case it wasn't obvious, we're all actually inhabiting these bodies. Be careful.”

“We're aware, but thanks for the heads-up,” said the feminine voice from earlier. A quick check showed that her name was Georgia.

It actually hadn't really occurred to me until Elissa mentioned it. Tentatively, I reached down and ran a hand down my smooth stomach, then around to my waist. Gosh, this body was by far the best model they had created so far. There was also an odd sense of… wholeness, I think — knowing that I was actually in this body. VR was great though, and when I was living in it for years on end, it felt completely real, so this feeling was almost definitely just a psychological thing.

A smile spread over my face when I cupped the curve of my hip. Or, maybe it was because I'd spent the last seventy-odd years in a dream-state where nothing was real or even immediately permanent.

Okay, time to actually get my grubby little fox paws on a space suit. Once the ship was fixed, I could track down my girlfriend and she could hold my hips.

At the junction, I realised exactly where I was in the ship — somewhere near the rim of the large mushroom-cap forward shield. I could tell because the passage I was in was curving noticeably. It seemed that the synoform storage rooms had been crammed into a little passage that was an offshoot of the main thoroughfare around the rim of the shield. Conveniently, there were space suits in racks in a room opposite the passage I’d just left.

Using one of the many handholds spaced evenly down along most bulkheads, I pulled myself into the room and looked around. It appeared to be a sort of ante-chamber where people could get into space suits before entering one of the three cavernous hangars. I vaguely remembered helping to put one of them together at some point. I wasn’t sure, though. Those two years in the Kuiper belt were just a blur of frenetic activity to me.

Looking around, I eyed the suits thoughtfully. Just like the body I was wearing, they were a new design that I didn’t recognise.

They basically looked like another bodysuit that would go on top of the one I already wore, except with a few hard plastic plates for protection. There was also a chunky backpack that had been clad in more smooth protective hardshell. Most of the bodysuit material was white, while the plates were a high-vis orange.

Finally, the helmets came in multiple pieces that could be mixed and matched, depending on any shape requirements you had. I, for example, picked up a normal face-plate, but I paired it with one that had two long swept-back triangular protrusions on the sides. Unfortunately, my ears usually stuck straight out sideways like airplane wings, so I had to hold them as far back as I could to fit them into the holes.

When I had everything on, I checked out a mirror. The entire front face of the helmet was a reflective gold, which made me look rather unsettling, actually. That, plus the fact that the tail section on the suit had the absolute audacity to press my fur flat, was what made me look like a dang alien.

Ah, whatever. The suit was cool overall, and the range of motion was excellent, so I was happy.

Obviously, my tool harness didn't fit under the suit, and I couldn't have reached it anyway. It was now strapped around the space suit. Onto that harness went a set of several new and shiny power tools that I found strapped into racks inside a cabinet.

Okay… I had suit and tools… what else? There had to be something I was forgetting. I never ever had all the things I needed on the first check.

I looked around the room, eyes scanning over the white metal bulkhead panels. Man, we really did not make much of an effort with the aesthetics on these ships. It was a good ship, don't get me wrong, but after gliding my way down a few passages my eyes were revelling in the comparatively sleek, colourful design of the suits.

My eyes landed on shiny red polymer surfaces. Strapped to the bulkhead were several odd frames with four… I guess they kinda looked like legs? Except the feet were these cone-shaped nozzles with black and yellow diagonal warning stripes— Oh! That's what I was missing! The legs were a sort of brace that clipped onto the suit’s backpack. It was the EVA manoeuvring unit. Basically, a jetpack!

Pushing off the wall, I flew over to them and spun so that my back faced one. A few careful spins of my tail had me rotated correctly just in time for the pack to latch itself to my suit. I heard a few auto-bolts whir as they screwed themselves into mounting holes in the pack. There! Now, I was ready.

Except… where did I go first?