NOVEL NEXT Chapter 51: The Horsham Silo
"Yay," cheered the girls raggedly, trying not to be too joyful while Ruby still sobbed in her sister's arms.
The dragons trudged out of the water. Jannali was still carrying the body of Jedda. The tubiàn carried the corpse carefully, and laid it at the feet of Ruby, the rest of the dragons gathering around the body.
They each touched their nose to Jedda, seemingly paying their last respects. Ruby pulled herself together enough that she could do the same. She knelt beside the dragon and lightly touched her nose to Jedda's.
"Bye girl," she whispered sadly to her. "I'm so sorry."
Indy led Ruby away so the dragons could do whatever it was they did when one of their own died.
The girls watched as they dragged the body off into the bush, where they covered it with branches.
Ruby went to help them, finding a large tree branch and dragging it to add to the pile. The other girls pitched in, pulling branches from the gum trees on the lake's edge and adding them to the pile, until the dragons were satisfied with its size.
Miro turned away first. He went to find Delphi. The dragons were done, she realised. She nodded at him.
She motioned for Feifei to join her. "Given the guards will follow our tracks here, they'll probably think we killed that dragon, which is good. I think we need to warn them not to enter the lake."
"I would say leave them to their own devices, given they're our enemies, but we do owe them one for that snake attack."
"If we can turn any of them to the rebellion, they'll make first class assets. It's better if there're more of them alive who might join us at this stage of the game," sighed Delphi reluctantly.
God knows she trusted them as much as she trusted any man, which was not at all, but the consorts' words rang in her ears. 'You must get some good men on side'.
"We'll know soon enough if we can recruit any of them, and now we have these dragons on our side," Delphi nodded at them, "I'm not concerned about those boys managing to drag any of us back with them."
"True," agreed Feifei, who shared her concerns about the guards' trustworthiness.
Feifei strode to the water's edge and drew a large skull and crossbones in the sand.
"If they miss that, they're fools and we don't want them on our side," smiled Delphi when she was done. "Okay girls, we're moving out. Last push!"
They mounted back up. Ruby hopped up on one of the 'spare' males.
"I'm calling him Bouddi," she announced, giving him a gentle pat.
Everyone nodded their approval, even though 'heart' was a very improbable name for a war-beast…
An hour of hard riding later, Delphi saw the familiar profile of the silo complex she had imprinted on her memory from images the consorts had shared with her.
The roofline and faded artwork painted on the walls felt to her like she was arriving home. Her heart swelled with joy and a sense of triumph at having made it across the ocean and the Mainland alive, to arrive here.
This was a disguised former military complex.
Consort Cheales was also the descendant of a war hero, and she was privy to its secrets, which were passed down among her family in the hope that they would one day return here. The consort had shared them with Delphi, who she had sworn to secrecy, thinking the complex would be ideal for the rebellion's HQ.
Delphi had been trying to push back thoughts of what might have happened to the consorts after their departure, but arriving in Horsham brought her fears for them front and centre. She felt her eyes prick with tears of concern.
Feifei noticed, and assumed they were tears of happiness. She rode Rulli up alongside Miro and gave Delphi a congratulatory hug.
"Well done, Captain. You got all of us here in one piece, and along the way you gathered up a weapon that might just win this war for us. You must be very happy."
"I am Feif. Thank you for the kind words. Let's get in there and have a look at the state of things."
Though the complex looked innocuous and friendly, with its walls painted with images of a huge black cockatoo, eucalypt branches and a giant picture of an indigenous man kneeling in the outback, the place was like a fortress, with almost no real entrances. There were some roller doors, which Delphi knew to be fake, with only thick concrete walls behind them.
Delphi led them to a rickety iron ladder that rose two thirds of the way up the side of the tallest silo building.
"Stay here Miro," she told him, gesturing for him to stop. "We'll be back to get you a bit later. Don't let anyone up this ladder. Protect the horses."
"Jesus Delphi," Lili complained as they climbed the terrifyingly high ladder, "I hope this isn't the only way in or out. How will we carry anything inside? Imagine fetching water…"
Delphi smiled mysteriously to herself and didn't answer.
When she reached the top of the ladder, she hauled herself onto the platform outside the door. Actually it was generous to call it a platform, it was more like a little diving board, with a hole down to nothing directly outside the door.
She edged her way across the gap, holding onto the thin handrail. Next to the door were some complex-looking pipes. She unerringly reached for a pipe stopper, which she turned like a dial safe lock, in accordance with the code Consort Cheales had given her.
Her heart was in her mouth hoping against hope the code was still accurate and would let them into the complex. She knew it would be almost impossible for them to get in if it didn't…
She took her time, making sure she didn't make any errors that might time-lock them out.
Feifei clung to the ladder below her, watching the process with as much trepidation as Delphi, virtually holding her breath as she listened to the little clicks and whirs of the mechanical combination lock doing its thing.
At last Delphi stopped spinning the lock and let it go.
A whirring and clanking sound reverberated from the lock and the small door, which slowly swung open.