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
