Momentum carried her back up past the gangways and Asenath found herself looking down. She had a sensation of floating near the roof of the tent; in that moment she saw the HawkEye peel off shots at the two bugs in rapid succession and Pig Heart manhandle Rust aside to fire at the insects, who dipped and skidded in and out the platforms.
She was tumbling again. Asenath saw a spurt of shot tear up the first bug’s wingspan as she fell towards it. The creature reared and caught her up on its back. Her repetitive lift and drop was substituted for a swooping buckaroo. Asenath took hold of the leathered neck frill and used it as a means to grip on. Her thighs pressed in and rubbed painfully over the bug’s slick scales.
Still the bullets came. Asenath rode the locust while hacking into its neck frill with her blade. Blood welled where she worked, gluppy and pus-yellow. Glancing up, she saw the HawkEye, standing tall on the lift rig as it ascended to the zoo platform. The bug seemed intent on the same destination. Asenath threw herself forward so that she was protected from the soldier’s fire by the armoured neck frill. Blood dashed into her face as she drove both scimitars around to the throat and in at the fibrous flesh there. All the while, a barrage of shots assaulted the locust.
The creature kept flying – except now Asenath realised the trajectory of the bug’s flight was off. It headed hard at the lift rig. She saw Hellequin squat as the bug’s undercarriage skimmed over him. The bug hit the deck and skidded on, propelled forward by the sheen of its body armour. Asenath took to her feet and rode the back of it. The dead insect slid between the stables of livestock to slam hard into the destroyed wagon that had once been its home – just before it did so, Asenath felt the breath torn from her lungs as she jerked back, the string of her harness having reached its maximum stretch. But as she travelled towards the upper reaches of the tent again, Asenath felt a blow to her back, followed by the whip of something soft and stinging to her face. The second locust dropped away, head feathers billowing out from its head crest in a poisonous halo.
The Jeridian was in trouble, Hellequin realised as he watched her gasp and writhe on the stretch string. There was fight in her yet, the scimitars driving out now and again to catch the locust a slicing glance.
“Asenath’s hurt!” he called down to the others. “We gotta take the last one out before it makes mincemeat of her.”
Volleys of rock ammo rang out. Hellequin zoned in on the flashes of black spark powder, the trails of blasted shot. The rocks pierced the insect’s undercarriage, releasing great sprays of yellow blood. He telescoped in on the microfibers of the locust’s keratin armour, the hair that fibrillated at each huge ham of a thigh. Zooming out, he saw the soft parts revealed when the insect breathed and armour plates moved apart a little.
He applied his HawkEye to his rifle sight; the implant laid a grid across the view, plotting the vulnerable chinks, and he fired ten shots in rapid succession. Each ripped into the exposed belly meat and wing sinews. Yellow blood exploded out in starbursts.
His sub-natural sight redirected to Asenath inside milliseconds, but he wasn’t quick enough to see who fired the shot that cut the stretch string – and for that he was later thankful. Asenath careered down, landing between the wings of the shot-up insect.
“Mi smo victorios!” The cry rang out, vitreous yet tremulous.
There would be no collecting and preserving the heads of the vanquished on this occasion, thought Hellequin with a tinge of bitterness. The locust carcass tumbled away into the swirling ether, the Jeridian brave splayed across its back.
For a few seconds, not a single voice could be heard through the entire tent. In the hush, the carnie folk listened to the swell and exhale of the circus in flight, a mechanical scraping noise that appeared to originate far below, and the thunderous drone of the swarm.
“The body of the first bug’s still in the zoo!” Hellequin hollered down from the lift rig. He leapt off so the others could make use of it and ran towards the broken mass of the locust at the far end of the platform. His steel eye scanned and processed the weight of it, and he knew by imprinted instinct that he couldn’t shift the cadaver alone.
“Hurry!” he thundered into the echoing space at his back. The noise of the swarm provoked in him the closest thing to fear he’d felt in a long time. He heard the stiff grind and punch as the lift rig ascended. No time, he panicked silently. No time.
But figures started to crawl over the edge of the zoo platform. The ladyboy, flipping into a handstand and back around onto his feet. The wolf girl, who tumbled over in a rush of awkward limbs. Pig Heart, levering his bulk up via the wires of the lift rig, colossal muscles tensed. Nim, who arrived in a silent, pink-faced effort and fell off to one side just as soon as she was safely on the platform. Hellequin zoned in on the clamminess of her skin, how her eyes rolled back to show the whites. Only her strength of will kept her conscious.
Together, the group dragged the carcass between the stables, the beasts either side silent now as if out of respect for their fallen fellow. Arriving at the edge of the platform, they worked to tip the carcass over. The group watched it drop in that loose-limbed manner of the dead. It was swallowed up by the dust storm below – just as the first few scouts from the swarm crawled in at the base of the tent. Hellequin watched them scuttle up the inside walls, mandibles chittering. They paused now and then to scrape their tremendous back limbs and signal 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.