Let’s see how her metal head survives when it hits the pavement from this height.
The observation deck fell away behind them. The wind roared in his ears.
Oh crap, this is it…
He stared at death, in the form of an onrushing sidewalk.
Then the view blurred. A mirage shimmered beneath him. He felt himself buffeted up, banging his head against Célestine’s metal chest. With a bang of displaced air and a flash of white light, the Ameline levered itself into existence, hanging in the sky metres from the wall of the skyscraper, jet thrusters whining.
Ack-Ack Macaque and Célestine hit its upper surface and rolled apart.
> HELLO!
Ack-Ack lay gasping for breath.
“What?” The voice had been speaking to him in his mind.
> I’M THE SHIP. I’M CONNECTED TO YOUR GELWARE BRAIN.
He shook his head. Close to the vessel’s nose, Célestine clambered awkwardly to her feet and looked around, seemingly dazed.
“Shut up.” He glanced around for a weapon, but found none. The alien pod lay beneath the bows, and he couldn’t get to it from here.
> I’M THE AMELINE, MONKEY. I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU.
“Then kill this metal bitch.”
> CAN DO. BUT YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO HELP.
Célestine fixed on him and started walking forward, hands grasping like claws. Ack-Ack Macaque danced backwards, staying out of reach.
“How?”
> MY WEAPONS ARE UNDERNEATH. I NEED YOU TO THROW HER OFF SO I CAN GET A CLEAR SHOT.
“I can’t, she’s too strong.”
> THEN FIND SOMETHING TO HANG ON TO.
Without further warning, the old ship rolled. Ack-Ack Macaque lunged for one of the handholds he’d used earlier. He wrapped his fingers around it and clung. Less nimble, Célestine toppled. She lost her footing and fell, over and over, towards the ground. Ack-Ack Macaque felt his arm being torn from its socket. He snaked his tail through the next handhold along, using it to help support his weight.
The Ameline was still at ninety degrees to the ground when the weapon at its tip fired. A burning shaft of starfire speared the falling cyborg and, as she tumbled, diced her into glowing chunks. Still dangling precariously, Ack-Ack Macaque watched the burning debris rain onto Fifth Avenue.
“Yeah!” he yelled into the wind. “Take that! You see what you get when you mess with my friends?” He sent a gob of spit sailing earthwards. “Try teleporting your way out of that!”
EPILOGUE
GONE
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I’m going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again.
(Walt Whitman, Good-Bye My Fancy!)
EPILOGUE
GONE
ACK-ACK MACAQUE CLAWED his way around to the airlock. When he got there, he found Victoria and K8 waiting for him. They pulled him inside and helped him to a chair, then let him catch his breath as the old ship powered up, away from the city.
“Thanks,” he gasped when he could finally speak.
“Don’t thank us,” Victoria said. “We had nothing to do with it. One moment we were standing on the Sun Wukong, the next we were here, on the ship.”
“But I thought—”
> AND DON’T LOOK AT ME, EITHER. I WAS MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS BEFORE SOMETHING ZAPPED ME INTO THAT HORRORSHOW.
Ack-Ack Macaque frowned. He scratched his eye patch.
“The Founder,” he said quietly. She must have used her powers—her knowledge of the simulation—to teleport the ship and his friends here, the same way Célestine had brought him. “I guess she wasn’t as bad as everybody said, huh?”
K8 gave him a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised.
“You really have lousy taste in women,” she said.
Ack-Ack Macaque gave a snort. “You’re talking about the mother of my babies.”
“That’s as may be, but I’ll bet you that’s the last we’ll ever see of her.”
The ship gave a couple of final bumps, and then steadied. Katherine Abdulov appeared from the hatch leading to the bridge.
“Célestine’s dead,” she said. “We scanned the wreckage. There wasn’t a piece of her left that was bigger than an orange.”
“So it’s over?” K8 asked.
Victoria shook her head. “There are still the cyborgs on Mars. If we don’t deal with them now, who knows what they’ll throw our way next time.”
The young Scot pouted. “And how long’s it going to take us to get there?”
“Six months.”
From the ladder that led from the ship’s bridge, Katherine Abdulov cleared her throat. “Perhaps I can help?”
They all looked at her.
“I’ve been doing some calculations with the ship,” she said. “We think we can tow you.”
“Would that be faster?” Ack-Ack Macaque asked.
Kat grinned. “I reckon we could get you there in six weeks.”
Ack-Ack Macaque sat bolt upright. “Hot damn! That’s more like it. I’d go nuts rattling around that airship for half a year.”
“And then, after that,” Kat continued, “maybe you could help us?”
“In what way?” Victoria’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Kat’s smile turned serious. “Napoleon and I go back a long way,” she said. “And it’s good to have him back, even if he is a monkey now. Besides, there are other builders out there. What say we go and throw a wrench in their plans?”
K8 laughed. “A monkey wrench?”
Ack-Ack Macaque fixed her with his most withering scowl.
“Not funny.”
He turned his stare on Katherine. “Do you think we can track down the Founder?”
“Possibly.” Abdulov stuck out her bottom lip. “I mean, we’ve done it before. She’ll know we’re looking but, in theory, yes.”
“Good.” He shifted himself on the seat, getting comfortable. “Because I want my babies back.”
His arms and legs felt as if they were made of wood. The accumulated aches and pains of the last few days—the barks, bruises and grazed knees; the multiple punches, kicks and bites—had taken their toll. As Victoria and Kat continued to plan their next move, he let his solitary eye fall closed.
With the Ameline’s help, they could be on Mars in a matter of weeks. And then the real fighting would start: monkey versus machine in a battle to the death, on the red sands of a dying world, with all the other worlds of creation at stake and an infinite playground stretching out all around them.
All they had to do was seize it.
SIX MILES ABOVE New York City, the Ameline readied her engines. Her course was set: first, a jump to rendezvous with the Sun Wukong, and then onwards, ever onwards, through all the billions of possible worlds.
Her fusion reactor came online, generating power for the jump engines. Deep in her belly, the engines began to spin up until the old ship felt she could leap the length of the universe in a single orgasmic bound.
> HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS, she warned her passengers. Her scanners took a final, almost lingering sweep over the blue and green marble that was the Earth. Then all the readouts on her bridge spiked at once. The Ameline’s engines tore a hole in the walls of the multiverse. There was a blinding flash of pure white light, and then they were all gone and elsewhere—humans, monkeys and spaceship alike.
THE END
ACK-ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
HERE, AT THE end of the ‘Macaque Trilogy’, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the following people for accompanying me on the journey:
Jon Oliver, Ben Smith, Mike Molcher, Lydia Gittins, and the rest of the team at Solaris Books, for giving me the chance to write these novels in the first place. My agent, John Jarrold, for all his advice and support. My wife, Becky, for giving me the time and space in which to write, for reading and editing the first drafts, and for keeping me going when all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and never come
out again. Jake Murray, for his excellent and inspiring covers. Jetse de Vries and Andrew Cox, for publishing the first ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ short story in Interzone, way back in 2007. Matt Smith and Tharg The Mighty, for allowing me to fulfill a boyhood dream by writing an ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ comic strip for 2000 AD. My sister, Rebecca, for her excellent and incisive critiques. The rest of my family, for their constant and unflagging belief. Su Hadrell, for useful feedback on early drafts of Hive Monkey and Macaque Attack. Neil Beynon, for his insights on the first draft of Hive Monkey. And Danie Ware, Desiree Fischer and the team at Forbidden Planet, for book launches, signings and other events.
And, lastly, I want to say a big thank you to all the people who’ve read, reviewed, discussed or recommended these books over the past three years; all those who came to readings or book launches; all those who voted for Ack-Ack Macaque in the 2013 BSFA Awards; and all those who’ve engaged with the monkey on Facebook or Twitter. Your response has been terrific, and this trilogy/quartet wouldn’t exist without you.
Thank you all.
Gareth L. Powell
Bristol, June 2014
In 1944, as waves of German ninjas parachute into Kent, Britain’s best hopes for victory lie with a Spitfire pilot codenamed ‘Ack-Ack Macaque.’ The trouble is, Ack-Ack Macaque is a cynical, one-eyed, cigar-chomping monkey, and he’s starting to doubt everything, including his own existence.
A century later, in a world where France and Great Britain merged in the late 1950s and nuclear-powered Zeppelins circle the globe, ex-journalist Victoria Valois finds herself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the man who butchered her husband and stole her electronic soul. In Paris, after taking part in an illegal break-in at a research laboratory, the heir to the British throne goes on the run. And all the while, the doomsday clock ticks towards Armageddon…
‘Gareth Powell is going to be a major voice in SF.’
Paul Cornell
‘If you read only one space opera this year, it’s got to be The Recollection.’
The Guardian on The Recollection
‘A bid to join the big leagues, with big themes and a big setting.’
Locus on The Recollection
www.solarisbooks.com
GOT A MONKEY ON YOUR BACK?
In order to hide from his unwanted fame as the Spitfire-pilot monkey who emerged from a computer game to defeat the nefarious corporation that engineered him, the charismatic and dangerous Ack-Ack Macaque is working as a pilot on a worldcircling nuclear-powered Zeppelin.
But when the cabin of one of his passengers is invaded by the passenger’s own dying doppelganger, our hirsute hero finds himself thrust into a race to save the world from an aggressive hive mind, time-hopping saboteurs, and an army of homicidal Neanderthal assassins!
‘Fizzes with wild ideas… A ripping yarn about murder, mayhem and monkeys’
Philip Reeve, author of Mortal Engines, on Ack-Ack Macaque
‘Powell primes an explosive narrative with brilliant cliffhangers’
The Guardian on Ack-Ack Macaque
‘Gareth Powell is going to be a major voice in SF’
Paul Cornell
www.solarisbooks.com
When his brother disappears into a bizarre gateway on a London Underground escalator, failed artist Ed Rico and his brother’s wife Alice have to put aside their feelings for each other to go and find him. Their quest through the ‘arches’ will send them hurtling through time, to new and terrifying alien worlds.
Four hundred years in the future, Katherine Abdulov must travel to a remote planet in order to regain the trust of her influential family. The only person standing in her way is her former lover, Victor Luciano, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm. Hard choices lie ahead as lives and centuries clash and, in the unforgiving depths of space, an ancient evil stirs…
Gareth L. Powell’s epic new science-fiction novel delivers a story of galaxy-spanning scope by a writer of astounding vision.
‘Utterly Impossible to put down.’
- Colin Harvey, author of Winter Song
‘Just the way SF should work.’
- Warren Ellis on The Last Reef
www.solarisbooks.com
Macaque Attack! Page 29