Sullivan Saga 2: Sullivan's Wrath by Michael K. Rose Page B

him?” asked Sullivan.
    Brain waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, we killed him after making sure he’d told us the real location. Zednik’s body wasn’t pretty, but it was still recognizable, and I showed it around to enough people so the word would spread that he was really dead, and I was in charge.”
    “Well,” said Allen, “he got what was coming to him.”
    “Damn right,” said Brain. “Besides, I think people prefer having me in charge now. I’m a lot more understanding.” He took a sip of his drink. “You have to make examples of people, of course, send a message every once in a while. But if a man crosses me, his family is off-limits. I don’t kill children.”
    Sullivan nodded. He knew that for a man like Brain, that was more than could be expected. But it saddened him that he was part of a society in which killing for profit could be justified, in which some lives were forfeit but others were not. How was the life of one person less valuable than the life of another? As Sullivan pondered this thought, he realized that he himself had weighed the value of men’s lives and determined whose deaths were justifiable, whose were not.
    Brain was telling another story. Allen seemed to be listening, nodding. Sullivan tuned in just in time to hear Brain say, “Just like a watermelon!” and laugh.
    Sullivan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “How long do you expect your man to be with the money?” he asked when Brain had stopped talking.
    “Not too much longer. You in a hurry?”
    Sullivan nodded. “Time is of the essence in this matter, I’m afraid.”
    Brain took his tablet back out and tapped on it. “I told them to hurry it up.”
    “Thank you,” said Sullivan. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate this.”
    “Not at all, not at all,” said Brain. He leaned forward again. “Frank,” he said, addressing Allen, “is there any chance I could get my hands on one of those hyper-hyperspace ships?”
    Allen glanced at Sullivan. “They were all destroyed getting men to Edaline for the war, I’m afraid.”
    Sullivan nodded. “There were some problems with the technology anyway,” he said. “It was never one hundred percent reliable.”
    Brain frowned. “Too bad. Something like that could make a man a lot of money. If they ever work out those problems, you’ll give me a call, eh?”
    Allen smiled. “Of course.”
    They spent the next hour making small talk with Brain. Sullivan could see that he had changed. Being in charge had made him a lot cockier. Every other sentence was a boast of some kind or another. When the prepaid card finally arrived and Brain handed it over to them, Sullivan was glad to be free of the man’s presence.
    They let Brain think they were leaving the planet and took off in their ship. They jumped into hyperspace and spent a day circling the system before returning to Abilene, just in case Brain had decided to track them.
    “You can never be too careful with a man like that,” Allen had said.
    Sullivan did not disagree.
     

23
     
    THE PLANET OF Abilene had been settled—and named—by a group who had left their native Texas two hundred and fifty years earlier. The majority of the settlers belonged to a religious group led by a man named William Johnson. Most people on Earth recognized them as a cult, and it is true that Johnson had an unhealthy level of influence over the members of the church.
    Sullivan, who had never really studied the history of Abilene until now, read the Stellar Assembly Database files concerning the planet’s history with interest. As he and Allen were waiting for their contact to arrange a meeting so they could buy the weapons, he began to understand how Abilene had become the lawless enclave of murderers and smugglers that it now was.
    After the initial settlement by Johnson’s followers, other groups began to arrive. There was plenty of fresh water due to extensive underground reservoirs, but the surface of the planet was unbearably