“Gotta use the Duster in the nose of this old gal then.” D’Angelus unbuckled his harness and reached up to yank on the roof hatch, drawing it down and sealing them in.
“If we’re gonna stand a chance of aiming the thing right, we’ve gotta dive. But it can’t be deep, else we risk striking down into the Rongun mines.” Das took a hand off the wheel and scrubbed the base of his neck nervously.
D’Angelus shrugged. “We don’t need to dive deep. Just enough to get a steep trajectory on the upturn so we can fire into the sky when we surface.”
“We’re not alone,” said Jaxx suddenly. He hadn’t known the fact before he said it aloud.
His words went unheeded. D’Angelus clipped back into his harness. He glanced at Jaxx, flashing his customary dead man’s grin.
“May your spirits bring us luck, Siriense!”
Up front, Das stretched a hand to the bank of variegated mechanisms and revolved a large dial by its short brass handle. With a colossal engine roar, Wanda Sue tipped and started to burrow under.
Descending on the lift rig, Pig Heart hollered down at the lower platforms.
“For the love of the Saints, we need a handler up here! Hoppers have gone locust on us!”
He’d devised a more sophisticated plan originally, one which had involved bargaining the information with Herb in exchange for his reinstatement as chief pitchman. But then Rust had directed his attention to the wilting bars at the front of the hoppers’ cage and that had clinched it for him. The nymphs had shed their passive skin and metamorphosed into a more violent life form – Black Locusts. Which meant one thing to Pig Heart. The two locusts were attempting to break out of their cage in search of a swarm.
His cry filtered through the decks like nerve gas. Panicked voices arose as the lift rig arrived at the canteen level, where the creatures’ handler stood waiting. The man had collected two whips and indicated Pig Heart and the wolf girl aside.
“You may as well stay down here.” He gestured to the crowded canteen. “Once hoppers go locust, we ain’t got much hope except to gas and dump ‘em.” Throwing back his shoulders as if steeling himself to the task, the man pressed the ‘Up’ lever on the rig. “I got a can of gas stored with the roos’ feed,” he shouted down as the lift started its ascent.
“Bare man’s gonna need more than a can of gas to kill those crawlers,” hissed Rust. “There’s blood to be shed. Its stink lies in the air.”
“Shut your yapping, Rust.” Pig Heart glared at her. “Talk like that’ll as good as curse us.” He shivered though, in spite of the swelling heat inside the circus tent.
“Where’s Herb?” he shot across the canteen. His question was met with coughed bursts of ‘traitor’ and mumbled curses. Pig Heart’s old pitch crew hadn’t forgiven him for selling Nim out. “Aw, come on you shitters!” he cried, exasperated. “Ain’t there one of you on board who remembers the way it went ten years ago, huh? What it was like to lose so many good folk to the creatures once they turned?” Pig Heart dragged a hand across his glistening nostrils. His weak eyes turned glassy. “One of you motherfuckers needs to fetch Herb while Rust and me head on up and help the handler to gas ‘em before a swarm gets wind of their scent.”
He froze as a man’s wail sounded from the zoo level. The sound visibly cut through every person below. The canteen darkened a moment as a huge black shape swept down and around the vast expanse of the circus tent. A second beast swooped down, the remains of the handler’s torso suspended from its bloody claws. The hind femora clutched and lengthened. Wings – black, glossy and speckled with calcified spit – beat achingly slowly.
“By the Saints, we need to get those fuckers out of the tent!” Pig Heart glared at Rust. She was trembling – the wolf in her having a better idea of the danger they were in than all the men on the pitch crew.
Cyber Circus understood the violent potential of the two black locusts in its belly. The tent shuddered and tipped sideways on a steep axis as if trying to shake the locusts out the open bottom of the tent.
But now the locusts had shaken off their peaceable nymph sensibilities, they were ravenous. One swept in and around the living quarters and the platforms. The handler’s torso landed alongside Pig Heart, discarded in preference for softer meat. Screams filled the hull as the second locust slipstreamed in behind the first, the rabid pair tearing chunks out of the rails, floor grids, tables and integral structure of Cyber Circus. An eerie whine escaped the calliope as the tent pendulumed. Pitch crew clung to the fixtures, lay flat on the gangways up in the Gods, tucked children into their arms, and held onto the circus for dead life. Some lost their footings, tumbling out into the ether with terrible, pitiful cries. Others were picked off by the voracious locusts.
“Blood in the air,” moaned Rust, cowering at one end of a fixed trestle table.
Clinging to a table leg alongside, Pig Heart told her, “Don’t worry, gal. Cyber Circus’ll shake them out.”
“Something’s amiss.” Beyond the gauze curtains of the dressing rooms, Hellequin could hear the circus in turmoil.
Nim didn’t stir. Her breathing quietened though, which suggested she was conscious.
“Nim?” he said louder.
“Yes...” She sighed – a bitter sound that suggested peace had been all too fleeting. “I know.”
“I’m heading up to the bridge. You ought to stay put. Avoid whatever mayhem’s occurring out there.”
But Nim was already sitting up. “Last time I stayed here, D’Angelus’s men broke in.” She started to roll up her stockings, wincing against the pain from her arm, which had to be considerable. “Asenath’s right. Its time I had more say over the uses I’m put to.” She stood and tugged on a high-collared field vest with a great many pockets and brass fastenings. Her hair fell about her shoulders, loose, long, the colour of jewel fruit.
“Okay.” Hellequin slid off the bed and fastened his pants.
They slipped out through the gauze curtains. Backstage was littered with broken scenery and a sort of caustic white dung which sizzled as it ate into the floor. Hellequin and Nim stared up in time to see one of the black locusts smash through the rail onto Herb’s private platform then take to the air again.
“Saints almighty, the nymphs have become locusts.” Hellequin got a grip on Nim’s hand. “You remember at the prison when the inmates rocked their wagon? I’d a hunch the beasts had been rubbing up against each other. They can’t do that, you see. After a while, it brings about the metamorphosis. But the handler was sure there’d be no fallout after the prison visit.”
At that instant, a deep drone arose from somewhere far below the tent. It made Nim’s blood run cold.
“Swarm,” she said softly,
Hellequin let go of her hand. He stared at her and asked, “Can you use a firearm?”
“Locusts are terrible creatures. They’ll strip a farm in a day.” Dressed in her monk robes, the woman stood at the open door and watched the huge bug investigate the platform. The creature froze when it saw her. She stared into the black mirrors of its eyes and saw the ringmaster’s pod reflected there, the narrow stairs, the open door. Her reflection was absent. As if she didn’t exist in that world.
In a great puff of chitinous material, the creature powered off its hind legs and swept back out into the air space.
The woman closed the door. She turned around to find the Scuttlers cowering at the back of the room. Their wrinkled faces peeped out from their toughened shells.
“I’ve shut them out,” she told the children – or so she presumed them to be. They were, after all, what had drawn her to Cyber Circus. ‘A child without bones’ was the way she had put it to the Sirinese, Jaxx, describing the one who would search the nooks and crannies of the mines for the lover she had lost. The Scuttlers were the closest match she had found.
They blinked at her through the steamy air, their soft bodies – the turtle meat of them – cocooned in keratin. In the case of all three, one of the front claws would snap on occasion, a spasmodic action. Their wrinkled old faces retained a sense of youth in the snub noses, blue-blue eyes and plump neck folds.
One of the girls shuffled forward and prodded the Zen monk mask on the floor.
“Nasty ugly,” she said sourly.
The woman tied the belt of dried relics around her waist over the top of the rough cassock. “It’s dress up. Nothing more. A peepo thing to scare off witches and other creepers in the dark.”
“I’s try it on,” said the boy. He slunk forward on his belly. His claws were nimble as he worked the cloth
