“So the idea is to get the koobs in the Soob fighting with the zhee?”
Nilo nods. “More or less.”
“Seems like they’d just disavow, doesn’t it? Like, call it an extremist group, make some reparations—let the zhee get their vengeance on the tribes out here?”
Nilo is resting his chin on his hand, index finger pressed against his cheek. He arches an eyebrow and points his finger, ceding the point. “Probably. But I have a man in the city who will make sure that’s not the way it happens.”
I nod. That’s good enough for me. Another yawn takes hold of me.
“You’re tired,” Nilo says, leaning forward. “And the particulars of this operation and its fallout aren’t what I wanted to talk with you about, Carter. Those are the details. And detail-oriented people are overseeing it.”
“What did you want to talk about, then?” I ask, killing another yawn.
“The big picture. What’s on the horizon.”
That’s a loaded topic. Legion Commander Chhun is rebuilding the Legion under a program designed to make it Savage-ready. The galaxy is trying to figure out what the Republic 2.0 should look like after Article Nineteen… like where the capital should be. A few of the old coalitions are talking about forming up from the pre-Savage Wars days. In short the galaxy is in not-quite turmoil. Only the lack of will and the fatigue of everything that happened seems to have kept things from going the way of open warfare. Except on Kublar, I guess.
I shake my head. “I don’t know where to begin when it comes to that.”
“I do.” Nilo leans forward, bridging the gap between our seats, inviting me to come closer.
Leaning forward so our heads are just a couple of feet apart, I can see something like excitement in Nilo’s eyes, though his voice is calm and quiet when he speaks.
“How much did you ever know about Goth Sullus?”
BOWIE
THE SOOB
17
Jack Bowie’s comm pulsed on a soft burble of a delicate chime. A soft alert so low most people would never notice it, even in a quiet room. Here, in this hotel room, a luxurious suite at the Grand Intergalactic, that soft burble of a chime almost went unnoticed. Bowie lay there in the darkness, the Tennar twined about his body. Her slender tentacles gripped him lovingly, even in sleep.
They’d each almost been killed in the mad rush to flee the party after the zhee headman had been hit deep within the garden sanctum. She’d had no idea Jack Bowie, late of Repub Naval Intel and now a freelancer in the world of dirty deeds done not cheaply, had been the hitter.
The beautiful and highly prized Tennar courtesan had just been grateful some handsome stranger pulled her out of that party the moment heavily armed quick reaction teams swarmed the chaos to secure other high value guests and find the assassin. Bowie, smiling his devil-may-care smile and plucking up a bottle of the host’s finest out of a sterling silver urn of cracked ice, had merely arched an eyebrow at the devastatingly beautiful young alien to indicate she should come with him. Now.
She had no idea how he’d jacked a luxury sports sled with just a card swipe. She had no idea who he was, or what he’d done.
She had no idea…
Or so you think, Jack, he told himself as he lay there, almost a part of her, his mind trying to surface though the haze of her exotic beauty. Entrapped in her arms. Skin, burnt orange, and other charms…
Delicate eyelids fluttering and hiding her large otherworldly aquamarine eyes.
He was trying to think of how much she really knew. Going over next steps by recounting his plays thus far. He’d grabbed her because she was good cover to exit the area. Just two more beautiful and rich guests leaving the chaotic aftermath of a political assassination. A successful businessman and his escort.
Of course.
Because when you were a Tennar female with that highly prized orange skin the entire galaxy’s assembly of flesh peddlers held in high regard, a rare genetic variant in the species, all anyone ever saw when they looked at you was “escort.”
And a pricey one at that. So of course the man with her has to be rich. And therefore he’s one of the ones that needs to be protected, think the swarming security teams. He’s one of the sheep.
And definitely not the wolf.
So how much does she know? Bowie asked himself as he lay there thinking, and then realized his comm device was signaling him that a very important call was coming in.
He slithered away from her, tentacles caressing him as he pulled to the side of the bed, leaving small thrills of electricity in their wake across his muscled and lean body. Jack grabbed the chiming device and went into the marble homage to grand structure that was the suite’s bathroom.
Kodorian tub. Penthaar volcanic tile sauna. An array of chilled sipping liqueurs, aphrolilacs, and various scented soaps and skin oils. Nothing cheap.
Everything was on “Team Nilo” for the night, or so he’d been informed by message after the hit. So, Jack Bowie had spared no expense.
His contact indicated that the Grand Intergalactic was his “Safe House” after the audition hit. The working interview.
On the way there he’d dumped the getaway sled in the lowest end of the recently built Grand Intergalactic’s garage, paying the valet to go ahead and lose it. Then he hit the bar and finally the room. The beautiful Tennar in the party dress clung to him like she was afraid of everything in the world.
She told him she was new to Kublar. New to the escort business. Yesterday had been her first official gig. And now she thought she was in some kind of trouble.
She probably was, reasoned Bowie. And she was probably lying. Especially about the “first gig” part. They always said that. Always.
In the bathroom he sat down on the cool toilet, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the comm device. They’d drunk a lot of Arcturan ice whiskey—neat. Knowing they were heading to the same room that night. Her telling them both that she, not he, needed to be held after everything that had happened. Needing to know that she wasn’t going to die in a blaster shootout. Needing to feel alive, even if it was just a lie, for a few hours. Even if it was just with a handsome stranger who might be dangerous.
So they had.
Even here, in the marble monstrosity of a bathroom, her scent was all over him. She’d given him everything she had to offer. Desperately so.
He answered the comm.
“Lobby bar in thirty minutes.”
Before he could acknowledge he would show, the call went dead and Bowie sat there for a moment. Letting the scent of her fade from his skin and sore muscles. Forcing her from his mind.
He was back on mission. Rest time over.
This was what he was here for.
He showered and dressed, then left the suite, glancing back at her once more. She was lying on her stomach and what was visible of her perfect body was enough to make him question whether the wealth he was being promised was worth it. Staying here with her had cost some rich men upwards of small planetary economies. But those were rich men with credits to burn. And burn. And keep on burning.
And he was only an ex-naval intel officer hung out to dry in the aftermath of the collapse of the Republic.
“It’s just hormones,” Jack Bowie muttered and made for the door to the suite, leaving her to her Tennar dreams of distant warm oceans and the songs of unknown creatures down in the deeps. Calling to one another among the vibrant coral. Listening to the music of those places.
The lobby of the Grand Intergalactic is the opposite of nearly everything else on Kublar, even in Soob City. Though it is not the actual heart of the unofficial Green Zone of the New Kublar, post its battles with the Legion and civil war, it is the emotional and probably real beating heart of the new boomtown economy that’s in the making. The lobby of the Intergalactic is as grand as the suite’s bathroom. Luxury and opulence compete w
ith the beauty of the ladies and escorts coming and going, and the finely cut suits of the new commercial class that has so recently found Kublar, and especially Soob City, interesting for no reason anyone can quite put a finger on at this moment.
Words like “growth” and “potential” are thrown around as are “deal” and “development costs.” But the prevalent feeling is more poker game than startup. Everyone’s holding cards and no one’s showing just yet. There’s something there. But no one really knows what, or they’re not saying. Everyone may be bluffing. That’s happened before. Fortunes have been won and lost on dead worlds out along the edge that were supposed to become the center of galactic commerce. But when galactic fortunes are to be made, it pays to sit down and play even if there’s nothing in the pot. Yet. And so everyone has come to the Grand Intergalactic to see and be seen. To get their cards and play their hands.
Jack Bowie met his contact by prearranged signal in the lobby bar. An ornate teak and marble affair accented by artistic renditions of ancient Kublaren tribal masks and a Utopion show-worthy display of Granadian tequilas.
It’s all very colonial, but new, and uber chic. That’s how you let people know they’ve arrived at the place where deals are made. Where the wealth is traded and acquired along with a couple of million souls.
The Team Nilo contact is someone familiar. Bowie crossed the crowd to reach the window table that looks out on a wide terrace gazing out across sweaty, seething Soob City at midmorning, filled with minarets and slum housing and the distant ship-hulks of the breakers district. He smiled at the man he is supposed to meet.
But it’s not a warm or friendly smile, though it’s made to seem so. Or it can be taken that way. No, the smile is there to cover the realization that could have crossed Bowie’s face when he calculated how much deep sket he currently was in.
Reiser.
Reiser is the contact. Reiser is working for Team Nilo. So things just got a whole lot murkier.
Whenever Reiser is involved… voodoo black magic intel is going to get weird. Bowie had crossed paths with the man back in Naval Intel when they’d worked an op, kicked over a rock and found Nether Ops hiding underneath and up to no good, as usual.
Reiser is who Bowie’s smiling at. And who Bowie’s contact is today. He slid into the chair, and a waiter from some edge world looking to make a killing in hospitality is there lickety-split with fresh kaff in a silver and bone china service so hot the steam rises from the delicate cup.
It’s aromatic and fresh. Probably Kandarian Red Mountain. The most expensive in the galaxy.
“So you’re working for him?” asks Bowie cutting to the chase and forgetting deft formalities. The left unsaid identifier of “him” clearly indicates Nilo of Team Nilo.
Best to get these things out of the way upfront and try to figure out who’s playing for whom, when really everyone knows everyone’s only playing for themselves. No one in this line of work is a true believer. Maybe a fool. But never a true believer.
That’s the worst kind of fool to be.
Or at least, the worst kind still living on the other side of an op. Rumor was the last true believer got croaked during the end of the Savage Wars. But no one misses that old fraud except the other old frauds who’d spent their best years getting legionnaires killed and navy ships shot to pieces or occasionally outright blown to kingdom come like the destroyer Chiasm.
“Yeah,” says Reiser. “We all are, Bowie. We’re all working for him now.”
Bowie stares at the man he knows as “Reiser” for a long moment, looks away and seems to come to some agreement with himself about what needs to happen next. Whatever it is, it remains hidden behind sunglasses. But so does whatever crosses Reiser’s mind in that brief interval of measuring.
“This isn’t Nether Ops?” asks, no, demands Bowie.
“Damn, Jack, you always were a ball buster. Just start swearing like an engineering chief on an old Vindicator-class destroyer and straight invoke all the devils of the Nether, why don’t you. Ain’t you worried one of them might appear right here and swallow all our souls, Jack? Words like Nether Ops ain’t s’posed to be used in polite company, or classy places like the Intergalactic.”
Reiser laughs good-naturedly and tastes his kaff.
Bowie follows suit. Then…
“I’m not kidding, Reiser. If this is Nether, then consider last night a freebie and I’m moving on. I’m dirty, but I don’t wanna get that dirty. So be straight with me—if only because of what went down on Cerdo’s Run and how much you owe. Copy?”
Reiser thought about this for a long moment as he savored the next sip of kaff. Then he sat back in his chair. He was smaller than Jack. Older by a few years and a lot of hard living. He’d probably retired out of Naval Intel. But he was still young enough to be dangerous. And the scars on his face mixed with the craggy texture gave him the appearance of a mean alcoholic.
That kind of dangerous.
“Yeah,” he said clapping his hands together suddenly and ginning up some faux enthusiasm that was little more than thinly disguised sarcasm. “Ain’t like that anymore, Jack. Nether’s dead and gone. Ain’t ya heard? Buried in a deep, dark hole no one should ever go looking in again. You got my word on that for whatever my word—yes, an ex-Nether lizard word—is worth these days. Okay. Nah, this…” He threw his hands wide to encompass the bar, and all of Kublar was caught in the implication. “This… ain’t that, Jack. This is something completely new. Something better is about to happen for everyone.”
Reiser looked around to see if any of the fine suited business types making deals for everything possible that Kublar could provide were listening in. Near the entrance to the main restaurant, a white tablecloth and sterling silver affair, an entourage of zhee, holy men and guards, entered the lobby.
“Even though,” says Reiser, looking around. Looking at the zhee as they menace those attempting to servilely placate them, leading them to a grand table set up just for their needs. “Even though it’s a world full of them little koobs… it’s the zhee that have the real power around here right now, Jack. Always is with them, on every planet. And, when you think about it, it’s hard to say why, ain’t it? I mean, what the hell do they do? They don’t work. They’re difficult and hard to get along with. They treat every other race no better than the insects you step on when you cross any third-rate alien world. You know why that is, Jack? You know why the zhee, a basically worthless species, get treated like the princes of the galactic kingdom—that is, whatever the galaxy is post-Republic? You know why that is, Jack?”
Reiser watches the man he’s been sent to meet with and feigns surprise when he gets an answer.
“Because everyone’s afraid of them,” mutters Jack Bowie, relaxed and leaned back in his chair. Both men could kill each other from a dead standstill. Reflexes, training, and weapons would barely make the difference. Both are experts. Who lived would be decided by the ephemeral lady luck. As in… who decided to move first. That was probably the only real factor that would make the decision.
Reiser smiled at Jack’s deft insight. The intent was that the smile should seem genuine. Patronizingly so. Indicating that was exactly what he was looking for. The right answer.
“Yeah, Jack. That’s right. Everyone’s afraid of ’em. You’re right about that. Solid copy.”
Then he turned back to Jack, once the zhee entourage had passed into their private lounge. Teams of red-jacketed waiters swarmed the herd with all manner of delicacies. Soon the honking-braying indicating zhee gustatory delight would commence.
Reiser turned back and leaned in confidentially.
“This is something completely new, Jack. Brand new. And for what it’s worth… I’m all in, buddy.”
“Gonna make the galaxy a better place, Reiser?” asked Bowie, barely concealing his contempt.
“Yeah. Something like that, Jack. Something like
that. But…”
“Then you’d better start with that sled full of dobie pups you blew up. Just so the packs would keep fighting each other and all those other lies you guys told that year on Psydon.”
That had been a bad incident long after the Legion’s big conflict on that world. A supposed terrorist act by one of the militant tribes that got a sled full of dobie pups blown up on their way to a Repub medical facility. In the end it came out that it was a Nether Ops play gone horribly wrong. To the intelligence community, that is.
If only everyone had found that out before the Day of Genocide and six hundred thousand dead dobies needed to be erased from the pack rolls to pay for the crime.
“Hey… I didn’t like it any more than you did. But forty years of peace after the Legion’s conflict there and it was all about to go sideways again. And in the end, whether you like it or not… bad guys got theirs. And the Legion didn’t have to go in and die for some dogs. ’Cause that’s what they are, Jack. Dogs. So there’s that. Okay, smart guy?”
Bowie stared at the man across the table for a long moment. Just to let him know he knew the score. And that he could stare at him and wasn’t afraid of him at all. In fact the look said that Jack Bowie wouldn’t mind seeing what luck had to say if the two of them decided to tangle.
Reiser leaned back and muttered a slur. A volatile man, a bull, would have demanded an answer for that insult. Jack Bowie wasn’t that. He had the patience of a spider. But he could explode when needed.
He crossed his legs and leaned back.
“So, you’re not Nether Ops anymore but the things you used to do are still okay? I got that right, Reiser?”
Reiser said nothing.
“Things are changing, Jack. You and I both know it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. So save your holier-than-thou for another time, Jack Bowie, because everyone knows what you really are, and why you’re here. Freelancer.”
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 14