World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (34 page)

Short, sharp breaths hissed through Stegman’s clenched teeth. “Tell me that’s done the trick, please.”

“Not quite. But it’s definitely moved. So, Stegosaurus, you don’t appreciate my conciliatory gesture. That hurts. I’m trying to, you know, build bridges between us. Hold out an olive branch.”

“Then do it some other
FUCK! KING! SHIT!
”

The flechette was almost fully free from Stegman’s knee. There was just the barbed tip left. This would bring quite a bit of flesh with it when it emerged. Dev had a sealant pad ready to staunch the bleeding.

“You don’t reckon, after all we’ve been through together, that we can be friends?” he said, keeping up the teasing. As a distraction technique, it was working. Sort of. “We haven’t managed any of that bonding-under-adversity stuff?”

“Personally, no,” Stegman said. His face was flushed pink and burnished with a sheen of sweat. “This trip to Lidenbrock has been a shambles from start to finish, and I hold you accountable for that. What have we accomplished? Was it worth Zagat’s life?”

“I like to think so. We’ve got a load of info. We now know more or less what we’re facing.”

“Which is...?”

“That’s something I’d like to confer with your boss about before I say any more. If my theory’s correct, Calder’s Edge has a lot worse on its plate than simple earthquakes.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“You bet it is, Stegosaurus.”

“For the last time, don’t ever call me tha–
OH, FUCK ME RIGID!
”

The flechette came out with a crunchy, sucking
slurp
. Dev slapped the sealant pad in place and secured it with a self-tightening bandage loop. Analgaesics in the pad began working their numbing magic from the outside in, and Stegman’s pain-contorted face gradually eased.

“Oh. Oh, that’s better,” he sighed.

“Got the astrocyte solution here.” Dev held up a hypodermic jet injector. He slotted the appropriate cartridge into the cylinder and applied the injector to Stegman’s knee. “Guess you’ll...”

But Stegman had passed out. His head lolled on his chest.

“Guess you’ll have to thank me later, Stegosaurus,” Dev murmured, pulling the injector trigger.

Milady Frog
began her transfer from docking bay to ejector tube. Dev took his seat and buckled himself in, and before long the arcjet was hurtling up to Alighieri’s surface.

As she sprang free of the ejector tube, the temperature in the cabin sky-rocketed.

First it was greenhouse hot, then sauna hot. Dev began perspiring freely. He remembered Junius Bilk telling him, as part of the host form orientation talk, that excessive sweating was inherent in the Aligherian physiology. The corollary of that was it was easy to become dehydrated. Dev felt a dry prickling at the back of his throat, even as the sweat continued to ooze out. Thirst.

Once
Milady Frog
was back on Alighieri’s night side, things gradually cooled. Dev found bottled water and glugged it down.

Then he called Kahlo to give her a progress update.

Harmer. Kind of busy right now. Can you call back later?

What’s up?

Oh, nothing much. Just a couple of dozen earthquakes in quick succession, that’s all.

That many?

I’ve not been keeping count. Could be more. Things have gone haywire in the past few hours. Since shortly after you left, as a matter of fact. I’ve been running in circles, barely catching up with myself, trying to keep on top of everything. Governor Graydon’s not helping, messaging me every half an hour, bitching about this and that, wanting to know what’s going on.

The damage. How bad?

Extensive. We’ve lost the rail tunnel to Xanadu. Huge cave-in about a quarter of the way along. Rubble blockage stretching at least half a kilometre. Other tunnel cave-ins mean several of the outlying townships have been cut off. Also, roof falls in the main Calder’s cavern.

Shit. It’s escalating.

You could say that. The death toll’s running at a hundred-plus, but that’s not including casualties in the townships. We don’t yet know how many lives have been lost there. This is turning into a major disaster. Please tell me you’ve accomplished something in Lidenbrock. Otherwise, this conversation’s over.

I think I have. It’s Plusser activity, like I thought.

For sure?

Beyond dispute.

How are they doing this? Is it bombs? Sabotage? Some new technology?

Not quite. It’s moleworms.

I’m sorry, we must’ve had connection issues for a moment there. I could have sworn you just said moleworms.

Moleworms are being used to simulate, or stimulate, seismic events.

You’re shitting me.

If only I were.

Assuming I buy that explanation – which I don’t – which is it? Simulate or stimulate?

Unclear at present. Insufficient data. But it doesn’t matter; the result is the same either way. Moleworms, under Plusser control, are burrowing around in such a manner that they’re generating cave-ins, rockfalls, landslips...

How is that even possible?

If they’re well co-ordinated by an external intelligence, and if their digging is precision targeted, it’s perfectly possible.

How many moleworms are we talking about?

I’d say every single one on the planet, give or take a few. Alighieri’s apex predator is being used against you. Your wildlife has been weaponised.

Well, how do we stop them?

Not sure yet, but my best guess would be we need to neutralise the Plusser running the show.

Who is he? Where is he?

That’s the problem. He’s inside one of the moleworms. He’s turned it into some sort of ultimate alpha male and he’s using it to manipulate all the others, ruling them as his pack.

Well then, the way I see it, we hunt him down and kill him. End of story.

Easier said than done. As far as I’m aware there’s no way of telling
which
moleworm he is. You might have to go through an awful lot of other moleworms before you got to him.

That’s fine. I’ll slaughter every last one of the buggers if that’s what I have to do to protect my city.

That’ll take manpower. More than you’ve got. Also, how easy are they to track? The entire planetary crust is their home, their jungle. They have trillions of cubic hectares to hide in.

For someone from Interstellar Security Solutions, Harmer, you’re not offering me very many solutions. You’re just listing obstacles.

I’m mulling over a few possible options for a plan. Give me time.

How long ’til you’re back in Calder’s?

Four, five hours.

Then that’s how long you’ve got.

Kahlo cut the connection.

Dev sank back into his seat, thinking.

His hypothesis
had
to be correct. The Polis+ sentience calling himself Ted Jones was now ensconced inside Banerjee’s hand-reared moleworm and was using the creature to marshal the moleworm population as a whole, eastern and western subspecies alike. The mass migration had been Jones’s doing. He had led a whole army of
pseudotalpidae
over from the Lidenbrock side of the planet and begun an insidious campaign of undermining.

Literally
undermining
. Burrowing through the rock strata. Exploiting geological , using weak points to trigger chain reactions – tremors and temblors that had been impeding mining operations and disrupting daily life at Calder’s Edge and Xanadu. All part of an attempt to drive out the inhabitants of Alighieri’s principal cities so that Polis+ could move in and take over.

Dev had established the source of the earthquakes, but in doing so had forced Ted Jones’s hand. The Plusser, it appeared, was accelerating his agenda. Hence the sudden, steep increase in earthquake frequency. He had to be stopped as soon as humanly possible.

Dev didn’t think Jones’s goal was simply ridding Alighieri of Alighierians, not any more. That would have worked if he had been able to carry on his sabotage uninterrupted.

Now he was going all-out. He was destroying wantonly, wildly. His scheme had been rumbled, so his only viable option was to cause maximum mayhem in the shortest time possible. The end result would be more or less the same as originally conceived – a mass exodus, an Alighieri without humans – only with a much higher death toll.

If Dev managed to put paid to his plans, somehow preventing his moleworm army from devastating Calder’s completely, mightn’t it still be too little, too late? Would the civic and industrial infrastructure be left so badly compromised that no one would think it worth salvaging? Would TerCon and the mining conglomerates decide to cut their losses and give up on Alighieri altogether?

In other words, even if Dev won, mightn’t it all be for nothing? He could foresee Jones’s actions relegating Iota Draconis C to pariah status. Alighieri would become infamous as
that place where all those terrible things happened
. Who would want to go there then? A bad reputation, once gained, was hard to shake.

No.

He couldn’t think that way. It was a recipe for despair.

He had to focus only on what he could control, the outcome of his mission, and the outcome was smashing a Plusser plot. That was what he had come here to do. That was what he was with ISS for.

That... and a second shot at life. A chance to take back what had been. To regain a normal existence.

To be Dev Harmer once more.

As
Milady Frog
soared through the darkness, Dev fell into a reverie.

There would come a time when he was no longer sent pinballing around the galaxy through ultraspace. When he was no longer indentured to ISS. When he had fulfilled the terms of his phased payment contract with the company and was granted a discharge.

Then he would be reunited with himself.

Resurrected.

Reborn.

Not a passenger in host forms anymore, but truly, wholly, indivisibly Dev Harmer. Mind restored to body, body restored to full working order.

That was what he was working towards. That was what he repeatedly risked his neck for on ISS’s behalf.

Life.

Real
life.

ISS had been notoriously vague on the timeframe; the number of missions he had to conduct for them. Each was judged on its own merits and rated according to certain criteria: efficiency, rapidity, positive yield. He could be penalised for such things as collateral deaths and damage requiring financial restitution. If ISS was ordered by a court to pay out compensation, for instance, that would count against him.

It wasn’t impossible that he could complete a mission satisfactorily and still be scored zero. The minuses could wipe out the pluses, and he would be left with nothing, no credit to show for his efforts. He had had that experience a couple of times before, and this mission was looking worryingly like it might go the same way. The deaths of Junius Bilk and Deputy Zagat were both black marks against him. Even if one of them, Bilk’s, was not his fault, the ISS liaison’s family might sue for reparation for their loss. ISS tended not to dispute such claims, but simply coughed up. Any money that came out of their pockets was money coming out of Dev’s pocket.

Those, however, were the terms Dev had agreed to. They were unfavourable, but they were all he had been offered. One day, as long as he kept going, as long as he survived, he would bank enough points and achieve the magic total.

1,000 points.

One day he would get there and he would be free.

The number 1,000 floated through his mind, weaving in and out of his thoughts like some elusive exotic fish. He knew he should be strategising, working out ways to stop Ted Jones before his mad orgy of destruction got completely out of hand. But he was physically exhausted. Every part of his host form felt pummelled and sore, either aching or throbbing or both. His mind couldn’t help drifting.

1,000.

It was a hope. A destination.

Milady Frog
droned around him, the vibration of her engines a mechanical lullaby.

1,000.

He slipped into sleep and dreamed of being Dev Harmer. Of mirrors that showed him himself, unharmed, intact, entire. Of a voice that sounded like his own and a sensorium – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch – that was unmistakably his and not mediated through the tweaked DNA of a host form. A body that wasn’t borrowed and bespoke, a home rather than rented accommodation. A future that wasn’t a constant struggle to pay off an almost insurmountable debt.