On the bridge behind her, the pilot’s and navigator’s workstations were unoccupied and empty, and the Commodore had full control of the vessel.
The elderly Russian’s skin seemed greyer than usual. His face held the washed-out sepia look of a photograph bleached by sunlight. The brass buttons of his jacket were unfastened, the sides held together only by the red sash that looped over his left shoulder and dropped to the empty scabbard on his right hip. Having instructed the flight computer to make the necessary course adjustments, the gnarled fingers of his hand lay on the keyboard of the SincPad set into the arm of his command couch. The other gripped the knee of his cavalry trousers.
“The sooner we are out over the Atlantic and away from Commonwealth airspace, the happier I will be.” He gave her a look from beneath his brows. “You do realise that we are all fugitives now, don’t you?”
Victoria pushed away from the concave glass wall. She said, “We’re not the ones plotting a coup.”
“Nevertheless, we are the ones harbouring an absconded prince, and a stolen monkey.”
“They can’t touch us here, though, can they?”
The old man looked grave.
“Ordinarily, no. Skyliners are neutral territory. But there has never been a situation quite like this one before. A claim for sanctuary from an ordinary criminal is one thing. A lost heir to the throne? That is something else again. Who knows what they might do to get him back? What they might be capable of?”
Victoria pushed her hands into the pockets of her long coat.
“What can they do?”
“Berg said they would burn this ship from under us.”
“Berg was a lunatic.”
“He was also a dangerous man, Victoria, and I would not disregard any of his threats.” The Commodore drummed his immaculately neat fingernails on the touchpad’s glass. “As a matter of fact, that is one of the reasons I invited you here. I wanted to talk. Have you given any more thought to my offer?”
“To join your crew?”
“Yes. You have a knack for sniffing out trouble, and you have shown you can handle yourself. I could use a person with your talents.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Do not be. I simply state the facts. Up here, we have the freedom of the skies. But we are also a target for hijackers, smugglers and terrorists. I need you, Victoria. I need your nose for trouble.”
Sunlight shimmered on the sea.
She said, “This thing with Paul—”
The old man raised a hand.
“You have to finish it. I understand matters of honour. But what will you do afterwards? Where else will you go?”
Hands still in her pockets, Victoria stepped away from the front wall.
“I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“Perhaps you should.” He accessed one of the softscreens on the cabin wall and tapped up a headline from the BBC. “Especially as the police now think that you killed Constable Malhotra.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I know it is bullshit, you know it is bullshit. But once the press got hold of it...” He waved exasperated hands at the black and white CCTV image of her that accompanied the story. “If you were a member of my crew, I could at least protect you.”
Victoria’s fingers brushed the padded headrest at the back of the empty pilot’s couch. The air on the bridge seemed cooler than elsewhere on the ship. The rear bulkhead bore a plaque, listing the
Tereshkova
’s place of construction as the Filton Aeroplane Works in Bristol, England; its date of completion as June 15, 1980; and its original name as the
Great Western
.
Seventy-nine years old, she thought with a tiny shake of her head. These grand old ships. Their designers had been in love with romantic twentieth century notions of sea travel, from a time when transatlantic liners such as the
Mauretania
were a byword for luxury and speed. Now, those passengers rich and impatient enough to pay the carbon tax could opt to fly the supersonic airliners, while the rest still cruised the skies in the cramped elegance of a skyliner’s cabin.
Looking back, she realised that the past six months she’d spent aboard the
Tereshkova
had been among the most settled she could remember. After university, her life had been one long whirl, constantly moving from job to job, from assignment to assignment. Paul had offered her a fleeting taste of stability, and she’d loved him for it; but their relationship had foundered on the rocks of his sexuality, and now he was dead, if not-quite gone, and nowhere else felt much like home anymore.
Her hand went out to touch the metal wall, its surface clogged beneath thickly accumulated layers of paint and memory. She thought of the changes it had been through, the people and places it had seen, and she felt a prickle of kinship. Like the
Tereshkova
, she’d travelled the world and, despite being battered and patched, clung to her identity. She’d done her time and plied her course, and here she still was, still toiling onwards when so many others had fallen by the wayside. A lifetime of constant travel. Every day different, every day the same. Nothing to hold either of them anywhere. No baggage, no regrets. Just the wide open sky and the shimmering horizon.
“Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.” In her pocket, the knuckles of her hand brushed the haft of the retracted quarterstaff. “But first, I need you to do something for me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HEROICS OF YOUTH
A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE LAY
in a foetal position amidst the scrambled, burning fragments of his shattered plane, and laughed. He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth. Fires smouldered around him. Thick, greasy roils of smoke filled the sky above him like greedy fingerprint smudges on a blue vase. And he was alive! He’d slammed his delicate, beautiful fighter into an iron deck at sixty miles an hour and survived with only a few cuts and scratches and some singed fur. He was alive, and as indestructible as a god. The laugh gurgled in his throat.
“You were right, K8. You were right.” His goggles were missing a lens. He pushed them up onto the top of his head. All those missions, all those desperate fights and daring escapes—he could have walked though them all with his head held high, and still prevailed.
He sat up, dislodging a shower of broken glass from his flight jacket. The air stank of spilled aviation fuel. His adversary’s plane lay enmeshed in crash netting at the far end of the runway, some hundred metres from where he sat, in the shadow of the conning tower. Brushing himself down, he climbed to his feet, reached into his jacket for a cigar, and lit it.
Here was where it would happen. He would kill or be killed and, if K8 was right, the world would know.
With the cigar clamped securely in place, he shuffled towards the other wreck, leathery fingers curling and uncurling above the holsters strapped to his thighs, ready to draw at the slightest provocation. He bore no malice to his replacement. The monkey didn’t know it was being used any more than he had. It would unquestioningly accept the world it found around itself as real, and play along accordingly. If anything, he pitied it.
The remaining Messerschmitts circled overhead like vultures, sensing death on the wind. Other planes had joined them, but none were fighting. They were waiting to see what he would do. He gave them the finger.
“Enjoy the show, creeps.” Although they didn’t know it yet, they’d had all the entertainment they were going to get from him. The game was over. This was the end. Gotterdammerung. The end of the war, and the end of this world.
Ahead, a figure ducked under the wing of the Spit caught in the nets. When it stood upright, he saw it had short, bowed legs and long, dangling arms. The jacket it wore was identical to his, but the creature had no eye patch, and looked younger than he did, with fewer wrinkles around its eyes and snout. A silk scarf fluttered at its neck. It carried a bazooka at its hip, and spare shells dangled from its waist.
“Who are you supposed to be?” The creature’s voice lacked the gravel of cigars and rum, and Ack-Ack Macaque felt the hackles prickle between his shoulder blades. His thumbs hooked over the tops of his holsters.
“Be careful who you’re staring at, boy.”
The bazooka shifted. Lips slid back from sharp, pointed teeth.
“Or what?”
Ack-Ack Macaque rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. The younger monkey’s eyes and stance betrayed the cheap heroics of youth, as yet unscathed by the endless, grinding procession of dogfights and lost comrades. He hadn’t yet had time to become bitter, to start questioning his place in the war and the world.
“Because I’m you, you idiot. At least, an older, less sanitised version of you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ack-Ack Macaque drummed his fingers against the butts of his Colts.
“What’s your name?”
“Ack—”
“Yeah, mine too. What’s your real name? Can you remember?”
The younger monkey let its mouth open and shut. Its tail twitched like a snake caught under a car tyre.
“They used to—”
“Yes?”
“Teiko. They used to call me Teiko.”
“Well, look around you, Teiko. The sky, the clouds. None of this is real.”
The younger monkey’s eyes didn’t move. The insolence of his stare bordered on direct physical challenge, and it was all Ack-Ack Macaque could do not to scream and leap in response.
The bazooka barrel wavered.
“It seems real enough to me,” Teiko said. “Now, talk. Tell me who you really are.”
“I am telling you, you’re just not listening.” Ack-Ack Macaque pulled himself up to his full height. “I used to be a character in a video game. Then I got out, into the real world, and they replaced me with you. You’re me, but with all the rough edges sanded off. You’re the reboot. You’re younger and you don’t smoke. I bet you don’t even drink, do you?”
The other primate’s lips slid back from its teeth.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Just tell me whose side you’re on. Ours,” his eyes flicked up at the circling Messerschmitts, “or theirs.”
Ack-Ack Macaque took the cigar from his mouth and said, “There are no sides anymore. That’s what I’m saying. All this, everything you see and feel and touch. All this is a game, an illusion, and you’re not really here. You’re lying on a couch in a laboratory with wires sticking into your brain.”
Teiko made an agitated, chattering noise.
“You don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why those German planes aren’t attacking. Ask yourself how I crashed my Spitfire into the deck and climbed out unhurt.”
“Shut up!” The bazooka barrel began to shake.
“It’s not luck that’s kept you alive, Teiko, it’s the game. You’re hard to kill because you’re the main character. You’re the one on the box. The one with your face on mugs and t-shirts and who-knows-what other crap.”
“I said,
shut up
.”
Ack-Ack Macaque screwed the cigar back into place. His hands dropped to his thighs, and he closed his fingers around the handles of his revolvers. All he had to do was draw and fire.
“Why don’t you try to make me?”
“I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t.”
The younger monkey raised the bazooka to shoulder height, ready to fire.
“Do you want to make a bet?”
Ack-Ack Macaque grinned around the soggy end of his cigar.
“Do you want to suck my balls?”
They held each other’s stare, their fangs bared in challenge. The moment stretched. The very air between them seemed to shimmer.
Come on, you bastard. Come on.
Ack-Ack Macaque saw his opponent’s eyes start to water. Leathery fingers squeezed the bazooka’s trigger. Smoke and flames blew from both ends, and Ack-Ack Macaque pitched himself sideways, as out flew a shell the size of a small freight train. He shoulder-rolled across the deck, and came up with the Colts gripped in his hands, his trigger fingers squeezing for all they were worth. Bullets spinged and spanged from the wrecked Spit’s bodywork. Teiko dropped the bazooka and lunged. Ack-Ack Macaque tried to plug him, but the guns seemed to twist away, the game unwilling to allow a fatal shot.
They crashed together and rolled, scratching, gouging and biting; trying to rip out each other’s throats. Teeth snapped, and Ack-Ack Macaque felt hot breath against the side of his face. He let the guns fall away and reached for the blade in his boot. If bullets wouldn’t work, he’d have to do it the traditional way, with an old school monkey knife fight.
A
MSTERDAM,
F
EBRUARY
2054. A shabby and poorly-lit warehouse by the waterfront. Stacked crates contain smuggled Armenian cigarettes, repurposed Japanese laptops and knock-off German porn. Dormant fork-lifts block the aisles like sleeping sentry robots. The air smells of blood, sawdust and monkey shit. In the centre of the room, lights hanging from the ceiling illuminate a makeshift ring: a circle of hay bales, and the crowd around it. Bets are taken, fistfuls of money are exchanged.
Ack-Ack Macaque stands panting in the ring, a cutthroat razor clasped in his hand. His forearm has been stained red and sticky to the elbow. He’s bleeding from a dozen cuts, but he doesn’t care. This is all he knows. The ring is his world, the fight his life.
At his feet, a flea-bitten chimp lies quivering. Thick ropes of blood pump from its slashed throat. Floating specks of sawdust spin and clump in the spreading puddle. The crowd are shouting. Some are incensed, others aroused. He doesn’t know the chimp’s name; and after four straight fights, he’s not entirely sure of his own. It certainly isn’t Ack-Ack Macaque. That name comes later, far from here, in a laboratory outside Paris. Right now, his nostrils quiver with the stench of sweat and pheromones. His arms shake with fatigue.
He looks down at his former opponent, in time to see the chimp rattle its last. The poor creature stops struggling. Its body goes slack and its bowels let go, adding to the stink and mess on the concrete floor.
Somewhere in the crowd, a woman watches. She works on behalf of an agency, which works in turn for Céleste. She’s been looking to procure a monkey with character and fighting spirit, and now she’s smiling. He’s won four straight fights. There are scars all over his body, and a filthy, yellowing bandage covering the gouged ruins of his suppurating left eye: he couldn’t be more perfect. Without taking her eyes from him, she reaches into her elegant Parisian shoulder bag to retrieve a white, platinum-sheathed SincPhone. Her fingernails speed-dial a number, and she puts the phone to her ear.