“Was it the commandoes?” She found that hard to believe. Who would purposefully detonate a nuclear engine? She knew the units used on the skyliners were designed to survive crashes intact, and so she wasn’t worried about a nuclear explosion; but if the bomb had torn a hole in the engine’s fuel containment, the effect would be similar to the detonation of a terrorist “dirty” bomb, spreading airborne radioactive contamination across a wide area, blown on the wind.
The Commodore pursed his lips and brushed his moustache with a crooked fingertip. “They never got further than the landing pad. This must have been someone else. I don’t know who but, right now, I have more important matters of concern, such as keeping us airborne.” His fingers danced across the pad before him, making adjustments to the Tereshkova’s trim and pitch.
“Any casualties?” she asked.
The pilot looked up. “Mostly minor injuries at this point, but we still have two passengers unaccounted for. At least our transmissions are being jammed no longer. If we go down, we can call for help.”
“Anything I can do?”
The Commodore waved her away. “We do not need you here. We can manage. It will be dark soon. Go find Merovech and the monkey. Follow the plan.” He tapped in a command and snarled something in Russian.
Victoria hesitated. This could be the last time they spoke face-to-face. She felt she should say something, but nothing came. Events were spiralling too quickly.
“Go,” he said. And so, she went.
With a hollowness inside her, she left the bridge and made her way aft, to the main lounge, where Merovech and his entourage were holed up, recovering from the confrontation on the helipad. K8 was busily applying bandages to Ack-Ack Macaque’s cuts and scrapes, while the monkey chewed at another cigar. Blood stained the white fleece cuffs of his flight jacket.
Julie Girard sat on a chair, her leg propped up and bandaged. She looked pale and scared. In the confusion of the skirmish, she’d been hit in the thigh by a rail gun’s steel needle. Merovech sat beside her, holding her hand. When he saw Victoria, he stood.
“What’s happening?”
Victoria ran a hand back over the fuzz on her scalp.
“We’re evacuating the passengers. What’s happening up top?”
Merovech’s dirty fingernails rasped at the stubble on his cheek. “The soldiers wanted to leave. They were worried about radiation.”
“You let them go?”
“I saw no reason to keep them.”
K8 looked up. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Victoria shrugged. “That depends whether or not you know anything about skyliner systems.”
The girl smiled.
“Do you remember the Nova Scotia, two years ago? Somebody hacked her flight computer remotely, and had her flying in circles around the Empire State building for two days before they managed to fix it.”
“Let me guess, that someone was you?”
“Bingo.”
“Go on, then. The rest of you, grab whatever you need and get to one of the choppers.”
“No.” Merovech’s voice was quiet but firm. “I’m staying here. We have to do what we planned. For my father’s sake, we have to go through with it.”
“What about Julie?”
Julie Girard tried to sit up straight. An empty packet of painkillers fell from her lap. “If Merovech is staying, I am staying too.”
“Are you sure? You’re already hurt, and it might not be safe.”
“I do not care.” She looked up at the young prince and reached for his hand. “As long as we are together, that is all that matters.”
The bulkheads creaked.
Merovech’s eyes lingered on her bandage. When he looked up again, Victoria could see the wetness glittering in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Julie tried to shush him.
“It is not your fault, my love.”
“Yes it is. My mother’s responsible for this. For all of it.” He turned to Victoria. “This has gone on long enough. She has to be exposed, whatever it takes.”
The emotion in his voice stilled the room. Nobody wanted to speak. They all looked at each other. Finally, Victoria said, “Okay, whatever you say. In that case, we do what we said before. Merovech, you take Julie. Make her comfortable and record your message. Have it ready to broadcast as soon as we have the media’s attention.” She turned to the door. “Monsieur Macaque, it’s time for you and I to suit up.”
THE WINGSUITS WERE one-piece black garments of lightweight material, with inflatable flaps between the legs and under the arms, and a parachute on the back. Paul claimed to have once dated an extreme sports enthusiast, and said he knew the basics, and Victoria had seen plenty of online videos, and had a fair idea of how they worked. She had also taken a lengthy course in skydiving as part of her preparation for her visit to the South Atlantic—training which had proved useless when her aircraft ditched in the ocean, a few hundred metres from its carrier.
“Okay,” Paul said in her head, “You have to remember to keep your arms and legs tensed. It’s like freefall, but you control the glide using your body. If you get into difficulty, open your ’chute.”
They couldn’t carry much equipment, but had a number of weapons—including her quarterstaff—strapped to their backs, on either side of their parachute packs.
“I’ll cope.” She turned to the monkey beside her. “How are you doing?”
Ack-Ack Macaque had his aviator goggles pulled down over his eyes. Beneath the wingsuit, he wore his fur-lined leather jacket, and he’d shunned a helmet in favour of the leather skullcap K8 had given him.
“Everyone needs to know who he is,” K8 had explained when Victoria protested. “He needs to look the way he does in the game, so they recognise him at a glance. Otherwise, he’s just a crazy monkey running loose.”
Now, standing at the passenger hatchway, just aft of the lounge in the main gondola, Ack-Ack Macaque looked serious and professional.
“Don’t worry about me.”
He had sticking plasters on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose, but the injuries didn’t seem to bother him. Or maybe they did, and Victoria couldn’t read his body language. Sometimes, she thought, you could almost forget what he was; but, every now and then, he did or said something that threw you, reminding you that deep down, he really was a wild animal with a head full of artificial brains, and not a human being at all.
Although, she thought, who am I to talk?
She used her neural software to access an online map, showing the relative positions of the Tereshkova and Duchess Célestine’s liner, the Maraldi.
“Right,” Paul said. “If you get this right, you can expect to get a glide ratio of two point five to one. That means you’ll travel two and a half metres forward for every metre you drop. We’re currently around eight thousand feet above the Channel, which means you can probably expect to get just shy of two and a half kilometres out of these things. How far is it to the liner?”
“Seven kilometres.”
“Ah.”
“If the Tereshkova gets any closer, the RAF will shoot it down.”
“Then what are you expecting to do? You can’t swim four and a half kilometres!”
Victoria smiled. “We won’t have to. There’s a two-masted yacht en route to the Maraldi from Southampton. It passed underneath us a few minutes ago. We should be able to make it aboard without too much trouble.”
Paul raised his eyebrows.
“God, Vicky. You’re so fearless now, I can’t believe it. You’ve really changed.”
“I’ve always been this way.” Her grin was fierce. “You just chose not to notice.”
The hatch had a glass window set into it, but all she could see was her own reflection. Outside, the sky had grown dark.
The shoulder pocket of her suit held a SincPhone. She unravelled the hands-free earpiece and fitted it to the side of her head. The microphone dangled just below her chi
n.
“How are we doing, Commodore?”
On the other end of the line, the old man sounded grim and tired, his voice seemingly hacked out of ancient Russian stone.
“We are still here, Victoria. For now, that is victory enough.”
The old airship gave a low, metallic groan of complaint, like an old-fashioned tramp steamer caught in a heavy sea. With the two starboard hulls losing gas, the other three were having to take the strain of their increasing weight.
“Good luck,” she said. It didn’t seem like an adequate farewell, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. They were all heading into harm’s way, and who knew what might happen?
She cut the connection and turned to Ack-Ack Macaque.
“Are you ready?”
He gave her a wide, toothy grin. “As ready as I’ll ever be, considering I don’t usually fly without a plane.”
Victoria took hold of the wheel that opened the hatch, and began to turn it. As she did so, she remembered the gut-roiling terror that had seized her former self before each parachute jump. That terror was missing now. Yes, she was nervous, but that timid, earlier version of her was dead and gone. Vicky the journalist had been killed in action in the South Atlantic, and now only Victoria the cyborg remained.
The lock disengaged and the hatch swung inwards. Beyond, the night was black.
“Okay,” she said, summoning all her courage, “follow me.”
She pulled her goggles down over her eyes. Then, gripping the sides of the hatchway frame, she launched herself out, headfirst into the night. In her mind, Paul cried out in fear. The wind snatched at the fabric of her suit, and she fell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ALL SET FOR THE LIFE ETERNAL
MEROVECH HALF-CARRIED JULIE to the Tereshkova’s infirmary, where he helped her onto one of the bunks and cut the denim from her wounded leg. The room was small and economical, with sterile white surfaces and ranks of sliding drawers packed with pills, dressings and surgical implements. Two bunks occupied the centre of the room, for emergency cases. Normally, the medical officer treated passengers in their own cabins, but he himself had been wounded in the fighting, with two gunshot wounds to the groin, and had therefore been airlifted away with the other non-essential personnel, leaving the sickbay unmanned. Luckily, as a soldier, Merovech had been trained to give first aid.
“It’s just a gash.” He used a wad of cotton wool to sponge the blood. “A nasty one, though.”
Each time he touched her, Julie sucked air through her teeth.
“It hurts.”
“I’m sorry.”
She summoned a strained smile. “Why are you apologising? It is not your fault.”
The rail gun needle had scraped her thigh at a shallow angle, ripping out a furrow six inches in length and half an inch wide: painful, but thankfully not deep enough to cause any real, lasting damage. Merovech did his best to clean it up, and then applied a thick pad and bandages.
“You probably need stitches in that. Perhaps when this is all over—”
Strands of purple hair swayed as Julie shook her head.
“I will be okay, I think.”
“If you don’t get it stitched, you’ll have a scar.”
She shrugged. “Then I will have a scar. And a story to tell.”
She watched him rinse his hands in the steel washbasin, then shake them, and wipe them dry against the back pockets of his jeans.
“It will not put you off?”
He turned to her. “Excuse me?”
“The scar.” She pointed to the fresh bandages. “It won’t put you off me?”
Merovech’s lips twitched: the closest he felt he could get to a proper smile right now. He stepped over to the bed and took her hand in his.
“No,” he said, “it won’t.”
“Good. Because we make a good team, you and I, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, c’est vrai.” He circled her knuckles with his thumb. “Then, what is the matter?” she asked. “I can see you’re troubled.”
Merovech sighed.
“Those soldiers in the helicopter. They were only doing their job.”
Her hand tightened in his.
“They were trying to take you away.”
“They were just following orders. And we killed them. They were British soldiers, and I stood by and watched them die.”
“What else could we have done?”
He let go of her hand and pushed his fists into his eyes.
“I was a British soldier. I wore the same uniform. I flew in the same choppers, handled the same weapons and ate the same food.” He lowered his hands and looked at her. “Now, what does that make me?”
Julie touched his knee with her fingers.
“This is not your fault, Merovech. Really not. You did not ask to be put in this position.”
“Maybe I should have gone with them?”
Julie’s eyes widened. “No! We need you. I need you.”
“But the cost...”
“Forget the cost, Merovech. Do you understand that? Forget. The. Cost.”
He pulled back.
“But—”
“No buts!” Julie reached for him. “Je t’aime, Merovech, you know that. But there is more at stake here than you realise. Your mother has to be stopped, and you are the only one who can, whatever it takes.”
“If she wants the throne—”
“The throne is not what she is after. K8 read her private files. She wants the whole world.”
“What?”
“K8 found the evidence. We were waiting for the right time to tell you. This stand-off with China, it is part of your mother’s plan. She is deliberately provoking them.”
“Why would she do that?”
“When the Céleste probe gets to Mars, the Undying plan to download themselves into robot bodies and terraform the planet.”
“Yes, but—”
“Mars has no magnetic field. The surface gets a lot of radiation, and the robots are built to withstand it.”
A cold hand closed around Merovech’s heart.
“And so if China attacks—”
“World War Three. Everybody gets blown back to the Stone Age, and the Undying get two planets instead of one.”
“Jesus Christ. Is that even possible?”
Julie lay back on the pillow, her hair fanning out around her head.
“Je ne sais pas. But K8 thinks so, from what she saw when hacking the files.”
The walls of the airship groaned, and the deck shuddered, tipping another degree or two to starboard.
“If anyone is going to stop her, Merovech, it has to be you.”
Merovech flexed his fists.
“What can I do?”
Julie hitched herself up onto her elbows.
“The people need a leader they can trust.”
Merovech looked up at the low ceiling, which had been painted white, rivets and all.
“Then they’ll have to elect one. I’ll expose my mother, and I’ll take the throne. I’ll do what needs to be done, for my country.” His hands clenched, fingers digging into palms, knuckles white. “But afterwards, when the dust’s settled, I’m going to abdicate.”
Julie put a hand to her mouth.
“Are you serious?”
Merovech perched on the bed beside her.
“Deadly serious. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, ever since the crash. And I’ve not been happy for a while.”
Julie opened and closed her mouth, digesting his words. Then she said, “Is that what you really want?”
“It is.” He smiled at her. “I can’t bear the formality. All those endless receptions. And besides, the succession isn’t mine, remember? It turns out I’m no more entitled to it than my mother. And with all this illegal gelware in my head, I may not even be fit to rule at all. As soon as things get back to normal, I’ll call a referendum and let the people decide.”
Someone rapped on the sickbay door. Merovech t
urned to find the Commodore leaning against the frame.
“Excuse the interruption.” The old man’s jacket had been left undone, and his sash had gone missing. Beneath his moustache and bushy white brows, his face seemed pale and strained. “But I thought you should know, we caught the saboteur.”
“Where was he?”
“My men found him hiding in the starboard cargo bay. Now we have the kozyol in the lounge.” He turned, holding his injured hip with one hand, and gestured Merovech to follow. “Come, he wishes to speak with you.”
“Why me?”
“I do not know. But he refuses to talk to anybody else.”
THE COMMODORE’S CREWMEN had strapped the saboteur to a chair in the centre of the main lounge. He was a young man around Merovech’s age. Plastic packing strips bound his left wrist and right ankle to the chair. He wore a creased white shirt and thin black tie. In his right hand, he cupped a smouldering cigarette.
He looked up as Merovech approached.
“Hey, your highness.” Diamonds of sweat shone on his brow. His hair and shirt looked damp.
“You wanted to see me?”
“I sure did.” The man’s face cracked into a white-toothed grin. “I got a message for you, man.”
Merovech crossed his arms, making no effort to conceal his impatience.
“What is it?”
The man wagged his cigarette. “Hey, not so fast. Why the rush? Don’t you want to know who I am first?”
Merovech tapped a toe against the deck. “To be honest, I couldn’t give a damn.”
The young man’s grin broadened. “Well, my name’s Linton. Linton Martin, and I sure am pleased to meet you.” He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held out his hand. Merovech ignored it.
“I suppose you’re working for my mother, too?”
Smoke curled from Linton’s mouth. A bead of sweat rolled down his face.
“You know it, baby.” He took another big hit from the cigarette, tipped his head back, and blew smoke at the ceiling.
The Commodore stepped forward, favouring his bad hip. One of his polished boots dragged against the deck.
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