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

Besides, have you all worked out the remote weapons system yet?”
    “I have, you’ll be meeting your gunmen shortly.”
    I hadn’t seen Gregor all morning. I assumed he was working on rigging the drill-runners with the cannons.
    Davis turned on the news feed. “See if this motivates her.” He left without another word. Could’ve stayed and it wouldn’t have mattered, our eyes were glued to the terrible feed coming in.
    I stared until the images couldn’t hurt me anymore. My brain fought every right it had to scream. All I could do was gape at how much the insides of a person could resemble the pinkness of a poodle’s tongue.
     
     
     

15. TARGET PRACTICE
     
    “Fire.”
    I could practically feel my gunman’s groan. I set the drill-runner in the center of the bay before he finished annihilating the target. There were burns down the side of the wall. So much for target practice.
    “He’s too slow,” I said to a glaring Davis.
    “Hey, tell her I can shoot a Dessup the second I see one, but I’m waiting on her to say hit the target.” The gunman’s name was Officer Dent. I was almost certain it was a name he had earned and not been born with, but Davis assured me otherwise.
    “He’s right I think in actual combat it will work fine.”
    “That’s easy for you to say. If I swoop in on the Dessup Gang and this guy hiccups, I’m dead.”
    Alice threw in her two-cents. “There has to be a way for us to control the shooting , this is just stupid.”
    Maybe there was a better way, but I will admit that I didn’t have the reflexes to do it myself.  Still a gunman on a zero-drop feed should not have any hesitation in his firing. As it was it felt like I was ordering a drink in a packed pub and I had the smile of a gorilla.
    Davis returned to the surly man I had first met, all that whimpering puppy dog crap had gone out the window for one sharp remark, “Maybe you’re just scared.”
    In Burnside there would’ve been the sound of a door slamming. Here in Earthside, it just swooshed and swished as Davis stormed out.
    Alice’s gunman spoke up in the immediate silence, “What if you all said fire sooner? That sounds dumb given what you just said, but what if you say it as you’re turning into the target?”
    “Shut up, brainiac.”
    I quickly corrected Alice, “You mean keep dodging then lining up the assault as soon as the cannons start firing?”
    “It’s not ideal,” the gunman named Clancy said.
    “Well, not in close quarters where we might shoot each other, but let’s try it.”
    We ran a few test runs. Dent performed better. There were only a few burn marks leading up the wall to the target, then he locked onto to the target and turned it black from the red and white target that it was.
    “Let’s turn them all to ash,” Clancy said.
    There were no arguments from the drill-runners. It was the first time I felt ready. Davis was wrong. I wasn’t scared. I just wanted to be certain the Dessup would get dead as much as possible.
     
    Tourner came to watch us perform. She had a pair of folded arms and a face with no legend. We received a nod, and that was good enough for me.
    She spoke with Davis at length. When he came to me he was stern, strong and arrogant like when we met.
    “Halloween is tomorrow. Word of a private party for elite citizens has been spread. Maybe the Dessup heard it. Maybe we’ll be the only ones who show up to the party.”
    “Where’s my costume?” Alice asked.
    Gregor chuckled. We’d been practicing so hard we had stayed out of the party planning committee.
    “They’ll be delivered to your quarters tonight. I’m told it is rather gruesome.”
    “And our drill-runners?”
    Gregor flashed a Cheshire grin.
    “They are the screaming banshee,” he said. “Very scary. You will like, Kimmie.”
    “We chose a venue as big as this bay. It will be loaded with officers. They will arrive unarmed, but we have stocked every nook and cranny. Every hellish decoration packs