“He had help,” Dev said.
“Yes, but even so – incredible. So much havoc from a single Plusser. I suppose he just knew the right threads to pull to make everything unravel.”
“And the right people to manipulate. Banerjee. Graydon.”
“Yeah, the governor himself,” said Thorne, shaking his head. “Who’d have thought? I mean, I never saw eye to eye with him personally, but he was our elected leader. The Plussers can get to just about anyone, can’t they?”
Kahlo was glowering at him.
“Not that it was his fault,” Thorne amended hurriedly. “He was brainwashed, wasn’t he? He wasn’t himself.”
Dev had agreed earlier with Kahlo that the full extent of Graydon’s complicity in Jones’s scheme would never become public knowledge. It would remain between him and her.
The governor had been hypnexed. That was the official line. That was what Dev would put in his report to ISS. He owed Kahlo that much. Graydon had been her father, after all, even if he hadn’t behaved much like one for most of her life. He, like Banerjee, would be remembered as an unwilling pawn in Ted Jones’s game. His reputation, though stained, would be more or less intact.
Trundell said, “What’s next for you, Harmer?”
“I’m here ’til I’m well enough to drag my sorry self back to the ISS outpost. Couple of days or so, I’d say. Then it’s an automated self-upload using the spare transcription matrix, and who knows? Next stop on my magical mystery tour of Border Wall trouble spots. Could be anywhere.”
“And what happens to your host form?”
“This handsome thing? Back into the growth vat, where it’ll get broken down into genetic soup, ready to be reconstituted if ever there’s a need on Alighieri again.”
“Let’s hope that never happens,” said Stegman with feeling. “One go-round with you was quite enough, Harmer, thank you very much.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Thorne, uncapping fresh beers for everyone.
“Well, I, for one, will miss you,” said Trundell.
“You’re too kind, Trundle. The feeling’s mutual.”
“Though I won’t miss that. ‘Trundle.’”
“Oh, be honest. You’ll miss that most of all.”
The xeno-entomologist gave a shy blink. “Well, maybe. I was never the cool kid at school. Never friends with the cool kids. No one ever gave me a nickname, unless it was ‘geek face’ or ‘weirdo breath’ or something like that, which doesn’t count. It was nice, for once, to be part of a gang.”
“Please don’t start crying, Trundle.”
The blinking became unusually rapid, and Trundell looked away.
Eventually everyone left, save Dev and Kahlo.
“I should be overseeing the mopping-up operation,” Kahlo said, sinking onto the sofa beside Dev. “Calder’s is a mess. It’ll be weeks – months – before life gets back to normal. We have to re-establish transport links with Xanadu, make sure there aren’t any moleworms left loitering anywhere in the city, get the rail system functioning again, above all rebuild... The list is endless. We don’t even have a governor to run things.”
“I can safely say you’ll manage. With you in charge, how can you not?”
“I’m just done in right now. I could sleep for a week. And yet there’s so much to do...”
“Don’t think about it.” Dev put an arm round her shoulder and drew her close. “Let it be someone else’s headache, just for tonight.”
“How many points are ISS going to give you for all this?” she said, nuzzling against him.
Dev’s laugh was hollow. “Have you seen the state I’ve left this place in? Hardly any.”
“Bummer. But at least you’re a little closer to your thousand.”
“A little.”
“I hope it works out for you, Harmer. I hope you get your life back. I really do.”
“Me too.”
The lights dimmed.
“Was that you?” Dev asked. “Are we getting in the mood?”
“Not me. They said there might be power problems while they’re getting the geothermal plant back online. Maybe even –”
The lights went out altogether.
“– outages,” Kahlo finished.
“Lucky for us, we see in the dark.”
Kahlo rose from the sofa. She began shucking off her uniform.
“What do you see now?” she said.
Her body was silvery, shimmering, full of sweet bulges and tempting clefts.
“Good things,” Dev said, huskily. “Lots of good things.”
EPILOGUE
1111010101000110101010101011111001101101010011110110101011000110101001010010111101001010101011100001010101010100001010100000000101010111010100010100100101001000001111110101010110101111100101101100100101001001010001100 take the bait 01011001010010000000010101011101111000111101010101110000000000111010001010 Trundle? Where’s that – ? 101010010111110010100101101010101010111110011011 a little closer to your thousand 1111001011110100101110000101010111111010101010001010011111111101000111100001100000101001100 01100 good things 0100010010101010101111
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 on his head and set it for automatic upload.
The dazzle of the reflected light made him wince, but it wasn’t as searing as it would have been had he still had Aligherian 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. Webs of skin stretched between his fingers.
Webs of skin stretched between Dev’s own fingers too.
The man blinked, two white secondary membranes closing like curtains perpendicular to his eyelids.
“Mr Harmer?” he said. “Welcome to Robinson D in the Ophiucus constellation, also known as Triton. I’m your liaison, Xavier Handler. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“The good news is the installation has been entirely successful,” said Handler. “No transcription errors occurred during download. Mind 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 an 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...”
Look out for Book 2, World Of Water, coming soon...
Acknowledgements
It was Solaris’s Ben Smith who proposed the idea of an adventure series situated on a variety of planets, each world unique, with its own particular characteristics and dangers. I’m grateful to him for setting my mind down the path which has led to the Dev Harmer Missions.
I’m grateful, too, to Gary Main, who originally sowed the idea
for what I now call data ’porting.
The hugely talented Eric Brown cast his expert eye over the manuscript and gave it the thumbs up, offering small suggestions which improved things immensely. I appreciate him taking the time and trouble to do so.
The date is 4 Jaguar 1 Monkey 1 House – November 25th 2012 by the old reckoning – and the Aztec Empire rules the world.
The Aztec reign is one of cruel and ruthless oppression, encompassing regular human sacrifice. In the jungle-infested city of London, one man defies them: the masked vigilante known as the Conquistador.
Then the Conquistador is recruited to spearhead an uprising, and discovers a terrible truth about the Aztec and thier gods. The clock is ticking. Apocalypse looms, unless the Conquistador can help assassinate the mysterious, immortal Aztec emperor, the Great Speaker. But his mission is complicated by Mal Vaughn, a police detective who is on his trail, determined to bring him to justice.
“The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write.”
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
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Lex Dove thought he was done with the killing game. A retired British wetwork specialist, he’s living the quiet life in the Caribbean, minding his own business. Then a call comes, with one last mission: to lead an American black ops team into a disused Cold War bunker on a remote island near his adopted home. The money’s good, which means the risks are high.
Dove doesn’t discover just how high until he and his team are a hundred feet below ground, facing the horrific fruits of an experiment blending science and voodoo witchcraft.
As if barely human monsters weren’t bad enough, a clock is ticking. Deep in the bowels of the earth, a god is waiting. And His anger, if roused, will be fearsome indeed.
‘A full-blown thriller, high on action and violence.’
Eric Brown, The Guardian on Age of Aztec
‘One of the SF scene’s most interesting, challenging and adventurous authors.’
Saxon Bullock, SFX Magazine on The Age of Ra
‘Lovegrove is vigorously carving out a godpunk subgenre – rebellious underdog humans battling an outmoded belief system. Guns help a bit, but the real weapon is free will.’
Pornokitsch on The Age of Odin
‘5 out of 5. I found myself unable to put it down, and plan to reread it soon.’
Geek Syndicate on Age of Aztec
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THE AGE OF WAR!
The Ten Avatars battle demons and aliens and seem to be the saviours of a world teetering on collapse. But their presence is itself a harbinger of apocalypse. The Vedic “fourth age” of civilisation, Kali Yuga, is coming to an end, and Zak has a ringside seat for the final, all-out war that threatens the destruction of Earth.
‘One of the SF scene’s most interesting, challenging and adventurous authors.’
Saxon Bullock, SFX Magazine on The Age of Ra
‘Lovegrove is vigorously carving out a godpunk subgenre – rebellious underdog humans battling an outmoded belief system. Guns help a bit, but the real weapon is free will.’
Pornokitsch on The Age of Odin
‘5 out of 5. I found myself unable to put it down, and plan to reread it soon.’
Geek Syndicate on Age of Aztec
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‘Lovegrove is vigorously carving out a ‘godpunk’ subgenre – rebellious underdog humans battling an outmoded belief system. Guns help a bit, but the real weapon is free will.’
Pornokitsch
WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY...
AGE OF ANANSI
Dion Yeboah leads an orderly, disciplined life... until the day the spider appears. What looks like an ordinary arachnid turns out to be Anansi, the trickster god of African legend, and its arrival throws Dion’s existence into chaos. He is summoned to America to take part in a contest of trickery. It’s a life-or-death battle of wits, and in the end, only one person will be left standing...
AGE OF SATAN
1968. Guy Lucas is sent to an old-fashioned boarding school, where he is bullied and abused. A fellow student persuades him to perform a black mass and plead with Satan to intervene, with horrific consequences. For the next ten years, the shadow of Satan is cast across his life; he flees, but tragedy follows him. Eventually, he must confront the Devil, and learn the truth about himself...
AGE OF GAIA
Billionaire Barnaby Pollard, energy magnate, has the world at his feet. The planet’s fossil fuel resources are his to exploit, as are the size-zero girlfriends he loves and leaves in endless succession. Until he meets Lydia, a beautiful and opinionated eco-journalist. She’s the very opposite of the kind of woman he normally dates: large and outspoken, with a firm belief that Mother Nature is not to be tampered with...
‘A compulsive, breakneck read by a master of the craft, with stunning action sequences and acute character observations.’
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
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Table of Contents
Indicia
Also by James Lovegrove
World of Fire
Preface
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nin
e
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Epilogue
Coming Soon
Acknowledgements
'Age of Aztec' by James Lovegrove
'Age of Voodoo' by James Lovegrove
'Age of Shiva' by James Lovegrove
'Age of Godpunk' by James Lovegrove