option was to risk it underground.
Rooting around at his hairline, Pig Heart muttered, “If we’re gonna risk it in the caverns again, lets set our best man to the task of navigating the ship. One who’s got the need to protect his fellows embedded in his skull and who’s got sight that’ll pierce the dark and then some.”
Herb nodded slowly. He stepped to one side of the reinstated pitchman and hollered down at the HawkEye soldier, who was patching a rent in the wall at the zoo level. “Get up to the bridge, Hellequin. I’m trusting you to steer us through the pits of Hell to paradise.”
The caverns burrowed deep into the Fathenora mountains dividing Humock from Siria. Border control was non-existent either across the mountain range or beneath it. Any fool enough to cross to Siria was welcome to its barren sheets of rock while those who would journey to Humock had already done so – or else been lost to starvation in that waterless, stony land. Meanwhile, anyone choosing to enter the old mine caverns was a danger to himself and the rest of the world – best he wander inside and be swallowed up by the devilled dark.
Hellequin stood on the bridge, staring out the view-pane at the ever-shifting grey.
“I can’t see anything,” said Nim. She had followed him up there. Although as she pressed her hands to the viewing pane and remained intent on the view beyond, it seemed she was there less to support him than for her own reasons.
“I see enough,” he answered gruffly, with a hunch she’d been talking to herself. And he could see. Just. The concentric rings of his eyepiece whirled, making sense of the distorted landscape. Cyber Circus was floating no more than fifteen metres above the ground. The float bladders were the only things keeping the craft aloft now that the integrity of the hull had been compromised. With the water in the boiler drained dangerously low, it was impossible to work up a fresh bloat of steam. The last dregs of power were being channelled to the pendulous root mass at the rudder so he could steer the ship at least.
Hellequin checked the chart coil to the left of the ship’s wheel, using the foot peddle to scroll the thin cloth between the brass winders. There were no townships marked this far south-east. They were headed straight for the vast mountain range.
“We aren’t far from the entrance to the caverns,” he told Nim. She might not be listening but it gave him a sense of comfort to be in her company.
Nim looked at him suddenly from her spot slunk down amongst the cushions and rag-rugs in the viewing pit. She looked fragile.
“So many folk have died or been injured just so we could outrun D’Angelus. I ain’t accustomed to thinking of others. Always been some fucker ready to paw me or rub me sore. Asenath might have encouraged me to fight back but did she really mean to go and sacrifice herself while I was getting round to it?” She was crying again, but with no suggestion of needing to be comforted. Hers were bitter tears which washed away the numbness and left vengeance in its place.
She sighed raggedly. “So much blood spilt just so D’Angelus could try to get a bolted horse back in his stable.”
“Pig Heart invited the pimp in. Rust attracted the suckerloop’s attention. Asenath died by her own code of decimate or be decimated.” Hellequin’s voice was sharp. His hold on normal emotions was always more tentative in combination with adrenaline. “Yes, there are members of the pitch crew who’ve fallen and I suspect their families will share a savage whisper regarding you... and me, no doubt.”
He scowled, the twin bone ridges at his brow more pronounced. “Ask me though, there’s only one soul you oughta say sorry to for this upset.”
“Who’s that?” Nim asked, swiping the tears from her cheeks and chin in irritation, as if surprised to find them wet.
Hellequin patted the ship’s wheel, the frilled matter rippling beneath his touch. “Cyber Circus,” he said softly.
“Old gal’s the forgiving sort.” Herb waddled out onto the bridge. He nodded at the viewing pane. “That the entrance?”
Hellequin nodded. A vast rock formation was materialising through the dust. Rugged black folds towered over them where the ground had split and poured out its guts. A gaping chasm ran up the mountainside. The hole was lined with sharp crags; to all appearances they might well have been delivering themselves into the mouth of Hell. Hellequin glanced up as Cyber Circus was slowly swallowed by creeping, almost tangible darkness. Seconds later, the fibrous green cell-structure of the circus started to glow with bioluminescence.
As the dark threatened to seep though the glass, Nim abandoning the viewing pit to come and stand alongside Herb and Hellequin.
“You got enough light to steer by?”
Hellequin nodded. He was operating on a neural-macular level, retuning the circuitry that wormed into his brain. The amber lens in the centre of the HawkEye became red, providing night-vision.
“I see the truth of it,” he said, guiding the ship between two great slices of rock and into a cavern that dwarfed the dirigible. Hellequin parted his lips in wonder; the cavern might have been built to house the Saints. Fat columns of calcified stone spiralled up to a ceiling too high to glimpse. The ground was carpeted in stalagmite needles a few short metres below. Now and then a colossal rock sculpture would rear up through the darkness, formed by water long evaporated. Then the rock would fashion itself into waves, like broiled tongue, or take on the face of a crone hunkered down amongst that vast subterranea.
“And what is the truth?” asked Nim at last as if she had been wrestling with herself not to ask for fear of the answer.
“Rock mostly. And dust.” Clouds of the stuff had swept in over the years, banking against the sides of the cavern in soft grey hills.
Herb asked, “And the locusts?”
“They like it warm. The swarm will have holed up further in.” Hellequin’s eyepiece revolved in measured clicks. The red lens flicked up and side-to-side.
“How’s the re-patching going?” he asked. Herb needed to remember that the swarm wasn’t their only worry. The circus itself could expire at any moment.
Slotting his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, Herb rocked onto his toes and back onto his heels. “Flames are all out. We got the methane pipes hooked up to the gas lamps quickly re-rooted. Thankfully our propellant gas isn’t flammable, plus the old gal’s skin don’t burn up easily. She’s hurt though. Time we travelled the caverns before we didn’t have no HawkEye to see through the blackness. Then we were reliant on the blaze offa Cyber Circus. Today though, this glow” – he held his arms out from his sides to indicate the twilight – “is as much as she can manage.”
He rocked back onto his heels again. “Pig Heart’s doing a fine job of putting my boys to work down there. We got skin grafts off the polyps out back by the boiler. We should be able to heat up the hull again before long. Just so long as we can find a water source and let my old gal drink her fill.”
“Easier said than done.” Hellequin took a sharp breath as he manoeuvred the ship over the tallest spikes in the cavern floor with what he guessed were centimetres to spare. Herb and Nim were oblivious of course, being blessed with natural sight.
“What about the Black Lake?” Nim bit a corner of her mouth.
Hellequin had spent enough time around a campfire to have heard just about every folk tale bandied around. As far as the tale went, it was claimed that the Black Lake was a piece of ocean trapped inside the Fathenora mountains. Still as black ink, the lake was home to the heart of the swarm. Nest place of the Black Locust queen.
“I’d always thought that was just a dust trail myth,” he muttered.
Herb piped up, “No sign of the place last time we negotiated the caverns. Don’t mean it don’t exist though.” He sucked in his cheeks. “Don’t mean we want to go looking for the place either.”
“Except, maybe we don’t have a choice.” Hellequin indicated a large glass gauge in the rack to his right. The waterline was very low. “I’m going to get us across these spikes then find a place to put down.”
“What spikes?” said Nim anxiously.
“Exactly.” Hellequin reeled himself back in so as not to disclose any more information about the truth of their situation.
