Song of the Navigator (3 page)

“Right.”

As the giant approached, Tover tried to pull back. He knew his terror showed on his expression, but he couldn't help it.

“Please,” Tover managed to gasp. He reached his hand out toward Cruz. “Don't leave me here.” His hand fell weakly to his side.

For a moment, Cruz hesitated. His frown deepened slightly. “It won't last long.”

The other Pulmon Verde laughed at that and slapped Cruz on the back, then Cruz was gone, his precious data saved, and he never even looked back.

For a long time the two smugglers watched him, discussing matters in low voices in a foreign language. It sounded Russian but the rhythm of the language made it noticeably different.

At length the brown-haired man crouched once more and looked Tover in the eye.

“My name's Savel.” He nodded to his companion. “This is Cherko. I make sure things get where they need to go. He makes sure people do what they need to do. Understand?”

Tover focused on maintaining his glare. He didn't want these men to see his fear.

“You work for us now,” Savel said. “You jump the goods where we say, when we say it. If you don't, we hurt you. If you do, you will be rewarded. Every luxury will be afforded to you once you have proven your loyalty.” Savel smirked. “You are not the first navigator we've worked with, so don't think we don't know what we're doing.”

Tover gathered enough saliva together to spit at Savel. The spittle fell short, but the meaning wasn't lost, and Savel's expression darkened. He stood and left the room. Tover heard rustling and looked up to see Cherko, arms still crossed, grinning maliciously down at him. The man had no teeth, Tover noticed.

Savel returned, carrying a thin-gauge restraint wire. Tover almost laughed—where did they think he could go, with no strength to move?—but then Savel jerked Tover's head back by his hair and wrapped the restraint wire around Tover's neck.

Tover panicked and pulled back. Savel twisted both ends of the wire tight and it strangled Tover's neck. Terror flooded Tover. He tried to fight but all he could do was thrash on the floor. Savel tightened the wire, locked it, and stood.

For several seconds, Tover writhed on the ground, unable to swallow, unable to breathe…then he realized the wire was painfully tight against his throat but he
could
breathe, barely, although every swallow was restricted and the wire cut deeply into his neck. It made him light headed, and he had to concentrate not to panic again. He took shallow breaths.

“The wire cuts off your navigational cords,” Savel said, standing slowly. He no longer smiled. “Don't want you going off on your own any time soon.” He pursed his lips. “We'll give you food, and a few days to recuperate. Then you start work.” He cocked his head toward Cherko, and the giant man grabbed Tover by the right arm and lifted him up.

It felt as though he'd dislocated his arm. Cruz's touch had been gentle. This man dragged Tover down a carpeted hallway, tossing him like debris into the corner of an elevator. They went down several levels, Tover concentrating on his anxiety, reminding himself he could breathe, regardless of the constriction at his throat. He took slow, deliberate breaths.

Once the elevator doors opened, Cherko grabbed Tover by the arm and dragged him again, heedless of the uneven grating on the floor. Pain vibrated up Tover's spine as he was hauled along a darkened corridor. At the first door, Cherko swiped his wristpad against a sensor and the door clicked open. The room was barely bigger than a closet, with steel floor grates and dark concrete walls. A hint of light filtered into the room from the grated ceiling.

Cherko dragged Tover to the corner and yanked his arms behind him. He pulled a set of magnetic cuffs from his pocket and locked Tover's right hand to a thick metal pipe that ran along the base of the wall.

“Stay,” Cherko said, pointing to Tover like a dog. He laughed, and he locked the door behind him, and Tover found himself at last, terribly, alone.

Tover slumped against the wall. “Happy birthday,” he mumbled to himself. He emitted a wheezy chuckle with no mirth to it. Without family, Tover had spent many birthdays in lonely places, but being sold by his lover to a bunch of unscrupulous pirates definitely won the prize as being the worst birthday present ever received.

Chapter Three

Food was everything.

Ravenous, Tover ate constantly, and it didn't matter that every bite cut the wire around his throat deeper into his neck, and it didn't matter that he only had one hand free to eat with. He shoveled meals into his mouth with his left hand, and with every bite he felt his strength returning. He drank gallons of water using a straw, grateful that, despite the fact that they had taken his clothes and left him for three days in this cell, Tover was getting what his body needed.

Of course, that's the whole point
, he thought, as he ate another plate of mashed potatoes. They tasted bland, and lacked seasonings, but they were hot and full of calories.

He'd already asked for a mattress and been refused. He asked for his right arm instead of his left, since he was right-handed, but they prohibited this as well. For three days he had been denied every comfort except food and water, but these were given to him in endless quantities. The minute he finished a plate or emptied the bucket of water, Cherko or one of the other smugglers came into his room with another helping of meat or vegetables. Clearly surveillance cameras tracked his progress.

The calories returned his strength, but there was little he could do with it—standing hurt with his right arm cuffed to the base of the wall. And the calories helped with the cold, but he still shivered all the time. He hated being naked, so exposed amongst the men who came and went from his room. There were at least four of them working with Savel, and most ignored him, not reacting to his shouted insults as they dropped off food or exchanged his waste bucket for a clean one. But one of them smirked, and the one Tover nicknamed Dirtbag for the filthy stains on his military jacket made a grab at Tover's crotch which had drained Tover of color and filled him with terror.

For all he knew, they could be poisoning him, but it didn't matter. If he wanted to escape, he needed energy. So he ate, fuelled both by the food and by the thought of revenge. He'd get out of here, then he was going to find Cruz Arcadio, wherever he was, and kill him.

No, first he would torture him. Maybe tie a wire around his neck until he bled, see how
he
liked it.

Then
he would kill him.

Because Tover was a navigator. He was the god of entire populations of people, the sole reason Harmony owned half of CTASA. He was worth more than anything else in this entire fucking universe, and he should have been worshipped. Instead, he slept on a hard metal grate and pissed in a bucket under the constant gaze of a security camera. It was humiliating and infuriating, and he spent most of his endless, bored hours those first days planning how he'd surprise Cruz, and kill him. Slowly.

The cell door slid open.

“How you like the food?” Savel entered the room. Cherko stood behind Savel, arms crossed, blocking the doorway.

Tover licked his fingers clean of mashed potato. “Fuck you.” It hurt to speak, the wire tight against his throat. He had to struggle for air as he talked. “I want my arm free. Where can I go? I'm locked in this fucking cell.”

Savel shook his head. “One freedom at a time, Navigator. You have to earn your freedom. First successful jump, you'll get your clothes back. Second jump, a mattress. Then both your hands. A blanket. Some utensils for eating. A shower, and a shave. Eventually, you'll have your own quarters, your own wages, your own whores to fuck, you get me? All these things will be given back to you, but they must be earned. And every time you screw with us, they will all be taken away.”

“You think Harmony doesn't notice I'm missing?” Tover wheezed. He pulled at the wire against his throat with his finger, but it didn't budge. Blood encrusted the edge where it cut into his flesh. “They probably have the entire peacekeeper fleet looking for me. You're fucked when they get here.”

“You think you're home, being jerked off by corporate cocksuckers? You think some Stuurmanites are gonna rescue you?” Savel pointed at him. “You aren't in the CTASA colonies anymore, you're on the Jarrow satellite, where we don't worship navigators. Only some bug-lung terrorist assholes even know you're here. You have no rescue party.
I'm
your fucking rescue party, so start acting like a man and I'll start treating you like one.”

Tover kept his anxiety hidden underneath the veneer of rage which hadn't left him since Cruz had abandoned him. He stank. He wanted a shower. But he wouldn't help these bastards. He'd spent most of his life supporting legitimate commerce through CTASA, and it was pirates like these men who posed a threat to what Tover had worked for.

So he simply glared.

Savel nodded to Cherko and said something in their language. Cherko punched Tover in the face.

Tover fell backward, twisting his cuffed arm, his knees crashing against the hard grates. Pain and shock flooded through him. He had never been treated so poorly in all his life. No one in all of the CTASA allied worlds would dare touch him like that.

Before he could get his balance, Cherko demagnetized the cuffs restraining Tover's right hand and cuffed both Tover's hands behind his back. With a jerk Cherko lifted Tover up to a standing position. Despite the throb in his jaw, Tover felt relief. It had been days since he could properly stand, and his back ached.

“Stretch his legs,” Savel said, turning to leave. “Give him a few more days, make sure he's back to normal.”

“I'm going to fucking kill you!” Tover gasped.

Savel shrugged. “Doubt it. Rest up, Navigator. Vacation's almost over.”

A week of rest did little to calm Tover's nerves. He grew more impatient every hour, furious his rescue was so slow. What the fuck was Harmony up to? They had to be searching for him. How hard could it be?

Years ago, an important dignitary from one of the overpopulated, politically significant colonies clamoring for inclusion in the alliance was kidnapped, and Tover was tasked to help find the man. He worked overtime, relentlessly jumping a rescue team from location to location, the search resulting in the man's discovery on a remote insurgency base. It had taken only four days to find a relatively minor political figure. But Tover was an improvisational navigator. His rescue was long overdue.

Granted, they'd have to call in one of the other improvisational navigators to find him, but this was Harmony Corporation. If they needed an employee repositioned in a hurry, it happened. The wheels of corporate bureaucracy spun fast.

But after five days Tover was left to think hard about what his next move would be. Escape constantly filled his mind. He'd tried repeatedly to create an orbifold, but the wire around his throat was terribly effective, and even though he now had strength enough to jump, he couldn't until someone cut the wire.

However, he wouldn't need much time once it was. He kept DK Station's location fresh in his mind, attuned for it in case an opportunity arose. They'd have to cut the wire to get him to work for them, and in that second, he'd be gone. He knew exactly where the medical facility on DK Station was, he'd jump right there and have his doctor get to work on the gash around his neck, and the raw skin at his wrist.

But until he was forced to work, Tover had nothing to do but sit in the cold and brood. Invariably his thoughts turned inward, and he wondered how he could have gotten Cruz so wrong.

What really perplexed him was the fact that Cruz had breathed oxygen when they had been together.

He must have been taking cell suppressants. While expensive, the technology existed. After all, hundreds of years ago the original settlers on Carida had genetic cell therapy to create a botanical lining in their lungs for converting the carbon dioxide atmosphere of the planet into usable oxygen. They passed their genetic alteration on to their children, so now generations of Caridans were only capable of breathing the thick, greenish atmosphere of their home world.

Terraforming had improved since the original colonies were founded. Instead of altering humans to fit the environment, Harmony's innovative terraforming generator system could alter the planet and allow humans to live comfortably without expensive and risky genetic modifications.

But if scientists had the ability to create carbon dioxide-breathing residents in the first place, Tover reasoned it must be possible to reverse the effect—a genetic therapy that had allowed Cruz to breathe oxygen as long as he was on the drug. It could have made him appear normal. Even kind.

Tover coughed and then froze as the wire cut deeper into his neck. He would have given anything to have it removed. His difficulty breathing left him in a chronic state of muted panic. It reignited his fury every time he swallowed. The indignation that someone he knew could have left him in this situation staggered Tover, and he now wondered if this insult had been the purpose of their entire affair.

After all, he had been the one to give Cruz information about his own abilities. But what didn't make sense is how long Cruz had maintained the ruse. The two of them had barely spoken ten words to each other during those initial couplings, quick and silent, only smiles exchanged. It took several months of recurrent hookups before they began to chat, but the discussions weren't deep—Tover never found out about Cruz's political leanings, or his family, or his past. He preferred that—because Cruz never asked the reciprocal questions that Tover didn't want to answer.

But they'd discovered they had a shared taste in music and followed soccer avidly. Cruz was even in an amateur league back in Savara. And as they talked about places they'd been, hobbies and sports and beer and favored sex positions, Tover had allowed himself to believe he had grown to know the man, know what was important, at the very least.

It had been so refreshing, being with someone who wasn't solely obsessed with the fact that Tover could sense the universe. Only once did Cruz ever ask about Tover's abilities, and it hadn't been a direct question, only a casual one, brought up a few months ago, after Tover had spotted Cruz at the Harmony Annual Station Celebration.

Tover had walked into the ballroom of the Palacio and noticed Cruz, standing in the corner with his drink, a small smile on his face as his dark eyes scanned the crowd. They made eye contact, and Cruz's entire countenance changed, his body seemed to loosen, relax.

Tover had felt their eye contact like a bolt of electricity down his spine. Cruz's face was the only one he ever looked for anymore, and it was so rare and so welcoming, he couldn't bother to feign interest in the other guests, beelining toward Cruz.

Along the way, he had been stopped half a dozen times, company staff introducing themselves, dignitaries leaning closer, laughing huskily, executives shaking hands, autographs. Tover's eyes never strayed from Cruz's face. Cruz waited for him near the door, and when Tover finally arrived, Cruz had said nothing. He had simply placed one of his large hands on the small of Tover's back and directed him around the corner, out the door.

They walked in silence, their shoulders brushing. They calmly stepped through the floor foyer and into the elevator. Occasionally they stayed at the Palacio, in Cruz's room, but it had been a long time, months since Tover last saw Cruz, and he had wanted to be home, where there were mirrors to see himself in the act, with his comfortable bed and reliable room service.

Tover's bodyguards remained studiously uninterested and faded into the background as Tover and Cruz crossed the crowded station corridor to the Oasis. Tover stood outside and provided autographs to tourists as Cruz went on ahead, and they met up again outside Tover's penthouse suite.

As soon as Tover entered the suite, Cruz had pushed him against the closed door and kissed him, hard. It felt like release after months of tension, the tedium of all those shipments, all those jumps, no end in sight, and only this to look forward to, this hot embrace, tongue forcefully pushing into him, hard cock grinding against his own.

Cruz jerked Tover by the shirt into the bedroom, and they had made love under the mirrored ceiling. It was hard and relentless, and at one point Tover nearly cried out in gratefulness for this feeling, a complete and utter ravishment that left him speechless and exhausted, sprawled on his white sheets.

Cruz had reached over to Tover's bedside table, where he had one of his collection of older navport helmets on display, and he had lifted the helmet in his hands and rested it on his stomach. He still breathed heavily from intercourse, and the helmet moved up and down on his toned belly.

“What does it feel like?” Cruz had asked him, contemplating the helmet. “Jumping?”

“Not much at all,” Tover said. “It feels like the air is sucked out of your body. But when I'm wearing a navport helmet, I feel nothing.”

“You can still jump without an amp unit, right?” Cruz clarified.

Tover nodded. He sprawled his legs open, his foot brushing against Cruz's dark, hairy thigh. “I can go wherever I want by myself. However I don't have a power source for it.”

“What would happen to you if you went far?”

Tover shrugged. “I'd starve. I don't know. We were warned against trying anything like that in training.”

“And small jumps?” Cruz asked.

Tover stood on the bed and hummed, creating an orbifold around himself, instantaneously reappearing in the bathroom doorway. “Like that?”

“Fuck!” Cruz leapt into a defensive crouch, eyes wide in surprise.

Tover laughed, pleased by Cruz's reaction to his demo. He always
did
like to show off. “That only makes me hungry. Speaking of which, you want something to eat?”

“Yeah.” Cruz smirked. “Bring that dick back over here.”

Tover swaggered over, hand on his genitals, offering them to view. “And after this? Maybe some sandwiches?”

“Ask me in twenty minutes,” Cruz said, eyes already focused on Tover's cock. He pulled Tover back to the bed and Tover's hardening dick into his mouth, and that had been the end of the discussion.