“Please, do continue to waste our time feeding us unlikely options,” Barix muttered. “Not like we've got a bunch of powerful enemies after us and time is of the essence.”
Aiden ignored him, too. “The second option is that HAE betrayed us to Elyssa. Which again, doesn't add up since we just finished helping them, and they have no reason to want us destroyed. Not to mention that they could've taken us out far more easily when we were at their secret base, in their power.
“A third option is that Elyssa is so good that not even HAE can keep her out. Considering the companions' vaunted reputation for being unhackable, that doesn't seem likely.” He smiled grimly. “Also, if she is that good, we might as well give up now.”
Ali cut in, sounding impatient. “She's not. If you don't mind, my love, I'm going to cut to the chase and just suggest the only likely possibility, before you continue to hurl veiled and baseless accusations against the Caretakers on the pretext of theories you yourself are discounting.” She waved around vaguely. “The most likely possibility is we have a mole.”
Aiden noticed that everyone but Lana stiffened warily. She just stared around in confused caution, and he wondered for an amused moment if, with her memory wipe leaving her only with the definition of words and terms, she thought the Caretaker was talking about the small furry rodent.
“Hold on!” Barix protested. “You think one of us betrayed the ship to Elyssa? Why, so we could get ourselves blown up?”
“An electronic mole,” Ali corrected patiently. Aiden noticed Lana relaxing slightly, as if that was enough context for her to figure out what the AI was talking about.
“Or in other words, it's the Caretakers' fault after all?” Belix asked, giving Ali a chilly smirk. “You said syncing would fix all your deficiencies, which is why you betrayed our illustrious captain in the first place.”
The Caretaker shrugged, looking chagrined. “It's possible there's a device broadcasting our location, hidden somewhere on this ship. Either I missed it when I swept the ship after Elyssa planted that hacking drone on us at Ceras 2, or it was planted at some later time. Perhaps at the ERI facility by one of their maintenance bots. I assumed the Caretakers would've discovered it when they scanned the ship at the secret base, but if it was well enough concealed it might require more than even a thorough sensor sweep to uncover.”
“Then let's tear the ship apart and find it,” Aiden said grimly. “We can talk about blame once we've stomped this bug and we're safely away from here.” He turned to Ali. “Start with the ship's exterior, since that's the most likely place. Especially the more likely blind spots, like attached to the sensors or comms. Program the combat androids to help you as a top priority.”
The beautiful woman nodded. “In the meantime, we should continue to jump randomly. It won't keep pursuit away from us forever, if the bug is sophisticated and our enemies are extrapolating patterns from our jumps. But we should at least do our best to delay pursuit for as long as possible, buy us time to find the bug. We should also have another jump prepped, so we can go the moment we get rid of it.”
Lana cleared her throat. “Just to be thorough, do we have any plans for if it turns out to be some option besides a tracking device?”
Barix gave her a condescending look. “If it's not a bug, we're in the clear the moment we jump a few times.” He paused, then jerked his head towards Ali. “Unless, of course, the Caretakers betrayed us, at which point we're carrying an actual mole aboard.”
Aiden didn't like the idea that Ali had betrayed him, even though he knew she wasn't the same person she'd been. Or same programming, or whatever. But he had to entertain that possibility for the sake of the rest of his crew. “If they keep finding us and we don't find any device, I'll have to admit there's a chance of that. In the meantime, let's go with the more likely and less potentially devastating option.”
“Emotionally, or practically?” Belix asked snidely.
He didn't dignify that with a response. “Everyone, let's get to work.”
* * * * *
Ali disappeared to start the sweep of the hull, pulling the androids off repairs to join her. Since there were still some repairs that ideally should be done sooner rather than later, the captain pulled Lana and Belix off their usual duties and sent them to go get started on them.
Lana was a bit proud that she knew enough about emergency procedures and ship systems to be helpful with the task, even if most of what they were doing was temporary workarounds to fried circuits to keep vital internal systems running to minimal standards.
Most of those systems were things like powering the emergency blast doors. Those worked opposite to how Lana would've expected, by needing a constant feed of power to keep them open; that way, in a catastrophic situation where the ship lost power, the blast doors would automatically shut via pneumatic pressure to prevent the entire ship from depressurizing in a hull breach.
For crew that needed to get around the ship in such a situation, hotboxes with modestly sized batteries could be plugged into the doors to open and shut them. Lana was also glad that their uniforms had built-in pressure seals and attachable helmets so they could survive, at least temporarily, in vacuum and null-g. At least until the small batteries ran out and they froze
