Page 15 of Savage Union

“I can prove my claim,” he said, lifting his chin. “Ask me to plot a course to anywhere—I can do it.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll try you both. Who wants to go first?”

“I do!” The boy’s hand shot up, as though we were in school. I couldn’t help thinking that it probably wasn’t long since he had been a pupil. He was clearly of age—but only just barely. Why, he still didn’t even have the faintest trace of whiskers on his chin—his skin looked a smooth and soft as a baby’s.

“Fine, you can go first,” I said to him.

“No—Ishould go first,” Gurflug demanded. “I am the senior navigator here!”

And without further ado, he wedged himself into the padded nav chair and grabbed the navigator’s helmet. He adjusted the silver band rapidly and then shoved it down over his temples and closed his eyes in concentration.

I don’t usually tolerate a subversion of my orders, but the big bastard wasn’t under my control…yet.

“All right,” I said, grimly holding on to my temper. “Plot me a course to the Triplex Cluster—that’s where we’re going.”

We watched on the viewscreen as a star map appeared along with the wormholes all marked in different hues. The distortion around them was strong—they looked like blurs of indistinct color to me. The colors ran and bled because of the distortion field, hiding any possible pitfalls or dangers in the direct vicinity of the wormhole entrances and exits.

But despite the fact that the wormholes were nothing but smears of color on the screen, it was clear that Gurflug knew what he was doing.

In just ten minutes, he had plotted a route with only seven jumps that got us from the Imperium Galaxy to the outer edge Triplex Cluster. I had to admit—I was impressed.

When he was finished, the big Galafruxian took off the nav band and looked at me triumphantly.

“There! Let’s see the little snot beat that!” he declared.

“First we have to check your route,” I reminded him.

He looked affronted.

“You presume to check my navigation?”

“Of course I do,” I growled, nearly losing my temper. “That’s what we’re fucking here for. Agatha,” I said, raising my voice to speak to the AI that ran most of The Illyrian’s computer functions. “Use the Imperium Verifier and check the route.”

The Verifier was like the central nervous system of our home galaxy—it was good for all kinds of functions but we used it most for checking Cross Dimensional Routes.

Unfortunately, when you left the edge of the Imperium Galaxy, you lost access to the Verifier. Which was why it was so vitally important to have a navigator you could trust. Once you crossed over into extra-galactic space, you were on your own and you had to trust your navvie implicitly.

“Acknowledged, Captain,” Agatha murmured in her low, feminine voice.

I’d had her programmed as a female on purpose. Sometimes on these long, interstellar voyages a man got lonely. Of course, in almost every port you visit you can find companionship, but I tended to avoid it for the most part. There are enough horrible venereal diseases out there to fill up a whole database of medical texts—I prefer not to catch them if I can help it.

We waited another few minutes for the route to go through the Verifier and then Agatha announced,

“Verification report complete. Verdict—pass. Rating on a scale of one to five—four stars.”

“What? Only a four? That’s ridiculous!” Gurflug burbled. “What justification can you give for such a low rating for my route?”

“Agatha? Justification?” I asked, frowning.

“Stage three of the proposed route takes us very close to an asteroid field, Captain,” the AI said calmly. “There is only a fifteen percent chance that it would become a problem for us, but the chance of a collision with a stray asteroid is not non-zero.”

“Ridiculous!” Gurflug declared again, crossing his slab-like arms over his beefy chest. “I haveneverplotted a course that would put a ship in danger—never!”

“That’s not what the Verifier said,” the boy remarked, speaking up before I could answer. He turned to me. “Captain Turk, let me have a try. I can get you to the Triplex Cluster in five jumps with a perfect five-star rating—I promise.”

“Impossible!” Gurflug blustered. “Such a thing is simply not possible!”

“Not if you have blind spots,” the boy said, smirking a little. He turned to me. “He’s skipping possible routes because he can’t tell if there’s a problem through the distortion field or not. I can do better—let me try.”

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