Right there. "She wanted him not as a man, but as an effective force." And if Nick is one thing, that is it. An effective force.Angus had more power over her than he realized.
Yet he was right when he sensed that something leapt up inside of Morn at the sight of Nick Succorso.
That "something" however, had nothing whatever to do with Nick's handsomeness, his virility, his physical appeal. Instead it had to do with his raffish eagerness. His scarred and buccaneering appearance of bravado. She wanted him not as a man, but as an effective force. He might be strong and cunning - not to mention unscrupulous - enough to destroy the man who was destroying her.
He also did not want her for her beauty or appeal. Oh, he would enjoy her, that was for sure, and he noticed her beauty, but it wasn't the truth.
With Morn it makes sense, why she can't stand men. Angus Thermopyle will do that do you. But Nick's history is a bit more interesting.The truth was - which he kept to himself - was that he didn't actually like women. In secret, he feared and despised them. Their bodies only had value to the extent that his response to them, could draw an even greater response from them. Where such satisfactions weren't at issue, he had no interest in them. He preferred seeing them hurt.
.Once, when he was barely a man in years, and no more than a boy in experience, he'd been bested by a woman. And as she beat him, cheated him, ruined his dreams, she sneered a him. His scars were the marks of her contempt, the visible sign thats he hadn't considered him worthy of killing everyone else she had killed, every other man on that ship, nearly twenty of them; but him she'd left only his scars to remember her by. There was nothing he could do to make her fear him
This is the core of Nick Succorso. Everything he does revolves around this event in his life. Up untill this moment, he had been a relatively innocent person. Dreams of working on a starship, Captains Fancy, of leaving behind the closed in walls of the station and his parents. Open space. Freedom. Up untill it was cracked by the Captain of Captains Fancy. He did not parlay words, just a simply "no" and Nick's dreams were gone. And his innocence questioned.
The first mate had told him that no ship would take stationers. Didn't have the instincts they said. So Nick started to wonder how he could pay for formal training at an academy. The problem was, all the major money was involved in the space industry, and he had just been cut out of it. So he used the only link he had, work on Scan. In an indirect way, he had access to all the statistics of the ships moving in an out of his station. Perfect information to sell to pirates. He only had to pick his first target, and which better than the ship that had crushed his dreams?
It was then that he met the woman that would later scar him.
In hindsight, his only crime was thinking that she would want Captains Fancy in the same way he did. However she did not. When the plan was executed, the ship was crippled and the crew murdered on the spot. Not at all in the way he thought it was going to go down. No embarrassment, just death. And then she turned on him. She didn't really love him, though he thought she did. So she scarred him, and made him into the man he is now. Filled with hate and fear for the women who he sees as all the same. All women are just the one woman. THE woman.First came casual conversation. Casual drinks. Casual sex. His first casual mention of Captains Fancy passed as if she hadn't heard it. Only after he told her enough of his plans, his needs - only then did she let him see the hunger in her eyes. She wanted that ship.
So what is Nick's reason for picking Morn out of all the other (assumably) attractive girls in Mallory's?
It's almost humorous that both Morn and Nick were drawn to each other for the less obvious of reasons. That they might use the other for their own gains. Morn to escape; Nick against Angus.Under other circumstance he wouldn't have lifted a finger to help Morn Hyland. Women in pain were the next best thing to women who loved him. Both pain and love helped him get even.
But under these circumstances,
Nick Succorso was drawn tot he diea of rescuing Morn for several reason. Angus Thermopyle himself was one of them. Nick knew Angus' reputation, of course: he knew Angus wasn't just a competitor; he was a dangerous competitor. And nick was prepared to tolerate competition as long as it wasn't good enough - wasn't dangerous enough - to get in his way; to cast him in the shade. He saw Morn Hyland immediately as a handle on Angus, a lever to use against the competition.
The chapter ends with Angus' gut alerting him to the future problems between Morn and Nick. Though nothing was betrayed by Morn, he knew that he had lost any chance of making her completely his. Because even though it was so small it might as well not exist, she now had hope; in Nick Succorso.
