Light of the Jedi(68)
Kassav had three Storms up at the top of his Tempest’s hierarchy: Gravhan, Dellex, and Wet Bub. They all wanted to be him, but they would never work together to get rid of him, because then none of them would be the Tempest Runner—they’d still just be three Storms sharing power. Yep. It was a good little system.
All three of those Storms were on the bridge of the New Elite, and they’d all blown smash right when he did. He didn’t know if they’d all taken the rounder, or if the Clouds and Strikes in their crews had, either…but that was all right. A little edge wasn’t such a bad thing. The Nihil were all about edge. It wouldn’t be a problem, as long as everyone did what they were told.
And everyone would. That was the other thing that made the Nihil such a great system, even if this particular truth was hidden down deep, making it hard to see unless you were near the top of the organization. On the surface, the Nihil were all about freedom, about breaking away from the galaxy’s systems of control. Forget the Republic, forget the Hutts, forget anything but doing what you wanted when you wanted. That was the sales pitch, how they got people to join up. Ride the storm, baby, ride that storm.
But once you were a Nihil, you still had a boot on your chest, even if you didn’t always feel it because of all of the burn parties and smash and the thrill of taking what you wanted, when you wanted. You still had to do exactly what your bosses above you said, and the bosses above them. If you didn’t, at best you didn’t get your share of the Rule of Three. At worst, you got a vibroblade in your neck, or you got thrown out of the Great Hall the hard way. Everyone had to stay in line, everyone paid their price. Well, everyone but Marchion Ro and the Tempest Runners—him, Lourna Dee, and that flashy brute Pan Eyta, did he even realize how stupid he looked, a Dowutin trying to be fashionable? Anyway.
The Nihil was just another form of control, an engine designed to roll credits up to the people at the top of the organization.
Yeah, good little system.
Kassav surveyed his crew, the upper echelons of his Tempest. Gravhan, Wet Bub, and there was Dellex right up front, her one organic eye gleaming from the smash—oh yeah, she definitely hadn’t taken that rounder—and their crews arranged behind them.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Kassav said. “We’re gonna string these jerks along, make them pay us so much money there won’t be more than two credits left in the whole blasted system. We’re gonna take ’em for everything they’ve got, and they’ll be happy we did.”
Everyone liked that—lots of savage grins and appreciative words from the crew.
“We’re about to drop out of lightspeed in this system called Eriadu. They’re hurting pretty bad from the Republic’s hyperspace blockade—not enough food to go around down there. Word is the people are ready to overthrow the governors. So those guys are already in trouble, and they ain’t gonna want any more. Perfect for us.
“Everything will start to happen fast once we show up—we gotta cut this close because of the way the Emergences are lined up. Storms, you all got your crews briefed? Everyone knows their job?”
“Dunno about these other two jokers, Kassav, but my line knows their business good,” Gravhan said, fingering a tusk. He was a Chevin, mostly just one huge head to look at him, with wrinkled gray skin and wisps of long blond hair on his scalp. He looked slow and ponderous, and maybe he was, but Kassav had once seen him rip a security guard in half with his bare hands. They were robbing a bank in a tiny settlement on some backwater ice planet. Gravhan had just grabbed the guy, and…well, if Kassav’s Tempest had a motto, it would be something like Strength Wins, and Gravhan was the perfect example of that. Just ask that security guard.
“My people are ready, too, boss,” Dellex said. “I’ve been drilling them ever since you laid out the plan.”
“I bet,” Gravhan said, and a few of his Strikes chuckled, people too dumb to know that you didn’t want Dellex on your bad side.
Kassav had known the woman for a long time, even had a little thing with her a while back. He knew she thought she was ugly as sin, and that’s why she kept spending all her money on fancy mechanical upgrades. She was making herself beautiful, one shiny new body part at a time. But all that metal didn’t do her personality any favors. She was getting prettier, sure, but colder, too. Kassav had a feeling those chuckle-happy Strikes in Gravhan’s crew might find themselves with their skulls crushed some night soon.
Oh well. Not his problem. There were always more Strikes.
“Affirmative,” said Wet Bub, giving a thumbs-up from where he sat at the ship’s primary computer console.
Sometimes people figured Wet Bub was called that because he was a Gungan…but that wasn’t the only reason. Used to be, when he’d go on raids, he’d end up covered in blood, head-to-toe. Like, soaked. Happened enough times that people got to calling him that, and he never killed anyone who said it, so he must have liked it. Hard to tell what Wet Bub did or didn’t like, sometimes.
Bub was also a slicer, though. A damn good one—he’d been breaking into computer systems ever since he was a kid, and now he used that skill to do all sorts of ugly things in his personal time. Intrusive, cruel things.
Also not Kassav’s problem.
“Let’s do this,” he said.