PRAISE FOR WORLD OF FIRE
“The story zooms along at a rip-roaring pace, told in an irreverent tone that perfectly matches the character of our hero. Planet Alighieri is rendered in such believable detail that I almost got a sweat on when Harmer got into trouble on the surface. Lovegrove has got things off to a brilliant start here.”
– SF Crow’s Nest
“I read this on holiday and it was perfect for kicking back, a throwback to the likes of Dumarest and James Bond. ****”
– Theaker’s Quarterly
“Lovegrove nails the tone: the technology, the atmosphere, all of it was vivid and real.”
– Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing
“Sarcastic and funny, Dev Harmer’s the kind of guy who can keep you reading about his antics.”
– Fresh Fiction
“A combination of Quantum Leap and James Bond starring Bruce Campbell; a great concept, very well executed right out of the gate. If you like your heroes smarmy, your villains inscrutable, and your action crunchy, the new Dev Harmer Missions are for you.”
– Strange Currencies
First published 2016 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-84997-913-9
Copyright © James Lovegrove 2016
Cover Art by Jake Murray
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of he copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Also by James Lovegrove
NOVELS
The Hope • Days
The Foreigners • Untied Kingdom
Worldstorm • Provender Gleed
Co-writing with Peter Crowther
Escardy Gap
THE PANTHEON SERIES
The Age Of Ra • The Age Of Zeus
The Age Of Odin • Age Of Aztec
Age of Voodoo • Age of Godpunk
Age of Shiva
THE REDLAW SERIES
Redlaw • Redlaw: Red Eye
THE DEV HARMER MISSIONS
World of Fire
NOVELLAS
How The Other Half Lives •Gig
Age Of Anansi • Age of Satan • Age of Gaia
SHERLOCK HOLMES
The Stuff of Nightmares
Gods of War • The Thinking Engine
COLLECTIONS OF SHORT FICTION
Imagined Slights • Diversifications
FOR YOUNGER READERS
The Web: Computopia • Warsuit 1.0
The Black Phone
FOR RELUCTANT READERS
Wings • The House of Lazarus
Ant God • Cold Keep • Dead Brigade
Kill Swap • Free Runner
The 5 Lords Of Pain series
The Lord Of The Mountain • The Lord Of The Void
The Lord Of Tears • The Lord Of The Typhoon
The Lord Of Fire
WRITING AS JAY AMORY
The Clouded World series
The Fledging Of Az Gabrielson • Pirates Of The Relentless Desert
Darkening For A Fall • Empire Of Chaos
In the century after it cast off all religion, humankind flourished and prospered, spreading out beyond Earth, beyond the solar system, to colonise far-flung planets.
This expansion, the Diaspora, continued until it reached the territory of the race of artificial intelligence zealots known as Polis+.
There followed a gruelling, decade-long war that ended eventually in an uneasy truce.
In the years since, along the notional Border Wall between the two empires, a body of men and women – the officers of Interstellar Security Solutions and similar companies – have stood guard against enemy sabotage, sedition and subversion.
One of these agents is Dev Harmer...
1
111101010100010101011010100101000101010110101010001111110101000110101010101011111001101 troublemaker like you won’t amount to anything in this world, Harmer 1010101010100101010101010010101010000101 101010101011010101010100101010110110010101011111010100110011011110001010101111011010101100011111110001
01 make yourself available for military service01001010010111101001011010101000001101011110 Ninth Extrasolar Engineers1010111000010101010111111011110001010110111101011111010111101100111111 Leather Hill veteran110010101010001010101001001010010010011010110000101010000000010 extreme courage under fire 10110100101011111101010001010 Interstellar Security Solutions 0100101010100111100001111101010101 the war against the digimentalists is not over 11100001001011111000011111101111001010 data ’porting into genetically modified host forms101101101110001101111110010101000110101011111001011 Alighieri 0110111111110100101001001010001100 take the bait11101110100010100000111000111101010101110000000000111
010001010 Trundle? Where’s that – ? 101010010111110010100101101010101010111110011011 a little closer to your thousand 1111001011110100101101010101000101001111111110100011110000110000001100 good things 01011001 good things 01101 good things 01
Dev awoke to patterns of rippling, multifaceted light. Sunshine bouncing off water, broken into a million pieces.
His first thoughts were of a slightly awkward but tender farewell with Astrid Kahlo at the ISS outpost before he clamped the transcription matrix over his head and set it for automatic upload.
The dazzle of the reflected light made him wince, but suggested he no longer had enhanced Aligherian night vision.
He sat up on the mediplinth, feeling awful as usual after a data ’port. No, he decided. More than usually awful. It wasn’t so much like a hangover this time, more like a persistent migraine.
Facing him was a slim, prim-looking man with an oddly distended neck. His epidermis had a slickness to it, as though he was encased in resin. Webbing stretched between his fingers.
Dev’s own fingers, too.
The man blinked, white nictitating membranes shuttering across his eyes.
“Mr Harmer?” he said. “Welcome to Robinson D in the Ophiuchus constellation, also known as Triton. I’m your liaison, Xavier Handler. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Good news first,” croaked Dev. “Always start with good news.”
“The good news is the installation has been entirely successful,” said Handler. “No transcription errors occurred during download. Brain imprint and host form are fully integrated.”
“So what’s the bad news?”
A flap flared on either side of Handler’s neck, exposing an underside of raw red flesh.
Gills.
It was an embarrassed gesture. Like a sharp intake of breath.
“The bad news is: the host form itself has been compromised.”
“I’m sorry, what? Compromised?”
“Yes.” Webbed fingers fluttered. “A problem with the growth vat. Something went wrong during the assembly process. Something small but crucial. I’m afraid it means your host form has sustainability issues.”
“Cut the crap. Sustainability issues? What is that jargon-speak for?”
Xavier Handler shifted his feet. “Your host form is breaking down at a cellular level. It’s already begun. At best guess, you have seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours before your body becomes irredeemably damaged and no longer functional.”
; “Three days...” said Dev.
“Three days,” Handler confirmed with a brief, despairing nod. “And there’s so much for you to do. So very much...”
2
DEV DRESSED UNSTEADILY in a booth. The clothes – tunic and leggings – were form-fitting, made from a fabric with a glossy texture and an iridescent gleam. The lining was soft and porous.
There was a mirror. With the usual trepidation, Dev studied his face.
His new face.
It was not dissimilar to Xavier Handler’s. High cheekbones, narrow jaw, pronounced lips. That waxy skin, which Handler had told him was less permeable than Terratypical skin and provided insulation against cold.
He tugged at the corner of one eyelid to expose a sliver of the membrane beneath. He tried to close the under-lids but they did not seem to respond to conscious command. It must work autonomically, responding to reflex rather than demand.
Next he examined the gills. Triple grooves, scored into either side of his neck. He probed one with a tentative finger, gingerly, as you might a wound.
His fingertip slid inside the flap. It was painless but odd, a bit creepy, a more intimate action than sticking a finger in your ear, say, or your mouth. The gill was a tight, fleshy, personal orifice.
He tried to flare the gills as Handler had done. Again, he couldn’t seem to do it. No matter how he tensed the musculature of his neck, they remained stubbornly shut.
This form was going to take more getting used to than most. Dev recalled telling the xeno-entomologist Trundell on Alighieri that he had yet to experience amphibiousness, but it was surely only a matter of time.
Looked as if the moment had finally come.
A knock at the door. “Mr Harmer? You decent?”
“Never.” As always, the voice issuing from Dev’s throat was unfamiliar: higher-pitched than any he’d had before, something of an oboe in its tone.
He exited the booth.
“Fabric coated with hydrophobic nano particles, right?” he said. “With a unidirectional absorbent lining to wick out stray moisture.”
“What the well-dressed ISS operative is wearing this season,” said Handler. “A drysuit that doubles as fashionable daywear.”
“It really rides up under the crotch.”
“It’ll loosen up with use.”
“Ugh.” A sudden wave of nauseating pain, worse than the normal post-installation hangover. Much worse. Dev clutched his head. “Got anything I can take for this? Feels like my skull’s full of lava.”
Handler fetched a sachet of edible analgesic gel, which Dev squirted gratefully down his throat. Relief was almost instantaneous.
“I’m used to a bit of grogginess and discomfort when I ’port in,” he said. “Goes with the territory. But this is something else.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to keep hurting,” the ISS liaison said, “and it’s not going to get any better. As the cellular breakdown continues, it’ll accelerate and become exponential. A snowball effect.”
“Joy.”
“Pain management is relatively easy, and I think I can also do something to retard the deterioration. Regular shots of stabilising nucleotides should hold the damage at bay.”
“Giving me longer than three days?”
“Unfortunately not. My estimate factored that in. Without the nucleotide shots, you’d be looking at more like two to three hours. A very messy two to three hours, at that.”
“So three days is a best-case scenario.”
“I’d say so.”
“Dose me up, then.”
Handler produced a microneedle-array patch with a sac containing 20 millilitres of a clear serum and applied it to Dev’s arm. A painless procedure – nanites bonded to the serum molecules, then perfused the liquid down through his skin into his bloodstream.
“Any idea how this happened?” Dev asked.
Handler’s shrug was apologetic. “Best guess? The hybridisation of two types of DNA isn’t an easy trick to pull off. Especially when we’re talking about genes from vastly differing species.”
“So I’m half human, half… fish?”
“Not quite. Triton has an indigenous, non-terrestrial population. Like me, you’re mostly human but with chromosomal attributes drawn from the native Tritonians.”
“Great. So I’m part alien.”
“If that’s how you choose to regard it. Before I submitted to alteration myself, I was told there was a chance the procedure might not ‘take.’ The odds were fifty-fifty. In my case it worked.”
“But in my case, it failed. I didn’t develop properly in the growth vat.”
“So the vat readout told me. You sound remarkably sanguine about it.”
“Hey, it’s Interstellar Security Solutions. Shit goes wrong all the time. I’m kind of used to it. Resigned, at any rate.”
Handler laughed. “It’s a huge corporation. Huge corporations aren’t known for the loving treatment of their employees.”
“Yeah, it’s almost as if they don’t care about us.”
Dev’s headache had almost entirely receded. He felt human again. Or rather, to be accurate, human and the other species that was mixed into his host form’s genome.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get down to business. Robinson D, Triton, whatever it’s called. Where’s that again?”
“Ophiuchus constellation, as seen from Earth.”
“I know. You said. Care to be a little more specific?”
“Well, it’s right on the edge of the Border Wall. In fact…”
Handler held up a hand, fingers rigid and pointing straight ahead, to represent a wall.
“On this side,” he said, canting his head to the left, “Diasporan territory. On this side” – he bent to the right – “Polis Plus territory. Triton sits here.”
He lodged the forefinger of his other hand a fraction to the right of the hand he was holding out.
Dev let out a low whistle. “We’re over the wall?”
“Debatable. TerCon doesn’t think so.”
“I bet Polis Plus disagrees.”
“It’s on their back fence, that’s for sure. Maybe even in their back yard.”
“And it’s an ocean planet, yeah?”
“Originally an ice giant with a negligible atmosphere, until a slight shift in axial rotation – probably a reversal of the magnetic poles – triggered a warming, melting the ice. Now it’s water all over, hundreds of kilometres deep in places, and the atmosphere’s breathable.”
“I know how ocean planets are formed. Well, I do now. What kind of Diasporan presence is there?”
“Not significant. Forty thousand colonists, give or take. Also a couple of military bases.”
“Which the Plussers are no doubt delighted about. Oh, I’m going to have fun here.”
“It’s started well, hasn’t it?” said Handler wryly.
Dev had the feeling that this was someone he could bear to work with.
It was an opinion he would consider revising five minutes later, as they stood outdoors and Handler prepared to give him a crash course in amphibianism.
3
“THERE’S ONLY ONE way to learn how to breathe underwater,” Handler told Dev. “The hard way.”
“And how does that go?”
“I drag you under and you figure out how not to drown.”
They were on a platform jutting out from the dome-shaped floating habitat. Waves lapped and slapped at the platform’s edge. Rolling, sun-brilliant sea stretched all the way to the horizon.
The habitat was one of a cluster of domes, all bobbing sedately on pontoons. The smallest of them, on the outskirts, were single-family dwellings. The nearer you got to the heart of the settlement, the larger the domes. The main central dome was a communal zone some 300 metres in radius, its surface a lattice of clear geodesic plates.
Footbridges linked the domes, constructed from hinged platforms that flexed with the rise and fall of the ocean swell. A couple of residents were walking across on
e now, negotiating motion with practised finesse.
Areas between the domes were filled with maricultural units – fish ranches, algae farms, phytoplankton cultivators. There was also a desalination plant, a tidal power barrage, and a marina where a variety of seagoing vessels were moored.
It was called Tangaroa, according to Handler. A mid-sized, modular-built township, one of several dozen Diasporan settlements distributed across Triton. Tangaroa was the Maori god of the oceans; Triton, a son of Poseidon in the Ancient Greek myths. Deity-derived place names were common all across the planet – something that was exceptionally rare in the Post-Enlightenment era. The first settlers of Robinson D had had an ironic and truculent sense of humour. They had known what a backwoods, boondocks world they were colonising, and had chosen their lexicon accordingly.
“So I can’t just dunk my head in the water and it’ll happen naturally?” Dev said.
“It might,” Handler replied, “but probably won’t. This is how my predecessor taught me. Sink or swim. Are you ready?”
“No.”
“Neither was I.”
Handler gave Dev a hefty shove between the shoulderblades, and Dev flew headlong off the platform, hitting the water with a spectacular bellyflop. He surfaced, spluttering, just as Handler executed an arrowing swan dive, entering the sea beside him with barely a splash.
Handler vanished beneath the waves. Dev, treading water, peered but couldn’t see him anymore.
A minute passed. Two.
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