Hellsborough Chronicles - Hellsborough and The Dark Peak
The semi-mythical Van Hallam's adventures in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.
The finished version of Dark Peak: Hellsborough Chronicles Book One, is now available in Kindle and paperback formats from Amazon -- or you can download the first 7 chapters for free in ePub or Kindle mobi format from Hellsborough Library
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Introduction » Chapter 1 » Chapter 2 » Chapter 3 » Chapter 4 » Chapter 5 » Chapter 6 » Chapter 7 »
Put simply, clowns are the courier service of Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.
Call 333 555 333555 333 555, ask for Penny, Pandora, Pietr, Piers, Ptol or Pal: Any package, any place, any time. No questions asked, no package too small (or too large), nothing turned down. We see you right, tell us what you need, we deliver. We always deliver. I saw that on a sticker on a bin somewhere.
My knowledge of Pandora and the clowns seems to be vaguely in tune with those of Van. He now casually discards observations from his past experiences:
Pandora of Hathersage, hah. She's all skin and bones, ain't she? All skins and bones, says Van. Why do you study her so intently Pip? A couple of generations ago, they were a proud species, rulers of The Dark Peak. Look at them now: Debased, a poor reflection of their former glory. Hathersage. It was the centre of the universe, back then; but no longer. The clowns are parodies of what they once were. If her mother saw her now, she'd turn in her egg.
Hah! Hah-thersage! They've returned to type, no more caring about the wellbeing of The Dark Peak, like they did. Now, just caring about their own selfs. They was saviours, now they is parasites. Like the nascenti prey upon the jellyhead. Makes me sad, it does. Make's me angry. What's the youth come to, ay? Van huffs up a gob of phlegm, depositing it on the quarry tiles. A blackworm, crawling out from the grout and grime, feeds soundlessly on the green. Shad makes short work of both, settling down with a grin.
But they are mercenaries, right?
They wasn't Pip, says Van. Back when I knew them, they were the opposite of mercenaries. The clowns were the rulers and the gods of The Dark Peak, huge in number, they kept the nascenti and the xin in check, but that was a while back now. They've suffered as a species, I don't doubt. Now, they cling to life -- like Pandora over there, forever playing catchup with the might have been and the once before -- look at her, all skin and bones she is, all skin and bones.
What Van is saying is news to me. My only experience of the clowns, has been -- if not bad, then not good either. Yet Van talks of a time not so long ago when the clowns were rulers of a land not so far away from where we sit now.
Pandora's having an animated conversation with a xaexs on that table over there now. She -- the xaexs -- is an unusual sight in Hellsborough, and she walked in a few moments ago. She hasn't even gone to the bar yet, going straight over to the clown and the crosslander. To my reckoning, something is seriously afoot. I'm keeping my eyes on these three, could be that there's trouble brewing hereabouts.
Van, as relaxed as ever, is dealing himself a couple more crib hands. Yet, I know his eyes are watching -- he monitors things closely, even if you don't think he is. He takes another long slug on his pipe, his pupils following the vapour as it trails upwards in spirals.
Hey, hey, you got some of that pretty green? Shouts Van, suddenly twisting around and looking directly at Pandora. I need a hit love, someat to speed me up a bit. Getting slow in me old age, you got some fruit, murker?'
Pandora ignores him.
I'm sure I detect a flaring of the nostrils and a sneer, which I didn't expect. I'd have thought a clown would be on that like a rash, but the feeling I get is that she knows who Van is, and right now, that means disdain.
A line, just need a sliver, continues Van. The xaexs seeing Pandora's sideways looks, breaks away from their conversation, and pivots towards Van. It's a pivot that scares me, like you'd expect from some sort of automaton in the off-world. Alien. Somehow. And I'm thinking: This is not a good sign.
I feel uneasy. I'm not someone who starts fights, and no-one in this bar is going to ever defend themselves against a xaexs. This particular specimen stands 8 feet tall and has two sets of fully developed and very muscular arms -- she is nothing if not intimidating. I don't tend to swear, but there's only one word that is front and centre of my mind, and it begins with F and ends in K.
I'll tell you more about the xaexs, it might provide some context. Just think Samurai cockroach. Independent, disciplined, well trained, hard to kill and -- utterly, utterly -- ruthless. That's a xaexs. And this one, as I said, is with a clown and a crosslander, and they're talking in shallow clicks and whispers. What they're discussing, I can only guess.
The xaexs are, like the clowns, by my approximation, mercenaries.
From what I know, they're fairly small in number, but since they are such effective combatants, you don't need many of them to do a lot of damage.
Evolution in Hellsborough -- Van would be able to tell you more, and he will if I ask -- assuming he's coherent -- but I'm pretty sure the xaexs are related in someway to the dyapnids. They're both insectoid at any rate. But then so are the clowns, not that you'd ever guess, since they resemble humanity so closely. But whilst the dyapnids are more likely to be found in huge groups -- swarms, I suppose -- the xaexs are rarely ever seen together. They operate alone. Silent killers. If you need a job doing, so the saying goes, hire a xaexs.
I once heard a story -- for a change, it didn't come from Van -- about a xaexs contracted to destroy a nascenti communications cluster -- an organic network hub for all of the incoming communications from the various plants and fungi that the nascenti use to monitor and control their jellyhead underlings. The communications cluster was staffed by forty three exacids. Exacids are the nascenti's muscle, their security guards. Their bouncers and enforcers. There was another four nascenti who ran the cluster on a day-to-day basis. Maybe the numbers are wrong, who knows, it's a story after all, it's probably embellished to make it sound better, but then, when I think about it, maybe it isn't.
Anyway, let's say the numbers are correct. This xaexs, the story doesn't mention her name, breaks into this communications cluster -- evading all of the security systems -- and they're pretty sophisticated, if you know what I mean? I mean, this bit baffles me, exacids and nascenti have all of the benefits of a hive mind and the organic network, and still this happens -- incredible. But then, the xaexs is also plugged into the hive mind through her breeding as well, so I guess being an off-worlder, I just can't fathom it so well. Anyway, the xaexs gets into the perimeter and the main building of the hub undetected by the exacids, kills the four nascenti officers who are maintaining the facility -- injecting them all with a poison straight through that heavy carapace of theirs, killing them instantly.
The data in the network hub is then scrambled by the xaexs, so that it's of no use to the nascenti without a time based quantum code dependent on the temperature of the murk at the point it was compromised. Of course, this code is believed to be simple and easy to remember, but whoever tries to enter the code to unscramble the data, gets just a single chance, or the data is wiped -- forever. It doesn't matter that the nascenti have the data backed up, because by chaining the data by its relatedness to the organic world, once the source data is scrambled, so are all of the replicated versions. Using a backdoor only known to this xaexs, she then uploaded the network data from the cluster to an encrypted server held by the crosslander resistance.
Apparently, that was that. If you wanted more technical details, then I am definitely not the one to ask, but I'm not sure who you would ask either, or rather who I would ask, since the technology here is so different to that in the off-world. Organic technology is so different to that silicon stuff that you find at home.