What he’d do when he found her was another matter. He hadn’t given it much thought, beyond the vague idea that he’d rip her arms off and use them to beat the rest of her to death. After all, this was the woman who’d started it all: the spider in the web, pulling the strings. She was the one who’d contacted the various Doctor Nguyens on their respective worlds, and encouraged them in their experiments. If it hadn’t been for her, he might never have been uplifted. He might have stayed a semi-conscious monkey, living out his days in ignorance. He and all the other sentient monkeys and apes might have gone on with their lives as nature intended, without being strapped to tables and shaped into aberrant, gaudy monstrosities. If Nguyen had been his personal Frankenstein, Célestine was his Mary Shelley. She was the author of all that had transpired, the mad genius behind his story, and he really wanted to kill her. Because who knew what insanity she intended to unleash this time? Three years ago, she’d egged on her counterpart on this world—Merovech’s mother—to engineer a nuclear confrontation with China, all in order to further her own desires for cybernetic immortality, and, if Apynja was to be believed, she’d already killed most of the population of her own timeline, sentencing billions to sickness and lingering death for her own foul ends.
Well, fuck that with a long, greasy pole. It was time for a reckoning, and it seemed only fit and proper that he—one of her discarded prototypes—should be the one to dish out the justice.
A stray shell hit the ground a couple of dozen metres to his right, with a force that bowled him over and showered him with earth and stones. He rolled with the impact, taking it on his shoulder, and came back up onto his hands and feet, still running.
It’s going to take more than that to stop me today. All his aches and pains seemed to have fallen away, having sloughed off like a dead skin. Adrenaline burned through him like good rum. He felt young again.
Ahead, his target lumbered forward at less than walking pace, the vast tracks barely turning.
She doesn’t want to get too far from the portal, he thought. And who could blame her? The last thing she would have been expecting was to have her lead tanks savaged by armour-plated aerial behemoths. She would have been anticipating a world still recovering from the nuclear standoff between China and the West, a world devoted to peace and disarmament; she would have had no idea she wasn’t the first to try invading from another parallel, and therefore she couldn’t have foreseen the presence of the Gestalt dreadnoughts.
Attacks from other worlds—so far, the Earth had suffered two, and now there was the threat of the asteroid from Mars. Was this the way reality was going to work from now on? Would there be other aggressors, an endless procession of belligerent invaders from an infinite number of parallel worlds, unending strife and conflict?
Fuck, no. Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.
Veering to the left, he started to circle the great machine. Even in his wild state, he wasn’t reckless enough to try a frontal assault. His Colts had been refilled and he’d retrieved his chainsaw, but neither would be much use if the forward machine guns drew a bead on him.
A missile whistled overhead, coming in at a steep angle from one of the dreadnoughts on the edge of the pack, and exploded against the Leviathan’s invisible shield.
“I’ve got to time this right,” Ack-Ack Macaque muttered. He needed to be in position when the tank retaliated; ready to leap through when it dropped its force field in order to fire.
And there it was! The cannons at the Leviathan’s snout let loose a volley that rocked the beast on its tracks and shook the earth beneath his feet. Without waiting for the echoes to die away, he hurled himself between its caterpillar tracks. He rolled and kept rolling, until he was right under the main body of the tank and away from the danger of being crushed by its treads. Then he climbed to his feet and brushed himself down. Having already infiltrated one tank, he knew exactly where to find the hatch on the underside of this one. Without hesitation, he marched over and, standing directly beneath, used the butt of his Colt to hammer on the steel.
“Knock, knock, motherfuckers. Guess who.”
VICTORIA VALOIS USED the blunt end of her fighting stick to give the green cyborg’s head a final series of whacks. When its emerald skull finally caved and she was quite sure it was dead, she turned to look around the Sun Wukong’s bridge.
“Everybody okay?”
Three camouflage-painted cyborgs had tried to force their way onto the bridge, but all had been felled. The two Marines were down, one dead and the other injured. Merovech stood by the front window, his arm around Amy Llewellyn’s shoulders. He held a French-made FAMAS assault rifle in his free hand, taken from one of the fallen soldiers.
“Are we safe now?”
Victoria walked to her command chair and pressed a control. A loud clunk came from the back of the room, followed by more slams and thumps from further back in the gondola.
“I’ve locked down the airship. All the fire doors and bulkheads are now sealed. I don’t know how many of those metal bastards are still aboard, but that should slow them down.”
“What about the crew?”
“What about them? Between screeching, firing wildly in all directions, and flinging their own merde at each other, they’re doing nearly as much damage as the invaders.” She worked her shoulder, which hurt where it had taken a glancing blow from a cyborg’s kick. “It’ll do them good to stay confined for a while, give them all a chance to calm down.”
She watched Merovech help Amy over to a chair. The secretary had been thrown into a wall and cut her head. The King pulled the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and pressed it to her wound.
A light flashed on Victoria’s console, indicating an incoming message. She accepted it, and routed the signal to the main view screen above the forward window.
“Victoria Valois?” The woman in the image wore a grey coat over olive green one-piece fatigues. She had short brunette hair and eyes the colour of dried dates.
“Yes?”
“Greetings, from one captain to another. My name is Katherine Denktash Abdulov of the Strauli Abdulovs, late of Strauli Quay, and I am here to offer my assistance.”
Victoria frowned.
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Katherine Abdulov, of the trading vessel Ameline. We’re currently two hundred metres above you, monitoring your situation.”
“Two hundred metres above…?” Victoria reached out and activated another screen, displaying a composite of feeds from all the security cameras on the upper deck. As she did so, Merovech left Amy holding the handkerchief to her head and came over to stand behind her.
“There,” he said, pointing over her shoulder at one of the images. Victoria tapped it, enlarging it until it filled the display.
“Jesus.”
The wedge-shaped UFO from Amy’s photographs hung in the sky above them, balanced on three jets of pale fire. Victoria glanced from it to the face of the young woman on the main screen.
“Yes, that’s us.” Katherine Abdulov rolled her eyes impatiently. “Right where I told you we were. And, once again, we’re here to help.”
Victoria swallowed. A thousand questions swarmed, fighting to be asked. Behind her, Merovech said, “Help? What kind of help?”
Katherine looked at him with frank astonishment.
“With the invasion,” she said. “With the tanks you’re fighting.”
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “You have weapons?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, those tanks have some kind of force field. It’s damned near impenetrable.”
“Really?” The young woman glanced off-camera for a moment, and then smiled. “Watch this.”
For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. Then a brilliant white pencil-thin spear of light flashed from the spaceship’s nose, overloading the cameras. Victoria leapt from her position and ran to the front window.
“Putain de merde!”
Belo
w, the hindmost Leviathan lay carved in half, sliced down the middle like a log in a sawmill. The edges of the cut smoldered a molten yellow and beneath them, a long, thin strip of grass and soil had been charred down to bedrock. Victoria put a fist to her lips, hardly daring to breathe. The weapon struck again, and another of the giant tanks flared.
“Yes!” She punched the air. “Oh, yes, yes, yes!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
ACK-ACK MACAQUE LOOKED up at the blue sky.
“What the fucking, fucking fuck was that?” He’d been skirmishing his way through the big tank’s walkways and chambers when the world turned white and hot, and everything tipped sideways. Now he lay with his back against what, until a moment ago, had been a wall, with his nose full of the stink of burning plastic and singed monkey fur.
Climbing gingerly to his feet, he poked his head above the cooling edges of the room and looked out. The other half of the tank rested on its side a few metres away. Smoke rose from a dozen points, and he could see flames leaping where fuel lines had been cut.
“Holy crap in a hand basket.” He had no idea what had happened, only that he’d been lucky to survive the experience. The cyborg he’d been fighting at the time hadn’t fared nearly as well. It had been standing directly in the path of whatever had split the tank, and now its body lay on the grass between the two halves of the wreck, cleft into asymmetric and half-melted segments. Its metal body had probably shielded him from the worst of the mysterious attack, but all he felt towards it was the fierce satisfaction of seeing an enemy brought low.
He had to get out of here and find the Duchess. The edges of the cut walls were rapidly cooling. He leapt up onto one, trusting his boots to shield his feet from the residual heat. The tank lay with its innards bared to the sky, its rooms and walkways like the indentations in an empty chocolate box. As long as he kept moving, followed the walls and kept his balance, he’d be okay.
He started running, using his tail as a counterbalance to steady himself. He guessed Célestine would be somewhere towards what had been the top of the vehicle, so he made his way in that direction, and found her lying in the ruins of the Leviathan’s control room. She had two cyborgs with her, but both were damaged and disorientated. Crouching on top of the wall, he decapitated them both with his chainsaw, sending their metal heads rolling into the echoing depths of the damaged tank like ball bearings rattling into a sewer.
The Duchess looked up at him.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. What do you want?”
Ack-Ack Macaque curled his lip. “I’ve got a message for you.”
Célestine rose to her feet and brushed herself down with her palms. Her black uniform was rumpled and dusty, and one of the sleeves had been badly scorched.
“You know, I told Nguyen you were going to be trouble.”
Ack-Ack Macaque killed the chainsaw’s engine, and laid it aside.
“Well.” He drew his revolver. “That’s one thing you got right.”
“You said you had a message?”
“Yeah, from a lady called Apynja.”
Célestine blinked and her face tightened.
“Oh, so you’re working for her now?”
Ack-Ack Macaque was surprised. “You know her?”
“Of course I know her. She’s my sister.”
He opened and shut his mouth a few times.
“Your sister? But she’s a—”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” Célestine drew herself up. “Now, what is it she has to say?”
Ack-Ack Macaque glowered at her and raised his gun.
“Just that you shouldn’t have killed so many people.”
“Me?” Célestine pushed her tongue into her cheek. “That’s a good one.”
Ack-Ack Macaque snarled. “You killed eight billion people. I don’t see anything funny about that.”
The Duchess waved a hand. “It’s all just numbers.” She looked up at the sky. Her breath came in small, almost imperceptible wisps. “You have no idea who she is, do you?”
Ack-Ack Macaque rubbed his leather eye patch. The socket beneath itched.
“She’s an ape.”
Célestine laughed and shook her head.
“Oh no, no. She may be many things, but she’s not remotely an ape. She’s not even human.”
“Then what is she?”
“I told you.” The woman smiled with all the warmth of a shark. “She’s my sister. Or rather, she was, before she grew a conscience.”
Ack-Ack Macaque growled. “You’re not making any sense.” He waved the gun at her in annoyance. “Make sense!”
Célestine stuck her chin at him.
“I’m making perfect sense, you vile creature. You’re just too stupid to grasp what I’m talking about.” She put her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you?”
Ack-Ack Macaque took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m the one holding the fucking gun,” he reminded her.
“So you are.” Up ahead, one of the other Leviathans sparked and fell to pieces, diced into chunks by a blinding white beam from the heavens. Moments later, the one next to it suffered an identical fate. Ack-Ack Macaque blinked away purple and green afterimages.
“Your invasion’s cancelled,” he said. “You’re fucked.”
“Really?”
Célestine brought her hands together and smiled. She seemed to shimmer and her body grew translucent. She was fading, exactly as Apynja had faded from the clearing in the wood.
“Oh no you fucking don’t!” Ack-Ack Macaque stood up and fired his Colt into her almost transparent torso. His first two shots seemed to pass through without hurting her, but the third made contact. Célestine screamed with pain and rage, and suddenly she was solid again. She fell back into a sitting position, hands dabbing madly at a bloody wound in her stomach.
“You imbecile. What have you done?”
Ack-Ack Macaque raised the pistol’s barrel to his lips and huffed away the smoke.
“I told you, I’m delivering a message.” He holstered his weapon and jumped down beside her. “To you and all the other megalomaniacal ball-sacks out there.”
“And what message is that?” She was panting, and her skin was pale with shock. He crouched, bringing his snout to within inches of her face.
“That we’ve had enough of your shit.”
He watched her struggle and curse. She tried to pull herself up on the edge of a chair but his bullet had damaged her spine, and her legs wouldn’t work.
“Do you even know how many people you’ve killed?” he asked contemptuously. She gave a snort.
“Do you?” Another bolt sizzled from above, bisecting a Leviathan to their left. With a squeal of brakes and a crunch of abused gears, the remaining tanks cranked into reverse and began backing towards the portal. “After all, you’re hardly blameless, are you?”
Ack-Ack Macaque bridled. “I only kill people that need killing.”
“And who are you to decide?”
“Who are you to say I can’t?”
Célestine coughed, and wiped her lips on the back of her sleeve.
“You can dress it up any way you like, but you’re as much of a murderer as I am.”
Ack-Ack shook his head. “Nobody’s as much of a murderer as you are, lady.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Your friend Apynja is. Or she was before she changed her ways, the hypocritical bitch.”
“What are talking about?” Ack-Ack shuffled back slightly, to avoid the blood spreading from her wound. “She’s just an escaped orangutan.”
Célestine shook her head sadly. “She’s so much more than that. Yes, I killed a world. I admit it, and I’m proud of it. But her.” She coughed again. This time, her sleeve came away red when she wiped her mouth. “She’s killed dozens. Hundreds maybe.”
“Who is she?”
Célestine’s eyes became glassy and her head began to sway. Ack-Ack Macaque took her by the shoulders and
shook her.
“Who is she?”
He shook her again, but her head lolled back and her body went limp, and he knew she was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ALL THE FISH
WITH THE INVASION defeated and the Leviathans in retreat, Victoria allowed herself to slump into the command chair. Merovech and Amy had taken the surviving Marine to the infirmary in search of medical attention, leaving her alone on the airship’s bridge. The noise of battle had faded, and the only sound she could hear was the constant hum of the Sun Wukong’s engines. Her shoulder still hurt, and she had a number of additional cuts and bruises, but her mind wasn’t dwelling on her injuries. Right now, she had other priorities.
She couldn’t read the words on her computer display, but knew the control sequence by heart. A tap here and a tap there, and Paul’s hologram activated. The little drone sailed into the middle of the room and projected his image in all its three dimensional luminosity. For the briefest moment, he remained frozen as the airship’s processors booted up his personality, and she took the chance to drink in his appearance without distraction—his bright shirt and creased white lab coat; his spiky peroxide hair and hipster spectacles; the jewelled stud in his ear. This could very well be the last time she’d ever see him, and she wanted a clear picture to remember him by.
“Ah,” he said, blinking rapidly and focusing on her. “You again. I was hoping you’d be Vicky.”
Victoria felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach.
“I am Vicky.”
“Really?” He peered at her over the rim of his glasses. “My word, so you are. What happened to you, to your hair?”
She didn’t feel like going through it all again. “It’s a long story.”
Macaque Attack! Page 23