Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  Simeon's sudden outburst shook Nimrod into action. Turning, he ran back into the palace behind him. "Your attention ladies and gentlemen, if you would be so good as to make your way to the nearest exit? Everybody out! Move!"

  Batting a shambling prisoner-ape aside with a double-fisted swipe, Simeon landed in front of the pack leader, the towering, collared, half-naked creature holding the ruined control box in its massive paws. The ape-thing fixed him with its beady yellow eyes from beneath beetling black brows.

  Simeon rose up and then, ripping open his jacket and the shirt beneath, beat a tattoo of challenge upon his chest.

  Lips pulled back from yellow teeth as the apeman displayed its response to Simeon's threat. It knew that its position as head of the pack was being challenged. And it seemed that the other apemen sensed it too. With a roar it returned the gesture, hurling the metal box aside. With barely a moment's hesitation, it threw itself at the Neanderthal.

  Simeon was braced, ready for the tattooed ape's attack. As the brutal savage grabbed him round the middle, he trapped the brute in a headlock.

  Toes gripping the turf beneath its feet the alpha apeman pushed up with its legs. Eyes bulging and face turning purple as Simeon tightened his grip around its neck, the apeman lifted its challenger off the ground. With a guttural, half-choked growl of effort it threw itself backwards, hurling Simeon over its shoulders. The two of them crashed to the ground, the action loosening Simeon's hold. But in the next instant the two battling primitives were on their feet again, a circle clearing around them - as the other apemen moved back or paused to watch - like a pair of roustabout prize-fighters ready for round two.

  With mutual roars of aggression the Neanderthal and the apeman threw themselves at each other. Kicking, punching, gouging and biting, the two brute wrestlers fought on. They appeared equally well matched - one a de-evolving serial killer and cannibal, the other the semi-tamed product of a mad professor's dark ambition.

  Getting in under Simeon's guard, the apeman sank its teeth into the Neanderthal's side. In response Simeon clubbed the savage around the head with both huge hands locked into one fist. The Neanderthal twisted a red-furred arm behind the monster's back until something snapped, the ape planting a foot into Simeon's midriff and kicked him clear with a roar of shrieking baboon rage.

  Simeon crashed to the ground on his rump and felt something sharp dig painfully into his back. He reached behind him, hands closing around the roughly cuboid object, as the apeman, blood streaming from various cuts and grazes, bounded towards Simeon, ready to finish him once and for all.

  The Neanderthal brought his arm back round, smacking the ape-savage around the head with the mangled control box. The blow sent the apeman tumbling sideways, stunned. Before it could recover itself, Simeon was on his feet again, the metal box now held in both hands above his head. With one powerful motion he brought the lump of metal and electronics down on top of the apeman's skull. There was a wet crack and the de-evolved convict slumped motionless onto the churned turf, but just to be sure, Simeon did the same again.

  Ripping the torn remnants of the soiled shirt from his back, filled with his own feelings of savage satisfaction, Simeon planted one foot on the corpse of the apemen's bested quasi-leader. Howling with barely restrained feral joy he beat his chest again, his bellow ringing across the darkened park. The rest of the ape-pack seemed to freeze and then the regressed fugitives answered Simeon with a hooting cry of their own as they saluted the new leader of their tribe.

  With a sweep of his arm Simeon beckoned his tribe towards the glittering structure of the New Crystal Palace.

  Ulysses ducked as another pane of glass was blown to smithereens by gunfire. Gripping the wheel tightly in both hands - so tightly in fact that he could feel the nagging pain in his right shoulder grumble again - he braced himself against the floor of the flight deck as the zeppelin closed on the New Crystal Palace.

  He felt a sudden tug on his leg and started. It was Jago Kane.

  "We're going to die, aren't we?" he gasped, spluttering through bloody lips.

  "You might be planning on doing so," Ulysses remarked sourly, "I, however, do not intend to go down with this particular sinking ship."

  "Look, I know what you think of me," Kane coughed, bringing up more blood, "and you know what I think of you. You might say that our moral codes are... incompatible."

  "Moral code? You?" Ulysses almost laughed.

  "Look, just listen you arrogant shit," Kane's voice was as cold and clear as ice. "If you do get out of this alive the one you really want is Uriah Wormwood."

  "Wormwood? What do you mean?"

  "He's the one behind all this. Who else would have the power and influence to set something like this up, undetected?"

  "How can I believe anything you tell me?"

  "Can you afford not to?"

  "Wormwood," Ulysses mused, half-forgotten suspicions reawakened. "But why are you telling me this now?"

  "Because that slimy bastard betrayed me. He sold me out, me and my men, the ones who trusted his intentions." His increasing ire instigated another bout of cruel coughing. "Because if I'm going to die I want him to pay." Kane fixed Ulysses with a steely stare. "Swear it! Swear you'll get the bastard!"

  "I... I swear it," Ulysses replied, dumbfounded, the words feeling strange on his tongue as he swore an oath to the man who had long been his nemesis.

  The glittering glasshouse structure now filled the view from the shattered cockpit. There was no doubt that the airship was set on a collision course. Sprinting back up the slope of the flight deck, as the zeppelin dived towards the Crystal Palace, he hurled himself back through the door by which he had entered.

  Its one remaining engine emitting a high-pitched whine, the zeppelin hit the Crystal Palace. Iron bracing struts buckled, glass shattered and the flight deck was filled with whickering diamond shards.

  The deafening scream of shearing metal and the cacophonous blast of hundreds of panes of glass shattering rang throughout the juddering gondola as Ulysses half-ran and half-fell through the airship as he made his way to the zeppelin's bomb bay.

  There, in their steel cradles, hung the last of the Darwinian Dawn's deadly devices. Each carried a portion of Professor Galapagos's deadly regression formula.

  Tugging the gas mask from the corpse of a black-clad guard Ulysses put it on, the smell of warm rubber and human sweat assaulting his nostrils.

  He pulled hard on the first of a series of large metal levers in front of him. With a yawning groan the bomb bay doors swung open. Looking down, through the hole in the bottom of the airship, Ulysses could see the red-haired ape-things capering about inside the Crystal Palace. Shards of glass had rained down on top of them as the gondola collided with the palace and some lay either dead or mortally wounded as a result. Others were running amok, overturning dining tables and throwing gilt candlesticks, fine bone china and silver-plate cutlery at one another whilst others tried to eat the table decorations.

  Ulysses grabbed hold of the second lever and then paused. Keying a number into his personal communicator he put the device to his ear. When the call was picked up he said, "Nimrod, are you clear?"

  "Yes, sir. Everyone is out."

  "Then keep going. This is one grand finale that's guaranteed to bring the house down."

  "Yes, sir. Good luck. Nimrod out."

  Ulysses took hold of the lever and pulled hard. Released from its harness the first of the Galapagos-bombs rolled forwards and off the end of the tilting cradle. Locking the lever in place, Ulysses got clear of the bomb bay as the rest of the devices followed the first, dropping towards the half-destroyed palace.

  The airship had become wedged within the roof of the Crystal Palace, so that its gondola now hung amidst crumpled roof joists, its dirigible balloon still above it and undamaged outside of the stricken structure. For a moment Ulysses' world was wonderfully still, and then the first of the devices made groundfall.

  Sheets of flame burst fro
m the shattered glasshouse, consuming what had, only a matter of hours before, been a grand dining hall in a raging firestorm. The limp bodies of apemen were tossed into the air. The series of detonations rocked the gondola. Then, after the initial explosions, came the transmuting chemical clouds.

  Having already been exposed to the weaponised gas of the formula, the Galapagos transformation was accelerated within the bodies of those convict-apemen not killed by the explosions. Stricken by a terrible palsy, their warping bodies spasmed as their entire physiological structure regressed at an unimaginable rate. Savagely snarling ape-features became as fluid as melting wax, mutating into lizard-like visages. Fur fell away to reveal scales or pliable amphibian skin.

  Grotesque abominations were born as entire cell structures collapsed under the incessant changes they were being subjected to. Things that were half-mammalian and half-reptilian gurgled and hissed in their death-throes. Things with the blunt snouts of primitive men slithered through the coiling, rancid mists, limbs uncertain as to whether they should be claws or fins. Fish eyes blinked from quivering mounds of amorphous flesh, bones dissolved into the fluid flesh of invertebrates.

  The process of accelerated de-evolution continued to a chorus of mewling moans and croaking cries until the warping bodies could no longer support themselves. Every last one of them ultimately collapsed into a morass of protoplasmic ooze that covered the carpeted floor of the New Crystal Palace in sticky mucus-like slime.

  And at the far end of the hall, amidst the pooling slime, lay the remains of an altered suit of clothes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Unnatural History

  Flinging open the door to the flight deck Ulysses surveyed the devastation. Glass littered the floor in myriad glittering shards. The bodies of the airship's pilot and the guardsmen lay where they had fallen. Kitty Hawke lay unconscious, face down, her body a pincushion for stiletto blade slivers of glass. But Jago Kane was gone.

  Ulysses Quicksilver swore. Still his nemesis had managed to evade him. He had more lives than a cat! But wherever the murdering revolutionary had got to, he couldn't have gone far. He wouldn't have been able to make much of a head start with all his injuries. But, if Kane had been telling the truth - and Ulysses' own niggling suspicions made him believe that, incredibly, the terrorist might have been - the real villain of the piece could be making his getaway right now.

  Leaning against a buckled strut Ulysses gazed down at the floor of the devastated Crystal Palace. Even through the gas mask he could smell the rancid meat and aniseed stench of the dissipating formula-gas. Amidst the bomb craters and burning piles of debris a thick ooze covered the floor of the building. From it rose wisps of a jaundice-yellow vapour. Nothing was moving down there, other than the occasion pop of a bubble in the seething slime.

  Ulysses thought he heard the sound of footfalls. Looking to his left he could just see that where the gondola had come to rest. One of several maintenance walkways was accessible. From there his fugitive could easily make it to the ground and escape. That was the way Kane would doubtless be heading and it was where Ulysses needed to go now. For, even if his old nemesis had evaded him again, somewhere below, amidst all the chaos and confusion, Uriah Wormwood was in danger of getting away.

  Wormwood cast fitful glances around whilst striving to maintain an outward appearance of calm, self-assured superiority. He had allowed himself to be evacuated from the dining room, along with the Queen and her dinner guests, and stood now at the side of the contraption-bound monarch, along with Victoria's personal attendants - her ladies-in-waiting and personal physician, the French surgeon Dr Mabuse - the entire party being surrounded by a bodyguard of armed police officers. Fifty yards away stood the smouldering wreckage of the New Crystal Palace, the Darwinian Dawn's airship still locked within its steely embrace.

  Wormwood glanced at the ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever known, the merest arching of an eyebrow betraying his true feelings of disgust and distain. She was a far cry from the public image of the noble, determined woman who had ruled a quarter of the world during the greater part of the last century. There was more machine than monarch now, the physical husk the old woman had become was trapped inside the Empress Engine, a Babbage difference unit of the greatest complexity that provided life support and a basic level of steam-powered mobility for the Queen. The Widow of Windsor was just a withered creature kept alive long beyond her natural span and far longer than was good for her deteriorating mind. The scurrilous voice of rumour suggested that the encoded intelligence of the Babbage unit spoke on behalf of Her Majesty these days, mimicking the Queen's own voice by manipulating a bank of sound recordings made when Victoria was still able to speak for herself.

  For many people the world over, Queen Victoria, Empress of India, Monarch of Mars and Ruler de facto of the Lunar colonies was the empire of Magna Britannia and Wormwood felt that too. She was the perfect embodiment of a decaying, outdated system maintained for much longer than was healthy for the benefit of the privileged few. But all that was about to change. When the sun rose the following morning, it would mark the dawning of a new age for Magna Britannia, its citizens and all the peoples of the world. The age of dinosaurs was over.

  Thoughts of the future returned Wormwood to the upheavals taking place in the present. Things had not proceeded exactly according to plan, but he had his state of emergency nonetheless and had been able to put into play the special powers he was granted under the terms of the recently passed Anti-Terror Bill. This could still all turn out to his advantage. He just needed to make sure that he didn't let his mask of calm composure slip.

  "Prime Minister, a word!" came a shout from behind him. Wormwood froze, feeling the trickle of ice water down his spine. It was the voice of Ulysses Quicksilver.

  There was a gasp of wonderment from the gathered throng as Ulysses approached. Wormwood took a moment to compose himself and then turned to face the approaching dandy.

  So it was confirmed. Ulysses had somehow survived Genevieve Galapagos's parting gift but he didn't look any the better for it. His once doubtless impeccable outfit was now in disarray as was the rest of him. His face was a mess of contusions, swollen lips and bleeding gashes. His left forearm was bound with a red-soaked handkerchief and one eye was half shut by a swelling black bruise.

  "Greetings, Prime Minister," the rogue said, combing a hand through the tousled mess of his hair. "I am here to report the successful resolution of the case you yourself charged me with two months ago."

  "You are?" Wormwood said warily.

  "I am, Prime Minister."

  "Did I miss something? Aren't you supposed to be dead?" the astounded Inspector Allardyce interjected, forgetting himself for a moment.

  "And good evening to you, Inspector," Quicksilver said with a sideways glance, flashing the bemused trench-coated policeman a wry smile, wincing as he did so. "You just can't keep a good man down I suppose. Aren't you keen to hear my conclusions?" He said, addressing Wormwood again.

  "As I understood it that matter had already been brought to a conclusion weeks ago," Wormwood said, a frown of annoyance lining his face.

  "Indeed. And that was my own opinion on the matter - although I had some lingering doubts - until you tried to have me blown up."

  A gasp passed around the gathered group.

  "Are you out of your bloody mind?" Allardyce challenged. It had been a long day and everything had just gone tits up in the most spectacular way possible. He just felt lucky that the Queen herself wasn't dead. "Have you recently received a bang on the head? Cos if you haven't I'll happily give you one if you carry on like this."

  "No, Inspector, I am in full command of my faculties, thank you," Ulysses bit back. He was aware of Nimrod joining him at his shoulder.

  "Is everything all right, Prime Minister?" the recording-synthesised voice of the monarch herself crackled from the speaker-horn of her mobile throne.

  "I do apologise, your majesty," Wormwood said, a qu
iver of uncertainty entering his voice for the first time. "This will only take a minute. I shall be with you shortly."

  "I was about to say the same thing myself, your majesty," Ulysses called out.

  Around the park and the streets of the capital beyond, a thousand broadcast screens - that had relayed the apeman attack to the nation as the cameras continued to roll - now relayed the intrigue unfolding before the burning glasshouse ruins to an eager and anxious public.

  "Arrest that man," Allardyce ordered a pair of robo-constables. "And turn those bloody cameras off!"

  "Hold that order!" Nimrod commanded, stepping in front of the two drones, leather wallet card-case held open in front of their visual sensors.

  "On whose authority, sir?" one of the constables asked affably.

  "By the authority stated here on this card, Constable Palmerston," Nimrod said, reading the drone's name off the badge on its chestplate.

  "I don't bloody believe this," Allardyce fumed, in exasperation. "You're supposed to be under arrest!"

  "Inspector, if you would be so kind as to actually do something!" snapped Wormwood.

  "Yes, of course, sir." The inspector moved to take hold of Ulysses himself. "I'll have this tosser out of your hair in no time, sir, if you'll pardon my French."

  "But aren't you intrigued to know who's been behind the Darwinian Dawn and their attacks on our glorious capital all along, Inspector?" Ulysses asked, turning his attention to Allardyce.

  "Scotland Yard are looking into it."

  "It was you, wasn't it, Mr Prime Minister Wormwood?"

  The nation took a sharp collective breath as the dramatic confrontation played out across the empire, courtesy of the Magna Britannia Broadcasting Company's continuous coverage of the jubilee event.

  All eyes now turned in startled disbelief to the Prime Minister. Nimrod threw Ulysses an uncertain look as much to say, "Do you realise what you are saying?" Then the merest rumour of a tick rippled across Wormwood's face and Nimrod's moment of doubt was gone; he was convinced. The world held its breath.