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

  THE HELL WITH EARTHSIDE: A Novella

  STRYDER’s HORIZON (#1)

  FP EDITION

  © Copyright 2014 All Rights Reserved to Daniel J. Kirk

  Edited by George Strasburg

  Cover by Turtle&Noise

  WARNING: THIS EBOOK CONTAINS LANGUAGE AND SITUATIONS FOR MATURE AUDIENCES. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUNGER READERS.

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes) prior written permission must be obtained from both the author & publisher.

  Table of Contents

  THE HELL WITH EARTHSIDE

  INTRODUCTION

  1. THE STARTING LINE

  2. A 30-SECOND GUARANTEE

  3. IF YOU’RE GOING TO EARTHSIDE

  4. WHAT IS DEAD?

  5. PIVOT POINTS

  6. POPPIN’ BUBBLES

  7. GLASS OCEANS

  8. LET’S GO BOOM

  9. PICKING A FIGHT

  10. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING

  11. SUPER TOP-SECRET AMBUSH

  12. BACK TO BURNSIDE

  13. HELL IN EARTHSIDE

  14. MOTIVATIONAL

  15. TARGET PRACTICE

  16. NOT TO BE HUNG ON WALLS

  17. HELL HAS A PARTY

  18. PACKING UP BAGS

  THE HELL WITH EARTHSIDE

  By Daniel J. Kirk

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  INTRODUCTION

  Before we start I want to say a lot of people are going to get dead. People always get dead. They were made to die. There isn’t much about people that was made to live. Everything in us races to death.

  1. THE STARTING LINE

  Alice pulled up to the starting line. Her music was loud and if there was a melody, it was lost in the screaming singer’s indiscernible lyrics. Alice smiled and blew a kiss with all the subtlety of a stage actor.

  It was about time. If anything her late arrival to the starting line had cooled my adrenaline and left me disinterested in how our race would carry out. She had been the one who challenged me after all. I knew I could beat her and I had no interest in proving it until she demanded for the millionth time.

  Gregor pulled on an imaginary rope to get himself up out of his tattered lawn chair. It was in such disrepair that it almost followed him as he stood, but the strap broke. He rolled a small flag up around the pole and had to spin it free on his way out to the middle of the road. I thought of complaining that he was more on my side than Alice’s. That would force me to put my tires on the very edge of the pavement when I passed, but the challenge of doing so actually revived the blood in my veins. I felt warm again, like I could live.

  I winked at my reflection in the rearview mirror. I looked like shit. Should’ve brushed my hair, or should’ve cut it off. I looked like some frizzy haired punk rocker chick from the ancient 1980s minus the fluorescent headband. It wasn’t all that bright out. But I had my sunglasses on for more than just show, my eye shadow was a little more than normal.

  Gregor shrugged and looked at both of us. He raised the flag, which must’ve been exhausting because he yawned. I knew when he brought that arm down I had to pop the clutch into to gear and leave Alice in my dust. Meanwhile, she revved her engine as if that actually worked. It was all about timing. My rod, Old Shepard could get to 280-mph in five seconds. I topped out at 290, that’s when the steering wheel would rattle and I’d be vibrating like a charged electron. But the track was only six miles. So my start did matter since I knew Alice’s vibrant green paperweight could actually haul ass up to speeds over 300.

  Alice smacked her hand on her door. Why are the ones who are always late always the most impatient?

  Gregor dropped his arm. The flag followed. It was a memory now. An image still clinging to my retina as I listened to the engine accelerate. I couldn’t take my eyes off the road, the first curve happened fast. My faster acceleration meant I had to let off, where as Alice was still speeding up and matched the curve with the right velocity and then zoomed passed me.

  I hadn’t lost the race just yet. At mile four there was a turn that was going to take the wind out of her. I just needed to keep up. As long as I stayed close enough, it’ll be like starting at the line again and the acceleration would be enough to beat her in the final two miles.

  As I crossed the finish line I realized I’d run this track for the last time. There was no point to it anymore. Alice came in a mere second later. She flung open her car door and called Gregor over to inspect her engine.

  “Something has to be wrong!”

  I needed to stretch my legs otherwise I would’ve driven home. I’ve never been one to flaunt my victories.

  “Looks fine to me,” Gregor said scratching various parts of his body. He probably had fleas. Looked like he had fleas at the very least.

  “I don’t buy it. I could’ve beaten her.” Then she turned to me. “I could’ve beaten you on a longer track. No way your rust bucket does that again.”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  Alice didn’t hear me. “And if you want to go again I’ll show you how you got lucky. I thought I should take it a little easy on you when I passed you so quick on the first turn. Maybe I underestimated you, but you didn’t beat me.”

  “Your stereo too loud,” Gregor said yanking a wire. The noise gave the air a piercing silence, one that made Alice’s voice even shriller.

  “Come on Kimmie, let’s go again!”

  “Stereo eats horsepower,” Gregor tried to tell her. It was true. I’d removed mine years ago. Sold it for a brand new split crank. Of course that was a piece of junk and only lasted 1500 miles before it cracked. I think I have bubble gum filling the seams but I hadn’t checked in a couple years. I hadn’t had a real race or challenge in so long that there was no reason. Maybe I had a death wish or something. Maybe I wanted to lose.

  That’ll be the day.

  Kimmie Stryder, Loser.

  Gregor’s shack had a water pump so I helped myself to a drink as Alice tried to convince him she would’ve won. He wasted translating his knowledge from Russian to English. Alice simply did not like what he was trying to tell her.

  “Kimmie is better racer.”

  “She’s not the best,” Alice said.

  “I say ‘better’.”

  “You mean the best! That no one can beat her. That I just wasted my time and money. She got lucky. If she goes out there again I’ll crush her! I have faster times on the drag than her. Everybody knows that.”

  “Alice,” I said. “Do you want to beat me?”

  “Oh you bitch, I’ll kick your ass!”

  “No.” I tried to sound cordial, “I mean do you really want to know how to beat me?”

  “Great now you’re going to be all condescending. Get back in that rust bucket and suck my dust.”

  I almost did, but it would crush Alice when I beat her again. And despite her habit of tardiness and expansive musical appreciation, I actually liked the fire in her. She could be a pretty good racer if she stopped thinking everyone was trying to tell her they are better than her. She must’ve thought the whole planet was against
her.

  “I know you can beat me, Alice. You’ve got everything you need to do it, but you need to listen to Gregor. He’s only trying to help you.”

  “Suck. My. Dust.”

  Gregor shook his head, “You such pretty girl, but your mouth. Too vulgar.”

  A transport was en route. We could smell it making a turn. All Colonial transports had that burned leaves smell, like they ran off more than just Calcioil. We watched the bend wondering why it was headed this way. I’m sure each of us had a good reason to be concerned. When it appeared, that concern became a lump in my throat, a step back for Alice, and for Gregor, he tightened his grip on the rolled flag. We probably could’ve run, but those who did always ended up on the news looking like fools.

  The transport slowed down upon seeing us, taunting us with a snails pace of 100-mph. It stopped a little too close to Old Shepard. It was a pet peeve of mine, nobody was allowed close to its ass but me. I didn’t even like it when Gregor walked too close, and he was my friend.

  The air brakes hissed and the electronic chime announced the transport was opening. A Colonial officer stepped out. He looked like he’d just learned that the sun was going to keep coming up everyday, that there was nothing to worry about. He had a face like an accelerator pedal, long and flat, and with his overly joyed expression I wanted to step on it.

  “Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentleman. Colonial Officer Brent Davis.” The officer wasn’t introducing himself. He was introducing the man who stepped out of the transport next. His whole shape resembled the brake pedal. If a small critter ran across the road no one would blame me for braking.

  “Kimberly Stryder, you look like hell.”

  I could almost feel the collective sighs from Alice and Gregor on my neck. Apparently I’d drawn the short straw and this Colonial transport was here for me.

  Officer Davis continued his inspection of me. I thought of my frizzy hair, and felt bad about the first impression I was making.

  “I apologize.”

  “No, worries. It’s just that your profile showed a woman with much more…” I didn’t think he was going to say it, but he did, and he relished in it, “…class.”

  “Hard times, you know that. I’m sure all your briefings detail what’s going on out here. It’s not exactly Earthside is it?”

  “Earthside is not exactly Earthside anymore either.” Davis’ expression was glib. I checked in on the uniform that had introduced him. That joy of his must’ve been tattooed on or he must’ve been as dim as a rock.

  “What can I help you with today?”

  “Oh, that’s exactly want I wanted to hear, Stryder. We might get along after all.” He was still circling me, but he’d decided to pass judgment on Alice and Gregor as well. He snorted when he was done with the assessment.

  “You used to run for the drillers. Thought you would’ve made a fortune. You must’ve pissed it all away from the looks of it. But I heard, and also can see you still race regularly.” Davis ran his hand along Old Shepard finding nicks in the fender panel. “So let me get down to it. I want to offer you a job, which I thought would’ve been a harder sell, but apparently you could use the credits. So I won’t sugar coat it, Stryder. The job I’m offering is not going to be easy. But I hope it will be quick and efficient to use you and your skill rather than exhaust the reserves of taxpayers. And since you seemed oblivious to Earthside’s current climate, I assume you are unaware of the predicament the people are in with regards to a particular element who has seen fit to terrorize any and all the good people.”

  “I’m not seeing where this involves me.”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. I was hoping you’d say, yes, Colonial Officer Davis I would like to corral the Dessup Gang for you.”

  There it was. Davis had played the Ace up his sleeve. He let it hang in the air for all to see. I could almost feel the hairs rise on Alice’s neck from ten feet away.

  Even Gregor gasped, “The Dessup Gang?”

  2. A 30-SECOND GUARANTEE

  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.

  3. IF YOU’RE GOING TO EARTHSIDE

  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.