World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (47 page)

Dev’s momentum was abruptly arrested, and he slammed down face-first onto the ground.

Excruciating pain seared up from his foot. The moleworm’s teeth were like a score of daggers.

Dev drew the mosquito and fired; the close-range shot popped the moleworm’s left eye. The animal recoiled, letting go of him. It staggered away, making a hoarse, keening cry that was somewhat like a pig in distress.

Dev was wounded too, worse than the moleworm, but not, he thought, mortally. He clambered upright, trying not to look at his foot. His boot had spared him to some extent, but still, the foot was mangled. Bone glinted whitely amid torn, bloody meat.

He focused on ignoring the fiery agony, and limped onward to the station.

As he hobbled up the steps to the entrance, a second moleworm caught up with him. Dev shot it, point-blank, in the mouth. The dart penetrated the soft flesh of the moleworm’s tongue and the neurotoxin took effect. The creature collapsed, obstructing the entrance with its bulk.

Dev crossed the narrow concourse to the platform, hopping more than walking. The comatose body of the moleworm bought him a few precious seconds as the other creatures attempted to climb over it or circumnavigate it. The giant moleworm solved the problem by seizing the unconscious moleworm by the scruff of the neck and tossing it to one side.

The way now clear, the moleworms prowled onto the platform, the giant one at the vanguard.

The rail track sloped down from an elevated section to flatten out beside the platform.

Dev heaved himself onto the middle of the track and began staggering along. He was aware of the guideway coils humming on either side of him, the crackle and ozone tang of electricity in the air. He was aware of leaving a trail of blood behind him from his torn, useless foot. Most of all he was aware of the giant moleworm, wavering cautiously at the platform’s edge.

Come on, Jones, you bastard.

He either thought these words or spoke them aloud, one or the other, he wasn’t sure which.

Come on. Take the bait. Take it.

Jones took it. The giant moleworm slid onto the track, filling the gap between the guideways with its huge tubular body and tail. It clawed its way along in a leisurely fashion, now and then prodding at the smears of Dev’s blood with a nasotentacle as it went. It was in no hurry. Dev was walking wounded. It knew it had plenty of time.

Trundle. Trundle?

Here, Harmer.

Where’s that – ?

Dev didn’t finish the question. Didn’t have to.

The track bed was vibrating underfoot.

Something was coming.

The giant moleworm had almost reached him. It was confident – Jones was confident – that Dev could not escape now. Savouring his helplessness, the imminence of his demise, it snaked its nasotentacles towards him.

Dev looked up.

A freight shuttle was bearing down on him at full tilt, swooping down the incline from the elevated section.

He didn’t even think about it, just threw himself headlong onto the track bed.

Pressed himself flat.

Hoped he was small enough, thin enough.

Hoped the train was hovering high enough to pass straight over him.

If not...

There was a tremendous, hair-ripping, clothes-wrenching
WHOOSH
. Then an equally tremendous thudding impact.

A crash.

A crunch.

Bedlam.

51

D
EV SAT ON
the front steps of what was left of the South Six station. He had bound his injured foot with strips torn from his undershirt. The pain from the foot was nauseating, a relentless aching throb, but bearable as long as he didn’t put any weight on it.

Walking was off the agenda. All he could do was sit and wait.

A short way along the track lay the overturned freight shuttle, along with the remains of the giant moleworm.

The train had ploughed into the creature at two hundred kilometres an hour, reducing it in an instant to pulp. Then, with most of the moleworm splattered across its front, it had derailed, slamming sidelong into the platform and somersaulting onto its roof. In the process, it had wiped out all of the smaller moleworms who had been accompanied Jones.

Had the train obliterated the Polis Plus sentience inside the giant moleworm upon impact, or had Jones managed to data ’port out at the last second?

Dev would probably never know the answer to that question.

A random moleworm meandered past along the street outside the station. Dev raised the mosquito, ready to deter the creature if it came too close.

It seemed uninterested, however. It had a dazed air, as though it wasn’t sure where it was or why it was there. Finding the hole made by the moleworm that had bitten Dev, it ambled down inside. Dev heard it begin to burrow, and the scratchy digging sounds immediatelt began to grow fainter.

For a time, Dev’s vision dimmed. Pain. Blood loss. The world grew grey.

He was startled awake by a voice.

“Harmer. There you are.”

It was Kahlo, along with a handful of police officers in riot gear.

“You did it,” she said. “You got Jones.”

Dev nodded wearily. “Made a bit of a mess while I was at it.”

“So I see.” Kahlo cast an eye over the wreckage of freight shuttle, moleworm and platform. “You killed him... with a train?”

“That seems to be a thing on Alighieri,” Dev said. “I was just carrying on the tradition.”

Kahlo tried not to smile. “You’re hurt.”

Dev glanced at his foot. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandages already.

“Yeah. I think I’ve voided the warranty on this host form.”

“I’ll call a paramedic. That needs to be looked at.”

Dev was too exhausted to do anything except raise a hand in acknowledgement.

“Just so’s you know, our technicians are inside the power plant again,” Kahlo said. “Last I heard, they’ve made it to the control room and are starting a safe shutdown procedure. You were right about the moleworms. Without Jones guiding them, they’re scattering. They don’t want to be here. Now all we have to do is roust them out. That’ll keep the miners busy for the next few hours, and my people too, scaring the stragglers back down to their nests where they belong. Harmer? Are you listening? Harmer...?”

L
ATER –
D
EV DIDN’T
know how much later – he was having treatment on his foot.

Wonderful analgesics.

Later still, he was at Kahlo’s house, sprawled on the sofa with his leg elevated on cushions. Trundell was there, and Stegman, and Thorne too, along with Kahlo herself. There was beer, and an atmosphere of relief tinged with regret. They weren’t celebrating, not as such, but they were definitely marking the fact that the threat to Calder’s Edge was over. The city had been saved, disaster averted, albeit at the cost of many lives. That merited a small ceremony.

“Three hundred and twenty,” said Thorne. “Miners, that is. That I know of. Died in their rigs, defending against the moleys. Brave men and women. They’ll be mourned.”

Bottles were raised and clinked, in commemoration.

“And it was all down to one Plusser,” said Trundell. “Just one. When you think about it, it beggars belief.”

“He had help,” Dev said.

“Yes, but even so – incredible. So much havoc from a single Plusser. I suppose he just knew the right threads to pull to make everything unravel.”

“And the right people to manipulate. Banerjee. Graydon.”

“Yeah, the governor himself,” said Thorne, shaking his head. “Who’d have thought? I mean, I never saw eye to eye with him personally, but he was our elected leader. The Plussers can get to just about anyone, can’t they?”

Kahlo was glowering at him.

“Not that it was his fault,” Thorne amended hurriedly. “He was brainwashed, wasn’t he? He wasn’t himself.”

Dev had agreed earlier with Kahlo that the full extent of Graydon’s complicity in Jones’s scheme would never become public knowledge. It would remain between him and her.

The governor had been hypnexed. That was the official line. That was what Dev would put in his report to ISS. He owed Kahlo that much. Graydon had been her father, after all, even if he hadn’t behaved much like one for most of her life. He, like Banerjee, would be remembered as an unwilling pawn in Ted Jones’s game. His reputation, though stained, would be more or less intact.

Trundell said, “What’s next for you, Harmer?”

“I’m here ’til I’m well enough to drag my sorry self back to the ISS outpost. Couple of days or so, I’d say. Then it’s an automated self-upload using the spare transcription matrix, and who knows? Next stop on my magical mystery tour of Border Wall trouble spots. Could be anywhere.”

“And what happens to your host form?”

“This handsome thing? Back into the growth vat, where it’ll get broken down into genetic soup, ready to be reconstituted if ever there’s a need on Alighieri again.”

“Let’s hope that never happens,” said Stegman with feeling. “One go-round with you was quite enough, Harmer, thank you very much.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Thorne, uncapping fresh beers for everyone.

“Well, I, for one, will miss you,” said Trundell.

“You’re too kind, Trundle. The feeling’s mutual.”

“Though I won’t miss
that
. ‘Trundle.’”

“Oh, be honest. You’ll miss that most of all.”

The xeno-entomologist gave a shy blink. “Well, maybe. I was never the cool kid at school. Never friends with the cool kids. No one ever gave me a nickname, unless it was ‘geek face’ or ‘weirdo breath’ or something like that, which doesn’t count. It was nice, for once, to be part of a gang.”

“Please don’t start crying, Trundle.”

The blinking became unusually rapid, and Trundell looked away.

Eventually everyone left, save Dev and Kahlo.

“I should be overseeing the mopping-up operation,” Kahlo said, sinking onto the sofa beside Dev. “Calder’s is a mess. It’ll be weeks – months – before life gets back to normal. We have to re-establish transport links with Xanadu, make sure there aren’t any moleworms left loitering anywhere in the city, get the rail system functioning again, above all rebuild... The list is endless. We don’t even have a governor to run things.”

“I can safely say you’ll manage. With you in charge, how can you not?”

“I’m just done in right now. I could sleep for a week. And yet there’s so much to do...”

“Don’t think about it.” Dev put an arm round her shoulder and drew her close. “Let it be someone else’s headache, just for tonight.”

“How many points are ISS going to give you for all this?” she said, nuzzling against him.

Dev’s laugh was hollow. “Have you seen the state I’ve left this place in? Hardly any.”

“Bummer. But at least you’re a little closer to your thousand.”

“A little.”

“I hope it works out for you, Harmer. I hope you get your life back. I really do.”

“Me too.”

The lights dimmed.

“Was that you?” Dev asked. “Are we getting in the mood?”

“Not me. They said there might be power problems while they’re getting the geothermal plant back online. Maybe even –”

The lights went out altogether.

“– outages,” Kahlo finished.

“Lucky for us, we see in the dark.”

Kahlo rose from the sofa. She began shucking off her uniform.

“What do you see now?” she said.

Her body was silvery, shimmering, full of sweet bulges and tempting clefts.

“Good things,” Dev said, huskily. “Lots of good things.”