“We have to get to the bridge,” he said. A shell struck the bottom of the airship and Victoria staggered as the deck shook beneath her feet. Ack-Ack Macaque looked at her with his bloodshot yellow eye. “Come on.” His face had scratches; his jacket had become filthy, ripped and scuffed; his fur had been caked in mud and tangled with brambles and twigs; and his arms dangled loosely at his sides, as if he lacked the strength to lift them. God alone knew how long he’d been without food or sleep.
“No,” she said.
He blinked at her. “But—”
“No, I’ve got this.” She rolled her head, stretching her neck muscles in an effort to shake off the drowsiness of the drugs. “You get below. Take a shower. Get something to eat. Have K8 patch you up.” He opened his mouth but she cut him off. “Go on,” she snapped in her best captain-of-a-skyliner tone, “you’re no use to us if you can hardly stand.”
Now she was out of the chopper, and not in imminent danger of another crash, she felt better. And this wouldn’t be her first battle.
“I’ll call you if I need you,” she promised. A damaged rocket corkscrewed up into the sky and burst like a firework. Ack-Ack Macaque sagged with relief.
“Yes, boss.”
“Good, now get below.”
“Just one thing.” He lingered. “Their shields.”
“What about them?”
“They work both ways. They have to drop them to fire.”
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
The monkey gave a grim nod. “I clocked it in the field. That’s how the missiles got through to the second tank.”
Victoria felt her cheeks redden. So, that’s what he’d been doing. She’d been too busy running to pay attention to the ins and outs of the battle. Surprising herself, she lunged forward and caught him in a bear hug. He squirmed, and stank like an old carpet, but she held him tight, clinging to his leather-clad shoulders, feeling his whiskers prickle her cheek and neck.
“I’m so glad to have you back,” she said. She held him for a moment, then gave him a final squeeze and hurried up the companionway to the bridge, where she found the Founder in the command chair. The pregnant monkey looked at her through her monocle.
“Thank goodness you’re here, dear.” She wore a long velvet dress and a miniature top hat.
“What’s the situation?”
“Two tanks clobbered, dear, but more keep coming. Every time we hit one of them, another takes its place.”
“Keep firing.”
“I’m not sure we can, dear. Those tanks are shielded and we’re running out of missiles.”
The bridge trembled with the force of an impact. Victoria reached over to connect herself to the ship-wide intercom.
“Don’t waste your ammo,” she snapped, addressing the crew. “The Leviathans have to drop shields to shoot. Wait until they fire,
then
let them have it.” She clicked off, and turned back to the Founder. “Now, get out of my chair.”
“Yes, dear.”
She let the monkey move, and then slipped into place. There was no time to get comfortable. A quick scan of the tactical display showed that the Founder hadn’t been exaggerating: they were running out of ammunition at a frightening rate, and damage reports were coming in from all sections of the airship, nearly all of them tagged as urgent.
“We can’t take much more of this,” Victoria muttered to herself. It was time to call in reinforcements.
“Paul,” she said, opening the wireless connection between her cranial gelware and the
Sun Wukong
’s control systems, “get in there and get on the radio. Send out the following message with a general distress call:
Am fighting invasion from parallel world. Stop. Outgunned. Stop. Send help. Stop.
”
He blinked at her through his spectacles, eyebrows scrunched in puzzlement.
“Huh?”
“Please, I’ll explain later. For now, just do it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to call Merovech.”
“The Prince?”
“The
King
.”
Paul smiled. “Oh, I like him.”
A shell hit the underside of the gondola like a hammer striking an anvil. Klaxons wailed. With a lurid French curse, Victoria initiated the transfer, giving Paul the electronic equivalent of a hefty shove. He tumbled out of her head, his source code transferred from her neural prosthesis to the airship’s computer—his ‘home’ for the past two years.
She hoped he wouldn’t get lost in there. The computer’s file structures were labyrinthine and mostly undocumented, and Paul’s memory could hardly be described as being at its best; still, she didn’t have time to worry. All that mattered for now was that he sent the distress signal; everything else could wait. With luck, there’d be one or two dreadnoughts in the vicinity, fully armed and able to assist.
While he called for help on the radio, she accessed the ship-to-shore telecommunications console and typed in a private number, known to fewer than a dozen people. The phone line rang twice, and she found herself facing the image of a young woman in a business suit.
“Captain Valois? You’re back?”
“Who are you?” Victoria had to shout over the airship’s sirens.
“Amy Llewellyn, His Majesty’s private secretary. Are you calling to speak to him?”
The deck lurched again, knocking Victoria sideways. She had to grab the console’s rim to avoid being thrown from the chair. The air on the bridge smelled of burning electrical wire.
“This is an emergency.”
“I can see that.”
“Then stop blithering and put me through!”
“V
ICTORIA
?” M
EROVECH LOOKED
haunted. “Is the monkey with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I need to see you both, as quickly as possible.”
“That’s not going to be easy.” Victoria flinched as the airship took another hit. “We’re sort of busy right now.”
The young king narrowed his eyes, for the first time noticing the chaos around her.
“Why, what’s happening?”
She gave him a brief summary of the situation. As he listened, his expression grew darker and more troubled.
“I’ll send everything I can,” he promised. “How long can you hold out?”
“A few minutes at the most. We’re taking quite a hammering.”
He shook his head. “Then get out of there. You’ve done your bit.”
“But if we’re not here—”
“It won’t make much difference.” He glanced aside, consulting another screen. “We can have another fully-armed dreadnought on site within fifteen minutes; then another ten minutes after that, with a third close behind.”
A huge detonation shook the
Sun Wukong
, and it tipped a few degrees to starboard. They were losing buoyancy and the smell of smoke was growing stronger. Victoria put a hand to the scar tissue at the back of her head. She had no desire to be shot out of the sky again, especially so soon after her most recent helicopter crash.
“Okay,” she said, “we’re leaving.”
Merovech stood. He was wearing a charcoal-grey blazer over a black polo neck sweater. The camera followed his motion, tracking his face.
“Head for the Channel,” he told her. “I’ll meet you en route. I’ve got something I need to brief you on.”
“What about the invasion?”
Merovech shook his head, looking suddenly far older than his years. “Believe me, we’ve got worse problems.”
A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE LAY
on his bunk, wrapped in a towel. He had a glass of rum in one hand and a fat Cuban cigar in the other. He’d taken a long, hot shower and eaten the meat from a whole roast chicken. He’d even sucked the grease from its carcass. K8 stood in the doorway, bracing herself against the frame to compensate for the tilt of the deck.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
Ack-Ack Macaque took a luxuriant puff on his cigar and blew a line of smoke at the low ceiling. His bones ached and his muscles felt as if they’d been worked over with a meat tenderiser, but at least he’d scrubbed the dirt from his fur and filled the void in his stomach. Apynja’s drugs had worn off and he felt almost back to his old self.
“Better.” He stretched and yawned, baring his fangs. “I haven’t heard any sirens for a while. Are we still fighting?”
“We’re withdrawing. There are other airships coming in to take our place.”
Startled, Ack-Ack Macaque sat up. “What do you mean, ‘withdrawing’?” He couldn’t believe Victoria would run from a fight.
“Merovech wants to see us.”
“Oh, he does, does he?”
“He
is
the King.”
“So?”
“And he’s our friend.” K8 adjusted the lapels of her immaculate white jacket. “He says we’ve got more to worry about than a load of tanks in a French field.”
“Pah.” Ack-Ack Macaque clamped the cigar in his teeth and stretched his legs over the edge of the bed. He wriggled his toes. “How long until we get to London?”
“We’re not going to London. We’re meeting Merovech in Calais, in about an hour.”
“Time for a nap, then?”
“Maybe a quick one.”
Something in her voice caused him to pause. He gave her a look. “What’s the matter?”
She looked down evasively, like a teenager with a secret. “Nothing.”
He grunted. “Hey, K8, come on. It’s me you’re talking to. I can see there’s something bugging you. What is it?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She licked her lips.
“It’s the hive,” she said. “Now we’re home, we can hear them again.” She tapped her temple. “In here.”
Ack-Ack Macaque narrowed his eye. “But that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
K8 balled her fists. It made her look like the moody, freckle-faced adolescent he remembered. “We don’t know. Being away from them was difficult, but coming back feels like trying to catch the thread of a conversation that’s been going on without us. It takes some getting used to.”
Ack-Ack Macaque drummed his toes on the deck. “But it’s still what you wanted, right?”
She sighed. “We said you wouldn’t understand.”
Ack-Ack Macaque took the cigar from his mouth and rolled it between his fingers and thumb.
Bloody kids.
He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it was his fault she was as she was. If he hadn’t given her to the hive, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
“So,” he asked gruffly, trying to make conversation, “what are they saying?”
“All sorts.” K8 stretched like a cat. “Remember, there are close to a million of them. Some are still on the dreadnoughts, helping train crews from this timeline; others are on the ground, helping the rebuilding effort.”
“And what about the Founder?” Ack-Ack tried to keep his tone neutral. “Now Victoria’s let her out of her cage, won’t she be plugged back in?”
K8 gave a nod, and he scowled.
“What’s she saying to the hive?” Despite their mutual attraction, he’d never completely trusted the Founder, and had been deeply skeptical about her release.
“Not much. Just keep cooperating, keep working hard. That sort of thing.”
“That’s it, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“No insurrection?” The first time he’d met her, she’d been trying to take over the world. This new meekness seemed out of character, and he didn’t buy it.
“There is one thing.” K8’s face split in a sudden grin, teeth squeezing the tip of her tongue, eyes sparkling.
“What?”
She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle her amusement. “We shouldn’t say.”
Ack-Ack Macaque growled. “What’s she planning?
K8 shook her head. “It’s not like that, Skipper.”
“Then what is it? I know she’s up to something. If she so much as—”
“She’s pregnant.”
Ack-Ack Macaque’s head jerked back. The cigar fell from his fingers.
“
What?
”
K8’s smile broadened. “You’re going to be a daddy.”
Ack-Ack Macaque coughed. He worked dry lips but no sounds emerged from his throat. There seemed to be a disconnection between his brain and vocal cords.
K8 stooped to retrieve the cigar. She held it out to him, and he took it, fingers shaking.
“You’re shitting me?”
Her laugh was clear and bright, like a Highland brook. “We’re afraid not, Skip. It’s the truth.”
“And it’s definitely mine?”
“No doubt about it.”
With a groan, Ack-Ack Macaque sagged back onto the bedclothes.
“And everybody knows?”
“Only the hive.”
“Why hasn’t she told me?”
K8 spread her hands. “You’d have to ask her.”
He bared his teeth. “Oh, I intend to, you can be sure of
that
.” He glared at the rivets on the ceiling. “Where is she now?”
“She’s on the bridge, with Victoria.”
Tired stomach muscles protesting, Ack-Ack Macaque sat up.
“Then I should probably go and see her, huh?”
K8’s smile faded. “No, not yet. There’s something else you have to take care of first.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“It’s Bali. He’s been stirring up trouble.”
“Tell me something new.”
K8 bit the inside of her cheek. “He’s serious this time.” She started fiddling with her cuffs, then stopped as she realised what she was doing. “We don’t like it. He really thinks he should be in charge.”
Ack-Ack Macaque huffed. “Well, he can moan all he likes. If he wants to be leader, he’ll have to challenge me first. That’s the way it works.” He gave a snort. “And he’s hardly going to be dumb enough to do
that
, is he?”
The corners of K8’s mouth pulled back in a nervous grimace.
“Um...”
“You’re joking?”
“We’re afraid not.” She pointed upwards. “He’s waiting for you up in Hangar Three. Most of the other monkeys are up there. Some are just curious, but others support him.”
Ack-Ack Macaque’s exhaustion came flooding back, like a tide reclaiming a beach. “So, I’ve got a mutiny on my hands?”
“We’re afraid so.”
“Have I got time for a nap, and to get some clean clothes?”
K8 checked her watch—a habitual and obsolete gesture given the connections in her head. “He’s given you an hour. He says you forfeit if you don’t show your face by three o’clock.”
Ack-Ack Macaque bridled. “Cheeky bastard. What time is it now?”