World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01)

by James Lovegrove

  The giant moleworm communicated another silent scent order, and, as one, the pack moved off.

  “Jones has something specific in mind,” Dev said.

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know yet. We need to follow that moleworm pack.”

  “Easier said than done. We’re on rails, remember?”

  “Just stay on them. Close as you can.”

  Kahlo navigated the complex tangle of rail tracks, switching at junctions and travelling along short interconnecting spurs designated for the use of police and emergency services only. She did her best to keep the pack in sight at all times; the pod was faster than the moleworms, but the creatures had the advantage of being able to take a direct route to wherever they were going. If Kahlo hadn’t known the layout of the rail network quite as well as she did, she might have lost them in the labyrinth of the city.

  Every moleworm the pack passed broke off from whatever it was doing and joined them. The ranks swelled, gathering size like a rolling snowball. Soon it numbered in the hundreds, a bloated amoeba of pinkish creatures flowing through Calder’s Edge with the giant Ted Jones moleworm as its nucleus.

  “Damn,” said Kahlo. “End of the line.”

  The pod was approaching one of the sections of track that had been wrecked by a roof fall. A colossal mass of rock had broken loose and plunged through it. The track, elevated some thirty metres above the cavern floor, stopped in mid-air like an unfinished bridge. A gap of a couple of hundred metres lay between them and the next intact section.

  Warning lights on the control console advised that the driver should halt immediately, otherwise an automatic override would kick in and arrest the pod’s progress.

  Kahlo eased back on the acceleration lever and the pod sank to rest on the track.

  Dev climbed out.

  “You’re continuing on foot?” Kahlo said.

  “Don’t see that I have a choice. Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

  “No, but I’m coming too.”

  “Okay.”

  They headed along the track bed to the next support pylon, where they shinned down a maintenance ladder to the ground.

  “Which way now?”

  Dev pointed. “Last I saw, the moleworms were heading in that direction. Which makes a kind of sense.”

  “Why? There’s nothing that way except...”

  Kahlo’s face fell.

  “Shit,” she said. “The geothermal plant.”

  Dave gave a grim nod. “Jones is going for broke.”

  “Cut power to the entire city. The oxygen extractor centre will shut down. We’ll slowly suffocate.”

  “I think he’ll go one worse than that,” said Dev. “Sabotage the plant. Throw moleworms at it until they’ve done enough damage to cause an overload. He intends to blow this city sky-high.”

  49

  PERCHED ON THE rim of the chasm, with the magma stream winding far below, the binary cycle geothermal plant provided Calder’s Edge with all its power needs.

  Dev and Kahlo heard crashes and detonations from within the building as they arrived. It seemed that the moleworm pack had made swift work of the chainlink perimeter fence, and the outer walls had also presented no problem.

  Several very frightened technicians came running from the main entrance. Kahlo waylaid one of them.

  “They’re all over the turbine hall and the condenser chamber,” the man gasped. “They’re on the rampage. Just smashing everything, tearing everything up with those damn great claws of theirs. We tried to initiate a shutdown procedure. A few of the guys stayed behind in the control room to do that. I didn’t see, but I – I don’t think they lasted long. The moleworms swarmed all over them...”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “If they carry on wrecking the plant? You’ve got thousands of gallons of water being heated to a supercritical state. You’ve got isobutane being pumped through a heat exchanger at high pressure. You’ve got boreholes leading straight down to molten magma. You’ll have extraordinary amounts of pent-up energy being released, unchecked.” The technician gave a hapless shrug. “Do I need to spell it out?”

  As if to underline his point, a siren started to wail.

  “Can you still shut it down if things aren’t too far gone?” Dev asked.

  “I’m not going back in there,” the technician said. “All those moleworms... it’d be suicide.”

  “But if the moleworms weren’t a factor...”

  “It’s possible, I guess. Depends on how much damage they’ve done by the time we get back in.”

  “Kahlo. Summon every member of personnel you’ve got. Bring them here as fast as you can. Make sure they’ve got weapons. Riot gear, too, preferably.”

  “How’s that going to help?” Kahlo said.

  “They’re going to escort these technicians back inside the plant. But only once the moleworms are no longer under Ted Jones’s control. They’ll be easier to deal with then. Most of them will probably leave once he’s not directing and organising them any more. There’s too much noise for them up here. That siren alone would drive them off if Jones wasn’t forcing them to stay and do his bidding. Stop Jones...”

  “...and you stop all the moleworms,” Kahlo said. “But how are you planning on doing that?”

  “Not a clue,” Dev said cheerily, although he did have an inkling of a plan. “First I’ve got to find the bastard.”

  “Have you got a weapon?”

  “None.” Dev hadn’t had time to rearm himself since returning from Lidenbrock City. There had been too much else to do.

  “Well, take this.” Kahlo handed him her mosquito. “It didn’t work on Jones, but it might on the smaller moleworms.”

  Dev pocketed the little incapacitator gun. He appreciated the gesture, at least.

  “And,” Kahlo said, “try not to get yourself killed.” Her face was hard, but her eyes soft.

  “The motto I live by every day,” Dev replied.

  He turned and hurried off at a jog. He wasn’t sure where Jones was, but a moleworm three times the usual size was hard to miss. He decided to search outside the power plant first, not really relishing the prospect of venturing within. That would, as the technician had said, be suicide.

  As luck would have it, he rounded the corner of the building and there was Jones, with a small entourage of lesser moleworms. It seemed the Plusser had no wish to enter the plant either, but was leaving the rampant destruction to his minions. He was content to supervise from outside, stirring the other moleworms to a marauding frenzy with powerful pheromone blasts.

  “Hey!”

  Dev waved his arms and jumped up and down on the spot.

  “Hey, big ugly!”

  One of the smaller moleworms heard and let out a vicious snarl.

  The giant moleworm’s head snapped round; recognition flashed in its bulbous, rudimentary eyes. It shuffled towards Dev, its small coterie of lesser moleworms keeping pace like a phalanx of bodyguards.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Dev said, turning. “Here I am. You want me. More than anything else. You want me baaaad.”

  He began to run. The moleworms accelerated, heads questing, mouths drooling.

  “Be a moleworm, Jones,” Dev called out over his shoulder. “Listen to your instincts. Don’t be a Plusser. Be the creature that I hurt. You want to get me, don’t you? Like you got Graydon. Because you’re a bad-tempered carnivore, and because you can.”

  He had no idea if the giant moleworm understood what he was saying. Could its ears convey human language to its brain in such a way that the tenant inside, Jones, was able to comprehend? Maybe his voice was just unintelligible noise to the moleworm, and thus to Jones.

  If nothing else, the sense of his words must be clear. The taunting, defiant tone.

  Jones and the moleworm were merged. The Plusser was in charge, but the animal had its own atavistic impulses, which were hard to deny. They both wanted Dev dead. It was their shared imperative, their mutual go
al. And with countless other moleworms ripping the power plant apart, Jones could afford to be diverted. He must feel he had set a chain of events in motion that could not be stopped, and he could take time to attend to killing his ISS enemy.

  Dev did not have to run too hard to stay ahead of the moleworms. They lolloped after him, sometimes sprawling over one another in their clumsy enthusiasm. The Jones moleworm stayed at the centre of the group, urging the others onward with occasional nips to their hindquarters.

  Trundle.

  Harmer. How’s it going?

  Tip-top. Couldn’t be better. I just have a slight vermin problem I could do with sorting out. I’m at the geothermal plant. There’s a rail station nearby which I’m heading for right now. I need a train.

  Hold on. Let me pass the message on.

  A moment later Trundell said:

  Does it matter what sort of train?

  No. Just one that runs.

  The control room guys say they can send a freight shuttle along to you. You’re at South Six. There’s one sitting in a siding at South Seven station. It’s about a mile away.

  Fantastic. That’ll do. Tell them to drive it through the power plant station at full speed. It mustn’t stop. It has to be going as fast as possible.

  They’ll have to disable a lot of failsafes first.

  I don’t care what they have to do. Just make sure they do it.

  What’s all this for, Harmer? What’s it in aid of?

  Can’t talk now, Trundle. I’ve got a train to catch.

  Or rather, Dev thought, someone to catch with a train.

  50

  AS DEV NEARED South Six station, one of the moleworms did what he had feared they might: plunged down into the cavern floor and carried on chasing him underground.

  Now Dev had to pour on speed. Aboveground a human was quicker, but a burrowing moleworm would have no trouble outstripping him.

  He felt the creature rumbling through the rock at his heels, gaining on him. He resorted to running in a sine-wave pattern in order to confuse the moleworm and prevent it getting a fix on him.

  The moleworm kept to a straight line and shovelled up through the roadway straight in front of him.

  Dev leapt into the air, hurdling the moleworm’s snout. It was all he could do.

  He almost made it, too.

  But the moleworm swung its head up, startlingly fast, and caught his foot in its jaws.

  Dev’s momentum was abruptly arrested, and he slammed down face-first onto the ground.

  Excruciating pain seared up from his foot. The moleworm’s teeth were like a score of daggers.

  Dev drew the mosquito and fired; the close-range shot popped the moleworm’s left eye. The animal recoiled, letting go of him. It staggered away, making a hoarse, keening cry that was somewhat like a pig in distress.

  Dev was wounded too, worse than the moleworm, but not, he thought, mortally. He clambered upright, trying not to look at his foot. His boot had spared him to some extent, but still, the foot was mangled. Bone glinted whitely amid torn, bloody meat.

  He focused on ignoring the fiery agony, and limped onward to the station.

  As he hobbled up the steps to the entrance, a second moleworm caught up with him. Dev shot it, point-blank, in the mouth. The dart penetrated the soft flesh of the moleworm’s tongue and the neurotoxin took effect. The creature collapsed, obstructing the entrance with its bulk.

  Dev crossed the narrow concourse to the platform, hopping more than walking. The comatose body of the moleworm bought him a few precious seconds as the other creatures attempted to climb over it or circumnavigate it. The giant moleworm solved the problem by seizing the unconscious moleworm by the scruff of the neck and tossing it to one side.

  The way now clear, the moleworms prowled onto the platform, the giant one at the vanguard.

  The rail track sloped down from an elevated section to flatten out beside the platform.

  Dev heaved himself onto the middle of the track and began staggering along. He was aware of the guideway coils humming on either side of him, the crackle and ozone tang of electricity in the air. He was aware of leaving a trail of blood behind him from his torn, useless foot. Most of all he was aware of the giant moleworm, wavering cautiously at the platform’s edge.

  Come on, Jones, you bastard.

  He either thought these words or spoke them aloud, one or the other, he wasn’t sure which.

  Come on. Take the bait. Take it.

  Jones took it. The giant moleworm slid onto the track, filling the gap between the guideways with its huge tubular body and tail. It clawed its way along in a leisurely fashion, now and then prodding at the smears of Dev’s blood with a nasotentacle as it went. It was in no hurry. Dev was walking wounded. It knew it had plenty of time.

  Trundle. Trundle?

  Here, Harmer.

  Where’s that – ?

  Dev didn’t finish the question. Didn’t have to.

  The track bed was vibrating underfoot.

  Something was coming.

  The giant moleworm had almost reached him. It was confident – Jones was confident – that Dev could not escape now. Savouring his helplessness, the imminence of his demise, it snaked its nasotentacles towards him.

  Dev looked up.

  A freight shuttle was bearing down on him at full tilt, swooping down the incline from the elevated section.

  He didn’t even think about it, just threw himself headlong onto the track bed.

  Pressed himself flat.

  Hoped he was small enough, thin enough.

  Hoped the train was hovering high enough to pass straight over him.

  If not...

  There was a tremendous, hair-ripping, clothes-wrenching WHOOSH. Then an equally tremendous thudding impact.

  A crash.

  A crunch.

  Bedlam.

  51

  DEV SAT ON the front steps of what was left of the South Six station. He had bound his injured foot with strips torn from his undershirt. The pain from the foot was nauseating, a relentless aching throb, but bearable as long as he didn’t put any weight on it.

  Walking was off the agenda. All he could do was sit and wait.

  A short way along the track lay the overturned freight shuttle, along with the remains of the giant moleworm.

  The train had ploughed into the creature at two hundred kilometres an hour, reducing it in an instant to pulp. Then, with most of the moleworm splattered across its front, it had derailed, slamming sidelong into the platform and somersaulting onto its roof. In the process, it had wiped out all of the smaller moleworms who had been accompanied Jones.

  Had the train obliterated the Polis Plus sentience inside the giant moleworm upon impact, or had Jones managed to data ’port out at the last second?

  Dev would probably never know the answer to that question.

  A random moleworm meandered past along the street outside the station. Dev raised the mosquito, ready to deter the creature if it came too close.

  It seemed uninterested, however. It had a dazed air, as though it wasn’t sure where it was or why it was there. Finding the hole made by the moleworm that had bitten Dev, it ambled down inside. Dev heard it begin to burrow, and the scratchy digging sounds immediatelt began to grow fainter.

  For a time, Dev’s vision dimmed. Pain. Blood loss. The world grew grey.

  He was startled awake by a voice.

  “Harmer. There you are.”

  It was Kahlo, along with a handful of police officers in riot gear.

  “You did it,” she said. “You got Jones.”

  Dev nodded wearily. “Made a bit of a mess while I was at it.”

  “So I see.” Kahlo cast an eye over the wreckage of freight shuttle, moleworm and platform. “You killed him... with a train?”

  “That seems to be a thing on Alighieri,” Dev said. “I was just carrying on the tradition.”

  Kahlo tried not to smile. “You’re hurt.”

  Dev glanced at
his foot. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandages already.

  “Yeah. I think I’ve voided the warranty on this host form.”

  “I’ll call a paramedic. That needs to be looked at.”

  Dev was too exhausted to do anything except raise a hand in acknowledgement.

  “Just so’s you know, our technicians are inside the power plant again,” Kahlo said. “Last I heard, they’ve made it to the control room and are starting a safe shutdown procedure. You were right about the moleworms. Without Jones guiding them, they’re scattering. They don’t want to be here. Now all we have to do is roust them out. That’ll keep the miners busy for the next few hours, and my people too, scaring the stragglers back down to their nests where they belong. Harmer? Are you listening? Harmer...?”

  LATER – DEV DIDN’T know how much later – he was having treatment on his foot.

  Wonderful analgesics.

  Later still, he was at Kahlo’s house, sprawled on the sofa with his leg elevated on cushions. Trundell was there, and Stegman, and Thorne too, along with Kahlo herself. There was beer, and an atmosphere of relief tinged with regret. They weren’t celebrating, not as such, but they were definitely marking the fact that the threat to Calder’s Edge was over. The city had been saved, disaster averted, albeit at the cost of many lives. That merited a small ceremony.

  “Three hundred and twenty,” said Thorne. “Miners, that is. That I know of. Died in their rigs, defending against the moleys. Brave men and women. They’ll be mourned.”

  Bottles were raised and clinked, in commemoration.

  “And it was all down to one Plusser,” said Trundell. “Just one. When you think about it, it beggars belief.”