Read Online Macaque Attack by Gareth L. Powell - Free Book Online

from the door. As she did so, Ack-Ack Macaque barrelled into the room at full pelt, and shoulder-charged her. He hit like a rugby player, knocking them both into the gaping portal. Victoria had an instant to see their bodies puff apart in bursts of dust, and then the screen flashed white, and died.
    She cried out in frustration.
    “Power spike,” K8 said, voice flat. “Drone’s dead.”

 
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    A NECKLACE OF LEOPARD’S TEETH
     
    T HE S UN W UKONG loomed over the jungle, its armoured glass bow moored to a mast on the summit of the island’s volcano. In its briefing room, Victoria Valois stood with her arms crossed. Her tunic hung open and her scabbard hung crooked. K8, Cuddles and Erik sat in the front row of the theatre-style seats. Paul’s image hovered at the back, glowing gently in the low light. Wrapped in an animal pelt, Bali leant against the door, a twine necklace of leopard’s teeth draped around his neck.
    Nobody wanted to be the first to speak.
    Finally, Victoria walked over to the brass porthole and considered the blue ocean stretching away to the horizon. Below, between the trees, she could see the thatched roofs of the log cabins in the monkeys’ stockade.
    “So,” she said, hugging her upper arms, “did we salvage anything ?” She looked questioningly at them all, one after another—all except Cuddles. One thing she’d learned about male gorillas was that, no matter what, you never looked them in the eye. Not unless you wanted your arms ripped off and your head stomped into paste.
    Erik coughed and squirmed in his seat. “Not much. By the time we got into the lab, there was no trace of the Skipper, and the machine had pretty much melted. It must’ve had a destruct setting.” From his shoulder bag he pulled something sticky and covered in dried black crusts of flaky blood. He held it pinched between thumb and forefinger in much the same way Victoria imagined he’d have held the tail of a dead, plague-sodden rat.
    “We did get this, though.” He stretched his lower lip over his upper. “It’s the doctor’s soul-catcher.”
    Victoria glanced at the dangled fronds of hair-fine wire, and then at the bayonet sheathed in the orangutan’s belt. She didn’t need to ask how they’d extracted the device from Nguyen’s skull.
    “Is it intact?”
    Erik dropped it onto the empty seat beside his, and wiped his long, hairy orange fingers on the bare plastic arm.
    “We pulled it out by the root, Captain.”
    “Anything else?’ She addressed the room. “Anything that can tell us what the hell happened back there?”
    After a moment, K8 raised a hand.
    “We’ve been analysing the drone’s telemetry.”
    “And?”
    The teenager stood and walked over to the wall screen. She tapped the upper right hand corner, and it flashed into life.
    “These graphs represent readings taken from the machine immediately prior to its self-destruction.” Her index finger traced a sharp upward curve. “As you can see, there’s a spike here, indicating an energy profile similar to that of the Sun Wukong ’s jump engines.”
    Victoria raised an eyebrow. The lines and words on the screen were squiggles to her.
    “You think it might work the same way?”
    “Almost definitely.”
    Victoria blinked away a mental image of Ack-Ack Macaque’s body apparently exploding into dust. “Then he could still be alive?”
    K8 gave a small, tight smile. “We think so.”
    “How do we find him?”
    The young woman returned her attention to the screen. “There’s a clue in the visual footage.” She tapped a few commands and the graphs disappeared, replaced by a blurred close-up of the black-clad figure in the office, caught in the instant she glanced up at the dragonfly. Victoria walked up to the screen, screwing her eyes into slits in an attempt to glean as much detail as she could.
    “She looks familiar, but...”
    Behind the figure, the portal presented as a disc of shimmering light.
    K8 said, “We