Tennal did regret saying that, but of all the consequences he’d experienced during his life, eight hours of grindingly dull mathematics and charts, cramped at a desk with a grumpy ranker, wasn’t the worst of them.

Istara turned out to be a loud, prickly personality who was quick to take insult but equally quick to forgive, and they didn’t seem to hold a grudge about that morning. They obviously weren’t thrilled to be landed with Tennal, but they knew their stuff. They threw a pile of basic instruction work at him, gave him a few hours to plow through it, then quizzed him mercilessly. Once they were satisfied about his fundamental physics—Tennal hadn’t had to engage his brain for a long time, but he still had one—they took him through some mocked-up interfaces on their workstation.

By hour six, Tennal’s brain was leaking out of his ears. A couple more weeks of this study program and he might be able to pilot a bathtub around a very small artificial vacuum.

Istara was apparently best friends with Basavi, the tall, quiet ranker with the impressive biceps. They spent the time in between blithely chatting—Istara was brighter and more cheerful with Basavi than anyone else, though Basavi’s answers were too low and soft for Tennal to hear. Istara broke off when they saw Tennal had finished the latest exercise.

“Done?” They slapped down a light-screen on Tennal’s desk. It lit up to show a grid of lines and colored symbols. “This is the chart of our current position.”

Tennal stared. There were hundreds of symbols, only a dozen of which he’d memorized. But it didn’t matter. As soon as he saw the chart, it made sense. Like someone had just opened a window, he felt the looming presence of chaotic space settle into those spirals and lines. He knew where every twist and distortion was on the map like each was a ridge or a dip on the back of his teeth. If he shut his eyes, he could feel a new space in his head like his vision was expanding, like his mind was leaving his body. He could see the ship as a speck of dust approaching a vast maelstrom, as if he floated in the darkness of space next to it.

So this was why a reader was useful to the pilots.

Istara was watching him. “You can feel it, huh?”

Tennal tore his attention from the map, still reeling. At the desk next to them, Basavi watched him sideways, nervously. Tennal could still feel the ghostly shape of chaotic space in his head. “Why doesn’t the army just employ readers as pilots without syncing them?”