by Michael Rose
“Whatever fee you think is fair, I will pay.”
Younger looked at the photo. “He’s military, isn’t he?”
“Ex-military. Edaline special forces, from what I was able to find out. And there’s another complication. The Bureau is here looking for him. I need you to find him first.”
Younger rapped his fingers against the table. “It’ll be a hundred for this one.”
Zednik smiled. The girl was worth half a million to him. He could afford to pay a hundred thousand for her return and the death of Sullivan. “I agree to that price,” he said. “You know how to get in touch with me.”
“Yes,” said Younger. He stood and turned to leave.
“Oh, Mr. Younger,” said Zednik. “Be careful with this one.”
“I’m always careful, Mr. Zednik.” Younger left the table, shoving the picture of Sullivan into his pocket as he went.
11
SULLIVAN WATCHED AS the girl slept. She’d spoken little over the past two days, but he had learned that her name was Kate Alexander and that she was from Silvanus. He didn’t know what the tall man had wanted with her, but he assumed it was a ransom kidnapping. Silvanus was one of the wealthiest planets in the Assembly; it was likely that she came from money. He’d thought about contacting the local authorities but had quickly rejected the idea. He didn’t think they could be trusted to keep her safe.
Sullivan realized that the other side of that coin was that he would have to keep her safe. It would slow him down to have her around, but he couldn’t justify cutting her loose. She wasn’t the type of person who could survive long on this planet alone.
They were enjoying their last night in the hotel. He’d have to find someone who would hire him. He had skills that would come in handy on a planet like Abilene. His ultimate goal was to get to Faris, where there was a large population of refugees from Edaline. Faris had taken in many of the rebels after the civil war, and a steady flow of people dissatisfied with Edaline’s government had been making the move ever since.
Sullivan gently shook Kate to wake her. She stirred and opened her eyes. “Kate, I’m going to go out and find some work. I want you to stay here.”
“No, I’ll go with you.”
“This isn’t a safe planet. You’ll be better off here.”
“Please, Rick. Don’t leave me alone.”
Sullivan pursed his lips. “All right, but if you come, you’ll have to help me.”
“I will. What do I need to do?”
“You need to be confident. You need to walk like you aren’t afraid of anyone, like you mean business.”
Kate got up from the bed. She put one hand on her hip and raised her chin slightly, looking down her nose at Sullivan. “Like this?”
“Less prissy, more pissy.”
Kate lowered her head and glared at him.
Sullivan laughed. “Yes, exactly like that!”
Kate laughed, too.
Sullivan pulled at her shirttails. “I’ve noticed a lot of the women here seem pretty promiscuous. Can you tie this up, expose your midriff?”
Kate blushed slightly. “I don’t want to draw attention.”
“Trust me,” said Sullivan, “people are going to be looking at you anyway.”
Her blush deepened. She tied up her shirt, exposing a smooth, toned stomach. Sullivan nodded his approval, stuck his gun into his belt band and made sure the bulge of the firearm was visible underneath his shirt. The shirt he’d stolen from the apartment was a bit tight, which helped accentuate not only the gun but also his muscles. He figured that could help him here.
Sullivan and Kate made their way down to the lobby of the hotel. Sullivan started for the front door but stopped. Coming in was Frank Allen. Sullivan turned to head toward the rear entrance of the hotel but Allen spotted him before he was out of sight.
“Hey! Sullivan!” Allen yelled out.
Sullivan grabbed Kate’s arm and broke into a full run. He bounded through the rear entrance of the hotel and out into the street. He heard the door slam open a second time and Allen’s steps behind him, gaining as Sullivan checked his pace so Kate could keep up with him.
He turned to Kate and put his mouth near her ear. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said, breathing heavily as the exertion began to get the better of her.
“Then play along,” he said.
Sullivan was still leading her by the hand. He pulled her into a narrow alleyway and stopped halfway down the alley. He spun around, pulled her into his arms and drew his gun. He put the barrel against her temple as he put his other hand around her neck.
“Stop, Allen! Don’t come any nearer.”
Allen slowed to a walk and stopped at the entrance to the alley.
“C’mon, Rick. I know you won’t hurt her.” Allen closed the gap by a few steps.
“Yes, he will,” said Kate, genuine fear in her voice. “He’s already said he’d kill me if I try to get away.”
Allen paused. Had Sullivan grown more ruthless since he’d been on Abilene?
Sullivan turned the gun from Kate to Allen. “Just turn around and walk away.”
Allen had intentionally not drawn his gun, but now that Sullivan was aiming at him, he wished he had. “I know you’re not a bad man, Rick. Remember our telephone conversation? And those agents you could have killed but didn’t?”
Sullivan pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the ground at Allen’s feet, but it rattled him enough that he backed off and took refuge around the corner of the building. He drew his gun and peeked back around the corner. Sullivan and the girl were gone.
SULLIVAN CURSED HIS bad luck. What was Allen doing on Abilene? The Bureau had no jurisdiction here. As he made his way through the narrow, crowded streets of the shantytown, he realized that not only was Allen after him but the tall man would probably be after him as well. The faster he could get off-planet, get to Faris, the better.
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 t
hem 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.