World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (41 page)

“That’s... Well, I’d heard stories, rumours. But...”

“The official ISS line is that all us operatives are volunteers. We’re a happy band of adventurers, ex-military personnel who’ve chosen to continue fighting the Frontier War in its secondary phase, guarding the Diaspora’s borders against Plusser incursion while our bodies lie in induced comas back on Earth. There’s some truth in that, but it’s also a whole lot more complicated. At least, it is as far as I’m concerned. I can’t speak for other ISS consultants. Maybe some of them
are
volunteers, for all I know, and that induced-coma thing is real.”

“You, though... You’re a slave.”

“Am I? That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. But what would you do in my shoes? When the alternatives are this or death, wouldn’t you take this? Wouldn’t anyone?”

Kahlo eyed him with wonder, and something Dev hadn’t seen before from her, at least not directed towards him: compassion.

“ISS have you over a barrel,” she said. “They know you’ll do whatever they ask, because otherwise you’ll die. They’re relying on that to keep you obedient, a good little drone. The only thing that keeps it from being slavery is the fact that you can earn your way out of it.”

Dev shrugged. “TerCon seems to think it’s legal.”

“Legal maybe – just about – but ethical?”

“Big business and ethics. Since when have those two even been on nodding terms? I’ve got a second chance at life, Kahlo. It’s not straightforward, and I’m having to fight for it, every inch of the way, but I’ve got it nonetheless, and no way am I going to let it go.”

Kahlo shoved her chair back from the table. “I don’t know whether I think you’re an idiot or a hero.”

“I’m pretty confused about it myself.”

“I hope it works out for you. I hope you get your thousand points and make it out the other side.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Correction: it’s the nicest thing
you’ve
ever said to me.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“
And
you came topside looking for me.”

“Not just you. You and the whole of your team, including my men.”

“Still, if I didn’t know better, Captain Kahlo, I’d say you’d developed a soft spot for me.”

“Believe what you like. I’m going for a shower now. I stink, and I could do with a change of clothes, too.”

Kahlo crossed to the bathroom.

At the door, without looking back, she said, “Feel free to join me if you want to.”

Dev ran an eye over her muscular, curvy profile, and yes, he very much wanted to join her in the shower.

And so he did.

44

T
HEY GOT CLEAN
, and then got dirty.

And then after that, they had another shower and got clean again, only to get dirty again in Kahlo’s bedroom.

Scrubbing, then rubbing. It was urgent and violent the first time, languid and lingering the second.

In the shower they both were standing up. In bed, Kahlo went on top, perhaps inevitably. It was a different kind of straddling from three days earlier when she and Dev were fighting in the sculpture pedestal. They were naked, for one thing. But there was a similar imperious look of triumph on Kahlo’s face, not least when she orgasmed. The grip of her thighs on Dev’s pelvis was spectacular and succulent, bringing him a few moments later to a climax so powerful his entire self seemed to shoot out of him.

Afterwards, they lay together, with the top sheet twisted around them like a giftwrap ribbon. For a time they dozed, Dev relishing the weight of Kahlo’s breasts on his chest and the moth-wing stir of her breath on his neck. It wasn’t love, it was two people finding solace and release in each other’s bodies while the world threatened to fall apart around them. But that was almost as good as love. The next best thing.

“I guess you’ve figured out by now that Graydon’s my father,” Kahlo said.

“Thorne called you two the king and princess of Calder’s Edge. That was kind of a clue.”

“Since we’re sharing confessions – and bodily fluids – I thought I should just mention it.”

“Does banging the governor’s daughter mean I’m in trouble? Is your dad going to come after me with a posse and a noose?”

“No, actually it makes you an elected official. Didn’t you know? That’s how we do things ’round these here parts.”

“You Alighierians and your quaint backwater customs. In return, I have to tell you that you have the honour of being my first.”

“Yeah, I took your host form’s virginity, didn’t I?” She ran fingernails down his belly. “I corrupted you.”

“The bad news is, at three days old I’m technically a minor.”

“Let’s not go there.”

“You’re a cradle snatcher. I’m your toy boy.”

She dug her nails in hard. “I mean it, buster. Not even remotely amusing.”

“So what did Maurice Graydon do that pissed you off so much? To the extent that you even changed your name?”

Kahlo seemed as though she was going to clam up. Her lips went rigid as bone.

Then, relenting, she said, “Okay. Here’s how it was. Graydon wasn’t around much when I was little. But don’t go thinking I’m just some girl with daddy issues and I resent not having had his full attention while growing up. That’s bullshit. When he was home, he was good to me and my mother. We were, I guess, a happy family. He just worked hard, both as a miner and a union representative. He loved his job. Loved mining. Loved standing up for other miners and their wellbeing.”

“He’s the dedicated public service type, isn’t he? And the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.”

“It all went sour when my mother was killed. She was a miner too. She drove a driller rig; she was good at it, by all accounts. There was an accident, a malfunction. Not sure if it was a hardware or software glitch, but one of the critically damped servos failed.”

“There was an overshoot?”

“That’s it. The assistive mechanism on the drill arm didn’t respond correctly to a motion she made. The arm reached out much faster and further than she intended it to go, and it tore her own arm off at the socket.”

Dev made an appalled face. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

“I thought you were going to make some crass, inappropriate comment there.”

“I’m not
that
insensitive. Presumably help didn’t get to her in time.”

“She was in one of the remoter tunnels, digging out a new seam. A couple of co-workers tried to save her, but she bled out. It was a brand of rig, TechnoCorp, that was notorious for faults. Uncontrolled oscillation. Failure to detect unsafe or invalid user motions. Joint fouling.”

“I remember. The company went bust eventually. Lawsuits galore.”

“Too late for my ma. This happened at the start of the Frontier War, when manufacturers like TechnoCorp were diversifying into munitions and tanks. They were overstretched, and their quality control plummeted. Some of their product didn’t meet basic safety requirements. They blamed my mother for her death, of course.”

“Driver error.”

“Exactly. They denied their rigs had problems, even though everyone knew they did. My dad waged a publicity campaign against them. He would have taken them to court, but...”

“There was a war on.”

Kahlo nodded. “People had other things on their minds. He tried to shame TechnoCorp into admitting liability, but nothing he did made a blind bit of difference. That was when the light went out of his eyes. When he stopped being my father and became just this... this robot lookalike. He shaved his head – contrition, self-mortification, whatever. He retired from mining, moved into politics. He stopped caring about anything except what he thought was important, which was Calder’s Edge and being governor. He put all his energies into that, because it was something he could control, and something he could lose himself in.”

“In a way, you can’t blame him.”

“Oh, I can,” said Kahlo with a bitter laugh. “He had a daughter, remember? But he could barely look at me any more. Said I reminded him too much of her – ‘my Soraya.’ I’d lost someone too! But he couldn’t have given a shit. It was all about himself, his status, his career, being Maurice Graydon, the people’s friend and defender. I suppose, as long as he was governor and kept being re-elected, he didn’t have to think about anything else, any
one
else. Guess what he said when I told him I was changing my surname to my mother’s maiden name.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘If it makes you happy, Astrid.’ In that smarmy way of his. Same when I told him I was joining the police force. ‘If it makes you happy.’ Like my happiness mattered only to me. He’d cut himself adrift from the rest of the world. People weren’t of interest to him unless he was trying to win their votes, in which case he could pour on the charm.”

“I’ve seen him at it,” Dev said. “He’s good. Super slick.”

“Even his penchant for expensive whisky. That’s not a genuine foible. It’s a schtick. It’s calculated. Makes him look like ‘one of us’ – he enjoys a tipple, spends more money on it than he should, wow, that’s kind of cool, relatable but sophisticated at the same time, what a swell guy.”

“I was thinking just that when I first met him – swell guy, for a politician. The Yamazaki’s a nice touch. Even Thorne, I reckon, who loathes his guts, admires that about him, his fancy booze habit.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Kahlo said. “Graydon does a number on people. He’s been doing it for twenty years. He’s great at being your best friend, and he doesn’t even know what friendship is any more. Emotions are alien to him. He fakes them superbly but he doesn’t have them.”

“A sociopath.”

“But he wasn’t always, that’s the thing. It was my mother’s death that did it to him. It burned him out from the core, left him a hollow shell. I distinctly recall him being fun once, when I was little. Before. He’d play with me. Dance round the kitchen with me. Read me stories. Hug me.”

“I can see why you put distance between you. You had to. It was too painful otherwise.”

Kahlo’s eyes glistened. “It wasn’t petty vengeance. It wasn’t holding a grudge or adolescent acting-out. It was self-protection. I couldn’t be Maurice Graydon’s daughter any longer because I
wasn’t
Maurice Graydon’s daughter, not in any appreciable way. From my teens onwards, I was more or less an orphan. My father
appeared
to be still alive, but he wasn’t, not really.”

Dev drew her closer to him, and for a while they lay in silence. He felt the hot trickle of tears on his neck, but said nothing. Kahlo would not want him drawing attention to it. Crying was a weakness, and weakness was anathema to her.

She was more like her father than she realised, or might care to admit.

“So that’s us,” she said finally. “Estranged. Leading very public lives, but nothing much else going on between us. Graydon hasn’t had a girlfriend since he became a widower. Not even a casual fuck now and then. Nothing. And I haven’t exactly been active on that front myself.”

“Just the occasional under-age offworlder.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry.”

“Most of the men I meet, I’m either giving them orders or arresting and interrogating them. Neither of which is really conducive to starting an affair. The crooks, particularly, are none of them what you’d call prime material. Thieves, drunks, troublemakers, wife-beaters, liars...”

“Must give you a pretty jaundiced view of the male of the species.”

“I don’t know. Yes, maybe. What I tell myself is that life’s less complicated when you’ve only yourself to think about. That way – Ah.” She sat up. “Got a call coming in. Konstantinov.”

Dev took the opportunity to slip out of bed while Kahlo conducted the call. He was bursting for a piss – the coffee – and the bathroom beckoned.

As he urinated, he mulled over what Kahlo had told him about her father. A thought struck him.

An unappetising thought.

He tried to dismiss it, but it wouldn’t go. It was stuck in his head like a splinter, and the more he worried at it, the deeper it sank in and the more naggingly unignorable it became.