“We don’t have a craft,” Merovech said. “We’ve got some experimental engines but nothing to bolt them onto.”
“Then I’m sorry, your highness, but I don’t see how we can help.” Victoria got to her feet. “Unless you need us to evacuate you to another parallel?”
Merovech set his jaw.
“I won’t leave my people to die.”
“You may not have a choice.” They stood looking at each other for a moment, and Victoria couldn’t help but admire his bravery and dedication. The boy who never wanted to be king had grown to be one of the finest kings the Commonwealth could ever have hoped for. At the rail, Ack-Ack Macaque took the cigar from between his teeth.
“I’ve got an idea,” he rumbled.
Victoria gave him a look. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” He leant back, resting his elbows on the bamboo, the butt glowing between his fingers. “I’ll need to check it with K8, but yeah, I think I know how we can stop that asteroid.” He picked something from the hairs on his chest, inspected it, and then popped it into his mouth. “This whole invasion thing, too.”
Amy Llewellyn frowned skeptically. “You really think one monkey can make that much of a difference?”
Ack-Ack Macaque stiffened. He stood straight and looked her up and down. “You really think I can’t?”
For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the cries of the birds in the upper branches. Then the Founder cleared her throat.
“You have a plan?” she asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting convened.
“That’s what I said.” Ack-Ack Macaque wouldn’t look at her.
“Care to share it?”
He turned back to the view through the airship’s glass nose. When he spoke, his voice was gruff.
“Well,” he said, “the first thing we’re going to have to do is capture one of those tanks.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HEAVY COAT
T
HE THINGS
A
CK-
A
CK
Macaque missed most about the
Tereshkova
were its watering holes. He missed hanging out on a barstool, eating peanuts and drinking daiquiris. The old skyliner had been built to transport passengers in comfort and elegance, and most of its half a dozen gondolas had sported at least one lounge area with a fully stocked bar. The
Sun Wukong
, on the other hand, was a warship. It had been built by a hive mind with no real interest in creature comforts. The crew cabins were spartan affairs, with steel-framed bunks bolted to the metal walls. The only touch of luxury was the forest built into the airship’s nose, and even that had its uses.
After the humans left through the brass door to return to the bridge, he spent a few minutes swinging through the upper branches, stretching himself, working out the kinks in his back and shoulders. The fight with Bali had left him battered, but he’d been bruised and hurting to begin with.
The Founder watched him from the patio table. She’d discreetly tipped her coffee into the soil at the base of one of the potted trees and replaced it with tea—black, with a slice of lemon—which she sipped as she waited for him. When he finally came down from the trees, she was sitting demurely, monocle in place and hands clasped in her lap.
“Do you feel better now?”
Ack-Ack Macaque growled. “I feel like hammered shit.”
“Are we going to finish our conversation?’
“What conversation?” He shuffled over and flopped onto a vacant chair. “You already told me you were pregnant.”
The Founder twitched her tail.
“I haven’t told you the best part, yet.”
Ack-Ack Macaque raised an eyebrow, too tired to move or really give a shit. “What best part?’
“It’s twins.”
The air drained out of him. He felt like a week-old party balloon.
“Twins?”
“A boy and a girl, as far as can be told.”
“Holy hopping hell.”
The Founder removed her monocle and polished it with a lace handkerchief.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“For the moment.”
“And you’re still going through with this idiotic plan to capture a Leviathan?”
“Yah.”
She twisted the lens back into place. “I thought that now you knew about the children, you might—”
“Might what?” Ack-Ack laughed bitterly. “Give up this life of adventure and settle down somewhere?”
“Don’t be childish.”
“Then what? What do you want from me?”
The Founder looked towards the vast, cone-shaped window that formed the airship’s nose. The daylight glinted on her monocle.
“When you told me you’d let Bali live, I thought you’d finally started to grow up. I thought you were starting to accept your responsibilities.”
Ack-Ack Macaque snarled deep in his throat. “Why the fuck do you think I’m doing this? You think I’m facing off against those tanks for
fun
?”
“Why else? This isn’t our fight. We could leave now, leave this world to Célestine and her minions, find a better one, a safer one...”
“Fuck that.” He leant his elbows on the table and leaned towards her. “Listen, lady. I saw some stuff on that last parallel, when I was in the woods.”
The Founder frowned.
“What sort of ‘stuff’?”
“Stuff that opened my eye.” Ack-Ack Macaque put a fist to his forehead and mimed an explosion.
“You mean the drugs that
female
gave you?”
“No, it was more than that.”
The Founder gave a dismissive snort. “If you don’t want anything to do with these children, just say so.”
Ack-Ack sat back with a sigh. “You don’t get it.”
“I’m quite sure I don’t. Why don’t you explain it for me?”
Frustrated, he ground his right fist into his left palm. “I saw the multiverse,” he rumbled. “All of it. Now, whether it was real or a hallucination doesn’t matter. I know what I saw.”
The Founder considered him with cool disdain. “And what else did you see? What ‘revelations’ were vouchsafed?”
Ack-Ack Macaque bit down on an angry reply. She could be as sarcastic as she liked, he was still going to say his piece.
“I know that if we run, now, we’ll be running forever.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Yes, yes we will.” He scratched his chest. “Because I’ve seen what happens—I’ve seen war and suffering. I’ve seen that wherever you go, wherever you run, there’s always some fuck-knuckle thinks he has the right to impose his will on everybody else. Look at Bali.” He lowered his voice. “Look at yourself.”
The Founder’s chin dropped. She squeezed her hands in her lap.
“That was a cheap shot.”
Ack-Ack Macaque swore, got to his feet and shambled over to the drinks cabinet. It was a box on wheels containing a few bottles and a stack of glasses, and had once been a minibar in an expensive New York hotel, before he’d liberated it by heaving it through the window into the pool.
“Don’t mean it ain’t true.” He knew he was being petty, but didn’t much care. After all, it was her who’d bombed London and killed all those people, not him, and he saw no reason to sugarcoat the truth. He rummaged in the cabinet and fixed himself rum and cola, dumping both into a tall glass without care for drips or spills. Once again, he missed the shabby elegance of the
Tereshkova
’s lounge, and the white-gloved stewards who used to mix his drinks.
Still seated, the Founder said, “So, this is where you’ve decided to make your stand?”
He stood straight, downed half the glass in a single swallow, and then wiped his lips on the back of his hand.
“I’m tired of saving the world,” he said. “If we keep jumping from one timeline to another, we’re always going to be butting up against trouble, in one form or another.” He took a second smaller sip; swallowed. “There’s always going to be somebody that needs their ass kicked.”
“You’d rather stay here and fight?”
Ack-Ack Macaque stuck his chin out. “Sure, why not? This is where I’m from. I’ve got friends here.”
“And that’s worth dying for, is it?”
He shook his head. “You’re not listening.”
“And you’re not explaining yourself very well.” The Founder unfolded her hands and stood. She brushed down the front of her skirt with a gloved hand. “I just want to be sure you know what you’re doing, and that you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
Watching her, and the bulge at her middle, Ack-Ack Macaque drained his glass. He clunked it down on top of the cabinet.
“I belong here,” he said. “I can’t run out at the first sign of trouble.”
“I’d hardly call impending global annihilation ‘the first sign of trouble’.”
“Whatever.” He reached up and snatched off his goggles and leather cap, and tossed them down beside his glass. “I’m talking about Victoria and K8, and Merovech. They’re...” He tailed off.
The Founder inclined her head. “They’re
what
?”
Ack-Ack Macaque swallowed. He felt foolish, and that only fuelled his irritability.
“They’re my troupe.” He fixed the Founder with a baleful eye, daring her to laugh, but she only smiled.
“So, you
do
care about something, then? You have chosen a side?”
“Shut up.” He stomped back to the rail and leant his weight on it. Through the airship’s nose, he could see the distant coastline of England lying like a green smudge on the other side of the Channel. Seagulls wheeled through the air like little white fighter planes. Ships carved long, foamy wakes across the calm waters.
Damn it all, what
had
Apynja done to him? What had happened to the days when he would have simply hopped into his plane and flicked the world the finger? When had he started giving a shit? He glanced back, around his shoulder, at the Founder’s pregnant belly and shuddered. It filled him with... what? Not dread, exactly. He wasn’t afraid of being a father. No, it was something else, something harder to pin down. For much of his life, as far as he’d been concerned, he’d been living on the edge of death, throwing himself into one dogfight after another, relying on skill and sheer bloody-mindedness to see him through. Now though, for the first time, he felt flutters of apprehension. Where previously he would have been itching to get going—to fly eagerly against the Leviathans in a battle to the death—now a strange fatalism gripped his heart. Mortality weighed on him like a heavy coat. When he thought of the children—his children!—growing in the Founder’s womb, he experienced a wave of sadness, almost regret, and knew in his gut that, one day, he’d go off on one of those damn fool missions and never return. One day, he’d leave them fatherless. In that instant, he knew it, and knew the Founder knew it too.
No wonder she’s pissed off.
He licked his lips and swallowed. His life had split in two. A crazy, reckless chapter had drawn to a close, and something new was waiting to take its place—an unexplored future with no maps or precedent, where everything to which he’d become accustomed would change.
He
would change. Truth was, he already had. For the first time in his life, death actually meant something.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
INCOMING
W
ITH
V
ICTORIA AND
Merovech on the bridge, the
Sun Wukong
retraced its steps, back towards the field near Paris where the portal stood. Merovech had stayed on board despite the express objections of his security people. He didn’t want to miss this. The only concession he’d made to their concerns was to don a helmet and flak jacket.
As the site of the incursion became obvious on the horizon, Victoria saw at least twenty of the large vehicles spread out in a fan shape, their huge caterpillar tracks having flattened trees, power lines and stone walls with as much ease as the first tank had flattened her helicopter. Above them, four ex-Gestalt dreadnoughts hung like armoured thunderclouds, dispensing volleys of missiles whenever a Leviathan dropped its shields for a split second.
“Looks like a stalemate,” she said. “The tanks can’t shoot the airships because they daren’t lower their force fields in order to fire, and the airships can’t hurt them in return while their force fields are in place.”
Merovech stood silhouetted against the front window, peering forward.
“So they’re just sitting there, looking at each other?”
“Not exactly.”
The cannon on the front of one of the Leviathans boomed, gushing smoke and flame. At the same instant, a rain of black torpedoes fell from the nearest dreadnought. Both vehicles rocked with the forces of impacts and explosions.
“It’s a war of attrition,” Victoria said from the command chair. “They’re going to keep plugging away at each other until eventually someone’s going to score a lucky hit, or they all run out of fuel and ordnance.”
“It seems so pointless.”
“Well, nobody ever said war had to make sense.” She rose and walked over to join him, right hand resting on the pommel of her sword. “The Founder says there are Gestalt advisors on each of the airships, helping coordinate the attacks.”
“I suppose that makes sense.”
“You don’t sound too keen?”
Merovech let his hands fall to his sides. “I know they surrendered, and I know they’ve been a big help with the rebuilding and everything.” His voice caught. The light shimmered in his eyes. “I just can’t forgive them for what happened to Julie.”
Without thinking, Victoria reached out and took him by the shoulder.
“It’ll be okay.”
He shook his head and put a hand to his mouth. “How can you know that?”
“Because I’m going through the same thing with Paul.”
“Paul’s dead?”
“Paul’s been dead for three years.”
“But his back-up?”
“It’s falling apart.”
Merovech swallowed, and wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Not unless you’ve got a way to get us to Mars.” Ahead, one of the dreadnoughts took a hit to one of its engine nacelles and peeled off, side-slipping away from the fight with all the majesty of an iceberg calving. Smoke trailed from its damaged impeller.