CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THREADS
VICTORIA VALOIS MOANED, and tried to move. She was still seated in the pilot’s chair, but the floor of the Tereshkova’s bridge had crumpled inwards, its metal walls concertinaed by the force of the collision, and she now found herself wedged between the seat and the curved metal ceiling, held in place by the remains of the instrument console.
And beyond the ceiling, she thought, the bomb. Had it survived intact? Obviously, it hadn’t gone off, but that didn’t mean the impact hadn’t triggered some sort of malfunction. For all she knew, a countdown could be underway right now. And here she was, with her cheek pressed up against it.
She twisted around in her seat. The chair had been wedged sideways into the narrow gap between floor and ceiling—an uneven space filled with smashed furniture and broken sections of bulkhead. If she could get free from behind the console, she could probably crawl to the front of the bridge, and squeeze out through the remains of the front window; but the console’s edge pressed uncomfortably into her abdomen, pinning her against the back of the chair, and she couldn’t escape.
“Paul? Paul, are you there?”
Nothing. All the instruments were dead, and all the lights were off.
She tried pushing at the console but its metal stand had been bent in such a way that she couldn’t move it.
“Captain?”
The voice came from somewhere aft, beyond a section of deck that had cantilevered up into the ceiling.
“I’m here.”
“Captain, it’s William. Are you okay?”
She squirmed her hips, trying to wriggle her way out, but to no avail. She tried twice, and then fell back with a curse, slapping the instrument panel that held her.
“I’m stuck,” she said.
Cole didn’t answer straight away, but she heard him banging around.
“I can’t get to you,” he said. “Not without equipment.”
“How many of you are back there?”
“Four stewards, myself and Lila.”
“Marie?”
He paused again. “I don’t know. We can’t get to the infirmary from in here.”
“Can you get out?”
“We can climb through the main hatch behind the passenger lounge.”
“Then go. Don’t wait for me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just get out. Take guns, and do whatever you can. I’ll join you later.”
“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Good luck, Captain.”
“And to you.”
She listened to him work his way back into the interior of the gondola. Overhead, the main body of the Tereshkova’s central hull gave a loud, metallic groan as the wind caught it, and heeled it over slightly to the left.
It wouldn’t take much, she thought, to completely dislodge the Tereshkova’s carcass from its precarious perch atop the Gestalt vessel. A decent gust of wind, or some gentle manoeuvring by the bigger craft, could be enough to tip it off, and send it falling, to dash itself to pieces on the roofs and spires of Westminster.
If she were going to get free, she’d have to do it herself.
Closing her eyes, she mouthed the series of passwords that allowed her access to the command mode of the gelware processors in her skull. These slimy artificial neurons handled the bulk of her brain’s processing, regulating the physical functions that kept her body alive and working, as well as supplementing the damaged areas responsible for reasoning and memory. Stepping into command mode was a way of tinkering with their settings, and thereby changing the way her body behaved. Strictly speaking, it was cheating. It was not something the surgeons and technicians who’d installed the neural prostheses had bargained on her being able to do; but she’d pestered and cajoled them, using every trick in her reporter’s tool kit, until they’d finally given her the access codes.
Now, as she shifted her focus, her mind was pulled up, out of the hormone-washed gunk of her biological cortex, and into the crisp, rarefied air of pure machine thought. In this heightened state, she saw everything with luminous summer clarity, unencumbered by fear or anxiety. Life-threatening situations, which would otherwise have left her biological cerebellum quaking, became abstract puzzles to be solved, and self-preservation a desired outcome rather than an overpowering physical imperative.
Coolly, she considered the console in front of her, assessing its weak points and comparing them to her body’s capabilities, balancing necessity against acceptable levels of organic damage. It would be no good, for instance, to escape her present predicament only to find that, because she’d dislocated both hips in the process, she was unable to walk.
There.
Feeling under the console, her fingers found the point where the stand—basically, a steel tube sprouting from the floor—had been welded to its underside. That was the weak spot. If she could apply enough force, she could break the join and kick the stand free, thereby removing the thing that kept the console braced against her.
Pressing back in her chair, she brought her foot up so that it rested against the stand, just below the weld. Then, in her mind’s eye, she summoned up the menus governing adrenalin production and pain tolerance, switched off the safeguards, and turned all the dials up to maximum.
Mentally exhausted, she dropped out of command mode and her awareness fell, like a released fish, back into the comforting shallows of her natural mind.
In response to the changes she’d made, her renal glands were dumping huge amounts of adrenalin into her bloodstream. She felt her heart quicken, and her breathing grow rapid, drawing oxygen to her muscles. It was the classic ‘fight-or-flight’ response, and she’d found a way to weaponise it. Butterflies fluttered in her chest, and she itched with a sudden, smothering feeling of claustrophobia. She had to get out, and get out now!
She heard the whine of an electric motor, and a toy car bumped and trundled through the gap where the forward window had once been.
“Paul?”
The car wobbled towards her on its thick, knobby tires, and paused a few metres away. Her ex-husband’s image flickered into the gloom of the wrecked bridge, crouched in the confined space.
“Hello, Vicky.”
Gone was the Kamikaze headband. Now, he’d reverted to his default appearance: white lab coat over a garish green Hawaiian shirt, cargo pants, and ratty old trainers. His gold earring twinkled.
“Paul, you’re alive.”
He shook his head.
“No, I’m not. I’ve just downloaded myself into this car, but I’m still dead. And, unless you shift your butt, so will you be.” He eyed the ceiling dubiously. “This whole thing’s going to collapse.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try faster.”
Gritting her teeth, she pushed with her foot. Engorged with blood, the muscles in her calf and thigh, already hard from regular training sessions with her fighting stick, bulged like steel cable. “Come on,” Paul urged.
She felt the sole of her boot flatten against the steel pole, and pressed harder. The chair creaked under her. The quadriceps at the front of her thigh felt ready to rip in half. The back edge of the console rasped against the ceiling. Something had to give; she just hoped it wouldn’t be her leg or ankle.
She closed her eyes and kicked with every ounce of strength.
“Argh!”
With a crack, the weld split. The post clanged back, and the console came free. Victoria tumbled out of the chair, onto the uneven remains of the deck. Her foot throbbed, but she didn’t have time to worry about that now. On hands and knees, she followed Paul’s car forward, across the smashed glass and plastic littering the remains of the bridge, to the window.
As she emerged into daylight, she saw the Tereshkova’s prow rising above her, and gave the wall of the smashed gondola a final pat.
“Goodbye, old girl.”
Following Paul, she rolled out from under the skyliner and got to her feet. Her right foot was sore, but the gelware kept the pain in check.
They were on the armoured upper surface of the Gestalt battleship. Further along the two hundredmetre length of the Tereshkova’s pancaked gondola, she could see Cole and his daughter. They were heading in her direction. Behind them, four of the Commodore’s stewards had taken positions behind air ducts and missile turrets, and were keeping at bay a group of armed Gestalt. Pillars of black smoke rose from the city below. Fighter jets screamed overhead, raking the ironclad with cannon fire.
“Come on,” she called to Cole. “We need to get inside.”
The writer carried a Kalashnikov. The wind blew his hair up like the wing of an injured bird.
“No,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “I have to go back. My wife—”
“Leave her.”
“But—”
Victoria put a hand to his cheek, turning his face to hers.
“She can’t walk, and we can’t carry her. And if we don’t get down inside this thing and kill that monkey, she’s as good as dead anyway.”
Cole looked down at her with red-rimmed, haunted eyes.
“No,” he said, his voice firmer and more decisive than she would ever have believed. “I lost her once, I can’t lose her again.” He stepped back. “I’m sorry Captain, but I have to do this. I can’t leave her. I won’t.” And with that, he turned and walked back towards the stern.
Victoria let him go. In his position, she would have done the same.
Had done the same.
She glanced at Paul. He glanced back.
“Hell to it,” she said.
Lila was still standing in front of her, an automatic pistol held to her chest. Victoria looked from her to her retreating father.
“Are you with us?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your mother—?”
The girl clenched her jaw. “She’ll understand.”
“Okay, then.” Victoria drew her fighting stick. They’d wasted enough time already. “In that case, you go ahead, and shoot anything that moves.”
VICTORIA AND LILA made their way to an anti-aircraft turret near the bows. Paul’s car trundled after them. The installation had obviously been hit by one of the circling jets. The domed roof had been peppered with fist-sized holes, and the white-suited Neanderthal inside lay dead and mangled in his chair, thick blobs of glossy blood dripping onto the deck from the tips of his hairy fingers.
Behind his chair, a hatch opened onto a narrow companionway. The stairs led down into the interior of the airship. They were only wide enough for one of them to descend at a time, and were a lot steeper than those on the Tereshkova. As Victoria ducked under a low stanchion, she figured they must be have been designed to allow the gunner to reach his post, rather than as a means of general access to the roof.
With Lila in the lead, they crept down, ready to shoot or stab, and acutely aware that if only one member of the Gestalt caught sight of them, the whole of the hive mind would instantly know about it. Victoria had to carry Paul’s car under her arm. She felt a bit bad about letting the girl go first, but Lila was much better armed than she was, and handled the weapon with a respectful nonchalance that spoke of training and experience.
The companionway wound down through the ship in a spiral, eventually ending in a heavy oval hatch that would have looked more at home on a submarine than an airship.
Lila peeped through the porthole in the door. “Corridor,” she whispered.
“Clear?”
“Two guards at the bow end.”
“What are they guarding?”
“Big brass door.”
“How are we going to get past without them seeing?”
“Can’t.”
“What, then?”
Lila pursed her lips. “Look, it’s big and brass, it’s
at the bows and there are two guards. Whatever’s behind it has got to be important.”
With her left hand, Victoria gripped the handle of her fighting stick; with her right, she put the toy car down and reached into the pocket of her tunic.
“What’s that?” Lila asked.
“A tracking device.” Victoria thumbed the power button and waited for the screen to boot up. When it did, it showed a series of concentric green circles, which indicated distance in units of ten, fifty, and one hundred metres. A red direction arrow bobbled about. “I find it useful for keeping tabs on the monkey.”
“Does he know?”
Victoria shook her head. “Are you kidding? I got a vet to insert the microchip while he was passed out drunk, after we lost him for two days in Las Vegas. He doesn’t even know it’s there. If he ever finds out, he’s going to go berserk.”
She held the little device flat in the palm of her hand. The arrow swung back and forth, and then settled.
“Alive or dead,” she said, “he’s behind that door.”
“Right, then it’s decided.” Before Victoria could stop her, Lila pulled the hatch to the corridor open. Without stepping out, she leaned around the frame and fired twice, and then twice again. The shots echoed loudly in the steel-walled corridor. Victoria’s nostrils twitched to the familiar tang of gun smoke, and she heard the thuds of bodies hitting the deck.
Lila raised the pistol to her lips and blew.
“Okay,” she said, “the guards are down. But now every white suit on this ship knows we’re here.”
Victoria slipped the tracker back into her pocket, and grinned. She couldn’t help herself. Right now, they had nothing to lose. She felt liberated, and dangerous. She reached down and picked up the toy car.
“Then we’d better make this quick,” she said.