Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  Doing much of anything useful might've been difficult for most normal people, after getting a hand blown off by a Dormant. But Ali simply adjusted her feet to grip like hands, showing the same flawless dexterity with them. She even adjusted her legs in some way so they'd be more like arms, flexible enough for the needed tasks.

  To be honest, Aiden was a bit glad he didn't have to see that. The Caretaker already creeped him out enough when she looked and acted like a genuine human. And exposure to vacuum probably hadn't helped her; he dreaded seeing the damage it had to have done to her impossibly beautiful features.

  As the robot and science officer worked, Aiden fidgeted restlessly in his seat, ready to maneuver the ship if an enemy suddenly jumped in.

  Although if the Deeks caught up to them now, with those two outside, it would be a disaster. There wasn't much Aiden would be able to do in those circumstances except try to buy time for them to get back inside, which was probably impossible. As a last resort he'd have to make the jump the gunner was currently calculating, somehow able to concentrate in spite of the agony of his broken arm. Which was as yet untreated, aside from being tightly bound in a crude sling.

  A jump under those circumstances would scramble Barix's brain and rip his body apart, by pulling him out of spacetime while outside the protection of the ship's hull.

  Which to be fair wasn't the most unwelcome idea, but then he'd be down a science officer. So yeah, Aiden hoped their search wouldn't take long.

  Thankfully, it actually only took a few minutes. And in the end, it was almost predictable where Lana had hidden the tracking device that had nearly destroyed his ship: in the blind spot on the sensor array.

  Granted, the Dormant had obviously gambled on the strongest concealment for the micro rift generator being that none of them would be looking for it until it was too late, and she'd nearly been right. Even so, she'd taken pains to very cleverly conceal it, so the search had taken Ali longer than it should've.

  In fact, the Caretaker had nearly missed it on her first sweep, which said something. Not that Aiden was in the mood to praise Lana for her cleverness or skill, all things considered.

  In any case, it didn't take long before the bug was found and thoroughly destroyed, then its remains launched into the void to join the other debris from the battle. In the tense minutes it took for Ali and Barix to get back inside, Aiden kept a sharp eye on the sensors for any sign of trouble.

  Given how their luck was going, it almost came as a surprise when his two EV crew members reported they were safely in, and Aiden guided the Last Stand through the rift the gunner opened for him.

  The display shifted to an endless expanse of interstellar space, and Aiden slumped back in his seat with a silent sigh of relief. After a few seconds he grudgingly toggled his comms. “Ali, priorities?”

  The Caretaker responded without hesitation. “Verify all systems are stable for another jump, see to the injured crew, more thoroughly secure and examine the prisoner, and begin repairs.”

  Aiden grimaced. The prisoner. A callous way to refer to their friend, whatever had just happened. The Caretaker was colder than the companion had been. “All right, let's get to work.”

  * * * * *

  It was quite possible this was the closest the Last Stand had ever come to living up to its name.

  Aiden's poor ship was a mess. Aside from the obvious catastrophes, like the shields being slagged, the railgun a mangled lump of scrap, his cargo bay a crumpled tangle of scorched metal, two crew cabins and the lounge packed with sealant foam and unusable, not to mention the expensive full immersion gear now so much junk, there were hull breaches and radiation warnings everywhere.

  Not to mention he was down to four active crew members; Ali had gotten Belix back on her feet, with nothing worse to show for her run-in with a Dormant than a splitting headache, but her medical advice had been for the slight woman to rest for a few hours while the stabilizing drugs she administered did their work.

  Likewise, the gunner's arm had been set and he was still stubbornly on his feet, but he was relegated to performing his duties one-handed. Which, to be fair, probably still made him more useful than anyone besides Ali, who was also down a hand but was already working on a replacement.

  Although it wasn't as if an extra pair of hands, more available crew that is, would've helped much; the Last Stand could technically still fly and fight, and the fuel and provisions were untouched, but the maneuvers of space combat would very likely tear her apart at the seams.

  Aiden was going to have to touch down somewhere to make emergency repairs. Or, more ideally, find a space station and let qualified professionals patch the old girl back together. Possibly both.

  At the moment, though, Barix had taken them through another few jumps, enough so that being followed was theoretically impossible. They'd also gone over the rest of the ship with a fine tooth comb to make sure there were no more bugs aboard, and on top of all that the slight man had a jump queued up, and was currently enjoying one of his brief stints manning the pilot's chair.

  There were a thousand things Aiden had to do, all clamoring for most important. But now that things were at least somewhat stabilized there was one thing he had to do. Even if he wasn't sure he wanted to.

  So he made his way to the medical bay, which was serving as an impromptu brig for Lana since literally no other room was available.

  Unsurprisingly, the gunner was there standing vigil, even though there were countless things he should be doing as well. Including rest, considering the shattered arm that Ali had set and begun accelerated regrowth for; it was now immobilized in a brace and sling, giving the young man a battered look to go with his haunted, empty expression.

  Aiden couldn't really hold the gunner's desire to watch over Lana against him. What did come as a surprise was that the young man was standing out in the corridor, looking into the bay through a small window that was usually shuttered for privacy.

  He would've expected the emotionally devastated weapons officer to be sitting at his lover's side. Not waiting for her to wake up, of course, since Ali was keeping her in a medically induced coma for security reasons, but at least keeping her company.

  Then again, maybe he could understand the young man wanting to distance himself from his pain; when in the Construct's short life had he ever experienced anything like this? Aiden, technically over thirty years his senior, was having a difficult enough time of his own processing this betrayal, and he was no stranger to the feeling.

  For a young man who'd spent his life secluded aboard a relatively small ship, almost never leaving it, and being surrounded by people he'd known all his life, this could very well feel like the end of the universe. Overcome by a sudden surge of pity, Aiden stepped up beside the boy and rested a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  Only when the gunner visibly stiffened did he realize this was the first real contact they'd ever had, aside from accidental brushes while working near each other. It seemed almost unforgivable, that the gunner was for all intents and purposes his son, and Aiden had refused to ever act like it.

  Just one of his many failings.

  “Excuse me,” the young man said curtly, not quite shrugging off his hand as he stepped away. “Redlining the engines during the battle threw the stabilizers out of alignment. With your permission, I should go recalibrate them.”

  Aiden opened his mouth, struggling for something to say. But the weight of over five years of never saying what needed to be said suddenly piled down on him, and his mind went blank. So he nodded dumbly. “Of course, crewman. Get to it.”

  The gunner turned on one heel and strode off, leaving Aiden alone at the window.

  He stared at the unconscious young woman lying on a medical cot inside. Even though Ali had put her under so she wouldn't be a threat, he hadn't been willing to take any chances and had also insisted on restraints. Not just wrist and ankle restraints, either, but fully strapping her down.

  The precaution seemed ov
erblown, even absurd, when he looked at her sleeping face. Her beautiful features were soft and peaceful, and the only sign of the vicious fight she'd put them through was the bandages swathing her right hand, which had been horrifically burned when the gunner disarmed her.

  Even after seeing the damage she'd wreaked after being triggered, it seemed impossible that she could be anything but harmless. But appearances could be deceiving.

  The irony wasn't lost on him, that he'd originally “rescued” this girl by leaving an atomic in Fleetfoot's path, floating innocently like any random bit of space debris. It looked as if the Deeks had come up with the same idea for his ship, tricking him into bringing a figurative nuke aboard.

  And all this time she'd just sat there, waiting to be set off. Befriending them all, struggling to become one of the crew. Falling in love and beginning a relationship with the gunner.

  Aiden snorted bitterly. After he'd gotten over his anger at discovering the two were together, he'd acknowledged that they had a lot of similarities: the girl with no memories and the boy with no childhood. And now, discovering that Lana had been brainwashed similarly to the young man's conditioning, it looked as if they were even more alike than he'd realized.

  He jumped slightly when a familiar and at the same time unfamiliar form slipped up to the window beside him. He'd already had a few chances to get used to the sight of Ali after her exposure to vacuum, and she'd taken hasty steps to repair herself between working on everything else that needed to be done.

  Even so, the damage done to her was shocking, almost horrifying.

  Whatever synthetic flesh her creators had used to make her seem human to all the senses, vacuum hadn't been much better for it than if she'd actually been a real woman; fissures and blisters covered it, most of the visible ones hastily sealed over and cauterized so she looked like the survivor of some terrible battle. The smallest and most unobtrusive “wounds” still gaped open, although whatever she used for blood was either depleted or no longer circulating in those areas, so the injuries looked as if they were on a corpse.

  Her face was the most damaged, with mouth and nose and eyes containing moisture that could be flash-boiled by vacuum. She'd taken more care to repair them, but her once impossibly beautiful features were now painful to look at.

  And to top it all off, the hand Lana had blown off was unsalvageable, so she'd replaced it with one of the crude models from a destroyed Fix; it was huge and ungainly on her slender arm, although she used it with just as much grace. Still, it all served to remind Aiden of what she was.

  Not that he needed a reminder. He wasn't sure which was more painful to look at, her or Lana, so he focused his eyes on the wall above the Blank-the Dormant's head, saying nothing.

  “Her hand will require extensive work,” the Caretaker finally said. “I've begun already, a process that would be quite uncomfortable for her if she wasn't unconscious.”

  “Good thing you'll be keeping her that way until I decide what to do with her,” he ordered more than said. “A solution that'll involve booting her out at the nearest habitable world, ideally.”

  He didn't look to see whether or not Ali approved with that callous decision, and whatever she felt, she said nothing. The tense silence settled again, the Caretaker waiting patiently for him to sort out his inner turmoil. Or failing that, to tell her to go away so he could suffer on his own.

  Well, he certainly wasn't about to go to Ali for comfort, all things considered. But he didn't want to be alone, either. “She really wanted to stay behind on Callous, didn't she?” he finally said, almost under his breath.

  The Caretaker hesitated, obviously startled by the direction his thoughts had taken. “If the part of her that was a Blank Slate was separate from the Dormant, with no knowledge of it, that seems very likely. Her brainwashing would've forced her to follow her mission.”

  So it hadn't been loyalty to him or his cause, or even to the gunner, that had made Lana stay. She'd been ready to ditch him and his insane war with the Movement, like any rational person would, and would've if she'd been free to choose.

  Even understanding that, even though he himself had done everything he could to get the young woman to stay on the colony world, the realization still stung. “Who was she?” he asked harshly. “And more importantly, why didn't you identify her as a threat with your vaunted Caretaker upgrades? Don't you have all the knowledge in the universe at your fingertips?”

  Ali didn't sound offended by his hostility. “Logic hiccups, ones AIs tend to be susceptible to. Firstly, Dormant brainwashing on Blank Slates is considered impossible, so I did not include the potential threat in any but my most peripheral analyses of her. At the same priority ranking that checked the likelihood of, say, her actually being an alien in disguise, or a mythical creature from Homeworld.”

  Well, hard to fault her for that, since it had caught the rest of them completely by surprise, too. Although he secretly thought that the Caretaker should've known, just based on what she was and how reliable she'd been for him right from the start.

  Of course, she'd been less and less reliable lately. Case in point. “And secondly?”

  “Secondly,” Ali continued, unruffled by his hostile tone, “information on her real identity was not considered for my searches because she's recorded as dead in all Deconstructionist Movement archives.”

  “And other captured people who become Dormants aren't?” Aiden demanded. “That seems like a really stupid thing to filter out of searches.”

  “In fact no, Dormants are not usually “killed off”, since that would be a pretty major telltale,” the AI replied calmly. “Particularly since most Dormants take over the lives of whoever they'd been before being captured and brainwashed, so giving them an obituary would kind of raise red flags. The last reason is that HAE has managed to dig rather deeply into Movement Intelligence's databanks, and there wasn't even a hint of her in the black ops area of MI that creates most Dormants.”

  Aiden simply glared at her, waiting for her to give him something besides excuses, until finally she sighed. “Her name, assuming I've correctly identified her, is Jaziri Irsham. A very skilled, very low profile hacker. One who'd been operating in this very galaxy before she was captured, in fact.”

  The Caretaker pulled up information on her pad, showing him numerous images of Lana with various hair colors, styles, and facial tattoos and piercings, some so bizarre that he didn't even recognize her, aside from context. She was also wearing a variety of outfits that spanned almost every fashion style for the last thirty or so years.

  Or at least, the more risque ones; seeing this stranger who looked like Lana, or at least some version of her, so brazenly flaunting her sexuality was utterly incongruous with the sweet, innocent young woman he knew. So much so that he felt a bit uncomfortable seeing her like this.

  Along with the images came a surprising number of wanted notices and profile alerts from the Movement, various powerful corporations, and private entities. “Jaziri's full activity isn't known, since she covered her tracks very adeptly,” Ali continued. “But the crimes attributed to her include theft, fraud, extortion, blackmail, fomenting treason against the Movement in public allnet spaces, and the brokering of highly classified information. The act that ultimately set the Deeks after her, and got her captured, was a confidence scheme in which she seduced a highly placed Movement leader and then blackmailed him for the access codes to his agency's database.”

  Aiden blinked. Even after seeing the way she'd dressed in her previous life, he had a hard time seeing innocent Lana as capable of that sort of cynical seduction. Not to mention that the idea of her screwing a Deek, even so she could then figuratively screw him, was more than a little repugnant.

  The Caretaker didn't seem to notice his surprise. “She used the information taken from the database in further blackmail schemes and other illegal activities, sowing a surprising amount of chaos and profiting immensely from it. Which was enough to see her hunted down, captured,
and supposedly executed.”

  “But Deeks never throw away useful tools,” Aiden said grimly. “So instead they brainwashed her and sent her to worm her way onto my ship.”

  “Yes,” Ali agreed, tone solemn. “I've analyzed what's left of our Fixes' memories, and discovered that she tampered with two of them. I've also thoroughly examined the ship's computer for signs of intrusion, to try to work out just what she's been up to all this time.”

  Aiden grit his teeth; this wasn't going to be good news. “What did you find?”

  The Caretaker hesitated. “First off, that we were very lucky.”

  “You think? We barely came out of this fight alive after she sabotaged us.”

  Ali shook her head. “Not this fight. My search revealed that the Dormant had a surprisingly deft touch with hacking, no surprise considering her background. Not enough to get past my defenses, but enough that I didn't spot her tampering until I looked for it specifically, rather than for a phantom virus as I originally assumed it was. That is my own failure, for which I apologize.”

  Aiden waved that away irritably; if she hadn't been up to the task, no one would've been.

  The disfigured woman continued, not seeming reassured by his unspoken forgiveness. “It appears that one of the Dormant's sabotage attempts was with the ship's controls. She wanted to take them over just long enough to fly the Last Stand into the nearest obstacle, at speeds swift enough to obliterate the ship. Failing that, she convinced you to teach her to fly in the hopes that she'd have a few seconds unsupervised to do it manually.”

  He felt the blood drain from his face. “You're telling me she came within seconds of suiciding us into the nearest asteroid dozens of times in the last couple months?”

  Ali grimaced, which didn't do anything for her appearance. “I believe so, my love. Fortunately, rookie pilots are watched almost as suspiciously as potential traitors, and you never gave her that opportunity.”