“Fantastic,” Barix muttered. “We can fool them by going back to being a light cruiser.”
Belix ignored her brother. “What do you think we did recently to piss them off bad enough for this sort of response?”
Aiden didn't normally acknowledge the elfin woman, but this time he did. “The Movement doesn't forgive or forget . . . this doesn't have to be anything recent. We've probably been steadily pissing them off more and more for years.”
“Which I'm sure you couldn't be happier about,” she shot back snidely.
He shrugged. “Aside from the task force hunting us and having a bounty big enough to buy a fully equipped capital ship or a colony world? Yeah, I never mind the idea that Deeks are losing sleep over me.”
“Well happy as I am that your every dream is coming true, Captain,” Barix said in a wry voice, “what exactly do we do now? Head back to Callous to become farmers?”
The man was joking, but Aiden still shook his head vehemently. “Did you not just hear me mention a task force hunting us? We were putting the colony in enough danger before now . . . as it stands we're not going anywhere near there. probably not for a long time.”
In spite of their circumstances the Ishivi grinned broadly. “A silver lining to every cloud! I'll break out the hard liquor for a celebratory toast.”
Nobody seemed in the mood to even acknowledge the slight man's snark. “What now?” Belix asked. “Make our way to the other side of the galaxy again? That didn't seem to work so great this time.”
Aiden hesitated. He'd been thinking this through ever since they got away, and hadn't liked his options. “Well first off, we're going to find some nice uninhabited planet or asteroid somewhere and change our profile. Even if it won't help much now that they're slapping human eyes on us, it's still more than nothing.”
“Yeah, it's a ton more work,” Barix groaned. “Just us, with no materials or equipment to work with besides what's on the ship? That'll take forever!”
His sister poked him. “What're you complaining about? You probably won't be asked to do much of it.”
“I'd better not be,” the slight man grumbled, turning to Aiden. “You do realize we've got bigger problems than our profile, if they've already recognized us once and seemed to be ready for us.”
He bit back his irritation. “Yes, which is why we're also going to take a close look at our transponder and IFF spoofs to make sure there's no problem. And while we're at it, we'll see if our computer somehow picked up a virus that's been feeding the Deeks all this information they seem to have about us.”
Ali cut in gently, although she was frowning. “That seems very unlikely, my love. I'm not sure you realize how closely I defend the systems on this ship.”
“I'm sure you do. But we're going to check anyway.” Aiden ran his hand through his hair. “Something about all this doesn't add up; even if the Deeks are more motivated than ever before, they're still on us way too close, and seemingly from out of nowhere. Nothing about us has changed from the way we've been operating for years, including the unpredictable ways we change our operation, so what has?”
“Maybe that's the problem,” the gunner suggested. “Nothing about us has changed. Maybe we're giving them something they can use against us without realizing it.”
Aiden sighed. That brought him to his other option. “We can't discount the possibility. Which is why I'm thinking it's about time we hopped to another galaxy.” As he said that he looked around at his crew, to gauge their reaction to this bombshell.
Granted, you wouldn't expect to see much in the way of shocked reactions from an adult companion, two Ishivi, an Ishivi construct, and a Blank Slate who didn't know him well enough to understand why that was significant. But he liked to think they were suitably surprised.
“You've been operating exclusively in this galaxy ever since the war ended,” Belix pointed out in a bored tone. “Isn't it your quest to win it back from the Deeks, a foothold of sanity in the larger universe?”
“Also,” her brother added, “it's by far the most lawless part of the Movement's territory, not least because of our own efforts. Easiest place to do what we do, without getting ratted out or ending up hunted down by a task force of dozens of Deek ships.”
“You mean like what's already happening?” Lana asked.
“We've been at the wrong end of manhunts before,” Barix said with a shrug. “That's never stopped our brave leader from fighting on for the sake of his galaxy.”
Is that what he'd been doing? It was what he told himself, what he told everyone, but he had to wonder if he even remembered what that meant. For almost ten years he'd been on the run, unable to stay anywhere, not even havens like Callous, long enough to call them home. Unable to ever get to know anyone besides his crew other than as casual business acquaintances.
Or targets.
“I had goals here,” Aiden admitted. “But I'm not some kind of zealot. The heat's on us right now, so it's time to go someplace quieter. At least until things calm down a bit here . . . not even the Movement can keep up a manhunt like this forever.”
Lana tentatively raised her hand. “If we're going someplace quieter, does that mean we'll stop being pira-privateers? Maybe we could be traders instead. Or at least smugglers.”
The question was greeted with laughter from the Ishivi, and even Dax looked amused as he shot the young woman an apologetic look.
“No, we'll do what we know,” Aiden replied. “If anything, a quieter galaxy will be even easier to operate in at first. And we can always move on if things get too heated there.”
Barix raised his hand in mocking imitation of Lana's tentative gesture. “Point. Almost all the leads we got from our targets' logs
