Dax came to an abrupt stop, piercing green eyes staring at her intently. Was that sadness he hid behind his stoic mask? Grief? Concern? “He ordered you off his ship?”
“No, he's giving me until you leave to think about it. He already talked to Jorroc about taking me in.”
“Oh.” Dax hesitated a moment, then looked away. “You should stay.”
Again she felt that deep hurt, if anything even more painful than with Aiden. She thought she'd been building something special with Dax, a real friendship. He was the only one who really seemed to care about her and understand what she was going through.
And even he was sending her away; did anyone on the ship want her as a crew mate? “You want me to leave?”
“Yes.” He seemed to realize he'd said something wrong, because he straightened to his usual tense posture. “It's a good offer for you, a good opportunity. If I'd ever been given a chance to leave the ship I would've thought long and hard about taking it.”
“And you wouldn't miss me?” Lana demanded, more harshly than she'd intended.
If anything, the young man became even tenser. “Of course I would. But it would be selfish of me to ask you to endure a hard life with no real future on the ship, risk your safety every time we fight, when you have a better choice.” He hesitated again, then continued determinedly. “I'd be content to be lonely again, if I knew it meant you had a happy life here.”
Something inside her crumpled on itself, and she wasn't sure whether to cry or hug him or hit him or run away. Instead, she fought for composure as she took a few deep breaths, then turned and strode away from the green towards Jorroc's house.
She didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed that Dax didn't follow. In fact, no one stopped her or even tried to talk to her as she fled to her guest room and threw herself onto the heavenly soft bed, huddling there in miserable indecision until sleep finally claimed her.
* * * * *
Lana wasn't sleepwalking, but she wasn't aware of her actions, either.
Her movements were perfectly silent, keeping to shadows with all senses alert as she ghosted down the stairs and out of Jorroc's house, then through the colony town to the green. Moving unseen across such a wide open space was more difficult, but cloud cover and patience helped.
Last night had been too busy, too many eager colonists excited about their visitors, and the crew sleeping irregularly because of their disrupted schedule. And, of course, Fix working throughout the night on the tasks it had been assigned. Not to mention Lana's little friend in the next room, just hoping to hear her stir so they could go back to gossiping.
Tonight, on the other hand, those who'd been restless the previous night were exhausted and sleeping soundly, the crew were resting in preparation for departure, and Fix was on downtime.
It didn't take much mental effort to calculate that now was her best opening to get some real work done.
Lana slipped up the ramp Aiden had left down and into the ship, where her steps took her unerringly towards her quarters; if anyone was still on board for some reason, it would be easy enough to excuse her presence. In the extreme, she could blame the captain's offer to leave her on this planet as having left her troubled and sleepless, so she'd come here to agonize over the decision in more familiar surroundings.
Upon reaching her quarters she paused, watching and listening for several seconds to make sure she had the corridor to herself. Then she continued past her cabin and on to the storage closet that had been retrofitted as an android bay, where Fix charged and performed self-maintenance during his infrequent periods of downtime.
Such as right now.
Lana's fingers flew across the keypad of the locking mechanism, ears still listening intently for the approach of other crew members. After half a minute it beeped and the door hissed open; inside, the large combat android shifted slightly to look down at her.
“How did you obt-” it started to say.
“Priority override 1B83K-2KAN0-2KSHT-KH328-182NA-K28N3-K2SLA,” she said, the long alphanumeric code flowing in an impossibly swift and accurate torrent from her lips, completed in just under two seconds.
Fix immediately powered down, and she squeezed into the closet and closed the door after her, oblivious to the claustrophobically tight confines.
The Elson Robotics Initiative installed a kill switch on all their combat androids. Ostensibly only the owner was supposed to know the specific code for their robot, but nobody harbored any illusions that the Deconstructionist-operated corporation kept hold of those codes for their own use.
A bit of extra insurance to make certain their own androids weren't used against them.
Aiden was no fool, and while he hadn't figured out how to remove the backdoor itself, obviously, he'd taken the precaution of disabling the combat android's usual safety protocol which caused it to freeze all operations while the proper code was being relayed to it.
To prevent it from, say, tearing its own owner apart while the poor idiot was trying to deactivate it.
The fact that that safety protocol could be tampered with was a definite weakness in ERI's safety protocols, one which they'd be wise to address. If Lana hadn't been able to relay the override with inhuman speed while Fix was still reconciling the security threat she presented with the fact that she was an official member of the crew, she'd be a corpse right now.
Which had, in fact, been the fate of several Deconstructionist personnel who'd tried to deactivate Fix even as the android killed them, since the code could only be relayed in person.
But none of that really mattered now, since she'd succeeded and currently had complete control of the robot's systems. Reaching for the toolkit Fix used in its self-maintenance, she got to work.
A little over ten minutes later, everything put back the way it had been and
