The creatures were coming home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SLAVE ARMY
K8 CAME TO Merovech’s cabin. She had her arms crossed and a scowl on her freckled face.
“We’ve lost access to the Internet, so there’s not much I can do. Now that Ack-Ack Macaque’s been thrown out of the game, I feel like a spare part.”
From the bunk, Julie gave a tired smile. “Tell me about it. Merovech has gone to the library to work on his speech, and I am sitting here going crazy.”
“Aye, you and me both, then, is it?”
“It seems that way.”
K8 put her hands on her hips.
“Hey, I hear tell that you hacked your way into the Céleste servers, too. You must be kind of handy with a computer, eh?”
Julie laughed. She’d thought she had some skills but, compared to this freckled Scottish kid, she was really just an amateur.
“Still,” K8 continued, “there’s some pretty scary shit in those files, yeah?”
Julie swung her legs off the bunk. “I did not see much. As soon as I found the documents on Merovech, I hit print and went to find him.”
“Ah, you were lucky.” K8 scratched her short, carroty hair. “I had a good root around and I found all kinds of things. Plans for stuff straight out of your worst nightmares.”
“Like what?”
“Compulsory back-ups. Soul-catchers fitted to everyone, by force if necessary.”
Julie made a face.
“I would not want one.”
“You wouldn’t have any choice. If Célestine takes the throne, she’ll order laws to make it a criminal offence not to have a catcher implanted. It’s basic Undying philosophy: back everything up so nothing gets lost. They have plans for a storage facility in a bunker beneath their laboratories in Paris. If war breaks out with China, they want to have saved as many backed-up personalities as possible before the bombs start falling.”
Julie stood. She rubbed her arms as if cold.
“It all sounds ghastly.”
“That isn’t the worst of it.”
“No?”
“From what I read in those files, I think the Undying are trying to deliberately provoke the Chinese. I think they want a war.”
“Putain-de-merde! Why would anyone want to start a nuclear war?” Julie’s mind flashed to the horror stories her grandfather had told her. He’d grown up in the 1980s, as Soviet Russia squared off against the European Commonwealth, and his teenage memories were filled with the anxiety of seemingly inevitable apocalypse, when the best a young man could hope for was to be incinerated in the first few seconds of an exchange, rather than surviving to face a lingering death from sickness or starvation. She shivered. Surely the governments of the world had learned from the Cold War, and the insanity of Mutually Assured Destruction? “I thought they wanted Mars. So why would they kill everyone on Earth?”
K8 bit her lip.
“Well, what if they’re planning to do the same on Earth as they are on Mars?”
“Which is?”
“Download all the backed-up minds into android bodies, like Berg’s, and take over.”
“That is crazy!”
“Is it? Androids don’t worry about radiation or lack of food. With China and Europe flattened, there’d be no-one to stop them rebuilding and taking over. The Duchess would have the world at her feet, and a perfect slave army do to her bidding.” She stopped talking. Julie looked at her with her mouth hanging open.
“That is horrible.” Framed by her purple hair, her face seemed paler than usual.
“Are you okay?” K8 asked.
Julie swallowed.
“I really need a cigarette.” She puffed air from her cheeks. “Do you have any?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“I did not think so.” She pulled herself upright. “Okay. First things first. We must tell Merovech, and the others. We must get them all to read those files of yours. They all need to know the stakes for which we are playing.”
“Do they?” K8 shuffled her feet. “Because it seems to me they’re under enough pressure. Victoria and the monkey, they’re both pretty strung out right now. I don’t know if they could cope.”
“So what? We say nothing?”
K8 thought about it. “I suppose we could tell Merovech, if you wanted to. He should know, I guess. We could let him make the decision.”
“He is in the library.”
“So you said.”
Julie straightened her t-shirt and hitched up her jeans.
“Then let us go and see him.” She moved to step past K8, but as she reached for the cabin’s door, an alarm sounded. Both girls jumped.
“Putain!” Julie swore. “What now?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
INCANDESCENT JUNGLE FURY
THE THREE HELICOPTERS came from the north-east in the late afternoon. Standing on the Tereshkova’s bridge, Victoria watched their progress on one of the wall-mounted display screens.
“Do you think they’ll try shooting at us?”
In his chair, the Commodore shook his silver head. The top buttons of his tunic were undone.
“No. If they really wanted to kill us, they would have sent jets. It would be faster. My guess is, this is a boarding party. They want the young prince intact, yes?”
“What can we do?”
“Very little. Our radio transmissions are being blocked, so we can’t tell anyone or call for help. We could alter course, but they are smaller and more manoeuvrable.”
“You have anti-piracy weapons.”
“Yes. But to use them would be a declaration of war. Better, I think, to let them make the first move.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, as the swollen orange sun dipped low in the afternoon sky, Victoria stood at the edge of the landing pad atop the Tereshkova’s central hull, her quarterstaff extended to its full length, and her pistol pushed into the pocket of her army coat. The wind chilled her naked scalp. Behind her stood a shifting mob of the airship’s stewards, flak jackets and helmets strapped over their white tunic uniforms, each of them self-consciously cradling a rail gun or pistol from the armoury. Beside her, the Commodore stood, the white tails of his dress uniform fluttering, the gnarled fingers of his right hand resting on the pommel of his cutlass.
Together, they watched the helicopters crest the edge of the gas bag, circling in like piranhas, their flanks painted with the eye-twisting black and white stripes of dazzle camouflage—geometric patterns designed to conceal their exact shape and size. Through their open sides, Victoria saw machine gun-toting, black-clad troops ready to deploy the moment the wheels hit the deck.
In the corner of her eye, Paul’s image twitched.
“I don’t like the look of this,” he said.
Victoria took a firmer grip on the staff.
“Shut up,” she told him.
He gave her an offended look.
“Don’t forget whose neural-ware I’m running on. If you get killed, that’s me dead too.”
“And there I was thinking you were concerned for my wellbeing.”
“I am! Of course I am. But we’re in this together now. If you get killed, we both die.”
The lead ’copter came in low, presenting its belly as it dropped. Victoria leaned into the downdraught.
“You’re already dead. Now, get out of my head and keep quiet. I need to concentrate.”
She raised the staff into a defensive position and ran through a mental litany of her opponents’ most vulnerable points: ankles, knees, throats and wrists. A quarterstaff wouldn’t be much use in a firefight, but at close quarters, it could be deadly. And in the meantime, she had the pistol. As the helicopter kissed the pad, she reached into her pocket and, heart beating in her chest, closed her fist around the gun’s cold butt. Whatever else she’d been, she’d never been a soldier. Even in the Falklands, she’d only ever reported from the sidelines of the fighting.
This close, the helicopter’s engines we
re deafening. Black figures spilled from its hatches, taking up positions on either side, wearing thick flak jackets, gas masks and combat helmets.
An officer stepped forward with a salute.
“Commodore, I am Captain Summers of His Majesty’s Special Air Service, and you are hereby required to hand over the Prince of Wales, His Royal Highness, Prince Merovech.” The gas mask’s eyes were convex blisters of glass. They turned in her direction. “And the fugitive and murder suspect, Victoria Valois. Failure to comply with either request will result in the use of deadly force.”
The Commodore’s medals jangled as he drew himself up. Beneath his bushy brows, his eyes glowered like coals.
“I have to inform you, Captain, that you are in breach of international law, specifically those treaties concerning the independence and autonomy of individual skyliners. Any attempt to use force against a passenger or member of my crew will be considered an act of piracy, and responded to accordingly.”
The other two helicopters circled at a safe distance, rotors chopping the sky, out of range of small arms fire, but close enough for the snipers on board to draw a bead on anyone who tried to draw a weapon.
The butterflies churning in Victoria’s stomach threatened to force their way up through her chest and throat, and out into the open air. Sensing her agitation, the gelware tried to push even more adrenalin into her bloodstream, and she had to concentrate hard in order to stop her arms from shaking. Against the metal of the staff, her palms were slick.
The Captain and the Commodore glared at each other: a heavily armoured, bug-eyed shock trooper trying to stare down an old fashioned man of honour carrying only a sword.
“I’m sorry, Commodore, but this really is your last chance. I have been authorised to take whatever steps are necessary to recover the Prince.”
“The Prince has requested asylum aboard this vessel and, as such, I am legally obligated, by the terms of the applicable treaties, to protect him.”
The wind blew colder. The troopers around the helicopter were as immobile as statues, their black, snub-nosed submachine guns trained on the Commodore’s crew.
“My orders are quite specific, Commodore.”
“As is my resolve, Captain. Now, I am asking you politely to please leave my vessel.”
Captain Summers lowered his mask.
“You can’t hope to prevail. Your crew will be slaughtered. Please, Commodore, stand down and let me do my job.”
The Commodore frowned. He looked from the soldiers to his own men, then up at the twin helicopters circling the pad; and, for the first time, Victoria saw a shiver of doubt in his eyes. He turned to her.
“Perhaps you should go below?”
She shook her head. She’d be damned if she’d let him fight her battles.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Summers cleared his throat.
“Time’s up, Commodore. Please, stand aside.” He raised his pistol. Behind him, his troopers tensed into firing positions, the barrels of their weapons covering everyone on the pad.
Victoria tasted sick at the back of her throat, and swallowed it back. The Commodore’s men were hopelessly outgunned. The fight would last seconds, and there would be few, if any, survivors. Her fingers squeezed the stock of the pistol in her pocket, but she didn’t dare draw it. To do so would call down the ire of the snipers circling above.
This was going to be a bloodbath.
Summers said, “I’m going to count to three.”
As the sun moved ever lower, the sky behind him had taken on a purple aspect.
“One.”
Victoria transferred her weight from one boot to the other. If she overclocked herself again, could she draw her pistol fast enough to make a difference? Paul’s image cowered in the corner of her eye, nervously chewing the fingers of one hand.
“Two.”
She felt the wind against her exposed scalp. Even this far up, it smelled of the sea.
“Thr—”
“Halt!”
The voice was Merovech’s. He climbed from a hatchway at the edge of the pad and strode forward, between the two opposing forces.
“Tell your men to stand down, Captain.”
Summers lowered his gun and threw the prince a stiff salute.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. My orders are detailed and specific, and—”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes sir, of course, sir. But my orders are to get you on that chopper. Right away, sir.”
Merovech thrust his chin forward. “And if I refuse?”
Summers raised his pistol again.
“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to insist, sir.”
Victoria saw Merovech blink in surprise, eyes trying to focus on the end of the gun barrel. For a split second, Summers seemed to be about the pull the trigger.
And then everything changed.
Gunshots rang out. One of the orbiting helicopters dropped away, bullet holes stitched across its windshield, the pilots slumped forward against their controls. Victoria threw herself forward onto the pad’s yielding rubber surface. She heard cries, and saw members of the Commodore’s crew scattering, running for cover. But the troopers weren’t firing at them; they had other things to worry about. In amongst them, cutting through their ranks, came a blur of incandescent jungle fury.
Frustrated by its inability to dampen the adrenalin in her system, the gelware kicked her into command mode. In slow motion, she saw a hairy arm swat a trooper aside, breaking his neck and twisting his gas mask askew. One of his comrades took a bullet through the lower jaw, spraying bone shards and gristle into the faces of his companions. And at the heart of it all, Ack-Ack Macaque whirled, meat cleaver in one hand, huge silver revolver in the other. Used to fighting superhuman German ninjas, the monkey seemed to be making short work of the lumbering British commandoes. In front of her, she saw Summers turn, ready to fire at the creature, and brought her quarterstaff scything around at ankle height. The blow jarred her shoulder. The SAS Captain yelled and fell, hands wrapped around his right ankle. Victoria raised herself to her knees and pulled the pistol from her pocket.
“Stay there,” she ordered.
The burning helicopter had disappeared, leaving only a dirty trail of black smoke against the sunset to show where it had spiralled out of sight. The second moved erratically, more concerned about avoiding incoming fire than harassing the people on the Tereshkova’s pad. She looked around for the Commodore. The old man seemed to have fallen awkwardly. He was using the cutlass as a stick to pull himself upright. She watched as he clambered painfully to his feet and brushed down the front of his white tunic. Then, with obvious effort, he limped to where Summers lay wrapped around his pain, and brandished the tip of his sword in the younger man’s face.
“Call off your men.”
Merovech came up beside him.
“That’s an order, Captain.”
Summers looked from one to the other, lips tight against clenched teeth. For a moment, his eyes burned with defiance. Then, as his men let forth fresh screams, Victoria saw acceptance of the situation steal over him. He raised a gauntleted hand to his throat mike.
“All units, stand down.” He spoke the words as if they were rotten to the taste. “Now call off the monkey.”
The Commodore sheathed his cutlass. He put a hand on Merovech’s shoulder for support.
“Can you, my boy?”
Merovech pulled a SincPhone from his pocket.
“K8? We’re all done here. Can you put the big fella back on his leash?”
If a reply came, Victoria didn’t hear it. A loud bang came from below, and the skyliner shuddered like a truck on a cattle grid. She staggered, but managed to keep her footing.
“The engines!” cried the Commodore. “We’ve been hit!”
Thrown off-balance, he clung to Merovech as the deck began to tip.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DIRTY BOMB
FROM THE TERESHKOVA’
S bridge, the situation became distressingly clear. Through the great curving forward window, Victoria saw smoke billowing from one of the starboard engine nacelles. The blades of the impeller had been blown back and twisted so that, in the last orange rays of the setting sun, they resembled the curled legs of a dead spider. Above the nacelle’s smouldering remains, the fabric of the hull had been gouged and torn by shrapnel. Ribbons of material flapped free.
At their respective workstations, the Commodore and the pilot fought to maintain control, throttling the port engines back to compensate for the sudden lack of starboard thrust.
“We’re losing pressure in hulls four and five,” the pilot said, reading data from his screen. Already, as the damaged hulls bled away their buoyancy, the Tereshkova had begun to wallow to the side.
In his chair, the Commodore scowled.
“Well, if we are going down, we are not going down without a fight. Increase power to the port engines, and give me full rudder.”
“Aye, sir.” The pilot was a gangly Muscovite with thick glasses and a spreading paunch: more of a computer programmer than a pilot in the old and accepted sense of the word. “But what about the passengers? If we ditch in the water...”
“Get our helicopters in the air. I want all non-essential personnel off the ship. And get a team over to the damaged sections, see if there is anything we can salvage.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And tell them to take Geiger counters, for heaven’s sake. That was a nuclear engine, and I do not want anybody to take stupid chances if there’s been a containment breach.”
He turned his attention to Victoria.
“I do not suppose there is any point in ordering you to leave?”
She shook her head.
“I’m a member of your crew now, remember? Besides, I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She glanced back to the window, and the engine belching smoke and, possibly, radioactive fallout.
“Was it a missile?”
The old man shook his white-haired head. “A missile could not have penetrated our defences without detection. This must have been a bomb. Deliberate sabotage.”
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