Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  Instead, within a matter of moments the companions had ripped the combat androids to pieces. And, his horror mounting until he felt like he was in some sort of nightmare or sick full immersion dive, he realized that behind them the ones attacking Garridy and Halser had done the same to the two men, painting their dainty smocks and flawless skin with macabre trails of gore.

  For an eternal moment Dalar stared at the ragged pieces of his fellow crewmen, then at the blood-spattered females turning towards him, feeling the blood drain from his face and bile rising in his throat. It took every ounce of self-control not to lose his lunch, or for that matter control of his bladder.

  With a frantic scream, he drew his cauterizer and blew apart the door controls, hopefully locking those horrors on the other side of the solid barrier. Then he spun to face Sarr, who to his fury looked queasy but triumphant.

  “I thought companions were ordered to prioritize human life above all other considerations!” he snarled.

  The scientist actually smirked, although she continued to look sickened by what they'd just witnessed. “Companions, absolutely. They'd sooner allow themselves to be destroyed than harm a human. But you and I both know, Deek, that there's a more complex moral consideration . . . what if one human is threatening the life of another, and there's no choice but to either end a guilty life or see an innocent killed? That requires an entirely different level of AI prioritization. Caretaker level, to be exact. And the Caretakers have very interesting core priorities when it comes to the Deconstructionist Movement.”

  On the other side of the door, the companions had begun banging on it and the surrounding walls. Which wouldn't have been all that intimidating, considering they looked like a bunch of half-dressed supermodels. Aside from the fact that they'd just literally torn humans and even void-blasted combat robots limb from limb, and their punches and kicks visibly dented the thick reinforced metal.

  Dalar shifted his aim from the door to Sarr's face, shoving his cauterizer within inches of her eye. At the moment he cared more about survival than taking these slaves for some mega-corporation, but he'd expose himself to vacuum before he let them get away after smirking at the death of two good men like that.

  “Move!” he snarled. He waved the weapon at the other scientists. “All of you, move! Anyone not running the other way with the rest of the group by the time I finish speaking gets shot!”

  The huddled mass of men and women bolted across the room towards the other exit. Dalar pounded after them, more concerned with getting away from the nightmare behind him than with hurrying the scientists along, to the point where he probably would've simply shoved past any who ran too slow.

  Although that didn't turn out to be a problem; maybe they'd taken his threat seriously, or maybe the sight of humans being gruesomely murdered in front of them by their own creations had shaken them, but these unathletic eggheads were managing to stay ahead of him running for his life.

  Behind him, he heard a tortured groan and then a heavy crash. He was too busy running to waste even a moment to look behind him, but his imagination supplied an image of the heavy door being torn out of the wall and dozens of blood-spattered monstrosities crawling over each other to pour through it in pursuit of him.

  And if they caught him, they'd rip him apart like they had his crew mates.

  Dalar jerked his head slightly to the side for universal broadcasting on his communicator. “All units, the companions are hostile! Repeat, the companions are hostile! Evacuate the facility immediately!”

  A frantic voice replied, speaking over the sharp whine of cauterizers and nearby screams. “Yeah thanks for the tip, former Captain Obvious.”

  Seriously, even at a time like this?

  The scientists had hit a slight bottleneck at the exit to the warehouse building, pouring through it in twos and threes onto the tarmac beyond as the people behind them pounded on their backs and screamed at them to hurry. Which just served to slow the process down even more; it looked as if even genius AI developers could be morons when they were panicked.

  Dalar hooked an arm around the neck of the one causing the most trouble, putting his cauterizer to his head and pulling him backwards. “In an orderly fashion, ladies and gentlemen!” he bellowed. “Didn't you ever do emergency evacuation drills?”

  Inspiring as his words were, by the time he finished speaking the others were mostly through. He kicked the quivering scientist he held forward and charged through the door, opening his mouth to shout for his prisoners to make for the shuttle ahead of them. Which turned out to be unnecessary, since they already were.

  Only the shuttle hadn't dropped its boarding ramp, and its engines weren't spooling up to take off.

  How was that even possible, after the warning he'd given? Dalar slammed his head to the side for universal broadcasting, forgetting he'd already done that. “We need to get these scientists loaded and get off this rock ten minutes ago, pilot!” he shouted. “Didn't I make that clear while I was running for my life on the way here?”

  “I don't take orders from you, crewman,” the pilot replied contemptuously. Another idiot who'd heard of his disgrace and was using it as an excuse to make stupid decisions just to spite him.

  Dalar jerked a thumb over his shoulder, sure the shuttle's flight crew were watching him on a display. “Then take orders from the ARMY OF KILLER ROBOTS THAT JUST TORE GARRIDY AND HALSER TO PIECES AND ARE FIVE SECONDS BEHIND ME!” he screamed. “You want to take off with a few dozen prototype companions programmed to kill Decons tearing through your hull to get at you?”

  Maybe he got through to the crew, or maybe they finally spotted the first of the bloodstained abominations pouring out of the facility. Either way, the shuttle ramp's emergency release popped and it slammed to the ground, inviting him to safety. He heard the ship's engines roar to life as the pilot “expedited” the preflight checklist.

  Only one last obstacle to getting the void away from this deathtrap. Dalar waved his cauterizer at a knot of scientists at the rear of the group, including the charming Stag in hiding, Miss Sarr. They were trying not to be obvious about slowing down as they crossed the tarmac, probably still hoping the murderous robots they'd created would save them from a life of ignoble slavery to their competitors.

  He shot the ground behind them, then to both sides, leaving smoking craters in the composite surface. “Last person on that ship gets fried!”

  That got them moving.

  There was another slight bottleneck at the ramp, even though it was meant for quickly loading troops and ran the entire width of the troop transport. Dalar took a moment to glance over his shoulder, then nearly screamed at the sight of several of the abominations already out on the tarmac, running at least twice as fast as a normal human could manage, while more streamed out the door behind them.

  He bulled into the final people yet to board, shoving them onto the ramp only moments before the shuttle lurched and began to take off, the ramp shuddering as its hydraulics forced it closed against the weight of a dozen people. Apparently the pilot had decided not to let the killer robots anywhere near them, even if it meant leaving someone behind.

  Probably hoping one of those they left was Dalar, the festering pustules.

  The scientists ahead of him stumbled and clutched anything they could, including each other, to keep from getting tossed off the ramp as the ground dropped away beneath them. Dalar scrambled up the lurching surface on all fours, barely managing to catch hold of Sarr as she was about to fall over the side. Or, knowing her, possibly make a suicidal leap a hundred feet to hard tarmac below.

  All the thanks he got for his heroism was a soft shoe to the shoulder as the skinny woman desperately pushed off him, launching herself the final few feet into the safety of the transport compartment. He threw himself after her, rolling wildly as the ramp clanged closed behind him.

  After a few seconds to catch his breath and rub his bruised shoulder, he hauled himself to his feet with a groan and looked around, doin
g a quick head count.

  Twenty-seven, that abomination who'd snapped Halser's neck had said. He only counted twenty-six scientists with him; either one had fallen during takeoff without him noticing, or there'd been a last person hiding somewhere on the facility that the assault force hadn't caught before the companions went on their murderous rampage.

  Either way, he had a hard time caring. “Get strapped in, people,” he said tiredly, slumping into one of the narrow seats and fumbling with the straps. “Looks as if the pilot's in a hurry to get us away from here, so it's going to be a bumpy ride.”

  Once Dalar was securely belted in, he sagged his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes in relief that this nightmare was finally over.

  After a few seconds, he shifted his head for fleet-wide communication. “Crewman Dalar to the fleet,” he said in the steadiest voice he could manage, speaking over the babble of the scientists around him; from the sound of some of them, apparently even being captured at gunpoint couldn't stop them from complaining.

  A curt voice he didn't recognize responded. “Fleet comms, what's your emergency?”

  “Reporting at least five thousand prototype adult companions activated and programmed to kill Movement forces. Two security officers dead and three combat androids from my strike team destroyed, facility retaken by enemy forces. We were barely able to escape with the facility's human staff.” He paused a beat, taking a deep breath, then continued firmly. “Recommend use of atomics.”

  Dalar wasn't sure if they listened to his advice, or if other members of the assault force had already reported in, or if the ships in orbit had watched the entire thing on their sensors. Either way, half a minute later he watched on the shuttle compartment's display as the facility, now distant, flashed with a blinding light.

  The display dimmed and filtered the glare, allowing him to see the distinctive mushroom-shaped cloud of an atomic detonating on a near 1g planet with standard atmospheric density. Many of the scientists around him shrieked in shock and horror and, oddly, even grief as the facility was obliterated. That, or sat staring numbly at the awe-inspiring display of destructive force.

  He bit back a curse, realizing he probably shouldn't have let them see that; it wouldn't do much to make them more cooperative. Or, come to think of it, maybe it would.

  Before he could decide what to say to calm the anxious crowd, his earpiece clicked as he was shifted to a private channel, Captain Bresac's voice speaking coolly in his ear. “Crewman Dalar, report for debriefing as soon as your shuttle rendezvouses with the Vindicator. Thus far HAE has not employed their companion or Pilot AIs for military applications. If that's changed, we need to know every bit of information you were able to gather in that facility.”

  That was an understatement; if the mega-corporation was capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands or possibly even millions of killer robots, abominations that could rip apart combat androids with their bare hands and blend in with real humans, that presented a serious threat to the Movement.

  One, perhaps, that would justify calling the task force away from its current pointless mission chasing pirates. “Acknowledged,” Dalar said. “Does this change our orders? Are we going to be pulled off hunting the Last Stand?”

  His new and wholly unwelcome captain snorted derisively, and he could almost hear her unspoken taunt. Wouldn't it be convenient for you to distance yourself from your humiliation? But her tone remained professional as she replied. “I'm not about to speculate on big picture changes, but our orders haven't changed . . . we need to take these slaves you picked up to the ERI facility where they'll be put to work. Good job extracting them all from that mess, by the way.”

  The praise was almost mocking, and Dalar grit his teeth. It didn't take much to distinguish yourself in the Fleet if you had resources or connections, but otherwise you had to rely on merit. He'd paid his way into captaincy of the Vindicator the first time, although he'd told himself that his competence and commanding presence made it so he hadn't really needed to.

  But doing so had taken all his family's wealth, and he hadn't been very frugal in saving his pay since then. Which meant rising through the ranks again was going to be a miserable slog, if it was even possible at all.

  Maybe he should just quit, captain a private vessel. He'd probably make more chits from it anyway, and even disgraced Fleet dropouts like him would get snatched up by corporations looking for someone experienced to take their ships through sectors infested by pirates.

  Too bad he was so loyal to the Deconstructionist philosophy . . . he couldn't in good conscience abandon the Movement.

  With a sigh, he turned to the scientists. “Good news, boys and girls. We're going to get you all in stasis pods, and when you wake up a few days and some rift hubs later you'll be in charming Iglis galaxy, ready to start your new lives as ERI drones.”

  Chapter Three

  Deep Space

  The technical term for the light cruiser Last Stand's current position in space would be “the middle of nowhere”.

  Since they weren't making for any specific spaceport, and their current destination was the Iglis galaxy, the nearest galaxy but still mind-bogglingly far away in comparison to intragalactic travel, they didn't really have to worry about sticking close to usual trade routes between inhabited systems.

  As Aiden Thorne, captain of the pirate ship Lana had unexpectedly found herself on after being rescued from slavery a few weeks ago, put it, they “just needed to point the ship in the general direction of Iglis and make one rift jump after another until they got there.”

  Practically speaking, rift jumps required such complicated calculations that even a genius with access to a powerful computer, or an even more powerful AI such as Aiden's companion Ali, took time to calculate them. More time than the jump engines themselves required to prepare for rift travel, by an order of magnitude. Thanks to that, it could take up to a half hour to calculate a jump that would take them somewhere between 10 and 100 lightyears.

  Which was all just a fancy way of saying that the trip to the new galaxy would last about a month. If they had access to rift hubs it would take a fraction of that time, but unfortunately aside from allnet relays, the hubs were pretty much the only thing the Deconstructionist Movement guarded. Leaving the rest of the universe to rot, aside from the parts of it they seemed determined to rip apart with their own hands.

  Including the Last Stand; going anywhere near the hub wasn't an option for a pirate vessel with an entire task force assigned to hunt them down, and they had enough problems as it was.

  Although to be honest, Lana had absolutely zero problems with spending a month in peace and quiet, without anyone shooting at them or, just as bad, them shooting at anyone else to capture prizes in their piracy. They had plenty of food and fuel to make the trip, if just barely, and she was content to spend the time learning to work the ship's systems.

  And, whenever she wasn't on duty, spend every waking moment with her new boyfriend. Which was exactly what she was doing at the moment.

  Being with Dax anywhere on the Last Stand would be incredible, and it was. Even so, it hadn't taken long for Lana to convince him that they could have just as much fun, perhaps even more, doing those same things in full immersion, in more comfortable and romantic settings.

  Just three or so days since they first became a couple following the escape at Brastos 4, to be exact.

  Now that Lana had finally managed to get him to agree to finding a nice little spot in a full immersion dive to enjoy some intimacy, they'd spent the last hour or so enjoying a swim in the surf just off the beach of a recreation of one of Homeworld's most popular tropical islands. Although to be fair, it was hard to swim when they couldn't keep their hands off each other.

  Once they'd accepted that even shallow water presented difficulties for the activity they both really wanted to be doing, they spread a towel out on the beach they had all to themselves, enjoying the hot sun and cool sea breezes on every inch o
f skin exposed by their minimal bathing suits.

  It didn't take long before they were tangled up together, exchanging languid kisses and caresses as their passion slowly built. Lana was making her way down the rock-solid muscles of her boyfriend's chest and abs to free him of his swimming suit when Ali's voice abruptly appeared from nowhere, startling her so much she jumped and accidentally kneed him in an unfortunate place.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but the Captain's called a meeting in ten minutes.”

  Dax seemed just as surprised by the companion's voice as Lana was, although the knee to the groin probably had a lot to do with that. “This is a private immersion, Ali,” he growled through gritted teeth as he curled up around himself in pain. “What makes you think intruding like this is okay?”

  “I've merely injected my voice into the simulation, your privacy hasn't been breached. Also, may I point out this is the first time you've voiced a complaint about being interrupted in full immersion?”

  “We'll be there, now go away!” Lana snapped, while she rubbed her boyfriend's back soothingly in anxious remorse.

  The young man cursed under his breath and snapped the command to disable all physical sensations for himself, immediately relaxing and regaining his usual calm reserve. “Too bad we can't do that in real life,” he told her, sitting up. “Would've been useful a time or two. Sorry about this.”

  She couldn't help but laugh as she hugged him, even though he couldn't feel it. “I'm the one who accidentally kicked you somewhere I'm informed guys really don't want to be hit. I'm so sorry.”

  “That's okay, she surprised both of us.” He looked slightly frustrated, as well as confused. “I guess I was apologizing to myself as much as you, that this moment was ruined when it was so perfect.”