If that was intended to hurt, it didn’t. In fact it didn’t even faze Jack Bowie. He didn’t have any illusions about his life. He’d given all that up when the 7th went boom like a firecracker at a battle he was supposed to have been at.
All the illusion, and the biggest one of all, had died that day. Best to be clear about it.
Yeah, Reiser was right. The galaxy was becoming something new. And everyone was worried about the same thing. Would the new boss be the same as the old boss?
No one knew the answer.
That was why it was the biggest question.
“So who is he?” Again the specific identifier was dropped. They both knew the “he” being referred to indicated Nilo. The problem was no one really knew “who” the “he” was. Nilo was a big mystery and if anyone knew anything hard, they weren’t saying. Just yet.
Bowie had heard recruiting was going on for something new. And if your contact info was submitted, credentials verified, then you got an audition. Whoever Nilo was, whoever his, or even her, people were, they’d been able to verify Bowie’s credentials. Which had been rated very high back in Repub Naval Intel. Need to Know. That was for sure. But someone had known. Because the audition had been tailored specifically for his skill set.
Infiltration and Termination.
Espionage, infiltration, and… his time attached to the Marine Reapers… termination. Just for the training, specifically. The shooting skills. He’d applied their teaching on behalf of Navy Intel in other situations no one was ever supposed to know about.
Except Nilo, Team Nilo, had found out. And now here he was. He’d passed the audition by killing a zhee headman inside a security cordon that was rated at the VIP executive level. No mean feat.
Enemy commanders surrounded by divisions of crack infantry were rated lower in difficulty.
“Who is he, Jack? Well, ain’t that the question on everyone’s lips,” answered Reiser. “Fingers, and even tentacles, are crawling across all the data archives trying to put the pieces together. Who is this guy who’s basically financing his own war machine on a small planet on galaxy’s edge that most people think isn’t worth the effort because of how ornery the Kublarens are. Not to mention the zhee that arrived. Interesting, huh? Who is he really? You got that right, Jack. That is the big question.”
Bowie said nothing.
“You heard the rumors? About him. You heard ’em, Jack? Because they are crazy.”
“Some,” Jack muttered and scanned the room for threats.
Reiser leaned close and began to speak.
“Did you hear the one about how when he was a kid, his dad, some kind of planetary development scientist, and his mom, she was the brainy type too, did you hear they were out on some world and Gomarii slavers murdered the both of ’em. Let the other slaves rape the mom. Killed the dad afterward. Sold the kid to Djini nomads crossing out near Grayson’s Storm. Doing one of their hundred-year pilgrimages into the nebulae to seek enlightenment and all that crazy talk. Have you heard that one, Jack?”
Again, Bowie said nothing because this was all rhetorical. Reiser had always liked a bit of theater and so that was what this was. A story. A story about a boogeyman. Or rather a boogeyman that might just be their savior. Because the boogeyman was paying salaries and bonuses for the boogey work he needed done.
“Well… Jack,” continued Reiser, low and conspiratorially. “If you’ve heard that part then maybe you’ve heard the next part of the story. Have you? Feel free to stop me if you have. Two years later that Djini nomad ship comes out of the nebulae and makes straight for the Gomarii hideout that did the parents. The normally peaceful Djini kill the Gomarii and the kid disappears for five years out there along the edge where space gets real weird. Where rumors aren’t just made-up stories about ghosts seeking vengeance, well hell, they might even be real. If you believe in that sort of thing. Do you, Jack? Do you believe in the vengeful dead? ’Cause I never did until I started trying to dig on the person we are talking about myself. Or at least I never used to.”
Bowie remained still. The zhee were starting to eat and the sounds coming from the private lounge verged on the obscene. A woman screamed, and then, dressed in the livery of the hotel, ran from the lounge with her starched white shirt torn open. The zhee brayed with delight at her humiliation.
Reiser looked over and gave a sick little laugh. And a look that said, Well, you know how they are.
“There’s another story, Jack. Maybe you’ve heard of this one too. It’s a really, really good one. There’s this story that says he surfaced again in his mid-teens. So, this is about fifteen. Which is kind of incredible considering the first rumors about him and the Djini wiping out a Gomarii slaver base start to circulate just a few years prior. And not just one base. Apparently the Djini and their… translated in their backwards language, “death savior” went to town on all the Gomarii they could find in that sector. And it wasn’t pretty. No. Not at all. Real galactic Dark Ages stuff. Stuff like the Savages used to do to the worlds that betrayed them during the Protectorate. The Gomarii that year got real afraid of getting ‘the workout’ as it was called, from the Djini and their Death Savior.
“We looked into this back at Nether Ops because we heard the Gomarii were running scared and kept talking about ‘the workout.’ We used the Gomarii a lot back then to cover our transit operations. And they were getting real hard to work with because I’ll tell you, they were straight up afraid of somebody. As near as we could tell, this Death Savior had an elite guard who called themselves the Divine Wind. They trained him, the kid, the Death Savior, to kill just as they were trained from birth to kill in their… what they called, the Forgotten Clans. The only way to ascend through their ranks was to kill the person in the position you wanted. You know how the Djini are. Didn’t you get into a scrap aboard the Carascar when you ran interdiction on one of their Nomad ships trying to escape into the Suribacco Nebulae? Seems so if I remember correctly. Half your boarding party got killed, right, Jack? Back when you were an ensign attached to the hullbusters? Musta looked real bad on your junior OER. Is that how you ended up with the bastards in Intel? The Castaways they called them.”
Bowie gave nothing away.
Reiser checked his chrono quickly and then looked up at a news stream running over near the bar as if to confirm something. Whether he found it or not was unclear.
“We got time,” the older man said to himself and then settled back into his stories and rumors. “So, after all that playing vengeful pirate, the kid turns up at Oxodon University right smack dab on Utopion itself. Gets in on a scholarship under an assumed name and basically lives like a beggar for three years. Practically lives in the virtual library access node and learns everything. Now when I say… learns everything… you think I mean he’s real smart. Right? Like the guy who’s always called “Brain” in the platoon. That guy. Well, that ain’t even close. In three years he tests out of three doctorates and gets advanced into their theoretical programs and think tanks. Secret stuff. House of Reason funded. Black magic and other dark arts. The other scientist nerds start getting jealous because he’s nailing down a patent a week on some very proprietorial stuff in Dark Matter Physics, Quantum Investment, and Theoretical Longevity. All of which none of his doctorates are in. Add to the fact that he invents a credit transfer device that destroys the current business contract interface at the time and becomes the industry standard for just a small charge to everyone and the kid who’s been living like a beggar in the virtual library suddenly has several trillion in credits to burn.”
Reiser smiles like that cat. The one who swallowed the canary.
“Oh yeah, I skipped the part about ‘the workout.’ The thing the Gomarii were afraid of. Back when supposedly he was playing pirate with those psycho nomads, the Djini. So, here’s the best we could come up with in Nether Ops, and we lost three operatives just to get this much. Apparently
aboard the flagship of the Djini nomad horde—a thing they never do, maybe once every five hundred years they actually get together for common purpose instead of aimlessly wandering the stars—apparently aboard this flagship, there was a training room with two floors. One floor could be lowered onto the sub floor. So, the Gomarii that were captured, were spread-eagled onto the sub floor and then the upper floor was lowered down onto their chests and bodies. The floor locks were disconnected so basically the floor was resting on them. Their chests. A floating floor squeezing the air out of them. Then… the fun started. The Divine Wind began their daily training and workout regimen which involved hand-to-hand combat—note fatalities were common with every session. Then a jungle gym program of leaps and jumps and calisthenics all atop the floor resting on the bodies of these poor dumb Gomarii bastards who had the misfortune of being taken prisoner. Average training session was four hours. Sometimes they did two-a-days. You stayed under the floor, if you were a Gomarii or anyone who happened to be working with the slavers when this kid came looking, until you were dead. They had you hooked up to a life scan monitor. Some lasted for up to four days, lying there as every bone in their body was broken and then shattered, and finally ground into a pulp. No sedation. Barely able to breathe, you were slowly crushed to death, completely aware as each bone broke. They pumped amphetamax gas in there just to make sure you stayed clear enough to enjoy the pain.”
Reiser smiled in admiration at the Djini and the Death Savior’s handiwork. As though he were seeing it live. Who knew, maybe they’d acquired a download that showed the whole Workout Show.
“Kid was slick. Those damned Gomarii left that sector and never came back. They knew what was good for them.”
Reiser leaned back.
“No one taught that kid to go Legion like the Legion did at Ankalor. He just did. All on his own. Like it was hardwired into him. So that’s another rumor I’ve heard about Mr. Nilo, as we call him. I can’t tell you if it’s true or not. But it scares me, Jack, and… to be honest… intrigues me too. A lot of problems in the galaxy could have been avoided with that kind of out of the box thinking. Not saying it’s right, not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying sket like Kublar and the Chiasm… never would’ve happened. So we got time for one more rumor before I drop your mission on you… Ready, Jack?”
Bowie nodded slightly. Wondering why the wait for a specific time. What was about to happen and why did he have some vague, bad feeling beginning to form in the back of his mind? Maybe it was because the high of his time with the Tennar had faded and he was coming down off of her. Getting that post-euphoric anxiety that came after the high of their actual physical contact. The price one paid for all that forbidden pleasure.
Maybe. But he suspected it might be something else altogether.
“So, this is just a few years ago… if the stories are true… the kid’s company is really rolling. That few trillion has now turned into tens of trillions and he’s the kind of big wheel that’s getting invited into private planning sessions with the House of Reason’s galactic trade and business councils. Anyway… one of his competitors, one of the old guys who’s been in bed with the House of Reason for like forever, he and this kid go to war. Business-wise. But it’s a quiet war and the rumor is it has nothing to do with business really. Except they’re fighting with the mega-conglomerates they each own just like you and I might fight with the holdouts we’re both strapping here in the no-weapons Green Zone of safe-as-all-can-be Soob City. Right, Jack?”
Bowie doesn’t acknowledge that he has no less than three weapons right now. If he has to kill Reiser, he’s already made up his mind he’ll do it with a knife. Fast like a jackhammer. Yeah, people will see him stabbing that hack to death, but no blaster fire. No sound to send automated security into lockdown mode. Stabbing will buy him at least fifteen seconds to get the jump and make for the sled in the garage.
Shame to leave the Tennar. Shame to walk out on whatever this Nilo is cooking up. But… maybe that’s the wise play.
Unless Nilo, the Nilo of the Djini Death Savior variety, wants you for a workout. Then, you’ve made the wrong call.
But it’s also a shame to end up in the wrong hands. Especially in this day and age where law enforcement seems to be a local thing, as do jury trials. Now that the Repub is rebuilding, trying to reconsolidate power, a lot of things are up in the air. Like basic rights. Like trials. Like official penal systems and the guidelines they were supposed to be administered by.
But then… as it turned out, the Repub wasn’t as big on those as they pretended to be. The Legion blew the lid off that one.
The point is anything can happen if you end up in someone else’s hands.
So… it’ll be stabbing Reiser, jackhammer quick, if it needs to be. Like someone said a long time ago. Be polite. Be nice. Have a plan to kill everyone in the room.
Jack Bowie has a plan. He always does. In his line of work there is no other way.
“So… like I said, these two business titans are just going to town on each other. Buying up suppliers, land, leases, rents, loans. Y’know… the way the rich and powerful fight. There are rumors that both sides are using hit teams on execs. Then the old rich guy connected to the House of Reason… well, his daughter gets killed. Nilo, he’s got no one close. Not even a girlfriend. So… the old guy sends a hit team after him direct. Wipes out an entire private extreme sporting planetoid resort the kid is staying at. Except he doesn’t get the kid.
“All of this gets hushed up. Lotsa credits are paid out to local law and families and even some Repub agency types to make it all go away. But now things have gone horribly wrong. If you listen to the stories… and if they’re true… then this is what happens next. Everyone around the old man, everyone he’s ever known from back when he was a kid on some private richy-rich world, starts to die.
“Everyone. Even the people who knew those people start to die. The old guy decides to call a truce but the kid isn’t having it by then. It’s gone too far. And this is where it gets crazy, real crazy in fact. It was never about revenge. It was about artifacts. Turns out both of them had been friends before the whole mess started. And the kid, once he had the money, wanted to buy the guy’s private collection of artifacts. Old guy wouldn’t sell and they had a falling out over it. So, the kid started a war. And once the old guy, who it turned out cared about someone other than himself, felt the noose tightening around his family and closest associates, and eventually himself, one can infer, he gave in and sold the collection to the kid. Or at least he offered to.”
“Kid didn’t buy it,” said Bowie interrupting Reiser in the middle of his performance. Reiser made a face and nodded. Somehow defeated. Because even this part baffled him.
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Bowie knew poker. Knew how people played. Knew what Nilo was after.
“Nah,” said Reiser, caught up in the action once more. In the story. In the gory details. “Nah, not at all. Now he just wanted it.”
Reiser smiled.
“For free. Said it was his right. His destiny.”
“So he gave it to him,” stated Bowie.
For a moment Reiser was stunned at this leap in the story also.
“How’d you know?” asked the older man.
When Bowie didn’t answer, Reiser continued.
“Yeah, that’s about right. Just gave it up. Had the whole thing transferred via secured freighter that supposedly disappeared in route, but we can assume the cargo and ship were conveniently ‘lost’ as we’ve pulled that kind of op a time or two before. Then, old guy kills himself an hour later. We guess that was part of the agreement, in order to spare the rest of his family. Or it was just suicide because the collection meant so much to him. Or even just the humiliation of having been outplayed and forced to sue for mercy. Half dozen one or the other, I say.”
Reiser checked his chrono and then once more glanced
at the morning news feeds.
“Okay, it’s time, Jack.” He was all business now. “Got an offer from Mr. Nilo. Direct. Yeah, you’re on the team. But this here’s special. And… well, we just wanna make sure you’re all in on this. So, are you, Jack? You gonna play team ball this time?”
Bowie took off his sunglasses. Drank the last of the kaff that had gone cold.
“Before I answer,” began Jack Bowie. “I have just one question.”
Reiser looked bothered by this and then flung open his palms. As if to indicate what choice did he have.
“The artifacts. The collection the two were fighting over. What was it? What was the stuff the kid wanted so badly?”
Reiser gave a quick glance at the stream. Obviously, timing was of the essence here.
“Old Savage stuff. Junk mostly. Artifacts from off their ships and things. Real sick stuff. Also… highly illegal. Or at least… it was back under the House. All that kinda weird stuff had to go right to the government so they could R and D it. Or keep someone from doing just that. Alright… so… are you in, Jack? ’Cause we gotta start now if you’re gonna make it.”
Jack Bowie replaced his sunglasses and straightened his jacket. Every muscle in his body awake. He knew showtime when he smelled it.
“Yeah, I’m in. Give it to me, Reiser. Who needs to die?”
“Funny you should say that, Jack.” Reiser leaned down and picked a briefcase up off the floor next to their table. It almost looked like the one Jack Bowie had entering the compound the night before. “’Cause this is the opposite of that. You’re the target. Here, take this. It’s a Jackknife Supreme. Press this and it deploys into a cut-down heavy blaster. You’re going to need it.”
“What do you mean I’m the target?” asked Jack Bowie, alarm bells sounding strident warnings across his frontal lobe.
Comm device alerts went off across the bar. Out in the lobby. Even in the restaurant and lounge where the zhee were braying.
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 15