Song of the Navigator

by Astrid Amara

  “Good evening.”

  Tover cracked one eye as the door to his cell opened, revealing Cherko and Savel, together as always. Savel appeared flushed, as if tipsy. He seemed cheerier than usual, with a smile on his face and bright red cheeks. It was most likely late on the station, and Savel had returned from a party.

  Tover sat up slowly from his mattress. He couldn’t recall how long ago it had returned. Since he had abandoned hope, he’d truly lost track of time. The length of his facial hair suggested weeks of incarceration, but he couldn’t be sure. He might have shaved—he’d not been paying attention.

  He stared blankly at his captors. Without a word he placed his hands behind his back and let Cherko cuff his wrists together.

  Cherko helped him stand. Something had happened to his hip during his last futile attempt at rebellion. He shuffled stiffly out of the cell with Cherko’s assistance, not saying a word, even though Savel chatted as though they were associates.

  “I got a crazy deal this evening from a real asshole!” Savel chuckled to himself. As they headed down to the cargo bay, Tover didn’t bother reciting his litany of birds anymore. “The prick is from Carida, like your friends.”

  Tover barely listened. He watched his bare feet stumble along the grates of the hallway. A light emanated from one of the floors below. He tried to pinpoint the source.

  “…and the guy was raving drunk, like they all are. Fucking bug lungs.”

  Savel smirked. “It’s the CO2, you know. Fucks with their head. I don’t care how many generations they’ve been breathing that shit. Never trust a Caridan. It’s what my grandfather taught me.”

  Tover didn’t respond. He waited while Cherko pressed the elevator call button. They entered the elevator, Savel still talking.

  “Cherko, you see that prick?”

  “I saw him, boss. Fucking douchebag.”

  “Well, we’re laughing, he’s not.”

  “Can’t laugh. Mouth full of respirator.”

  Savel seemed to think this was pretty funny and hit Cherko on the shoulder, hard.

  “They’ll get what’s coming to them,” Savel said. “You hear that, Navigator? Your revenge will be sweet. Those fucking bug lungs are doomed. Harmony’s transferring parts of their terraformer to the surface this year. One flick of a switch, and the whole population is dead.”

  Tover wasn’t convinced this accurately described the situation. He was pretty sure he had heard something about a reservation being built for the original carbon-dioxide-breathing inhabitants of the planet. But then again, he hadn’t been paying that close attention.

  And that was another life. A life where things like that were vaguely interesting. Here, all that mattered was that the elevator stopped moving, and he had to walk to the console.

  He shuffled forward, eyes down. It was all routine. An aspect to the mundane nature of this work felt disturbingly similar to his old life. Here, he was led down to the navport, forced to jump goods, and taken back to his cell with a pat on the head. Back home, he was escorted to his navport, given a round of applause, and escorted back to his own suites.

  He had to force himself to remember the differences between creating orbifolds on DK Station and creating them under the threat of torture were vast.

  Once they reached the navport, Tover didn’t need to be told what to do anymore. He didn’t wait for Cherko to uncuff his hands. Tover collapsed to his knees. Cherko uncuffed him, and Tover willingly slid his arms into the restraints, wincing in pain. The restraints automatically closed, and his stomach flipped in nausea and fear. He hated doing this. The navigational console, helmet and chair had been the tools of his trade for years. Now they represented his torment, restraining him, invading his body. He began to count, a steady rhythm to fight back the nausea. One, two, three, four…

  “Once the bitches get here, I want you to give them to Marco,” Savel said. He marched off.

  Bitches? Tover felt sudden dread.

  Cherko pulled down the helmet.

  Tover didn’t bother looking at the coordinates. He knew all of Savel’s storage locations by heart. Cherko pushed the helmet on and locked the chin strap.

  Almost instantly the pipe was shoved down his throat, and Tover gagged against the wire. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one… He tried to count but it did no good, and he threw up again, Cherko pulling the helmet from him in the nick of time.

  Cherko clicked his tongue angrily. “This is getting to be a habit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tover choked. He started to cry.

  “Don’t be a fucking pussy, just do your job!” Cherko shouted.

  Tover braced himself for the helmet again, but both he and Cherko were distracted by a female scream.

  Tover looked over to the pallets and gasped.

  Five women were shoved at gunpoint into the amplification area.

  Women was too generous a term. They were very young, one girl hardly a teenager. They were clearly in distress. Their clothes were cheap and provocative, and their hands were cuffed behind their backs. All of them wore breath clips, suggesting they too were Caridans, from the same planet as the man who had sold them to Cherko. One of the smugglers Tover particularly despised stood guard outside the perimeter of the orbifold amplification zone, with a machine gun aimed with obvious intent.

  Several of the women sobbed behind their gags, but the silent one made eye contact with Tover. Her glare shot a bolt through his heart.

  There was no way he could do this.

  They seemed to be in the same boat as him. And this didn’t entail contraband weaponry to a storage bin on a distant satellite. These were people, and if he was supposed to move them to Marco, he knew enough now about Savel and his associates that their lives would be brief and tormented.

  Savel didn’t reappear for several minutes, which was unusual. Tover could hear his voice, shouting at someone in the long corridor leading to the cockpit. This was what happened when Savel got drunk. He made hideous deals, and Tover had to suffer the consequence.

  Tover began to tremble. Oh God, he thought. I can’t help these bastards hurt them…

  Then he thought, what choice did he have? The memory of being trapped in that bone knitter washed through his body like a physical pain. His muscles began to clench in terrified anticipation of the repercussions of failure. If he didn’t jump these women, he would suffer worse than before.

  Tover began to breathe rapidly. He rested his head against his outstretched arms, thinking desperately. What the fuck was he going to do?

  “Tover.”

  A rough slap against the side of his head jerked him upright. Savel’s expression was furious.

  “Get them out of my sight before I fucking kill them.” Savel glared at the woman in the center, the one who had made eye contact with Tover. She was beautiful, her dark hair loose and wild. But at the moment she looked capable of murdering all the men in the room with her eyes alone.

  “Give them to Marco on Jagarbaz Station,” Savel repeated. The only other sound was one of the women sobbing against her gag.

  Tover almost sobbed himself. He knew what was about to happen to him. But he would never be able to look himself in the mirror again if he contributed to these women’s torture.

  He held his tears in, not wanting the other prisoners to see him weak. As he thought this he almost laughed. How absurd that his pride would return now, in the face of such a horrible situation.

  Cherko grabbed the helmet. Tover shook his head. “No.”

  His entire body tensed, ready for the attack against him. The silence stretched. Savel pulled the wire around Tover’s neck tighter, choking him.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Savel hissed. “Fucking jump them!”

  Tover gagged, but shook his head.

  Savel held up his fist to Tover’s face, his eyes red-rimm
ed. “You really. Do not. Want to piss me off. Not tonight.”

  “Just let them go,” Tover whispered.

  Savel’s fist hovered there for a moment. He let out a loud sigh. He reached under the console and pulled out his metal pipe. Nausea swelled through Tover.

  “Stretch out his legs this time,” Savel said.

  White fear blinded Tover. “No! Please, no, not my legs!”

  Tover shrieked as Savel smashed his knee, hard enough that it splintered like balsa wood. The pain knocked him out. He sputtered back to consciousness soon afterward, soaking wet. Someone had stripped him, doused him with water to awaken him. Savel waited until Tover regained consciousness before assaulting his right leg.

  The beating was worse than before. A heavy blow just above the restraints broke his barely healed left wrist. Cherko smashed the butt of his gun hard across the bridge of his nose, and he thought he would pass out again. A hard kick snapped something in his chest, and pressure and pain exploded through his body.

  Even the bone knitter hadn’t been this bad. Trapped on the console, Tover writhed as Savel yelled profanities and told Tover to complete the orbifold. He could hear the women screaming on the pallets, and he tried to look up, make eye contact, strengthen his resolve. But Savel’s pipe smashed against his left eye and everything went completely dark.

  An explosion sounded somewhere, but Tover couldn’t see. The implants in his ears shot pain through his head at the volume of the explosion. Someone hit his exposed groin and he choked on a sob.

  Off in the distance he heard a cry for help.

  “Fuck,” he heard Savel curse. “Come on!” Savel took off with a roar. Flashes of brilliant pain became one overwhelming flame in Tover’s body.

  He heard gunfire. Someone in the room screamed, and there was the sound of something large and heavy falling. But none of it mattered. His eye was swelling shut, the sound was overwhelming his senses, and his body hurt so badly he only hoped whatever exploded around them would take him out quickly.

  More gunfire sounded from close by. A voice in the room shouted, “Get out of here!”

  Tover’s left eye was too swollen to see out of, so he turned his head slightly, and out of his right eye saw two armed men in fatigues approach the amplification zone. They removed the restraints on the female hostages, and a small sense of relief broke through Tover’s all-encompassing pain. At least his resistance had bought their rescue, if not his own.

  The woman who had made eye contact pointed toward Tover as soon as her hands were free, and the soldier turned. He actually jerked back as if in shock, then said something to his companion. The other soldier led the women free, gun aimed ahead of him.

  Tover lowered his head, the pain too great to do anything but curl in on himself.

  “You!” a voice shouted, very close. The voice sounded furious. “Release his restraints!”

  There was a hesitation. Tover opened his right eye again. One of the smugglers stood with his hands out, looking ready to piss himself.

  “Release his fucking restraints!”

  Another pause, then a thermal gun fired and the smuggler’s face burst apart from the heated ray. The soldier moved closer, and Tover turned his head to see the last person he ever expected.

  Cruz Arcadio glared down at him, half a dozen guns strapped to his chest, holding a machine gun pointed at Dirtbag.

  “You okay?” Cruz asked Tover.

  Tover spat blood in Cruz’s face.

  Chapter Five

  “You!”

  Tover’s voice was ruined, throat chopped to ribbons. He tried to pull away but the restraints held him captive.

  Cruz motioned Dirtbag toward the navport console with the barrel of his gun. Cruz wiped Tover’s bloody spit off his cheek. “Release his restraints you goddamn son of a bitch!”

  Dirtbag struggled with the old, rusted switch. Tover spotted Cherko lying on the floor, his head melted and bubbling in a pool of his own blood.

  The restraints unlocked and Tover collapsed. His vision wavered, nausea rolled through him. He nearly blacked out from the pain in his legs. He tried to shift around on his elbows to ease the weight, but his broken ribs made every movement excruciating.

  Cruz looked down at Tover, his face uncharacteristically showing emotion: fury.

  Tover imagined what he must look like. Naked, pitiful, broken. Bruised, bleeding and filthy. No part of his dignity left. Cruz stared at him with an expression of clear horror.

  Without warning Cruz swiveled and shot Dirtbag point blank in the head. Dirtbag collapsed backward.

  Tover couldn’t get up from the ground. He hoped the prisoners had been freed.

  Cruz spotted something down the corridor and took off at a run. Tover tried to crawl toward the pallets but he couldn’t. His body disobeyed him, so he lay there, trying to think beyond his pain.

  Cruz returned with one of the other Pulmon Verde, who dragged Savel by the cuff of his shirt. The terrorist threw Savel to the ground.

  Savel’s fury was palpable. Cruz growled and kicked Savel in the head. Savel toppled over, and Tover saw Savel’s hands were tied behind his back with the same type of wire tied around his own throat.

  Cruz pointed toward Savel with his gun. “This guy. He do this to you?” He nodded to Tover’s face.

  Tover stared at Cruz, not understanding.

  Cruz repeated the question. “Did this fucking bastard beat you?”

  Tover’s face crumpled.

  Cruz unholstered a thermal pistol and handed it to Tover.

  “Kill him.”

  Tover’s right hand shook as he held the pistol. He turned it on Cruz. He wanted to shoot Cruz so badly he could taste it. How many weeks, imagining this, to see Cruz here, through the sights of a weapon?

  Cruz’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t move.

  The other terrorist pointed his gun at Tover. “You shoot him, I shoot you, and you lose your chance out of here.”

  Tover couldn’t understand why the Pulmon Verde were helping him now, after all this time, but Tover knew the bastard was right. He had no idea what Cruz’s plan was, but he had shot to death all but one of Tover’s tormentors. If Tover wanted out, he’d have to go with Cruz.

  Savel tried to sit up but Cruz was fast, grabbing Savel by the back of his neck and slamming his head against the floor grates.

  “Shoot him, or else I will!” Cruz shouted at Tover.

  Tover pulled the trigger. The gun roared and heat blasted through it as he shot explosive energy into Savel’s chest. Savel cried out and collapsed, the smell of burning flesh and boiling blood filling the air.

  Tover shot him again. A rush of adrenaline flooded him, nearly blocking out his pain, and it sickened him to think how good it felt, to kill this man.

  When he had sapped the energy from the charger, Cruz grabbed the gun from Tover’s hand. He adjusted his respirator, then reached down and grabbed Tover’s uninjured arm, swinging him over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. Tover cried out in pain, and his vision did blacken then, every part of his body screaming in agony.

  “Get the loading bay door open,” Cruz barked at the other terrorist. The man nodded and took off at a sprint.

  Cruz carried Tover through the cockpit and into the elevator. The entire ship hummed, vibrating as if about to explode. They exited on the top corridor, and Tover saw the occasional form of a slumped body, the littered remains of the Jarrow crew.

  “I can’t remember. How tall are you?” Cruz asked gruffly. “One eighty? One ninety?”

  Tover didn’t understand.

  “How tall?” Cruz asked.

  “One eighty-five,” Tover croaked, his voice a raspy, broken thing.

  Shots rang down the hall, and Cruz jerked backward behind a bulwark. The movement shocked pain through Tover’s legs, and he had to clenc
h his teeth from crying out. He felt Cruz reach to his belt, felt as he returned fire, something powerful judging by the violent recoil. Cruz groaned and leaned against the wall for a moment before returned fire. As soon as the firing stopped, they proceeded down the narrow hallway.

  As they walked through the ship, Cruz leaned down and examined the dead as they walked past. At one of the bodies, he stopped abruptly and slowly lowered Tover to the ground beside the corpse. He winced as he moved, as if injured, but Tover couldn’t care. Tover nearly passed out simply from being lowered.

  Tover didn’t recognize the dead man, so it must have been one of the smugglers not working directly under Savel. Tover wondered how many men the Pulmon Verde had killed breaking into The Baroque.

  Cruz ripped off the dead man’s shoes and unbuttoned his pants. Tover watched him, understanding dawning.

  “Legs…broken,” he mumbled.

  “You have two choices,” Cruz said, voice calm despite the wild, furious look in his eyes. “You can get on board a public freighter naked, with your dick hanging out for everyone to see, or you can endure three minutes of pain and let me pull trousers over your legs.”

  Tover glanced down at his ruined body. His legs looked like they had been mangled in heavy machinery. He nodded.

  Cruz expertly yanked the dark uniform off the Jarrow smuggler. He grabbed Tover’s right leg.

  Tover looked away but the pain blinded him anyway. He writhed on the ground. His mind filled with blinding, nauseating darkness, and he lost consciousness.

  Pulsing.

  The sound of the engine was rhythmic and close by. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. It trembled through Tover’s body like an alien heartbeat. Its tempo clashed with the pulsing of Tover’s own nerves.

  Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.

  The noise overwhelmed his senses. Even with his heightened sensitivity, years of technological advances should have muted the noise. Tover had never heard anything so deafening in his life.

  He stirred. Pain forced him to still. His pain felt distant, suggesting he’d been drugged. But every movement burst the bubble of protection the narcotics gave him, and he gasped with the agony of his broken ribs and opened his eyes.