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
