World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (13 page)

The men’s room door opened and closed behind him.

He turned – staggered round, really – and there were the three miners from the next-door booth. They, too, were drunk, but not the kind of spinny-head drunk that Dev was. Mean drunk.

The ringleader cracked his knuckles and, without a word, took a swing at Dev.

What followed was far from elegant.

It wasn’t a fight.

It was even a brawl.

It was a ferocious, clumsy free-for-all, full of shouting and flailing and bodies smashing into inanimate objects and inanimate objects smashing into bodies.

The miners, the ringleader in particular, bellowed names at Dev:
faggot, queer, cocksucker.

Dev didn’t dignify that with a retort. Besides, he was too busy concentrating on staying on his feet and getting his shots in.

Three to one. On paper, it was hardly fair.

It became two to one when Dev knocked one of the miners unconscious by ramming his face against a toilet stall door.

Then Dev found his own face being dunked into a toilet bowl and held under by two pairs of callused hands.

He flashed back to his conversation with Trundell about host form adaptations. Breathing water? Maybe he was about to discover what that was like.

But the water and the dread of drowning did do something for him. Not quite a Blitz-Go, but the adrenaline surge restored him part-way to his senses, bringing some clarity.

He elbowed one of his assailants in the side of his knee. He felt the crunchy click of a patella dislocating and heard the satisfying scream of a man in immense, crippling pain.

He came up, heaving for air, and grabbed the hobbled miner by the shoulders.

The miner’s skull met the edge of the toilet bowl with enough force to break them both.

Which left just the ringleader.

If the man was alarmed or surprised to find himself alone, his friends out of commission, he didn’t show it. He was probably too far gone to care. He rushed at Dev like a bloodshot-eyed bull, slamming him spine-first against a basin.

Ceramic shattered, and water sprayed from snapped faucets.

Dev and the miner slugged away at each other like punchdrunk boxers in a clinch, skidding across the wet floor tiles.

At some point, one of them fell; Dev was mildly astonished to find that it wasn’t himself.

The miner groaned through pulped lips, and Dev kicked him in the head until he shut up.

After that, he slumped to his knees. Blood mingled with the puddles of water on the floor. It came from his knuckles, his forehead, his nose, his mouth.

What a fucking mess.

When he next looked up, police were barging through the door. They surrounded him, yelping like a pack of dogs. He couldn’t make out what they were saying over the high-pitched ringing in his ears.

He must have made a movement which one of the police officers interpreted as aggressive. Or he didn’t. Either way, they mosquitoed him.

Then they did it a second time, for good measure.

His body became a stupid, floppy thing, a meat sack. He could do nothing as the police officers trussed him up in restraints and bundled him out of the bar. They were not gentle. Now and then a fist struck him, or a foot, as if by accident.

He felt it, but it was as though someone else was feeling it.

It wasn’t so bad, really. Not when he could remember all too clearly the sensation of being riddled by ferromagnetic rounds entering his body at hypersonic speed from a Polis+ coilgun. Of being battered helplessly by kinetic forces that turned him into a dancing marionette.

Of being flayed alive.

Of dying.

15

“H
ARMER,
H
ARMER,
H
ARMER
...”

The face of Chief of Police Kahlo hovered above him like a gibbous moon.

“Urrgh,” said Dev.

“That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

Dev struggled up to a sitting position. Every organ in his body seemed to be slipping out of alignment. His brain was trying to ooze out of his cranium via his eye sockets and his nostrils. His stomach was pushing against his lungs; his heart slumped a little further sideways with every beat.

It was the mother of all hangovers.

“Latrine’s over there, if you’re going to barf,” Kahlo said. “Just be sure to aim away from me. I put a fresh-pressed uniform on this morning.”

Dev peered blearily around. A bunk, wipe-clean walls and floor. Recessed overhead lighting behind shatterproof plastic.

Holding cell. He was back at the Calder’s Edge police headquarters.

“I must lodge a complaint with the management,” he said. “This isn’t the five-star penthouse suite I was promised. Where’s my hot tub?”

“Hey, count your blessings. You got a private room and your own bed. You could’ve been stowed with all the other drunk-and-disorderlies, but last night was a busy one. Seems like half of Calder’s went on a bender. The drying-out tank was full. They were packed on the floor like sardines. Can’t blame them, I suppose. These quakes. The pressure’s getting to people.”

Dev did a quick inventory of his injuries. Contusions everywhere, several stiff muscles, swollen knuckles. One loosened tooth. A half-closed eye. What might have been a cracked – but was probably just a badly bruised – rib. Maybe a torn rotator cuff tendon.

“Ouch,” he said as he experimented gingerly with the shoulder. If not torn, the tendon was certainly wrenched.

“You treat these host forms like rental cars, is that it?” said Kahlo. “Doesn’t matter how many dents and dings you put in the bodywork because they’re not your own?”

“No,” he said. “Well, kind of. Not exactly. Put it this way: it doesn’t matter
as much
. I’m only in it for the short term, not the long haul.”

“Hence you pull these stupid stunts. I mean, you had me beating you up about three minutes after you got here. Then you assault the doorman at Inferno.”

“You know about that?”

“Jacko Dusenberg, the owner, filed a complaint. We extrapolated backwards, cross-checked security footage, found you in the vicinity of the club at the correct time. Dusenberg IDed you. You assaulted him as well, but I talked him out of pressing charges because he was associating with Franz Glazkov.”

“Who I was tailing.”

“Right. I put two and two together and threatened Dusenberg with arrest for consorting with a known dealer in unlicensed pharmaceuticals. He caved.”

“You’re my guardian angel.”

“Don’t get cocky,” said Kahlo. “And now, to cap it all, you wind up in a bar fight. You hospitalise three mine employees.”

“I didn’t start it. I only made sure I finished it.”

“Fortunately for you, I believe you. We have eyewitnesses saying the three guys followed you into the men’s room. They were talking about teaching you a lesson. They didn’t want ‘your kind’ stinking up their favourite watering hole.”

“They weren’t the most enlightened human beings I’ve met. You could have them up for hate crimes, if you like.”

“I think they’ve been punished enough already. But Harmer, help me out here. Why is it you can’t seem to stay out of trouble? You haven’t been on Alighieri one day, and shit just keeps happening around you.”

“It’s not something I encourage.”

“Were those miners another attempt on your life, do you think? Did somebody pay them?”

“No, it was a... misunderstanding. They got an idea into their heads that they shouldn’t have. They’re the sort of people who don’t need much of an excuse to pick on the sort of people they don’t like.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“As much as I can be.”

Kahlo grunted in annoyance. “So, doesn’t tell me why you’re incapable of keeping a low profile and simply getting on with what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“I told you, that bar thing, it genuinely wasn’t my fault.”

“You were drunk, though.”

“That wasn’t my fault either.” Or was it? Maybe it had been, just a little. The Alighierians weren’t the only ones who were feeling the pressure and needing an outlet, a way of alleviating it.

“I just find it baffling that you’re so... so
irresponsible
. So cavalier. Such a damn liability. Why have ISS sent us someone like you? Do they hate us?”

“We can’t all be by-the-book cops,” Dev said. “I’m unconventional. I have my own methods. But I’m known to get results. Otherwise ISS wouldn’t use me.”

“Well, they must see qualities in you that I don’t. If you were under my command, I’d have fired you by now. Maybe ‘consultant’ means something different to your bosses. Like: ‘shambolic trouble magnet.’”

Kahlo let out a breath as though expelling all her pent-up frustration in one go. She then drew a slow in-breath, resetting herself, inducing calm.

“All right,” she said. “I’m going to move past how exasperating you are and how much you’re pissing me off. I’m a big girl; I can handle jerks like you. Have done all my life. If I have to work with you, then so be it.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Dev. “Find your inner tranquillity. Go to your happy place.”

“My happy place would be thumping you in the head until you stop talking.”

“Imagine that, then. Let it bring you bliss.”

Kahlo pretended she was picturing it in her mind’s eye. “Yep. Feels great now. So, between chasing Glazkov and demolishing a men’s room with, by the looks of it, your face – find out anything useful? Any progress at all?”

“Well, Glazkov was a wild goose chase. You were right on that front.”

“Bet it hurt to say that.”

“Like a needle in the eyeball. He’s just a low-level hustler. Bottom feeder scuzz. But he did lead me, inadvertently, to something more promising.”

“Which is...?”

“I know now that the earth tremors have got your moleworms all discombobulated.”

“And? What about it?”

“And I’ve enlisted someone to enquire further into it – someone with the relevant expertise.”

Kahlo leaned back against the cell wall and folded her arms, unimpressed. “Upset moleworms? That’s all you’ve got for me?”

“I think it’s a viable lead.”

She shook her head in wonderment and dismay. “That host form must have cost ISS millions. I hope they think they’re getting their money’s worth.”

“Ultimately it’s TerCon that’s picking up the tab. ISS are just private government contractors.”

“If the taxpayers only knew...”

Dev nodded, then stopped. His head felt as though it was going to break free and topple off his spinal column.

“What about you?” he said. “Any luck with the rail network people?”

“Well, you were right, too.”

“Bet it hurt to say that.”

“Like needles in the eyeball. They ran the Polisware scan like you suggested. It flagged up an external attack on the server by a Plusser malware bot. The bot tiptoed round the firewalls, took over, shut everyone else out, caused havoc, then expired, leaving no trace. At least, none that the standard security programs could detect.”

“They’re pretty sophisticated things, Plusser bots. Like electronic kamikaze cat burglars. Where did it originate from?”

“They can’t seem to find out. It doesn’t appear to be off-world. No ultraspace encryption signature. Somewhere on Alighieri, but they can’t figure out precisely where. Not enough left of it after it self-destructed to extrapolate a vector pathway from.”

“That settles it, then. There’s a Plusser agent on-planet.”

“A Plusser who knows you’re here and who introduced the malware into the rail network server in a bid to get rid of you. Can’t say it’s an unpardonable offence. If you’re half as irritating to Polis Plus as you are to me...”

“Oh, I am.”

“But listen up, Harmer,” Kahlo said. “In all seriousness, the reason I’m continuing to tolerate you – and not planning on leaving you in this cell to rot – is that this Plusser nearly killed me and two of my men along with you. The attempt on your life was also an attempt on mine, Utz’s and Stegman’s.”