Sullivan Saga 1: Sullivan's War

Sullivan Saga 1: Sullivan's War Read Free

Book: Sullivan Saga 1: Sullivan's War Read Free
Author: Michael Rose
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the park was about as good as it got.
    Sullivan glanced at the playground and watched the children. He envied them. Growing up on Earth, they had never known misery or want. The closest they ever got to violence was playing the virtual reality war games. Videos and photos of real wars on other planets were less vivid than those games. The gruesomeness of it, the destruction of it, the pain of it, seemed to be nothing more than a fiction to them. They knew it happened, but it happened to other people light-years away. On Earth, war was for entertainment.
    Sullivan had played war games as a child. His home planet of Edaline was just as technologically advanced as Earth, he’d had all the same comforts and luxuries. But Edaline had none of the social and political stability. The people were not content with their government, and the government was not content to let any challenges to their power go unanswered.
    When Sullivan was fourteen, those disruptions reached a fever pitch. Edaline’s military had been dispatched to put down a student uprising at Agrona University. The resulting massacre rallied the citizenry against the government, and for six months, revolution flared. As the people rose up, they took control of eighty percent of the capital, Agrona. In other cities around the planet, similar uprisings pushed the military back, drove the politicians into hiding and took over government facilities.
    But the revolution burned brightly and was extinguished quickly. The military decided that by fighting street to street, they were at a disadvantage. In such fighting, they couldn’t bring their superior weaponry to bear. The rebels had gotten ahold of anti-tank and anti-air weapons, barricaded the streets and been able to repulse ground assaults and take down low-flying fighters. But the surgical strike missiles were idle. There was no way to use them and restrict casualties to the rebel forces. Even if the weapons’ precise guiding systems performed flawlessly, the destructive force of the missiles would damage the surrounding buildings. If Edaline’s military used them, civilian casualties would be heavy.
    Sullivan’s neighborhood was one of the first to be hit. It was early evening, and his mother was cooking dinner over a grill on the balcony of their apartment. The power had been out for weeks, spoiling all the food that required cold storage, but they had managed to make do with the small supply of canned and dried foods they’d had in the pantry.
    At first, Sullivan didn’t know what the sound was. There had been explosions since the start of the revolution but nothing like this deep, rumbling wave that shook the building and made his father stand and look toward the open balcony door. His mother came inside and closed the door just before the shock wave of another blast, stronger and closer, reached their building, shattering the windows and rattling the dishes off the table and the pictures off the walls.
    Sullivan’s father took his and his mother’s hands. “Let’s go down to the parking garage,” he said, speaking firmly but calmly.
    The unlit stairwell was filled with the other tenants of the building. A few had flashlights and were trying to illuminate the way for as many as possible. A cry rose up from the crowd as another missile hit.
    “They’re getting nearer!” cried his mother.
    Sullivan’s father leaned over the railing and looked down the stairwell. “Move, damn it!” he yelled.
    Sullivan’s mother put her hand on his father’s shoulder. “Why have we stopped?”
    “Something’s happened down there. I think someone’s hurt, blocking the stairway.”
    The last explosion that Sullivan recalled knocked him sideways. He felt himself fall, land hard against what felt like another person and then the dim light from the flashlights faded as the smoke and dust rose and his eyes closed.
     
    SULLIVAN BLINKED AND refocused his eyes as a child began to cry. He looked over at the jungle gym

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