“A radioactive wasteland.”
The Duchess laughed scornfully. “A clean slate. Can’t you see that, Merovech? Can’t you imagine a world without sickness and death? A world where we can strive for the stars, unfettered by bureaucracy and corruption, unencumbered by the weak and ignorant? A world where everybody works together, and everybody knows their place?”
Ack-Ack Macaque gave a snarl.
“You sound a lot like the people I used to fight.”
Célestine glowered down her nose. “And what would you know?”
Half crouched and ready to spring, the monkey let his lips draw back from his fangs.
“I know a fascist when I see one.”
The Duchess smiled.
“Call it what you like, you can’t stop me. None of you can. You can’t even kill me. There’s a copy of my mind on its way to Mars as we speak, and a new body waiting for me ashore. Nguyen will—”
“Nguyen’s dead,” Victoria said. “I killed him.”
“You?” For the first time, the older woman seemed genuinely taken aback.
Merovech took another step towards her.
“Put the axe down, mother.”
The Duchess backed up against the rail. Her nostrils quivered.
“No!” She glared around at the three of them. For a moment, Victoria thought she would let fly with the axe; but instead, evidently seeing no way out, the woman’s left hand dropped to the decorative handbag slung over her right shoulder, and emerged with her fingers clutching the knobbed fruit shape of a shiny black hand grenade. She hooked a thumb through the pull-ring. “Now please, all of you put your weapons down and step away.”
Merovech lowered his gun.
“You wouldn’t.”
Duchess Célestine’s eyes were narrow slits. “What have I got to lose? I may fall here, but I will rise again. As the Empress of two worlds.”
She raised the grenade and used her teeth to pull the pin from its mount.
With a cry, Merovech lunged forward, but she brought the axe around in a one-handed sweep that caught him on the left shoulder, sending him staggering sideways. The Uzi clattered from his grip.
“Idiot boy!”
Her cry galvanised Victoria. Without stopping to think, she squeezed the trigger of the pistol the Commodore had given her. It bucked in her hands. A loud bang, and the recoil almost shattered her wrists. Duchess Alyssa gave a grunt and looked down. The bullet had drilled a smoking hole through the fabric of her gown. The axe fell from her hand, and she tottered, still clutching the grenade. In Victoria’s mind, Paul yelled at her to get down, but she knew she didn’t have time to get away. The gangway offered nowhere to hide. The explosion would kill them all.
But then, from beside her: a streak of fur. Ack-Ack Macaque sprang forward in a flying crouch. He wrapped his long arms around the Duchess’s legs and heaved upward. She screamed, and he screeched, and together they tipped over the edge of the gangway, thirty feet above the floating dock beneath.
Victoria threw herself down beside Merovech, who moaned and clutched his shoulder, thick red blood slathering his fingers. Below, the grenade exploded in mid air. The gangway convulsed beneath her, smacking against her hard enough to drive the wind from her body. She tasted blood. The roar of the blast rattled the enclosed dock, battering her senses.
And then, there was nothing but the sound of fire alarms and the smell of burning.
She lay still for a long time, hardly daring to believe she was still alive.
The monkey had saved them. But at what cost?
She turned her aching head to the edge of the walkway, and her eyes caught sight of something brown wrapped around the chrome rail. She got to her feet, every inch of her body complaining bitterly, and struggled over to it.
Hanging by his tail, Ack-Ack Macaque dangled above the smoking black remains of a splintered, burning pontoon, his crumpled cigar still wedged between his teeth. Thirty feet below, gown shredded by the explosion, the Duchess lay face-down in the water.
“You’re alive!”
He glared up at her with his one good eye. With his cuts and scrapes, he looked like something from a taxidermist’s nightmare.
“Yeah. So, quit gawping and help me up.”
She reached for his outstretched hand.
“I thought, for a moment, that you were—”
“Me too.” He rolled the end of the cigar around in his mouth. “But, you know, once you’ve fallen out of a few trees, it turns out you get to be pretty good at catching yourself.”
With her thighs braced against the rail, she gave a heave. She helped Ack-Ack Macaque onto the gangway, and they both flopped down onto their knees, panting. From her jacket pocket, her phone rang. On the fourth ring, she pulled it out and answered it. The call was from Julie.
“Is Merovech there? Is he all right?”
Victoria glanced at the boy lying a few feet from her, still clutching his shoulder.
“He will be. What’s going on? Have we captured the ship?”
“Yes, but—” Julie’s voice faltered. Victoria could hear her breath rasping on the other end of the line. “I have some bad news.”
Victoria felt cold inside.
“What is it?”
“It’s the Commodore.” Julie’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ALL THE MYRIAD COUNTRIES STRETCHED BENEATH
A
S DAWN BROKE
over the Channel, clear and cold, Victoria stood on the rubberised helipad atop the
Tereshkova
’s central hull, looking out over the sea. There would be no stick fighting practice this morning: she had her right arm in a sling and, beneath the loose woollen jersey she now wore, extensive bandaging to hold her ribs in place.
In her left hand, she gripped the Commodore’s bloodstained tunic. One of the stewards had given it to her, along with an envelope addressed to her in the old man’s handwriting.
Injured as he was, the Commodore had finally been killed while capturing the
Maraldi
’s bridge: shot through the heart at point blank range, by a man already skewered on the tip of his cutlass.
Her godfather’s body now lay beneath a sheet in the
Tereshkova
’s infirmary, awaiting burial at sea.
She draped the jacket over the rail, and reread the letter.
My dearest Victoria
, it began.
I have no children of my own, and no wife.
Therefore, in the event of my death, it is my fondest wish that you become sole beneficiary of my estate—including ownership of the
Tereshkova
. My lawyers will be in touch to discuss the details. In the meantime, please take care of the old girl.
The end of the letter contained all the command codes and bank account numbers she would need to operate the old airship, and was signed with an ornate, and unreadable, flourish
.
The paper flapped in the breeze. She folded it in half, and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she reached out and touched the medals pinned to the breast of the stained tunic.
“Goodbye, old friend.”
Overnight, the airship had been partially patched. Another skyliner had arrived, and had donated part of its helium reserves to re-inflate a few of the
Tereshkova
’s newly-repaired gas bags. The sabotaged engine had been examined and declared safe, the bomb having failed to crack the reactor housing. And now, the skyliner loomed over the water, still listing slightly to starboard but otherwise buoyant, a couple of hundred metres from the damaged liner.
Looking across at the dazzling white ziggurat-like terraces of the
Maraldi
, Victoria saw where the upper stories had borne the brunt of the
Tereshkova
’s impact: smashed windows; snapped aerials; a broken funnel. The liner wouldn’t be going anywhere under her own steam for a while, and would be towed back to Portsmouth as soon as a hastily-despatched aircraft carrier arrived to take her passengers aboard.
Victoria planned to limp the
Tereshkova
back to Heathrow for repairs.
The wind blew in from the south-west, fresh with the promise of a new morning. Behind her, the sun climbed higher in the eastern sky, throwing her shadow across the fabric of the hull.
“It looks as if it’s going to be a nice day,” she said.
Floating in the air before her, Paul’s image smiled.
“You know,” he said, “for a while back there, I didn’t think we were going to make it.”
Victoria wriggled her fingers. Her arm felt stiff in its sling.
“Me neither.” But when the Commodore’s men had found her sitting on the gangway, watching the monkey trying to stem Merovech’s axe wound with rolled up folds of his own clothing, they’d brought the news she hadn’t dared hope for: that the British fleet had turned around, and was sailing for home with no shots fired. The holocaust for which she’d been bracing herself had been averted. At least, for today.
Now, standing on the helipad, she felt desolate and desiccated, as if every drop of fear and despair had been wrung from her.
“So,” Paul asked, scratching his bearded chin. “What now?”
Victoria turned and peered into the east, using her hand to shade her eyes from the sun’s orange glare.
“I don’t know. If the repairs hold long enough to reach Heathrow, I might stay here, on the
Tereshkova
.” She patted the pocket containing the Commodore’s letter. “It is mine now, after all.”
Paul shuffled his trainers on an invisible floor. “I meant, what now for you and me? Where do we go from here?”
“I guess that depends on how long you last before you start to fragment. The longest I ever heard of a back-up being run was six months.”
He looked sheepish. “Do you think you could put up with me for that long?”
Victoria pursed her lips.
“Perhaps.” She wouldn’t admit it, but she’d started to get used to having him around, and she didn’t like the idea of losing him. Too much had been lost already, and she didn’t want to go back to being lonely and alone.
“If we do this,” she said, “we’re going to have to come up with a few ground rules. I like your company, but I need my privacy, if you know what I’m saying?”
Paul held up his hands. “Oh, absolutely. Anything you want.” He grinned. “And who knows what will happen in six months? If I’m lucky, I might get an android body, after all. Then you’ll never get rid of me.”
Victoria pantomimed a shudder.
“What a horrible thought.”
She started hobbling back towards the hatchway. As she drew close, it opened, and Merovech appeared, with Julie in tow, her weight braced against a crutch.
The young King looked tired. He also had his arm in a sling, and an extensively bandaged shoulder; but he’d taken the time to shave and change. She looked down at the red military jacket he wore.
“It’s one of the Commodore’s,” he said. “Julie didn’t think you’d mind.”
Victoria smiled. “It suits you.”
Merovech stuck his lip out, clearly unconvinced.
“You have to address the nation,” Julie told him. “If you are going to be the king, you need to look the part.”
He took her hand in his. For a moment, they looked into each other’s eyes. Then Merovech turned back to Victoria.
“And how are you?”
Victoria blew air through her cheeks. “Oh, you know. Look like shit, feel like shit.”
He grinned.
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that we have all the members of the Undying cult detained. At least, the ones who were on the
Maraldi
last night. As for the rest, we have their names from my mother’s files, and the police can deal with them.”
Victoria looked around. “Where’s the monkey?”
Julie cleared her throat.
“He is down in the lounge, eating bananas and drinking daiquiris with the press. They cannot get enough of him and, frankly, I think he likes the attention. He is already talking about suing Céleste for the copyright to his image.”
“I hope he’s got a good lawyer.”
Merovech shook his head. “He won’t need one. With my mother dead, her share of the company passes to me. And it’s a controlling interest, so I can do whatever I like.”
“Well, you are the king.”
His young face darkened, like a cloud passing across the sun.
“For now, anyway.” He took her hand. “Thank you, Victoria. You’ve done so much, I can’t begin to—”
“Ah,
c’est rien.
”
“No, I’m serious. If there’s anything I can do, just say the word. How about a knighthood? A stately home? Something like that?”
Victoria laughed, and gently extricated her fingers from his grip.
“I don’t think so.” She turned to look back along the length of the hull, towards the airship’s tail. “I have a place here now.”
At that moment, Ack-Ack Macaque stuck his dishevelled head through the stairwell hatch. His fur looked patchy and ragged; he had a few new scars around his muzzle; and safety pins held the sleeve of his jacket in place. K8 had fashioned him a new eye patch from gauze, and he’d bummed half a dozen cigars from the assembled reporters.
“Hey,” he said. “What are you all doing up here? You’re missing all the fun.”
Victoria held up her hand, warding him away.
“We’ve all had more than enough ‘fun’ for one day, thank you.”
“Then what’cha doing?”
“We’re getting ready to leave.”
The monkey pulled himself up onto the helipad and lit a cigar. K8 followed him out, blinking in the sunlight.
“In that case,” he said, “we’re coming with you.”
“What about the cameras?” Victoria asked. “What about your fans?”
Ack-Ack Macaque stuck his bottom lip out. “I’m not cut out for stardom. I’m a pilot.” He blew smoke at the clear dawn sky. “And, with the old man gone, and his pilot injured, I’m guessing you could do with someone to fly this tub for you? Am I right?”
“Can you fly an airship?”
Ack-Ack Macaque cracked his knuckles.
“I can fly anything.” His face dropped into a simian scowl. “I’ve got a hell of a lot I need to figure out. This will keep me out of trouble while I decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. And besides, there’s a whole world out there that I never knew existed. I’d like to see some of it.”