World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) Read Online Free PDF Page B

intrigued to see how she chose to answer.
    “The highest civic political position is governor,” she said. “But if you want the honest truth, the mining corporations call the shots. The place wouldn’t survive – wouldn’t have a reason to exist – without them, and they know it. They say jump, the governor asks how high.”
    Dev filed all this information away. It might be germane, it might not. He wouldn’t know until he had been here a little longer. The first day of any mission was a miasma of acclimatisation and intelligence-gathering. You could scour the local insite via commplant to find out when you needed, but it was usually better to get it first-hand. You learned more from someone with an opinion and an insider’s perspective than from ’pedia entries and officially sanctioned publicity material.
    Townships whizzed by – smaller caverns than Calder’s Edge’s, with smatterings of habitats, some forested with lichen outcrops and gargantuan mushrooms. One, Loveville by name, was evidently a self-contained red light district. Huge garish floatscreen signs advertised burlesque revues and lapdance clubs.
    “Jansson Crossing,” said Utz eventually, and he retracted the police pod’s electromagnet array, drawing it away from the propulsion and levitation coils embedded in the track. The vehicle’s progress slowed to a gentle glide, and finally the pod coasted to a hovering halt.
    The township was centred around a busy, intricate rail intersection. The crash had occurred on a branch line just outside its station. An automated freight shuttle had been involved in a head-on collision with a commuter train. According to the chief rescue officer on the scene, there were two confirmed fatalities: the driver of the train and one of the passengers. There were also several injured, with three people on their way to hospital in critical condition and paramedics attending to the rest.
    Freight shuttle and commuter train were locked together like a pair of animals who had died in the throes of feral territorial combat. It was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. A knot of tangled, tormented steel fused them, nose to nose.
    Survivors, interviewed by Kahlo, said there had been no warning, just an almighty walloping impact that had hurled them from their seats. They had emerged from the wreckage, shaken and bloodied, glad to be alive.
    Kahlo looked baffled. And angry.
    “What?” said Dev. “What’s the matter?”
    “What do you think’s the matter?” she snapped. “An accident like this is impossible.”
    “Accidents happen. There’s even a saying about it. It goes: ‘accidents happen.’”
    She flared at him. “Don’t you laugh at this! Don’t you dare!” She fell silent for a moment, glaring at him, and he thought she was about to hit him. Then she looked away again. “Anyway, you’re wrong. The entire maglev network is computer-regulated. There are failsafes in place to prevent precisely this sort of thing, any number of minimum-distance protocols. One train cannot be heading down a track towards another coming the opposite way. Overrides would kick in. Worse come to worst, the power would shut down and they’d brake well before a collision.”
    “Then there’s been a mainframe error. A software glitch.”
    “Maybe,” she said, relenting just a very little. “I’ll have one of our techs analyse the records at the central rail control room.”
    She made the call, think-sending the message over her commplant.
    Meanwhile Dev’s gaze fell on a vending machine on the station platform, which sold high-protein, glucose-rich energy bars and electrolyte-replenishing drinks. It advertised its wares with the slogan R EFRESH YOURSELF ! B EAT THE MID-SHIFT SLUMP ! and illustrated their effectiveness with clips of burning suns and crashing waterfalls.
    He activated his commplant and checked to see if ISS had given him a standard operational slush fund to draw on. They had. Hardly a king’s