back to the swarm with a reedy solo.
“We’re done for,” said Pig Heart.
The HawkEye’s steel eyepiece took in a sectionalised grid of images: the crawling horrors, the mass of insects burgeoning at the opening to the hull, and Nim, terrified, beautiful, and pulsing with pure white light that made her an angel.
When the sonic wave off the rocket launcher struck, it wavered up and then throughout the tent, invisible to all but Hellequin’s sensitive lens. The others were flung back by the power of it. Hellequin alone stayed grounded, crouching at the edge of the platform, hands woven into the gridded floor. A great burst of flaming shot burrowed up through the layers of insects, exploding out into the hull. Bright red rays streamed in all directions, punching holes in the wings and exoskeletons of the twenty or so scouts circling in the circus. At the same time, the rays pierced the fibrous walls of the tent in many places.
“Volcanon shot,” Hellequin shouted to his companions. He arched his spine at a dramatic angle; the millisecond he gained from his advanced sight enabled him to avoid a red hot rock that skimmed past his shoulder. He dodged a second rock and stood up, hands to his hips. Firepower like that had to originate from a costly war machine – a burrower enabled for underground mining explorations as well as military engagements.
“D’Angelus.” Hellequin stared at the smoking carcasses of the locust scouts, twitching and tumbling down to join the ashes of a good number of their kin below. The remainder of the swarm must have taken to the wing again, their drone definitely receding. Peering down through the dust and fallen locusts, he made out the nose cone of D’Angelus’s burrowing machine.
Retracting his telescopic sight, he concentrated on the state of Cyber Circus. Fires had broken out where the interior walls had been punctured. The dirigible was listing heavily to the left. Hellequin knew with certainty that the airship was losing pressure and, with it, buoyancy. The ship was heading down.
The body parts of blown-apart insects littered the ground nearby, but otherwise all D’Angelus saw through the dust was Cyber Circus, coming closer at alarming speed.
“Dive, you motherfucker, Das! Dive!”
Das stayed gormless, his eyes wild behind his goggles.
“No time,” said Jaxx, as calmly as if death was just another segment to his evolving life.
D’Angelus gasped. Dampness spread out across his lap as the enormous circus settled fully over the top of the burrower. For a brief instant, the dust storm ceased and the atmosphere became fantastically still. D’Angelus found himself staring out of the burrower’s windshield at the flaming interior of Cyber Circus, and the HawkEye, hands on hips, at the uppermost platform. Then the circus was rising again and Wanda-Sue was back out amongst the roaring dust.
D’Angelus watched the dirigible drift away into the dust cloud, a lame animal retreating to lick its wounds.
“The fucker looked at me,” he whispered.
“Who?” The Sirinese stared over.
“The HawkEye.” It came out as a gasp, followed by tight, hysterical laughter.
“You believe the soldier’s genuine?” Jaxx’s tone suggested he had never doubted the fact.
“Stared right at me with his twitchy metal eye.” D’Angelus laughed, as if finding the notion incongruous, before stabbing a finger at Das’s shoulder. “What’re we sitting here for, man? We got them wounded and on the run.”
Das scrubbed a hand around his chin. He glanced back over a shoulder. “There’s nowhere for the circus to go if it keeps on south-east like that. Unless it means to dip into the caverns to escape the storm a while.”
“Go into the old mineshafts?” D’Angelus inhaled deeply. “Screw it, I ain’t no lemon-belly gonna miss out on a kill this close. Take us down, Dax.” He gave the navigator’s arm another jab. “And you’d better deliver me safe above ground again or, by the Saints, I’ll skin your hide, even if I have to come back from the afterlife to do so.”
Hellequin replayed the snapshot of D’Angelus peering up from behind toughened glass, his Daxware having stored the captured image. He zoomed in on the figure in incremental degrees until he saw the pimp’s expression in detail: the arched brows and pupils, liquid with fear.
“Need you working alongside me, soldier. There’ll be time to stand and stare once we’re free of the storm and have put the fires out.” Pig Heart nodded towards the mayhem of the circus in flame. “Rust’s staying put here to soothe the beasts.”
“You in charge of the pitch crew again now Asenath’s dead?” Hellequin asked brutally.
“For the time being, if the men’ll have me. Got to save the circus from burning up then they can jack me out on my ear again.”
“What do you say, Lulu, Nim?”
The courtesan swung her rifle up onto a shoulder. Her red eyes were wet. “I say Asenath was a fierce and loyal friend. I wish she was still with us. Since she’s not, let the pig do his job.” Tears brimmed over. Her face did not crumple though.
Hellequin maintained her gaze. He nodded.
“Enough with the tears and make ups,” snapped Lulu. “Can we get on with putting out the fires before this whole damn circus burns down around our ears?” He stamped a foot and stared accusingly at the others.
“Sure thing.” Walking past the ladyboy, Pig Heart stopped suddenly and delivered a right hook to Lulu’s jaw.
The ladyboy hit the deck.
Pig Heart directed a spit gob alongside him. “That’s for slapping me around so enthusiastically when I got tied up a day or two back. And for expecting us to forget one of our own inside minutes of them expiring.”
Nim strode past Lulu in the direction of the lift rig. Hellequin adjusted the rifle on his shoulder and followed after.
Herb strutted along the gangway, pink-faced with rage and concern.
“Put out these fires quick smart!” he barked at the pitch crew, and superfluously since Pig Heart had already arranged them into fire fighting squads. Buckets of water were being winched up on makeshift rigs, then passed hand-to-hand until the final man in the line sent the contents sloshing out. Some buckets steamed with water siphoned off the fat-bottomed boiler.
“Cyber Circus is weak enough without draining her,” Herb muttered, chin on his chest, sweat pouring off him.
“Who’s got the wheel?” demanded Pig Heart, striding up to the ringmaster. He swiped an arm across his brow, adding to the soot already smeared there.
He and Herb stared at one another.
“I hadda put you through it.” Herb sniffed with that awkward way of a man under pressure to make right but with no intention of appearing wrong.
Pig Heart clucked in his throat. “You near on did for me, Herb. Good job I got a tendency to heal tough as a ham hock and quicker than most. Back full of scars will give a man jip forever though.” His small watery eyes widened. But the anger died back and he sighed. “I got greedy, Herb, and I got a hiding for it. Now, how’s about you let me get on organising the patching of this craft so we’ve any kind of hope of staying airborne. Plus, I say again, who’s got the ship’s wheel?”
“Some fool off the pitch crew. I hadda come see how the old gal was fixed.” The ringmaster stared around him, gave a low whistle and shook his head. He put his hands on one of the brass rails running either side the gangway and stroked the metal gently. “I’ll have you fixed up real fast.” He nodded, lips pursed. “Real fast.”
He got a steely look then, and bounced his hands off his pot belly. “I’ve given the order to take us into the caverns. You more than anyone else here understand why that decision weighs heavy on me.”
Pig Heart nodded. Both Herb and he carried the burden of their last trip to the caverns years earlier, how they’d been unprepared for the destruction a swarm could wreak on an airship full of soft meaty bodies. It went without saying that neither man wished to return – just as it went without saying that the gale outside the tent was strengthening by the minute. Sooner or later, Cyber Circus would be torn limb-from-limb by the storm. Their only
