CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE COMMONWEALTH EXPECTS
AS THE FIRST explosions still shook the capital, Ack-Ack Macaque dropped to all fours and scampered from the bridge. He threw himself up the nearest companionway. He had to get airborne. It was his default response, a reflex written into the software of his mind. He’d been created to re-fight a fictionalised Battle of Britain, and had scrapped his way through countless simulated air raids and scrambles. This was what he did, and what he knew. When the bell rang, you ran for your plane. It was as simple as that. In some ways, it was a comfort to find himself back in such a familiar situation.
Using his arms to haul himself upward, he charged up flight after flight of metal stairs, until he reached the top of the Tereshkova. By the time he got there, he was wheezing for breath, and coughing up globs of brown tobacco-tasting mucus. All five of the planes were waiting at the end of the runway. There wasn’t much room for them, but somehow they’d managed to cram themselves together. The pilots and solitary mechanic had been in the process of loading ammo belts into the machineguns built into the wings of the lead plane when the attack began, and had stopped to stare at the carnage, hands shading their eyes as they peered ahead.
“Hey!” He did his best parade ground yelp. “No time for gawping. I need these babies in the air, right now. How are we doing?”
The nearest pilot turned to him. Like the rest of this ad hoc squadron, he wasn’t military. He was a retired airline pilot, a volunteer at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and his face dripped fear and bafflement.
“Have you seen—?”
“Of course I’ve f*cking seen it. Why do you think we need the bullets?” He pushed past, to where the mechanic knelt on the wing. The mechanic’s name was Smithy. He wore oil-stained overalls and a battered, shapeless cap.
“It’s okay, chief.” Smithy closed the lid of the ammo compartment and wiped his hands on an old rag. “This is the last one. I can’t swear they’ll all work, mind, but they’re loaded and ready to go.”
Ack-Ack Macaque felt his teeth peel back from his gums. His pilots were looking to him, plainly shocked and badly frightened. None of them were warriors. He spoke loudly, to cut through their confusion.
“Okay, sweethearts, this is it. ‘The Commonwealth expects’, and all that crap.” He strode to the leading plane, and hopped onto the wing beside the open cockpit canopy. He knew he had to say something to motivate and inspire them, but, “Follow me, and don’t get yourselves killed,” was the best he could come up with. In annoyance, he flung a hairy arm at the distant warship. “I’m going to land on that big bastard and try to rescue my friend. Your job is to keep it busy. Try to stop it deploying its doomsday weapon before the jets get here.”
Cigar clamped in place, he glared around at their upturned faces. Like startled owlets, they blinked back at him. They were weekend hobbyists pitched into an unforeseeable war. When the firing started, they’d be lucky not to crash into each other, let alone take on the enemy. Still, they were all he had, and he knew he had to make the best of them. If this was going to be his final flight, his last battle, he was damned if he wasn’t going to take it seriously.
He snapped his heels together and threw them a stiff salute. Then, with as much style as he could muster, he turned and dropped into the pilot’s seat.
Oh well, he thought. Here goes nothing.
HE BARRELLED ACROSS the London sky with the other four planes arranged in a line behind him. This new Spitfire wasn’t the same as his old one. Like horses, every plane had its own character and set of quirks. This was a Mark V, with wings clipped for greater manoeuvrability—a model he hadn’t flown before. A few of the controls were in different places, and the stick felt jumpier than he was used to. Nevertheless, it was still a Spitfire, and he thrilled to the guttural growl of its engine. Like him, it was a relic from another time.
Ahead, the Gestalt warship loomed like a cliff face. Ack-ster, it’s Paul.
“What is it?”
We’ve received a signal from the RAF. Planes are scrambling from the Shakespeare and Verne. They should be with you in five minutes, and suggest you hang back until they arrive.
“Screw that, I’m going after K8.”
A fresh volley of missiles burst from the underside of the behemoth, and he followed their white smoke trails down to the ground. That was Downing Street gone. The Parliament buildings and large areas of Whitehall already lay in ruins. The invasion seemed to be proceeding exactly the way he’d told Victoria it would, with a decisive first strike aimed at destroying the country’s political and military leaders.
Well, not on my watch, motherf*ckers!
With his left hand, he pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go. The Gestalt ship hung in his gun sights.
“Okay, spread out,” he told his wingmen, “concentrate your fire on the gun turrets and missile launchers. Try to knock out as many as you can.”
He watched them peel away to either side, taking up attack positions, while he held his course, hurtling straight at the enemy. He couldn’t afford to show fear or hesitation. Somewhere on board, the Leader would be watching. He would guess who was piloting the lead Spitfire, and be ready to attack at the first sign of weakness or hesitation.
This was a test of courage. They were sizing each other up.
Stabbing at the radio with a gloved hand, Ack-Ack Macaque changed the frequency.
“Okay,” he said into his mike, “it’s me. I’m coming aboard.”
As if in reply, fire erupted from every turret he could see. Lines of tracer raked the sky. Anti-aircraft missiles streaked like sparks. And, one by one, his Spitfires fell. The first two disappeared in greasy fireballs. The third seemed to fall apart in midair, hacked to bits by bullets. The fourth pulled up sharply—a sure sign the pilot had been hit—and tipped over onto its back. He watched it dive on Lambeth, accelerating into the road just shy of the bridge. And, just like that, all four of his wingmen were gone, blown away before any of them had managed to fire even a single shot.
When he looked up, the airship’s guns had all swivelled in his direction.
“Oh, bollocks.”
His squadron hadn’t stood a chance; and now, if he was at all mistaken about the Leader’s desire for a face-to-face confrontation, neither did he. For a long, long moment, he kept driving forward, into the teeth of the arsenal arrayed against him, knowing it would be fatal to flinch now. If he was right, this was all still part of the pre-fight posturing. The Leader was demonstrating his superior firepower, and Ack-Ack Macaque his courage. Essentially, they were beating their chests and circling each other.
For tense seconds he continued to hurtle at the juggernaut. Then he heard a burst of static over his headphones, and a familiar voice hissed, “Welcome, my brother. I am flattered you have decided to accept my invitation.”
Ack-Ack Macaque felt his hackles rise. His tail thrashed against the cockpit wall.
“Screw you.”
“Crude as ever, I see.” The Leader sounded weary, almost bored. “But it can’t have escaped even your limited attention that I have you at something of a disadvantage.”
Ack-Ack Macaque pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. The gun barrels twitched in unison as they tracked the movements of his plane. He was beaten, and he knew it.
“Just tell me one thing.” He fumbled one-handed for a cigar. “What do you want with me? First you send Reynolds, now all this. Why’ve you got such a hard-on for my approval?”
The Leader didn’t speak for a few moments. When his voice came back over the airwaves, his tiredness held an edge of disappointment.
“Don’t you feel it too?”
“Feel what?”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to meet another one of your kind? Haven’t you ever been lonely?”
Ack-Ack Macaque jammed the cigar between his teeth. The black armour plated flank of the airship filled his entire forward view. If he didn’t pull up soon, he’d hit it dead centre, at three hundred miles per hour.
“So,” he rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, “you’re looking for a playmate?”
“No, my simple brother.” The Leader gave a half-hearted chuckle. “I’m looking for a lieutenant. Now—” his voice hardened. “—I want you to come aboard.”
Ack-Ack Macaque pulled back on his stick, and the Spit’s nose rose towards the low grey clouds. He zoomed over the whale-like back of the airship and looked down. “You haven’t got a runway.” All he could see were a few helipads, with choppers and VTOL jets parked on them.
“You have a parachute.”
“F*ck off.”
“If you want to see your little friend again, you’ll do it.”
Ack-Ack Macaque snarled.
“If you’ve hurt her—”
“I’ll give you thirty seconds.”
Ack-Ack Macaque screeched, and hammered the Perspex canopy with his fists.
“Twenty-eight…”
He thought of K8 and took a long, shuddering breath through his teeth.
“Twenty-six…”
“Okay, okay.” He wiped his right eye with the back of one hairy wrist. “I’ll do it. But I’ll need to gain some altitude, or the ’chute won’t open properly.”
The radio crackled.
“Understood. But we’re still tracking you. Try anything idiotic, and I’ll blow that balsawood kite out from under you before you can blink. Capeesh?”
Ack-Ack Macaque’s shoulders hunched, and he drove his plane skyward.
“Yeah, I got you.”
As the Spitfire’s prop drilled into the rainclouds, he took a last look downwards, and saw a glint at the airship’s bows. What was that?
Were they windows?
A wicked grin smeared itself across his face. His plane circled upward in a narrowing spiral, like a vulture riding thermals above a wounded buffalo, and then the clouds enveloped him and everything turned to fog.
* * * aS Soon aS the monkey’s plane vanished into the overcast, the Gestalt warship opened fire on the Tereshkova. Bullets punched through the black and white zigzags at its bows, piercing all five hulls. Propellers sparked and windows smashed. Radio aerials snapped and fell.
On the Tereshkova’s bridge, Victoria grabbed for support as the floor lurched. In the doorway behind her, William Cole yelped as he was thrown against the frame.
Slowly, the bow began to turn.
Clinging on to the arm of the pilot’s chair, Victoria shouted, “What are you doing?”
“Turning away,” Paul’s voice quailed through the intercom speakers. Bullets rattled against the aluminium hull like hail clattering on a tin roof.
“No!” She pulled herself upright. “If you turn sideways, you’ll just make us a bigger target.”
“What, then?”
She glanced at the cloud layer.
“Take us up. Follow the monkey.”
“I can’t!”
The front windows shattered, and Victoria ducked.
“Why not?”
“We’re losing gas from the port hull.”
“Jettison it!” The Tereshkova’s five hulls were kept in place by lightweight steel girders. Up until last year, they could only be disengaged manually. Then, after damage to one of the outer hulls had almost cost the whole craft, one of Victoria’s first acts as Captain had been to install explosive bolts at all the key junctures.
“It’s losing buoyancy,” Paul protested. “It’ll crash.” “Better it than us.”
She heard a detonation, and the deck shook. She couldn’t tell if it had been the bolts, or a shot from the Gestalt.
“Separation complete,” Paul reported.
The Tereshkova’s four remaining hulls quivered like a wet horse, and began to rise. The hail of bullets paused as the sudden change in altitude threw off the Gestalt’s gunners.
Through the howling gap where the window glass had been, Victoria caught sight of the discarded section pitching down towards the city like a kilometre-long torpedo, trailing smoke and debris. Almost in slow motion, it dove into the shadow of the Gestalt craft and hit the brown waters of the Thames, throwing up a huge fan of spray. The nose smashed against the piers of Westminster Bridge, crumpling even as the bridge cracked and buckled before the weight of the impact. Clumps of masonry fell into the river. The fins at the stern rose into the air, hung there for an instant, impellers still spinning wildly, and then crumpled back with a splash.
“Jesus.” William Cole joined her behind the pilot’s chair.
“You said it.”
“No, I mean those engines. They’re nuclearpowered.”
“They’re designed to survive crashes.”
“Will they?”
“Who knows?” Right now, irradiating half of London was among the least of her concerns.
She lost sight of the chaos on the ground as the Tereshkova reached the clouds. For a moment, the bombardment wavered, but quickly picked up again with equal ferocity.
Damn. For a minute there, she’d thought they might find cover in the overcast.
“They must have infrared tracking.” Paul’s voice held an edge of panic. The deck shuddered again. “We’re taking damage to all sections. Venting gas in a dozen places.”
Victoria turned to Cole, who was in the process of brushing glass and dust from his hair and beard.
“Take your family,” she said, “and get out.”
He looked at her, wild-eyed.
“Marie can’t move.”
“Then find a way to move her.” She seized him by the shoulders, span him around, and shoved him at the door. “Allez-y!”
He ran off unsteadily into the corridor, heading aft.
She heard the blang, blang, blang of bullets punching through metal and flinched. Her hand went to the sword at her side.
“What do we do?” Paul cried.
“How the hell would I know?” With the Tereshkova literally falling apart around them, her options were shrinking by the second. “How much longer can we stay airborne?”
“Assuming they don’t hit the airbags again, another ten minutes. Twelve at the outside.”
“Not good.”
“And we’re losing manoeuvrability.”
She shook her head.
“Putain de merde.” She climbed into the pilot’s chair and pressed the ship-wide intercom. “Attention all hands,” she barked. “This is the Captain. Assume crash positions. We are going down. Repeat. We are going down.”
a t the top of its climb, the Spitfire emerged from the clouds into sunlight, and stalled. As it hung vertically in the clear air, with its prop spinning at the cobalt sky, Ack-Ack Macaque pulled the goggles back over his face, and dragged open the canopy. He had only seconds before gravity’s fingers brought the nose down and the plane began the long fall earthwards. Bracing himself against the lip of the cockpit, he used his knife to hack a strip from his safety harness. Then he stood up, and gripped the control stick with his prehensile toes.
“Think you’ve got me, f*ck-knuckle? Think again.” The plane began to slip backwards and he clung on with his feet until the nose snapped earthwards and he had it aimed where he wanted. With all the cloud and murk between him and his target, he had to line it up from memory, and then use the strip of harness to lash the stick in place. It was trickier than he’d thought it would be, but he did the best he could do in the few seconds available to him, and hoped it would be enough.
Falling nose first, the plane began to pick up speed. The wind flapped at the collar of his jacket. He crouched on the seat and leapt, arms and legs stretched out as if hurling himself from one jungle branch to another.
“Geronimo!”
He fell spread-eagled for a few seconds, towards the undulating carpet of cloud. Air rushed past his face, pulled at his hands and feet. Then, just as he reached the tops of the mashed potato-like peaks, the ’chute sprang open, jerking him back with a snap.
Swinging from its straps, he fell into the white and grey void, one hand on the lines, the other pulling a pistol from the holster at his thigh. He knew the enemy airship lurked only a few metres below the base of the clouds, so he wouldn’t get much warning before he hit it. But that also meant her defenders wouldn’t get a lot of time to shoot at him, either. He’d only be vulnerable for a few seconds. And, if he came down where he hoped, they’d already have better things to worry about.
THE MIST LIGHTENED around his feet and he fell into clear air, just in time to see the ruined Spitfire whirling away from the airship’s bows, slipping from the toughened glass like a crushed butterfly falling from a car windscreen.
“Hell and damnation!” He’d hoped that by crashing it into the ironclad from above, the plane might have sheered the front of the ship’s nose right off—but it seemed to have done little beyond smashing half a dozen panes, and cracking a handful of others.
The deck rushed at him. As he’d expected, there were people waiting for him. Members of the Gestalt stood at intervals along the two thousand metre long craft, each dressed in an identical white suit, and each cradling an identical machine pistol. He put bullets in the nearest two, but then had to haul at the parachute and brace for collision. His feet struck the armoured surface with a shock that rattled his skeleton like a maraca, and he went limp, rolling with the impact.
He came to rest on the edge of one of the broken panes of glass, where the bow joined the body of the airship, his torso and legs on the metal hull, his boots dangling over the edge of the jagged hole. Flapping in the wind, the parachute tugged at him, and he flicked the release and wriggled out of the harness before it could inflate and drag him off the ship, dumping him onto the buildings below.
Weapons raised, the remaining Gestalt drones walked in his direction. They didn’t seem hurried. He heaved himself to his feet and plugged one. The man crumpled soundlessly, only to be replaced moments later by another emerging from a hatch. All along the airship’s length, Neanderthals in white suits were clambering from ladders and companionways. If he shot one, three more appeared to take their place. With their thicker bones, they were tougher than ordinary humans, and he knew he simply didn’t have the ammunition or strength to fight them all.
Behind him the splintered hole led down into a cavernous interior. He saw more glass far below. The entire nose was glazed, like the cockpit of a World War II German Heinkel. He glimpsed leaves and vines further back, in the body of the airship. The nearest treetop was maybe thirty feet below. With the heel of his boot, he kicked away the remaining glass splinters around the window’s frame. Shots were fired at him, and he paused to return the compliment, felling a white-clad woman with a silver beehive. Behind her, maybe fifty others shuffled forwards, their movements eerily synchronised. Treading as carefully as he dared, he balanced around the edge of the broken pane until he was at the lower edge, closer to the pointed bow. From here, he could see the trees more easily, and also some sort of wooden platform set with tables and chairs.
Thirty feet seemed suddenly more like forty. Still, there was no way to back out now. Muttering to himself, he re-holstered his pistol and backed off a few paces. The guys and gals in white opened fire again. Ducking, he made a dash for the hole, and threw himself headlong through it, aiming for the nearest trees.
His jacket fluttered around him as he fell into the comparative gloom of the airship’s interior. He saw the wooden platform—some kind of balcony— beneath him; but, before he could make out any more detail, he crashed into the upper branches of a coconut tree. The thick fronds snapped and tangled around him, catching his arms and legs, slowing him; and the trunk bowed, absorbing some of his momentum. Then he broke through, and fell, in a shower of twigs and leaf fragments, into a web of vines and creepers. He fell from one branch to another, until he ended up swinging from one leg, his right knee hooked over the lower branch of a potted cedar. His goggles hung down on their strap, almost touching the floor. The cigar remained clamped firmly in his teeth, but it had snapped midway along its length, and the loose end dangled in front of his eye.
Debris settled around him.
FOR A FEW MOMENTS, he was content to remain there, letting his shaken brain catch up with his precipitous descent. Then he heard clapping, and the Leader emerged from the trees.
“My dear fellow,” the monkey said, “that was quite an entrance. But then, I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything less.”
Ack-Ack Macaque spat out the remains of his cigar. Painfully, he reached up to grab the branch supporting him, and unhooked his leg. At this point, he felt more bruise than monkey, and every abused limb griped with its own chorus of aches and pains. He lowered his feet to the floor, brushed down his aviator jacket, and readjusted his eye patch.
“That’s nothing,” he rumbled. “Wait ’til I tell you about the time I made a jetpack out of fire extinguishers.”
The Leader bowed his head and made a welcoming gesture.
“Please,” he said, “we’ve been waiting for you. Won’t you join us?”
He turned and led the way through the trees, onto the veranda, and Ack-Ack Macaque trailed after him, rolling and stretching his stiff shoulders beneath his jacket. His boots crunched over shards of glass from the broken panes high above.
The veranda overlooked the interior of the airship’s conical nose. And there, silhouetted against the blue sky, a wrought iron table with three chairs, one of which was occupied.
“K8?” Her posture looked wrong. Instead of her usual teenage slump, she sat with her back straight and her hands resting on her knees. A half-finished cup of tea sat on the table before her, gentle wisps of steam curling upward past her unseeing eyes. “What have you done to her?”
“Oh her, she’s fine.” The Leader dismissed the matter with a flick of his hand. “It’s you I want to talk about, my brother.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Then how should I address you?”
Ack-Ack Macaque curled his lip. “Most people use my given name.”
The Leader pulled back a chair, scraping the metal legs on the veranda’s wooden planks, and gestured for him to sit.
“But that’s just the point,” he said, “Somebody gave you that name, and the identity that goes with it. They made you, just as they made me. The difference between us is that I had the wherewithal to think outside the box, to reject the paradigm handed to me by those damn dirty apes, and forge my own identity. Create my own brand, if you like.”
Ack-Ack Macaque remained standing. His fingers curled and uncurled. He’d been primed for a fight, but this clown seemed intent on talking him to death.
“Look at you,” the other monkey continued, walking around to stand behind K8. “A monkey in a flying suit? You’re a joke to them. A living cartoon character; a plaything created for a game, still playing out that game in real life.”
“And what are you?”
The Leader’s eye narrowed.
“I’m a self-made monkey. I’m a king on many worlds, a pharaoh on three. I’m practically a god.”
“Because you turn everybody into mindless puppets?”
“On the contrary, my brother.” He placed his hands on K8’s shoulders. “They are not mindless, quite the reverse. They retain their thoughts and memories, but share them with the wider consciousness. They become part of a giant web of humanity that stretches across the timelines, linked by transmitters like the ones on this ship. A multi-global harmony of thought and reason.”
K8 hadn’t reacted to his touch.
“They’re still zombies.”
“Not at all.” The Leader shook his head. “They’ve simply surrendered their initiative to that of the consensus. Their individual identities remain, and are preserved as essential parts of the whole, rather than isolated sparks of awareness. The things which make them unique human beings are the things about them we cherish most.” He patted K8’s shoulder proprietarily. “Take your little friend here, for instance.”
Ack-Ack Macaque looked down into her face. Her features were smooth and untroubled, her eyes focussed on the middle distance.
“She has become one with the collective.” The Leader bent around and spoke into her ear. “Isn’t that right, Katie?”
“Yes, Leader.” Her voice was a calm monotone that seemed to come from somewhere far behind her face. Hearing her speak, Ack-Ack Macaque felt a hollow open in his stomach. It was an upturned, empty, impotent sensation.
“You still remember everything, don’t you, Katie?”
“Yes, Leader.”
“Even this reprobate here?”
Her eyes swivelled up to focus on Ack-Ack Macaque, and he felt a wild surge of hope.
“Yes, Leader.” Her tone remained flat, her gaze cool and dispassionate, accepting his presence without reaction.
Rage burned like a flare in his chest.
“No…”
He drew himself up and glared: a direct physical challenge.
The Leader stepped back from K8’s chair and straightened his tie.
“Really?” He looked sceptical. “We’re the only two of our kind in the world, closer than brothers, closer than twins. And you want to fight?”
Ack-Ack Macaque squeezed his aching hands into fists.
“You’re damn right I want to fight.”
The other monkey gave a snort.
“Then I’m sorry, but you leave me no other choice. Katie, if you please?”
Without changing expression, the girl reached under the tea cosy on the table and produced a pistol, which she pressed to her own temple.
“Make another move,” the Leader growled, “and she’s dead.”