World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (38 page)

Stegman joined in the conversation.

Can’t we rest? Just for a little bit? My knee’s killing me.

The sun is killing us. Little by little. But if we just sit still and let it, then what’s the point? You want to beat this? You want to live? We do that by moving. Every step we take is a fuck-you. A fuck-you to Iota Draconis. A fuck-you to Alighieri. A fuck-you to the Plusser who brought us down in the first place.

You’re... You’re one crazy bastard, Harmer.

I know. It’s why I’m still alive.

Stegman tottered to his feet. Dev grabbed him and steadied him.

Trundell started walking.

Dev and Stegman followed.

40

O
N THEY TROD
. On, across a world of fire.

The ground pulsed like flame. The air was a hazy, smoky yellow. There were no shadows any more, other than the faint, fluctuating silhouettes their bodies cast on the ground ahead of them. There was mostly just brightness, a range of lambent hues from hearth-fire orange to magnesium-flare white.

00:11:21 became 00:09:33 became 00:07:09. Dev couldn’t tell if it was the shieldsuit recalculating or if he was losing track of time passing, a malfunction in his own internal clock. Minutes were instants. Yet they were also shapeless and malleable. One segued seamlessly into another. Everything was a continuum of heat and pain and toil and glare.

Now there were warning lights. Loads of them. The faceplate HUD was giving him all sorts of ominous messages. The shieldsuit’s internal temperature had soared to 55ºC, as hot as any of the hottest places on Earth, as hot as the Sahara, as hot as Death Valley on a bad day. Externally it was nigh on 500º.

Dev noted scorch marks appearing on Stegman’s suit. Wisps of smoke were drifting up from Trundell’s helmet.

Five minutes to unviability.

They walked.

They didn’t communicate, didn’t acknowledge one another.

Just walked.

Each man on his own. Each dizzy and suffering from nausea. Each isolated, lodged inside himself, alone with his suffering and misery. Each drenched in sweat and listening to his pulse pounding in his ears, fast, too fast, like a timpani roll. Each barely conscious of his legs moving, lost to the
why
and the
where
of the journey, going on because that was all that was left, this mechanical motion, like a ritual which had long lost its original significance and become rote. Because walking was all that mattered and all that had ever mattered.

Three minutes to unviability.

Two minutes.

One.

Then the warning lights, in unison, winked out. Dev’s shieldsuit stopped telling him how much distress it was in. He clearly wasn’t paying any heed, wasn’t worth alerting to the danger any more. The suit seemed to settle into a sullen, acquiescent silence, as though accepting that it had tried its best and now there was nothing anyone could do.

When the cooling system gave out, the suit just put up a silent perfunctory statement informing its wearer of the fact. Likewise when the water recirculation unit gasped its last, and when the heat sink went down.

The shieldsuit was now simply an inert shell, an inorganic carapace. It could do nothing but hang off Dev’s body and be a barrier between him and the sunlight.

A failing barrier.

The glass of the faceplate developed a crack. Tiny striations branched off the crack like the veins in a leaf. The glass itself began to blacken from the edges inward, and the head-up display flickered and vanished.

Dev could smell burning. Was it coming from inside or out?

Both.

The suit’s ceramic had started to singe.

So had he.

An aroma of chargrilled meat.

His own flesh, cooking.

armer

A voice.

No, just a thought. Something random flitting through his brain.

Harmer, are... Harmer... Acknow

He tried to answer it, this ghost voice in his mind, this accidental sparking of neurons. Words wouldn’t come, however.

is Kahl... read me... Hang

Baked alive.

Vision darkening.

Then a rush of wind, and his head emptying, and something large, something insectile and monstrous, descending in front of him with claw-tipped arms outstretched...

And then the darkness swamped in and entirely obliterated the light.

41

L
IGHT.
A
ND MOTION
.

The sway of transportation.

Dev forced his eyes open.

He was on a floor. Cool metal. Blessedly cool.

An IV was in his arm, feeding him a clear fluid.

Icepacks on his forehead and forearms, his legs.

People. Cramped, crowded conditions. The cargo bay of some sort of small airborne craft.

He turned his head, and there was Trundell lying right next to him. Paramedics were bending over the little xeno-entomologist. The skin of his face was reddened and blistered.

Then his body started trembling, twisting. A seizure.

The paramedics reacted with practised calm, rolling Trundell onto his side, making sure his airway was open, cradling his head. An injection. The fit passed.

“This one’s come round,” said one of the paramedics, noticing Dev watching them. “Stay down, sir. Don’t try to get up.”

“Trun–” Dev croaked. “Trundle. Is he all right?”

“Him? We think so. He’s suffered heat syncope, as have you. Fainting from extreme hyperthermia. Seizures and muscle spasms aren’t uncommon after heat stroke collapse. We’ve given him a muscle relaxant and we’re putting saline and electrolytes into him, just like we are you.”

“Stegman. The third guy. Where is he?”

“He’s okay too, Harmer,” said a familiar female voice. “Up front in the cockpit. That’s how pushed for space we are. He’s worse for wear, but the docs say he’s going to pull through.”

Captain Kahlo edged into Dev’s line of vision.

“Kahlo,” he said. “So I didn’t imagine it. You
were
talking to me out there.”

She squatted down beside him. “Who else did you think it was?”

“Things were starting to get muddled. I thought you might have been a hallucination.”

“No such luck. It was me, and I’m not best pleased with you.”

“When are you ever?”

“What kind of insane stunt did you think you were pulling? Out in full daylight?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. As a matter of fact, it still seems like a good idea, considering you found us and we’re alive.”

“Only just, in both instances. We were about to call off the search. This is a surface equipment maintenance flyer we’re in. She’s got a daylight tolerance of ninety minutes. We were at the point of no return when we picked up your signal. As things stand, it’s touch and go whether we’re going to get back to safe harbour in time. Pilot’s pushing her to her limits. Lot of people are risking their lives to bring you home.”

“Including you. And I’m grateful.” Dev recalled the outstretched arms he had seen before blacking out. Robot arms. “So you hauled us aboard using the waldoes?”

Kahlo nodded. “The ship’s got telemanipulators for carrying out essential external repairs to ejector tube doors and the like. The pilot dragged the three of you in, shucked the suits off you, tossed them back out. Then he opened the cargo bay airlock so the medics could come in and do their thing. It was precision stuff. The guy’s a pro.”

“Remind me to thank him.”

“Sir,” said the paramedic. “I strongly recommend you rest up and don’t talk so much. After what you’ve been through, you should take things easy for a while.”

“Wish I could, believe me.” Dev turned back to Kahlo. “I don’t suppose you were able to reach
Milady Frog
?”

A sombre frown from Kahlo. “We got there first before we doubled back and went looking for you. And... there wasn’t much left of her. Just a smouldering husk.”

“Damn.”

“Wing Commander Beauregard got off a last-minute message as we were approaching. Said you three were out on foot and indicated which way you’d gone. We must have passed by not far from you on the way in, but somehow missed you.”

That had happened, in all probability, while Dev, Trundell and Stegman were negotiating the boulder field. The three of them would have been out of direct sight, their beacon signals blocked, weakened by solar interference.

“Ten minutes sooner,” Kahlo continued, “and we might have got to Beauregard in time. Iota Draconis takes no prisoners.”

“Tell me about it,” Dev said. “Pity about Beauregard. He saved us. More than once.”

“Speaking of ‘us’... Where’s Deputy Zagat?”

Her tone said she was anticipating bad news, and Dev’s solemn expression confirmed it.

“Shit, Harmer. Not him, too.”

“Back at Lidenbrock City, we ran into difficulties. Zagat was a fucking marvel. I couldn’t have asked for anyone better at my side. One-man platoon. But he got caught, got taken out, and for that I’m happy to shoulder at least part of the blame. It’s on me. I thought an opponent was down when he wasn’t. He ought to have been, but he wasn’t. Maybe I should have checked, and then Zagat would at least have made it out of Lidenbrock alive.”

Kahlo set her mouth in a bitter pout. “Two men died to get you into and out of that place. That’s a high price.”

“You think I’m not beating myself up about it?”

“I damn well hope you are.”

“But you know also that the real culprits are the Plussers?”

“It’s the only thing that’s keeping me from tossing you back out onto the surface,” Kahlo said. “Those bastards have a lot to answer for.”

“How’s the situation in Calder’s? I’m guessing it’s not so terrible, since you’ve come out here to head up the search for us, rather than staying there.”

“It’s quietened down. There’ve been no quakes for a couple of hours. Rescue crews are combing the rubble, pulling out survivors. Xanadu seems to be bearing the brunt of it right now, and getting it worse than Calder’s. Details are still sketchy, but it seems there may have been a significant roof fall in the main cavern – as in, most of it. We’ve also heard that Xanadu’s governor, Huston, could be dead.”

“How’s Graydon?” Dev nearly said “your dad,” but Kahlo hadn’t yet come clean to him about the truth of her relationship with the governor, and it was simpler if Dev appeared not to know.

“Taking it badly. Stressed as anything. He’s toying with the idea of contacting TerCon for permission to call in all the nearest available gulf cruisers.”

“What, to get everyone off-planet?”

“If possible. A mass evacuation. If TerCon declare an official emergency on Alighieri, we could have probably a dozen cruisers diverted this way within twenty-four hours. All civilians could be embarked within a day or so after that, leaving just essential personnel.”