Caretakers (Stag Privateers Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  So he ducked down beside his pilot's chair and reached into the storage compartment, fingers groping among the water bottles, pads, and other items inside. They finally closed around a slender chain, his old dog tags from during the war, as well as the device strung on the chain with them.

  As soon as he had it in hand, without even bothering to take it out, he fumbled aside a safety cover and pushed a button inside.

  Immediately afterwards, Fix's AI circuits exploded, turning the combat android's chest into a molten ruin and spraying shrapnel against the barrier surrounding the workstations.

  * * * * *

  Lana swayed aside as Dax abruptly lunged forward, the stiffened fingers of his injured hand jabbing at her throat.

  It was an all-in move, compromising his own balance and position in an attempt to surprise her. It probably would've worked, too, since he'd been distracting her with a flurry of kicks and punches at the time.

  But its near success also precipitated its failure; he'd pushed off with his bad leg, knowing she wouldn't expect it. But because he had, he'd been just a fraction of a second too slow.

  The Dormant snapped the heel of her left hand out, catching the young man brutally on the outside of the elbow. The joint bent the wrong way with a sickening snap, and Lana screamed inside the prison of her own head at what she'd just done to the man she loved.

  She wasn't sure what happened in the desperate flurry of movements that followed, but the next thing she knew she was entangled with the young man on the ground. Unlike the more enjoyable times they'd been in positions like this, however, there was nothing romantic or playful about it; she had Dax in a solid hold with her knee at the small of his back, inexorably bending him backwards towards the point his spine snapped the same way his arm had.

  He was obviously struggling to draw breath, and had to be in incredible pain, but in spite of that he managed to gasp out a last message for her, voice almost tender. “I love you, Lana. I'm sorry I failed you when you needed me most.”

  Something snapped, but it wasn't Dax's back.

  Somehow, Lana's frantic clawing inside her head for something, anything to hold onto, to fight, found purchase. Her anguished scream finally tore free of her throat, and she abandoned the unfamiliar wrestling move and threw her arms around the man she loved, clutching him protectively.

  The force that had taken hold of her fought wildly to regain control, even now trying to turn her attempts at intimacy into a killing attack. Lana didn't know how long she could hold it off. “I love you too,” she choked out, voice shaking with the strain of her internal battle. “Dax, I can't . . . you have to-”

  Her boyfriend's knuckles slammed against her temple, not all that different from how she'd taken down Belix, and both sides of her warring mind faded away in a sudden rush of blackness.

  As unconsciousness took her, Lana blessed the young man for being able to do it without having to be told.

  * * * * *

  Barix stared at the android smoldering not six feet from him in open shock. “What the void just happened?” he demanded.

  Aiden ignored him, abandoning his cover and rushing towards the corridor where Lana and the gunner fought, cauterizer raised. When he heard no sounds of scuffles, thumps, or the slaps of flesh on flesh from the furious fighting he'd witnessed just seconds ago, he slowed to a cautious halt along the wall just beside the doorway.

  If Lana had won, did he have a chance of beating a Dormant, even if he caught her by surprise? It seemed impossible that the girl could've won against a larger, stronger opponent, and a Construct to boot, but she'd certainly been holding her own from what he could see.

  Well, if he didn't try she'd destroy his ship and kill him anyway. Might as well go out guns blazing. Aiden tensed, cauterizer ready, and then in one smooth motion ducked and pivoted around the doorway, leveling his weapon down the corridor.

  To his vast relief, he saw Lana down and apparently unconscious, the gunner clutching her with incongruous tenderness considering he only had one arm to hold her; his right arm, still healing from terrible burns, was now mangled as well, his elbow shattered and bone very nearly sticking through the skin. Combined with the young woman's even more horrifically burned hand, bits of molten and then cooled metal from her slagged cauterizer still fused to her charred flesh, the scene had a sharply tragic feel to it.

  Aiden wasn't sure which he was happier about, the fact that the Dormant was down or that the gunner had managed it without hurting her. How pathetic was that, that she'd betrayed him, sent Ali flying into space, and nearly killed them all, and he was still worried about her safety?

  But emotions didn't just shift on a whim, and even now he couldn't help but feel bothered by the sight of the young woman lying injured and helpless. He wasn't emotionally ready for the sight of the gunner holding her so tenderly, especially after what she'd done, so he cleared his throat sharply. “Secure her.”

  “Yes, sir,” the young man said emotionlessly. But it was the dull, defeated tone of numb despair, not his usually disciplined mask. He gently set her down and got to work binding her with restraints, occasionally hissing with pain in spite of himself as he jostled his broken arm.

  Aiden felt an incongruous surge of pride in the fact that his weapons officer was still going in his condition, to say nothing of the fact that he'd won against such a dangerous enemy with arguably the optimal outcome.

  But he roughly shook those feelings aside; he didn't have time for them. “Good job, gunner,” he said curtly, holstering his weapon. “Never doubted you could win.” Even when you decided to toss aside your weapons and go try to stop her with your bare hands.

  “Oh good, he got her?” Barix called, ducking out from his hiding place. “Serves her right.”

  The gunner ignored the Ishivi, wordlessly finishing up binding Lana and then kneeling over her with an anguished expression. Aiden wasn't even sure the young man had heard what he'd said until he spoke quietly. “I didn't win. She had me, seconds from finishing me off, when she managed to snatch control and stop fighting. Just long enough for me to neutralize her.”

  That was genuinely a surprise; Dormants weren't known for managing to keep from hurting people they'd been close to. Just the opposite, actually. It might just be possible that what the gunner and Lana had really was something special.

  Or once had. Whatever Aiden's complicated relationship with the young man might've been, his heart went out to him at such an obvious show of pain. Especially from someone who so rarely showed anything. “I'm sorry,” he said quietly.

  The gunner didn't reply.

  “Well!” Barix said brightly, brushing off his uniform as he joined Aiden at the doorway. “Construct DNA-encoded memory vs Dormant brainwashing. It's gratifying to know our methods proved superior.”

  Aiden actually wanted to discuss Ishivi methods with the little purebred rat. He grabbed the slight man by the front of his uniform and hauled him up so they were face to face. “The next time you throw a void-blasted grenade on my bridge,” he growled, “at my crew, I'm going to scramble your DNA with my bare fists.”

  Barix glared back, although with as much fear as belligerence. “That's not even phys-”

  He shook the miserable waste tank. “Do you understand me, Ishiv?”

  “Okay fine, fine!” the slight man snapped. “It was a stupid thing to do, purely heat of the moment. Aren't I always telling you battles are inherently stupid?”

  “You certainly seem to be, when you're in one.” Aiden let him go and sagged against the doorway. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the outcome of this battle. Or, more accurately, both of the battles they'd just narrowly scraped through. His ship was half scrapped, Ali was floating in space, waiting to be retrieved, he'd lost four expensive combat androids, Belix might be dead, two of his crew were injured, and Lana was a traitor.

  “Still, it all turned out fine in the end, didn't it?” Barix pressed. “Which, as I was saying, is due wholly to the su
periority of Constructs.”

  Aiden shot him a disgusted look. Yes, that's what the slight man would care about here. “I'm not sure how you came by that conclusion. The gunner is bigger, stronger, more massive, and has better reach, and she still nearly tore him to pieces.” He glanced at the young man down the corridor. “No offense.”

  The gunner continued to ignore them both.

  As for the Ishivi, he looked decidedly put out at that rebuttal. “No need to be churlish, Captain. The Construct's victory is why we're all alive right now. That, and you destroying Fix before he could tear me to pieces.” He paused, giving Aiden a suspicious look. “On that subject, now that nobody's trying to kill us, could you please tell me what the blazes happened to the android that was about to rip my head off?”

  Aiden shrugged. “Fix had an override code.”

  Barix rolled his eyes. “Duh. I helped you disable the safety protocol that froze the stupid pile of tin while its code was being relayed to it.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, and we've watched Deeks try to use that code a dozen times on the first Fix, while it turned their insides to paste. Which is to say, the only thing keeping a dangerous combat android from turning from an ally into an enemy was the fact that it was killing Deeks before they could say a string of syllables. You think I wouldn't take precautions with that kind of vulnerability, especially after we took over a bunch of combat androids in just that way during our raid on Recluse?”

  “What kind of precautions?” his science officer demanded. “And why wasn't I kept in the loop about them?”

  In case you were the one who tried to take control of the Fixes, Aiden thought. Didn't seem politic to mention that, though. And anyway it was Lana who'd ended up doing that. “Nothing fancy, just a few strategically placed explosive charges linked to a remote detonator I always keep nearby.” He patted the necklace that held his dog tags.

  Barix scowled, obviously still miffed about the entire not being told about any of this thing. “It wasn't exactly a small explosion. You could've killed me!”

  Aiden smiled, charmed by that thought. “That's the point.” The slight man stiffened in outrage, and he quickly continued. “If Deeks ever did steal Fix, or any of the new ones we got, I thought it might be nice to take a few of the enemy out when I blew the androids up.”

  Not waiting for Barix to say anything more, he stepped into the corridor and joined the gunner beside Lana. The man had taken no chances with her, securely binding her hands, feet, arms, and legs. He'd even gagged her, in case she'd snuck some nasty verbal commands into the ship's computer that by some miracle Ali had missed.

  “How is she?” Aiden asked, dropping into a crouch opposite his weapons officer.

  “A traitor,” the gunner replied shortly. His usual iron discipline was frayed to the breaking point, revealing a confused and hurting young man. He was practically rocking back and forth as he cradled his broken arm, staring down at his incapacitated lover.

  Aiden bit back a sigh. “The part of her that had no memories and didn't realize she's a Dormant? That's Lana. Her brainwashing? That's just a nasty mental violation the Movement forced on her, turning her into a weapon against her will.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that part of her was really the traitor all along, and everything else was just a really convincing act.”

  “Yeah, and our medical scanners that confirmed she was a Blank Slate were in on it, too,” Aiden said wryly. The gunner just looked away with sullen stubbornness, and he did his best not to shift at a sudden feeling of awkwardness.

  Embarrassing as it was to admit it, he felt distinctly uncomfortable with the way the young man was acting at the moment. Easy to dismiss him as just a Construct when he was behaving like the perfect crewman, the way the Ishiv twins had made him.

  But like this, grieving and in pain for a woman he'd clearly had feelings for, possibly even loved . . .

  He seemed a lot more human at the moment. Specifically, like Aiden's son. One he'd treated with the same cold disregard he'd shown towards Fix for all these years, ever since he'd come out of that sickening nutrient vat as the result of Belix's twisted tampering.

  Aiden gave up crouching, which wasn't doing anything good for his knees anyway, and settled down crosslegged with a sigh. “You just got done telling me she overpowered her brainwashing to save you, right? Don't go too hard on her.”

  The gunner tore his gaze from the young woman and stared at a bulkhead, expression dull rather than emotionless. “Maybe so. But how do I know how much of her is in there, and how much she can do against the brainwashing they did to her? How can I ever trust her again?”

  Aiden fumbled around for some reassurance to offer. “You've put up a convincing act of being nothing but a mindless drone all these years,” he pointed out. “Is that all you are, just your DNA-encoded memories and conditioning?”

  Dax stiffened, fists clenching. “Don't, sir,” he warned.

  So much for a touching father-son moment. “Okay, I won't.” Aiden leaned forward and gently brushed a strand of reddish-blond hair away from Lana's face, looking down at her. She looked surprisingly good, considering she'd just got her brainwashed backside handed to her by a Construct. Which made her seem just as vulnerable as always.

  So beautiful and harmless, the sort you'd never expect to be a threat to anyone. Not by ability and certainly not by inclination. How was it possible she was a Dormant, one of the most hated and feared weapons of the Movement? Did they hold nothing sacred, to do this to an innocent young woman?

  Well, he knew the answer to that well enough; nothing was beneath the Deeks.

  With another sigh he pushed to his feet. “Don't give up on her just yet. Once we pick up Ali and go see whether Belix is still alive, they can focus on undoing whatever mental scrambling the Movement did to her. She'll be back to her naive, judgmental self in no time.”

  The gunner's only response to his reassurance was unblinking regard that seemed to scream disbelief in spite of his stoic mask; he'd know as well as Aiden that it was effectively impossible to deprogram a Dormant. The comforting words were just that, and they both knew it.

  Feeling a surge of weariness at the thought, Aiden turned and headed for his workstation to start the sensors sweeping the area for Ali. He passed Barix going the other way, resentfully rubbing at a scorch mark on his jacket as he stopped near Lana, glaring down at her.

  “I can't believe the rabid mongrel actually betrayed us,” the slight man muttered. “I so don't regret stealing her eggs, now.”

  Aiden whipped around. “What?” he snarled. He noticed Dax had also leapt to his feet behind the Ishivi, his usually tightly controlled expression practically murderous.

  Barix held up his hands. “Joking! Joking!” At Aiden's continued glare he drew himself up in affront. “Fine! Go search my lab, Mister I Don't Have A Sense Of Humor.”

  “You should probably rethink some of your “jokes,” Aiden shot back as he continued to the pilot's chair. “We put up with a lot from you, but you pick a moment like this to be outrageous and you might find a pissed off Construct trying to kill you. And we both just saw how he fights.”

  The Ishivi shifted uncomfortably, like he hadn't considered the possibility. As if his verbal sparring with Aiden all these years had never factored in the other person who was usually in the room with them. “I'm, um, going to go check on Sis,” he said, edging around Lana and the gunner.

  Aiden settled into his seat, scanning the nearby area. “Ali, you still with us?”

  “Always, my love,” she said.

  So soon after Lana's betrayal, the words seriously set him on edge. So much so, in fact, that he almost contemplated leaving the AI behind. It would certainly be better for his peace of mind.

  It wasn't the thought of betraying her that made him dismiss the idea. Or at least, not entirely; it was more the fact that Lana and the gunner both needed medical attention, and most likely Belix as well. Also, if anyone could help undo Lana's brainwas
hing it would be the Caretaker.

  Lastly, it had to be mentioned, the fact that he'd effectively lost five crew members in the last few hours and couldn't afford to lose another. Especially when there was a tracking device hidden on the ship, and he desperately needed to remove it before more enemies showed up and blew them all to the void.

  “Sit tight, we're on our way,” he told her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Trust

  Ali had drifted farther than Aiden would've liked since being blown out of the shields room's hull breach.

  Considering they were a big fat target at the moment, with the railgun slagged and the shields pretty much totally destroyed by Lana's treachery, every second counted. So even though there was no immediate danger he could see, he pushed the engines and inertial dampeners both to their limits to get to the Caretaker.

  Luckily, neither system failed from that abuse, since Belix was still out and couldn't repair them. Speaking of a certain spiteful engines officer, Barix had confirmed his sister wasn't badly injured. Or, as he put it, “She's sleeping like a baby while we all do her job for her.”

  That wasn't completely inaccurate: down to just Aiden, the gunner, and the science officer, they were scrambling to repair critical damage and plot a rift jump so they could get out of there the moment the Caretaker was recovered and finally able to track down the bug Lana had planted.

  A lot of things made more sense, now that they knew the young woman was a sleeper agent. The mysterious intrusions into the ship's computer had to be her, not some elusive virus like Ali had thought. And the task force closing in on them so seamlessly back in their old stomping grounds was likely thanks to her feeding them information.

  And, of course, the sabotage that had nearly gotten his ship blown up. It was anyone's guess what other chaos she'd sown that they weren't even aware of yet; Ali would have to dig deeper once she had the time.

  For now, though, the Caretaker didn't even bother to come back inside the ship once they caught up to her. Instead, Aiden sent a loudly complaining Barix to suit up and meet her at the airlock with a tool chest, and they immediately got to work scouring the exterior.