Read World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) for Free Online

ransom, but enough credit to be getting on with.
    He linked to the vending machine and bought himself a fistful of bars and two cans of drink. He tore open the wrapper of one of the bars – mint flavour – and swallowed it nearly in one bite. It tasted like sweet sawdust with a toothpaste top note. The next bar, claiming to be chocolate-raspberry, tasted much the same as the first.
    But it was bliss to have some food inside him at last. As his blood sugar level rose, a haze in his mind seemed to clear. The last vestiges of the nausea he had been feeling since arriving on Alighieri were dispelled.
    “Harmer!” Kahlo called from the door to the police pod. “You want a lift back to Calder’s? Or are you going to stand there all day stuffing your ugly face?”
    He climbed aboard, and Utz reversed into a turning siding. Then, remotely triggering the appropriate points, the patrolman manoeuvred the pod out onto the track that ran parallel to the one they had come in on.
    Dev proffered an energy bar to Stegman, but he turned his nose up at the humble olive branch.
    “Kind of disrespectful. Eating, when people died back there. Everyone else thinking what a tragedy, you only thinking about your stomach.”
    “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