Sullivan Saga 1: Sullivan's War (9 page)

Kate was doing well. She strode confidently through the crowd, scowling at people as they stepped in front of her. Even with the nasty glare on her face, she was still the most attractive woman on the street. Sullivan halted and led Kate to a shaded corner beneath an awning. Across from them, three men loitered in front of an open warehouse door, their guns intentionally visible. Sullivan could see inside to the warehouse and through to the open bay door on the tarmac side of the warehouse. A small transport ship was parked in front of the warehouse, and several men were unloading boxes from the ship. Sullivan wondered, briefly, if this could be the tall man’s operation. He disregarded the concern and strode across the street.

“Let me see the boss,” he said to the largest of the men at the door.

“Fuck off.”

“Let’s not misunderstand each other,” Sullivan said, lowering his voice. “I
will
see the boss, and when I do, he’ll thank you for making the introduction.”

Another man whispered into the large man’s ear. He nodded, and the third man went inside. A moment later, he reemerged with the person Sullivan assumed was in charge.

The man looked Sullivan up and down. He followed with a visual examination of Kate, taking somewhat longer than he had on Sullivan.

He spit a wad of Jarvis leaf onto the sidewalk at Sullivan’s feet. “What?”

“I want a job.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever you’ve got.”

“I don’t need any men.”

“I think you do.” Sullivan leveled his gaze. “Wilson said you could use a man like me.”

The man’s cheek twitched. “You know Wilson?”

“That’s right. A couple days ago, he said to come to this warehouse and ask for the boss. He said you’d thank him for sending me.”

The man looked back at Kate. “And who’s this?”

“She’s my morale.”

The man grinned. “She certainly is. Come inside.”

Inside the warehouse, a metal staircase led up to a catwalk. Along it were four doors. The boss led them into one of the rooms, which had been furnished as an office. Sullivan glanced down at the warehouse floor before following the man in.

“So,” said the man in charge, sitting behind the desk and gesturing toward the chairs opposite, “convince me that you’re not wasting my time.”

Sullivan smiled. “Those three men you have out front, your security?”

“Yeah.”

“I could’ve taken them down within fifteen seconds and been in here putting a gun against your head.”

“How would you have managed that?”

“The big guy, he’s strong but slow, so I’d save him for last. The little guy is weak. Based on the piece he’s carrying, he’s probably good with a gun, but in close quarters I could take a few hits from him before feeling too much pain, so I’d take him down second. The guy about my size, he’s the one I’d take first.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t pay attention. I watched him for no more than a minute and could tell he was too easily distracted.”

“All right, suppose you’re right about your assessment of my men, and I’m not saying you are. You look tough, but you can’t take three men down by yourself.”

“I spent five years in the Edaline army, special forces. What kind of training do your men have? A lifetime of street fights and bar brawls? That makes for an eager but sloppy fighter.”

The man in charge leaned forward. “So you want to join my security team, I get that. But you’ll have to prove your abilities.”

“Look up the name Richard Sullivan. That’s proof enough.”

The man cracked a sideways smile, leaned back and picked up his tablet from the desk. He typed in Sullivan’s name and scanned the results for several minutes. When he finished, he looked up at Sullivan, double-checked the picture accompanying the news reports and smiled again.

He looked at Kate. “And what about her?”

“Like I said, she’s my morale. Where I go, she goes. And she’ll earn her keep. Say you need someone to quietly distract a guard, or need someone innocent-looking to slip past a security check. Can any of your thugs do that?”

The man stood and stuck out his hand. Sullivan stood and took it. “The name’s Brain. Eugene Brain.”

“Brain?”

“That’s right. By the way, I know you were lying about Wilson. He’s Zednik’s right-hand man. And besides, he’s dead.”

“I take it Zednik is your competition?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know that I’m the one who killed Wilson.”

Brain’s smile faded. He broke the handshake with Sullivan as his cheek twitched again.

III:
LOSS

12

THE SHIP WAS bound for Tritica, a sparsely inhabited world that served as the bread basket for several of its neighboring planets, Abilene included. Crops didn’t grow well on Abilene, but on Tritica, vast corporate farms, with fields covering millions of square kilometers, dominated much of the landscape.

Food was expensive on Abilene. The early settlers had tried to make a go of farming, but despite an abundance of water due to a large underground aquifer, everything but the hearty, inedible native plants shriveled and died. The heat and the nitrogen-deficient soil proved too harsh.

Forward thinkers foresaw a day, perhaps a hundred years distant, when Abilene could feed itself. Massive, temperature-controlled greenhouses had been built to house crops planted in minerally and chemically enriched soil, but it was still easier and cheaper to transport the food itself.

But Tritica was no verdant paradise either. A few corporations owned all the land, and most of the inhabitants of the planet worked long, hard hours overseeing the growth and production of the crops. Predictably, there was a high demand for alcohol.

Brain’s operation wasn’t strictly an illegal one, and runs like this, dropping off alcohol and picking up food to take back to Abilene, were fairly commonplace. But Tritica had its own criminal organizations, and on more than one occasion, Brain’s cargo had been stolen before he could deliver it to a buyer. Sullivan was along on this run to ensure that it didn’t happen again.

Kate was along as well. Brain didn’t like the arrangement, but over the past few weeks, Sullivan had proven his worth. His ultimate goal was still to get to Faris and join up with the Edaline resistance he’d heard had been growing, but now that Kate was in his life, he had a more immediate goal: to keep her safe and get her back home to Silvanus. Zednik’s men had taken her six months before depositing her in the cell next to Sullivan’s. There was little doubt her father would have agreed to pay a ransom, but now, with her gone, Zednik couldn’t collect. Kate had already sent a message to Silvanus that she was free, but it would be almost a year before the message was received and someone was sent to take her home.

Tritica’s only sizeable city was Bandar. It was here that most of the commerce took place. Brain’s ship landed at Bandar’s spaceport in the dead of the night. Sullivan didn’t like this. They could have stayed in orbit until morning, but the pilot had insisted on landing and going into Bandar in search of companionship. Kate’s presence on the ship had given him an itch he was anxious to scratch.

Sullivan was left to oversee the unloading of the cargo. They had made contact with a buyer after dropping out of hyperspace, but he wouldn’t be available to pay for or receive the cargo until the morning. The Interstellar Freight Transporters Association required that all cargo be immediately unloaded. They claimed it was a safety and security issue, but everyone knew it was so the Association could collect their percentage on the fees the warehouse owners charged for storage. This was on top of the landing fees each ship paid to dock at a regulated spaceport. It didn’t surprise Sullivan that so many in the transport business were crooked. On the non-Stellar Assembly planets there were unregulated spaceports, of course, but the fluid and unpredictable nature of interstellar commerce required that ships land where buyers had easy access to them.

The transport business was difficult enough already. Sellers of goods were reluctant to send their merchandise out without knowing if or when they would be paid for it, so the freight ship owners acted as middlemen. They bought the cargo outright then hoped they could find a buyer willing to pay a better price upon arrival. But by the time news of a demand on one planet had reached another, it could have already been filled before a ship, with cargo loaded and paid for, was dispatched.

Because of this, most freighter owners bought and sold cargo they were guaranteed to sell. On a planet like Tritica, it was alcohol; on Abilene, it was food; on the wealthy Stellar Assembly planets, it was exotic luxury goods. The more ambitious freight companies studied the trade patterns of previous years and tried to predict when and where a demand would occur. A few had made their fortunes doing this. Many more had been bankrupted. But the most ambitious among them created their own demand. Whenever a new toy or device or style took a planet by storm, freighters loaded with the innovation were soon on their way to the farthest-flung of the inhabited planets, hoping to be the first to deliver to a new, untapped market.

WHEN BRAIN’S SHIP landed, the warehouse workers went to work immediately. The more quickly they unloaded, the longer the cargo had to be in storage, making money. Sullivan could see the warehouse manager grinning from the metal catwalk that ran along the offices on the second story. He’d be able to charge a hefty fee for storing the cargo overnight.

Sullivan went back to the ship and looked down the tarmac. There were only a handful of other ships at the spaceport. Most of the ships were in orbit, waiting until buyers were available to receive their cargo. Sullivan cursed the pilot under his breath. The extra storage fees they’d have to pay would cut into the profits for this job, a percentage of which Sullivan was entitled to keep.

At the end of the long row of warehouses, headlights appeared. A truck had just turned onto the tarmac. Sullivan watched it with increasing suspicion as it made its way toward him. It pulled up next to the ship, just in front of the forklifts unloading the cargo. Two men hopped out of the back of the truck as the driver and passenger got out. They looked at each of the workers then at Sullivan.

The driver took a few steps forward. “This your cargo?”

“Not mine, my boss’s.”

The driver leaned down and studied the label on one of the crates. “Liquor. Gonna be an extra surcharge for unloading liquor.”

The warehouse workers abandoned their forklifts and went inside. A moment later, the large warehouse door rolled down and closed with a metallic clang.

“Look, friend,” said Sullivan, “we paid our fees. A ship can’t land without wiring ahead a payment first. So the way I see it, we don’t owe you anything.”

“You misunderstand… friend. This ain’t an optional surcharge. The way
I
see it, you own us six crates of liquor. It’ll be seven if you give us any more lip.”

Sullivan smiled. “Fine. If you want it, take it.”

The driver turned to his cronies. “Load ’em up, boys.”

Before he could turn back, Sullivan had spanned the distance between them and landed a firm blow to the back of the man’s head. The man staggered and fell against a crate. One of his henchmen threw back his coat and reached for a weapon. Sullivan drew his gun and fired, hitting the man in the arm. He pulled the driver from the ground and held the gun to his head.

“No more,” he said, “or your boss gets it. Back away.”

They complied.

“Now throw your guns down, and get in the truck.”

They looked to their commander before following the order. “Do it,” the man said, pushing the muzzle of Sullivan’s gun away from his head. It was back in place a short second later. Sullivan felt for the man’s gun, found it and took it.

“All right,” said Sullivan. “Now I want you to get in the truck and drive back the way you came.” He pushed the man away and followed him with the gun as he went back to the truck.

The man got in, flipped Sullivan off and sped away down the tarmac. Sullivan gathered the weapons and took them to the ship before rapping on the metal door of the warehouse. “All clear,” he called. The door rumbled to life a moment later. The workers inside had armed themselves, but their guns fell to their sides as they surveyed the situation.

The warehouse manager skipped down the metal staircase and jogged across the floor of the warehouse. “They’re gone?”

“I took care of it. Your men can get back to work.”

“Mister, those sons of bitches have robbed me three times this month, and I’ve had hell to pay for it with the boss. I have to pay for cargo that goes missing from the warehouse.”

The manager put his hand out. Sullivan shook it. “Maybe now they’ll think twice before bothering me again.”

Sullivan looked down the tarmac. The truck had disappeared from sight. “I’m only here as long as it takes us to finish the transaction. You’ll have to stand up to them yourself next time.”

“Any chance you’d be interested in a job?”

“Sorry. If I don’t go back with this ship, I don’t get paid.”

“Well, let me know if that doesn’t work out for you.”

“Thanks, I will.”

The manager went back to his office, and Sullivan went back to the ship. Kate was standing in the hatchway of the ship’s side entrance. Sullivan climbed up to her and stroked her arm with his hand. “Did you see all of that?”

“Yes. I came out when I heard the warehouse door close.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe. As long as you stay in this ship, no one will be able to get to you.”

Kate leaned into Sullivan and put her head on his chest. “No, it’s not the ship. It’s you. You keep me safe.”

Sullivan put his arms around her. The feelings that had been developing between them over the past months were now fully-formed and could not be ignored. But they could be held at bay for a little longer. Sullivan had to stay alert while they were on Tritica.

He broke the embrace. “You’d better go back in and close the hatch. I’m going to stay out here until the cargo is unloaded.”