Hopper had concerns over how feasible doing his job here in the Soob would be. He looked up to the roof. The museum was a single-story with high ceilings, low and squat for the Soob but extending deep underground with exhibits that literally spanned the entirety of the city. The planners had done this so museum guests would be “just beneath” the sites of famous events in the history of Kublar. Before Article Nineteen, some builder with a set-for-life House of Reason contract was going to extend the subterranean museum across the entire planet. And make himself get in good with the ruling tribe while at it. Opportunity begetting more opportunity. Visitors of the museum’s sublevel exhibits would avoid the harsh above-ground climates in luxurious tube-cars that would crisscross the planet. Big things had been planned for Kublar.
“Hey!” Hopper called out, using his hands as a megaphone. “What’s the status on those guns?”
A merc wearing nothing but a flak vest and a pair of cargo shorts peered over the side to look down at Hopper. “All set, Hop. It sucks up here. Hot as balls.”
Hopper nodded and moved on to check the emplacement set up outside the museum’s main doors. Comments like that just needed to be heard.
The merc grinned down at Hopper, and then his face lit up like he just remembered something. “Hey! Did Van Dop tell you about the weird, I dunno, dust up here?”
“Negative.”
“Shaped like a bat. We scattered it a bit setting up, but you can still make out most of it.”
Hopper shrugged. “Koob art.”
Another merc popped his head up from the repeating blaster nest. “Wasn’t the koobs s’posed to be watching this place?”
Hopper nodded again. “I guess even koobs balk at pulling security when there’s fighting. Probably pulled out to help keep the donks trapped in ZQ.”
It seemed odd from the start that the Kublarens, so fanatical in their fight yesterday to keep the museum from being looted and defaced by the zhee, would abandon it now. Elektra, in the brief talks Hopper had with her, conveyed that Team Nilo was surprised by this, too. And apparently, Big Nee himself gave the order for Hopper’s element to break away from the main force and set up security. Someone else would probably be tasked with hunting down the missing army of koobs—and their Black Leaf acquired weapons. But that would be their job while this was his—and his men’s job. And he trusted his team to get the job done.
As best Hopper could tell, everyone working as a hired gun for Team Nilo was former military. Marines or Legion. Even the army. And all of them had combat experience. Part of being a soldier was complaining about the suck. These guys would do their jobs. They just needed to vent frustrations a bit. And it was hot. Hopper could feel his sweat-drenched shirt rubbing beneath his body armor and against skin like high-grit sandpaper.
Emplacements were set. Men were resting in what cover—and shade—they could grab. The convoy of vehicles they had ridden in on were tactically spaced so the column could react in case of attack, but wouldn’t be rendered useless by a surprise artillery barrage or strafing run. Not that Team Nilo’s intel thought such things were at any of the planet’s players’ disposal.
The plan to flip the Pashta’k koobs to Nilo’s Kublaren alliance had worked. The zhee were licking their wounds, afraid to leave the ZQ after the absolute beating they took. If there was to be trouble, it would likely come from the remnant House of Reason forces stationed inside the Green Zone’s inner ring. The true believers of a lost cause whose job was to protect a Republic government that found itself on the losing side of Article Nineteen. Or at least the soldiers who hadn’t managed to find a way to go AWOL from appointed officers who were still clinging to the hope that somehow the nightmare they were living in would come to a close.
But Orrin Kaar and the rest of the House of Reason… they weren’t coming back. Neither was Goth Sullus.
The galaxy was up for grabs. And while Hopper was here because the pay was better than what he’d get anywhere else beyond going into the bounty hunter trade, it didn’t hurt that he believed the message Big Nee was selling.
Things had gotten too corrupt. Planets had been exploited. People were stuck in a system that didn’t care about them and was more concerned about telling them how to live and what to think than it was letting them live their lives.
Nilo was seeking an end to such things. Hopper was good with that.
And he was even better with the shot caller assigned to the Soob. Elektra. Compared to Brisco it was like being cured from blindness. Word was that what Brisco lacked in communication he made up for by being lights-out with drone strike capabilities. But having worked with both, Hopper much preferred Elektra.
“Museum is secure,” Hopper reported in. “Remaining outside per orders. Any word on activity in this direction?”
“Stand by, Hopper.”
Hopper inclined his head. Unless it was his imagination, she sounded tense. Yeah. The stress was evident in her voice.
To pass the time, Hopper inspected the gun emplacements on each of the armored sleds he’d been provided. He wanted to be sure each sled had a gunner ready to go. And they did. But the poor bastards manning the mounted heavy blasters looked so hot and miserable that they had to be praying to Oba that nightfall would come early.
Elektra came back on the line. “We’re moving assets to your position. Stand by.”
“Wait. ‘Moving assets’? We’re blind over here?”
“We’ve been losing drone contact over the ZQ. The zhee there are shooting down anything that flies overhead and they have more drone killers than we have drones. Pulling some from the docks to your location. ETA… fourteen minutes.”
“If it arrives,” Hopper muttered to himself.
“Understand your frustration. We don’t like it either. Advise you place sentries
