Mission accomplished . . . a task she'd found frustratingly difficult to complete with the crew around and the combat android almost always busy with assigned tasks.
On to the next objective. Lana made her way back to her cabin and inside, where she activated her terminal. Her fingers flew across the keys, although a frown quickly marred her previously blank features.
Both other obstacles to her continued efforts were still in place.
First off, this backwards Stag planet didn't have an allnet hub she could use to report progress. She'd been given no other opportunity to connect to the allnet since Midpoint, and at that time her nightly efforts at infiltration into the Last Stand's computer hadn't afforded her much in the way of useful information.
What she'd provided then should've at least pointed the task force in the direction the ship was headed, something which the destroyed pirate ship at Ollan's Hub would also point to. That should give the task force enough clues to let them deduce a general direction for the ship's travel, and a region for them to focus their search on.
That might be enough on its own, with no further contact from her needed. If so, once the task force caught up to them Fix would give her the edge she needed to act when she received the appropriate trigger. Or, she might even get lucky and Aiden would finally provide her unsupervised access to the ship's controls long enough for her to fly them at top speed into the nearest large obstacle.
Frustrating, that in spite of his apparent complete trust of her, he'd watched her like a hawk when he'd let her practice flying, and locked the flight controls to whoever was on duty at the time. Not surprising, since she was a novice pilot and the Last Stand was his entire life, so he wasn't about to take any chances.
And, if he had his way, it would also be his death. A goal they had in common.
Perhaps if she applied herself in her free time to learning to fly in simulations, the captain would grow confident enough in her abilities to give her more leeway. With luck, she might even be able to solve the task force's problem before they found the Last Stand at all.
She'd add visible piloting practice to the list of ongoing priorities.
The other obstacle was in her efforts to simply take control of the ship herself, bypassing the need to trick the captain into letting her fly it unsupervised. The old cruiser's computer was nothing impressive, and she would've easily breached its security measures and taken control on the first night if not for Ali.
Lana wondered if Aiden had any idea just how much his sex robot was providing countermeasures against hacking and other such intrusions; those sorts of attacks weren't as common in battle as simple lasers and atomic, but the fancy sorts who attempted them tended to be all the more dangerous for it. Only thanks to Ali, the Last Stand was as formidable against remote intrusion as it was against the enemies who came after it weapons blazing.
The companion practically ran the computer as a secondary part of herself, and defended it fiercely. It took every bit of Lana's programmed skill to simply pull restricted information from the ship's databanks without being caught, let alone make any progress towards wresting control away from Ali.
Lana had hoped that with the companion off the ship her vigilance might have slackened, but of course that wasn't the case; Ali was remotely connected to the Last Stand's computer, so unless she was at least a few light minutes away she'd be able to detect and counter any direct attempts to take control before Lana could succeed.
Since Aiden was never far from his precious ship, neither was his companion, so it wasn't much use hoping they'd suddenly decide to take a jaunt halfway across some star system and leave the Last Stand vulnerable.
And unfortunately, Lana couldn't simply co-opt the adult companion the way she'd just done with Fix. The first and most obvious reason for that was that Ali always stayed with her human. Another was that companions had far swifter and more effective self-preservation protocols than combat androids, allowing them to shift perception of friend to foe in the case of potential threats, and respond to neutralize or eliminate the threat within a split second.
Of course, even if by some miracle Lana somehow got Ali alone and incapacitated, she had no hope of hacking her: HumanAssist Enterprise's code was untouchable, their AI protecting themselves with organically morphing security algorithms that were impossible to crack. Movement funded companies had devoted more man-hours than the age of the universe itself to the attempt, without success.
Oh well. If Ali's mind was an impenetrable fortress, and she was providing nearly the same protection to the ship's computer, there were easier ways to neutralize her physical shell; even a prototype adult companion's impressive skill, speed, strength, and durability weren't insurmountable. Especially not with the element of surprise.
After a few hours of futile effort, Lana made her way back off the ship and to Jorroc's house, exercising the same near-perfect stealth she'd previously shown. She made it back to the guest room undetected, where she slipped beneath the covers and immediately went still, already back in REM sleep.
She woke the next morning with no memory of her nocturnal activities.
Chapter Fourteen
Departure
Lana was up early the next morning, making her way back to the ship to gather her things. Not that she had many: just a few personal toiletry items Ali had given her for grooming, and her spare uniform.
Some deep, treacherous part of her still felt strongly that she shouldn't accept Aiden's offer, but she was overwhelming that impulse with sheer irritable determination. People who genuinely seemed to
