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
