Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  Aiden swore, so surprised he jerked the ship slightly off course. “What the void is that?” he demanded as Ali cut off the communicators again, the sound fading back to the previous warning klaxons of battle blaring through the bridge. “They played that junk at us the last time we ran into them too, didn't they?”

  The Caretaker hesitated, thoughtful, before shaking her head. “No idea, but it played over the ship's internal comms before I managed to block it.”

  “Was it some sort of psychological attack to throw us off our game?” Dax asked, not looking the least bit nonplussed. “Or did it do something to our systems?”

  “I don't see any signs of attempted hacking or other disruptions,” Barix replied. “Your first guess is probably right.”

  “Well keep an eye on our critical systems, just in case,” Aiden growled as he pulled the Last Stand into a corkscrewing turn, maneuvering to give the gunner a clear shot at the enemy ship as they came into extreme firing range. “During the middle of a fight is the worst time for them to throw something unexpected at us.”

  * * * * *

  Lana froze at the burst of static that came over the speakers. What was that? Where had it come from? It almost seemed like she should recognize it, if she still had her memories. Almost like . . .

  She was still frozen. Her muscles wouldn't obey her commands. What was happening to her?

  Then, to her horror, she moved. Not the way she wanted, but in a purposeful stride to the locker where the shield room's tools were neatly stored in magnetic clamps, to keep them from flying everywhere if gravity or the inertial dampeners failed. Or if the ship was undergoing serious combat maneuvers, like right now.

  Reaching inside, she withdrew a delicate tool and bent over the main buffer controls for the shielding system, getting to work. There was no visible result to her efforts, at least not here, but a few moments later the ship lurched into wild evasive maneuvers, and both Aiden and Belix began shouting at her.

  “Shields just went down, what the blazes is going on?” the captain demanded.

  “On my way!” the engines officer snapped. “Don't touch anything!”

  The force controlling Lana cocked her head to activate her communicator, making her voice panicked. “I don't know what happened! I can't even see anything wrong, but the . . . um, hold on. It says there's a short in the main buffer controls? Residual damage from our last fight?”

  “That's what I'm seeing,” Aiden agreed grimly. “That's delicate work you probably haven't learned yet, so like Belix said, don't touch anything. She'll be right there, and one or two Fixes when they get back inside.” His voice became sharper, more urgent, as he continued, obviously speaking to the Ishivi. “We're sitting ducks here, get those shields up!”

  * * * * *

  All-consuming void, the MI eggheads had actually been right. The Dormant had delivered as promised.

  Dalar watched with deep satisfaction on the shields room's display as the fight progressed, the pirate ship evading wildly as its shields suddenly failed, while the Vindicator's twin three-burst lasers rained shots down at its vital systems.

  Victory was at hand. His crew, pride of the Fleet, were about to blow the hated Last Stand out of the sky. Even if he'd been robbed the full glory of the kill, which would go to Bresac, enough would shine down on his humble position in the shields room to lift him out of his former disgrace.

  His meteoric rise to the top began again here, now. And the fireworks that would celebrate his rebirth would come from their target blowing up. Soon, very soon.

  Very, very soon.

  Dalar frowned as the shots that should've torn into the pirate ship all missed, irritated at his gunner's incompetence. Then his irritation began to shift into worry as the second volley also missed.

  He'd seen what little footage the Movement had been able to give them of the Last Stand in action. He knew Thorne was a daring and clever pilot who knew the full limits of his ship, and pushed them to the edge in combat. He knew the man's enigmatic gunner, about whom absolutely nothing was known, was the sort that struck terror into hearts of rookie sailors.

  But he'd trained his crew to match that skill, to specifically counter the enemy's techniques. He would've put his chits on them to win any day of the week, felt a deep burning pride for their ability even after he'd been demoted in disgrace. And in spite of seeing what this pirate ship could manage when he'd engaged them at Brastos, his confidence had remained high.

  But at that time, the Last Stand had been focused on escape, not on directly engaging the Vindicator. It turned out there was a world of difference there.

  What he was seeing now was . . . beauty. Horrifying beauty, like a Construct escort ordered by her masters to kill you with her bare hands after stealing your genetic material, but awe-inspiring nonetheless. The recordings he'd watched, the engagement at Brastos, didn't do justice to what he was seeing now with his own eyes.

  The raw skill and coordination with which Thorne and his gunner operated was impossible to dismiss, much as he would've liked to. They made his own people, who he would've pitted against any other ship in the Fleet, any other two ships, look clumsy in comparison.

  As the seconds dragged by, and the completely defenseless ship they fought continued to dance away from their attacks while raining accurate fire down on them, Dalar felt the first flickers of fear.

  * * * * *

  After returning to the locker and replacing the small tool, Lana hunched her shoulders and began wringing her hands, dancing nervously in place. Less than a second later Belix burst through the door, immediately heading for the machine Lana had just sabotaged.

  “What can I do?” Lana asked her, expecting to be brushed aside. She just needed to not be noticed for another few seconds, until-

  Belix started to push past her, and she moved.

  Her stiffened knuckles slammed into the Ishivi's left temple, and before Belix even knew she was in danger she was unconscious, her dash for the controls becoming an uncontrolled tumble across the shielding bay that caused minor injuries.

  Trapped inside her rebelling body, Lana screamed, clawing at her mind desperately to regain control. The horror of what she'd just done to her friend, to the ship, made her want to empty her guts and curl up into a ball.

  Ali's voice came over the comms again, even more urgent. “Mini rift just opened in what's left of the cargo bay! We've got three combat android boarders! Sending the Fixes to repel . . . you're on your own with the shields, Belix.”

  The Dormant saw an opportunity to go and activate the two Fixes she'd coopted, take out the other two, then join up with the boarders and destroy the ship from within. But another opportunity was even more tempting, so instead she spoke frantically into her comm. “Belix hit her head during one of your maneuvers! She's-she's not moving!”

  The captain cursed a blue streak. “Ali, go figure out what the blazes is going on!”

  There you go. The Dormant smiled, even as the Blank Slate continued to scream inwardly. With the possible exception of the gunner, the Caretaker was the biggest threat aboard the ship. The biggest obstacle to continuing on to sabotage the engines, ensuring the Last Stand's destruction.

  Neutralizing it would mean almost certain victory.

  * * * * *

  “Whoa whoa whoa!” Barix protested as Ali rushed out of the bridge, as the man realized Aiden intended to continue engaging the Vindicator. “Our shields are down for the foreseeable future, and you want to keep fighting?”

  “It beats the alternative,” Aiden growled, all his focus on the frantic patterns of tight loops and swirls that kept the Last Stand close to the enemy ship but, hopefully, far away from its weapons fire.

  “What alternative would that be?” the Ishivi demanded.

  “Exactly. We're committed . . . if we try to run, we just make ourselves an easier target and our living weapon the gunner has a harder time shooting back.”

  “You should be committed,” Barix muttered,
turning his focus back to using the ship's internal countermeasures to deal with their three boarders.

  “Enemy shields down, prioritizing critical targets,” the gunner abruptly said tersely, exactly the sort of news Aiden wanted to hear.

  Prioritizing critical targets was a fancy way of saying shots that had a chance of hitting something that would outright destroy the Vindicator. Which, given that privateering with the intent to take ships intact was all the young man had ever known, meant he hadn't had many chances to take those kinds of shots.

  Although knowing him, he'd be just as good at them.

  A quick kill would be nice under the circumstances, and it was miraculous that the gunner had managed to take out the enemy's shields while Aiden was doing everything he could to stay ahead of the Vindicator's two three-burst laser arrays. But those combat androids could destroy his ship from within while the Fixes who'd just entered the airlock were still trying to get there. And Ali, who should've been helping with that, had to go fix the shields instead because literally everything possible seemed to be going wrong there.

  Aiden made a snap decision. “Ali, we'll either be dead or have won before you can repair the shields. Go repel boarders.”

  “I'm at the damaged system now, my love,” the Caretaker replied tersely. “It's a quick fix, less than a minute. Making repairs.”

  Looked as if she was going to keep up her habit of disobeying his orders and undermining his authority. Fine, he didn't have time to worry about that right now. Besides, if more Deek ships showed up, or the gunner suddenly had a stroke and lost all motor control, having shields would be nice.

  “Fine,” he growled over his headset, then turned to the young man. “You have a minute to earn some bragging rights. Take out that ship.”

  “That's going to be a bit of a trick since we just ran out of railgun slugs,” his weapons officer replied grimly. But in spite of his warning, he leaned over his controls and did his best.

  * * * * *

  The first thing the AI did when entering the engine room was drag the unconscious Ishivi out into the safety of the corridor. Apparently a precaution programmed into the Caretaker's core priorities, in case of hull breach or some other hazard.

  “You should go out and stay with her, do what you can for her,” it told Lana as it worked frantically to repair the shield buffer controls.

  “I need to be here in case you need help,” Lana's voice, but not her words, argued. She tried to scream a warning, but nothing came out.

  “Fine, then at least secure yourself,” the Caretaker snapped.

  Amusingly, and conveniently, enough, that was exactly what she needed to do anyway for her plan to work. She hastily made her way over to the bulkhead at the side of the room and clipped her belt carabiner to a loop there.

  Then she turned, reaching behind her back as if to keep her balance. “Ali.”

  The Caretaker turned, giving her a somewhat impatient look. “Excuse me, I need to focus right now.”

  Lana nodded, keeping her expression helpful. “I'm ready in case of trouble,” she said. “But what about you? The Deeks could hit this room at any time.”

  The Caretaker gave her a reassuring smile. “I can survive vacuum, and should be able to brace for explosive decompression in the moment. Until that time, I must keep working.”

  “Understood,” Lana said, still screaming in horror inside her mind. This wasn't her, this wasn't her!

  Keeping her movements appropriately casual for the fact that they might blow up at any moment, she drew the gunner's cauterizer from where she'd tucked it at the small of her back, concealed beneath her shirt, and held it out of the Caretaker's line of sight. Working blindly with just one hand, she dialed its power up to the highest setting, one that threatened to melt the weapon's focusing mechanism if she wasn't careful.

  She couldn't aim for the AI without engaging its self-defense priorities, but she could aim for the wall to her left without it seeing.

  The one that opened out into space.

  The first shot punched a big enough hole to immediately start a gale as the room began explosively decompressing. The second and third shots widened it enough that the gale became a hurricane, snatching loose objects up and blowing them out into the void.

  Including Lana, who was secured, and the AI, who wasn't.

  But somehow, miraculously, the Caretaker managed to snag a control with a single finger. It didn't look like nearly enough to anchor it against explosive decompression, but somehow it held on as it reached for a better hold with its free hand.

  At least until Lana, struggling to keep hold of the cauterizer so it didn't fly out into space with everything else, shot the Caretaker twice in the arm with precision that should've been impossible for her. The fake human barely had time to stare at her with wide eyes, expression conveying betrayal and a plea to know why, before it was yanked across the room by the hurricane of escaping air.

  It slammed into the hole, which was too small for it, and for another moment it seemed it would get wedged against the bulkhead. Then the air pressure crumpled the Caretaker into itself, and as it grasped futilely at nothing with its remaining hand it was forced through and sent flying spinning into the void.

  * * * * *

  Dalar worked in a frenzied panic to get the shields operational again, breath hissing frantically inside his uniform's emergency helmet. Small silver lining, at least the hull breach that had slagged the critical system had also blown the choking smoke out into space.

  He was just lucky it hadn't blown him out, as well. Or more accurately, his foresight in clipping himself to the wall for the battle had saved him; no one had ever accused Jian Dalar of being unprepared for disaster.

  “We're taking hits to the engine's last resort shields, Dalar!” the engines officer screamed in his ear through his headset. “Where are our shields?”

  “Slagged beyond repair!” he snapped back. “The better question is, where is our pilot and gunner?” The Dormant had taken out the pirate ship's shields at pretty much the start of the battle, and yet the fools on the bridge had yet to take advantage of that enormous advantage and destroy their enemy.

  What was Bresac doing? For once he wasn't cursing the plain woman's stolid competency, and was in fact desperately hoping she'd shine like she never had before. Even if it meant she won all the praise for this victory.

  The engines officer abruptly screamed, then the comms went alarmingly silent. A violent shudder spread through the ship, and the lurching of evasive maneuvering vanished. Had the engines just been knocked out, too?

  Dalar keyed his comms to the bridge frequency. “What are you idiots doing?” he demanded. “We're sitting ducks now. Blow them up! Blow th-”

  He winced at a painful burst of feedback in his ears as his comms were squelched. Probably by Bresac, the hateful plodding cow.

  With no other options available to him, he stood in the vacuum of the devastated shields room and closed his eyes, struggling to remain calm as disbelief overwhelmed him.

  How was this possible? They'd entered this fight with every advantage, and in spite of that the Last Stand was swatting them aside with almost contemptuous ease. They couldn't be about to lose, could they?

  He couldn't die. He was Jian Dalar, hero of the Deconstructionist Movement. This wasn't how he went out.

  It wasn't!

  * * * * *

  Aiden winced as if he'd been punched in the face as his ship shuddered around him; to be fair, as far as he was concerned any damage to the old girl was as bad as personal injury.

  “Direct hit to our railgun,” the gunner said, tone clipped and terse. “Enemy shields and engines down, continuing to target engines to slag their reactor.”

  Well, at least they hit the weapon that was already out of ammo and useless, Aiden thought grimly. You had to look on the bright side. Of course, now the railgun would remain useless even after they fabricated more slugs, but they wouldn't have to worry about that if they
didn't survive this battle.

  Bright side. Better to focus on that than on his failure to stay ahead of the enemy's shots; maybe he should've had the gunner go for the weapons before going for the kill, but they'd been so close to victory he tunnel visioned.

  And maybe the young man did, too.

  It didn't matter; the Vindicator coasted through space, dead as an asteroid with its engines disabled, while the Last Stand's three-burst laser array and pinpoint accuracy, high rate of fire single-burst array both pounded into its tail section. Even though it was an enemy vessel, Aiden still couldn't help but wince at the damage it was taking.

  Or more accurately, had taken; there was blinding flash as the Deek cruiser's reactor took a direct hit, and with shocking speed the resultant explosion blew the ship to scrap.

  Unfortunately, Aiden barely had time to celebrate the win before another warning blared on his display. “Hull breach in the shields room,” Barix reported sourly.

  How? He hadn't seen an incoming shot headed anywhere near that part of the ship. “One last gift from the Vindicator?” he asked.

  The gunner shook his head grimly. “It came from inside. Small arms fire. Only . . . the intruders are still out in the corridors battling the Fixes.”

  Aiden frantically looked over sensor readouts from the shields room. Lana was stationary in the room, life signs stable, while Ali's sensor reading had disappeared entirely. “Ali?” he demanded frantically.

  “Here, my love,” the Caretaker replied.

  Relief swept through him, and he nearly gave himself whiplash yanking his head to one side to activate a private channel with her. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “In space, waiting for retrieval. I'm afraid I'll be of little further use this battle. Please do not hesitate to abandon me if necessary.”

  “The void I wi-” Aiden started angrily. He was cut off as the ship shuddered again, and on his display the icon for the disabled shields went red as they were destroyed, apparently by more small arms fire.

  Ali spoke, tone urgent. “My love, Lana betrayed us. She has a cauterizer and used it to cause a hull breach and facilitate my evacuation into space. I believe it's safe to surmise she sabotaged the shields in the first place.”