CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ZEPPELINS FROM THE GREAT BEYOND
WITH A FLICK of his hand, the Leader cut the connection and the wall screen went blank. From where she leant against her desk, Victoria Valois saw Ack-Ack Macaque’s posture slump. He’d been holding himself upright for the confrontation; now, he looked half dead.
“Are you all right?”
The macaque swivelled his face towards her, too tired to move his feet.
“Verbose motherf*cker, wasn’t he?”
She smiled.
“Do you think he was serious?”
“Do you have any reason to think he wasn’t?” Ack-Ack Macaque put a hand to the side of his jaw, and pushed his chin up and to the side. Something crackled in his neck.
“You look like merde,” she said. His knuckles were battered and raw. One of the sleeves of his flying jacket had torn at the shoulder seam, and now hung down almost to his elbow. His fur stuck out in clumps, caked in dark and sticky blood. She wondered how much of the blood was his, and how much had come from other people.
“What can I say? It’s been a long day.”
She pushed off from the desk and stood upright. Tapped the fingertips of her right hand against the palm of her left.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what you want to do.”
“About what?” He jerked a thumb at the dead screen. “About that arsehole?”
“He’s you.”
“He most certainly is not.”
“A version of you.”
“So what? He’s still an arsehole, and we’re still going to kick his f*cking head in.” He turned his body to face her, his movements stiff and laborious. “Right?”
Victoria let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.
“If you say so.”
The monkey’s eye narrowed.
“You didn’t think I’d be tempted, did you?”
Victoria shrugged.
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Not to me they haven’t.” He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a cigar. About a third of it hung at an angle, having been damaged during the fight at Larkin Hall. He snapped off the short end and dropped it into her wastepaper basket.
“You can’t deny you’ve been lonely.”
He reached into the pocket on the other side of his jacket, and extracted his Zippo. “No, I can’t.” A quick flick of the little wheel, and a flame sparked. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get gooey-eyed about the first talking monkey that comes along.” He held the flame to the end of the cigar and huffed clouds of blue smoke into the room. “Especially as he’s planning to f*ck the planet.”
The air-conditioning kicked in. It sucked most of the smoke up into vents on the ceiling, but couldn’t completely obliterate the pungent and lingering whiff. Victoria wrinkled her nose, and mentally recited the code words that let her access the command menus for her cranial implant. Once in, she quickly deactivated her sense of smell. Fond of the monkey as she was, the aroma of cigar smoke always made her feel ill.
“So you do care about us?”
“Of course I do. I already saved the world once, didn’t I?” He took a mouthful of smoke, rolled it around, and blew it at the ceiling. “Besides, I’m not really alone, am I?” He coughed, and looked away, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’ve got you two, and K8.”
Victoria exchanged a look with Paul, and they both raised their eyebrows. This was the first time they’d heard him talk this way; the first crack they’d seen in his habitually gruff exterior.
“Yes,” she said, “of course you do.”
The monkey scuffed a foot against the deck. He looked supremely uncomfortable.
“That’s okay then.”
Victoria tried to suppress her smile. It appeared that, despite his coarseness, Ack-Ack Macaque had the same insecurities and needs as everyone else, including the need to belong; and it seemed losing K8 had finally driven home to him who his friends really were, and made him appreciate everything he had, and everything he stood to lose.
“You should get checked out,” she said, wanting to spare him further embarrassment. “Get Sergei to patch you up.”
Ack-Ack Macaque looked down at himself. He tried to straighten his torn sleeve.
“But K8—”
“You’re not going to be any use to her in that state. Get down to the infirmary and get Sergei to see to you. That’s an order.”
He took the cigar from his lips and rubbed his brow.
“Yes, boss.”
a fter he’d gone, Victoria walked around her desk and sat in the chair.
“Jesus Christ,” she said.
In the bright noon light from the picture window, Paul’s image was an insubstantial ghost haunting the corner of her office: the murder victim who wouldn’t lie down, the ex-husband who never left.
“What are you going to do?”
Victoria pulled the cutlass from her belt and dropped it into the umbrella stand.
“You said you could fly this thing?”
Paul took off his glasses and rubbed them on the hem of his shirt. “Well, yes, if I had to. All the connections are in place.”
“You have to.”
“Right now?”
Victoria drew herself up. “Make course for central London, best speed.”
“Aye, aye.” Paul’s brow screwed in concentration as he devoted more and more of his processing time to the business of running the airship’s systems. His image grew tenuous, and then finally disappeared, as he focussed his attention elsewhere. Moments later, Victoria felt a tremble through the deck as the skyliner’s engines powered up and the Tereshkova’s nose swung eastwards again, towards the capital.
Ahead, the windscreen showed a bright blue sky growing paler all the way to the far horizon. A single vapour train caught the sun like a comet trail, and she found herself wondering what the world would have been like had jet travel really taken off in the latter half of the twentieth century. With the first skyliners entering commercial service in the early 1960s, and the subsequent oil blockades and price wars of the 1970s, jet air travel had never become an economical option, and now only the richest and most extravagant used it as a means of crossing oceans. Skyliners might be slower, but they were dependable and cheap, and their nuclear-electric engines had none of the economic and environmental disadvantages of oil. But how would things have been, she asked herself, had the skyliners not come along when they did—if the post-war British and French shipyards had been allowed to wither and die instead of being turned over to airship production? What would the globe look like with everybody rushing around at nine hundred kilometres per hour, and the skies streaked by hundreds of shining white trails?
Paul’s voice came over the intercom.
“We can’t fight them all,” he said. “Not by ourselves.”
Victoria glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the ceiling.
“We’ll alert the authorities.”
“Will they believe us? Because, quite frankly, I’m in the middle of this, and I’m not even sure I believe it.”
Victoria knew he was right. Even among skyliner captains, most of whom were considered pretty eccentric in their own right, she had a reputation as a maverick. Putting the world on a war footing in three hours would take more than just her word.
“In that case,” she said, “I’m going to have to make a call.”
“Not—?”
“Who else? Besides, he owes us a favour.”
THE FACE LOOKING back at her from the screen was that of a young man, but his eyes seemed more mature and weary than one might have expected from his apparent age. They were the eyes of a boy who’d served in the South Atlantic; who’d lost comrades in a helicopter crash; lost his father at an impressionable age; and fought his mother in order to prevent a holocaust.
“Hello, Victoria. What can I do for you?” This was Merovech I, King of the United Kingdom of France, Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Norway, and head of the European Commonwealth. In the time she’d known him, he’d played many roles—a soldier, a criminal and a runaway, to name three— but this was the first time she’d spoken to him since his coronation, and the first time she’d seen him actually looking like a king. Gone were the ripped jeans and red hoodie she remembered; in their place, a tailored suit, crisp white shirt and regimental tie.
“Your majesty.” Victoria tipped her head forward. “I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.”
Merovech leant towards the camera.
“I should say not. I saw what our monkey friend did on the M4, and how much damage he caused.”
“I can explain.”
“I think you’d better.”
Hands clasped behind her back, Victoria rocked back on her heels. The young king had become a man. Every gesture and tone conveyed authority and patience. She wasn’t sure how much of that came naturally, and how much had been taught.
“Merovech, listen.” She put a splayed hand to her chest. By addressing him informally, she hoped to break through the fa?ade, and reach the young man she’d once fought alongside. “You remember last year?”
“I’m hardly likely to forget.”
“Well this is worse.”
Merovech raised an eyebrow. “Worse than all-out nuclear war?”
“Yes. At least in a nuclear war there’s the possibility of a few survivors.”
“What are we talking about?”
“An invasion. Several hundred armed skyliners, one over every major city, and each one packed with some sort of hideous plague.”
“Where are they coming from?”
“From thin air.”
The young king sat back in his chair, and his image blurred for half a second as the camera refocused.
“I beg your pardon?”
Victoria rubbed her forehead. “Look, it’s an invasion from another dimension, from a parallel world. I can’t explain more than that because, quite frankly, I don’t understand it all myself.”
“Is this for real?”
“I keep asking myself the same question.”
He looked at her for what seemed like a very long time, and she could see that he was weighing their friendship, deciding how far he could trust her. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “When?”
“Three hours.” She felt a surge of relief. “You’ll need everything you have in the air, and you’ll need to alert the other countries. But be careful. If these things unload their cargo, it’s game over, and we’re all as good as dead.”
Merovech frowned, suddenly doubtful. He tipped his head to one side and tapped a finger against his lips.
“How can I ring the President of the United States and tell him we’re being invaded by Zeppelins from the Great Beyond?”
Victoria took a step closer to her screen.
“You’re the Head of the European Commonwealth, he’ll have to listen to you.”
“But will he believe me?”
“Does it matter? If one country scrambles every fighter plane it has, the rest will have to follow suit. They might not know the reason, but they won’t want to be caught napping. You get every European plane in the air, and I can guarantee the Russians, Chinese and Americans will do likewise.”
Merovech made a clicking sound with his tongue.
“After last year’s unpleasantness with China, putting that many planes in the air could be dangerous.”
“It’ll be a lot more dangerous for you to do nothing.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes I do. I’ve got the monkey with me. Twelve months ago, the three of us saved the world. Now, we’re asking you to help us save it again.”