Page 6 of Savage Union (Brutal Universe #2)

5

JESSINA

T he Space Port was crowded. Up and down the vast corridors there were vendors with carts and stalls—the curving walls echoed with the sounds of them hawking their wares. Crowds of people were walking swiftly in every direction with their luggage, clearly intent on getting to the right gate in time.

A thousand scents assaulted my nose—sweet spice from the roasted jaka nuts in the stall beside me mixed with the exotic pritha bone perfumes of a vendor to my left. At the same time I smelled the sharp bite of frillian mustard to slather on the fatty huat sausages as thick as my forearm coming from a food cart, which was wheeling slowly through the crowd. And of course, the stink of a thousand people of all races and species from the Imperium Galaxy was also thick in the air.

I saw a group of pink-skinned Jacobians rushing past, twittering in their bird-like language, their long yellow beaks clacking in agitation as they hurried to make their flight. I stepped out of their way only to be elbowed rudely by a Kanth three times my size who snarled,

“Watch where you’re goin’ boy!” before lumbering away, his trunk swinging.

Well, at least my disguise was working.

You may be wondering how I planned to get aboard The Illyrian in the first place. I certainly wasn’t going to go to Turk and let him know who I was—he would send me back to Slade and then I’d be right back at my father’s mansion under house arrest until my Binding Ceremony with the horrible Grr. Malofice.

No thank you.

I wasn’t going to tell anyone who I really was—my Synth implant should keep me safe as long as I was careful. I fully intended to stay undercover the whole time I was aboard The Illyrian.

But even though I knew I couldn’t reveal myself, I longed to be near my Fated Mate. That was the reason I had chosen The Illyrian over any other random ship. Also, I knew that Turk’s ship was headed for the Triplex Cluster—a trio of planets in the Wing Galaxy which was a place I knew well. At least in theory—I had visited it in the simulator many, many times and I had memorized the star maps.

And that was how I intended to get hired on board The Illyrian, even though nobody knew who I was. I had a skill—one that almost no one knew about.

I could navigate a star ship.

Not just galactic navigation—that’s nothing. You just use Space Gates, which are like man-made tunnels bored through the fabric of Space-Time to jump from place to place within the galaxy. That’s easy.

What’s really difficult is Cross-Dimensional Navigation—which is what you use when you’re traveling to other galaxies in the universe and there are no Space Gates to use.

Cross-Dimensional Navigation isn’t so much a skill as a talent you’re born with. I didn’t realize I had it until I took some piloting lessons along with Slade when I was younger. My father didn’t want to let me take the lessons, of course—he pointed out that as a Clan Princess, I would always have someone to fly me anywhere I wanted to go. But Slade stuck up for me.

“What harm can it do to let her try, Sire?” he’d said to our father. “She’s a female—she’ll get bored with it after a lesson or two.”

If that sounds horribly misogynistic, well it was—but on purpose. Slade has always known how to get my father to agree to things and he knew my Sire would let me go with him if he thought I was just being a silly girl who wanted to do everything her big brother did.

I didn’t take offense because I knew that wasn’t how Slade really felt about me. He’s always encouraged me to try and achieve whatever I want. And so it was, that I got to tag along with him to his piloting lessons.

I learned quickly—more quickly than Slade, even—which impressed and surprised the instructor. He told me later that he’d never had a faster pupil and asked me if I wanted to learn even more.

I came in on my own time, without Slade, to see what he was talking about. My near disaster at a club when I was younger made me cautious though—I brought a stinger-pen with me. It’s a tiny self-defense device that looked like a writing instrument but delivers a stinging shock that will make any attacker think twice before trying anything.

However my instructor, Grr. Horstauf, was a kind old man who, thank the Goddess of Four Faces, didn’t try anything. He was genuinely interested in my piloting ability.

“Here—try this on,” he said to me once we were in the flight simulator set up in his office. He handed me an adjustable silver circlet with various lights and sensors set in it.

“What is it?” I asked, taking the circlet from him and turning it over in my hands.

“A navigator’s helmet—sometimes called a ‘nav band,’” he told me. “Put it on and tell me what you see.”

I carefully placed the circlet on my head and Grr. Horstauf adjusted it so that the cool metal touched my temples. A moment later, a field of stars appeared in front of me.

“Oh!” I stared in surprise at the sparkling image. There was a huge swirl of stars and planets like an enormous, shiny disk spinning right before my eyes. “It looks like a galaxy,” I said to Grr. Horstauf.

“It is— our galaxy. The Imperium galaxy is vast—two-hundred thousand light years across,” he told me. “You’re looking at the macro view. I want you to concentrate and try to bring it closer in. Narrow your field of view and play close attention to the Star Gates—they’ll appear as burning blue spots surrounded by a golden halo.”

I did as he said, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how I did it. It was easy though—I just told myself I wanted to see a more close up view of a certain part of the galaxy and the view automatically narrowed. Soon I was staring at one of our local Space Gates—I recognized it by the structures around it.

“Okay—got it,” I told my instructor.

Grr. Horstauf frowned.

“Already?”

“See for yourself. Er—can you?” I asked.

He nodded and plucked the nav helmet from my head and put it on his own.

“Why, that’s our closest Space Gate!” he said. He sounded surprised.

“Yes—is that okay?” I asked anxiously. “You said to bring it in close and concentrate on the Space Gates, so I just…”

I trailed off because he was already putting the band back on my head.

“Plot a course from this Space Gate to one across the Galaxy—in the Fourth Quadrant,” he commanded.

I concentrated, picturing the jump from one gate to the next.

“Which gate do you want?” I asked him. “The Fourth Quadrant has seventeen…no, eighteen of them,” I amended as I counted.

“Remarkable,” I heard him mutter. “Take the one closest to Hyfrx Four—that’s a silver planet with four moons in the upper right sector of the quadrant,” he ordered.

I did as he said and the simulation automatically transported us through the simulated Space Gate. Soon the simulator’s viewscreen was showing a silver planet with four moons orbiting it.

“Excellent!” Grr. Horstauf seemed really pleased. “Now let’s try something even more challenging.”

So far nothing he’d asked me to do had been difficult at all, so I wasn’t sure what he meant by “more challenging.” However, I was willing to learn anything he would teach me.

“We’re going to try some extra-galactic navigation now—we call it Cross-Dimensional Navigation,” he told me. “There are no Space Gates outside the Imperium Galaxy, so you’ll have to use semi-stable worm holes instead. The holes often shift positions so using the right one can be challenging even for a seasoned navigator.”

I had never flown through a worm hole and said so. My teacher nodded.

“Not many have—it’s quite an experience, I can tell you. But it’s very important when you navigate between wormholes that you watch out for dangerous cosmic phenomena along the way. For instance, you don’t want to take a worm hole that spits you out in the vicinity of a quasar or directly in the event horizon of a black hole, right?”

“Your ship would be torn to shreds,” I said, seeing what he meant. “Or else everyone aboard would get massive, lethal doses of radiation.”

“Exactly, my dear. So now I want you to expand your vision—make our own galaxy smaller and look for worm holes. Each one has a unique color that corresponds to the exit of that same hole. The entrance—the side closer to us— will be brighter. Plot me a course to the Terebethian Galaxy—it’s shaped like a disk and it has a red center—and watch out for any dangerous exits,” he told me.

I expanded the map the nav helmet allowed me to see and soon I saw multiple glowing lights littered all over the cosmic field. As Grr. Horstauf had told me, each worm hole had an exit which was the same color but a bit dimmer than the entrance.

Soon I saw the galaxy he wanted me to plot a course to. I chose the worm holes I would use carefully, avoiding a black hole—which was tricky to see—and a neutron star which was sitting outside the exit of one of the worm holes. Even though it was no bigger than a small moon, it would have grabbed any ship that came too close in its massive gravity field and crushed it like an empty drink can.

I drew the lines with my mind and they hovered on the map, showing the rout I had plotted. As soon as I was finished, I plucked the nav band off my head and handed it to my teacher.

Grr. Horstauf studied my route and nodded.

“Amazing!” I heard him mutter. “Not a single blind spot.”

“Blind spot?” I asked, frowning.

He took off the band and turned to me.

“Many—well, most navigators—have what we call ‘blind spots.’ That is, they have a difficult time seeing some of the dangers lurking at the exits of the various worm holes. That neutron star you avoided gets almost every Cross-Dimensional Nav student I’ve ever taught—their brain just doesn’t see it. They must be trained through hours of laborious study to catch sight of the danger. But you—you saw it right away.”

“It was obvious.” I shrugged. “Can I try again with something harder this time?”

But though it felt easy and natural to me, it turned out that I had a rare talent. A Cross-Dimensional Navigator with no blind spots was so unique my instructor told me he’d only ever heard of one before, somewhere in the Third Quadrant.

He was so excited about my abilities—even though both of us knew I’d never get to use them—that he had me practicing over and over. I memorized hundreds of star charts and galaxy maps and learned all the inter-galactic markers to look for. I was a prodigy—though of course it didn’t do me any good.

I was proud of my unique talent of course, but I had to keep it a secret, even from Slade and especially from our Sire. My father wouldn’t have liked it if he knew what I could do. It wasn’t proper for a Clan Princess to learn a trade—not even a purely mental one like Cross-Dimensional Navigation. So nobody knew I was able to navigate all around the known universe except me and my instructor. And of course, I had never expected to use my skill.

Until now.

Now I was going to use my talent to get the hell away from the Imperium Galaxy and the odious Grr. Malofice who Lyrah wanted me to marry. And luckily, I just happened to know of a ship that was leaving the galaxy for an extra-galactic trip—one that needed a new navigator.

The Illyrian—Turk’s ship.

I knew they needed a new navigator because I’d heard Turk telling my brother how his whole crew had nearly been killed by a brown dwarf star due to navigational errors made by his old navvie.

I intended to be the new one.

I checked the departure boards at the next intersection and saw The Illyrian was docked in Berth Alpha-Quadrex 17. I headed there, hoping I would be just in time to “introduce” myself and audition for the open navvie position.

I was determined to get aboard the Illyrian, no matter what I had to do.