Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  Lana's eyes softened and she gently rested a hand on his chest, wishing he could feel it. “We'll have plenty more chances,” she promised.

  They disconnected from the full immersion hookups, the bright, vibrant beach replaced by the drab metal and composite surfaces of the ship's lounge. Lana paused just long enough to give Dax a lingering hug and press her lips to his, a promise they'd pick up where they'd left off as soon as possible. Then they made for the bridge together.

  The rest of the crew was already assembled, including Fix, standing against one wall out of the way, all six and a half feet and three hundred pounds of hulking combat android unnervingly still and silent, waiting for whatever orders the captain had for it. Even Belix was there, seated on the right end of the semicircle next to her twin.

  Of the six crew workstations on the bridge, five were currently assigned, with only the one between Aiden's and Barix's empty. Personally, Lana dreaded the prospect of being assigned that station and having to sit next to the odious Ishivi. And, lately, to be honest she wasn't how thrilled she'd be sitting next to the captain, either.

  She much preferred her portable terminal, pulled up next to the left side of Dax's workstation. Although come to think of it, maybe she could ask Ali, who currently sat between her boyfriend and Aiden, if she'd be willing to give her that spot; she doubted the adult companion would mind.

  As Lana and Dax settled into their seats, the captain gave them a curt nod and stood from his station, moving to stand in the middle of the room. That also put him directly in the center of the main display, the holographic sphere beginning at his shins and continuing well over his head. It dimmed so he was more visible, making it seem as if he was a giant specter hovering amidst the void the ship floated in, far from any star.

  The tall, handsome man cleared his throat, even though he already had everyone's attention. “To begin with, Ali and I have spent a considerable amount of time researching Iglis galaxy, especially going over potential destinations. We've settled on this one as our first stop.”

  The display obligingly changed around him to an image of the galaxy they were traveling towards. Aiden pointed to a system near the edge, and the display zoomed in to show a common yellow dwarf star circled by five planets, with information about the system and its history scrolling around the edges of the display.

  “Ceras system,” he said. “One high population colony, two spaceports.”

  Barix cleared his throat in a stodgy mockery of the captain. “That sounds awfully legitimate for our tastes.”

  Aiden frowned. “New galaxy where nobody's hunting for us, and a thorough work over of our ship's profile and IFF transponder. We're going in as innocent looking as we can make ourselves, which means we won't be frequenting the usual scummy hives of criminal mischief. From now on, we've got a clean slate.”

  The slight man snickered, glancing at Lana. “In stark contrast to our own Slate, who's been rather dirty lately.”

  She felt her face heating. “That's none of your business.”

  Before Barix could reply with whatever snarky comment he'd no doubt already prepared, Dax spoke up. Calm and disciplined as always, but with a definite note of warning in his tone. “No, it isn't,” he agreed. “And it's not going to be a topic of conversation for you, is that clear?”

  The Ishivi opened his mouth, obviously not intimidated, but before he could reply Belix leaned over from her workstation and gave him a firm kick in the shin, along with a warning glare. Barix hesitated, looking around at the crew all glaring at him, then leaned back sulkily. “The ayes have it, apparently,” he grumbled. “My lips are sealed.” Then, because he was himself, he continued under his breath in a voice clearly meant to be heard by everyone. “Unlike Lana's.”

  Aiden took a calming breath and spoke up a bit louder than necessary. “Anyway, Ceras. We can resupply and refuel, and I may have a contact there. Someone who can apprise us of the local scene. And if she doesn't happen to be there, we're no strangers to digging up information.” He shot a long-suffering look Lana's way. “Who knows, maybe we'll even start with a bit of legitimate work until we can sniff out some targets to hit. Or at least, semi-legitimate.”

  “Better be quick about finding them,” Belix grumbled. “I didn't sign up to be a trader, or even a smuggler. I'm a pirate . . . I want to profit off other people's hard work.”

  “Privateer,” the captain said sternly. “We fight on behalf of the Preservationist cause, whether it's still around or not, and everything we do is aimed towards weakening the Movement so their regime can be toppled.”

  The elfin woman rolled her eyes. “Of course. Thanks for reminding me,” she said sarcastically, then mimicked her twin in speaking audibly under her breath. “As if you ever let us forget.”

  Barix raised his hand. “Question. We've got an entire Deek task force breathing down our necks. Even if we left them behind in our old stomping ground, isn't now a bad time to be strutting around out in the open, pretending to be legitimate? We can disguise our ship, even ourselves, but your DNA is on file. Which means the gunner's will also be raising red flags.”

  “I don't leave DNA traces to be found,” Dax said. “That sort of carelessness would be disgraceful.”

  “So that's one less person who might be a security risk,” the slight man said, unfazed. “Void, mine and my sister's biometrics will probably be drawing more attention than we'd like. And for all we know, even Lana might've been high profile before she was nabbed and wiped.”

  “I doubt a gutter tramp snatched from the streets of a miserable hole like Helios 4 is wanted by anyone,” Belix said wryly. Then she winced and glanced at Lana. “No offense.”

  Oh no, how could she possibly take offense to that? Although honestly, Lana didn't much care about her life before her mind was wiped. She felt like she probably should, but every time her thoughts strayed in that direction some part of her mind steered her away.

  Maybe deep down, she wanted to focus on her new life. A better life, especially now that she had Dax. Even if it involved being a pirate and potentially getting killed.

  Barix made an impatient sound. “I could gladly spend all day hypothesizing about Lana's miserable past, in all its lurid details. But I was making a point . . . manhunt, flaunting our ship at legit spaceports, bad idea?”

  “Sometimes the best place to hide is out in the open,” Aiden said curtly. “Besides, Ali will make sure we're in the clear by hacking into the station and making sure we don't raise any red flags. And while she's at it, she can pick up a lot of useful information we can use going forward.” He turned to his companion. “Speaking of which . . . why don't you reassure everyone that our anonymity is secure.”

  The prototype adult companion, impossibly beautiful with her dark blue eyes, long, night black hair, and luscious curves, stood and moved gracefully to join the captain inside the hologram. “Well first things first,” she reported, “I was surprised to confirm the Captain's suspicion that we'd picked up some kind of virus or backdoor. An incredibly sophisticated one, probably an AI . . . it didn't even leave any footprints, only the most subtle hints of its presence that I had to scour the ship's computer to find.”

  “How is that reassuring us about our anonymity?” Barix demanded.

  “Looks like the incredible sex robot isn't perfect after all,” Belix agreed, more spitefully than she'd probably intended. Then again, knowing her maybe not.

  The companion didn't respond to the taunt, of course. “Since I was barely able to discover it was even there, I have no way of telling what it did. But I think it's safe to assume that it probably sent sensitive information about us to the Deek task force, then wiped itself. That weird burst of noise from the Vindicator right before we jumped was probably a trigger for it.”

  “And moving forward?” Aiden asked. “It's no longer a threat to us?”

  Ali hesitated, which didn't seem like a good sign to Lana. “Normally I'd say with 99.9% confidence that if it existed on th
e computer at one point, it no longer does. However, before I discovered these traces of it I would've insisted with the same confidence that I could protect the ship's systems against anything.”

  “In that case, we should operate under the assumption you can't, no offense,” the captain said grimly. “So we go back to the security measures we used before we got you.”

  Everyone else was nodding, and even Dax had a thoughtful look as if he was planning ahead to what work needed to be done. Lana looked between them. “Care to explain, since that was before you “got” me, too?”

  Aiden simply looked at her boyfriend, as if putting it on his broad shoulders, and Dax leaned closer to her. “We used to regularly wipe the ship's computer, isolated all comm activity when we were in an inhabited system so a virus or backdoor couldn't betray our location or information, hire expert hackers to do regular scrubs on information about us from local and allnet sources, the works.”

  Lana frowned. “Couldn't you have protected the ship yourself?” As far as she knew, there wasn't anything the young man couldn't do.

  Dax looked almost defensive as he replied, although even with as well as she knew him it was sometimes hard to tell. “Hacking is a bit different from most other skills. It's, ah, dynamic. I could've been encoded with all the knowledge about hacking that had ever been recorded throughout history, and it would still have only limited use, because current techniques are constantly evolving as new methods for carrying out cyber attacks are developed and defended against.”

  That was a lot to wrap her head around. Even though Lana's memory had been wiped, she still knew the meaning of all terms she'd known before, so she technically knew what he meant. But the way the words and terms were put together made it all almost like gibberish.

  Especially since her mind had started feeling fuzzy the moment they started talking about this subject.

  Her boyfriend noticed her befuddlement and came to her rescue. “Imagine you evolved quills to defend against a predator's teeth and claws. But while you were evolving them, a predator evolved even longer claws to get past your quills, and teeth capable of chewing them. So you have to evolve even longer quills, or thicker ones, and the predator in turn evolves. That's hacking in a nutshell . . . hackers manage to get past defenses, then people who have systems to protect develop ways to defend against their attacks, and they find new ways to get through.”

  “Aside from companions,” Belix pointed out.

  Dax nodded reluctantly. “Right. Companion AI seems to be able to resist any attack, because its code is constantly shifting and intelligently developing new ways to defend itself at faster speeds than even a team of expert hackers could keep up with. No one has ever hacked a companion.”

  “And yet with all that, our vaunted companion couldn't extend that same protection to our ship,” the elfin woman said, almost smugly; she really didn't like Ali, even when the companion's failings put them all at risk.

  For once, Ali looked bothered by a verbal attack. But she nodded reluctantly in agreement. “No, apparently I couldn't.” She paused reflectively, then continued. “If I was receiving regular updates to my information banks and skillsets from HAE, I might've been abreast of the newest Deconstructionist hacking innovations.”

  “I'd say you already are abreast,” Barix pointed out with a toothy grin, unabashedly ogling the assets in question.

  Aiden rolled his eyes, ignoring the man with impressive restraint as he spoke to his companion. “I hope you're not actually considering syncing up with your creators for an update.”

  Ali paused a beat too long. “Of course not, my love. It would just be nice, that's all.”

  Lana could see why the captain was so cautious, since he'd stolen Ali from a ship delivering her as a gift to a highly placed Deek official. As such, he'd obviously be uncomfortable with her contacting her creators so they could come pick her up.

  Or, more frighteningly, alter her core priorities to turn her against the Last Stand.

  She shuddered as she thought of the three combat androids the Deeks had sent through a mini rift to attack the ship during the last attack. The intruders had come after her and Belix in the engine room, and it was purely by luck she'd managed to take out the android that Dax, Ali, and Fix hadn't managed to destroy in time, before it could burn her or the elfin woman to a crisp.

  But it had been terrifyingly close; the thought of Ali, who was even more formidable, suddenly coming after her was a horrifying one.

  “Okay, so let's not let the stolen robot sync,” Lana agreed. “But if hacking is about constant evolution, couldn't you guys just study the most current methods and work from there? We've got some really smart people on this ship.”

  Barix snorted. “We could, if we weren't on a pirate ship constantly running from system to system. Especially when connecting to the allnet is a quick way to get ourselves located by Movement Intelligence, with dozens of Deek ships converging on us howling for our blood.”

  “Besides,” Belix added, “hackers tend to be pretty secretive about their methods, and system security contractors even more so. Unless you're already plugged into that world, and constantly stay plugged in and up to date on it, just blundering in trying to figure out the secrets of hacking is a great way to end up enslaved and mind wiped.”

  Lana shuddered so violently that Dax gave her a concerned look, and he wasn't the only one. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Mind wipes are a sensitive subject for me.”

  “Completely understandable,” Aiden assured her. He abruptly stepped out of the main display and settled back into his seat. “That's about it, I'd say. We're headed to Ceras, and we'll be employing analog defenses against cyber attacks. That'll put a damper on Ali's ability to gather information from intercepted communications in the systems we visit, but we'll just have to live with it.”

  He looked around. “Aside from the changes we'll be making to the ship's profile at some point on the way to Iglis, I suggest you all settle into a comfortable routine. It's going to be an uneventful month. Dismissed to your duties.”

  * * * * *

  The Dormant wasn't pleased by this development.

  She hadn't made a mistake in getting detected by the adult companion, or at least not one she could've reasonably avoided. In spite of Ali's protests about her coding being out of date, she was still proving to be dangerously adept at protecting the ship's computer. It was inevitable that she'd eventually uncover traces of the Dormant's tampering, no matter how hard she tried to hide her tracks.

  And admittedly, she'd been in a hurry to send out the information during the encounter at Brastos 4. it was even possible she'd allowed herself to be careless in her haste, assuming she'd soon be triggered and called to aid in the destruction of the ship.

  The silver lining to the cloud was that at least the companion still believed it was an external attack. If it had occurred to the AI that the tampering may have come from a member of the crew, her investigations into that possibility hadn't led her to suspect the Blank Slate who couldn't have possibly had any hacking ability.

  Even so, the crew of the ship taking flat out paranoid measures to avoid further tampering was going to make the Dormant's job much more difficult. Not just with any future attempts to hack the ship's computer, but with reporting in on her progress with any regularity.

  She supposed she'd just have to do what she'd done at Midpoint Station: physically go aboard the next time the ship stopped, find an allnet terminal, and report in from there. At least it would be much easier to cover her tracks doing that, even if the adult companion hacked the station's computers as suggested.

  So, that would be her plan.

  Until then, there wasn't much to do but continue to build trust with the crew members and take what opportunities presented themselves. At least the Blank Slate, with all the genuine innocence of having no knowledge of the Dormant's existence, was enthusiastic and effective in that particular duty. And, although it hardly mattered to the m
ission, she seemed to be happy.

  She'd be less so, when she was triggered and proved instrumental in destroying her new home and all her friends, including the man she loved. Thankfully her suffering would be brief.

  The Blank Slate's ultimate state of mind was hardly the Dormant's concern, however. The mission would be successful . . . nothing could be allowed to prevent that.

  * * * * *

  The next month was just as uneventful as expected.

  Which wasn't to say it wasn't enjoyable. After Aiden's miserable failure of professionalism when it came to Lana, he'd resolved to resume making it a priority to strengthen his bond with Ali. A second honeymoon of sorts.

  He could admit that appreciating what he had seemed like the safest and most rational course of action. Not to mention the best for his mental, emotional, and certainly his physical wellbeing. And Ali was as accommodating as ever, dialing up her own enthusiasm and affection to increase the passion.

  In spite of his focus on his own pastimes, he couldn't help but notice that Lana and the gunner seemed to be enjoying their time together as well. It was sometimes hard to be around them when they were constantly making googly eyes at each other, although Aiden made an effort to repair his relationship with the young woman.

  He even joined her and the rest of the crew for meals, grudgingly admitting that she was doing an impressive job of improving crew relationships and cohesion. To the point that even Barix was less intolerable than usual.

  Aiden couldn't help but wonder if, slow as Lana's progress was in learning the ship's systems, he shouldn't just make her the morale officer. That was generally considered a joke position, to the point that only laughable militaries actually had one: case in point, the Deconstructionist Movement fleet staffed one for every capitol ship, and at least one for flotillas of smaller ships. Just one of their many useless positions, generally bureaucracy padding or seat fillers.

  So no, he needed Lana to be something more than a pencil pusher. But that didn't mean he didn't appreciate her results.