Song of the Navigator by Astrid Amara Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œI 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