Macaque Attack!

by Gareth L. Powell

  Victoria put her hands on her hips. “And then what are you going to do? You just want to shoot him?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque’s grizzled face frowned in puzzlement.

  “Well, yes.” His expression split into a toothy grin. “Something like that, anyway. You know the old saying, boss: revenge is a dish best served hot, from ten thousand feet.”

  “You want to bomb the place?”

  “I figure we cruise over and drop half a dozen missiles on the lab. That ought to do it.”

  “Aerial bombardment?” Victoria shook her head. “That’s your answer to everything. Besides, we couldn’t be sure we’d got him, and there’d be a lot of innocents caught in the explosions. No, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it face-to-face. Up close and personal. Before he dies, he’s going to know who we are and why we’re there to stop him.”

  The monkey huffed, and stuck out his bottom lip. “Then what do you suggest?”

  Victoria drummed her nails on the edge of the lectern. “I suggest you take a small team and infiltrate the lab. Find Nguyen and bring him back on board.”

  “A quick smash and grab?”

  “Precisely.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque stroked his hairy chin, considering. Then he shrugged.

  “Okay, you got my vote. I’m happy as long as I get to wreck stuff and hurt people.” He pulled out a fresh cigar and ran it under his nose, savouring the smell.

  “Who will you take?”

  “Lumpy and Cuddles have commando training. Erik and Fang are handy in a fight.”

  “D’accord.” Victoria folded her hands on top of the lectern. “Take them to the armoury and get what you need. We’ll be in position in thirty minutes.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque stuck the cigar in his mouth, rose to his feet and threw her a floppy salute.

  “Aye, boss.” He shambled out and K8 followed him, leaving Victoria and Paul by themselves.

  Victoria looked at her ex-husband.

  “What?” she asked.

  Paul shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that. I know that look. What’s wrong?”

  Paul pushed his glasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m just a bit concerned, that’s all.”

  “About what?”

  He looked down at his hands.

  “About killing Nguyen.”

  Victoria walked over and sat in the chair next to his. She thought of Berg, and shivered.

  “In what sense?”

  “In the moral sense.” He shifted around to face her. “I mean, I know the Nguyen on our world was a bastard and all, but does that justify us killing his counterpart on this parallel? For all we know, the man might be innocent.”

  He looked so worried that Victoria felt a rush of affection, and had to consciously stop herself from putting an arm around him. She kept forgetting he was only made of light and that, if she tried to touch him, her fingers would pass right through his hologram body, saddening them both.

  “I think I understand what you’re saying,” she said. “But you didn’t see Cassisus Berg. He looked exactly as he did before, with human skin over a metal skull. Which means Nguyen’s pursuing the same goals he was last time. He’s trying to build cyborg bodies for human brains.”

  Paul looked unconvinced. “But that doesn’t mean he’s going to try to start a nuclear war, does it?”

  “We can’t take that chance.”

  “But what if he’s innocent?”

  Victoria clenched her jaw. “He’s not.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  She crossed her legs. “If he had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t have sent Berg to kill me. The other me, in Paris.”

  “I suppose.”

  He still looked doubtful. She let him mull her words over for a moment, then asked, “How are you feeling otherwise?”

  He gave her a wary look. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m counting on you to fly this thing.”

  He looked away. “I won’t let you down.”

  Victoria clasped her hands on her knee.

  Merde.

  She took a deep breath, and made a decision.

  “I’ll try not to let you down, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Fingers still interlocked, she tapped the ends of her thumbs together. “We won’t kill him.”

  “Seriously?” Paul sat up straight.

  Victoria exhaled. She had seen more than enough killing and death for one day—for one lifetime, even—and it disturbed her that assassinating the elderly scientist had been her default response. The man had done some terrible things on her world, but unthinkingly condemning his doppelganger to death put her on dubious moral ground.

  “Seriously. Well, we’ll try. If we capture him in one piece, then instead of killing him, we can stick him in the brig until we find somewhere safe to maroon him, where he can’t do any harm. How about that?”

  Paul swallowed.

  “Thank you.” He looked about to cry.

  “No.” Victoria gave him a smile that was part affection, part relief. Her conscience might have been asleep at its post, but his was as reliable as ever, and he’d saved her from making an irrevocable decision she might later have regretted. Killing Nguyen on this world would have made her no better than the monkeys in the infirmary, lashing out for vengeance with no thought for morals or justice. “Thank you.”

  HALF AN HOUR later, the Sun Wukong reached the outskirts of Paris. Ack-Ack Macaque and his team dropped from its underside, and their black parachutes flowered in the darkness. Below, the Malsight Institute was a large, smoked glass building surrounded by lawns and fountains, and a gradually emptying car park. The time was six o’clock, and workers were packing up for the day and leaving.

  “Does this bring back memories, Chief?” Erik called. He was an orangutan, with arms made of sinew and covered in carrot-coloured hair.

  Ack-Ack Macaque glared at him with his one good eye.

  “Shut up and concentrate.”

  They came down in a small, square courtyard at the centre of the building. As Ack-Ack Macaque’s boots hit the flagstones, he let out a grunt.

  I really am getting too old for this crap.

  He rolled over and hauled at the lines connecting him to his ’chute, pulling it towards him in great bundled armfuls. By the time he had it gathered, the rest of the team had done likewise, and were stuffing their ’chutes into the courtyard’s fountain. He crammed his in as well, and shuffled over to a fire escape.

  “Cuddles, get this open.”

  “Right away, Skip.” The young gorilla stalked forward on his knuckles. He was almost twice the size of Ack-Ack Macaque, and wore a gold chain and a set of specially adapted Ray-Bans. Without preamble, he punched his fist through the thin aluminum door and hauled back, ripping it from its frame.

  “Good work.” Ack-Ack Macaque drew his revolvers. “Now, the rest of you, inside.”

  He could feel his lungs heaving in his chest. He wasn’t as young as he’d once been, and all those cigars had taken their toll. He was happy to let the younger primates take the lead as he followed them into a corridor lined with offices.

  “All right, split up, just like we planned. Cuddles, take the first floor; Lumpy, the second; Erik, the third. I’ll check out this one.”

  He watched them go, scattering startled office workers as they charged towards the stairwell. Then he struck a match against the doorframe and lit his cigar.

  Okay.

  He knew the younger monkeys thought he’d picked the ground floor in order to avoid tiring himself on the stairs, but that wasn’t the reason; at least, not the only reason. He thought he knew Nguyen. He’d fought the man before, and had seen what a control freak he was. The old man liked to oversee everything. He wouldn’t be stuck away upstairs, he’d be down here, close to his minions and machinery.

  Victoria wanted Nguyen alive. Ack-Ack Macaque drew his guns. H
e wasn’t so fussy. He’d happily plug the bastard as soon as look at him. And ‘alive’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘intact’.

  He was at the corner of the building. The corridor led off in two directions. His team had gone left, towards the stairs, so he set off right. Men and women in white coats manned the offices and laboratories he passed, with pens and surgical instruments sticking from their pockets. They smelled of anesthetic and disinfectant, and cowered back when he snarled at them.

  “You!” He waved one of his Colts in the face of a young man carrying a pile of box files. “Where’s Nguyen?”

  The files clattered to the floor and the man raised an arm.

  “That way,” he stammered. “In the lab. Last door, at the end.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque grinned around his cigar.

  “Thanks, kid.”

  AS HE STALKED towards the laboratory, Ack-Ack Macaque took an earpiece from his pocket and thumbed it into his left ear.

  “We’re inside,” he said.

  The earpiece hissed, and then Victoria’s voice came on the line.

  “Understood,” she said. “Deploy the drone.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque fished the drone from the pocket of his flight jacket. The tiny machine looked like a jewelled dragonfly with a lens instead of a head. He held it in the palm of his hand and bent his face in close, focusing on it with his single eye.

  “Are you getting this?”

  “Urgh!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t get so close to the lens.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “You’re holding a high definition camera, and I really don’t need to see the inside of your nose in that much detail.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque huffed, and tossed the little machine into the air. It whirred away in a clatter of miniature blade-like wings.

  “Just keep it out of my way,” he grumbled.

  He heard gunshots and screams from the floors above, followed by the shrill of a fire alarm, and he grinned. He’d handpicked his crew for their expertise at making noise and causing chaos—and it seemed they weren’t letting him down.

  Ahead, the door to Nguyen’s lab remained closed. He holstered one of his guns and tried the handle. Inside, the lab smelled of disinfectant, fear, and monkey shit, and Ack-Ack Macaque felt the hackles rise at the back of his neck. Until Merovech and Julie had busted him out, he’d lived in a lab just like this one, strapped into a couch with wires plugged into his brain.

  How many monkeys had he since rescued from a similar plight? It must be getting on for a hundred and fifty now, and yet the smell, with its overtones of surgery and terror, still bothered him. It was a sharp, chemical reminder that he was an artificial, made thing—a prototype weapon manufactured as a proof of concept, and then plugged into a video game because, hey, waste not, want not.

  He stepped through the door, and the drone buzzed past his shoulder. It rose to the ceiling and scanned the room. The lab was a long, narrow and brightly lit room, with an adjoining office. Workbenches lined the walls; medical equipment stood on stainless steel trolleys; and six couches stood in a row down the centre of the room, each with its own simian occupant. Ack-Ack Macaque gripped his guns. At the far end of the lab, two white-coated technicians were bending over the last couch, ministering to the monkey strapped into it. One was a tall, blond man; the other was, unmistakably, Nguyen.

  “Hey.”

  They looked up. For a second, their mouths hung open and their eyes popped. Then the big guy went for his hip pocket and Ack-Ack Macaque shot him. The Colts were deafening in the narrow laboratory. The blond took two bullets in the chest and crashed backwards against a workbench, scattering scalpels and other instruments.

  Ack-Ack Macaque and Doctor Nguyen regarded each other through a blue haze of gun smoke and tobacco.

  “Remember,” Victoria buzzed in Ack-Ack Macaque’s ear, “we want him alive.”

  Ack-Ack swore under his breath. It would be so easy to waste this fucker. All he had to do was pull the trigger…

  But then he’d get Victoria mad at him, and the last thing he felt like was an earful from her. With a snarl, he lowered his guns.

  “Get your coat, doc; you’re coming with me.”

  Nguyen straightened his back. A bloody catheter dangled, forgotten, from his fingers. With his other hand, he gestured to the sedated primates on their couches.

  “You are one of mine?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “And you wish revenge?’

  “Me, and the rest of these poor bastards.”

  The old man swallowed visibly, then narrowed his eyes. “I don’t remember you.” His lip curled. “But what does it matter? Stupid monkey. You should be thanking me.”

  “For what?”

  “I made you a man.”

  “Big whoop.” Ack-Ack Macaque chewed his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Nguyen’s fists were clenched at his side. The elderly doctor drew himself up to his full height.

  “I gave you the gift of consciousness. I raised you to sentience.”

  “And I’m supposed to be grateful?”

  “I don’t care if you are or not. I did what I did for the betterment of mankind, and I have no regrets. Can you say as much, I wonder?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque waggled his guns.

  “Shut the fuck up. You’re coming with me.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Yeah, and whose fault is that?” Pointing the gun in his right hand at the bridge of Nguyen’s nose, Ack-Ack Macaque holstered the one in his left. If he was going to have to drag Nguyen out, that was fine. He might even bounce him off a few walls while he was at it, just for shits and giggles. With a growl, he reached out. But, before his leathery fingers could close around the knot of the old man’s tie, he heard the flat snap of a pistol shot and Nguyen fell, poleaxed by a round to the left temple.

  VICTORIA SCRAMBLED TO her feet.

  “What the hell was that?” She was on the bridge of the Sun Wukong. Paul’s image stood beside her; K8 sat at a console, controlling the dragonfly drone. In front of them, the main screen displayed the feed coming through from the drone’s camera. Doctor Nguyen lay slumped in a splatter of blood. Ack-Ack Macaque crouched behind one of the couches, Colts in hand.

  “Get the rest of the boys down here,” he snarled.

  “What’s happening?” Victoria shouted. “Who’s shooting?”

  The monkey didn’t reply. He stood upright and fired both guns through the open office door, then ducked back as his shots were answered.

  “Fuck and blast,” he muttered, crouching.

  “Can you see who it is?”

  “No, they’re behind something. See if you can get the drone in there.”

  Victoria glanced at K8.

  “Do it.”

  “Aye.” The young woman’s fingernails tick-tacked the keys of her console, and the view on the screen trembled. Slowly, the drone advanced, keeping close to the ceiling and out of the line of fire.

  “What sensors do you have on that thing?”

  “We have everything. Microphones, thermometers, spectrometers, the works.”

  “Turn them all on.”

  Another click of the keyboard, and a dozen sub-windows opened around the edges of the display, showing the same view filtered through the drone’s various onboard instruments. Victoria leant forwards, squinting at them. Some were dark and fuzzy, others simply readouts of temperature or humidity. When she reached the infrared view, she stopped.

  “Merde.”

  Something in the office glowed like a miniature sun, swamping all other heat signatures.

  “Some sort of machinery?” Paul ventured.

  Victoria shrugged. Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting steadily hotter.

  “We are picking up some noise,” K8 said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  A rising whine filled the bridge.

  “That’s co
ming from the office?”

  “As far as we can tell.”

  Victoria touched the headset attached to her ear. “Hey, monkey-man. Are you hearing this?’

  “Yeah.” He had to raise his voice. “Sounds like they’re firing up a jet engine in there.”

  Paul put a hand to his bristled chin. “I don’t like this at all. You should get him out of there.”

  A sickly white glow shone from the office door, casting a beam across the laboratory floor.

  “Yes,” Victoria said, “I think you’re right. I’ll—”

  Ack-Ack Macaque leapt to his feet. In one fluid move he vaulted the row of couches and, firing both Colts, charged the light.

  “Merde!” Victoria turned and barked at K8. “Get the drone in there, now!”

  The picture on the screen tipped forward as the dragonfly dived at the open door. For a second, everything disintegrated into a whirling medley of gunshots and bright light. Then she caught a glimpse of an armed figure silhouetted against the threshold of a bright, circular portal. It was a woman. Whoever she was, she looked up as the drone clattered into the room, taking her eyes from the door. As she did so, Ack-Ack Macaque barrelled into the room at full pelt, and shoulder-charged her. He hit like a rugby player, knocking them both into the gaping portal. Victoria had an instant to see their bodies puff apart in bursts of dust, and then the screen flashed white, and died.

  She cried out in frustration.

  “Power spike,” K8 said, voice flat. “Drone’s dead.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A NECKLACE OF LEOPARD’S TEETH

  THE SUN WUKONG loomed over the jungle, its armoured glass bow moored to a mast on the summit of the island’s volcano. In its briefing room, Victoria Valois stood with her arms crossed. Her tunic hung open and her scabbard hung crooked. K8, Cuddles and Erik sat in the front row of the theatre-style seats. Paul’s image hovered at the back, glowing gently in the low light. Wrapped in an animal pelt, Bali leant against the door, a twine necklace of leopard’s teeth draped around his neck.