Last Stand (Stag Privateers Book 1)

of cooperation do you want?”
There we go. It was depressingly easy to make Deeks fold once you started applying pressure. Hiding his satisfaction, Aiden straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. “Let's start with the location and code for this ship's safe. From there we'll move on to the Fleetfoot's command codes, and the account information for your patron company. Then, if we have time, we'll start going over your private account codes.”
* * * * *
Unsurprisingly, the crew of the Deek ship were far more willing to give up the information for their ship's corporate account than they were their own private accounts. That took a bit more leaning.
Aiden left that up to Fix, since the combat android would probably be more intimidating in an interrogation anyway. Especially when he loudly gave it some scary sounding orders before walking out of the galley with Ali in tow.
He'd need to send her off to start downloading the ship's logs and analyzing the data from them, but first things first. “You did a routine sweep of this ship. Find anything interesting?”
The companion hesitated. “There was one thing,” she admitted. “Another person aboard, not listed on a crew or passenger manifest.”
Aiden blinked. Deeks weren't usually known for smuggling, although they were known for human trafficking. He frowned at the obvious conclusion. “Let me guess . . . listed as cargo?”
Ali nodded, perfect features twisted in revulsion; with her core priorities to put the welfare of humans above all other considerations, she had a particularly dim view of slavery. One Aiden strongly shared. “And being carried in a stasis pod,” she confirmed.
Well, that was something. “Show me.” Ali nodded and led him down the corridor, towards the Deek ship's aft cargo bay.
Stasis pods had become obsolete tens of thousands of years ago, with the discovery and then refinement of rift travel. But even now they weren't wholly useless, since they allowed for the most efficient means of transporting prisoners.
Or storing them long-term.
To be honest, Aiden wouldn't have said no to freeing someone the Deeks were holding in long-term incarceration, for fighting on the wrong side of the war just under ten years ago. He could invite a freed Stag prisoner to join his crew, which would definitely be a plus since right now it was pretty much just him and a bunch of robots and Ishivi; all the other Stag loyalists aboard the Last Stand had long since either died in battle or deserted, and he keenly missed their presence.
It went without saying that, with the obvious exception of Ali, none of his crew was particularly good company.
But hoping for a long-term Stag prisoner was unlikely, considering the fate of so many other Preservationists after the end of the war. Which was why he wasn't too disappointed with what he found when his companion led him into the half-empty cargo bay, to the stasis pod tucked in among the other cargo near the back.
As soon as he got close enough to see through the faceplate of the stasis pod, he discovered that rather than a grizzled veteran of the wars, the prisoner was a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. Hope sprang eternal, and it was possible she was a Stag who'd been in stasis all this time, but it didn't seem likely.
Of course, whoever she was, it was hard to be too disappointed in her appearance.
It would be a lie to call her the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, since that distinction easily went to Ali. No surprise, when he'd customized the adult companion specifically to his own preferences. And while Belix creeped him out and he would've sooner tried to be intimate with a viper, he couldn't argue about the Ishivi's sculpted, aristocratic loveliness.
But the prisoner's delicate features and striking reddish-blond hair were impossible to ignore, stirring an almost paternal protectiveness in him. It was hard to believe she could've been incarcerated for some crime. Especially since, knowing what he did about the Deeks, the alternative was far more likely.
“What's her story?” he asked.
Ali inspected the woman in the pod with open curiosity. “She's a Blank Slate . . . according to the ship's logs, the Fleetfoot's captain ordered her mind wiped 23 days ago. She is now designated as a slave, destined to be sold to a brothel on Delados 3.”
Aiden spat off to one side in disgust. Deeks made such a big deal about how they didn't want their perfect society to be contaminated by humanity's tarnished past, and that's why they were determined to destroy all records and monuments of it.
Then, the moment they'd completely erased all knowledge of the “inferior” phases of society leading up to the perfect apex they considered themselves to be, the first thing they did was bring back some of society's greatest evils, like mind wiping and slavery.
It would be ironic if it wasn't so sickening. “Anything about her before the wipe?” he asked through gritted teeth.
The companion shook her head. “No hits stand out in this ship's logs or on the Last Stand's databanks. They apparently grabbed her from the streets during a trade run to the colony world of Helios 4, discovered she had no family or other connections, decided she'd be valuable as a commodity and wiped her memories for convenience's sake.”
Aiden looked at the lovely young woman's peaceful features. Helios 4 wasn't known to be the friendliest place, and there was no telling what sort of life she'd had before the mind wipe. But it was safe to say that if they'd taken her off the streets there, it hadn't been the most pleasant one.
“Well then, it looks like it's her lucky day. We can't give her back her memories, but we can at least save her from the miserable life she was headed for.” He turned away, back to business. “Take her back to the ship and check her out, make sure she's what the records say she is.”
Ali gave him a