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

hatch was open. As Allen shoved Sullivan through, he hit the panel by the door and closed the hatch. He pushed Sullivan into one of the crew cabins and jammed the hatch’s flywheel from the outside.
    Sullivan staggered to the sink beside the bed and splashed water over his face. He felt the ship lurch as it lifted off the ground a few inches. The next thing he felt was a shudder accompanied by the sound of screaming metal. Allen was smashing the ship through the warehouse door. The ship tilted toward the aft and Sullivan knew they were airborne. Sullivan felt his weight shift slightly; the artificial gravity had engaged as the ship left the pull of the planet.
    Sullivan lay back on the bed, his head swimming. The shift in the gravity had been too much for him. He struggled to stay awake but failed, and within seconds darkness overcame him once again.

III: REVELATIONS

19
     
    KATE ALEXANDER TURNED the card around in her hand. It had been twelve hours. If something had happened to Rick, there was no guarantee General Miller would be able to do anything about it, but she had no other option. Rick hadn’t told her where Frank Allen had asked him to meet. She had asked, but he’d quickly changed the subject; no doubt he didn’t want her following him.
    Kate tapped on the side of her earpiece and spoke the numbers on the card out loud. The call connected a moment later.
    “Miller.”
    “Hello, General—James—this is Kate Alexander.”
    “Yes, hello, Kate. How are you?”
    Kate swallowed. “Not well.”
    “Is something wrong?”
    “Yes. Last night, Rick got a call from Frank Allen. He went to meet him and hasn’t returned.”
    “All right, Kate. I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Thank you, James.”
    “Where are you staying?”
    “The Agrona Suites. Room fourteen ten.”
    “I want you to stay at your hotel. I’m going to send some MPs to stand outside your door. If someone did get Rick, I don’t want to take any chances in case they’re after you, too.”
    Kate swallowed again, fighting back tears. “Thank you.”
    “I’ll call you back at this number as soon as I know anything, okay?”
    “Okay. Goodbye.”
    Kate took out her earpiece and made sure the toggle on the side was in the on position so it would beep when a call came in. She considered trying Rick’s number again but knew it would be pointless. She’d called a dozen times, and the call had not connected.
    To distract herself, Kate once again turned to her father’s set of Stoic works. She ran her hand across the cover of Zeno’s Republic . The entry she’d read about Zeno in the Stellar Assembly Database has said that the rediscovery of The Republic was as significant a find as Lucretius’s De rerum natura , the Dead Sea Scrolls or the second century version of the Gospel of Mark ending, very clearly, at chapter sixteen, verse eight.
    The excavations at Zeno’s Villa—according to the SA Database, the name confuses many tourists who don’t know that the name references the discovery of The Republic there and not the owner of the villa—rekindled an interest in Classical thought. All across Earth, clubs and societies dedicated to studying the works of Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca and Cato the Younger sprung up. It had been called the Millennial Renaissance, taking place, as it did, in the first century of the new millennium.
    Kate’s father voraciously consumed not only the writings of the Ancient Greeks and Romans but also the writings and commentaries of those who had been alive during the Millennial Renaissance as well as the Italian Renaissance which had reached its height in Florence during the fifteenth century.
    “Classical thought,” he had once said to her, “represents the highest achievement of humankind. In terms of science and technology, medicine, government, yes, we have improved on the Ancients. But we have not been able to improve on their philosophy. All the remarkable thinkers who came after them—Descartes,