World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (6 page)

“Until a few hours ago, my consciousness was just a fizz of electrons zapping through ultraspace, sergeant. And this body was a mindless empty husk floating in a vat of nutrient solution. Cut me some slack.”

“Is it weird?” Kahlo said over her shoulder.

“This energy bar? I wouldn’t call it that. Then again: ginger and wheatgrass?”

“No. The whole ultraspace travel thing. Your special commute. Data ’porting. Hopping from body to body.”

“Don’t know,” said Dev. “I’ve been at it so long, it’s almost begun to seem normal.”

“Has to be pretty tough going. Waking up somewhere else, as someone else, over and over. Like a bad dream. I’m just wondering if it would account for why you’re such a thoroughbred douchebag.”

“No, that’s natural. It’s a talent.”

A red signal began flashing on the dashboard screen in front of Utz, accompanied by a repeated insistent buzzing.

“Utz?” said Kahlo. “Tell me that’s nothing bad.”

“It’s, uh... the proximity sensor alert.”

“The...? Is there an obstruction ahead?”

Utz scanned the readout. “No. Something behind. A freight shuttle. It’s joined the track at the junction we just passed.”

“So? Why is that a proximity issue?”

Utz was flustered. “Because it’s... it’s getting closer. And fast. Too fast.”

Dev turned round. Through the rear windscreen, he saw the glow of running lights some distance down the tunnel.

“It’ll reduce speed,” said Kahlo. “Surely. It’ll brake to maintain a safe distance. It has to.”

“The one at Jansson Crossing didn’t,” Dev pointed out.

“That was a one-off,” said Stegman, although his tone was more hopeful than confident.

The lights behind were getting brighter, and the alert buzzing was becoming louder and more strident.

“This is crazy,” said Kahlo. “Another shuttle gone rogue? There must have been some network-wide server crash. That’s the only explanation.”

“That or somebody is using trains to kill people,” Dev said. “Which would be a pity,” he added. “I’ve always liked trains.”

6

T
HE FREIGHT SHUTTLE
loomed large in the rear windscreen. Its blunt snout couldn’t have been more than thirty metres away, a rectangle of blank, windowless metal, oncoming. It had a terrible, unthinking purposefulness about it, a blind juggernaut with no heed for anything that lay in its path.

The gap between it and the pod was narrowing rapidly.

Utz had accelerated to top speed, in an effort to stay ahead. Kahlo, meanwhile, was contacting the rail network control room. Her brow was furrowed in concentration.

“No good,” she said eventually. “I’m not getting through. I’ve flagged it as a high-priority call. Still nothing. I’m being shut out.”

“Maybe they’re a bit busy there,” Dev suggested, “trying to stop the runaway.”

“I’m using police codes. I shouldn’t be getting the ‘unavailable’ tone. Someone should be answering and saying sorry for not picking up sooner.”

“Can’t we go any faster?” Stegman said, an edge of panic in his voice.

“The limiter says no,” Utz replied. “We’re at two-fifty kph, the allowable maximum.”

“How come a freight shuttle’s going quicker than a pod anyway?”

“How should I know? It’s heavier. Has momentum. Maybe
its
limiter’s been disabled.”

“Can’t you disable ours too?”

“Tell me how and I will,” Utz said acidly. That shut Stegman up.

The tunnel walls were rushing by. A township station flickered and was gone. The pod was shuddering now, as though trying to decide whether to leave the guideway and take flight.

If it and the track parted company, in the tight confines of a tunnel...

Dev tried not to imagine what the result might be. It would make the crash at Jansson Crossing look like a gentle flirtation. Cleanup crews would be scraping parts of the pod’s occupants off the rails for weeks.

The freight shuttle had got to within a stone’s throw of the pod. The pressure wave it was pushing before it added to the smaller vehicle’s instability. Dev could feel the pod being bounced and buffeted. There was a squeal and a spray of sparks as its left-hand flank nudged the guideway. Kahlo swore and Stegman wailed.

Dev looked up. “I’ve got an idea,” he announced, and before anyone could ask what it was, he swivelled round in his seat and began kicking at the rear windscreen.

“Hey!” yelled Stegman. “That’s police property.”

“Seriously?” said Dev, kicking harder. “That’s what you’re going with, at a moment like this?”

“You can’t vandalise police property. It’s an offence.”

“I gave you a dead leg. Does that count as vandalising police property too?”

The windscreen glass starred.

“Besides,” said Dev, using both feet now, “if that shuttle shunts us, a whole lot worse is going to happen to this pod than a busted window.”

The windscreen bowed outward, then all at once broke free of its frame, rubber seal and all. It spiralled into the shuttle’s face, exploding to smithereens. Shards hailed along the tunnel.

“Those are gun-stuns, right?” he said to Stegman.

Stegman glanced down at the two chunky rubberised cylinders attached to his utility belt. Police-issue EMP grenades.

“Yeah. So?”

“So give me one of them.”

“No.”

“Okay, then.”

Dev reached over and briskly unclipped one of the gun-stuns. Stegman tried to snatch it back off him, but Dev swatted his hand aside, then levered himself halfway out of the hollowed windscreen frame.

A hurricane tore at his hair and clothing. His ears popped.

The shuttle had neared to a distance of five metres, still remorselessly bearing down on them.

Dev lowered his arm, lining up his hand with the gap between the shuttle’s skirt and the inside of the guideway. He primed the grenade, thumbing off the cap and depressing the spring-release trigger. One-second delay. All he had to do was let go of it at just the right moment...

The pod juddered sharply as he released the gun-stun, throwing his aim off. The grenade hit the base of the track, then bounced up the front of the shuttle and over the top. It detonated halfway along the shuttle, over its cargo bay, silently, uselessly.

Dev crawled back inside the pod.

“All right, give me the other one,” he said to Stegman.

“Just what the fuck are you up to?”

“What do you think? Gun-stun. Three-metre-radius pulse of electromagnetic energy. Disrupts electronics. Disables non-shielded weapons that rely on circuitry. Also electric motors and electromagnetic fields. And what is that shuttle riding on? A damn great electromagnetic field. I land the thing beside the levitation coils, and the shuttle should flip out.”

“Should?” said Kahlo.

“Will. If the grenade goes off in just the right spot.”

“That’s a stupid plan,” said Stegman.

“Do you have a better idea, sergeant?” said Kahlo.

“No, ma’am. Not as such.”

“Then give him the other damn gun-stun.”

“Thanks,” said Dev, as Stegman passed the grenade over. “Now, I’ll need you to hold my legs this time, sergeant, so I can lean further out.”

Dev crawled out onto the rear of the pod again. He felt Stegman clamp arms around his knees. He teetered over the space between pod and shuttle, which was down to one metre. The track blurred by below him, dizzingly close.

One shot.

If he missed this time, there wouldn’t be another attempt. It would be too late. The shuttle would rear-end the pod, and that would be that. The tunnel walls would be decorated in various shades of human.

The pod shook and leapt. Dev, hanging out the back, was flung around like a wagging tail. If not for Stegman, he would have been thrown loose. The police sergeant was good for something, at least.

Steadying himself against the pod’s turbulence, Dev extended his arm. Carefully, with as much precision as the situation allowed, he took aim.

He let go.

The gun-stun was sucked into the gap between the shuttle and the guideway and detonated, unleashing its burst of energy, shutting down the levitation coils in a section of track.

The shuttle was knocked off-course.

Slightly
off-course, but that was all it took.

The shuttle’s skirt dug into the guideway on the opposite side. There was a shrieking, a rending. Metal curled like potato peel. The entire vehicle trembled, as though in mortal pain.

It veered. It slewed and slithered crazily.

Then it sprang aloft, hitting the tunnel ceiling, and began to disintegrate.

Dev watched from far too close for comfort as the shuttle shredded itself to bits against the tunnel’s insides. There was no flame. Nothing combustible in the shuttle’s structure. Only coachwork, chassis and electrical mechanism to be destroyed. The train became a bolus of fragments barrelling along the tunnel at breakneck speed, large chunks whittling themselves smaller, a relentless, roaring unravelling.

This torrent of torn, howling metal looked set to overtake and engulf the pod.

But then it began to lose impetus and subside. The pod pulled away, putting the maelstrom of ruined shuttle behind it. Its progress smoothed until it was sailing serenely along the track as though nothing had happened, the terrible near-miss now far behind.

Dev slid back through the windscreen frame, aided by Stegman.

“That was...” – Dev groped for an adjective – “exponential.”

“You mad bastard, Harmer,” gasped Stegman.

“Coming from you, I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

Utz’s grip on the pod’s acceleration lever loosened, colour returning to his whitened knuckles. “Another five minutes to Calder’s Edge. Man, I’ll be glad to stop and get out. I don’t think I ever want to drive one of these things again. Captain? Oh, sorry, you’re making a call.”

“Hang on.” Kahlo held up a hand. “Right. Done. I’ve just been informing the rescue crew about the second shuttle. They’ll cordon off the tunnel. That should hold things ’til the rail controllers sort their shit out. What is it, Utz?”

“Nothing. Just – earthquakes were bad enough. Now we’ve got homicidal trains?”

“Quite. This has to stop. It’s like the whole of Alighieri is turning against us.” She leaned round in her seat. “And the situation has got measurably worse since you showed up, Harmer.”

“Whoa, hold on,” Dev said. “The implication being that
I’m
responsible somehow? We all nearly just got killed, remember?” He jabbed a finger at his chest for emphasis. “Me included.”

“Can you even get killed?”

“Of course I can. What sort of question is that?”

“I mean, you data ’ported in. Can’t you just data ’port out again, should you get shot or fatally maimed or whatever?”

“Nope. Not how it works. I don’t have the ability to randomly project my consciousness into ultraspace whenever I feel like it. I have to be hooked up to a transcription matrix first and use that as a portal. If I die here, I die; just like you, Utz, Stegman, anyone.”

“Oh. I just thought –”

“You just thought an ISS consultant can chuck host forms aside like used tissues. You thought I can unzip my consciousness from one shell and zip it into another like Polis Plussers do. Uh-uh. Not that simple.”

“I see.”

“And for what it’s worth, suicide isn’t high on my bucket list. I’m not prepared to kill myself in order to take a target out. This isn’t about you, Kahlo. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? You’re the highest-ranking person on board this pod, Calder’s Edge’s chief of police, so you’ve got to be the target. But what if you’re wrong? I think so. I think, if this is about anyone, it’s about me.”

“What makes you so sure?” said Kahlo.

“Consider the facts. The moment I arrive, a chunk of rock drops onto where I am. Couple of hours later, I accompany local cops to the site of a train crash – a very suspicious incident, just the sort of thing a newly arrived ISS consultant might want to check out – and on the way back I almost get clobbered by another train. Either of those events alone could be happenstance. The two together – that begins to smell nasty.”