World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01)

by James Lovegrove

  Then the nanite swarm emerged from the mine, a swirling, swelling dark-grey cloud, and Mayor Major began to shriek as they consumed first his shoulder plate and then, swiftly, the shoulder itself. They whittled through his skin, into his flesh. Blood didn’t even flow. It didn’t get the chance to. The nanites consumed it, every drop, as it welled.

  Dev slammed the door shut behind him.

  That was when the shooting began in earnest.

  34

  BULLETS, DARTS, FLECHETTES – they pounded into the front of the habitat in their hundreds. Holes started to appear, letting in thin rods of artificial daylight. More and more holes, until the wall was as riddled as a colander.

  Stegman, Zagat and Trundell were hunkered behind items of furniture they had heaped up at the back of the room. Dev hurdled this makeshift stockade to join them.

  “Parley went well,” he said, shouting to make himself audible above the din of gunfire. “All parties broadly in agreement. Few fine details needing to be ironed out. We’re taking a break and will renew discussions shortly.”

  Stegman shook his head in disgust. “How many of the bastards are there? Not that I can’t guess.”

  “Rough estimate? All of them.”

  “Really?” said Trundell. “A thousand Kobolds?”

  “No. I’m exaggerating for comic effect. It’s more like forty.”

  “Might as well be a thousand.”

  “Good news is, Mayor Major is down. That was him screaming. He’s out of the equation.”

  “Should I ask?” said Stegman.

  “Don’t. But it means they’re leaderless. Whatever they do now, it won’t be subtle or ingenious.”

  “Won’t have to be, seeing as there’s ten of them for every one of us.”

  The shooting dwindled, then ceased altogether as magazines ran dry and had to be swapped out or replenished.

  Dev dared a peek round the side of the furniture heap. The front door was in tatters, half of it gone. Through the ragged gap he saw shadows moving – figures approaching.

  “You two cops,” he whispered. “Fetch those gun-stuns out and get ready to lob them. Set them to upper-limit effective radius. That’ll take out at least half of the Kobolds’ weapons when they come in. Won’t help with the non-electronic guns, but you can’t have everything.”

  As Stegman and Zagat readied the EMP grenades, Dev switched his hiss gun back to lethal mode.

  Kobolds were stationing themselves outside the habitat’s three main points of entry: the door and the two windows. Their attempts at stealth were laughable. One of them even stumbled and fell to his knees with a muffled crash.

  What they failed to appreciate was that by creeping into position directly in front of the house, they were placing themselves between the street’s light sources and the bullet holes. Where a cluster of the holes went dark, that was where a Kobold was lurking. It was as though constellations in the night sky were disappearing, and every new blank absence represented an enemy – and to Dev, a sitting duck.

  He couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Leaning up over the furniture stockade, he picked off the Kobolds, from left to right, with a single shot apiece. The hiss gun’s spike of air pierced the habitat’s aluminium double-shell and carbon-fibre insulation neatly. The Kobolds fell in a row. The bullet-hole ‘constellations’ lit up again.

  “They won’t try that twice,” Dev said. “My bet is it’ll be a full-scale assault next. You all braced for that?”

  They didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, a battle cry arose outside, a score of voices howling in mutual exhortation. Gunfire pounded the habitat once more, the leading edge of a desperate, murderous charge.

  As the first Kobolds came crashing in through the door, Stegman unleashed a gun-stun. Any non-hardened chip-controlled weapon the gangsters were carrying stopped working immediately. Dev and Zagat, at the same time, met them with a volley of fire. Kobolds tumbled over one another, corpse on freshly-killed corpse.

  More Kobolds burst in via the windows. Trundell whooped as he hit one with a dart from Stegman’s mosquito. The woman’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and she collapsed like a tent whose guy ropes had all been severed.

  Zagat detonated his gun-stun, making sure he threw it far enough so that his own weapon wouldn’t be affected, nor those of Dev and Trundell. Stegman, meanwhile, lined up one shot after another with the replica Ruger, doing his best to inflict crippling wounds rather than fatal ones. He had relaxed some of his law enforcement officer scruples, but not, it would seem, all of them.

  Kobolds kept piling into the habitat, a succession of garishly disfigured grotesques, a demonic tide. Shells and darts smacked into the stockade, sending up bursts of splinters and stuffing. Ricochets zinged.

  Dev kept up a constant barrage with the hiss gun, but its battery had started to run perilously low. Already the Recharge warning light was flashing. Zagat announced that he had gone through almost all the ammo for the MPA pistol. Stegman said something similar about the Ruger.

  Trundell was blasting away with the mosquito prolifically. He was so intent on scoring hits that it took him several seconds to realise the gun’s load was spent.

  Dev still had one nano-frag mine remaining. He tossed it at a group of three Kobolds and saw them frantically trying to beat away the nanite cloud with their bare hands. It was like trying to swat a million miniature razor blades. Their fingers were rapidly cut to the bone, and then the nanites latched onto their forearms and began eating upwards, past the elbows to the shoulders.

  Dev had put the mine on maximum duration, and so it was ten seconds before the nanites self-destructed.

  The Kobolds’ shrieks and sobs continued long after that.

  Finally Stegman and Zagat were both out of ammunition, and Dev’s hiss gun battery was flat.

  Kobolds were still coming. It seemed as though the siege would never end.

  Dev thrust himself out from behind the furniture heap, slithering across the floor on his belly to the nearest fallen Kobold. He snatched up the man’s handgun and shot at the next two attackers that stormed in through the door.

  It had been a while since he’d last fired an old-timey, hammer-strike sidearm with cordite-propelled lead bullets. That had been back in his tearaway teens, his period of juvenile delinquency between leaving school early with no academic qualifications and being convinced by a judge to ‘make himself available for military service’ as an alternative to a lengthy prison sentence. He and his friend Bogey had driven out to the marshes to take potshots at feral cats with Bogey’s dad’s most treasured possession, an antique Smith and Wesson Sigma semiauto. Off their faces on jazz juice – a liquid-form tetrahydrocannabinoid – they’d ended up destroying more flora than fauna, and then had had to leg it when a licensed vermin hunter appeared and started shooting at them with his rifle.

  He had forgotten that this kind of gun had a kick. The weapon bucked in his hands as he pulled the trigger, and both shots went wild.

  The two Kobolds flinched and ducked, then raised their guns.

  Dev’s next two shots were made with a firm double grip, wrists locked to absorb the recoil.

  That was more like it. The Kobolds never managed to get off a round. Both slumped in the doorway, dead.

  He steeled himself for the next wave of attackers.

  It didn’t come.

  Instead he heard footfalls outside, pattering into the distance, the sound of a handful of people running away. Then silence descended.

  The air in the room reeked of gunpowder and blood. Smoke and dust swirled thickly.

  Dev crawled over to the door and, using the two newest corpses as cover, peered out.

  The street immediately in front of the habitat was littered with bodies. The windows of the houses opposite were empty, apart from a couple of frightened faces peeping out to see if the fighting was truly over or this was just a lull.

  The siege had been broken. Dev and his team had put up such a robust defence t
hat eventually the last few Kobolds had chosen to flee rather than continue. The better part of valour and all that. They had given it their best shot. With a little more strategic planning, perhaps a few more gang members, they might have succeeded. As it was, whatever appetite they had had for the fight was now gone, and so were they.

  Dev signalled to the other three. “Coast’s clear. I think we’ve done it. Time to go.”

  They picked their way through the maze of sprawled bodies, Dev at the vanguard, Trundell next, then Zagat, assisting Stegman, half-carrying him.

  Trundell was saucer-eyed, with a pinched face that spoke of incipient shellshock.

  Dev knew the look all too well. He had seen it once on his own face. You never forget your first firefight.

  “Just keep walking, Trundle,” he said soothingly. “Don’t look back. You did a great job, but it’s over now. It’s all over.”

  It wasn’t, though.

  One of the Kobold bodies reared up from the ground, and rose to its full six-and-a-half-feet. It was incomplete. An arm was missing, along with a significant section of upper torso. Above the ribcage, reaching to the neck, a neatly hollowed-out gouge. As though a giant ice cream scoop had been used. Blood glossing a bare chest.

  A huge hand reached for Zagat from behind, grabbed the policeman by the skull. Yanked him backwards, away from Stegman, as though he were no heavier than a straw-stuffed scarecrow.

  Mayor Major. With an injury like his, he should have been dead. He wasn’t.

  Stegman, abruptly deprived of Zagat’s support, fell forward onto all fours. Meanwhile Mayor Major wrenched back the bigger policeman’s head, exposing his throat. Zagat thumped him with elbow jabs, but Mayor Major didn’t appear to notice. He was crazed with pain, his eyes like lost moons. He was too far gone to feel anything.

  He bared his tungsten teeth. His serpentine tongue flickered.

  Dev doubled back to help, fast, but not fast enough. The colossal Kobold leader chomped down on Zagat’s neck. His teeth went in gum-deep.

  With a sideways twist of his head, Mayor Major tore out a large chunk of flesh. Muscle, sinew and vein were rent asunder, accompanied by a spray of arterial blood.

  Zagat spasmed and shuddered but, laconic to the last, did not cry out.

  Mayor Major chewed briefly, swallowed, and went back for more. This time he bit in Zagat’s windpipe, popping it open. Zagat’s larynx came away in a gristly lump, which the Kobold leader wolfed down whole, with a gulp and a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Best meat there is,” he gloated. “Tastier than anything that comes out of a vat. How else do you think I got to be so big and strong?”

  That was when Dev collided with him, shoulder first.

  Mayor Major barely even swayed under the impact. Giving Dev a contemptuous look, he returned to Zagat for a third helping. The policeman hung limp from his hand. Major swallowed another ghastly mouthful and smacked his lips lasciviously.

  Dev delved in his pocket for his only remaining weapon, the hair-splitter, but it wasn’t there. The knife must have fallen out, along with its sheath, back in the house sometime during the siege.

  So instead he sprang high and brought his elbow smashing down on Mayor Major’s bald crown.

  The Kobold leader just laughed, as though a feather had dropped onto him. A fourth bite of Zagat’s neck left just cervical vertebrae and a few shreds of skin and tendon attaching the policeman’s head to the rest of him. Mayor Major gave Zagat a firm shake, and the sheer dead weight of the body sundered these last few attachments. The decapitated trunk and limbs fell away, leaving Mayor Major holding only the head.

  “Eyeballs,” he said with relish, turning Zagat’s face to his own. “Such a delicacy.”

  Dev recovered his balance, wondering what line of attack to take next. Nothing seemed to have any effect. Mayor Major was impervious. Kick to the balls? Knowing him, they’d probably been replaced by solid brass.

  The monstrous Kobold pursed his lips, preparing to suck one of Zagat’s eyeballs out of its socket like an oyster from its shell.

  Then his own left eye disappeared. A puff of pink mist erupted at the back of his head.

  The echoes of a gun report clattered along the street.

  Mayor Major turned to look at the shooter, his remaining eye set in a baleful glare.

  Trundell had a revolver in his trembling hands. The barrel smoked. The gun had belonged to a Kobold lying at his feet.

  The xeno-entomologist couldn’t have looked more appalled – or more righteous.

  Mayor Major tried to say something. Then he just let out a hearty laugh, and for one sickening moment it really seemed as though he was unhurt and would continue feasting on Zagat. Not even a bullet through the brain could deter him.

  But he fell – inexorably, thunderously – toppling onto his side. His hand, when he hit the ground, released Zagat’s head, so that it rolled away and fetched up beside Zagat’s body in posthumous reunion.

  Tears sprang from Trundell’s eyes. Gently Dev took the revolver from him.

  “I didn’t – I can’t believe I –”

  “Shut up, Trundell,” Dev said softly. “Don’t you even think about feeling bad. You did the right thing. Bastard got what was coming to him. The only pity was it was quick. You showed him more mercy than he’d have shown any of us.”

  Trundell blinked hard, then nodded. He didn’t even notice that Dev had again, only for the second time, used his proper surname.

  “Now let’s keep going,” Dev said. “Hopefully, if we’re really, really lucky, we can make it back to Milady Frog without any more shit hitting the fan.”

  35

  THE FAN DID indeed remain shit-free for the journey to the launch complex. Dev and Trundell walked with Stegman limping between them, his arms slung around their shoulders. The policeman grumbled virtually the entire way, which as far as Dev was concerned was a positive sign.

  Dev messaged ahead, and by the time they reached the docking bay, Wing Commander Beauregard had the blast doors open for them and the arcjet’s onboard computer was already cycling through its pre-flight checks.

  Beauregard took one look at the three and saw that things had not gone well.

  “Big fella didn’t make it, huh? Shame. Doesn’t look like it was a picnic for the rest of you either. Up the ramp, chop-chop. Launch window’s only open for the next ten minutes. We can’t depart any later than that, because the sun will have got too high and it’ll take us too long to catch up with the dark.”

  “Any trouble with Kobolds yourself?” Dev asked as they went aboard.

  “Couple turned up. Bit of fuss, trying to break in. Then they rushed off like they’d got a call or something.”

  “Probably to join the siege on us. Mayor Major got wind of where we’d holed up and mobilised a small army of his people.”

  “Yeah? And how is the ugly great brute?”

  “Not as healthy as he was before he met us,” said Dev. “Sometimes I wish there really was a Hell.”

  “I think, in the olden days, the response to that would have been ‘amen,’” said Beauregard. “Now, I’ve got a first aid kit somewhere here. Your friend’s leg looks like it could do with seeing to. You up to that?”

  “I know field dressing.”

  “Thought you might. Vet like me, huh?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Lot of you ISS types are, so I hear. You sign up for the war, or get drafted?”

  “Little of both, you could say.”

  “Heh. I get it. Conscription programme ‘volunteer.’ The choice that’s no choice. Say no more. Me, I signed up. Crazy, in hindsight, but it seemed a good idea at the time. The military were likely to co-opt me anyway, being as they were short on qualified pilots. I felt I’d be able to bear it better if I at least pretended I had some say in the decision.”

  “And did it help?”

  “Look at me. Look how I’ve ended up. Do I look like I had a good war?”

  While Beaur
egard went to the cockpit to finish prepping for takeoff, Dev attended to Stegman’s injury. A quick examination told him he could treat it, but Stegman wasn’t going to enjoy the experience.

  “The flechette’s going to have to come out,” he said. “I could leave it in, but the sooner we get some astrocytes into the wound, the more chance you have of making a complete recovery.”

  “Do what you have to,” Stegman said with a grimace.

  “I can actually see the end of the flechette sticking out. It has little steel flights I can get a grip on. A couple of tugs and I’ll have it out. Won’t be pleasant, though. We’re taking off imminently, so there’s no time to wait for painkillers to kick in. It’s now or never.”

  “Just get on with it.”

  “Okay. Here goes. Look away if you like, Stegosaurus.”

  “Stegosaurus? I don’t want one of your damn nicknames, Harmer. Trundell hates his, and Stegosaurus is even worse.”

  “Hey, don’t be ungrateful. I don’t dole out nicknames to just anyone. It means I like you.”

  “No, it means you like to annoy me, which isn’t the same – FUCK!”

  Dev had pulled on the flechette and had levered it out a couple of centimetres. Still some way to go, however.

  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?”