That was all well and good. Aiden folded his arms, struggling to keep his eyes locked on hers considering the view. “But just so we're clear, this specific job is hitting an Ishivi Harvester for its genetic material, which we will then deliver back to HAE for a reward?”
“A significant reward,” she agreed. “Although that shouldn't be your primary motivation, considering the good you could do. Still, I want to make it very clear that working with the Caretakers will not only benefit humanity, but will be immensely profitable for you and your crew.”
“And what if I decide to plunder the Harvester for its valuables and strip it of useful systems, then shoot the genetic material into the nearest star so nobody can use it for evil purposes?”
Ali grimaced, flawless features making even that look good. “Less desirable, but still a better outcome than letting the Ishivi use it for their sick breeding program. You'd receive no reward, obviously.”
“Other than knowing I've made the universe a better place?” he asked sarcastically. “Not to mention taking a prize, which is usually its own reward. Assuming the Last Stand actually could take on a Harvester, even if you gave us what we needed to set up a perfect ambush.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he kept going, finally allowing his eyes to drift down to her chest as he did so. “Anyway, you can't expect me to make a decision like this while constantly distracting me. I'll think it over, but in the meantime I think I'm ready to go again. Come here.”
The beautiful woman eagerly settled back into his arms.
* * * * *
It made perfect sense that the Dormant's own mission was lower priority than the information she'd been able to pass on through the beacon about HAE's secret shipyard and grander designs. Even so, she couldn't help but be irked by how long it was taking for the task force to follow her beacon.
Sure, planet-eating mining ships and enormous refineries and shipyards demanded swift attention. Even so, knowing who she was working with it was more likely incompetence and inefficiency that were causing her handlers to take so long to make use of the information she'd provided.
As a professional, that deeply offended her.
At the same time, a part of her was relieved by the delay. Specifically, the Blank Slate part of her. Which in itself was a cause for increasing concern; she was a sleeper agent, created by a process that had been refined over tens of thousands of years. A pinnacle of what could be done to twist the human mind.
Dormants had been known to spend years, even decades, living as themselves or taking on new personas after the brainwashing. Their rate of discovery was so low, it fell in the same statistical range as picking random strangers out of a crowd and shooting them as traitors. There had never been an incident of a Dormant's brainwashing failing and the original person reasserting control.
It was unthinkable.
Then again, she wasn't a usual Dormant. In her own way, she was as much a prototype as Ali; a sleeper agent whose brainwashing was concealed by the damage caused by a memory wipe. The process had only recently been refined to the point where it could be put to the test.
And Aiden Thorne and the Last Stand had seemed like the perfect test; the paranoid captain and his villainous crew would never let any normal person just join up, or even act as a long term passenger. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't extend the trust required for her to complete her mission.
After all, they barely trusted each other even after years of surviving impossible odds together.
But a Blank Slate was a different story. On top of everyone knowing that it was impossible for a Blank Slate to be a Dormant, psychologically it was also nearly impossible not to trust someone who'd had their memory wiped. Especially if that someone was young, attractive, and attached to a sob story about being doomed to live as a sex slave before their heroic rescue.
Far from distrusting her, they'd welcomed her with open arms. Befriended her, even fallen in love with her.
Unfortunately, the untested brainwashing process had resulted in the Blank Slate feeling that friendship and love right back. And in spite of ironclad mind control techniques perfected over millennia, the part of her that didn't remember anything, and felt everything with the innocence and exuberance of a kindhearted young woman, fundamentally rebelled against the prospect of ultimately betraying and killing all these people, including herself.
Ironically, the person Jaziri Irsham had been before being captured and brainwashed would've had far fewer compunctions.
Now that the beacon was in place and it was only a matter of time before the task force found them, the Blank Slate's resistance to completing the mission was growing frustratingly strident. Nothing the Dormant couldn't quash when the time came, of course, at least as long as that time was in the near future. But it pointed to a worrying breakdown in the brainwashing that suggested it probably wouldn't be effective long term, the way it was supposed to be.
If possible, she needed to pass that information along to her handlers before she and the ship were destroyed. It would help them make future attempts to repeat the process of disguising a Dormant as a Blank Slate more effective.
In the meantime, though, she kept herself fully receded and let the poor girl make the most of every precious moment with the gunner. There was no downside to it, after all.
At the moment, those precious moments involved Dax
