The Hell With Earthside: A Novella (STRYDER'S HORIZON Book 1) by Daniel J. Kirk

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 such 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.