Prisoner of Earthside: A Novella (STRYDER'S HORIZON Book 2) by Daniel J. Kirk Read Free Book Online Page B

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