World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (32 page)

“Fair enough,” said Dev. “Why not? We can always use an extra pair of hands. Stegman, give him your mosquito. Show him how to use it. It’s non-lethal, which is probably a good thing as far as Trundle’s concerned. Instant immbolisation is just as effective, for our purposes, as shooting dead.”

“Come on!” Mayor Major shouted. “We don’t have all day. What’s the holdup?”

“Just smartening myself up,” Dev replied. “It isn’t every day you get to meet a genuine mayor, is it? Got to look one’s best for civic dignitaries.”

Mayor Major’s answer was a hearty, rugged laugh.

“I’m ready now,” Dev said. “No gunfire, remember?”

He steeled himself with a deep breath and stepped outside, his hands thrust into his pockets.

Immediately he saw what had made Banerjee’s eyes goggle: men and women, twenty or thirty of them, ranged around the front of the habitat in a semicircle, all armed with handguns. Looking up, he saw more people leaning from the windows of several of the houses opposite. They too had guns. Kobolds, all of them, and at that moment, every single one of their weapons was trained on him.

His mouth went dry.

He fixed a smile into place and carried on.

“Here I am,” he said. “Which one of you fine folk is Mayor Major?”

“That’d be me.”

A large man stepped forwards – the largest man Dev had yet seen on Alighieri. He was tall even by Terratypical standards, and broad too, his torso double the size of an average person’s. His arms were as thick as legs, and his legs were like two sturdy children attached to his pelvis.

He was, put simply, massive. Bald. Hairless all over. Barrel chest bare. Intimidating.

He was also extensively body-modified. The other Kobolds around him sported their fair share of piercings, subdermal implants, bone outgrowths and tattooing, but Mayor Major was in a league of his own.

He had steel shoulder plates fused to his deltoids, like bulky silvery epaulettes. More steel ribbed his abdomen and thighs in bands. He had knobby protrusions running down each arm, as though the limbs were embossed with rows of studs. His knuckles and finger joints were capped with rivets.

As for his face, it was a mass of ridges and crenellations, so distended that it was barely a face any more. It seemed to have been warped and moulded into shapelessness by a mad sculptor.

Rings and bars transfixed his nose, ears and lips. As he approached Dev, he broke into a big grin that revealed solid tungsten teeth and a snakelike bifurcated tongue.

“Wow,” Dev said. “That is one impressive look you’ve got there.”

“Thank you,” said Mayor Major. “Are you going to make the obvious joke?”

“About setting off airport metal detectors?”

“That’s the one.”

“Perish the thought. I am curious, however, about the amount of tarnish remover you must get through in a week.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one a couple of times too. Usually I let people get away with a wisecrack about my appearance once, and once only. After that I lose my sense of humour.”

“I imagine, when you’re no longer laughing, things get very serious.”

“Oh, they do!” A jovial guffaw. “Who is it I’m talking to, by the way? I’ve run a facial comparison search and can’t find you on any Alighierian insite.”

“You can call me Dev.”

“Dev. Short for?”

“That’s between me and my mother, no one else.”

“Not ‘Devil,’ by any chance?”

“Nah.”

“If it was, you’d fit right in here.” Mayor Major swept an arm around at the assorted members of his gang. “We’re all of us a little devilish in our way, we Kobolds, in looks as well as deeds. Not least that comrade of ours you treated so impolitely – Harvey.”

“Harvey with the horns. I remember him well. In my defence, he wasn’t exactly treating
us
politely.”

“I watched you break his arm. Quite some piece of footage it was. You were merciless. Ruthless. I almost admire you for it.”

“I just like to be thorough, that’s all. When I put someone down I want them to stay down. Listen, your honour...” He frowned. “Is that the correct way to address a mayor? ‘Your honour’?”

“I think so. Funnily enough, nobody’s ever done it before with me. I like the way it sounds. I’m going to insist on it in future.”

“Well, your honour, what I was going to say was, we had an unfortunate run-in with some of your people back at the arcjet docking bay, that’s true. Can’t be denied. I know it wasn’t a super-clever thing to do, getting on the wrong side of the Kobolds, biggest and baddest gang in Lidenbrock City. It’s one of those mistakes you don’t really get to come back from. Now you’ve finally caught up with us, as I was scared you might...”

“I have. We put out a general-public bulletin for people matching your descriptions, with a reward attached. Lidenbrockers are known for turning a blind eye, but they can also be incredibly vigilant when there’s cash up for grabs.”

“Well, I was hoping, somehow, you’ll see your way to letting it go. Bygones and all that. If it’s a question of money...”

“Money?” said Mayor Major. “I don’t think so. I have money. I’m mayor, aren’t I? I get plenty in tributes, tithes and such.”

“Tithes?”

“You know what a tithe is?”

“I do. I just didn’t know anybody still used them.”

“They’re a noble tradition. A good system of getting what you’re owed as arbitrator and governor of a city district.”

“And ‘tithe’ sounds so much better than ‘kickback’ or ‘protection racket.’”

“That too,” said Mayor Major with a chuckle. “So you can’t buy me off, Dev. Not a chance. What we’re looking at here is a case of restorative justice.”

“An eye for an eye.”

“Precisely. And a life for a life. There are how many of you altogether? Four? I’ve lost many more of my people than that today, thanks to you. So the best recompense you can offer is all four of your lives. It doesn’t cover the full cost, but I’m willing to write off the shortfall.”

“Very generous of you.”

“I know.”

“And this is non-negotiable?”

“Afraid so.”

“Your best and final offer?”

“You won’t get a better one.”

“Okay. Well, then. Nothing more to be said.”

Dev’s hand whipped out from his pocket.

In it was a nano-frag mine.

He slapped the mine on one of Mayor Major’s shoulder plates. Automatically it affixed itself into place, immovably.

Then Dev ran.

Ran like crazy back to Ted Jones’s habitat.

Behind him, Mayor Major was bellowing in fury. He was trying to prise off the nano-frag mine, levering his fingernails under its rim, to no avail.

The other Kobolds were too bewildered to open fire on Dev. They were staring at their leader, wondering why he was so frantic and enraged. What was this object he was making such desperate efforts to wrench from his shoulder?

One or two of them recovered their wits in time to loose off a few shots at Dev before he dived through the habitat doorway. They missed.

Then the nanite swarm emerged from the mine, a swirling, swelling dark-grey cloud, and Mayor Major began to shriek as they consumed first his shoulder plate and then, swiftly, the shoulder itself. They whittled through his skin, into his flesh. Blood didn’t even flow. It didn’t get the chance to. The nanites consumed it, every drop, as it welled.

Dev slammed the door shut behind him.

That was when the shooting began in earnest.

34

B
ULLETS, DARTS, FLECHETTES
– they pounded into the front of the habitat in their hundreds. Holes started to appear, letting in thin rods of artificial daylight. More and more holes, until the wall was as riddled as a colander.

Stegman, Zagat and Trundell were hunkered behind items of furniture they had heaped up at the back of the room. Dev hurdled this makeshift stockade to join them.

“Parley went well,” he said, shouting to make himself audible above the din of gunfire. “All parties broadly in agreement. Few fine details needing to be ironed out. We’re taking a break and will renew discussions shortly.”

Stegman shook his head in disgust. “How many of the bastards are there? Not that I can’t guess.”

“Rough estimate? All of them.”

“Really?” said Trundell. “A thousand Kobolds?”

“No. I’m exaggerating for comic effect. It’s more like forty.”

“Might as well be a thousand.”

“Good news is, Mayor Major is down. That was him screaming. He’s out of the equation.”

“Should I ask?” said Stegman.

“Don’t. But it means they’re leaderless. Whatever they do now, it won’t be subtle or ingenious.”

“Won’t have to be, seeing as there’s ten of them for every one of us.”

The shooting dwindled, then ceased altogether as magazines ran dry and had to be swapped out or replenished.

Dev dared a peek round the side of the furniture heap. The front door was in tatters, half of it gone. Through the ragged gap he saw shadows moving – figures approaching.

“You two cops,” he whispered. “Fetch those gun-stuns out and get ready to lob them. Set them to upper-limit effective radius. That’ll take out at least half of the Kobolds’ weapons when they come in. Won’t help with the non-electronic guns, but you can’t have everything.”

As Stegman and Zagat readied the EMP grenades, Dev switched his hiss gun back to lethal mode.

Kobolds were stationing themselves outside the habitat’s three main points of entry: the door and the two windows. Their attempts at stealth were laughable. One of them even stumbled and fell to his knees with a muffled crash.

What they failed to appreciate was that by creeping into position directly in front of the house, they were placing themselves between the street’s light sources and the bullet holes. Where a cluster of the holes went dark, that was where a Kobold was lurking. It was as though constellations in the night sky were disappearing, and every new blank absence represented an enemy – and to Dev, a sitting duck.

He couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Leaning up over the furniture stockade, he picked off the Kobolds, from left to right, with a single shot apiece. The hiss gun’s spike of air pierced the habitat’s aluminium double-shell and carbon-fibre insulation neatly. The Kobolds fell in a row. The bullet-hole ‘constellations’ lit up again.

“They won’t try that twice,” Dev said. “My bet is it’ll be a full-scale assault next. You all braced for that?”

They didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, a battle cry arose outside, a score of voices howling in mutual exhortation. Gunfire pounded the habitat once more, the leading edge of a desperate, murderous charge.

As the first Kobolds came crashing in through the door, Stegman unleashed a gun-stun. Any non-hardened chip-controlled weapon the gangsters were carrying stopped working immediately. Dev and Zagat, at the same time, met them with a volley of fire. Kobolds tumbled over one another, corpse on freshly-killed corpse.

More Kobolds burst in via the windows. Trundell whooped as he hit one with a dart from Stegman’s mosquito. The woman’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and she collapsed like a tent whose guy ropes had all been severed.

Zagat detonated his gun-stun, making sure he threw it far enough so that his own weapon wouldn’t be affected, nor those of Dev and Trundell. Stegman, meanwhile, lined up one shot after another with the replica Ruger, doing his best to inflict crippling wounds rather than fatal ones. He had relaxed some of his law enforcement officer scruples, but not, it would seem, all of them.

Kobolds kept piling into the habitat, a succession of garishly disfigured grotesques, a demonic tide. Shells and darts smacked into the stockade, sending up bursts of splinters and stuffing. Ricochets zinged.

Dev kept up a constant barrage with the hiss gun, but its battery had started to run perilously low. Already the
Recharge
warning light was flashing. Zagat announced that he had gone through almost all the ammo for the MPA pistol. Stegman said something similar about the Ruger.