Chapter Nine – Carpooling
byChapter Nine – Carpooling
“You know what gets attention? Rage bait.
You know what our AI is good at producing? You got it! Rage bait.
Hell, even this entire post is nothing but rage bait.
We are gonna make billions.”
–Tim Jobs, moments before being shot at the 2029 World Telecom Conference
***
“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked as I hopped into the pilot’s seat. Only two of the others had followed me all the way to the cockpit; Hedgehog and Princess.
Knight was sitting in the back somewhere, stowing some stuff she’d brought, and Shy was… off being herself. Gomorrah was riding along in her own car, as planned.
“You don’t know?” Hedgehog asked. I could sense a lot of judgement in his tone there.
“I know in the sense that I know where we’re supposed to be. I don’t know in the sense that I don’t know where that is, exactly,” I replied, then I frowned because that sounded even stupider outside of my head than it did within.
“I think I know what you mean,” Princess said reassuringly, which didn’t reassure me much at all.
I shook my head and ran through the pre-flights. It wasn’t something I bothered to do every time, but since we were going to head off for a longer trip, I figured that it might be best to make sure that everything was in the green. “We’re going to visit the Royal Canadian Army’s base in New Montreal to meet up with Lieutenant Colonel Juno and a bunch of soldiers. Honestly, we can probably just follow Gomorrah.”
“They’ll be garrisoned at the old 2nd Division Support Base Valcartier, then,” Hedgehog said.
I glanced over my headrest at him. “You know the place?”
“Somewhat. It was marked as a historical site, so it still exists below the city plate in that area. North-east end of the city. But when the Royal Army privatized, it was turned into a rent-a-night motel.”
“Is it still the army’s then?” Princess asked.
Hedgehog nodded. “They repurchased it a while ago for cheap. Probably still lost a lot on the deal, overall, but that’s how things go.”
“Sure,” I said as I flicked a few last switches. Those were decorative, probably, but they made a real satisfying click-clack noise when I flipped them. “Get seated, the two of you. There are belts if you feel like it.”
I opened the Bastion’s PA system and gave Knight and Shy the same head’s up. There were plenty of seats in the back that had belts and the like to keep them secured.
“Gomorrah, you hear me?” I asked as I linked into some shared comms.
“Loud and clear,” Gomorrah replied. “Since you’re the slower of us, why don’t you take off first? I’ll follow along and run a patrol route around you, just in case.”
She justed wanted to fly circles in her little muscle car, but I didn’t poke fun at her for it. We all had our hobbies. “Got it,” I replied. “Taking off now.”
The Bastion, fortunately, had some pretty good cameras mounted all around it. I linked my augs into the ship’s systems entirely, then watched from six different angles at the same time as the ship rose in response to a slight shift of my foot on a pedal.
We moved nice and slowly out of the parking garage. The moment the front of the ship was out, I had to make a slight adjustment to fight the winds howling by and, of course, the usual and constant New Montreal rain.
I blinked, and at the same time, a bunch of teeny-tiny wipers flicked over the cameras that were starting to get rained on.
Once we were out fully, I opened a GPS and quickly copied over the name of the place from Juno’s last message to us. Then I gave the ship a bit of throttle and pulled up and over the middle lanes of hovering traffic.
I was aware of the Fury coming up behind. She kept pace for a while, then shot ahead and started to do large circuits up ahead, only sometimes flying back to rejoin us before scouting out again.
I kept a nice, steady pace, following the semi-transparent yellow line my GPS painted across the sky and only deviating once when I saw a flying drive-thru that was designed to serve larger trucks.




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