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

by Daniel J. Kirk

  “No. It’s just that I’ve never seen multiple drill-runners whipping around like that. I always went into the veins alone.”

  After a few seconds, and perhaps I had jinxed them, Millar and one of the second group had collided and just barely managed a controlled landing. Which is to say they only crashed into the floor where no one else was standing.

  “That’s probably why you only ever went in alone.” Davis shook his head. “This isn’t going to work. We’re wasting time.”

  “It’s awesome,” one of the wrecked officers said jumping to her feet. Millar was right up with her smiles on both of their faces.

  “How quick can they fix our drill-runners?”

  “If no one else is going to try can I use another one?”

  “Damn it, Millar, you’ve crashed two already!” Davis yelled. “At least let someone else crash one.”

  Gregor looked up from the first wrecked drill-runner.

  “Please don’t wreck anymore. I’m not sure I have enough materials for fix this one.”

  “Okay, keep it simple today. Don’t push it beyond a couple of laps. Everyone gets a turn. Only one person up at a time.”

  Millar and the other two officers looked disappointed as they hurried back to the group, forcing them into a line they were not prepared to start.

  They all practiced the rest of the day. Each time they took to the drill-runners they improved more than just incrementally. You could see them leaving each run with a bit more confidence. Even Davis seemed to lose that edge of failure.

  It was going to work.

  I was positive.

  7. GLASS OCEANS

  “You’re still the best one out of them,” Colonial Officer Davis said.

  It had been four days. At this point, all ten officers had stopped crashing. They showed up early and stayed late. Only the exhaustion in their eyes forced us end our sessions each day.

  “They’ll get there. I wasn’t the best drill-runner back then. And they may react better once they are in the tubes. As far as training facilities go, this is just an empty room.”

  “I agree, but that’s not what I’m getting at, Stryder.”

  I wasn’t dumb I knew he wanted me to lead them into the tubes. And a part of me did as well, but I had drawn the line in the sand for myself. I wasn’t going to cross it.

  “Have there been more attacks?”

  “That’s the first time you’ve asked,” Davis said. “There have been two since you arrived here. They took a child.”

  I guess drawing a line in figurative sand wasn’t the thing to do. My mind imagined the wind blowing sand over the line eliminating it altogether. But I couldn’t. The gang members that deserved my justice were long gone. I saw a report on the Dessup Gang that said their average lifespan was three to eight months. Six years is a lot of turnover.

  “I’m a driver and a pilot. That’s it. You need soldiers out there. You picked a good bunch, give them time and it’ll work.”

  “If it doesn’t, we’ll have to blow up the tubes entirely.”

  “The Burnsiders live fine without them.”

  Davis took some offense to that. Earthsiders would always hold themselves in higher regard. And perhaps rightfully so, they did practice better hygiene.

  “The real difference is that Earthside has a future. The Burnside is in their autumn. I can assure you that with your help you’ll land a nice stay here, even your Russian friend there if he can be housebroken.”

  “I’m fine where I live.”

  “Then what will take?” Davis asked.

  I hadn’t realized we were negotiating here. Davis didn’t like that I asked for a lot of credits. He didn’t understand how quickly I’d burn through it giving Old Shepard the tender love and care that it needed. Heck, if he threw in a couple of drill-runners for my personal recreation, maybe that could get us talking. But apparently, the Colonials left something out of my profile. I’m stubborn. If I can make up my mind it really can’t be changed.

  “Come with me,” Davis said as he led me out of the bay. We worked our way up the Colonial tower.

  “I prefer the stairs. They require effort, but mostly because they keep me in shape. They give my mind time to think and my body a chance to use the muscles that the refinery chamber gives me. To me, there’s no greater waste than to throw away something that is given to you. You have a natural talent, Stryder. Your profile says so and so do my eyes. You aren’t just someone who survived years of drill runs. You actually have a thing for speed and piloting. You still race your hunk of junk. The problem with you is that you’re a jerk off.”

  I wasn’t really listening before, now Davis had my attention because I’ve never been a three-strike person. I’m a two-strike.

  “You live in the middle of nowhere. Burnside is the armpit of the universe. Anyone who says different doesn’t have a working sense of smell. I get it, bad things happen and you don’t want them to happen again. But take a look around. They’re happening. And you know why they are happening?”

  I wanted him to tell me.

  “Because you haven’t done anything about the bad things that happened to you. So it just keeps happening. We can go six years back right now if you want. I can start tracking all the crime you have let the Dessup Gang get away with, and I guarantee the cause and effect of it all leads up to a little boy name Jesse Marshall getting kidnapped from his loving parents. And let’s peer into the future while your mind is still masturbating. Let’s imagine Jesse all grown up. Because they don’t kill him, they make him one of their own. And he is too young to know what they took him from. He’s a ball of clay and they mold him to resemble them. But you’ve seen sculptures made by man. They can’t match what nature has done. They are crude representations. And his reign will be worse than their current leaders because mankind as a species has always had to go that extra distance. Doesn’t it? We always have to try and push forward with everything. When really, and correct me if I’m wrong, if we just fixed the stuff that was actually broke we would probably still be living on Earth as one big happy nation.”

  “By that logic I’m not responsible for Jesse Marshall and the Dessup Gang isn’t responsible for me. You have to go way back. Tell me, has the Colonial ever figured out how to build a time machine?”

  Davis shook his head. We had argued all the way to the top of the tower. The Blue sun was setting over sheer glass water. It was enough to keep all the alleys and streets well lit. Not a light in a home had been turned on yet. It was a cool light. It relaxed me and took my breath away. In Burnside, the blue sun didn’t set like this. It lit the sky, but there was no water to reflect off of, only ground and decay. Earthside felt like a completely different planet.

  For a moment, we both just stood there looking out. It was peaceful. I could give the Colonials credit for that. I could not imagine that underneath it all, the Dessup Gang was shooting through tubes bring hell and chaos.

  Davis cleared his throat. “I’m just saying. He was your brother, Kimberly. Just like Jesse is someone’s brother.”

  8. LET’S GO BOOM

  Six years ago. I was standing in Earthside. It had just been built. Many drillers had worked themselves near death to earn the right to live there. My brother Callum and I had.

  He was twenty and I was twenty-four years old. We had signed on with the drillers to pay off the education our parents had tried to provide us with. It was the one favor we could give back to them in hopes they could retire to a place as nice as Earthside was supposed to be.

  I didn’t want to think about it, but I thought about it everyday. Maybe there was one day that went by without me thinking about what happened to my brother. And that’s the day I wish I could remember because whatever happened on that day must’ve been good enough to let me forget.

  I tried to focus on the present, on what the officers were doing. I tried to watch their technique and I had them practice with the drill-runners in groups of three. We used the VertDeck to simula
te the narrower passageways of the tubes. The drill-runners danced through semi-translucent lines, a loud buzz sounded if they would’ve touched a wall. But there was no real consequence.

  That would not be the case in the actual tubes.

  From surveillance footage, we had established that the Dessup Gang ran groups of three out in waves. They launched a group every five minutes until twenty-one gang members were in the tubes. It was shortsighted of Colonial Officer Davis to have me only train ten officers. I suppose if the officers were good at what they needed to do, they could take out the groups of three as they came in.

  But we hadn’t started combat tactics yet. They had just barely mastered basic steering.

  “You don’t look happy,” Gregor said at the end of day seven.

  “I’m not. There’s still so much more they have to be able to do. The Dessup have been running these tubes for months now. They own the place.”

  “There’s no proof the Dessup have weapons they can fire while on the drill-runners.” Gregor told me. “Think about it, no one is supposed to be in the tubes. You can’t be in the tube as a human. And all the drill-runners on this planet should be gone now that the drilling is done.”

  “But how do we know?”

  Gregor yawned as if he’d been piloting all day instead of sitting around waiting for another repair job.

  “Davis runs scans on their drill-runners each time. There are no modifications from the first scan we saw. They aren’t expecting a fight in the tubes. They are armed, but they are armed for when they get out of the tubes. I know you can’t pull a blaster while you steer a drill-runner.”

  “What about the extra hinge in our drill-runners, have you figured out how that will be useful?”

  Gregor turned a yawn into a smile.

  “That is simple. If we change the pulse sensory to one more command-sensitive we can load each drill-runner with an object, everyday garbage for instance. And with a flick of the wrists the pilot can fling the object at the Dessup. Boom.”

  “Everyday garbage isn’t going to go ‘boom.’”

  “I know, I figure Davis will have access to the ‘boom.’”

  I shook my head, “These guys can barely steer and now you want them to aim with what is basically a catapult? How do they reload?”

  Gregor had already noticed the limitation, “Two shots is all they have, ten officers vs. three Dessup. That’s twenty shots at sitting ducks. They reload before the next wave.” Gregor frowned. “You don’t like this ideas?”

  I didn’t have any reason not to, no one else had come up with a better idea on how to weaponize the drill-runners.

  Davis didn’t say a word. He handed over the tablet and let it do all the talking. The newscaster was computer-generated and its life-like concern only made the report sadder because it couldn’t show half the emotion a report like this should’ve had. It might as well have been reporting the results of the last Sketherball Tournament.

  “Today nineteen individuals were killed by the rampant Dessup Gang. Three children are also missing following the attack. As this is breaking news we will have more as Colonial officials update us on the results of yet another heinous attack.”

  Davis said, “They’re breathing down my neck. And they aren’t doing enough. They should be strangling me until I have the Dessup Gang caught or killed. We need to be in those tubes yesterday— a week ago. Build me that time machine you were talking about, Stryder.”

  I almost gave him an excuse. Instead I explained Gregor’s idea.

  Three hours later the bay doors looked like Swiss cheese.

  9. PICKING A FIGHT

  I went to the top of the Colonial tower alone. I think I had wanted to breathe again, but the clouds had stolen the blue sunset and I was left with a view of darkness. So my breath remained stagnant.

  Still, I was trying to see something. Almost anything, as if the shadows down below hid some secret to some question I had. And if only that blasted cloud wasn’t in the way the sunset would reveal it to me and then, and only then would I have the peace I’d longed for all my life.

  I knew it wasn’t that simple.

  Perhaps my reflection was getting in the way. It wasn’t the face I wanted to see, and it wasn’t the conversation I wanted to have. In the reflection you couldn’t see my bad hair day, couldn’t see all the wrinkles I’d failed to correct. I looked six years younger. Exactly six years younger, and I knew that because it was the same sad face I stared at six damn years ago.

  I looked like a little bitch.

  My brother and I had it all solved. Mom and Dad were paid for. We’d sent the credit. It was the least we could do. I breathed that day. It wasn’t just a sigh it was an exorcism. I’d survived drill running and I had a future paid for, and my parents’ future was paid for.

  What did I do wrong?

  Did I invite the Dessup over for a nice shindig where they could crucify my brother? Did I help them pick the best way to peal back some one’s flesh so that they could hang in the air an extra two seconds before splattering across the ground?

  No. The only thing I did was convince my brother that the best celebrations that night would be in Burnside.

  That’s where I belonged. Not here in the grand fictional paradise.

  “Kimmie?” Gregor must’ve snuck up on me. I wondered how long he had been standing there. He looked like he had seen the thoughts in my head.

  “What?”

  “I was just looking for you. You acted rather strange when you left the bay and I thought you might need to talk,” Gregor said.

  “I’m fine. It’s just that I worry that they won’t be ready.”

  “That’s not your decision to make. Davis makes the call. You’ve done a fantastic job. You know me, I could never pilot a drill-runner and yet you took 10 people. And you turned all ten into pilots that would’ve made the second, third, fourth day maybe. No problem. The veins always had the random pop and burst of hydrogen, but the tubes are pure. You’ve given them a chance they didn’t have before. Those Dessup will have hell to pay.” Gregor tried a smile on me, but had to give up. “Davis wants you to go in there, but it’s not your fight, Kimmie.”

  “I think I want it to be my fight.”

  “No, Kimmie, it’s not.”

  I couldn’t say another word. My mind had a thousand of them on the tip of my tongue. No matter what I said it would be wrong.

  Colonial Officer Davis had the officers practicing before I got there. Today was the first day they were going to make a test-run down the tubes. I walked into the bay and was relieved. I basked in the blue sunset again. The officers worked as a team gliding through the air as calm as a light snow flurry. There was a gentle hissing of the drill-runners as they whisked by each other. There were obvious differences in some of the officers’ skill levels the more I watched, but for the most part they were all capable of dodging and turning.

  They had soft orbs that they tossed at each other to practice aiming. The orbs would hit the drill-runner and burst into confetti. It wasn’t pleasant to stand under, but no one got dead from it.

  It blinded me, too. Something about the moment was surreal. It looked more like we were practicing for a New Year’s Eve party rather than to kill a ruthless gang of killers and thieves. It took minutes to come up with something to say, even though it was forced I finally said, “Looking pretty good, we’ll have to see how they handle the tubes.”

  “Pretty good? They’re ready,” Davis said. “You did it, Stryder.”

  “Haven’t done it yet, the Dessup Gang is still out there.”

  “Not for long,” Davis grinned.

  10. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING

  I was dumb enough to believe him. His confidence was infectious and when the officers ran the tubes perfect, there was nothing stopping Davis from ordering our first patrol.

  I didn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned, and didn’t know why for hours. My mind ran circles around what was actually bother
ing me. And that was the impending guilt I knew would belong to me if the officers failed.

  And by failed I meant died.

  I found myself back in the bay alone except for the glow of the surveillance footage. I watched how swiftly the Dessup Gang adjusted as the tubes directed flow of whatever resource I was seeing. You could see the demand thrusting a wall of water and the three drill-runners cut just in the nick of time. They were going as fast as they could.

  “You’re setting off alarms,” Gregor said behind me. I was too tired to be startled. Plus there was nothing in Gregor’s nature that scared me. He was kind and gentle, dirty and lazy were his faults. He eased into a chair next to me. He smelled of coffee, he wasn’t drinking any, but he was definitely perspiring.

  “You’re up late,” I said.

  “I should say the same thing, but maybe you have better reason than I. I have been trying to fix a few of your pupils’ rides.” He smiled and said, “Relax, just wear and tear. They don’t know how to pilot them efficiently yet, lots of jerky movement. You were like that once.”

  “They’re not ready.”

  Gregor shrugged. “Davis thinks they are.”

  I shrugged back. “Maybe. No. I don’t know. I mean they’ve had a little over a week’s worth of training and the Dessup Gang has how long? Just because they started causing havoc three months ago doesn’t mean they just started three months ago. Look at how fluid they move. They work as a team.”

  “Like they are communicating.”

  “Exactly.” Exactly! I rewound the footage. It was clear two of the Dessup were following the third, reacting as he reacted.

  “What is it, Kimmie?”

  “Davis thinks the Dessup have the plans to the tubes and are using them to be anywhere they want to be. But what if they don’t? What if they don’t have a map at all? The attacks so far have been completely random. What if this is out of necessity rather than just criminal sadism?”