Hive Monkey by Gareth L Powell

Author:Gareth L Powell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781781081662
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2013-11-29T22:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

WHAT ROUGH BEAST

I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes.

(Walt Whitman, Night On The Prairies)

CHAPTER TWENTY

TOOLING UP

THE TERESHKOVA’S ARMOURY: Victoria Valois stood in the corridor and watched as Ack-Ack Macaque worked his way around the walk-in cupboard, pulling weapons from the shelves. There were few guns, but he already had his Colts on his hips. He added grenades, knives, and a couple of rusty throwing stars that he found in an old shoebox on one of the higher shelves. Beside him, Marie did the same, tooling herself up with the calm efficiency of an experienced soldier preparing for an operation.

“So, you say you’ve done this before?” he asked, pulling a wicked-looking machete from a rack of blades.

Marie reached for a coil gun: a magnetic projectile accelerator in the shape of a machine gun, capable of punching a titanium slug through a concrete wall. With practiced efficiency, she hefted it in one hand, braced the stock against her hip, and clicked a magazine into place.

“I can look after myself.” She had her orange hair tied back in a severe ponytail, and Victoria had given her a bulletproof vest from her own personal stash. Watching her, Victoria couldn’t help but be impressed by the way the woman stood up to the monkey.

“Take whatever you need,” she said, reaching down to touch the retractable fighting stick tucked into her own belt. Ack-Ack Macaque saw her doing it.

“Wishing you were coming with us, boss?”

She smiled, but there was little humour in it. They were the assault team, and she was the skyliner captain.

“I’ll have more than enough to do here.” She had no doubt that, after the events of last year, every move the Tereshkova made would be closely scrutinised by both the authorities and the media. Larkin Hall was close to the skyliner’s scheduled route to London, so they could approach it without raising undue suspicion; but once there, she’d have to do some pretty fast talking to justify a helicopter assault on a stately home. If worse came to worst, she supposed, it would help that they had a friend in Buckingham Palace. Not that she’d presume on that friendship except in the direst of emergencies. Briefly, she wondered how Merovech was adjusting to life on the throne. She hadn’t seen him since the aftermath of the battle in the Channel, and still remembered him as he was when she first met him: a troubled young man in ratty jeans and a smelly red hoodie, struggling to come to terms with the death of his father. Now, he was king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, France, Northern Ireland and Norway, and Head of the United European Commonwealth. He was preparing for his forthcoming marriage to Julie Girard, the digital activist who’d first drawn him into the intrigue that freed Ack-Ack Macaque from his virtual world and exposed the conspiracy at the heart of Céleste Technologies. The boy was a head of state, and still only barely out of his teens.

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