Hollywood stars pay for access to luxury underground shelters
“Nuclear Doomsday Clock” reaches one second to midnight
Thirteen killed in post office shoot-out
Oxygen signatures in atmosphere of extrasolar planet may indicate presence of life
Unification Day celebrations marred by anti-war riots in Glasgow, Manchester, and Marseille. Troops deployed
New government website tells householders how to ‘Protect and Survive’
UK couple feared missing after yacht found adrift off Isle of Wight
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
HYSTERICAL STRENGTH
T
HE
U
NIFICATION
D
AY
celebrations were being held on the liner’s upper deck, from where the assembled glitterati would watch the Mars probe’s ascent on a giant plasma screen. The upper deck was a well sunk into the top of the ship. Cabins, balconies and terraces surrounded it on all sides, providing shelter from the wind. A running track followed its outer edge, and a landscaped swimming pool took up much of its centre.
Looking down from one of the balconies at the rear of the arena-shaped space, Victoria Valois guessed that maybe a thousand people were milling in knots around the pool. The women wore evening dresses, the men black tie. Beneath the plasma screen—which currently showed a live BBC feed—a stage had been erected, on which a band played a medley of classic songs from the past hundred years, from the raw rock and roll of The Beatles’ early Parisian-influenced recordings, to the rave-punk beats of the latest cross-channel download sensation. Armed guards prowled the roofs of the surrounding cabins, but they were mainly looking outwards, at the ocean, rather than in at the milling crowd. Camera crews covered the stage from every angle, waiting for the big moment, when the Duchess would speak to the nation.
Victoria shrugged off the magic white coat, trusting her black jacket and trousers to keep her concealed in the shadows of the darkened balcony. In her hand, she gripped the retracted quarterstaff. Squinting, she scanned the deserted terraces surrounding the main arena, but couldn’t see anything monkey-shaped. She’d been expecting to find him at the centre of a brawl. Where was he?
The band came to the end of its set and shuffled off the stage. Victoria checked the time: only a few minutes until the launch—from a converted oil platform in the Bay of Biscay—of the rocket carrying the Mars probe. And, after that, who could tell? Had Merovech managed to get a message to the fleet in Hong Kong? Could war be averted? She felt a shiver run down the nape of her neck. For all she knew, the nukes were already in the air.
She put a hand to the bandage at the back of her head. The anaesthetic the monkey had given her seemed to be holding the pain at bay for the moment, but she knew it wouldn’t last forever, and the collar she wore to support her head chafed the skin beneath the hinge of her jaw. She should be in a hospital bed, she thought, rather than skulking around darkened balconies. And if she lived through the next few minutes, a hospital bed was exactly where she hoped she’d end up—although, she told herself, she’d rather die than become one of Nguyen’s androids.
Below, the crowd had begun to press expectantly forward towards the stage. In her head, she heard Paul mutter something.
“What did you say?”
He looked up, startled by her voice.
“I said, you should have left the big stick at home and packed a sniper rifle instead.” He held his hand up, and squinted along the length of his index finger, drawing a bead on an imaginary target.
Irritated, Victoria squeezed the quarterstaff.
“Perhaps you should have suggested that when we were planning this?”
Paul laughed. “This is planned?” He dropped his hand and shook his head. “And yeah, I might have said something, but you kept me on mute most of the time.”
“Can you blame me?”
His pale eyebrows shot up. “And what’s that supposed to mean.”
Victoria’s voice was a murderous whisper. “It means, now is hardly the time to be bitching and moaning about what we do or do not have. Now, either say something constructive, or
tais-toi
.”
She needed to be closer to the stage. Directly beneath her balcony, a raised first-floor terrace ran all the way around the edge of the arena. If she could get down to that, she could hopefully work her way around to the stage without being seen by the crowds on the arena’s floor. She glanced over her shoulder, at the glass doors from which she’d emerged. If she went back inside, she was more likely to bump into a security patrol, and she didn’t fancy getting lost in the
Maraldi
’s warren-like maze of corridors and stairwells.
Moving as stealthily as possible, she stepped over to the balcony’s side rail and swung her legs over. For a moment, she dangled by her hands, and then dropped. The fall took longer than she’d expected, and she hit the deck harder than she would have liked; but her parachute training kicked in and she rolled with the impact.
She ended up lying on her front beside a potted palm tree, at the end of a row of white plastic sun loungers. Keeping as still as possible, she lifted her head, braced for the sounds of discovery and alarm. But none came. Of the guards she could see on the rim of the arena, none seemed to be looking in her direction. Bars and cafés ringed the terrace, but they were all in darkness, shutters pulled and glass doors closed. The waist-high rail at the edge of the terrace hid her from the eyes of the crowd around the pool below.
In her head, Paul swore. His hand clutched the chest of his Hawaiian shirt.
“Jesus Christ! You could have warned me you were going to do that.”
“Sorry.”
Below, the crowd applauded. Using her hands, she pushed herself up into a kneeling position, and risked a peep over the rail. On the plasma screen, the BBC had switched to a live feed from the launch site. The rocket was a silver needle poking skyward from the clunky industrial frame of the repurposed oil rig, its flanks picked out from the surrounding darkness by the glare of powerful spotlights. Vapour streamed from its skin, catching the light.
In front of the screen, another spotlight picked out the figure of a woman, and Victoria felt herself tense. There she was: Her Grace Alyssa Célestine, the Duchess of Brittany; CEO of Céleste Group; and mother to Merovech, the Prince of Wales.
As she approached the podium, the crowd subsided. A new window appeared, superimposed over part of the picture on the plasma screen, showing a close-up of her face and shoulders. She held herself regally, chin up and shoulders back. Her necklace and tiara sparkled. Her greying hair had tiny roses woven into it that matched her lipstick, and her teeth were dazzling white. Her eyes, narrow and grey, surveyed the crowd.
Duchess Alyssa had been a successful businesswoman before meeting and marrying William in 2039; and she’d kept her independence, playing an active boardroom role in all her companies, in addition to her royal duties.
“My friends and honoured guests,” she began, her words echoing from speakers placed all around the arena. “It is with the greatest regret that I have to announce that the journey from England has proven too great a strain for my husband, and that he sadly passed away a few minutes ago.” She lowered her head. The crowd stood stunned. Victoria heard gasps. After maybe thirty seconds, Duchess Alyssa raised her head again, and her eyes bored into the camera.
“Just before he died, he asked me to convey the following message—”
At that moment, rough hands seized Victoria’s ankles and pulled hard. She found herself sliding backwards across the polished floor of the terrace, into the shade of an empty café. She tried to struggle, but the hands grabbed her shoulder and thigh, and flipped her over, onto her back.
Ack-Ack Macaque stood over her, regarding her with his one good eye, his pistol pointing at the bridge of her nose.
“Oh,” he said, raising the weapon. “It’s you.”
Victoria looked up at him in disbelief.
“What the hell are you playing at? You almost gave me a heart attack!”
The monkey grinned.
“Sorry, I had to be sure. From behind, you humans all look alike.”
Victoria elbowed herself up into a sitting position, and Ack-Ack Macaque crouched beside her.
“I’ve been working my way around this level,” he said. “So far, I’ve run into three armed guards.” He drew a finger across his throat.
Duchess Alyssa’s voice continued from the podium. Victoria said, “We should be down there. We need to get to the stage.”
“No worries.” Ack-Ack Macaque holstered his gun and drew a wicked-looking hunting knife. Victoria felt her eyes widen. Lord only knew where he’d got it, but she was prepared to bet its former owner wouldn’t be needing it back any time soon. He sprang to his feet, and reached down to pull her upright.
“Enough sneaking around,” he said. “Let’s try a good, old-fashioned frontal assault. I’ll clear a path, you get to the microphone.”
Victoria glanced up at the armed guards: tiny silhouettes against the night sky.
“What about them?”
“They won’t fire into the crowd.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Hell, no.” That goofy grin again. He led her over to the edge of the terrace.
“It’s too far for you to jump,” he said. “I’ll hold the rail and lower you.”
“Can you do that?”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
On the plasma screen behind the stage, the launch countdown had reached t-minus five minutes. In the upper right-hand corner of the screen, large white digits ticked off the remaining seconds.
They might as well be counting down to the end of the world, Victoria thought. She looked at Paul’s ghost, projected over her field of vision, and sighed.
“If we’ve got to go, I guess we may as well go out fighting.”
Before Paul could answer, Ack-Ack Macaque clapped Victoria on the shoulder.
“That’s the spirit!” He slithered over the rail and dangled by one hand. He raised the other to her. “Now you. Come on!”
Victoria hooked a leg over the precipice. The floor looked very distant. She guessed five or six metres. In her eye, she saw Paul cover his face with his hands.
Where’s your sarcasm now?
She let herself hang. Ack-Ack Macaque took her hand in his and lowered her. His grip felt like a wire trap. His body stank like a zoo. He lowered her and adjusted his hold. And before she knew it, her boots dangled above the arena floor, her hand gripped in the prehensile toes of his feet.
“Ready?”
She licked her lips. Now or never.
“Ready.”
The toes uncurled and she fell. She tried to roll as she hit the floor but, this time, she smacked her knee against the deck.
Swearing, she rolled over and scrambled painfully to her feet, trying to put as little weight on the throbbing joint as possible.
Ack-Ack Macaque landed beside her, lithe and nimble, hunting knife at the ready.
“Okay, lady,” he said. “I’ll see you at the stage.”
And with that, he was off, bounding towards the crowd. She flicked her quarterstaff to its full extent and followed, hobbling as best she could.
Ahead, the monkey crashed through the hindmost ranks of the audience. His knife flashed. His arms and legs became a windmill of savage blows. Taken by surprise, men and women screamed. Some crashed into the pool; others were felled where they stood. Panic spread like a bow wave before him, as the rows nearer the front turned to find the source of the disturbance bearing down upon them, yellow eye glaring, fangs gnashing. And on he ploughed, hardly breaking stride, as they scrambled to get out of his way.
She tried to keep pace. At first, the crowd were mostly too busy fleeing to pay her much attention; but that didn’t last. As they picked themselves up from the monkey’s assault, they turned on her, their eyes and mouths wide with murderous anger.
A young man in a white tux tried to rush her, and she fought him back. But by then, she was surrounded. She held the staff in front of her, circling warily.
“Stay back,” she warned.
On the stage, Duchess Alyssa had become aware of the commotion. Her speech faltered. And, at that moment, the BBC coverage behind her changed abruptly. The floodlit silver rocket vanished, and Merovech’s face appeared. He was seated in the Commodore’s chair on the bridge of the
Tereshkova
. A ‘breaking news’ banner scrolled beneath him.
“That’s enough!” he shouted, his voice ringing from the speakers around the arena. He drew himself up in the chair and glared into the camera lens. “My name’s Merovech, Prince of Wales. I am the rightful heir to the throne, and I hereby claim what is mine.”
Duchess Alyssa’s crimson lips drew back from her perfect teeth in a snarl of rage.
“No!” She turned to the side of the stage making ‘cutting’ motions with her hands.
Merovech ignored her. “I have been the victim of a dark conspiracy, an attempted coup. But despite that, I am here to take up my father’s crown.” He leant forward, towards the camera, his projected face glowering down at the crowd. “And my first act as your new king is to order the immediate withdrawal of our ships in the South China Sea, and the arrest of my mother, the Duchess of Brittany.”
The crowd erupted. Some were horrified, others applauded. Their voices filled the arena. The men surrounding Victoria looked at each other. And then one of them tried to grab her. She stepped back and brought the tip of the staff smacking up into his left temple, dropping him where he stood. But by doing so, she’d put herself in reach of the man behind her. His hands clawed at her shoulders. She tried to twist away, but the other two caught hold of the ends of her staff and yanked it from her fingers.
She heard gunfire, and renewed screams, but couldn’t see where they came from, or who was shooting. Her world collapsed into a blur of thrashing arms and legs. She felt herself punched and kicked. The gelware did its best to smother the pain of each blow. She lashed out and felt her knuckles crunch into meat and bone, but too many people were on her now, and she was suffocating beneath their weight. It was like trying to fight the incoming tide. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to kick, but her legs were pinned.