No, instead, in the next two weeks, he fixes his ship as much as he can, and almost breaks his bank trying to solicit information on Nick. With what little he has he hacks into Com-Mine Station's main computer and extracts Captian's Fancy's lines of communication and codes, but they don't appear to be of much use.
In mad desperation to bring Nick down at any cost he knocks out Morn and goes EVA, across the Station's surface, and taps Captain's Fancy with a dummy line and runs it back to his ship.
If Angus wanted to he could steal Nick's finances and completely cover it up, even though he discovers that Succoro's, really, not much better off than he is (but at least his ship fully functions). There's no true money behind Nick and that's one veil off his facade, could there be more? If he dug any deeper in that and other directions Nick would be alerted, so he programs his comp to look for key words and names in the ship-to-station comunications.His computer had the codes and routing: now it had and echo of the actual data-stream. Soon he could call up a display of everything Captain's Fancy and Com-Mine Station said to each other.
Finally he finds two messages in code but can't crack them, but he can rout them-They came from Station Security.
When he discovered that, he wanted to laugh and scream and break something and celebrate all at once. It was the perfect touch--the final reason why his bluff had worked.
<snip>
And Nick Succoro's swashbuckling success was based on inside information. He had an ally in Security; a friend in power.
Another veil lifts off Nick's bravado and threats. Sure that makes Nick more dangerous to Angus, but he's really just an empty shell without his inside man.
Tiny chapter, but vital, and an interesting foreshadowing of how Angus freaks during EVA, but manages to get the job done-sorry you had to wait on me.
