CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SOMEBODY ELSE'S APOCALYPSE
VICTORIA VALOIS LAY on her bunk, unable to sleep. The Tereshkova would arrive over the outskirts of London within the hour, but Paul had persuaded her to try to rest. She’d been awake for almost two days straight, and there was a limit to the amount of fatigue for which her gelware could compensate. But, try as she might, she couldn’t relax. How could she, knowing what they were about to face?
She rubbed her eyes, and then ran her hand back, across her bare scalp, to the pillow.
How had she found herself in this situation again? Since saving the world last year with AckAck Macaque and Prince Merovech, she’d kept as far from politics as she could, done her damnedest to stay away from international disputes and diplomatic intrigues. Cocooned within the safety of her gondola, she’d all but fallen off the grid. And yet here she was again, sailing into the crucible, ready once more to throw herself into battle against superior forces in order to avert apocalypse. Why did it have to be her? Who’d appointed her world saviour? She wasn’t anything special, merely a braindamaged ex-journalist with a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
All she’d wanted had been a nice, juicy mystery to alleviate the boredom.
She should have known better.
Irritably, she rolled onto her side, and found herself looking at her desk, and the window beyond. How could she sleep in daylight?
If she wanted to, she supposed she could slip into command mode and use her gelware to force her body to sleep—but that was something she’d never tried, and she didn’t like the idea of artificially snuffing out her consciousness. It was a line she was reluctant to cross. Sleeping tablets were one thing, but she balked at the notion of turning off a switch in her brain in order to put herself under. The idea made her feel like a machine; and besides, what if she botched the instructions? She’d rather be shaky and exhausted than risk permanently shutting off the very gelware processors that kept her alive.
But maybe dying would be preferable to becoming one of the Gestalt?
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to share her skull with the thoughts of others; to have the echoing spaces of her mind filled with the ceaseless din of other voices; to submit her will to that of the majority and become little more than a synapse in something else’s brain; a walking, talking logic gate in an unknowably vast super-organism. The idea filled her with revulsion. She already felt like a halfhuman cyborg; she wouldn’t live as a zombie in somebody else’s apocalypse. If the worst happened, and conversion became inevitable, she’d turn her gelware off and slide into unknowing, insensate oblivion.
Or perhaps, she thought grimly, she’d ask Paul to blow the skyliner’s engines.
Would that even work?
Each of the Tereshkova’s fifteen impellers drew its power from its own nuclear electric engine. If she asked him, could he find some way to detonate them all simultaneously, destroying the airship and all on board? Could he, in effect, turn the old skyliner into a flying bomb? Victoria didn’t know enough about the physics involved, but she made a mental note to find out. Who knew what she might be called upon to do, and what she might be expected to sacrifice, in the coming hours?
For a few minutes more, she lay and listened to the familiar sounds of the gondola. She heard the wind buffeting against the walls; the flex and creak of the hull; and the almost subliminal hum of the motors. She heard people moving around in the corridors, opening and closing doors; the occasional scrape of a chair or shoe on the metal deck; and the clang and rattle of pans in the kitchen. It all sounded so peaceful and comforting that she could hardly bring herself to believe that it might soon be destroyed; that this flight might be the Tereshkova’s last.
With a sigh, she climbed off the bunk and walked over to the window. With luck, Merovech would be able to scramble enough planes to deal with the airships over Commonwealth territories; but what about the rest of the world? How many airships would it take to conquer the globe?
Paul’s voice came over the intercom speakers.
“Vic?”
She blew out a long breath, and massaged her forehead with her fingertips.
“What do you want?”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Victoria raised her eyes to the heavens. Another one? “Please God, what now?”
“Can you let me in?”
For a second, she didn’t understand what he meant. Then, with a sigh, she crossed to the cabin door and pulled it open. The remote control car waited in the corridor. She stood aside to let it in.
The car sped to the centre of the room and slithered to a halt on the Persian rug. Paul’s hologram rose from its projectors. He’d altered his look again, and now appeared to be wearing a droopy khaki bush hat, a white t-shirt, and crisp urban camouflage combat trousers. Silver dog tags hung around his neck, and his clear frameless spectacles had transformed into mirror shades with round, purple-tinted lenses.
“What’s going on?” She tried to keep her tone business-like.
Paul scratched his chest.
“It’s the monkey.”
“What about him?”
“He’s gone. He’s taken off, literally. As soon as Sergei had him patched up, he went to the kitchen and ate a jar of instant coffee. Then he stole a helicopter from one of the hangars. He even bit a mechanic when she tried to stop him.”
“Merde.”
“You can say that again.”
“Where’s he heading?” She didn’t think for a second that Ack-Ack Macaque would run out on a fight. But what if he’d decided to defect? What if he’d decided the best way to save K8 was to hand himself over to the Leader? The thought made her feel crawly inside.
“We’re tracking him via the chopper’s built-in GPS transponder,” Paul said.
“And?”
He shrugged. “He seems to be heading south, into Somerset.”
Victoria frowned. “What’s in Somerset?” All the action was ahead of them, in the Capital.
“He could be heading for France, or—” Paul stopped. He took his shades off. “Oh,” he said.
Victoria restrained a futile urge to grab him by the lapels.
“What?”
“I’m picking up a transmission. He’s making a call.”
“Can you patch it through?”
“Yeah, hold on a sec.” Paul’s eyes rolled back in his head, and the room’s speakers hissed into life. They let out a nerve-jangling blast of static, and then she heard the monkey’s yawp, his voice shaky from vibration and backed by the thud, thud, thud of a helicopter rotor.
“…fuelled and ready to go,” he was saying, “I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes, and I’ll need pilots for all of ’em.”
“Who’s he talking to?” Victoria asked, raising her voice over the noise.
Paul lowered the volume.
“The control tower at the Fleet Air Arm Museum,” he said.
Victoria frowned. “Don’t tell me…”
“Yeah,” Paul couldn’t keep still. “You remember those Spitfires they dug up in Burma a few years back?” “Yes, I bought him one.”
“Well, they have a dozen currently under restoration at the museum and, according to its website, at least half of those are airworthy.”
“Holy crap.”
“Quite.” Paul slid his glasses back into place, and shook his head. A smile tickled his lips. “It seems our friend’s rounding up a posse.”