Book where a slave/prisoner hooks his brain up to a spaceship

Question

I only remember bits and pieces of this book, but I'd really like to reread it. Basically, this teenager has been a prisoner his whole life and he's forced to explore spaceships (for boobytraps and stuff), and he somehow ends up connecting with this one ship. Like, it hooks up to his brain and he's the only one who can pilot and stuff. He ends up picking a few other people up and they go around and destroy the prisons and help out other planets. And there are space pirates! Any help would be so appreciated. The ship is automated basically and does like everything for them and one night as he's preparing dinner (asking the ship to make favorite dishes of past captains), it's discovered that some of the food is deadly to people, so presumably, aliens exist. They do end up finding a little weird vegetarian alien creature. That's pretty much all i remember though.

Answer 1

I found it! It's called Wanderer's Escape.

Summary from the author's website (with links to obtain it as a free ebook from several sources):

Jess was born a prisoner, grew up a prisoner and at sixteen knew he would die a prisoner. When his turn comes to try to break through the traps protecting a spaceship it seems his day to die has come. The ship, and others like it, have already claimed hundreds of prisoners’ lives.

Instead he manages to avoid the traps and gain access to the ship with two other prisoners, beginning a frantic flight to freedom. Soon Jess finds himself loose in a brutal universe ruled by the Empire and riddled with pirates, slave traders and worse. Can Jess manage to learn the rules of the universe and the capabilities of the ship he has stolen in time to stay alive?