Hellequin refocused on D’Angelus’s aim. The pistol was trained on his heart.
Seconds stretched. The burrower coasted forward, D’Angelus riding high in the cockpit like the eye of the machine while his men jogged either side, rock rifles primed. Hellequin breathed long and slow. He couldn’t move since risking his life might mean abandoning Nim to the pimp.
As the disturbed nest came to life, the burrower seesawed over uneven ground. Hellequin took his chance and began to charge back towards the circus. Ammo fire bit at his heels. These are my final moments, he told himself. His one consolation was the fattened hose that led inside the tent and the knowledge that Cyber Circus was slating her thirst.
He was nearly at the tent flap when a colossal shadow passed overhead. The lens of his eyepiece brightened, taking in a black mass of locusts. One creature landed a few short metres in front, blocking the tent entrance. Hellequin threw himself down into the dust as D’Angelus’s men discharged their rock rifles. Shot pierced the insect’s hoary shell. With no understanding of its true attacker, the locust thrust its tremendous head at Hellequin. The mandibles yawned, spit-gummed and pop-popping.
The soldier zoomed in on the goo and knew that in spite of his advanced sight, he couldn’t shuffle back in time. Drops splattered his chest, burning through fabric and flesh below. Hellequin showed his gums and cried out. He struggled to reach his rifle. At his back, he heard the burrower sledging in. His steel eye focused on the face of the locust, moving closer.
He freed his rifle and pointed it up at the last second. Before he could pull the trigger, the locust’s jaw exploded seemingly from within. He shuffled back on his hands, clearing the locust’s mammoth body just before it flopped into the dust. Riding the spine of the thing was Nim, rock pistol drawn, balance impeccable. She leapt down nimbly. The courtesan’s red eyes were livid with emotion.
“Herb says we have to keep D’Angelus and the shitters with him outside the tent. We can’t close the flap until the boiler’s full. Anyway, that burrower could just tunnel in under us.”
“So what are we meant to do?” panted Hellequin, joining Nim as she crouched behind one of the splayed wings belonging to the dead locust. Rock shot whistled past their ears.
“We’ve got to kill them.” Nim thrust a hand into her hair and bit her lower lip. “There’s also the hive to worry about now.”
Indeed there was. Hellequin scanned the air and here they came, hundreds of the creatures, tumbling in and over one another like the plague they were.
“By the Saints,” whispered Nim, glowing faintly in the twilight as if in a bid to make sense of the whirring above.
“Shit me!” Pig Heart appeared alongside, rock pistol tearing hunks off the next locust to zone in. Lulu brought up the rear, touting an unusual yet effective weapon. During one of his acts, he made use of two exceptionally long whips. He wielded them now with skill and a boldness Hellequin had not recognised in the ladyboy before that time. Whether the drive came from a desire to protect Nim, or rage at the kinds of men who would take what they wanted, no matter the damage, Hellequin had no idea. But Lulu slashed out at the bugs, taking out eyes and head feathers and wing scales and slices of neck frill.
All the while, D’Angelus was riding closer in the burrower, his men taking out their share of the locusts with the sweet burnt scent of fired rock shot.
Hellequin heard a new wave of artillery. He stared back over a shoulder. A great number of the pitch crew were assembled at the mouth of the circus tent, rifles and pistols raised and firing off into the half-light.
“Guess you were right all along HawkEye,” Pig Heart snorted, sending a blaze of shot into the chattering skies, reloading in a clink-clunk and rip of action, and taking out one of D’Angelus’s men.
“About what?” Hellequin peeled off a shot from his own rifle and dripped back down below the dead locust’s tattered wing.
“Guess we carnie folk do support our own when the squeeze is put on us.” Pig Heart inclined his head towards the pitch crew. He stared Hellequin hard in the face. “Any idea how we’re gonna wrangle our way out of here alive?”
Before Hellequin could answer, Pig Heart stood up and aimed for another of the pimp’s men. Hellequin tracked the bullet; before it had time to home in on its target, the pimp’s man was twisted chest from limb by the mangling jaws of a locust. The instant the man fell, he was left behind by the burrower. In the wake of the machine, the creatures clustered in, shredding the flesh of the man most likely while the breath was still working in his lungs.
“We gotta beat off the locusts, we gotta punch D’Angelus’s brains from his skull, and we gotta fire up Herb’s gasbag and get us the hell out of here.” Hellequin exhaled sharply. “Simple as that.”
Except it wasn’t simple, he thought. It was the most outnumbered fight he had been embroiled in. Locusts streamed towards them from all directions and would keep up their assault long after D’Angelus and his men had succumbed.
“Alright then,” said Pig Heart, sounding as unconvinced as Hellequin that they’d the slightest hope of survival. “How long ‘til the boiler’s full?” he shouted back at the wall of pitch crew.
One man disappeared inside the tent. He returned a few seconds later and yawped, “Got a way to go yet!”
Pig Heart cursed. The fire off the pitch crews’ guns was taking out the first wave of locusts. But in the chaos of battle, D’Angelus and his men were forgotten. The burrower dipped and arched over a difficult terrain of calcified boulders. Meanwhile, its hired thugs tucked in amongst the stones and launched an attack on both the swarm and the pitch crew.
Hellequin was glad of the cover provided by the dead locust as he saw five of the pitch crew taken out or badly wounded inside a minute.
What to do, he demanded of his natural mind and its cyber circuitry. He was the only one with the eyesight capable of taking out D’Angelus’s snipers.
“Concentrate on the swarm!” he cried, yanking his bowie knife free of the dead insect’s neck collar.
“Deserting me?” said Nim quietly.
Even through the storm of rock shot and rustling wings, he heard her.
“I’m doing what I’m programmed to do,” he shot back.
A moment later, he was running towards the nest of boulders. Rock sliced by within centimetres. His eyepiece whirred, the concentric rings zoning in, and in again, mapping the locale of each of the pimp’s men amongst the burgeoning stones. His Daxware tracked the trajectory of fire from each man’s weapon. Hellequin weaved through the flesh-slicing shot, pausing now and then to defend himself against the jaws or weighty limbs of a locust.
Fortunately the swarm appeared confused by him for the most part. Insects zoomed in half a metre from his head, but most seemed to see him as a box of wires and unpalatable metal.
He didn’t stop to argue. Sliding in alongside the first of D’Angelus’s heavies, he put his blade to the soft throat and ripped. The man’s gargle was lost to the engine noise of the idling burrower. A second man occupied a pockmark in the stone. Hellequin slid the bowie knife into his ribcage. Guzzling for air, the man collapsed. Hellequin dragged him clear of the machine. Moments later, there was a great chattering of wings as the locusts descended to strip the carcass.