by Astrid Amara
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.
Now, shivering on the metal grate of his cell, Tover wondered how much of that had been a setup. Was that the information Cruz had wanted? If so, he waited long enough for it. He could have asked him those questions after their second night together. So why had it taken over a year of clandestine trysts?
Fury boiled through Tover. He had been such a fucking idiot. There were obvious gunshot wounds scarred over on Cruz’s left arm, and Tover had let himself believe Cruz when he said they were from a hunting accident. Cruz told him the nasty slash across his abdomen was a result of a helicopter crash on Arland, and Tover had bought it, hook, line and sinker.
What fucking bullshit, Tover thought, angry enough at himself to focus on the wire around his neck, focus on the pain in his cuffed wrist. He needed to remember this. This was what happened when he let himself be lured by expectation. When one was naïve enough to fantasize, imagining some day forming a whole life with a person, travelling with them, sharing experiences with them, falling in love—one deserved the harsh lesson in truth: affection was transitory.
His boredom ate at his nerves. Tover didn’t do well alone. He hated the roaring mechanical sounds of the vessel, the sound of footsteps against the grates. Someone on the floor above his had the worst taste in music, and kept listening to the same Slavic dance song, full volume. A toilet somewhere in
the distance ran all night. He hated the cold. He got sick of the food, as important to his recovery as it was, and his mood soured to such a point that he found it a relief to finally be led from the cell, albeit with his hands cuffed behind his back, and given a chance to view something different.
The Baroque was a massive vessel, and Tover recalled that most barges had their cockpit not on a separate floor but rather in the actual cargo bay where navigators could switch between generating orbifolds around sections of the loading bay, or the ship. Now that The Baroque was welded to the rogue satellite, the amplification zone would only move goods. As Cherko jerked him down long corridors, Tover glanced around furtively, trying to remember the layout of the ship in case he had to flee on foot. They passed crew quarters and a room which stank and made Tover suspect the sanitation recycler needed replacing.
They took an industrial elevator down four floors and emerged in the prow, looking back at the enormous cargo hold of the vessel. The space was predominantly empty; a few boxes of goods lined the hull, and a single container was aft. But Tover instantly recognized the yellow demarcation line in the center of the cargo hold, surrounding several pallets of cargo flats. This line marked where the navigational speakers were set to form an orbifold. These were the goods the smugglers wanted him to move.
Cherko shoved Tover forward, and they passed along a cheap carpeted walkway to the cockpit, which was nothing more than an area of the cargo hold separated by a waist-high steel wall and full of piloting technology. The entire area tucked into the side of the space like a forgotten necessity. But it made sense for these older, inelegant shipping vessels—after all, views weren’t necessary. A navigator didn’t need to see.
Traditional combustion-engine ship controls filled a console that ran along one half of the wall. The other half was the navport console, complete with coordinate readout and medical cuffs.
Tover noticed the location where the navport chair would normally be was barren, only a few stripped bolts in the floor to show where the seat used to be. He glanced up. The ceiling for most of the cargo deck was voluminous, nearly too high to see, but in the cockpit section a ceiling had been welded on to contain the amplification system for the navigator.
Cherko pulled Tover to a halt in front of Savel and three other smugglers. Tover shook with the humiliation of standing naked in front of all these fully clothed men, and he avoided eye contact with Dirtbag, who reeked of vodka and had a perverted gleam to his eye. Fear dried Tover’s throat, and he tried to swallow to generate moisture, but every move of his Adam’s apple hurt.
Savel motioned to the navport console. “Let’s start small,” he said. He pointed to the collection of pallets on the other side of the low wall. The plastic crates were dark blue and their contents a mystery. Tover tried to sense what was inside. He could detect metals—an alloy of some sort—but no specific material.
“I want you to send those boxes to our warehouse in Reeva.” Savel tapped his finger against the console, pointing to the coordinates.
Tover swallowed, trying to force saliva down his parched throat. “How the fuck…do you expect me to jump anything with this fucking wire around my throat?” he complained.
Savel smiled. “Oh, we’ll take it off, once we have you nicely plugged in. Then you can’t go anywhere alone, can you?”
Fuck.
Cherko demagnified the cuffs. Tover immediately shoved his back into the man, knocking them both down. Tover scrambled to his feet. After so many days of limited movement, his balance wavered. Dirtbag grabbed his arm and twisted. Tover tried to yank free but one of the other men kicked him in the groin and Tover fell to his knees, pain radiating through him. The wire made every breath a ragged gasp. They forced him to his knees in front of the console. Cherko and Dirtbag each grabbed a hand and jerked his arms onto the console, locking him down in the wrist restraints.
Instinctively, Tover pulled his arms back, trying to break free. He couldn’t, and it was with chilling realization that he understood the more nefarious purpose behind navigational “medical” cuffs. He pulled back until he broke open the scabs around his right wrist and blood covered the metal. But he couldn’t get his hands out. And with his arms stretched out on the console, locked down, they all stepped back, no longer needing to restrain the rest of him. Tover kicked his legs and tried to stand but he was locked down at this uncomfortable angle where the only comfort could be found kneeling. Why the hell had they taken away the chair?
Savel gripped his hair and yanked Tover’s head back, forcing Tover to stare at him. Savel looked pissed.
“Did you hear a fucking thing I’ve told you all week, you dumb fuck?” he hissed. He slapped Tover’s face, and shock more than pain kept Tover silent. “You are outnumbered and outgunned, so do what you’re fucking told. Jump that shipment.”
Savel let go, nearly slamming Tover’s head into the console. Tover felt weak with fear.
Cherko moved to Tover’s side, and Tover tensed, but Cherko didn’t touch him. Instead he reached up and yanked down the navport helmet. It attached to the system above their heads by a wire with a great deal of tension to it. Tover collected navigational helmets and could tell by the design it was a Navamp first-generation 1200. This technology would barely be able to amplify his signal out of the nearby system, let alone another galaxy.
The helmet was in the original style, utilitarian and plain. There were plastic straps to tighten the helmet to the navigator’s head, and a mouthpiece attached by an electrical cord that hung from the front. Cherko grabbed Tover by the hair and pulled the helmet over Tover’s head, snapping the throat straps shut. The tension in the cable pulled the helmet up and the throat strap added pressure under Tover’s chin, but it was nothing in comparison to the wire.
Tover tried to get comfortable, arms stretched out, neck pulled up, when Cherko suddenly shoved his fingers into Tover’s mouth, and Tover opened in surprise. Cherko pushed the cold metal pipe of the mouthpiece down Tover’s throat.
Tover gagged and fought back vomit. The icy-cold pipe tasted like rust or blood. He wondered how many other navigators had had this thing shoved down their throats, and the thought made him sick, and he fought against his building nausea. The only one who would suffer if he threw up was him. He focused on trying to breathe.
Relief came instantly as someone pulled taut the wire around Tover’s throat and cut it free. He breathed through his nose and luxuriated in taking a full breath, grateful that at least this one pain was gone. He wondered what his neck looked like.
But now that the amplification tube contacted his navigational cords, any orbifold he made would form around the amplification zone, not himself. He would not be able to escape.
Tover couldn’t see anything. The Navamp 1200 didn’t have informational visors.
His captors let him alone, and Tover spent a minute or so trying to settle himself, relax around the pain in his wrists, the bad taste in his mouth. His groin still hurt, and the air was cold against his naked skin.
“This is very simple.” Tover recognized Savel’s voice, right beside him, slightly muted by the helmet. “Move the contents of the pallet to our dock at Reeva. Do it now.”
Tover recalled the location codes and stretched out his mind, feeling for the Reeva dock. He sensed it there, its form a sensation, a space cleared amongst other shipments. He knew exactly where these crates were meant to go.
He thought of DK Station and wished he could send their contraband bullshit there instead. That would serve them right, trusting him. He would have given anything to be able to jump the cargo to the peacekeeper station, let the soldiers wonder how the hell the goods got there. Maybe they’d even be able to trace the contraband back to its source, and rescue Tover.
But Tover knew the Navamp 1200 system was too limited for a jump to DK Station. Little existed in its range, but Reeva assuredly did—clearly these pirates knew the ca
pabilities of their own stolen ship.
But there was another peacekeeper base, not far from Reeva. A shipyard on Trinity had a fort nearby for training, and if Tover could jump the stolen goods to the base, he would not only fuck over his captors, but he would be turning in contraband goods.
For a moment, Savel’s warnings echoed through him. Tover knew if he did this and they found out, he’d be fucked. Royally. But he wouldn’t be their trained pet. He was a fucking navigator, and he had his pride. They had hurt him. They were going to pay.
And he knew they wouldn’t kill him. It was their one weakness. No matter how much he pissed them off, he was worth too much alive.
So before he lost his nerve, Tover closed his eyes and concentrated. He sensed the crates in front of him and created an orbifold. He could feel it form around the pallets, large but trembling slightly. The amp system was weak. He hummed to keep its structure, thought of the base on Trinity, and jumped.
Instantly, he knew he failed.
The amplification was too limited for Trinity. The smugglers’ goods scattered in every direction of open space, crates drifting apart into oblivion.
Oh, shit.
Silence filled the room. Tover couldn’t see anything. But he heard a comm ring.
“Yeah.” Savel answered the call. “Is it there…right. Okay… Fuck.”
The silence lengthened. Tover tensed.
It continued. He breathed out. Maybe they didn’t notice—
Someone smashed Tover’s right arm with a pipe. He shrieked around the metal in his mouth. Nausea welled up his throat and he began to choke. Pain blossomed and grew, exponentially, and they smashed his elbow, breaking it, and he nearly passed out.
Tover writhed in his restraints. The pain was unlike anything he thought possible. It never leveled to a bearable volume, it kept expanding. Dazed from the agony of it, he felt them tie the wire around his throat again. He gagged. Someone jerked the pipe out of his mouth carelessly, and the edge caught the lining of his throat and tore skin. Blood filled his mouth. The light of the room blinded him, and he saw Savel’s cruel grimace for a second before the man smashed a short, thick metal pipe into Tover’s other outstretched arm.
