“This is Kobb Sepped,” Winters says over comm.
The old donk seems oblivious to our being in the room, despite the loud greetings we sent in ahead of us. He’s still pressing that console and calling as I move in, rifle pressed into my shoulder and ready.
His robes seem whiter than what is possible. Not stained by sweat, smoke, or sand. But when I swing around the work station obstructing my full view, I see seeping stains of red marring the pristine robes. His lower half was peppered with shrapnel from the fraggers and he’s bleeding at a pretty good clip. Probably got an artery nicked. Maybe lacerations down into his guts or organs. Donks bleed pretty bad if you hit their liver or kidneys.
It’s clear that unless this group got a message off before we stormed the castle, the old donk isn’t getting through now. Probably he just fell back here in an attempt to stay safe, not figuring that his attackers would have Dark Ops level slicer boxes to get past the doors.
“What do you want me to do with him?” I ask Nilo. Maybe capturing a high value target like this was Hopper’s objective.
“Oh, you’re still in charge of this team,” the kid says, sounding almost like he’s surprised I’d consult him. “So, however you’d normally handle something like this as team leader, Carter.”
I want to say that, as team leader, I don’t know how to handle this because I was never briefed on the totality of the mission—there was no redundancy or fail-safe. A big error. But then, I can see from the holoscreens that Hopper and his team are trying to fight off a large concentration of donks now that Lash and Easy have set up a cross fire, hammering the zhee attackers in their flanks. That’s ultimately where I need to be. Hauling a bleeding old zhee isn’t going to get me there any quicker.
I also get the sense that Nilo is testing me here. Like he doesn’t actually care, but wants to see what I’ll do.
“Roger,” I say, and put two blaster bolts into the donk’s back and another in his head once he’s down. “Let’s rejoin with the rest of the team.”
The kid jumps at the suddenness of the blasts, but quickly recovers himself.
He moves to the comm console, legs spread wide in order to stand above the dead zhee lying at his feet without actually standing on the donk. “Just gotta make sure we’re not in for any complications.”
Nilo pries off a smoking panel that has a two centimeter shrapnel hole, revealing a thick clump of wiring. He pulls out a feather chip and affixes it to the conduit and then, while still on our two-line channel, calls Brisco.
“Brisk,” he says, obviously wanting me to hear the conversation. Maybe to keep me at ease about not going to help immediately, maybe just to draw me in closer to knowing why we’ve been doing all this. “I got a data phantom tapped to the relay conduit. What’s it say?”
“Hang tight, Nee,” Brisco says, and I wonder if my team are the only ones who didn’t know that the big boss was riding with us.
No, that’s silly. Surber knew. Brisco—maybe he’s a friend of the kid’s from back when he was doing whatever it is that got him his fortune. Something to do with how the Republic credit-chain worked. You forget. It’s a big galaxy with a lot of poor and a lot of rich. And the only rich ones you know about are the ones who became rich so they could get some fame to go with it. Nilo isn’t that type.
But I don’t think anyone else knew.
“We’re supposed to keep this quiet about you, I’m guessing?” I say.
“About me what?” Nilo asks.
“You being a rich kid with a trust fund that wanted to play merc and bought all the best tools for the job—Winters—only, surprise, you’re the guy running this show.”
I hear Nilo laugh gently over the comm. “Lots of capable people are running this show. You can’t get anything significant accomplished if you run it all. But I’m the guy with the vision. And yes, keep this quiet for now.”
“The others,” I say, thinking of Lash, Lana, and Easy. “They might tell Alpha.”
“They won’t.”
“Well, I dunno…” I say, not seeing how Nilo can be so sure of that. At the very least they’ll tell Abers. Or Abers will ask why his debts are paid and his paycheck got so large.
“You got them something they didn’t know they could have, Carter,” Nilo says, drumming his fingers against the smoking console, waiting for Brisco to get back word of whether the mission was compromised. “It was always there for the taking—a man sets his own worth. But most people in the galaxy don’t know that. And they don’t believe it when they see the proof in others.”
“Okay… but Easy has a big mouth.”
“You knew it, Carter. Deep down. It’s what I like about you. Deep down, you know how the galaxy works. You brought your team along for the ride and didn’t leave them in the dust. I like that about you, too. But they don’t know why they all just experienced such good luck. That’s what they’ll call it. Now, if it happened to someone else, they would respond by being jealous, by getting angry at the person. But since it’s happened to them… they’ll be scared.”
“Scared?”
That doesn’t make much sense.
“Winters—I mean, Mr. Nilo—I’m feeling a lot of things right now but scared isn’t one of them. Most of it involves what it’ll feel like to tell my wife the debts are all paid. That and how I imagine she’ll thank me when I get back home.”
Nilo laughs again. “Call me Nee or Nilo. But you’re not hearing me, Carter. I know you’re not scared. But they are. I know people. I know how the galaxy works. You’ve finally sailed into the horizon and you know the truth.
