Cyber Circus

by Kim Lakin-Smith

  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 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 me
mbers 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.

  Herb scratched his bald head with fat little fingers. “I’m not saying I’m against it. So long as we keep the flaps laced tight any crawlers out there should find it hard to get inside. But my problem’s this. It’d take our last slurp of water to get airborne again. And what then, when we run outta steam in the belly of this place?”

  “I’m suggesting we send out scouts to look for water before it gets to that.” Hellequin eased the dirigible over the last of the jagged spikes and into a second smaller cavern. Something about the way the rock formed here gave it an obsidian sheen. Reflected in its element, Cyber Circus’s luminescence magnified. Now Nim and Herb saw out into the cavern, a goblin hall of crystals and glossy rock folds.

  Nim slid back down into the viewing pit and pressed her hands to the glass. Herb huffed and puffed like an old tin kettle.

  “Scouts? Out there? Where you gonna find folk willing?”

  Hellequin noticed a flat outcrop of rock. He snapped a lock bar to the wheel to hold them steady and worked a series of pulley straps located above his head. They set down in a soft puff of dust.

  The soldier wiggled his wrists, cracked a couple of finger bones. “We got to look to those most suited to the task. Those who can protect themselves from the swarm, who can look through cracks in places normal folk can’t reach. I’m thinking we send the Scuttlers.”

  Nim broke away from the glass and stared at both men, appalled. “You want to send children out to do our dirty work?”

  Herb narrowed his eyes. “It’s not a bad idea.” When Nim attempted to interrupt, he held up his hands in appeal. “Whaddya wanna go against the say so of a trained soldier for, Nim? HawkEye to boot. This guy has got more strategy going on behind that clockwork eye of his than I could hope for in a lifetime! And it ain’t like the Scuttlers are your average rug rats. Hides like rhinohorns. Great sharp pincers. And a way of manipulating themselves into any nook and cranny. The HawkEye’s right. We gotta send them out.”

  Nim gave her attention back to the weird world beyond the glass. “And hope that they come back again,” she whispered.

  * * *

  “Where are those scab balls?” Herb strutted across the bare rock surface in the centre of the tent, kicking up dust as he went. “Any of you slackers seen the Scuttlers?” he hollered out to the pitch crew who had crawled down off the bones of the circus to explore the peculiar ground underfoot.

  “Little fuckers got a habit of tucking themselves away,” Herb muttered. “You!” He pointed a stubby finger at a young boy who was employed in smoothing oil over a freshly patched area of the tent wall. “Go peek behind the calliope. They hide away there sometimes.”

  The kid ran off to the gilt staircase spiralling up to the calliope.

  “Craggy little blighters,” Herb muttered.

  “Another hour should see the canvas patched,” Pig Heart shouted down from one of the gangways overhead.

  “Dirty warthog. Scragglewort children.” Herb kept up his huffing until a cry of “No sign here, boss!” came from the balcony of the calliope. The boy shimmied down the brass banister of the staircase and landed roughly. He smirked as he slumped
back off to his oiling task.

  “No Scuttlers means no scouts.” Herb put his hands behind his head and circled on the spot, a spinning top in the form of a fat little man. As he did so, he glimpsed something out of step with the circus – a grotesque figure to the fore of the platform dedicated to his own living quarters. The vision brought bile to his throat, it was so unexpected. But the ringmaster in him shouted, “Hi there! What’s that devil?” He pointed, directing the pitch crew’s attention just as the figure scrabbled down the wires of the lift rig and disappeared onto the scaffold behind the dressing rooms.

  “Get me that motherfucker!” screeched Herb, spinning on the spot again.

  * * *

  No longer required at the ship’s wheel, Hellequin was stepping out onto the gangway above the calliope when he saw the stranger. The ghoulish appearance of the figure aroused instinctual revulsion in the soldier. The feeling was fleeting; his Daxware kicked in and rationalised the enemy. A Zen monk aboard Cyber Circus? The notion was nonsensical, but Hellequin didn’t question the fact, or delay his pursuit. With fluid strides, he ran to the far end of the gangway and leapt off, using his long arms to propel his flight. He landed in a crouch at the edge of the canteen platform; the gridded floor rattled at the impact. Pushing off, he charged across the empty room, passing the spot where the monk had stood seconds earlier.

  Scaffolding branched off either side. Hellequin levered up onto the bars to the left of the canteen where they disappeared behind the dressing rooms. The last time he’d navigated the narrow bars was to observe Nim’s assault by D’Angelus’s men and quite literally leap to her defence. Now he pursued a different, unquantifiable threat in the form of the figure threading between the crisscrossed bars. Hellequin did not have the acrobatic skills of Lulu or Nim, but he was highly adept at using his own assets. His legs were fatless but muscular; he cramped them to step under the scaffold braces then lengthened out. His HawkEye clicked in sharp rotation, focusing on the monk at the same time that it allowed him to see where to scramble next.