Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  As for the Ishivi twins, they spent most of their time either calculating rift jumps, tinkering in their lab or at their workstations on personal projects, or in full immersion. In fact, they both clocked in more than double the time anyone else did, usually when the rest of the crew was sleeping or on duty.

  Aiden could hardly begrudge them that, since unlike him with Ali and Lana and the gunner with each other, the twins didn't have anyone on the ship they interacted with much, and certainly not romantically. Belix did spend as much time as she could with the only other human woman on the ship, whenever she could manage to pull Lana away from her boyfriend, but Barix mostly kept to himself, same as he had for the last seven or so years he'd been aboard the Last Stand.

  Feeling sorry for the obnoxious Ishivi was more than Aiden could manage, but he did sometimes wonder if the man got lonely. Or, for that matter, if Barix hated his own company as much as everyone else did.

  To be fair, Aiden supposed he technically spent most of his time alone, too. Although even if Ali was just an AI, he still considered her more real than most people he'd met. She was certainly more pleasant to be around.

  A couple weeks into the trip, Aiden ordered a stop for a day or two and shooed everyone but the gunner out of the ship, ignoring the very vocal complaints from the twins. He then put his crew to work changing the Last Stand's hull profile to be more in line with what you'd expect to see from a light freighter.

  Specifically, it was time to de-uglify his ship.

  Hull damage, from major buckling to superficial dings from micrometeoroid strikes, was repaired, buffed, and painted over with bright silvery paint. Extra plating was removed, aside from the ones that hid the Last Stand's unusually high number of weapons. And the remaining plating was shaped to give the light cruiser disguised as a freighter sleek, visually appealing lines.

  It would never look as a good as a vessel straight out of a shipyard, not when they were trying to disguise the ship like they were. But when they finally finished the job, then drifted far enough away to get a good view of their ship bathed in the light of the floodlights they brought with them, Aiden was ready to announce that it looked pretty good.

  “I never would've believed it, but the old girl actually looks legitimate,” Barix said.

  Belix had her arm hooked through Lana's as they looked at the results of their hard work. “What should we call her while we're pretending to be honest?”

  There was a thoughtful pause. “Phoenix?” Lana suggested.

  Barix snorted. “Deeks would blow it out of the sky just for that name. Or any name of anything mythical or historical.”

  “Well that kind of limits our options,” the young woman said, a frown in her voice.

  “Statistically speaking, the name Capitulation has increased the most in popularity in the last decade,” Ali said helpfully.

  It was Aiden's turn to snort. Since the end of the war, in other words. “It would've,” he said sourly. “But it has a certain poetic flair, doesn't it? Naming our ship after something we'll never do.”

  There was a long pause. “Capitulation it is, then?” Lana asked.

  No one raised an objection. “I'll plug it into the IFF transponder,” Ali said. “And mock up a history for our phony freighter. Something suitably cringing and servile.”

  Aiden nodded. “I've still got a bottle of Ferkins Reserve whiskey from that Movement resupply shuttle we hit a few years back. What do you say we head inside and toast our new name?”

  Chapter Four

  Ceras 2

  The spaceport loomed ahead, seemingly innocuous. Lana was yammering in the background, her usual needling questions and moral superiority. All traffic was following the approach courses fed them by Station Control, seamlessly moving past each other at safe enough distances that even human error could mostly be avoided.

  “Break off our approach!” Ali said sharply.

  Rather than complying, Aiden grit his teeth and leaned over the controls, tense and wary. “What're we facing?”

  His companion gave him a disapproving look at his refusal to take the safe decision of fleeing, but she was already answering. “Two light cruisers, angling to sneak up on us.”

  He scanned his eyes over the display as she highlighted the two enemy ships, then altered course for the nearest one. “Combat stations,” he ordered. “Gunner, take out our nearest enemy quick. Belix, take Lana and get down to the engine room. We're going to need whatever speed you can tease out of the engines, and enough power to fight without shorting out systems.”

  “Why are we not running, exactly?” Barix demanded, working frantically at his station.

  Aiden moved the Last Stand into evasive patterns as they approached firing distance with the first enemy ship. “Because shut up. Prepare to implement hacking countermeasures, and enable shipwide internal defenses for possible mini rift boarders.”

  The Ishivi cursed inventively, but did as ordered.

  At his workstation, the gunner got off his first shots before their target as they got in extreme firing range, a simultaneous hail of railgun slugs and pinpoint laser bursts to limit evasive options. The enemy cruiser returned fire after a few seconds, and Aiden focused on evading its two three-burst laser arrays.

  Standard weaponry for any Deek cruiser of that size. The Last Stand handily outgunned her, and with its top end six-layer shield system out-shielded her as well. But outnumbered like this, the advantage would be short-lived.

  “Second enemy vessel will be in range in 37 seconds,” Ali intoned.

  “Trusting you to take our target out before then,” he told the gunner through gritted teeth.

  The young man shook his head grimly, not needing to state the obvious; their target was now focusing fully on evasion, what little fire it was sending their way mostly wild, to try to disrupt the gunner's aim by forcing Aiden to keep up evasive maneuvers. While neither the Deek pilot nor gunner seemed particularly skilled, their efforts were buying time for the other ship to reach them so they could take the Last Stand together.

  And it was only going to get worse from here. “Light frigate jumping in at closest safe location!” Ali snapped. “It's already accelerating to intercept. Current target's course will take it under the protection of its guns in 26 seconds.”

  The Deeks had to have coordinated the jump via the allnet, probably sending the frigate from the nearest rift hub. Aiden spat out a curse and eased up on his evasive maneuvering, giving the gunner a chance to work his magic. “Now or never!” he shouted.

  It turned out to be never; the gunner managed to take out their target's shields, and using the Last Stand's pinpoint accuracy, high rate of fire single-burst array took out one of the enemy's laser arrays. Then the Deek cruiser's first layer of shields cycled back up, and its return fire from the other laser array managed to knock out two layers of the Last Stand's superior shields.

  Just in time for the enemy ship to enter the safety of the frigate's covering fire, a storm of laser bursts from four standard arrays, as well as two nukes fired one after another from its single missile launcher.

  Aiden forgot about taking out the cruiser, forgot about everything but making his ship dance under his delicate fingers, tossing him and everyone else aboard around in spite of the ship's powerful inertial dampeners. One maneuver after another that barely kept them from being skewered by enemy shots.

  On his display, he could see his ship's shield layers going red one after another whenever he failed to dodge, taking far too long to cycle back up as the buffers cleared. The red spread from two layers, to three, to four.

  Tactically speaking, he could've broken off the moment the frigate jumped in, looped around to try to take out the second light cruiser. But with the frigate already accelerating towards his ship, they would've gotten there first and he'd still be facing two enemy ships, with a third quickly closing the distance to join the fray.

  In any case, it was too late now that he was under the bigger ship's gu
ns; flying straight to accelerate away from a fight would make them sitting ducks to the enemy gunners, and every evasive maneuver he made ate into their speed, to the point that even the slower midsized ship could easily keep up with them.

  His only hope had been to run the moment Ali called out her warning. Even that would've been a slim hope, with more Deek ships potentially jumping in to intercept, or other ships in the system accepting mercenary commissions to join the fray for an easy reward. But now that the Last Stand was in the thick of the fight, the only option was to win or die.

  Win, against three ships.

  About the time that Ali yelled a warning that the third ship was in range, an explosion on the display was followed by the icon of their target light cruiser winking out. By some miracle, even amidst Aiden's crazy evasive maneuvering the gunner had managed to destroy the enemy ship. A quick glance confirmed it had been nearly on the verge of getting behind the frigate, too, under the protection of its shields.

  But that was the only bit of good news. There were just too many laser bursts filling space around his ship, too many trajectories and patterns to keep track of, too many random variables. Half the time when Aiden juked out of the path of one hit, all he managed was to fly into the path of another. Usually it was even worse, a choice of the best of bad options and taking the fewest hits.

  Even a pilot of his caliber couldn't keep ahead of that sort of sustained fire forever; a few seconds after the gunner took out the light cruiser they'd been going after so hard, the Last Stand's sixth layer of shields finally winked out, the buffer for the first layer still seven seconds from clearing.

  An eternity under combat conditions.

  Which hardly mattered, because while their shields were down the first of the frigate's atomics detonated at extreme range, but still with enough power to rip into the Last Stand's hull on the port side, playing havoc even with EM-shielded systems. Aiden watched as both their laser arrays winked out, and the shielding system went fully red as the recharge rate on all buffers froze, signifying the system was fried.

  While the first atomic was still ripping into his ship, the second struck home and finished the job. Aiden's world went white.

  Only Ali remained, hovering in the empty void like some sort of space angel. A judgmental one, going by her dark blue eyes narrowed in disapproval, and her luscious lips pressed into a thin line. Not to mention her arms crossed sternly over her chest, although the weight of that reproving gesture was somewhat lessened by how it served to accentuate the cleavage displayed by the low cut green dress her full immersion avatar wore.

  “Confirmed, the Last Stand destroyed with all hands aboard,” his companion said. “You almost broke the record for shortest survival time in the Brastos 4 simulation, although at least you took out one enemy ship.”

  Aiden sighed and shrugged his shoulders to ease the tension in them, rolling his neck and shaking out his arms. “Nobody likes to hear “I told you so.”

  Ali's frown deepened. “Then maybe I can ask you “what was the point?”, instead. You made the right call in the actual Brastos 4 encounter, and the ship and all crew survived with no major damage to systems because of it. So why do you keep beating your head against this, trying to win an impossible fight?”

  “Because that's what humans do!” he snapped. “Because the alternative is running, same as I've been doing ever since my side lost the war!”

  The impossibly beautiful woman's expression softened, and she stepped forward to put her arms around him, burying her head in his shoulder. Aiden hugged her close, dropping his cheek to rest against the top of her head and running his hand through the silken tresses that made a shimmering waterfall down her back, so inky black they glimmered with blue highlights in the sourceless light of the white void around them.

  “We arrive at Ceras 2 in a little over five hours, my love,” she murmured into his neck. “On the remote chance we do encounter trouble there, what do you plan to do?”

  Aiden grimaced. “I plan to blow every last Deek ship that comes after us into the void.” He felt Ali tense in alarm and laughed bitterly. “What do you think? We run, of course. Live to fight another day, nibbling away at Deek trading ships and solitary military craft and hoping we're actually accomplishing something useful in this war.”

  His companion drew back enough to look up at him. Her eyes, the deep blue color of a planet's sky just at the edge of space, seemed full of unspoken thoughts. Normally Aiden loved looking into her eyes for long stretches, exploring their mysteries and wondering if they held the same secrets a real human woman's would. Now, however, he could almost hear her objecting that they weren't technically in a war, because the Movement had won and no one else was really fighting.

  Aside from the people quietly slipping away from Deek control to found hidden colonies far outside the explored area of the universe. And the criminal element springing up like fungus in a dank cave, taking advantage of the chaos the Movement's combined brutality and ineptitude created in the universe.

  But those weren't really signs of resistance, just the usual human defense mechanisms when confronted with an impossible situation. Eventually they'd rot human civilization from within to the point where it collapsed, possibly into a singularity that spelled the extinction of the human race.

  Or maybe, eventually, the chaos would foment actual rebellions, and Aiden might have a chance to take another real crack at the hated enemy. Probably not . . . in all likelihood he'd be dead by then, his ship long since destroyed. Maybe even sooner rather than later, with this task force hunting them.

  Although these thoughts weren't doing anything for his mood.

  Forcing such unpleasantness from his mind, he did his best to grin and swatted Ali playfully on her perfect rump, prompting a surprised squeal of laughter from her. “Since we've got some time, I could stand to relax a bit. How about we leave the simulations behind and go skinny dipping in the Zelos hot springs?”

  His companion grinned back and looped her arm through his. “Well, we do have a tradition of spending time together relaxing after a battle. Even if these were just simulated ones, it wouldn't do to break tradition.”

  * * * * *

  The entire crew had been antsy with anticipation these last few days on the approach to Ceras 2. Especially once they were officially within the boundaries of the Iglis galaxy, and it felt like their month long break from their usual lives was finally over.

  Although for Lana, that month was longer than the rest of her life had been, at least what she remembered. And certainly a lot more peaceful and full of joy.

  Which was probably why she wasn't quite as happy about the prospect of going back to the pirate routine as everyone else seemed to be, even Dax she suspected. Although she had to admit that, as amazing as the opportunity to spend so much time with her boyfriend had been, she was looking forward to finally getting off the ship.

  A month of working hard to learn her duties as a member of the crew had taken her a long way. She finally knew enough about the engine systems to take over entire shifts for Belix, and do routine maintenance and even minor repairs. She was also familiar enough with shields that, if needed, she could manage the system during combat so Fix could focus on making emergency repairs or repelling boarders.

  She was also studying as much as she could, trying to make up for a lifetime of lost knowledge. Or, perhaps, knowledge she hadn't gained in her previous life. Belix had grudgingly told her she might just be smart enough to calculate rift jumps, and the Ishivi certainly didn't seem to mind the prospect of another crew member able to take over that onerous duty. But Lana had months or even years of study in complex mathematics and physics theory to tackle before she could even attempt those calculations, and even then she'd probably be ten times slower than anyone else on the ship.

  Throwing all her energy into making herself a useful crew member could only take so much time, however, and after a month it had long since stopped being a reprieve from the clos
e confines of the ship crushing down on her.

  Not even Dax's comforting presence was enough to prevent her from practically climbing the bulkheads at being cooped up in the deceptively small space for so long, prowling through every square inch of the Last Stand in a desperate bid to find an escape from its smothering confines. Out of necessity, their romantic forays into full immersion had gradually shifted to soothing hikes through some of the most open, vast stretches of land they could find, although even that only helped so much.

  Not that they didn't find moments for intimacy, even while hiking across empty prairies or scaling towering peaks.

  Lana wasn't sure how her boyfriend handled the close confines of the ship so well, even considering the fact that he'd been born to them and had almost never left, aside from brief jaunts on colony worlds like Callous. Technically, as far as she knew her experiences were almost identical to Dax's, but even so she couldn't handle the enclosed spaces for so long nearly as well.

  Maybe it was his Construct conditioning, or the fact that he'd had years longer to get used to it. Even so, she liked to think he appreciated being with her as a distraction from the drudgery of weeks of unchanging travel through the void between galaxies. She knew she'd certainly have long since gone crazy without him there.

  So yes, Lana was looking forward to finally setting foot on the Ceras 2 spaceport. Especially since she planned to insist that Aiden allow Dax to come with her; honestly, she couldn't see why the captain refused to let the young man off the ship anyway. Other than maybe some petty aspect of their uncomfortable history.

  It was a plan she hadn't revealed to her boyfriend, however. She had a feeling he would stubbornly protest that she shouldn't try to intervene on his behalf, and might even try to pretend like he was content with being a virtual prisoner aboard this ship. Even though she'd heard him express something very close to resentment in the past about not being allowed to leave.

  Which was why, as soon as they'd made the final jump to the station and were preparing to go aboard, she intended to make her demand to the captain. And not allow him the option of saying no.