The Hell With Earthside: A Novella (STRYDER'S HORIZON Book 1) (2 page)

The Dessup Gang was ruthless. Three years ago they disappeared from Burnside. Burnside was grateful. We didn’t throw parties, but we started leaving our windows open at night and talking to strangers again. We thought that maybe they had looted us to the point that they ran out of places to store everything and simply decided to retire in their wealth.

Only, they had decided to focus their attention on
Earthside, which seemed a bit brazen to me. Earthside was the image of paradise we all have engrained in our subconscious mind, perhaps a reminder of original sin. It’s very green, very clean. The beaches are white like snow and the water is so clear it looks like a sheet of glass when there’s no tide. Then there’s the attention the builders paid to the original engineers’ design. Earthside was an architect’s utopia. The variations in style and décor were meshed with the same harmony God must’ve intended for the Garden of Eden.

But
Earthside was still the work of man. And with that came laws and varying degrees of bullshit. To make something so beautiful so unpleasant was the real crime. If it was any other gang, I would’ve laughed and let Colonial Officer Davis try and find some other former drill-runner to chauffeur the Colonial brand of justice around. But he had played that Ace card. He did more than stare at the picture of me in my profile. Apparently he could read, too.

“He is house broken isn’t he?” Davis asked me as Gregor followed
us into the transport. We both tried to ignore it. As the door closed behind him, I figured Alice had either taken off in her green machine or started ransacking Old Shepard for my secret tank of luck. That made me antsy to understand just what plan Officer David had involving me and get back by my ride.

“The
Dessup Gang is using Earthside’s network of facility tubes, air, water, and energy. They have modified drill-runners as you can see in this video capture, which allow them to navigate where humans have never been. These were all machined tunnels. We were never meant to travel through them.”

“So you want me to remember my days as a drill-runner and what? Catch them in the act?”

“When the drillers left our planet, most of their employees shuttled off with them. Yours was the only name that came up as having made a habitat out here in Burnside. As unbelievable as that all sounds, your local legend is rather big and therefore we liked our odds on trying to get our own driller-runner in the tubes. At the very least you might be able to instill some knowledge with our officers on how to pilot their own.”

David didn’t like it when I scoffed.

But I did.

Drill running wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, and it certainly wasn’t a lap around Gregor’s track. The guy who ‘taught’ me didn’t care if I died. His mentality was that you just had to feel the way to pilot, and he was right.

“Of course with your past run-ins with the Dessup Gang, we were quite excited to offer you the opportunity of presenting them with justice.”

I nodded.
Gregor’s eyes burned a hole in the back of my head. He knew what happened to me. He knew about my brother. I was certain Davis knew every sick detail as well. But I’d spent too long trying to move on. Trying to live.

I owed the
Dessup Gang. All of Burnside owed them. It was the only thing keeping me listening and not punching the smiling officer who had the name ‘Christian’ on his name badge.  I didn’t really recognize the markings on his uniform and wondered if he was some kind of civilian chauffeur for Colonial Officers. It kind of made sense since they seemed to find a way of making everyone in Earthside do something for them.

And now they had come to Burnside to make me do something.

Gregor had taken an interest in the scans of the modified drill-runners. He couldn’t seem to put them down.

“What is it, what do you see?” I asked him.

“It’s all wrong, Kimmie.”

“What does he mean?”

I looked at the scans and sure enough these were more than just modified.

“I never piloted one of these,” I said.

“Well I know that. The Dessup Gang has the latest model, but what difference does it make? You’ll be in one you are quite familiar with… the point is to catch them.”

“No, these are different,” Gregor said pointing to the thermal scan.

“What?”

“It means I don’t know what these can or can’t actually do. I’d be going into the tubes blind as to what I’m up against.”

Gregor nodded.

Davis said, “Fine, just train my guys and they’ll go in there and do it. I thought an adrenaline junky like you would be raring to give the tubes a tour. But I guess I was wrong.”

He wasn’t entirely. I would’ve loved to pilot through them. Wasn’t I just lamenting how boring racing Old Shepard on Gregor’s track had become?

“I’ll do it.”

I shocked Gregor. He grabbed my shoulder like it was his supper trying to run away. He looked at me with scared eyes and gaped lips. I knew he wanted to lecture me on the dark days after what happened to my brother and me.

“Excellent,” Davis said.

“I’ll train your officers.”

Gregor’s mouth closed and my shoulder was released. Davis didn’t look as pleased, but he was getting what he wanted: an experienced drill-runner to tell his officers how not to end up dead within their first thirty seconds on a drill-runner. Of course anything after the first thirty seconds I couldn’t guarantee.

Alice hadn’t ransacked Old Shepard as far as I could tell. She was sitting behind the wheel of her ride ready to take off if things had gone south. She seemed pleased to see Gregor and I exiting the transport alive. There was good reason for her concern. The Colonial Officers usually only came to Burnside if there was some one they wanted to have executed.

She waited for the transport to veer back down the road before she ran to us.

“What did they want?”

“Pretty much what they said out here. I need to take care of a few things at my place and then I’m going to ride out to
Earthside, want to come?”

I had never figured out Alice’s story, but she shuddered at the thought of taking a trip out to
Earthside. I knew it couldn’t be pleasant. Most of the people who lived in Burnside had very good reasons for being here. Before Earthside was built, there was a much more hopeful attitude about this planet. Like this was going to be the one. Like we’d all drawn the long straws and lucked out on a place we could call home. But once the planet had been drilled and colonized, it never felt like home.

It was too expensive to leave.

“Where’s he going?” Alice asked as Gregor had gone into his shack and returned with a stuffed pack over his shoulder.

“With me. I just pilot drill-runners. I can’t say I know anything else about them.”

Alice had the expression on her face like she didn’t know what to do if we were gone. I’m sure she’d hook up with some scrap at a pub or start stories about how she did beat me today. But maybe it was something else. Alice was a few years younger than me, and she probably had no idea that sometimes when people get into a Colonial Transport they do come back.

Of course, I was smart enough not to risk that and was going to take Old Shepard all the way to the wall. Hopefully the Colonial Officers would overlook the environmental regulations and let me park it inside.

My place was nicer than Gregor’s, but I’d still call it a shack. It just happened to stay cleaner, mainly because I spent all my time in Old Shepard or at Macy’s Pub. But it was drastic enough of a difference that Gregor always tried not to touch things as if he was afraid I’d get mad at him for dirtying up the place. I guess it was because of the way I got when people touched Old Shepard.

I fumbled through outfits and tried to find my old roll gauge. I’d kept it when they disassembled my drill-runner and launched it into space. It wasn’t often, but sometimes I regretted not going. Like maybe I’d be happier if I was somewhere else, like maybe I did have a home out there in this galaxy.

I think homes are like souls. At some point, God ran out of them. Now we’re just kind of here with no purpose or reason, just a slight miscalculation of excess.

Kind of like all the junk that had filled my place. It was all stuff I didn’t really need. I just thought I did. All I ever needed was Old Shepard and enough Calcioil to keep me chasing the horizon.

“We need to be careful in
Earthside. We show them what to do and we leave,” Gregor said.

“I’m with you on that, buddy.”

“I mean it, Kimmie. If anything goes wrong, they will blame you. Colonial always blames someone.”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

“I think I do. I’m only coming to—

“Relax, if I thought there was a risk I’d have told him no. You know his little transport couldn’t keep up with Old Shepard.”

“What about the Dessup Gang? Huh, Kimmie? This might be a little operation for them. You play with the hornets’ nest and you get stung.  You better kill them all.”

He had finally said what was in my heart. I didn’t like hearing it. This was only a win/lose scenario. There would be no second place.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. It was in the past. I’m okay now. Let Colonial have their way with them.”

“Really, I don’t buy that.”

“I’m definitely going to make sure they see justice, but long ago I realized I don’t have the power to give them what they truly deserve.  It’s a tough bite to chew, but I’ve been chewing it for six years.”

“I’m just saying,
Kimmie. If you are going to do this you better kill them all.”

“Then let’s kill them all.”

Our conversation at my place had made the drive to Earthside awkward. We’d exchanged a few quips about Old Shepard’s performance, but it was like we were scared the water in the kiddie pool was too cold. Eventually I pushed Old Shepard up to 292-mph, which gave our teeth a nice solid rattle. It felt great when we finally had our feet on flat un-moving soil again.

Look, I’ve seen what vengeance does to people. I saw what it was doing to me, and thank God, someone like Gregor had seen it six years ago as well. And as the gates to
Earthside opened and Colonial officers led us in I didn’t have to remind myself of it. I was there to train someone else to take care of the Dessup Gang.  That’s as dirty as my hands were getting.

I could do this. I could keep my emotions buried.

Of course upon entering Earthside, I wondered if there was anyway to get my hands dirty at all. I had forgotten how beautiful it was. In no way did it look like a place terrorized by the Dessup Gang. Everywhere people bounded about with tattooed smiles and friendliness. There wasn’t trash anywhere. I was glad I hadn’t fixed my hair or makeup as that seemed to invite an array of odd glances. I felt like I needed a camera to collect them all, just to show how truly varied the look of disgust could be.

Colonial Officer Davis must’ve thought I had intended to clean up as well. The second he spotted me he quickly ushered us into a Colonial guard station.

The looks continued as we were marched into an immaculate mechanics’ bay. Ten drill-runners waited with the packing materials still on them. I wondered what it had cost them to get them sent down on a planet that had already been drilled. I also wondered if Davis had planned to get his officers to try a run without my help. Either way, I had assumed they’d be left over drill-runners rather than brand-spanking new ones. I might be at a loss if they had changed in six years.

“Very shiny,” Gregor approved. He began inspecting them. Davis watched him for just a moment before he directed me towards ten officers who looked about as proud as stupid could look. They must’ve volunteered.

Of course I understood that catching the Dessup Gang was an easy motivator.

“Officers, this is Lady Kimberly
Stryder. She worked for the KorCorp Drillers for five full seasons. She is an expert in drill-running and I am told she is also a skilled pilot of anything that moves.”

I gave a polite wave. They smiled like they had no clue what they were getting into.

“I will turn them over to you, Stryder. I will be right over here if I can be of any assistance. Just let me know.” Davis stepped back a single step. I guess that meant he’d be breathing down my neck the whole time.   So I had to keep in mind the end goal, the Dessup Gang.

“Alright, the first thing I was ever told about piloting a drill-runner was the best advice I ever heard. It didn’t make sense at the time, but in time, if you live, you will probably find it to be an apt description of
drill-running. My mentor used to say, ‘it’s not as hard as it looks but it is not as easy as it looks.’ Drill-running is done because no computerized system could survive the heat of the planet core. Instead, they jettisoned the smartest half-wits they could find with quick reflexes into a network of veins, a labyrinth of death. We’d shoot down hoping to find these tiny little slivers of 10-90a. We then had to latch a drill cup just right.  Then if we were lucky, we got to navigate out of the vein, only to go back in again a few hours later when the cup was full—“

An irritated Davis cut in, “They’ve seen the documentaries,
Stryder.”

“What I’m getting at is the fact we did this over and over, going deeper and deeper each time. We memorized the veins and unfortunately, I don’t think I could forget them. Now the benefit you all have is that first off, the tubes won’t damage any computer you have on board. I would recommend outfitting these with imaging, weapons, and anything else Colonial is willing to front.”

“We will be,” Davis said.

“Good, the second thing is that we can start to memorize the tubes without ever going inside since the plans for
Earthside can be uploaded into a VertDeck?”

I wasn’t actually sure. But Davis nodded as I looked at him.

“But before we can do any of that, you all must learn how to turn. It goes against every single device you have ever piloted. You are going to save us all a lot of time if you just pretend right now you have never moved your arms or legs in your life. Because when you lay down in a drill-runner, that drill-runner is a part of your body. And if you start moving your body like you do on a normal basis, you’re going to end up in a wall. Dead.”

“You can’t catch the
Dessup Gang dead.” Davis added. Seeing the smiles on the officers’ faces had not changed, it was probably a good idea to remind them of this.

So for good measure, I also added, “Dead is bad.”