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

Author:Daniel J. Kirk [Kirk, Daniel J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indents&Purposes/Bride of Chaos
Published: 2014-07-10T21:00:00+00:00

10. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING

I was dumb enough to believe him. His confidence was infectious and when the officers ran the tubes perfect, there was nothing stopping Davis from ordering our first patrol.

I didn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned, and didn’t know why for hours. My mind ran circles around what was actually bothering me. And that was the impending guilt I knew would belong to me if the officers failed.

And by failed I meant died.

I found myself back in the bay alone except for the glow of the surveillance footage. I watched how swiftly the Dessup Gang adjusted as the tubes directed flow of whatever resource I was seeing. You could see the demand thrusting a wall of water and the three drill-runners cut just in the nick of time. They were going as fast as they could.

“You’re setting off alarms,” Gregor said behind me. I was too tired to be startled. Plus there was nothing in Gregor’s nature that scared me. He was kind and gentle, dirty and lazy were his faults. He eased into a chair next to me. He smelled of coffee, he wasn’t drinking any, but he was definitely perspiring.

“You’re up late,” I said.

“I should say the same thing, but maybe you have better reason than I. I have been trying to fix a few of your pupils’ rides.” He smiled and said, “Relax, just wear and tear. They don’t know how to pilot them efficiently yet, lots of jerky movement. You were like that once.”

“They’re not ready.”

Gregor shrugged. “Davis thinks they are.”

I shrugged back. “Maybe. No. I don’t know. I mean they’ve had a little over a week’s worth of training and the Dessup Gang has how long? Just because they started causing havoc three months ago doesn’t mean they just started three months ago. Look at how fluid they move. They work as a team.”

“Like they are communicating.”

“Exactly.” Exactly! I rewound the footage. It was clear two of the Dessup were following the third, reacting as he reacted.

“What is it, Kimmie?”

“Davis thinks the Dessup have the plans to the tubes and are using them to be anywhere they want to be. But what if they don’t? What if they don’t have a map at all? The attacks so far have been completely random. What if this is out of necessity rather than just criminal sadism?”

“So they don’t know where they are going?”

“No, that means they are far better pilots than we’re giving them credit for. We assumed they were memorizing the plans and executing paths they knew beforehand.”

I watched hours of footage. It only seemed more plausible.

David arrived first thing in the morning. I still hadn’t slept and hadn’t lost the edge of my discovery.

“Do you see?”

Davis ran the footage back a couple times. “This gives us a very distinct advantage.”

“What?”

“If they don’t know where they are going then rather than face them head on, we need to direct them to where we will have the high ground. It doesn’t matter how ready our officers are then.

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