The Hell With Earthside: A Novella (STRYDER'S HORIZON Book 1)

by Daniel J. Kirk

  We entered a war room. Officers were analyzing maps and structural damage, life supports and more. They were broken up into stations. At least one woman was roving through them to keep check on progress. She had the bitterest face of them all.

  “Who’s this?” she barked.

  “Kimberly Stryder, her mechanic, and it seems another pilot.”

  “Seems?” She glared at the officer who had led us through hell.

  “Alice Murphy, pilot.” Alice confirmed.

  The woman scoffed, “Davis’?”

  She turned to the officer next to her who confirmed with a nod that tasted bad.

  “Where is he? Get him up here,” she ordered before turning back to us. “Don’t touch anything. Go into that room over there, and don’t touch anything.”

  She seemed to be placing a strong emphasis on touching, kind of awoke the teenage rebel within me. But I was a good girl and we went into a glass room and waited like products in a store window.

  Alice found a chair to flop into and said, “We should just take care of the Dessup ourselves, this is gonna be nothing but bureaucracy, a complete waste of our time. There won’t be an Earthside by the time they realize they need our help.”

  Gregor faked a yawn and tapped his foot.

  “It’ll work out once Davis gets here,” I said.

  “I don’t think your guy is the one in charge.”

  The woman entered just as Alice finished speaking.

  “You’re the hot shot that trained the drill-runners?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve come back to make more cannon fodder?”

  “I’ve come back to be the cannon fodder. All I need is a drill-runner for Alice and I and we’ll give the Dessup Gang a first class treatment to hell.”

  “I’m a Grand Officer, you say, ‘sir.’”

  “Sir.” I tacked on without any real effort of respect. She didn’t like that much and I didn’t like that her position as a Grand Officer put her rank above Davis’. He probably didn’t even have the rank to be in the war room now that I think about it. He must’ve been some guy with a dumb idea that the uppers were willing to green light on account that it couldn’t hurt. Only it did. It was successful and the Dessup didn’t like that one bit.

  “Is she already trained?”

  I looked at Alice and lied, “She’s better than me.”

  Alice didn’t have to act. She believed the part.

  The Grand Officer paced like it was in her good interest. I could tell she thought she was wasting her time, but she was waiting for Davis, maybe so that she could chew him out for inviting us here.

  “There’s a file on me if you’re looking for some reading and something to do while you rack your brain around how to get the Dessup back,” I said. “Can’t vouch for how boring it is since I didn’t write it, but give it a skim.”

  “I know who you are, Miss Stryder.”

  “Well I don’t know who you are.”

  “Grand Officer Tourner.”

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.” I extended a hand that wasn’t meant to be taken. Tourner knew better than to take the bait and didn’t even acknowledge it with her eyes. “I know I can help with your Dessup problem. Even more importantly, I want to help with your Dessup problem.”

  “I’m not accustomed to sanctifying suicides, especially when they only stir up the hornets nest.”

  Alice butted in to everyone’s surprise, “You’re the one wasting our time, lady.”

  “Well, then by all means, why are you here?”

  “We don’t own any drill-runners. I asked for one but you never sent it.”

  “Why don’t you just use Old Shepard?” The Grand Officer knew the name of my car. I almost swooned, but I wasn’t that easy. She spoke my beauty’s name with a careless disdain that wouldn’t earn her my friendship.

  “Old Shepard can’t move like a drill-runner. I’m going to need to go wherever they go.”

  Tourner shook her head. “They aren’t in the tubes anymore. Can’t you see you’ve flushed the rats from the sewers? They’re attacking from the streets.”

  Colonial Officer Davis looked like he walked into the wrong restroom. His hand was at the doorframe, ready to back out.

  “Look who has come back,” Tourner said to him. “You didn’t invite her back did you?”

  “No, sir,” Davis replied.

  Tourner cleared her throat and looked me in the eye, “So this means you really do want to be here.”

  I said, “I’d like to kill them all, sir.”

  14. MOTIVATIONAL

  To say I won over Grand Officer Tourner is like saying outer space tastes like cinnamon. I just don’t have the anything to prove it, but I don’t have any evidence that says space doesn’t taste like cinnamon. So I was willing to look at any glass as half-full.

  Davis loomed over me with a smile. He was a bit spastic in his movement like he couldn’t decide if he was allowed to make them. I could see Tourner had him in a fluster for how his plan had backfired. He was grateful I was there. This time, he seemed all too eager to let me handle the training and even the plan, only ever offering information that I was without, being that I didn’t live in Earthside.

  “No, Earthsiders do not celebrate Halloween,” Davis said.

  I was kind of appalled by that fact. “No trick ‘r treating for the little ones?” I asked.

  “Most of the old holidays are acknowledged but not celebrated, like Christmas.”

  “No Christmas?” Alice asked.

  “You asked if there would be a big festival, a distraction, and I’m saying there won’t be,” Davis said. “I understand what you want to do and that’s set up a good firm date we can expect an attack, but Earthsiders aren’t going to come out and celebrate it. They’re terrified.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting using them as bait,” I stated. “I just thought that if there was a celebration that took place, it would entice the Dessup Gang.”

  “They must watch the newsfeeds,” Gregor said. “What if you say there is going to be a celebration?”

  “There isn’t enough time, it will look like an obvious trap.” Davis had a pair of puppy dog eyes trained on me as if I held a treat behind my back.

  I shrugged. “You all really can’t pinpoint where they are coming from?”

  “It’s never the same location and we can’t track their movements before they make themselves known, nor have we had any success following them after an attack. All we know is that they are already in Earthside somewhere. They’re fast.”

  Alice scoffed. She thought we were faster.

  “Okay bright eyes, what’s your plan?” Davis snapped at her.

  “You get us in drill-runners and we arm them to the teeth, they won’t get away.”

  Davis looked to me as if I needed to control Alice. I wasn’t going to admit that I couldn’t so I just smirked like she was saying what I wanted her to say.

  Gregor said, ”Again, you can’t really fire a weapon on a drill-runner. Your body is too tied up with movement. If you stop to shoot they would get away. Every time.”

  Davis tapped his jaw. “What is we were to attach cannons, but have some one else control the firing.”

  “It wouldn’t be all that different than the avatar missions. Do you have any veterans?” I asked.

  “Sure, most of Earthside is retirees.”

  I looked at Gregor who was thinking this through. After a moment he nodded.

  “Now we still need to find a way to lure them out, Earthside is too big to count on getting lucky and being in the right space at the right time.”

  “You have a subculture in Earthside, right?”

  Davis didn’t answer.

  I continued, “I’ve heard about it. It’s all those folks who should move out to Burnside and live their lives free of judgment, but instead they go around doing sociably nasty stuff behind closed doors.”

  “I have never known anyone who has been apart of s
uch a thing,” Davis said as a badge of honor. Maybe it was. I didn’t know what kind of filth an Earthsider could be into. But I’d heard enough stories to know most would be killed in Burnside for their depravity. That’s why I think it’s good to be a little loose, a little angrier. One needs to work that stuff out of their system in small doses. It’s when you let it swell up that evil happens.

  “Well maybe there aren’t, but it’s common talk in Burnside. We expect the worse from an Earthsider’s mind. I would bet the Dessup Gang has heard similar rumors. What if we set up something really decadent sounding, a Halloween party like old times, truly pagan and dark?”

  “Try and lure them into thinking they can really embarrass the Colonial,” Davis continued my thought. “We can disguise our officers in costumes, even hide the drill-runners. Tourner will hate it.”

  “It’s good for one to be consistent,” I said.

  Between teaching Alice, who hated to be told to do anything, and trying to plan a decadent Halloween shindig, I would take teaching Alice any day. The party was coming together like a nuisance. Look that word up. The party was the word made flesh with a bow around its stupid neck.

  Davis had delegated the job to someone with seedier connections and there were arguments over which location would be best, which quickly dissolved once it was realized said destination would be decimated.

  Meanwhile, Alice put a dent in the bay that had enough definition to cast a sculpture of her in a drill-runner. She cursed me to trying to confuse her.

  “I thought you said she had done this before,” Davis asked upon entering one of our training sessions.

  “I’m trying to teach her how to fight on it. It’s a little different than just steering. She’ll get it. Besides, have you all worked out the remote weapons system yet?”

  “I have, you’ll be meeting your gunmen shortly.”

  I hadn’t seen Gregor all morning. I assumed he was working on rigging the drill-runners with the cannons.

  Davis turned on the news feed. “See if this motivates her.” He left without another word. Could’ve stayed and it wouldn’t have mattered, our eyes were glued to the terrible feed coming in.

  I stared until the images couldn’t hurt me anymore. My brain fought every right it had to scream. All I could do was gape at how much the insides of a person could resemble the pinkness of a poodle’s tongue.

  15. TARGET PRACTICE

  “Fire.”

  I could practically feel my gunman’s groan. I set the drill-runner in the center of the bay before he finished annihilating the target. There were burns down the side of the wall. So much for target practice.

  “He’s too slow,” I said to a glaring Davis.

  “Hey, tell her I can shoot a Dessup the second I see one, but I’m waiting on her to say hit the target.” The gunman’s name was Officer Dent. I was almost certain it was a name he had earned and not been born with, but Davis assured me otherwise.

  “He’s right I think in actual combat it will work fine.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. If I swoop in on the Dessup Gang and this guy hiccups, I’m dead.”

  Alice threw in her two-cents. “There has to be a way for us to control the shooting, this is just stupid.”

  Maybe there was a better way, but I will admit that I didn’t have the reflexes to do it myself. Still a gunman on a zero-drop feed should not have any hesitation in his firing. As it was it felt like I was ordering a drink in a packed pub and I had the smile of a gorilla.

  Davis returned to the surly man I had first met, all that whimpering puppy dog crap had gone out the window for one sharp remark, “Maybe you’re just scared.”

  In Burnside there would’ve been the sound of a door slamming. Here in Earthside, it just swooshed and swished as Davis stormed out.

  Alice’s gunman spoke up in the immediate silence, “What if you all said fire sooner? That sounds dumb given what you just said, but what if you say it as you’re turning into the target?”

  “Shut up, brainiac.”

  I quickly corrected Alice, “You mean keep dodging then lining up the assault as soon as the cannons start firing?”

  “It’s not ideal,” the gunman named Clancy said.

  “Well, not in close quarters where we might shoot each other, but let’s try it.”

  We ran a few test runs. Dent performed better. There were only a few burn marks leading up the wall to the target, then he locked onto to the target and turned it black from the red and white target that it was.

  “Let’s turn them all to ash,” Clancy said.

  There were no arguments from the drill-runners. It was the first time I felt ready. Davis was wrong. I wasn’t scared. I just wanted to be certain the Dessup would get dead as much as possible.

  Tourner came to watch us perform. She had a pair of folded arms and a face with no legend. We received a nod, and that was good enough for me.

  She spoke with Davis at length. When he came to me he was stern, strong and arrogant like when we met.

  “Halloween is tomorrow. Word of a private party for elite citizens has been spread. Maybe the Dessup heard it. Maybe we’ll be the only ones who show up to the party.”

  “Where’s my costume?” Alice asked.

  Gregor chuckled. We’d been practicing so hard we had stayed out of the party planning committee.

  “They’ll be delivered to your quarters tonight. I’m told it is rather gruesome.”

  “And our drill-runners?”

  Gregor flashed a Cheshire grin.

  “They are the screaming banshee,” he said. “Very scary. You will like, Kimmie.”

  “We chose a venue as big as this bay. It will be loaded with officers. They will arrive unarmed, but we have stocked every nook and cranny. Every hellish decoration packs real wrath.”

  “This better work. I don’t believe the Dessup will let you trick them twice,” Alice said.

  Davis nodded. “I believe in Kimberley Stryder.”

  16. NOT TO BE HUNG ON WALLS

  Let me paint the picture.

  All around us were flickering strobe lights. Orange, blue, green and red depending on which corner you stood in. There was a pulsing beat that both Alice’s sense of sound and my own found rather vile and unnatural. It was actually welcomed since it brought my agitation to a level where I might start killing the officers around me if the Dessup Gang didn’t turn up soon.

  Some idiot danced in the DJ booth like he was the only source of entertainment for the night. He was dressed like Frankenstein’s monster, but moved more like a jackass.

  Most of the other officers were disguised as famous politicians who were all very scary in their own right. There were a couple of renditions of vampires, including Alice’s.

  She’d been scratching the fishnet stockings out of her crotch for an hour straight. She was decked out in black, including a wig of straight black hair, and blacked out eyes. Her lips and chin were coated in bright red, while the rest of her skin had been painted a pale blue.

  She stood with her ass up against our costumed drill-runners. I was sure our gunmen, Clancy and Dent were enthralled by her thinly veiled rear-end posed right in front of the targeting camera.

  “The things we do to get to kill some Dessup,” she muttered after I had asked her to repeat it. I doubt it carried through the racket they claimed was music, but I shuddered as I thought the Dessup might still be listening in.

  They might’ve recognized it was a trap anyways, because while I painted the picture of the gyrating DJ, the rest of the officers stood around like it was a social business meeting. They paired off into a couple of conversations here and there. There was no unchecked depravity, no loss of inhibitions. Alice and I weren’t helping the scene standing impatiently next to two giant black banshees, with jagged black wings and terrifying white skulls forever composed in screams. I wondered if our drill-runners felt as stupid as we did.

  What was I wearing?

  I was dressed like some n
urse who would’ve caught infection on her first day in a hospital. If my breasts got any higher I wouldn’t be able to see over them. I could complain about the corset or the heels or the fake surgical knives glued to my neck and shoulder, or the stage blood leaking down my cleavage, but then it would sound like I didn’t want to kill the Dessup.

  Besides I kind of liked the insanity of the get up. I was starting to feel like the deranged un-killable nurse. What was her back-story? Something horrible happened to her, maybe she was picked on by her patients. Came back and haunted some hospital punishing the injured and ill.

  No.

  She had a brother once. A future too, her parents had helped her attain it, and now her brother was going to help her repay their parents.

  They uploaded the check to their account.

  Went to the bad part of town where the most fun could be had. It was her idea. She was so young and excited to experience everything, to know what it was like, to pass judgment based on her knowledge versus what other people had told her.

  Her brother was game. He was her little brother. He looked up to her. He wanted to protect her as much as she had protected him as they’d grown.

  There were sounds better classified as music that night. The whole drilling company was leaving the planet. It was one last hurrah for many who would never set foot on that planet again, for others, like that stupid girl and her brother, it was the last time they’d really have to work. They’d made enough to cultivate this new planet into a home.

  Oh, that stupid girl.

  It was easier for her to drive fast. Pay attention to the road. Forget about the past that she could never really run from. The past that finally had her dressed up like a damned nurse from hell. Looking for her revenge on just such a night.

  It was Halloween night, when the damned were supposed to be out.

  I was. Even had my friends with me.

  17. HELL HAS A PARTY