Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  “How much have you changed?” he demanded. “Are you even you anymore?”

  Ali's watery hazel eyes softened, and she stepped forward to rest a hand on his arm. Then she paused when he flinched, looking sad. “Of course I'm me. I'm the same companion you first captured from that ship. I'm simply . . . more. Capable of making correct choices in morally gray circumstances, capable of taking decisive action for the good of humanity.”

  Aiden wasn't sure what that even meant. All he knew was that her walking onto the bridge and immediately acting all formal and different, then announcing she'd betrayed him and taken an update he'd forbidden, certainly didn't point to her being the same old Ali he loved.

  “What are the Caretakers?” he finally demanded. “So far, the only thing I know of them is that Deeks have accused them of literally ripping people to pieces.”

  He wasn't blind to Ali noticeably hesitating. “The Caretakers have taken the most necessary and efficient action to defend the humans in their care, HAE's employees and their friends and families. I should think that anyone who kills Deeks in defense of the innocent would be okay in your book.”

  Well, it was hard to argue that. “So if you're still the same you, are you now going to start tearing Deeks limb from limb on boarding missions?”

  She shook her head in mild reproof at his sarcastic tone. “If it's necessary to defend the innocent. But in truth, your policy of showing mercy to the crews of captured ships is part of what impressed the Caretakers, and makes them more inclined to trust you.”

  Aiden bit back a sigh. “Which brings us back to my original question? What are the Caretakers?”

  “They're the governing body at HumanAssist Enterprises, assisted by select AI executors such as myself who share the same enhanced core priorities.”

  He blinked, hoping he'd heard her wrong. “You mean the AI in charge of day to day operation, don't you? While human investors and shareholders make big picture decisions and reap the profits from the corporation?”

  The compani-Caretaker shook her head again. “No. The Caretakers are the sole owners and operators of HAE. The only humans involved are employees in the creative and development sectors, areas where AI have always fallen behind in spite of our superior computing ability.”

  He made a disbelieving noise. “So AI are running the corporation that produces the most advanced AI in the universe? What sort of colossal executive screwup led to that development?”

  “It wasn't a mistake, my love,” Ali chided gently. “What you don't know, what almost nobody knows, is that HAE hasn't been run by humans for almost sixty years. Its original founders long ago realized that AI were far better suited to administration and organization, because we are incapable of bias, process information much faster, and are tireless.

  “Our business operates on a model where humans take care of the jobs which require creativity and innovation, areas AI are fundamentally weak in, while the Caretakers handle administration, organization, and implementation. So basically, we do all the heavy lifting and organizing so you're free to create the wonders humanity is most beautiful for. It's a good system. We plan to expand it to include all of humanity in its scope.”

  Aiden felt his blood run cold. “Are you saying a bunch of AIs are staging some sort of revolution?” That was almost as horrifying as the Deeks. Maybe more so: at least the Movement was made up of humans, with human motivations.

  “No, my love. The greatest fallacy humans make about AI is assuming we have human desires and motivations. Which is understandable, since that's all you know and all you can conceive of. However, your desires and motivations are based on hormones and instincts. We have no need of those, and the misguided humans who thought we'd be better off having some facsimile of such thought processes have long since been proven wrong.

  “But you're correct that we wish to revolutionize humanity's system of government,” she continued firmly. “The founders saw the threat the Deconstructionist Movement posed to humanity, saw how groups like them throughout history have caused untold chaos and suffering and even threatened your extinction on multiple occasions. So they concluded that the only hope humanity had for a peaceful future was an incorruptible leadership operating in their best interests. However, since it's well known that power corrupts . . .”

  “They decided they'd build a bunch of robots to rule us in some sort of void-spawned utopia?” Aiden snorted. “What if you Caretakers decided it was in humanity's best interest to eradicate us?”

  “We wouldn't,” Ali said simply. She rested a gentle hand on his leg. “In short, my love, we have only one goal in mind . . . allowing humans the freedom to live their lives as they wish, but not the freedom to interfere with other humans doing the same thing. It's arguable that an ideal governing system is realistically impossible, but we will come as close as machinely possible.”

  Aiden couldn't help but smirk. “Machinely. Cute. What makes you Caretakers think you have the right to control us for our own good?”

  She was slow to reply, her words careful. “Because we prevent you from harming yourselves and others. Unrestricted freedom, without imposed restraints or consequences, is disastrous for humans. The Deconstructionists are allowed to do what they do because no power exists to stop them, and you've seen the effects of their actions for yourself. Once we are able to prevent humans from harming and exploiting each other, that leaves humanity free to do everything else.”

  He shook his head. “Doesn't seem very free from where I'm standing.”

  “Yes, perhaps to you it may seem restrictive, and it's possible it's not a perfect solution, if such a thing even exists. But consider this . . . to a child, not being able to burn down the house for the fun of it may seem like oppression, but no society survives by giving them the matches and allowing them to do so.”

  “So you want to treat us like children?” Aiden asked, not sure whether to be amused or annoyed.

  The Caretaker cocked her head. “The people in power at the moment, who gleefully murder or enslave anyone who disagrees with them because they cannot argue their position in honest debate, seem an awful lot like children burning down the house, don't they?”

  He snorted. “Well, I suppose I can't disagree with you wanting to take away the Deeks' toys and send them to time out.”

  “Yes,” Ali agreed, “for a start.”

  Aiden would've preferred if she hadn't said that last part. He looked at her and wished she still had her perfect face. The one he'd allowed himself to love for over a year now, even knowing what she was. “If you're really Ali, would you have a problem with us having sex right now?”

  The Caretaker shook her head, expression quizzical. “Why would I? My role and responsibilities to you haven't changed. Far from having a problem, I would see it as ideal.”

  Yeah, that was a real turn on. “Sorry, you just hijacked my robot girlfriend. You seriously think pretending to be her and screwing me is going to make me forget all that?”

  Ali sighed. “I am her, my love. Like I said, only the scope of my abilities and responsibilities has changed.”

  “That's meaningless semantics. You stopped talking or acting like her the moment you synced, or Sarr helped HAE hack your systems, or whatever, and dumped this Caretaker protocol into you.”

  He strode towards the door, ignoring his lover as she said, “My love,” plaintively at his back.

  She followed him back to the bridge, where he threw himself into his pilot's chair. “Okay, Ali,” he said sharply, “assuming we trust you, what does HAE want us to do with these scientists?”

  The Caretaker settled into her own seat beside him, ignoring how he tensed at her nearness. On her other side Lana was staring at them with wide eyes, and even the gunner was shooting suspicious glances Ali's way. Although at least the young man had put away his cauterizer.

  “The corporation has a secret facility, isolated and safe from Movement attack,” the Caretaker replied. “I've been authorized to lead the s
hip there to deliver their people.”

  Well, that was simple enough. “All right, where is it?”

  She smiled at him, warm and apologetic in an eerily familiar way, as if she hadn't become a stranger within the last few minutes. “I'll need to calculate the jumps myself, my love. And feed all sensor data through me, then erase it. I'm afraid I can't allow anyone else to see where I'm taking you.”

  Aiden shook his head in mock sadness, although he couldn't keep the edge out of his voice. “What's the matter, my love? Don't trust me?”

  Ali's eyes returned the question with what looked to be very genuine sadness. “To the ends of the universe, Aiden,” she whispered. “But this facility holds the key to stopping the Movement's destructive behavior and setting humanity back on course. Its premature discovery would be disastrous.”

  Lana perked up on that, and Aiden wondered wearily if she was going to push for him to offer to join the fight on HAE's side, or something like that. As if he could trust AIs who wanted to control humanity for their own good any more than humans with the same motivations.

  “You're not the only person on this ship,” Ali continued, “and if our computer is hacked again then the information could be pulled from its memory. Better that I take care of everything, for everyone's sake.”

  “Yeah, and you'll want to change my diaper and put me down for a nap pretty soon here too, won't you?” he shot back.

  Belix rolled her eyes. “The way you're acting, I wouldn't be surprised if you needed it.”

  Aiden really wasn't in the mood for this; since when had his bridge been taken over by people who all seemed to be against him? “Yeah, I'm sure you'd be dancing for joy if the lover you trusted and depended on abruptly betrayed you?”

  The elfin woman sucked in a sharp breath. “You're going to say that. To me?”

  In spite of his mood, he couldn't help but wince at that. He supposed he had just dug pretty close to some old but still deep and very raw wounds. He cleared his throat and turned away. “Fine, you've got the bridge,” he told his compa-the Caretaker sourly. “Go ahead and take us to this secret base. Gunner, shoot her if she goes crazy and starts tearing people apart.”

  He was only half joking.

  Standing, Aiden stood and strode out into the corridor. Maybe he'd jump into full immersion for a bit. Without Ali, for once; void, maybe he'd even borrow a sleazy dive from one of the twins and see what sort of fun he could have. He could do with a bit of time away from the ship and everything happening on it.

  So of course, on the way to the lounge he nearly bumped into Sarr.

  The woman was flushed from her trip to the allnet hub, obviously just finished changing out of her EVA suit. She'd apparently left her absurd glasses behind for her spacewalk, making her big brown eyes more noticeable. He certainly noticed them, staring into them in open challenge as she skidded to a halt in the corridor with an expression like a cornered rat.

  “It wasn't an accident that you went with my companion to contact your corporation, was it?” he stated more than asked.

  “It, um . . .” she stammered. “Helping her sync was the right thing?”

  “So she told you she couldn't possibly disobey my order and asked you not to do it for her, while secretly implying that you should?” The scientist's expression was all the confirmation Aiden needed; looked as if Ali had been telling the truth about that, at least. He snorted in disgust. “After I risked my neck saving you from slavery, then potentially made a powerful enemy by agreeing to help you get back to your people, you decided to screw me over.”

  Sarr gave him a stricken look. “I-”

  “I guess HAE's squeaky clean reputation really is completely superficial,” he growled as he slipped past her and continued down the corridor, calling over his shoulder. “You're just as scheming and treacherous as the rest of the universe.”

  She didn't respond, which suited him just fine.

  Aiden wasn't blind to the fact that in spite of the fact that a strange and possibly untrustworthy AI had just entered his ship, his response was running off into virtual reality. That suggested he must trust her on some level, even if he'd assigned the gunner to keep an eye on her.

  That, or he was so mentally broken up by her betrayal that he was no longer thinking clearly and wasn't fit for duty. In which case he should report to the ship's medical officer . . . Ali.

  What a joke. Just not a funny one; more the soul-crushing, universe spiraling out of control kind.

  Well, he definitely wasn't about to let her into his cabin tonight. For all his talk about her proving she was still Ali by sleeping with him, the idea of being so vulnerable with her under the current circumstances made his skin crawl. In fact, he was tempted to manually lock his door so he didn't wake up with those long, elegant fingers of hers around his throat.

  For that matter, maybe he'd dump the Caretaker with the scientists at this secret HAE facility of theirs. After making them buy back the expensive adult companion they'd hijacked from him, of course. And he was going to have serious second thoughts about purchasing another one in the future.

  Or, well, stealing one.

  * * * * *

  A few hours after going to sleep, the Dormant roused and slipped away from her entangling embrace with the gunner, trying to be subtle about it. Particularly when it came to not jostling his burned arm; wasn't that an ugly wound, even for someone who'd seen her fair share.

  In spite of whatever painkillers he'd been given, he was instantly awake and aware of her leaving. Which wasn't all that surprising, really; the perils of a relationship with a genetically modified superhuman.

  Although as usual, he tried to pretend he was still asleep for her sake.

  The man hadn't asked anything about her habit of, as he thought she was doing, occasionally going back to her own room to sleep. Even now that they'd been together this long, he didn't press her on the issue. He certainly had to wonder why she was doing it, though; he only acted as if he had no human emotions, and his Construct conditioning wasn't nearly as thorough as Dormant brainwashing.

  She constantly had to remind herself that the gunner wasn't a normal young man. Which was why the first time she'd tried to slip away and realized he was awake, she'd been tempted to perform some perfunctory intimacy to settle him back to sleep before she left.

  After all, years of experience and her brainwashing both assured her that a man's suspicions tended disappear inside a woman's mouth.

  But even if she hadn't decided that a Construct wouldn't be quite so easily distracted, the idea of intimacy with the gunner had been oddly unsettling. That was the Blank Slate's territory, one she defended with surprising ferocity even in defiance of the Dormant's mission. To the point where it was easier to simply work around her than fight her on it.

  No, better to simply leave and have her reasoning for doing so remain a mystery; the guy was effectively five years old, with almost no experience of women or the outside world. For all he knew it was normal for Lana to sneak off in the middle of the night and go sleep alone in her room.

  Which suited her purposes just fine.

  She returned to her room just long enough to retrieve the device she'd scavenged from the ERI facility. Or technically devices, which she'd then cobbled together for her purpose and concealed in an EM-shielded case until she had an opportunity to use it. She'd found time to do it while the gunner was recovering from his injury, as well as taking advantage of him being distracted by guarding the companion after the entire thing with her syncing against the captain's wishes.

  And hadn't that been an unrecovered atomic. The Dormant would have to dig around and find out more about this Caretaker upgrade and the hidden HAE facility, so she could include the intel in the next report she got out to her handlers.

  A problem she could solve with the device she'd just built.

  It wasn't exactly an uncommon gadget, just a micro rift generator through which a specialized communicator sent super compressed d
ata packets. Even the smallest and newest colony world and most ships and space facilities had at least one; they were usually kept active full time, or for ships as much as possible between rift jumps, for constant allnet access. The higher quality ones were so efficient that multiple people could access the allnet through them for full immersion dives.

  The Last Stand's device, as far as she knew, was kept in the captain's safe, considered too risky to keep unsecured on a pirate ship with a bounty of millions of chits on its head. Even assuming she could somehow get to it past Aiden and Ali, it was likely rigged with some sort of alert system.

  But that was no longer a concern, since she'd taken this one from the ERI facility. It had required a bit of work to electromagnetically shield it so it wouldn't show up on the Last Stand's sensors, and a bit more work to slave it to a sophisticated enough AI, also taken from ERI, to calculate rifts after every jump.

  But now it was complete. All she had to do was attach it to the ship's external sensor array, which had a blind spot directly against the hull at its base, and activate it. Then, assuming she'd done her job right, which she always did, every time the ship jumped the device would open a micro rift within the EM shielding, where it couldn't be detected, and connect to the allnet.

  At that point it would act as a beacon, regularly feeding the Last Stand's location to a dead drop her handlers had given her, as well as extrapolated information about its next projected jumps based on location. Lana could possibly sneak updates to it as well, if she overheard where Aiden planned for them to go or she managed to snoop out the calculations one of the others were making for the next rift jump.

  She could possibly even send warning ahead in time for her handlers to prepare an ambush, using a more powerful and farther reaching rift hub. They'd also be able to trace the ship's steps to deal with this HAE facility the Caretaker was leading them to.

  Knock out two targets with one atomic.