by Chele Cooke
“Lach…” she whispered, looking up at her brother with childish excitement. “Is that…”
Lachlan didn’t look pleased with her enthusiasm. He placed the litcom face down on the desk and folded his arms over it.
“Yeah. It’s a Cirque.”
Of the four men walking south out of the city only one kept his jacket on and fully buttoned. Most had undone a button here and there, finally sliding the stiff, warm garments from their backs, slinging them carelessly over their shoulders. Only Lachlan refused to relent, a fact commented on by the other soldiers. They teased and bumped their shoulders against his, asking whether he was a particularly well-made android, sent to make them look bad.
Lachlan rubbed the sweat from the back of his neck, his hair damp and sticky in the early evening sun. The others had complained that they had to walk instead of taking one of the mules, but he didn’t want anyone on the hitched ship spotting their approach. They could hide four men on foot easily enough in the sweeping wheat fields but if they’d taken the loud and heavy mule they’d have had to skirt out into the open land. It didn’t matter whether they were on official business or not, the farmers would kick up a stink if they ruined crops with the backblast of a low-flying transport.
“What they sayin’ it is, Tack?” one of the men asked. Lachlan didn’t turn to find out which.
“Bet it’s a liquor hit,” one of the others laughed hopefully.
Behind him, Lachlan heard the skid of boots against the dry earth. No doubt they were scuffling and teasing each other with their fists.
“Yeah, because liquor hits always hitch out in ass-end of nowhere. You as dense as you look, Caron?”
Fred Caron made a noise of indignant protest and shoved the other man, his jacket slipping from his shoulder down onto the dirt just as Lachlan turned around. He raised an eyebrow at the dusty jacket and Fred scrambled to collect it and brush it off.
“It could be,” Fred said. “Ain’t just the cities that are dried out.”
“It’s not a liquor hit,” Lachlan replied. “Too big. They don’t go as far away, nor try to hide themselves.”
“You know an awful lot about liquor hits, Tack,” José chuckled. “You been sneaking it when we’re not looking?”
“I make it my job to know. The more we know, the easier they are to catch. They hitch close and without cover so they can be noticed quickly. That way they can get their business done and make a fast run. This ship intends on staying.”
The three men listened quietly. Lachlan Tack had changed a lot in the years since he’d been sworn in. The young, carefree boy José and Fred had known in school was gone and replaced with a true coalition soldier.
“So, what is it?”
“Cirque. At least, I think it is.”
A murmur of excitement and curiosity rippled through the men behind him. Lachlan rolled his eyes as they muttered back and forth.
“We’re here to shut it down,” Lachlan reminded them with a cool disdain. “These cirques are the worst kind of illegal.”
“Seriously, Tack? Do you even remember how to have fun?”
“Do you even remember your job?” Lachlan sniped back.
The men shrank back a few paces as their captain steamed on ahead, a new vigour in his step.
They were quiet after that. No more scuffles or jokes were passed between the men. There was only the rhythmic trudge of standard-issue boots on the hard earth. Lachlan didn’t look back even though he was sure that the men would be sharing cryptic glances and mouthed exchanges. Lachlan shook his head and rubbed the sweat from his hairline.
The hitched ship shimmered against the fading light. Pink smears of a distant horizon rose into a pale blue wash that morphed and danced before them. Lachlan had to blink repeatedly to see the almost invisible outline of where sky blue metal met sky. Behind him the nudging and whispers returned, the men pointing and tracing the outline to each other. Only the teal and white flames of the hitching engines truly gave it away. Against the rudimentary satellites of Corapolvo, it was an easy enough disguise.
Lachlan led the men into a track through the wheat. They followed in single file and all conversation stopped. Now that they were closer they could spot the areas where the cloaks were failing, slivers of burnt rust streaking through the sky. They crouched in the track near the edge of the field.
“What’s the plan?” José asked in a hoarse whisper. He rubbed his hand roughly underneath his nose and took three sharp sniffs before his mouth stretched into a grotesque pause. The others stared at him for a moment, waiting for the inevitable, but he exhaled silently and dabbed his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his watering eyes.
Lachlan blinked and let out a sigh of relief, looking back at the ship.
“It’s too big to take now,” he said. “Without knowing how prepared they are, we would need the entire city force to take it.”
Fred slid back from his crouch, his ass hitting the ground with a soft thump. He lay his jacket on his lap and leaned over it, propping his elbows on his knees.
“Getting the Central to agree to that would take days.”
“Getting Central to do anything that disturbs their coffee break takes days,” José muttered.
“They’d be long gone by then,” Paul said thoughtfully. “If this is a usual Cirque hitch, we got two nights.”
They all turned and looked at Paul, the youngest man in their group, just turned nineteen. Raised eyebrows were shared all around but he just shrugged it off.
“Lition planets get ‘em all time,” he continued in a heavy drawl. “Two nights and then they jump. Strange they’re out ‘ere though. Usually they skip the outlyings.”
Fred scratched his head, peering through the wheat stalks up towards the ship.
“What do you suggest, Tack?”
Lachlan slumped down next to José and, for the first time since leaving the station, unbuttoned the collar of his jacket. Rubbing his hand against the slick skin at the back of his neck, he sighed.
“Paul’s got more experience with cirques than we do, so we’ve got to assume he’s right and this one will be gone by day after tomorrow,” he sighed. Paul grinned triumphantly. “But we can’t hope to take this thing on the men in our quad alone. Not without knowing what we’re going into.”
He chewed on his bottom lip and pushed himself up just enough to get a good look over the wheat. Even if they could get all the men in the quadrant down here, which he doubted, they’d never get close enough to get a proper jump on this ship unless they all crawled through the tall crops.
“You sure we’ll have two nights?”
“Relatively. Not enough trade on the first night,” Paul said. “Need word to travel.”
Lachlan nodded and turned to the others.
“Right. Okay, here’s the plan. Tonight we scout.”
“What? You mean we actually go?”
“To the Cirque?”
“Seriously?”
Lachlan looked between them and rolled his eyes. He had expected the excitement from Hadley but these were men of the Coalition. They should have at least tried not to sound like school children.
“Exactly.”
Fred let out a whoop and quickly shrank into submission under his captain’s glare.
“Beukes isn’t gonna like that, Tack.”
Lachlan met José’s cautious gaze. A thin smile appeared on his lips and he shook his head.
“Well don’t tell him.”
The three men shared conspiratorial grins and Fred leaned closer.
“You suggesting we break rules?”
“I’m suggesting you keep your mouth shut. We go, we scout out the kind of defences they have, if any, and by this time tomorrow we’re the fucking heroes of Corapolvo.”
“My hero would let me have a drink,” Fred muttered under his breath. The others chuckled.
“No, no drinking. This is work. Got it?”
The four men grumbled but nodded just the sa
me.
Lachlan buttoned his collar and got to his feet. He brushed the dusty earth from his backside and, under his stern stare, the other men clambered up in unison.
They trudged back through the wheat, glancing over their shoulders until the ship was invisible against the horizon. Whispered conversation kept them company on the long walk back to the south-east quadrant. They made suggestions about what they thought they would see and questioned Paul on what he had seen when he’d been before. The young man was almost reverent about his visits to cirques as a young teenager, back before his parents had shipped him off to this backwater speck on the face of the Coalition. He regaled them with stories of constantly flowing alcohol and sights you couldn’t believe, even though you’d seen it with your own two eyes. Lachlan wondered if the alcohol had something to do with the disbelief, but he kept his scepticism to himself.
By the time they were in sight of Kalvin, still standing guard on the southern gate, the others had worked themselves into a frenzy of excitement. Lachlan turned to look at them, keeping them out of earshot of the guard.
“Remember, this is work. I want every one of you in my office before shift start tomorrow. A see a single red eye and you’re all on guard duty until you die.”
The three men nodded. They even managed to keep respectable expressions while he glared at them each in turn. However, the moment Lachlan turned to approach the gate, he heard the collective sigh.
“Yeah yeah, Tack. Ruin all our fun.”
“All the hitches are in place, sir. We’ll be able to power down all but the two core engines within the hour.”
Cole gave an indiscernible nod before the engineer hurried away across the deck, wiping his greasy hands on his backside as he went. Crewmen hurried back and forth, as well oiled and certain of their purpose as the cogs in the machine they called home. To the untrained eye it looked like chaos, but Cole Hatliffe had seen enough chaos to know that this was not it.
Placing his hand atop his hat he ducked beneath a large roll of crimson drapery being carried across the deck on the shoulders of two roustabouts. The one at the back gave him a curt nod but he continued on without returning the gesture. Approaching the railing he leaned over, careful to keep a hold on his hat, and peered down at the quick creation of the big top below him.
Unloading the midway from the bowels of the ship always took the longest, even with all hands on deck. Now that the ring was clear of crates and packed tents, the roustabouts were free to continue on the jobs they had been assigned.
The stands had already been pulled out from the walls, the low ring wall laid and fixed in place. Three men trailed pale yellow sand in concentric circles, ready to be raked out over the metal. No doubt a couple of men were already out hacking up a local field for the straw seats. There were benefits to hitching out of town.
“No skimping on the sand,” he boomed down to the startled men beneath him. “I don’t want another disaster like Seixin.”
“Yes boss.”
Two of the men stepped slightly closer together while the third hurried to the centre and began pouring new circles between the existing trails. High above them, two burly men hiked themselves up the central pole, thrusting spokes into pre-positioned holes to haul themselves up the thick wooden beam. Cole crossed his arms over his chest, following their progression until they reached the rolls at the top.
“Heads!” one of the men called in a booming voice before the first two buckles were released.
Swathes of damson and ruby material cascaded down the pole, enveloping the men atop the pole. Ropes with metal hoops bounced and swayed from the end of each banner, trailing through the perfect circles of sand. A young boy hurried to the centre of the ring, collecting up three ropes.
“Scuse me, Mr. Hatliffe,” a man said from beside him.
Cole stepped to the side. The man slotted a rope through a loop built into the railing. He tossed the coil of rope down to the boy, who clipped the metal hoops at the end of each rope onto a hook. As Cole watched, the man began hauling up the three banners. Lying on his stomach, he knotted the ropes to T-bar hooks fixed into the side of the walkway before tossing the hook rope back to the boy. From the looks of things, the top was well underway.
Striding along the walkway, he glanced into each of the side compartments, pleased to see that the setup was well underway in each one he passed. The large staircase that led to the balcony walkway was already thick with dust and boot tracks. His brow furrowed and he made a mental note to roll heads if it wasn’t cleaned by nightfall.
“No, Jack, stop it!”
Annalise Romero’s high pitched giggle cut through the late afternoon air, floating like bubbles that popped upon reaching the ear. She squealed and footsteps pattered down the open loading dock.
“Come on, Anna. He won’t bite! Will you Chester?”
“Stop it!”
Jack hugged the chimpanzee closer to his body and chased after her. The happy chimp screeched and hooted, stretching his bandy limbs to catch her. Cole stopped at the top of the ramp as the three darted between the crates. Crossing his arms, his eyes narrowed and his lips set into a thin line.
“Mr. Western!” he snapped loudly.
Jack skidded to a stop, planting his hand against one of the crates to stop himself from toppling over. He glanced over and the amusement in his expression promptly faded.
“Yes, Mr. Hatliffe?”
“Have the Advance gone?”
Propping the screeching chimp a little higher against his hip, Jack Western ran his fingers through his dirty blonde hair and approached the ramp.
“Not yet.”
Cole clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and adjusted his stance.
“If nobody knows about the show, how will we make money?”
Jack avoided his accusing glare and grasped the chimp’s hand in his own, watching the animal instead.
“We won’t.”
“Exactly, Mr. Western. So, I suggest you get to the job I hired you for. You can flirt with apes on your own time.”
He paused just long enough to see the grimace that twisted the young man’s features and the matching horror in Annalise Romero’s expression before he strode down the long loading ramp.
“I hope we have nothing unfortunate coming our way, Miss Romero,” he said as he passed.
She shook her head. Long thin braids swished through the stuffy air.
“No, Mr. Hatliffe.”
A curious blush spread across her tanned cheeks. She lowered her head and scurried away.
A chalk line had already been drawn on the earth, laying out the trail of the perimeter fence. Within the line, men rushed back and forth setting up carts. Tents had popped up all over the land, from the tiny rainbow jewel palmistry tent to the sprawling black and white freak show. The roar of the engines beat burning heat onto each man’s back and most had already stripped down to little more than a vest. As if on cue, one of the engines cut out and a billow of black smoke replaced the torrent of flames scorching the earth. Cole covered his nose and mouth with his hand and strode across the dry ground.
Empty crates were stacked higher than the tallest man’s head. They were kicked and tossed back into piles in the middle of the Midway trails, ready to be shifted to the backyard once things were set up.
“Cole!”
Cole turned on his heel away from the perimeter and back towards the ship. Sweeping his hat from his head, he smoothed back his hair, the hat dangling from his fingertips.
“Yes, Malak, what is it?”
Malak hurried forwards and threw a cautious glance past the perimeter before he met Cole’s gaze.
“Local troops already know we’re here. Pilot saw a group approach not ten minutes ago.”
“How many?”
“No more than half a dozen,” he said, wringing his hands in front of him.
“Well then, I am sure they will have fun taking down maybe two tents before we get to them. No doubt they
have their orders to check out the ship but I doubt they will make a move. Tell Mr. Clarke to keep his eye on the lands. If he sees ships or a great force, come get me.”
Cole rolled his eyes as Malak shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again. His gaze flitted between the crates and the men organising them quicker than Cole could see what he was looking at. He wrung his fingers in his tight grip.
“Out with it, Malak.”
“But for them to know so soon?”
“Means we are sure to get good takings. Where soldiers go, rumours follow. Mr. Western is about to head out with the Advance to confirm their suspicions and arouse their interest. Do not worry so much, my friend.”
Malak stared at the horizon. Placing a hand on his shoulder, Cole steered him back towards the ship, clucking his tongue.
“Go,” he ordered. “You have far more important duties than to worry about a few eager soldiers. No doubt they will be as enamoured as the rest of the townsfolk by midnight. Your set up cannot wait that long.”
Malak sighed and shook away his worried expression, plastering on an enthusiastic and utterly fake smile. He took a deep breath and Cole could see the falsehood starting to fade away. Fresh air filled the man’s lungs and he visibly calmed. Recycled oxygen and the constant scent of fuel played tricks on the mind, and it had been a long jump.
“I’ll tell Kenneth to find you if he sees anything suspicious,” he said, climbing the steep ramp back into the ship. Cole watched him go, letting out a sigh. The man had a habit of creating elaborate ideas that travelled far too close to paranoia for his liking. He turned away from Malak’s retreating back and spoke to nobody in particular.
“I’ll be in my quarters. Gates open at nine.”
Jack split away from the other Advance men as they neared the fence surrounding the city. Getting one man through a gate was difficult enough, let alone a group of six. Two turned left to make their way to the western quadrants while the other three continued north. According to Malak, the Coalition soldiers were already aware of their presence, and no doubt the fence would be more heavily guarded than usual. It was the same with every hitch. The Advance men were used to charming the gate guards into letting one lost stranger through.
