Hive Monkey (17 page)

The evil cult at the centre of the story provides a set of suitably sinister villains, prone to brainwashing recruits and bumping off enemies, and I particularly like the scarily plausible way that Cole shows them insinuating themselves into society.

All in all, I’m going to give this one an eight out of ten. The story’s exciting and fast-paced, and certainly a page turner—but I could have done without so much existential moping on behalf of the main character, as it made him look like the disappointingly soft centre of an otherwise tough and enjoyably hardboiled tale.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

BRINGING A MONKEY TO A DOGFIGHT

P
USHING THE OLD
Spitfire to the limits of its performance, Ack-Ack Macaque soared high into the bright morning sky, his right eye never leaving the dragonfly silhouette of the departing helicopter. It looked fast, but he was sure he could catch it; and it never hurt to have the high ground in a dogfight.

Paul’s voice came over the radio.

Hey, Ack-ster. What are you doing, man?

“I’m going after K8.”

But how are you going to stop them? You can’t shoot them down with her on board.

“I’m not going to shoot them down, I’m just going to shoot bits off their chopper until they agree to land.”

Are you serious?

Ack-Ack Macaque grinned around his cigar, his earlier tiredness gone.

“Damn right.”

The altimeter nudged ten thousand feet, and he tipped the nose forward and down, aiming it at the back of the fleeing chopper. He wanted to come at it from behind, exploiting the blind spot caused by the bulk of its rotor mounting. With any luck, they wouldn’t see him coming until he was already on top of them, and he’d be able to get a couple of good shots through the engine before they started weaving around.

The engine’s pitch changed as the Spitfire began its dive, and his lips drew back from his teeth. He hadn’t had a proper dogfight since being pulled from the game. Ahead, his target barrelled eastwards into the morning sunlight, seemingly oblivious to his pursuit. He watched it grow in his crosshairs.

He gripped the stick with both hands, and clamped his cigar tightly between his teeth. He wanted to get good and close before he opened fire. The chopper could stop in the air, he couldn’t. He needed to make his first shot count. They were over farmland now—that great swathe of patchwork fields that stretched along either side of the M4. If he could get a quick burst through the engine without peppering the cockpit, he might be able to force it down without killing anyone—especially K8.

So intent was he on his target, he didn’t see the attack drone spiralling down from above until it opened fire. Cannon shells punched through his wings and fuselage. The cockpit canopy shattered.

“Yowch!” He dragged the stick back into his left hip, throwing the plane over, trying to roll out of the line of fire. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of a shark-like profile, with two enclosed engines and short, stubby wings laden with missiles. The drone was an unmanned, jet-propelled weapons platform, and the Spitfire was no match for it. He could twist and turn all over the sky, but all that the drone had to do was follow and shoot. A single missile would be enough to finish him, and that thing looked to be packed with them.

“Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck.”

He’d lost sight of the chopper but that, right now, was the least of his concerns. Squinting against the rush of cold air, he clawed his goggles down over his one good eye, and shoved the stick as far forward as it would go, throwing the Spitfire’s nose at the ground. If he stayed up here, his life expectancy would be less than a few seconds. His hundred-and-fifteen-year-old plane was no match for a modern, computerised targeting system. His only hope was to get low, and try and lose himself in ground-level scenery.

For a moment, he missed his days in the game. Although he hadn’t known at the time that he was, as far as the other players were concerned, technically immortal, he’d at least had the reassurance that he’d never be pitted against anyone with a better plane than him. The Spitfire and the Messerschmitt ME109 were reasonably matched in terms of weaponry and performance. The playing field had always been level, and the conflicts decided by the respective skills of the pilots involved. But in these days of autonomous decision engines and laser guidance, skill meant a hell of a lot less than it used to. All a drone pilot had to do was steer his craft within a mile or so of his target and press a button.

Creaks and groans wracked the airframe as the Spit drilled down through the air, hammering towards the green baize billiard table of a grassy field. Ack-Ack Macaque, head half-frozen by the wind, held his nerve for as long as he could; until he fancied he could see each individual blade of grass. Then he hauled back on the stick, pulling out of the dive with his wings in serious danger of clipping the trees and hedgerows at the field’s border. If he could stay low enough, with the belly of his plane almost kissing the dirt, the drone’s missiles wouldn’t have enough room to manoeuver; they’d plough into the soil or hit a pylon before they could zero in on him.

At least, he hoped so. But being so low had its own share of hazards. Not only was he in constant danger of smashing into a telegraph pole, lamppost or church spire; he was also too low to bail out if something went wrong. If the Spitfire were hit, he wouldn’t have time to leap out—and if he did, his parachute wouldn’t have time to open—before he hit the ground at three hundred miles per hour.

He weaved from side to side. He had no idea where the drone was, only that it was behind him somewhere. He didn’t dare tear his one good eye from the onrushing scenery. With trees whipping past his wingtips like the skeletal fingers of ghouls trying to snatch him down, a moment’s inattention would be fatal.

His lips drew back in a fierce grin.

“Ah, to hell with it!”

Sparing one hand, he reached into the side pocket of his flying jacket and pulled out his petrol lighter. A quick flick of the thumb, and a blue flame roared in the wind. He used it to light his cigar. If he had to go down, he was going to do it in style.

T
HE FIRST MISSILE
hit an old oak tree a few metres behind and to the right of the Spitfire’s tail, with an explosion that threw Ack-Ack Macaque forward and sideways against his harness. He saw a fireball in the shattered remnants of his rear-view mirror, but didn’t have time for more than a quick glance.

“Damn and blast!” He threw the stick to the left, and then hauled it back over to the right, hoping to throw off his enemy’s aim. If there were more missiles, he couldn’t see them. He flashed across a motorway at streetlamp height, and crossed a set of train tracks. Ahead, a line of hills stood like a frozen wave. Pylons marched across the ridge. And still he couldn’t see the drone. The thing was built for stealth. It was designed to flit across warzones, raining death and mayhem on convoys and bunkers. His fingers curled around the firing controls, aching to shoot back. In the game, he’d taught his pilots to turn and face any attack. The drone might be a state-of-the-art killing machine, but a well-placed volley of tracer rounds would fuck it up the same as any other plane.

He hopped a hedge, into a long, wide field. With nothing to hit but brown soil, he risked a peep back, over his shoulder. The drone was a speck in his wake, above and behind him, black against the bright blue sky. As he watched, a flame shot from beneath its starboard wing: another missile on the way.

Ahead, the ridge of hills bore down upon him. He could go up and over—but when he reached the crest, he’d be plainly visible against the skyline, exposing his backside to the drone’s cannon. Better, he thought, to stay low and fight dirty.

To his left, the motorway carved into the hills, and he angled his nose in the direction of the cutting. If he could get low enough, he could squeeze under the twin bridges of the junction, and emerge on the other side with a barrier between himself and the drone. But it was going to be tight. He couldn’t fly up the middle of the road, as lampposts lined the central reservation. He’d have to confine himself to the westbound carriageway. As he powered down towards the tarmac, he realised that the four lanes of the carriageway measured no more than forty feet, which gave him less than five feet of clearance at each wingtip. But by that point, he’d already committed himself. He couldn’t pull out, and he couldn’t afford the slightest wobble.

Unfortunately, he was flying into the teeth of the oncoming traffic. Being early on a Sunday morning, there were thankfully few cars on the road; but, as the first bridge rushed at him, he saw a big, eighteen-wheeler bearing down on the junction from the opposite side. There wouldn’t be room for both of them under the second bridge; so, unable to manoeuvre, he took the only course open to him. His thumbs mashed down on the firing control, and the plane shook as all eight machine guns cut loose.

Bullets hammered the front of the truck. The radiator grille and front bumper flew apart, tyres burst, and the vehicle slewed to the side. Its front fender hit and crumpled against the metal barriers at the edge of the hard shoulder. It was still moving forward, but it was slowing.

Ack-Ack Macaque’s Spitfire cleared the second bridge and he hauled the stick back into his groin, dragging the nose up. For a second, he thought he wasn’t going to make it. The eighteen-wheeler filled his windscreen. He locked eyes with the terrified trucker at its wheel. And then it was gone, snatched away beneath him, and he was airborne, wheeling up into the sky over Wiltshire.

Behind him, the drone’s second missile hit the side of the first bridge. He didn’t stop to watch. Instead, he was pulling his plane around in the tightest possible circle, crushing himself into his seat with the g-force, and lining up on the junction again, this time from the other side.

As he bore down on the bridges, the underside of his fuselage almost scraped the roadway.

“Well,” he muttered, “this has to be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve done all day.” To have cleared both bridges once was a miracle; to attempt the same feat again was madness. He saw the drone ahead, moving uphill towards him, framed by the chalk sides of the cutting. For the moment, he was hidden. The drone’s computer couldn’t make him out; he was lost in the background noise, obscured by cars and bridges and smoke. He might remain hidden only a few seconds, but, with his opponent exposed and blind, a few seconds were all he needed.

The Spitfire boomed under the first bridge, wingtips inches from disaster. The noise of the engine bounced back at him from the concrete overhead. The wind snatched at the hair on his cheeks, and threw sparks from the cherry-red tip of his cigar. Grinning, he squeezed the firing control. Eight lines of glittering tracer converged on the drone’s bulbous, sensor-packed nose. He flashed into sunlight, then into shadow again. Passing under the second bridge, he kept the control depressed, knuckles white, pouring everything he had at the oncoming machine. A wild screech ripped from his throat.

“Die, motherfucker, die!”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

NO MORE MISTER NICE MONKEY

A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE NURSED
the damaged Spitfire back to the
Tereshkova
, and pancaked her down on the airship’s runway. He had nowhere else to go. By the time he’d finished with the drone, the helicopter had gone, having disappeared into the countryside at treetop height. He hadn’t even known in which direction it had gone, and his plane had been too shot-up to go searching for it, so he’d come limping home instead, seething all the way.

As he climbed out of the splintered cockpit, he saw Victoria waiting for him, along with Paul’s hologram, the American writer and the orange-haired woman.

“What the hell do you lot want?” He wasn’t in the mood to talk. All he wanted was to wring the necks of the Gestalt clowns who’d snatched K8; to choke the life out of them with his bare hands, watch their tongues loll and their eyeballs bulge. Especially Reynolds. Oh, how he’d love to get his fingers around the throat of that smug prick. Without breaking stride, he stalked past Victoria, heading for one of the hangars. He was going take a helicopter and start trying to pick up K8’s trail. She could be a hundred miles away by now, in any direction, but he had to try. He knew the odds were against him, and that his chances of finding her were miniscule; he just didn’t know what else to do.

“Wait up.” Victoria ran to keep up with him. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going after her.”

“I know. I want to help.” She caught his shoulder, but he shrugged her off.

“Then stay the fuck out of my way.”

“No.” With surprising strength, Victoria took hold of his arm and spun him to face her. Her eyes were narrow and her nostrils wide. “This isn’t just about you. This was an attack on all of us. Somebody waltzed onto my skyliner and kidnapped a member of my crew. Not even the CIA would be stupid enough to do something like that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a declaration of war against you, me, and the
Tereshkova
herself.”

He glared at her through the cracked lens of his flying goggles.

“Then get out of my way, and let me find them.”

“You don’t have any idea where they are.”

He flapped his arms in exasperation.

“Then I’ll go down to the city and pick one of the bastards off the streets. They’re all linked, aren’t they? So it doesn’t matter which one we get. I’ll just beat the shit out of him until he tells me where they are.”

Victoria pursed her lips as if considering this. Then, regretfully, she shook her head.

“We’re in enough trouble already, thanks to your stunt on the motorway. If we’re going to strike against the Gestalt, we have to do it directly, without civilians getting in the way.”