Prisoner of Earthside: A Novella (STRYDER'S HORIZON Book 2) Read online

  It was dark where we hid. Only the light from the metal grates gave any definition to the shapes between us. I just hoped the rats were real, and the jhornosp had already prepared its meal.

  To think I’d almost thanked the man for trying to get his suspicious buddy to move along. A part of me really wanted to scream for them, beg them to protect us, arrest us. I think Alice was having the same thought.

  Then I heard a sound.

  I’d heard it before, only that was before I could relate it to the information I had just learned. There was a jhornosp stashed beneath the metal grates with us. I really didn’t want to die like that. I began to make my way beneath the grates. I had this brilliant idea that I would kill it and somehow avoid getting licked.

  I think when fear is at its strongest we do things that sound thought out in our heads, we even convince ourselves this is the best available option. But I really hadn’t put much thought in how to manhandle and kill a jhornosp in such a tight space.

  The sound grew louder as I was headed in the right direction. Above the metal grates the cargo had blocked out any light. I moved into darkness. I stopped, bobbing my head from side to side in hopes of letting enough light down my path to see where I was headed. Then I saw its meaty flesh, breathing.

  The jhornosp could be no further than a meter away. It turned towards me. All those thoughts about this being a good idea soiled my pants. But I knew I couldn’t scurry back. I had to face it. I had to hope I wouldn’t be licked.

  I panicked. I hyperventilated. I didn’t move until my brain cracked and the light behind my shaking head revealed a glimmer of hope.

  12. SOME CURSING OCCURS

  “I don’t understand you,” Alice said.

  I put the cage beneath an empty pallet. The stupid jhornosp stared at us, plotting our seasoning and eventual devouring. Lucky for us, the moron smuggling the damned thing had properly imprisoned the nasty bugger in a cage.

  I wasn’t grateful enough not to steal his prized sale. I had plans for it now. Not real good and firm plans, but I have a bit of hoarding in my nature and I like to hoard options. A caged jhornosp is always a good option to have. Some one wise probably said that once.

  We had snuck off the Kirmine shipment easier than we had boarded, but were now in the import facility without the proper identification to allow us to maneuver about willy-nilly.

  Still green lights surrounded us, pulsing to keep shipments moving in the correct path. We followed floating pallets and tried to keep our faces unnoticed by any passerby.

  It wasn’t luck, most import facilities were so busy, especially in Earthside, that there was no reason to take a moment and try and recognize or say a friendly hello to a co-worker. I’d had a drink with enough former shipment pickers to know that it was in each employee’s best interest to keep their head forward and their task at hand in sight.

  It didn’t make the trip down several hallways any less suspenseful for Alice and I. I can assure you that. In retrospect, when we hit the streets of Earthside it seemed like it was all too easy and quite silly how tense we had been.

  But I do believe, to a certain degree, in the concept of karma, or balance. And because it was so easy to hit the streets of Earthside, I should’ve known only something truly terrible could be awaiting us.

  “Which way to Templar’s Stairs?” Alice asked.

  I had expected to see the looming structure, but we came out of the shipment facility into a rather busy part of town. The buildings were tall and clustered. Above, transports shot about without any intent on stopping. This part of Earthside wasn’t a destination, but a bypass.

  “The sun sets behind it, so we head that way,” I said. Hoping the light above was from the Star of EchoEarth. Fun fact, when Earthside was first being established, they decided to make life easier and say the sun still set in the West as it did on the old Earth. It was very disconcerting. Some people claimed it drove them mad, because on EchoEarth, the sun sets in the south east, and some how our brains had been trained to find this awkward and calling it west was akin to calling the color blue a rectangle.

  Maybe that was why everything was so screwed up on this planet. It was wrong to begin with.

  We took a few steps in that direction before the newsfeed shot across the sky and revealed Alice and I in high definition, blemishes and all stared back down at us as the news anchor reported that we were at large, having illegally returned to Earthside.

  “Well that was quick.” We quickly ducked against a building and tried to avoid anyone who had bothered to look up at the feed.

  “We just got here,” Alice said. “I thought you had a plan. I should never trust you when you say that.”

  “I’ll revise it a little. Look, they’re looking for the two of us together. Our best option might be to split up.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m gonna get caught and spend the rest of my days in jail because you decided it would be a good idea to string up a dead Grand Officer like a trophy killing.” Alice looked ready to strike me. “Damn it, Kimmie. I wanted to see Thom. That’s it. You fucked it up.”

  Alice had no problem splitting up. She didn’t even tell me where she planned to go. She just walked away, and not in the direction of where I thought Templar’s Stairs would be.

  If I’m being honest, I was tempted to go home. A part of me said, screw her. Screw them all. I could turn in the brat Randall Nehalem and try to pull a few more strings to make sure I didn’t do any time. Wash my hands of the whole damn thing. But inside me was this wretched pounding thing. Alice was right. I had made things worse with each new plan I concocted. Just so that she could meet up with her ex-boyfriend.

  I took more than two steps I think.

  Then I was sucker punched.

  “Open your eyes, bitch.”

  The voice was like sandpaper and a bowl of lemon juice. It was followed by another flat knuckle punch to my jaw. And then the voice resumed disparaging comments.

  “Whore, who do you think you are, killing us? You come back for me?”

  I felt the fist in the air, but it never hit my face. I slowly parted my winced eyes and saw a badly scarred man restraining himself. I made the mistake of trying to smile.

  So he punched me.

  “Who do you work for, cocksucker?”

  I made syllables that closely resembled, “Mal-al-wah-yah!”

  My arms were tied so I couldn’t use sign language to convey my message of, what the hell are you talking about?

  The man looked me over and I got a chance to get a better look at him, and the two others standing behind him. I was glad it was a gang that jumped me and not just one guy. That would’ve been embarrassing for my reputation.

  The puncher with the great respect for women, was dark skinned and very athletic. I realized I should probably thank him for not hitting me harder. He was holding back, hoping not to kill me. Hoping for answers.

  Behind him was a tall and similarly scarred woman with braided hair and disgust on his lips. Next to her was another athletic looking guy with synthetic skin. If he’d been scarred like the others he’d paid good money to have it replaced or perhaps his scarring was so bad Earthside paid for the new skin just to keep vomit out of the streets.

  The moment was nice. I had a chance to collect my senses. I never liked a hostile audience, but that’s what I had to work with, so I tried to start off by being polite. KorCorp required classes on human interaction. I remember being sober for them. I think that was required at the time.

  “Excuse me, I’m not sure we’re on the same page. I’m Kimberly Stryder. What you may not know from the newsfeed is that I haven’t killed anybody recently. Also, I’m not sure who you three are.”

  The puncher grunted, “You killed Cam Day and probably Nehalem. Three others on EchoStation. Those weren’t recent.”

  “Nehalem I can explain if you will allow it?” They gave me a chance to elaborate. “My friend and I are after Thom Crisp. Nothing nefarious. Not an assassinat
ion or anything. My friend is his ex-girlfriend. Thom invited her. So we came and were not allowed to see him. So we tried a few avenues to get close to him. It sounds silly now, but we pretended to be prostitutes so that we could get into Templar’s Stairs. We ended up finding our client’s body, the esteemed Grand Officer Nehalem. I was trying to figure out what was going on when Colonials showed up and tagged us with the crime. As far as the other people you mentioned, I don’t leave Burnside often and haven’t left the planet in almost a decade. So I think your information on me is a little off.”

  “No, you and Nehalem’s son murdered Cam.”

  I saw this was going to be a bit more difficult than just sharing my side of the story.

  “Randall, right. Randall fled when we showed up at his father’s place. I don’t think he did that. I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I think the Colonials are reaching at straws. Something bigger is going down. He didn’t kill that other woman either, Melinda Richards.”

  “Cam Day,” the puncher said.

  “Not familiar with.”

  “No, Melinda Richards is Cam Day.”

  “Aha!” I said with a bit too much enthusiasm. “Okay, so now I’m following you better. But I am still not familiar with Cam Day.”

  “I thought you said you were Thom Crisp’s ex-girlfriend.”

  “No, no. My friend is. I’ve never met Thom.”

  The three split looks like they needed a private conference room, but were scared to leave me alone. They should be. The ropes weren’t that tight and I could probably wiggle free before they agreed to believe me.

  The puncher leaned in towards me, as if closer inspection would confirm any suspicions. “So you really just want to meet Thom Crisp?”

  I shrugged. “I want my friend to meet him. This whole thing has gotten out of hand and really I just want to go home and have a beer.”

  “Thom Crisp survived hell. Cam Day survived hell. We survived hell.” He glared at me. “Do you know what it is like to be a prisoner of war these days? You wait for death, you pray for death. You think you are dead.”

  The scarring made a little more sense. But Thom Crisp was the only known prisoner of war to survive the Red Empress, or was he?

  “Thom wasn’t the only survivor?”

  “Two-hundred and twenty of us. We were only captured for a year. The rest we spent going through the Colonials’ tests. Making sure we could be trusted. Trusted!” The puncher jerked my chair and squeezed my arm.

  “Jimmy stop!” the synth-skin job said.

  “Someone started killing us. They shuffled us around for a few years before they hatched their plan. Cam Day became Melinda Richards. We all took on new names. We got to come back out and play in society again. None of us wanted to remember our time as prisoners. A new start sounded perfect. But they weren’t giving us any other option. Thom didn’t want to change his name. So they come up with their story about Thom Crisp, the loan survivor.” Jimmy the puncher laughed. “The second they did, we started dying again.”

  “That’s why we can’t get in to see Thom,” I said.

  “That’s right. I won’t let you kill him.”

  Back to this again, I had hoped he’d given me the benefit of the doubt. I thought I had a pretty convincing ‘dumb’ face.

  “Jimmy, I think she’s telling the truth.” The skin job stuck up for me. I appreciated that since he’d probably had the worst experience of the three.

  “I do not want to kill Thom Crisp or anyone. But that makes a bit more sense. I guess had we known that instead of being invited by Thom, we wouldn’t have ended up in this current mess. Look, if you promise not to hurt her, can you all go find my friend Alice. She’s still going to try to see Thom. But if the story you’re saying is true then the Colonial officers are going to gun her down on the spot.”

  “We’re going to find her. And hopefully her lies match up with yours, you stupid bitch.”

  Cue punching.

  13. SHORT STRAWS

  Before the three interrogators left they tightened the rope around my arms, poised a sentry blaster at me and promised they would be back with Alice.

  The situation gave me time to think, and unfortunately the more I thought the more things didn’t add up. If Jimmy and Cam, and all the others were given new identities and allowed to live their lives as they saw fit, why wouldn’t Thom do the same and then if he really still had a desire to see Alice then he could’ve, no problem. Why take on the burden of being the lone survivor?

  And why would Nehalem and his son be convinced that Thom Crisp was working with the Red Empress? Was his father that crazy, or was the Grand Officer Nehalem murdered because of what he did know?

  And finally, who is killing off the retuned P.O.W.’s?

  The answer, after these important messages from our sponsors.

  If only it were that easy. I thought too much and made my brain hurt. I didn’t have the brilliant idea to try sleeping for a bit until I’d spent hours trying to justify the actions of others.

  I started to think about sleep a lot.

  To the point where it was suspicious. I knew something was happening to me. It was coming on faster than I could’ve expected. A tiny part of my mind still wanted to believe that I’d just exhausted myself thinking, and the dim lights in a quiet room were not helping.

  But just before I blacked out, I knew I had been drugged.

  My thigh tickled. My eyes were still heavy. It took that tickle to rummage a bit further north before my eyes became He-Man and burst open.

  “Lord Gentry!” I closed my legs and looked around his darkened bedroom, to discover my clothes draped on a nightstand and thankfully, no spectators. Certainly, he had cameras somewhere.

  Gentry smiled. His lips were wet and proud.

  “They would’ve killed you, my dear,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, and realizing I wasn’t tied to Gentry’s bed I got up and took my clothes back.

  “You aren’t going to thank me?”

  “How’d you know where I was?” I asked.

  Gentry frowned. “I believe you know now, so I will say that my prayers go out to all the survivors of the Moon of Echoearth. Does that connect the dots for you?”

  I dressed in a hurry and searched for a door panel on the blank walls lining the room. No doubt in my mind that the great Lord Gentry was delighting in my attempt to leave his bedroom with any decency I had left.

  “We are elevated,” he said as if bored with my efforts. “Let me take us higher.” I felt the soft shift and the walls lowered to about knee high, and suddenly we overlooked all of Earthside. “This is my favorite view of this whole planet.”

  “I really wished I had time to enjoy it with you, but your pals, the survivors, plan to find Alice and give her a nice polishing.”

  “Not if the Colonials find her first,” he chuckled.

  He was immune to the death stare I shot at him.

  “Kimberly, please. Don’t you think I’ve taken care of everything? I even have Randall Nehalem downstairs to help sort everything out when the Colonial Officers arrive.”

  I couldn’t quite tell what his game was. “Are you turning us in?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorting out this mess you’ve made. Just like the New Shetlands. Remember?

  “And you thought I’d sleep with you, since I should have nothing to worry about now?”

  Lord Gentry purred.

  “Funny you mention the New Shetlands. If I recall, you had a lot to gain by helping me. So what’s it this time?”

  “Only the pleasure of your flesh, sweet Kimberly.”

  “When you say things like that, are you aware that you sound like a creepy asshole?”

  Gentry reached into his robe.

  “You used to be a decent guy. Or at least you acted like one.”

  “You used to be more of a whore,” Gentry laughed. “I guess people change.”

  For a second I wondered if Lord Gentry really could help us beat the mu
rder charges. The tinge of doubt I wanted to sow in my brain wouldn’t take, and therefore I did not chuck Lord Gentry from the roof of the Templar’s Stairs. But he needed to think I was going to.

  I grabbed his throat and dragged him over the knee-high wall.

  “I’m not your toy. And I’m not stupid. You could’ve helped me earlier, what’s in it for you?”

  “Oh, Kimberly, the blaze in your eyes, such passion!”

  He didn’t even fight my grasp. He was calling my bluff.

  I pressed my nails into his flesh, felt the warmth of blood on my fingertips. I didn’t want to kill him. But there was rage coming from me now. I wanted to fix him. I wanted him to be that nice farm boy I met years ago in Burnside. I wanted him to throw away all the religious bull shit he preached. The fancy clothes and secretaries. The way he spoke. I wanted him to just be normal again.

  I said something to that affect as I squeezed tighter and tighter. The words coming out of my mouth didn’t even make sense to me, so how could I expect them to reach the mighty Lord Gentry?

  He gagged.

  “You’re hurting me,” he whimpered and then screamed, “I’m sorry!”

  My hands opened. He fell onto the knee-high wall and rolled to his knees, gasping for air.

  “I put them back out on the streets,” he coughed. “The survivors. I cleared them all. They were mad when we found them. Positively bonkers. It took years of therapy for them to understand they were here with us and not prisoners of the Red Empress.”

  “What?”

  “The Red Empress attacked the moon, and claimed them. But Colonial pursued her crafts. That’s when we learned the attacks were all automated. The attack ended and the ships were retreating on programmed courses. The Colonials attacked every ship, but followed the wrong one. Knocked off its course and adrift for a year was the craft that imprisoned Thom Crisp and all the others. They were barely alive when we found them. They thought we were the Red Empress.”