Come on, he thought, this isn’t any harder than hanging from a tree branch. Travelling at a hundred miles an hour. Through a cyclone.
The tube housed one of the Commodore’s most prized souvenirs, taken from a cupboard in his cabin. It was a portable ground-to-air missile picked up off a battlefield somewhere in the Middle East thirty years ago.
Steadying the launcher, Ack-Ack Macaque lined the sight up on the eaves of the old house.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself around the cigar, “time to blow shit up.”
He pulled the trigger. There was a sharp whoosh, and the tube bucked in his hands so hard he almost lost his grip on the strut. The missile leapt forward on a candle of flame, and the helicopter dipped its nose to follow.
Squirming around, Ack-Ack Macaque managed to pull himself back up to the helicopter’s open hatch. He let the empty launcher fall away into the fields below, and drew one of his big, shiny Colts. Marie looked at him, and he gave her a big thumbs-up.
“Everything’s okay!” he hollered above the engine noise. Ahead, the missile hit the roof and blew apart in a huge fireball. Tiles and bits of wooden joist flew into the air, and black smoke mushroomed over the house. “Okay, as long as they weren’t keeping your kid in the attic.”
They passed over the front gates of the house, and he dropped a grenade, to make the clowns with guns keep their heads down. Then the helicopter was over the hole in the roof, its downdraught whipping the smoke and flames. The drop was somewhere between fifteen to twenty feet.
“Okay, lets go.” Cigar clamped securely in his teeth, he leaned out of the helicopter, and dropped.
The wind tore at him. His jacket flapped. He fell into the fire, and through, into the space beneath the roof. His bare feet hit wooden planks hard enough to jar his spine, and he rolled onto his shoulder, just getting out of the way in time before Marie crashed through the smoke and hit the deck beside him.
By the time she’d picked herself up, he was on his feet, both Colts at the ready, as the helicopter peeled away, heading back towards the Tereshkova, which was hammering past, a couple of kilometres to the south.
Black smoke filled the attic. He coughed and pulled his scarf up to cover his nose and mouth. There wasn’t time to waste looking for a hatch leading down, so he yanked the pin from a grenade, sang, “Have a banana,” and rolled it as far along the floorboards as it would go.
A second explosion rocked the house. When it had cleared, the floor had a ragged, burning hole in it.
Marie brushed dust and splinters from her clothes. She looked at him with an expression of respect, astonishment, and irritation.
“Please,” she said, “warn me the next time you’re going to do that.”
He grinned at her, scooped up a smouldering stick of wood, and lit his cigar.
“There’s something you need to know about me, lady—”
“That you’re dangerously irresponsible with explosives?”
He frowned, pulled out his cigar, and exhaled smoke.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “That’s near enough.”
DROPPING DOWN THROUGH the hole in the floorboards, they found themselves in a dormitory. The room had probably once been a grand bedroom; now it contained three rows of triple bunk beds. Chunks of shattered plaster lay on the blankets and floor, and the bunk closest to the hole was alight.
“Well,” Ack-Ack Macaque said, “I told you I’d get us into the house, didn’t I?”
Marie cradled the coil gun, keeping its barrel pointed at the door.
“You certainly did. I can’t fault you on that. But it’s lucky the girls weren’t in this room.”
Ack-Ack Macaque gave a shrug.
“Ah, they’d have been okay. I needed a grenade to get through those ceiling beams.”
From the landing beyond, they heard the sound of shoes running on a polished wooden floor. Holding his Colts at arm’s length, Ack-Ack Macaque drew a bead on the door. Marie waved him away.
“No, you’ll give away our position,” she said. “We need to kill them quickly, before they know what’s hit them, otherwise they’ll alert the rest of the hive. Leave this to me.”
He glanced at her gun. It was a slim metal tube wrapped in electromagnets, with batteries in the stock, and a foot-long magazine protruding from the bottom of the barrel, just in front of the trigger. It looked like something knocked up in somebody’s garden shed. Christ alone knew where the Commodore had found it.
“Really?”
She took up a firing stance.
“Have you ever seen one of these at work?”
He waggled his head.
“Nah.”
“Then you might want to stand back.”
The footsteps reached the door, and the handle rattled as somebody seized it. Marie clicked the coil gun’s trigger, and moved the barrel back and forth. Firing without sound or recoil, the gun peppered the door, punching dozens of pencil-thin holes through the wooden panels, the frame, and the walls to either side. The effect was as if she’d taken a chainsaw to it. As the stream of tungsten darts crossed and recrossed the door, chunks of wood were cut away and blown out into the corridor. By the time she clicked the trigger off again, only one large piece remained, attached to the lower hinge, and even that had a few holes through it. Outside in the corridor, two Neanderthals lay slumped against the far wall, their white suits ragged and soaked in bright red blood.
Ack-Ack Macaque walked forward carefully, keeping his guns trained on the them; but he needn’t have bothered—when he got closer, he saw they were both quite definitively dead. Bits of their massive jaws and swollen craniums were missing, torn away by the deadly rain of miniature projectiles, and their chests and stomachs had been minced to hamburger. He poked one in the shoulder with the barrel of his gun, and the man’s arm fell off, severed in three or four places, as if it had been hacked apart with a meat cleaver.
“Man,” Ack-Ack Macaque muttered, “I have got to get me one of those guns.”
The walls of the landing had been painted red; the floors were dark, varnished wood, and heavily framed paintings adorned the walls. Ack-Ack Macaque ran a finger across one of the paintings, and it came away covered in dust. Other doors led off from the landing, presumably into other bedrooms, and a wide stone staircase swept down to an entrance hall. Crouching by the wrought iron rail, he peeped over. The entrance hall had a bulbous, black metal chandelier hanging from a chain above its diamond-patterned flagstone floor, and a reception desk installed just inside the main doors of the house, at the foot of the stairs. A whitesuited man and woman stood behind the desk, consulting a fire alarm console, on which several red lights were illuminated. As he watched, they stopped what they were doing, and both turned to look at the stairs. He ducked back.
Damn, he thought, they’re all linked, aren’t they? Marie had done her best, but it made no difference; as soon as you killed one of the Gestalt, the others all knew something had happened. They might not know the cause, but they sensed the loss. Now, they’d all be converging on this landing to find out what was going on, and he wasn’t sure he could hold them all off.
Well, he thought, so much for stealth. If I wanted a sneak attack, I wouldn’t have blown up the roof.
He picked another grenade from his belt, and tossed it over the rail. He heard a shout, then a satisfying crump, and the clatter of broken glass.
“Maybe that’ll make them more cautious,” he muttered, standing up and dusting himself down. The two by the reception desk were either unconscious or dead. He kept one gun trained on them and the other on the front door, as he made his way down, step-by-step. The back of his leather jacket squeaked as he pressed it against the painted wall. His cigar left a descending trail of grey smoke.
Marie said, “They don’t know there are two of us. You keep them distracted, and I’ll stay up here and check the other rooms.”
“Knock yourself out.” They had only seconds, and a staircase was no place for a shootout. Three
doors led off the hallway, deeper into the rest of the house, and he knew he had to choose one. Rather than cross the hallway, he chose to slip around to the door beneath the stairs. His caution wasn’t the result of fear; at this point, he had no regard for own his physical safety, he just wanted to make sure he survived long enough to find K8, and get her out of this madhouse.
The door opened to his touch and he stepped inside, guns at the ready. If one Gestalt member saw him, the rest would be on his trail instantly, so he had no time for subtlety. The rule for today was to kill or be killed; and he couldn’t afford to die before he freed K8.She might be a brat, but she was a damn clever brat, and a dependable friend. She’d been there for him in reality, and in the game, and now she was his only remaining link to the game world, and the person he used to be. She was his colleague and his comrade, and he couldn’t imagine life without her. She’d saved his life in the past; now it was his turn to repay the favour. Monkeys were instinctively social creatures, yet he was the only one of his kind. She was the closest thing he had to a member of his troupe, and those primate loyalties ran deep. He knew he’d get her back even if—especially if—he had to kill every last motherfucker in the building.
The door brought him into a long corridor, which seemed to run the length of the house, with doors leading off to either side. As he stood there, three of the doors opened, and men and women in white suits stepped out, blocking the way. They were of all ages and nationalities, but their faces all carried the same eerie smile. Some clutched guns, but most were armed with whatever they’d had to hand: knives, letter openers, chair legs…
“You cannot win,” they said in unison, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, not attacking. “You are one, we are legion. You will join us.”
“Go suck an egg.” “You will join us willingly.” The crowd took a pace forwards. “Or otherwise...”
Ack-Ack Macaque glanced at his Colts. Both were fully loaded, which meant he had twelve shots—not nearly enough to deal with the mob in front of him. He might get the first few rows, but he wouldn’t have time to reload before the others were upon him. He’d have to drop the revolvers and switch to the automatic pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers, under his jacket. That would give him another ten shots. Then there was the knife at his belt and, if all else failed, his bare hands and fangs.
He fixed the closest two with a glare, and rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Fuck you,” he said.
As one, they took another step towards him, and raised their weapons. That was all he needed. He opened his mouth with a shriek, and leapt to the attack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DIALLING OUT
WILLIAM COLE STOOD on the Tereshkova’s bridge, watching the countryside wheel around as the old airship slowed and turned, ready to begin its run back to Larkin Hall and the scene of the battle. From where he stood, he could see a black column of smoke rising into the autumn air. Most of the building’s roof was ablaze. And, somewhere down there, beneath that inferno, his wife and child were fighting for their lives.
He scratched fitfully at his wild hair.
“How could I have let her go like that?”
Behind him, Victoria Valois glanced up from her instruments.
“I don’t recall you having a choice.”
He turned on her.
“But I could have insisted! I could have gone in her place.”
“No, you couldn’t. What use would you have been, eh?” She looked back down at her console.
“At least Marie’s fought the Gestalt before. She knows what to expect.”
William shook his head. He had a pain in the back of his throat.
“I am such a coward.”
He turned back to the window. The smoke and flames looked thicker than before.
Had he lost her again?
THREE CAVEMEN CAME into the cellar. One of them held Lila at bay while the other two grabbed K8. She tried to fight them off but they were solidly built and seemingly impervious to the kicks and blows she aimed their way. She tried to gouge their eyes and knee their groins, but they simply held her tighter, and twisted her arms up behind her back until she cried out and stopped squirming. Her strength had been sapped by the drugs in her system.
“You come with us,” the Neanderthals said together. It was the first time she’d heard them speak, and she was surprised. Somehow, she’d been expecting a crude grunt rather than fully formed words.
Moving in perfect step, they pulled her out of the cellar and up a set of stone steps, into a whitetiled kitchen equipped with a wood-burning range, a walk-in larder, and a porcelain sink as big as a bathtub. As they led her through the room, the house rocked to the sound of an explosion. She heard a helicopter overhead, very low and very loud, and small arms fire coming from the front of the building.
“Are we under attack?” The hands on her arms didn’t loosen. Without breaking stride or showing even the slightest curiosity, the three Neanderthals carried her through the kitchen and out, through a series of utility rooms, to a wooden door, which led out into a well-tended kitchen garden, with rows of herbs and vegetables and ornamental bay trees. After the dry, dust-laden air of the cellar, the bright sunshine and chill November breeze hit her like a double handful of cold water, and she sneezed. The fresh air helped her head to clear, and she struggled anew, to test their grip.
“Where are you taking me?” From within the house behind, she heard the muffled thump of another explosion. Her heart surged. That had to be the Skipper. He’d come for her, as she’d known he would. Who else would be tossing grenades around inside a stately home? She stopped wriggling and laughed.
“You idiots are for it now.” The Neanderthals weren’t listening; or, if they were, they were doing a very good job of ignoring her, and everything else around them. Still marching in perfect synchronisation, they marched her out onto the lawn, and stopped in the centre of a circular patch of dead grass maybe two metres in diameter.
Behind them, the roof of Larkin Hall was ablaze. Smoke billowed up into the blue sky, chased by orange tongues of flame. Gunshots went off like firecrackers.
The Neanderthals seemed to be in no hurry to get away. In fact, they could hardly have chosen a more exposed spot on which to stand. If the Skipper were in the house, all it would take for her to be rescued would be for him to look out of a window...
“Skip!” she hollered. “Skip, I’m out here!” But all that earned her was a cuff across the top of the head from one of her captors.
The caveman who’d whacked her pulled a device from the pocket of his white jacket. It was black and shiny, and resembled a fat SincPhone. The casing looked to be tough rubber, worn in places but designed to take abuse. She watched him tap the touchscreen with a fat, hairy-knuckled finger. Was he making a call?
Far beyond the conifers at the far end of the lawn, she caught sight of the Tereshkova. Impeller blades glittering in the sunlight; the old airship banked sharply, and came around to face the house. She felt the urge to wave her arms and shriek. It might be old and, with its black and white paint job, somewhat ugly, but the elderly skyliner was her home; the first permanent one she’d had since the offer of work with Céleste Tech had enabled her to escape the disintegration of her parents’ marriage.
The Neanderthal with the handset paused with his finger over the touchscreen, and muttered something in a language she didn’t understand.
“What?” He grinned at her, exposing flat, shovel-like teeth in a too-wide jaw.
“I said, ‘hold on to yourself.’” He brought his hand down and stabbed the ‘phone’. K8 felt a quiver move through her entire body. Every muscle and membrane shook. Her eyes trembled in their sockets, blurring her vision, and the sky went dark.
When her sight cleared, she found they were still in the garden, standing in their circle of dead grass, but everything around them had changed. The house wasn’t on fire; in fact, it was larger than it had been a
moment ago, with a couple of turrets that hadn’t been there before, and a whole extra wing that seemed to have materialised out of nowhere. The sounds of fighting had gone, and the Tereshkova had disappeared from the sky. In its place hung another airship—bigger, armoured, and unmistakably decked-out for war. Cannon poked from turrets along its length, and its upper surfaces bristled with radar emplacements and anti-aircraft batteries. Its impellers were much larger than the Tereshkova’s, and every inch of its hull had been painted black.
A VTOL passenger jet sat on the grass nearby, engines idling, and the Neanderthals carried her towards it. K8 had never flown in a plane before. To her, this one looked kind of like a helicopter without rotors, and she didn’t like it. Planes were rare in her world, and she didn’t trust them. The idea that a slim metal tube could be held aloft by the difference in speed between the air passing over and under its wing seemed ludicrous.
“Come along,” her captors said, bustling her forwards, “the Leader will see you now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE LEADER
BRUISED AND BLOODIED, Ack-Ack Macaque limped down the steps from the kitchen to the cellar. His cigar, guns and flying cap were all missing, lost in the fight. His jacket had been cut and torn in a dozen places, and his skin slashed and scratched. In his left hand he held a machete, in his right, an antique samurai sword. Both blades were slick with the blood of their former owners.
“K8, are you down here?” He thought he could smell traces of that scent she liked to wear. “Hello?” He reached the bottom of the stairs and leant against the wall, trying to get his breath back. He’d had to fight his way through the corridor, and now his arms hurt and his legs were tired and shaky. Things had been so much easier back in the game. In those days, he could fight forever without getting tired or injured, and always have enough breath left over for a witty quip or scathing putdown. Here in reality, things were somewhat different. Leaning against the wall, listening to the breath wheeze in and out of his heaving chest, he regretted every single cigar, every shot of rum and litre of beer. Compared to the character he’d been in the game, he was hopelessly out of shape. And the Gestalt drones were really hard to fight. Usually, when facing overwhelming odds, he went for shock and awe, using battle cries and ferocity to scatter and panic his opponents. A few bites and screeches would usually shatter their discipline and strike fear into the stoutest of hearts. The ranks would collapse and he’d be able pick off his adversaries individually. That hadn’t worked with the Gestalt in the corridor. He couldn’t break them up. Whatever he did, they were still a perfectly coordinated group, able to attack and parry as one. Taking them on had been like tangling with a multiheaded, multi-limbed hydra, and he’d had to fight hard for every centimetre he’d advanced.
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