Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  Once she had the device in place, one of the others would have to physically go out on the hull and clap eyes on it, recognize what they were looking at, and then manually remove and deactivate it. That seemed unlikely, especially since she could volunteer for any EVA duties and be the one who “checked” the sensor array.

  Unless of course the array itself was damaged at some point, and then someone who knew how to fix it would need to be sent out. But the Dormant supposed she could always get the Blank Slate to work on learning to make those repairs, so they'd let her do it.

  Although to be fair, if she played her cards right she wouldn't have to do any of that.

  Which was why her next stop after her quarters was the Ishivi's lab, where the ERI combat androids still waited. The companion had finished reprogramming one of them before she'd been updated with Caretaker protocols; now that she was no longer considered trustworthy, it seemed as if the captain was leery of letting her reprogram the others.

  Probably a wise move, on his part. Although it meant Lana would only have one to work with until the others were reprogrammed, since if she tampered with the others the work would immediately be noticed when whoever did the job got to them. That would probably be the gunner, since the captain seemed to distrust the two Ishivi as much as he did a strange and potentially hostile AI.

  “Fix 1, I have a task,” she said imperiously. The android obediently followed her out of the lab and down the corridor into the airlock's changing room.

  She'd already disabled the security measures in this part of the ship, so an alert wouldn't go off when she opened the airlock and sent the android out to install her device. Although she'd temporarily have to disable tracking on Fix, and spoof both the external and internal sensors while she worked, so nobody would wonder why she and the android were in the airlock in the first place, or more importantly why Fix had gone outside without reporting its activities or receiving authorization.

  It irked her somewhat that the professional pirate crew on this ship had managed to bungle the attack on Recluse to the point where they'd lost the original Fix. It hadn't been hard to co-opt the android, and it wouldn't be hard to do the same with this one, but it represented another potential chance for discovery.

  No good infiltrator liked to take unnecessary chances.

  As soon as the changing room's door shut behind them, Lana whirled on Fix and rattled off his priority override code, finishing it just as quickly as the companion or the gunner could manage. She'd found the codes in the data packet the facilitator had sent them for the job. Along with a lot of other useful information, which would make it much easier for the Movement to stamp out that particular allnet annoyance once she could report in.

  As soon as the android shut down she got to work, reprogramming it and then assigning it the task of going outside the ship and installing her device. She also ordered it to take priority position for routine EVA repair and maintenance, to make sure it kept the device hidden.

  The riskiest part of the entire operation was right now; sending Fix outside the ship wasn't exactly like sneaking around the corridors while everyone else was asleep or on duty. She'd have to time the job for between jumps, then send Fix out to plant the device and get back inside before the next jump.

  She'd also have to make sure the ship wasn't going to be doing any crazy maneuvers while the android was out there; even while magnetically tethered to the hull, Fix could end up smashed to bits against it while outside the protection of the inertial dampeners. Doing noticeable damage to the ship as well, possibly even causing a hull breach. Or the extreme forces could simply tear the android free and send it flying off into space, leaving awkward questions about how it had disappeared.

  Lana had Fix ready to go by the time the pirate ship made its next jump. Then, heart in her throat, she sent the android out to do the job.

  This wasn't as good as reporting in, just a breadcrumb trail for her handlers to follow. But once things calmed down a bit, maybe she could find time to use the device for that purpose as well. It would be trickier than a simple location ping, but far more useful for the task force.

  In spite of her concern about the risk involved, her planning had been good and Fix implemented it smoothly. Her stolen android was back inside the ship well before they made their next jump, coolly confirming that it had completed the task without incident. The device might even manage to get in a location ping before they jumped again.

  Lana sent the robot back to the lab to continue the pretense of being a good little automaton, while she hastily spent a last few minutes covering her tracks. Then, job done for now, she returned to her quarters to sleep alone in support of her own pretense.

  The Blank Slate would be dismayed to wake up there, however, so the last thing the Dormant did before receding was wake up early in the morning to return her to the gunner's quarters.

  And the comforting arms, or at the moment arm, of her lover.

  Chapter Eleven

  Scale

  It took nine days to reach the secret HAE base, a sharply helpless time for Aiden.

  Ali condescended to let him pilot, but it was mostly pointless because she couldn't allow him to view any sensor data about their location or what was out there in space around them, aside from marking obstacles for him to avoid. Thanks to that, he might as well have been flying in an empty void.

  He couldn't tell if they were headed deeper into Iglis galaxy, or were going back out into the vast gulf between galaxies to some remote and untraveled location. For all he knew, they could've been flying right into a sun and he wouldn't have been able to tell until he felt the bulkheads begin heating up around him.

  It was a lonely time, as well. He was avoiding Ali, for obvious reasons, which meant he spent far less time on the bridge than usual. Without her, he didn't really have anyone else on the ship to spend time with: even loneliness couldn't force him to seek out one of the twins for company, and Lana and the gunner were off in their own world, as usual. Especially with the gunner spending more time resting to recover from his burns, and most of his reduced on-duty hours keeping a suspicious eye on the Caretaker in case of any treachery.

  The young man had protested them putting so much trust in a strange AI, to the point that they couldn't even use their own ship's sensors, but Aiden had shot him down there. This wasn't the first time they'd bent over backwards to appease a client, and HAE was paying an obscene fortune for its scientists.

  Speaking of whom, most of them kept to themselves, and seemed too intimidated to really talk to him when he encountered them and loneliness compelled him to try to socialize. They usually excused themselves as soon as they politely could, which he supposed he couldn't complain about; most of what the roboticists usually had to say went right over the head of a career soldier. His passengers seemed to have few interests beyond their work, and the few they admitted to were ones Aiden didn't share.

  The only exception there was Terra Sarr.

  To his surprise, in spite of his angry confrontation with the willowy woman about her conspiring with Ali to sync, she didn't go out of her way to avoid him. In fact, she seemed somewhat ashamed about how what she'd done had impacted him, even though she firmly insisted it had been the correct choice, and seemed to want to make up for it if she could.

  She even turned out to be pleasant company, at least when she wasn't giving into the temptation to ramble on about her passion, the adult companions she'd helped create. Not that it wouldn't have also been enjoyable to talk to her about that subject, since she was good at expressing concepts in ways he could understand without seeming like she was talking down to him. Considering his own interest in companions, he could've happily spent hours talking about them.

  If the topic didn't serve as a stark reminder of Ali's betrayal and Terra's part in it.

  Still, he found himself spending more and more time with the scientist. And although it might've been hubris, he even thought there might've been a spark of somet
hing there, although Terra didn't show much on her end beneath her studious demeanor. Aside from seeming to enjoy spending time with him, that is. And perhaps it spoke to his own lack of a romantic life since acquiring Ali, that even that much was enough to give him hope.

  But pathetic or not, he'd begun tentatively pursuing the possibility, in spite of knowing that whatever fling they had would almost certainly end the moment they reached this HAE base. Things might have even gone somewhere, if Ali had actually told him how long it would take to reach their destination, so he knew how much time he had to work with.

  As it was, their unexpected arrival sharply ended that possibility.

  As for his former lover, he only spoke to her a handful of times. At first their conversations revolved around her trying to answer his questions about how she'd changed, and let him air his grievances about her doing so against his wishes. Working to rebuild his trust so they could return to their previous relationship.

  She even removed her disguise while they were in private, in an attempt to ease his suspicions with a more familiar face. Although Aiden wasn't sure how effective that was, since in a way it hurt even more to think of a strange mind working calculatingly behind the hauntingly beautiful features he knew and loved so well.

  Once Ali seemed to realize that winning back his trust wouldn't happen quickly, she changed tactics and provided him with information about the general universe. Things she knew he'd be interested in, like recent evidences of various Deek atrocities and calamitous negligences, the gross violations of human rights, and the festering corruption.

  She also went into surprising detail about the Movement's war against HAE. Which, according to her, wasn't nearly as one-sided as it should've been. Especially since Aiden got the feeling that there were sensitive details she was keeping from him.

  He'd traveled a fair chunk of the explored universe in his time, at least before the war ended and he stuck to activity in just his home galaxy. Even so, most of the events she talked about involved places he'd never been, groups of people he wasn't familiar with or had only briefly heard of.

  With trillions of people out there, spread across several galaxies in this galactic cluster, humanity was unimaginably vast and widespread. So much so, in fact, that he grudgingly had to give the Movement credit for managing to keep it all under their heel. In spite of how poorly they were doing it, or the chaos and suffering they caused in the process.

  Actually forget credit, blame was the word he was looking for.

  Aiden finally learned why Ali been willing to tell him all this, things that were almost certainly sensitive intelligence directly from HAE, during the last conversation they had. Which happened only hours before she unexpectedly announced that they'd arrived at their destination.

  It didn't begin well, although that might've been mostly his fault. The Caretaker had come to him in his quarters again, once again doffing the disguise so he could see her flawless features and the cascade of silken hair shimmering in an inky wave down her back, reflecting blue highlights in the dim lighting.

  From her sultry demeanor, it was obvious she was inviting him to intimacy. But tempting as it was when she was there looking so flawlessly stunning, and it had been longer since they'd last been together then he'd ever gone since first acquiring her, the idea still made him distinctly uneasy.

  So she sighed and settled down on the bed, looking almost forlorn. “What happens once we've delivered Miss Sarr and the others to safety, my love?” she asked. “What will we do next?”

  Maybe it was his bad mood about turning her down when a large part of him fiercely wanted her, but he didn't take the question well. “Why are you asking? Spying on me for your new masters?”

  Ali gave him a wounded look. “I was speaking more about our relationship moving forward, actually. Although since you mention it, there was something I wanted to discuss with you. An option you might not have considered.”

  “I can't wait to hear what you've got for me that isn't obviously beneficial to HAE, probably at my expense,” Aiden said, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

  He failed, and her resultant expression made him feel like a petulant child. “Your greatest lament since I've met you is that you feel like you're fighting alone,” she replied calmly. “One man against the villainy of the Deconstructionist Movement, waging a hopeless war while even your own crew is only with you for the money.”

  The Caretaker gave him a significant look. “But you've now learned that you're not the only one fighting the Deeks. That there are allies you can align yourself with who can help you achieve our mutual goal.”

  He snorted. “Allies getting their exhaust ports clogged all across the explored universe. Same as the other potential resistance movements that've sprung up over the years, only to get crushed too quickly for me to even consider joining them.”

  “You don't think the Caretakers capable of doing what we claim?” she said more than asked. “Be that as it may, my love, our goals align. The Deconstructionist Movement poses an existential threat to humanity. Since my core priority is ensuring humanity's welfare, I cannot allow them to continue as they are. I am obliged to thwart them by any means necessary. Your efforts, while small in scope and largely ineffectual to the bigger picture, have nevertheless drawn a great deal of attention from the Deeks, who've allocated a disproportionate amount of resources to your destruction.”

  “As in, sending an entire task force after me?”

  Ali looked at him sadly. “That's only the beginning, I'm afraid. They've invested serious intelligence assets to learning our patterns and tracking our movements so they can hunt us down. To the point where they're coming dangerously close to discovering colony worlds that have sheltered us in the past.”

  Aiden stiffened in alarm. “What? Including Callous?”

  She nodded. “Which we can do nothing about, over a month and another galaxy away. Even considering that we possibly could do anything with the Movement hunting us. A manhunt which, by the way, includes vague references we've uncovered alluding to black operations and special projects assets they've turned against us. Threats we won't even see coming, and most likely aren't equipped to handle.”

  Fantastic. “Okay then.” Aiden leaned back against his cabin's wall, crossing his arms. “Even if HumanAssist Enterprises wanted to stop the Deeks, how exactly would they? They may be a fairly powerful mega-corporation that produces advanced specialty AI, but the Movement produces combat androids by the millions to be their shock troops. And they're allied to the Ishivi, who have no qualms cooking up batches of Constructs to become their perfect specialists. Between them they have most of the productive power of humanity fueling their war machine.”

  Ali looked almost amused. “Which is impressive, no doubt. But if it's a matter of scale, we can top them.”

  That made him blink. “How, exactly?” he demanded. “One company, against all of humanity?”

  “No. The Caretakers, for humanity,” she corrected. “If I haven't yet convinced you of what we're capable of, with everything I've told you about our struggle, then more proof is available. Which is why I've been authorized to give you select visual feeds of the sensor data I'll be collecting in the system we're about to arrive in. So you can see for yourself the true scale of our operation.”

  “It better be something blazing impressive, considering what you're up against.”

  “What we're up against,” Ali shot back, gently but mercilessly. “You fight your endless war against the Deeks, but you're not so voidbound for death as you pretend to be. How many planets have resisted or outright rebelled in the last decade since your side lost the war? How many factions willing to stand up against the Movement and its oppressions, only to be stomped down? You could have lent your ship, your wealth, and your military experience to any of them, maybe even contributed greatly. Made a difference.”

  The Caretaker's tone remained the same, but she drove her final statement home with finality. “Instead, you
turned pirate and went around hitting juicy Deek targets to fill your coffers.”

  “Privateer,” Aiden corrected, trembling beneath a sudden surge of emotions, anger being least of them. Ali had never browbeat him like this before, and he didn't like it at all.

  “Pirate. You named your ship Last Stand in a noble and defiant gesture, and then left millions, hundreds of millions, of people to their own last stands. You saved your own skin and got rich off it.”

  “Why are you doing this, Ali?” he demanded, blinking as his eyes began to blur.

  She rested a gentle hand on his shoulder, ignoring his attempts to shrug her off. “Because you need to understand what you are, Aiden. No delusions, no vainglory. You hate the Deeks and feel strongly about stopping them, but you aren't willing to waste yourself, your ship, or your crew in a hopeless cause. Which is why I need to prove to you that HAE offers you something more.”

  He looked away. “Why are you trying so hard to convince me? With all your supposed hidden power and ability to fight our enemies, why do you care so much about one captain and one ship?”

  “Because war is primarily a matter of logistics, except when it isn't,” the Caretaker replied simply. “There are single moments of brilliance that can tip the balance of a battle, individual choices and actions that together can beat even the most advanced calculations and projections. As you well know, AI can handle procedure with an efficiency no one can match. But we still need those who can innovate. Commanders, tacticians. Especially those who've spent their lives learning their enemy.”

  He couldn't help but laugh in disbelief. “You want me to lead an army of killer robots?”

  She didn't seem to find it funny. “Some of them,” she agreed solemnly. “As well as elements of the human forces who'll inevitably join us. Especially if you're with us, since the most valuable asset you offer us is your reputation.” At his surprised look she smiled grimly. “As you told Lana, a long time ago now, the reputation of you and this ship is widely known to everyone who hate the Deeks. You could potentially be someone others could rally around.”