Captive of Pleasure; the Space Pirate's Woman (The LodeStar Series) by Cathryn Cade

“Wouldn’t do to ruin our shiny new rep as simple nomads.”
    “Hope that new tech works onboard the transport,” Ilya said quietly.  
    “It will, baby,” Var assured her. “Came straight from LodeStar security. Anyone scans it, nothing will show on that old scow but a bunch of containers of protein bars.”
    She snickered. “Wonder what Stark would say if he knew his shiny tech was being used to smuggle?”
    “Don’t kid yourself,” Var said. “Probably does know. The man is eerie.”
    Joran smiled wryly. His older brother did know more about what went down in his empire than most realized. He’d no doubt be hearing from Logan in the next several hours, wanting a status report.  
    “We’re away,” Haro said with satisfaction. He and Joran slapped palms, but Joran frowned as he turned back to watch the monitor.  
    “Haro, scan. I want a full-ship readout.”
    His pilot’s easy grin slid away. With a nod, he quietly instituted the commands and watched the monitors. “Our exit too easy for you, boss?”
    “Yup. While Qala was planting her trackers, someone may have doing the same to us.”
    “You think?” Ilya asked, leaning forward. She sounded more intrigued than worried.  
    “I woulda seen them,” Haro said instantly. “Monitors on full, entire time we were on the ground.”
    “I don’t doubt you,” Joran assured him. “But say the slavers have their own system in place. They tag every craft incoming, when we’re busy getting down safely in a crowd, with all kinds of interference from other com systems. Tracking devices are cheap, compared to a slave...at least one valuable enough to want back.”
    The words had no sooner left his mouth than a red light began to flash on the readout of the cruiser’s schematics. “Unknown device found,” a calm voice stated. “Rear port side, location three-niner-zed.”
    “Skrog shit.” Haro slapped his hand on the arm of his seat. “You were right.”
    “Yeah, you think as dirty as a slaver,” Ilya said admiringly. “Let’s get rid of it.”
    “We’ll have to land to do that,” Var said.  
    “No, we won’t,” Haro said. “Watch while the Hawk plucks that space louse off her lovely belly.”
    He tapped the red light on the readout. “Remote crawler, activate.”
    A holovid popped up, showing the belly of the ship. A small, nearly flat device appeared from an aperture in the cruiser’s gleaming shell and began to scoot back along the ship. Below, the earth shot past.
    “I can’t see the tracker device,” Haro pointed out. “That means it’s tiny. Hope your crawler is sensitive, Ilya.”
    “Yeah, so how’s that thing going to find it?” Var added.
    “Sensors,” Ilya said. “The schematics of the ship are in its memory banks so it knows what should be there, and what shouldn’t. It can remove anything the cruiser hits in flight. At the speeds we fly, even something small can throw off her aerodynamics, and thus flight. The device has blades and scrubbers for, er, feathers and stuff. Should work just as well on a tracker. It will use the readout to find its prey.”
    They watched the device slid along the shell. It stopped beside a rear exhaust port, and in a few secs the red light winked out.  
    “Unknown device removed,” the calm voice said. “Ship secure.”
    “What did it do with the tracker?” Var asked.
    “Dropped it,” Joran said. “If it’s still working, it’ll show we landed down there, by that bluff.”
    “Boss,” Ilya said quietly. “If we had one on us...”
    “I know,” he said grimly. “That means they’re tracking every ship in and out. They likely have eyes on the transport too.” And the transport didn’t have the high-tech remote crawler. “Haro, head after Mako.”
    “On it.” The cruiser veered sharply to the left, and they sped up, headed north toward a rugged range of mountains.  
    “Mako?” Joran called. “Come in. Do you read me?”
    Qala appeared in the hatch leading from the