“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. The
ir 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.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
OPTIMISED PEOPLE
VICTORIA STAYED IN the pilot’s chair. She had nowhere else to go. Around her, the old skyliner moaned and squealed its torment. Wet air barged through the shattered windshield, hurling debris and loose sheets of paper around the bridge.
“Nine thousand feet,” Paul intoned over the speakers. Victoria gripped the console in front of her, trying to make sense of the readouts and winking lights. Her mind kept flashing back to the helicopter crash, the one in the South Atlantic more than two years ago; the one she should never have survived; the one that had left her a half-human cyborg.
How much of her would be left after this one? “Can we steer?” She spoke to stave off the panic that thrashed inside her. Most of the screens on the bridge were dead. A small one set into the console lit with a projection of her ex-husband’s face. He still wore his round spectacles, but he’d somehow found the time to add a red and white Kamikaze headband to his image. Spikes of peroxide yellow hair stuck up above it like the bristles of an unwashed paintbrush.
“Barely.” He bit his lip. “Eight and a half thousand. Best guess is we’ll be coming down somewhere between Victoria Embankment and St. Paul’s.” “Can we turn?”
“What difference does it make?” He waved his arms. “Wherever we hit, we’re going to be hitting buildings.”
“Not if we land on the airship.”
He looked at her open mouthed. He took his glasses off, and then put them on again.
“Come on,” she said. “If we discard the other three hulls, we’ll be small enough. He’s bigger and wider than us.”
He pushed the glasses into place with an index finger. “But, what if we glance off?”
“Who cares?” She felt a dizzying sense of freedom, and knew the gelware in her head had cut in, suppressing her fear in a blast of clear thinking machine clarity. “We’re going down anyway.”
“But the Ack-ster—?”
“He’d do the same.”
Paul thought about it. The wind howled through the bridge.
“Okay,” he said after a few seconds. The deck heaved to port as he used the ship’s remaining rudders to bring her about. “What choice do we have?” He swallowed. “Seven thousand…”
Victoria couldn’t see anything ahead but cloud. They were still in the murk, but the number of shots hitting them had dwindled.
“Get the stewards up here,” she said. “As soon as we hit, I want them out, ready to fight.”
“What about Cole and his daughter?”
“Everybody fights.”
She watched the interior of the cloud slide past the window. Heading set, the Tereshkova lurched forward again, every last drop of engine power being used to propel it forward, and down.
Almost immediately, the Gestalt’s bullets resumed their clatter. Victoria ducked.
Paul said, “I think they’re onto us.”
“Then let’s give them something else to shoot at.” She leant close to his image. “Jettison the hulls.”
A series of bangs rattled the length of the skyliner, and the deck surged under her as the weight of the other sections fell away. They were on their own now, just one airship in a crowd of four. To the Gestalt gunners, reliant on infrared images, they must look like a sudden fleet of ships—or a gigantic wreck. But this obfuscation came with a price. Most of the engine nacelles and rudder fins were on the outer hulls. Losing them left the central section almost helpless. In effect, they were riding a kilometrelong balloon with only a single impeller to push it along. Now that they were locked on course for a collision, there was nothing they could do to alter their decision. They had lost the manoeuvrability needed to change course. Like it or not, they were going to hit the ironclad, and hit hard.
“I’m getting reports in from other skyliners around the globe.” Paul flashed some images onto a sub-window behind his face, making him look like a newsreader. Over his shoulder she saw aerial battles over foreign cities; burning planes, exploding buildings.
“Are we winning?”
He bit his lip.
“Not even slightly. There are too many ’ships, and not enough cooperation.”
“So we’re losing?”
“We’re getting annihilated.”
The bridge bucked as the remains of the Tereshkova hit turbulence. Then they were out of the cloud, with the broad bulk of the enemy ship directly ahead, and their abandoned hulls falling around them like spent rockets. They were seconds from collision with the Gestalt. Tracer bullets hosed the sky, their lines of firefly sparks joining the two ships. With one finger, Victoria pulled back the attitude control and raised the nose, bringing up the bow.
She touched the image of Paul’s face on the screen.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He didn’t hear her.
“Brace!” he yelled, his voice echoing through the ship. “Brace, brace!”
“WELL,” THE LEADER said with a thin smile, “it seems we have a stand off.”
He stepped backwards until he reached the veranda’s bamboo rail. Teeth bared, Ack-Ack Macaque glowered at him. Between them, K8 sat impassively, the barrel of the gun she held making a slight indentation in the short-cropped ginger hair above her right ear.
“Let her go, shitweasel. You and I need to settle this, monkey to monkey.”
The Leader shook his head.
“You still think you can fight me?” He seemed amused. “Look at the state of you.” He leant his elbows on the rail. “I’m surprised you can even stand.”
Ack-Ack Macaque gave him the finger.
“Spin on it.”
The Leader laughed, and turned his face to the broken glass ceiling.
“Oh, my friend. Why must you think of me as ‘the bad guy’? Surely even you can see the good I do?” He stretched out his arms. “There are entire worlds out there that know nothing of war or hunger. They have no crime or suffering, no murder or terrorism. No loneliness. Just world after world of happy, optimised people, working and str
iving together towards common goals.” He interlaced his fingers. “Togetherness, mutual understanding and brotherhood. That’s what it’s all about.” He checked his ornate wristwatch. “As your world will discover for itself, in a few short moments.”
“Says you.”
The Leader tugged his lapels, straightening his jacket.
“My fleet has begun to seed the skies with little machines, each with the dimensions of a single molecule. The process will take a few moments. After that, these little machines disperse themselves on the wind, adapting and assimilating every human with which they come into contact. Within hours, the world will be as your friend here.” He drew back his lips in a smirk that was half smile, half challenge. “You can be as sceptical as you like, ‘Ack-Ack’, but I build utopias. Good ones. Better than anything you’ve currently got.”
“We’ve got our freedom.”
“And what good is that? Last year, you almost blew yourselves up in a thermonuclear war.”
“We didn’t though, did we?
The Leader flicked dismissive fingers. “Only by the unlikeliest of chances.”
Suddenly, he frowned. He opened his mouth to speak again, but broke off before he’d uttered a complete syllable.
“That’s strange, “ he said, tipping his head to one side. The frown grew deeper. He looked at Ack-Ack Macaque. “My connection…”
Ack-Ack Macaque heard a strangled noise and glanced down at K8. She was looking straight back at him. Her features were pale and strained, and her teeth were clamped together. A single bead of sweat ran down the side of her forehead. The hand holding the gun began to shake. Behind her, the Leader cried out in pain and put a hand to his brow.
Ack-Ack Macaque looked from one to the other, and realisation dawned.
“Holy shit!” He sprang forwards and seized K8’s arm. It was her. She was fighting back. Somehow, she’d found a way to resist.
Twisted like wires around the pistol’s grip, her fingers didn’t want to relinquish the weapon, but he managed to pry them apart just as her knuckle whitened on the trigger. He jerked her hand free, and the gun went skittering across the wooden decking, and clonked against a plant pot.
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