Hive Monkey (28 page)

A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE LEFT
his plane with one of the mechanics and, without stopping to watch the others land, made his way down through the airship to the bridge.

Stepping into the room, he pulled out his lighter and lit the damp cigar in his mouth, huffing great clouds of blue smoke into the room.

“Hey, Boss. What’s shaking?”

Alone in front of the main window, Victoria wrinkled her nose and flapped a hand in front of her face.

“We had a visit from your old friend, Mister Reynolds.”

“And how is the old bastard?”

Her hand went to the empty scabbard at her side.

“Dead.”

“Good.” Ack-Ack Macaque looked around at the unmanned workstations. “So, who’s flying this thing?”

“Paul.”

“Seriously?”

“He seems to be doing a reasonable job of it.”

Ack-Ack Macaque loped over to the window.

“Then I’m out of work?”

“Not at all, just redeployed.” Victoria crossed her arms over her chest. Medals jangled. “We need you on the front line.”

He looked at the distant towers of Central London, and tried to imagine them in flames, pillars of smoke reaching up into the clouds—a new Blitz to wipe away everything rebuilt since the last one.

“Who’s coordinating the defence?”

“Merovech’s enlisted some high-ups in the RAF. They’re trying to liaise with the Russians and the Yanks, but everybody’s talking at the same time, and no-one’s listening.”

Ack-Ack Macaque curled his lip. He had some strong opinions on the subject of commanding officers and top brass. When he tried to express them, words such as ‘arse’ and ‘elbow’ came to mind.

“So, we’re on our own?”

“No, we’ll have fighter support. There are two aircraft carriers steaming up the Thames, and we can call in planes from Air Command in High Wycombe.”

“What about the other cities?”

“From what I can gather, Edinburgh, Manchester, Paris and Belfast are covered. The rest will have to take their chances.”

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“There simply aren’t enough planes.”

Ack-Ack Macaque blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Well, I brought another five.”

Victoria turned away from the view. Looking down, he saw the capital opening up before them like an unfolding map.

“Listen,” she said, walking over to a cabinet set into the wall. Inside were half a dozen swords. She selected one and slid it into her scabbard. “There’s something else you can do, right now, that might just give us an edge.”

Ack-Ack Macaque removed the cigar from his mouth and held it between the fingers of his left hand.

“What’s that?”

“The leader of the Gestalt.”

He felt his lips draw back from his teeth.

“What about him?”

“He’s a version of you. He might talk differently, but deep down, you’re the same.”

“He’s a lunatic.”

“Exactly.” She came over and stood beside his chair. “Can you put yourself in his position? Can you think like him? You’re the best chance we have of second-guessing his tactics.”

Ack-Ack Macaque rolled the cigar thoughtfully.

“I thought he made his tactics pretty bloody clear.”

“Yes, but if we’re going to have any hope of defending ourselves, if we’re going to fight him, we need to know how his mind works.” She turned to a screen on the wall of the bridge, and it blinked into life, displaying a strategic satellite view of the city, with red and green icons marking the positions of known forces, and yellow arrows indicating major targets. “If you were him, what would you do?”

Ack-Ack Macaque gave the map a wary squint. Then he kicked himself to his feet and shuffled over to it.

“If it was me, I’d materialise here.” He tapped a point on the screen where the river snaked through the heart of the city, just downstream from Westminster Bridge. “And launch everything I had. Take it all out in the first few seconds: government, monarchy, civil service, everything. Wipe out every one of the bastards, and the battle’s over. There’s nobody left to give orders.”

Victoria stroked her chin. “Decapitate the state, you mean?”

“Yeah.” Ack-Ack Macaque couldn’t help grinning. “Knock out the high command, and you can mop up the foot soldiers later.”

“You wouldn’t just nuke the place?”

His grin spread. “I can’t lie, that would be very tempting; but I don’t think that’s his game. He doesn’t want everybody dead. He wants converts for his religion. He wants fresh brains for the hive, and he can’t have them if they’ve all been vaporised.” He took a draught of smoke, and then blew it out the side of his mouth. “If he can throw us into disarray, even temporarily, it gives his virus thingy space to work. By the time we’ve regrouped, we’ll already have been infected.”

Victoria leant close to the map, eyeing the Commonwealth Parliament—the seat of power for most of a continent.

“A single, overwhelming attack,” she mused, “and then all he has to do is sit back and wait for us to come to him.”

“Unless we nuke him first.”

She straightened up, eyebrows raised, her hand on the pommel of her replacement sword.

“Non! We cannot! This is London, for heaven’s sake. Eight million people!”

The monkey shrugged.

“Then all we can do is wait until he appears, and then hit him as hard as we can.” He scratched his cheek. “What does the girl say?”

“Lila? Pretty much the same.” Victoria let her shoulders drop. She ran a hand back across the dome of her scalp.

“There’s something else,” she said. “Reynolds left us a present before he died. It’s in the cargo hold directly above this room. If we’re not there waiting for the Leader when he arrives, ready to hand you over to him, it’ll go off.”

Ack-Ack Macaque gave a snort.

“That stupid fuck.”

Victoria frowned. “Reynolds?”

“No, the Leader. He’s just made his first mistake.”

“How so?”

“Because I
want
to get onto his ship.” He curled his hands, picturing his thumbs digging into the other monkey’s larynx, choking off his air supply. “He’s got K8. If I’m going to get her back in one piece, I’m going to need to meet him, face-to-face. And if that happens, I can kill him.”

“But he’ll know you want that, won’t he?”

Ack-Ack Macaque shrugged. “Yeah, I’m sure he does.”

“So, why does he—?”

“Because he wants to recruit me.” Ack-Ack Macaque tapped his temple. “And because he’s fucking nuts. He probably wants to fight me as badly as I want to fight him. There’s only room for one alpha monkey, and neither of us will stop until we find out which of us it is.”

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of you?”

He stuck the cigar in his mouth and grinned around it.

“It’s a primate thing.”

Abruptly, the map vanished and the wall screen cleared to a picture of Paul’s face.

“Heads up,” he said. “Something’s happening.”

The display changed again, to a BBC News feed. The volume was off, but the pictures spoke for themselves. They were being relayed from a camera in Trafalgar Square, on the steps of the National Gallery, looking south down Whitehall towards the tower of Big Ben. Above the roofs, the sky crackled with blue and white sparks. People were standing and pointing, or running for cover. Police vans tore past, lights flashing. A cloud of pigeons flew in front of the lens.

And then,
blam!
Something vast, black and impossible snapped into solidity above the city, blocking out the daylight. The picture went dark, and then came back up as the camera adjusted to the sudden shadow.

Ack-Ack Macaque scowled at the screen and swore under his breath. They were looking at the underside of an airship so large he couldn’t see its edges—just row upon row of gun emplacements; a scattering of engine nacelles; and more than a dozen large, armoured gondolas, each bristling with missile tubes and machine gun turrets. The thing had appeared partially inside the low cloud layer, and rivulets of displaced grey fluff rippled away to either side.

Turning away from the screen, he looked to the front window, and whistled. Ahead, the Leader’s flagship filled the skies. It must have been at least two kilometres long, more than twice the size of the
Tereshkova.
Its footprint stretched from Green Park to Waterloo, and every inch of it radiated a brutal menace.

And then, even as he watched, he saw the first missiles streaking down from the giant warship, hitting the self-same targets he’d just selected on the map, turning the skyline into a series of fireballs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE COMMONWEALTH EXPECTS

A
S THE FIRST
explosions still shook the capital, Ack-Ack Macaque dropped to all fours and scampered from the bridge. He threw himself up the nearest companionway. He had to get airborne. It was his default response, a reflex written into the software of his mind. He’d been created to re-fight a fictionalised Battle of Britain, and had scrapped his way through countless simulated air raids and scrambles. This was what he did, and what he knew. When the bell rang, you ran for your plane. It was as simple as that. In some ways, it was a comfort to find himself back in such a familiar situation.

Using his arms to haul himself upward, he charged up flight after flight of metal stairs, until he reached the top of the
Tereshkova
. By the time he got there, he was wheezing for breath, and coughing up globs of brown tobacco-tasting mucus. All five of the planes were waiting at the end of the runway. There wasn’t much room for them, but somehow they’d managed to cram themselves together. The pilots and solitary mechanic had been in the process of loading ammo belts into the machine guns built into the wings of the lead plane when the attack began, and had stopped to stare at the carnage, hands shading their eyes as they peered ahead.

“Hey!” He did his best parade ground yelp. “No time for gawping. I need these babies in the air, right now. How are we doing?”

The nearest pilot turned to him. Like the rest of this ad hoc squadron, he wasn’t military. He was a retired airline pilot, a volunteer at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and his face dripped fear and bafflement.

“Have you seen—?”

“Of course I’ve fucking seen it. Why do you think we need the bullets?” He pushed past, to where the mechanic knelt on the wing. The mechanic’s name was Smithy. He wore oil-stained overalls and a battered, shapeless cap.

“It’s okay, chief.” Smithy closed the lid of the ammo compartment and wiped his hands on an old rag. “This is the last one. I can’t swear they’ll all work, mind, but they’re loaded and ready to go.”

Ack-Ack Macaque felt his teeth peel back from his gums. His pilots were looking to him, plainly shocked and badly frightened. None of them were warriors. He spoke loudly, to cut through their confusion.

“Okay, sweethearts, this is it. ‘The Commonwealth expects’, and all that crap.” He strode to the leading plane, and hopped onto the wing beside the open cockpit canopy. He knew he had to say something to motivate and inspire them, but, “Follow me, and don’t get yourselves killed,” was the best he could come up with. In annoyance, he flung a hairy arm at the distant warship. “I’m going to land on that big bastard and try to rescue my friend. Your job is to keep it busy. Try to stop it deploying its doomsday weapon before the jets get here.”

Cigar clamped in place, he glared around at their upturned faces. Like startled owlets, they blinked back at him. They were weekend hobbyists pitched into an unforeseeable war. When the firing started, they’d be lucky not to crash into each other, let alone take on the enemy. Still, they were all he had, and he knew he had to make the best of them. If this was going to be his final flight, his last battle, he was damned if he wasn’t going to take it seriously.

He snapped his heels together and threw them a stiff salute. Then, with as much style as he could muster, he turned and dropped into the pilot’s seat.

Oh well
, he thought.
Here goes nothing.

H
E BARRELLED ACROSS
the London sky with the other four planes arranged in a line behind him. This new Spitfire wasn’t the same as his old one. Like horses, every plane had its own character and set of quirks. This was a Mark V, with wings clipped for greater manoeuvrability—a model he hadn’t flown before. A few of the controls were in different places, and the stick felt jumpier than he was used to. Nevertheless, it was still a Spitfire, and he thrilled to the guttural growl of its engine. Like him, it was a relic from another time.

Ahead, the Gestalt warship loomed like a cliff face.

Ack-ster, it’s Paul.

“What is it?”

We’ve received a signal from the RAF. Planes are scrambling from the
Shakespeare
and
Verne
. They should be with you in five minutes, and suggest you hang back until they arrive.

“Screw that, I’m going after K8.”

A fresh volley of missiles burst from the underside of the behemoth, and he followed their white smoke trails down to the ground. That was Downing Street gone. The Parliament buildings and large areas of Whitehall already lay in ruins. The invasion seemed to be proceeding exactly the way he’d told Victoria it would, with a decisive first strike aimed at destroying the country’s political and military leaders.

Well, not on my watch, motherfuckers!

With his left hand, he pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go. The Gestalt ship hung in his gun sights.

“Okay, spread out,” he told his wingmen. “Concentrate your fire on the gun turrets and missile launchers. Try to knock out as many as you can.”

He watched them peel away to either side, taking up attack positions, while he held his course, hurtling straight at the enemy. He couldn’t afford to show fear or hesitation. Somewhere on board, the Leader would be watching. He would guess who was piloting the lead Spitfire, and be ready to attack at the first sign of weakness or hesitation.

This was a test of courage. They were sizing each other up.