Free Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth L. Powell Page A

scared.
    She grabbed his sleeve.
    “What do we do?”
    He gave her a blank look. He was only eighteen years old, and plainly as scared as she was.
    The pilot called: “Crash positions! Brace! Brace!” Then the water came up and slapped them. The impact threw Victoria against her straps so hard she bit her tongue. She heard shouts and screams, and the freight-train roar of seawater gushing into the cabin.
    They were sinking.
    Her nostrils filled with the smell of brine, and she recalled the safety briefings she’d endured, knowing that even if she managed to escape the stricken craft, she’d be unlikely to survive for more than a few minutes in the freezing waters of the South Atlantic. In a panic, she scrabbled at her harness.
    Beside her, the Prince unclipped himself and leant over to help. He pulled her out of her seat. Then other hands grabbed him and bundled him away, towards the open hatch.
    The cabin heaved again, caught on the swell. The walls creaked. Victoria lost her footing and fell across the aisle. The fall seemed to take forever. She saw dark water sloshing through the cabin and, in a single instant of freezing clarity, knew her time had come.
    And then, pressing up at the window, she saw a face! A mean face with a cruel smile and the flat dead eyes of a shark. The Smiling Man had found her! He’d killed Detective Malhotra, and now he’d come for her. Here, in the South Atlantic, a year ago.
    Time unfroze. Limp as a ragdoll, she plunged toward the windows on the opposite wall. Her head smacked the jagged edge of an open equipment locker and—
     
     
    V ICTORIA COUGHED HERSELF awake, spluttering up from the depths of a cold, dark sea. Her lips were dry and cracked, and her tongue lay in her mouth like an old leather bookmark. The air lay heavy with disinfectant and air freshener. Hospital smells.
    Non, c’est pas vrai, pas encore . Not again.
    She’d been dreaming about the helicopter crash: her brush with death in the South Atlantic, over a year ago. Either the head injury or the hypothermia would have killed her, had the copter not come down within metres of the aircraft carrier that it had been heading for.
    And the Smiling Man. Oh God, the Smiling Man. How had he wormed his way into her dream? And what had he done to her? She remembered his footsteps on the wooden stairs. The scrape of the knife along the wall. Malhotra. All that blood...
    Somebody cleared their throat.
    “Victoria?”
    She opened her eyes and stiffened. A figure stood at the foot of her bed, hands folded, hair white and brows black. Gold braid festooned a long tunic.
    “Commodore?”
    “I am here, my dear.” He moved closer and took her hand, his fingers rough to the touch, but nevertheless warm and comforting. “How are you feeling?”
    She tried to sit up and winced in pain.
    “What happened to me?”
    “You were attacked.” Still holding her hand, the Commodore perched a hip on the edge of the bed. With his free hand, he adjusted the cutlass hanging from his belt. “But you’re back on the Tereshkova now. You’re safe.”
    “Attacked?” With her free hand, she reached back and found a thick wad of bandage, and stubble where she’d expected hair.
    “Yes. Your implants sent an emergency signal to Céleste. I am listed as your next of kin, so they called me. They told me you were dead, but I sent a chopper anyway. I thought it would be quicker than an ambulance, and it was. We got to you in less than ten minutes.”
    He rose and walked over to the window. From where she lay, Victoria could see dark clouds edged with embers of sunset. She moved her hand forward, over her shaven scalp.
    “My hair?” She was afraid to ask. She could feel the memory of the attack in her neural processor, waiting to be accessed, but couldn’t bring herself to open it. The flashes that leaked through were bad enough; she didn’t need to relive the whole thing in high definition.
    The Commodore cleared his throat.
    “They took your