Without warning, the wooden tunnel collapsed, the wire weed falling to the ground on top of it. Some nervous private, whether through fear or incompetence, had yanked the shoring struts that held up the tunnel. Their way back to the trenches was blocked.
1 Section were stranded in No Man’s Land, between their own front line and the approaching Khungarrii army.
BACK BEHIND THE lines, in one of the tented Casualty Clearing Stations, Nurse Edith Bell and Nellie Abbott, the FANY, prepared for the first waves of wounded to come in, setting out trays of clean field dressings commandeered from soldier’s kits and bandages made from boiling old ones and cutting up the flannel shirts of the deceased.
“So how are you and Alfie the tanker getting on?” asked Edith casually.
Nellie scowled at the insinuation. “That’s Mister Perkins to you. We’re good pals we are, and don’t you go getting other ideas,” she protested, before confiding, “but he is nice, isn’t he? And I do worry about him so. The Ivanhoe was due back yesterday. It only has a range of twenty-three miles on full tanks of petrol, and –”
“Goodness, Nellie, if only you could hear yourself. You sound like a man. It isn’t feminine to talk about things like that. No one will thank you for it.”
“Perkins will.”
“But you can do better than that, Nellie.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Well, on your head be it.”
“I ain’t too worried, though. He’s in the safest place, isn’t he? Nothing can get to him in there. That’s why Everson sends ’em out, ain’t it?”
An orderly thrust his head into the tent.
“Nurse Bell, it’s the shell-shock patients. They’ve got the wind up, well, more than usual. I can’t do nuffin’ with them. They’ll respond to you.”
Edith glanced at Nellie. They both looked over at Captain Lippett, the Medical Officer, who was deep in conversation with Sister Fenton.
“You’d better watch it, Edi. You know how Lippy feels about the poor souls.”
Edith shot him a disapproving glance. “Oh, I’ve been well apprised of his feelings towards them on several occasions. He may not care for them, but someone has to.”
Lippett was dismissive of the shell-shock victims. It was all down to low morale, as far as he was concerned. Even the urmen gave them a wide berth, believing them possessed by malign spirits. She didn’t agree. She’d been through her own traumas; the thought of Jeffries still made her shudder. She bore the mental scars and empathised with those whose minds crumpled under the weight of their experiences.
“Go,” Nellie said, with a brief smile and a nod. “We can cope for the moment, but be quick. If you’re not here when the wounded start coming in you’ll be for the high jump. If Lippett asks I’ll tell him you’ve gone to an Aid Post.” She turned to the hovering orderly. “Stanton, get in here and help me, then.”
Edith put down her tray and stepped smartly out of the tent.
The rhythmic noise of the Khungarrii chittering gave her chills and she kept her head down, not daring to look as she walked briskly across to the barbed wire compound. Nicknamed the Bird Cage, it had been constructed as a temporary solution along the same specifications as a large POW compound, but was still in use months later, much to Edith’s chagrin. There always seemed to be more important things to do. Still, at least now there was a crude wooden hut at one end, rather than tents to provide shelter, and some little comfort to those that would use it. Others preferred the familiarity of the dugout at the other end.
In here, thirty-odd men had been abandoned by the meagre medical staff at the moment they needed help most, unable to cope. Some were trying to hide under blankets. Others flung themselves at the barbed wire in an attempt to escape. Others just sat weeping and howling, covering their ears, or jerking and twitching uncontrollably. Some had arrived on the planet like this, the bombardments of the Somme proving too much. Others had joined them here since, the shock of their predicament proving too much for their already fragile minds.
Lieutenant Everson had often asked her to stop them howling and wailing as it was distracting the men. It made them uncomfortable; the Bird Cage was a visible reminder of their frailties and fears, failure as men under horrific conditions. But it was not failure, not as she saw it, and it certainly wasn’t cowardice.
A number of new cases had been referred to her, unable to cope with the strangeness and violence of the new world around them. One of the triggers for shell-shock had been the unrelenting artillery barrages, the sustained bombardment and the inability to do anything about it. Here, there were no minniewerfers or five-nines, but when the very landscape around you proffered a sustained barrage of unpleasant and painful experiences, when any plant or creature might try to kill you and, more often than not, succeed, to some it was much the same. Those that weathered the Hun artillery with chirpy good humour or dogged willpower could crumble here, the sight of the alien sky above them sending them into the most fearful funks.
Entrance was gained though a single gate set into the barbed wire fence. Everson had allowed the posting of a single sentry. “You!” Edith called him as she approached. “Help me get them into the hut. And be gentle.”
A few allowed themselves to be herded towards the hut. Others were too physically incapable of moving by themselves, too paralysed by fear.
She dropped on her haunches by Private Miller. He was trying to claw a hole in the ground to hide, his fingers now raw and bloody as he scraped away at the hard earth, heedless of the pain and driven by a desperate desire to flee. She grasped his wrists gently.
“Shhh. It’s all right. You’re safe. Safe. Come with me.”
He looked up at her with a vague recognition. Her window of opportunity was slim, before he slipped back into whatever nightmare he’d been trapped in. “Come on,” she said, lifting him up. He acquiesced calmly, but she could feel the tremors through his arms. She led him towards the hut, distracting him every time he flinched or his eyes flicked towards the front line, muttering comforting maternal words as she led him step by step towards the relative safety of the hut, away from the clamour of the oncoming battle.
FROM THE FIRE trench, Lieutenant Everson scanned the alien army in his binoculars, chewing his lip. Every so often, the purple black of the huge slow larval beasts blotted out his view for a moment only for the advancing scentirrii to appear, as he continued his sweep, gnashing their mandibles and striking their chitinous thorax plates with their weapons.
The men called those great beasts ‘battlepillars.’ They were twice as high as an elephant and twenty to thirty yards long, making up the vanguard of the chatt army. Purple and black in colour, with fearsome-looking yellow markings on their faces, their bodies were covered with chitinous sections covered with defensive spines. A rider stood behind each head in a howdah-type affair, a canopied box, reins running down to the battlepillars’ head and fixed in some manner to their mandibles. Along the beasts’ lengths were slung long boat-cradles carrying yet more Khungarrii scentirrii armed with electric lances. They may not have had tanks, but these beasts weren’t far off.
And speaking of the tank, where the bloody hell was it? The Khungarrii thought it was some great demon or god of the dead or something. If the tank had been here they wouldn’t have dared attack. Or perhaps that was the point. Maybe they were attacking because it wasn’t here. Which meant they must have been watching all this time.
Everson realised that there was the very real danger that the chatts would try to flank and surround the encampment. He would have to hit them hard and fast to dissuade them.
He was depending on his machine guns. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem – the field of fire from their emplacements covered the entire valley mouth – but their ammunition supplies were severely limited. He’d only have one good shot at this.
Since the dwindling ammunitions reserves were rationed, and even he daren’t cross Company Quartermaster Sergeant Slacke, he h
ad taken to wearing the dress sword that his father had bought for him. Although only ever meant for ceremonial use, it was, nonetheless, a real sword. He wasn’t looking forward to the day he would have to use it. He hoped it wouldn’t be today.
CAUGHT IN THE poppy field, Atkins ordered his men to take up positions in front of the wire weed entanglements and find hasty cover, if they could.
The Khungarrii battlepillars began to advance, crunching their way over tube grass. Behind the great warbeasts marched the first wave of the Khungarrii assault. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to possess any long-range weapons of any kind. Atkins and his section had their guns, but they’d been on patrol and in a skirmish.
“Bugger!” muttered Mercy. “I’ve only got a magazine left.”
Gazette glanced over and smiled grimly. “Better not miss, then.”
Here they were again. Same old same old. It never changed. Atkins nodded back and shifted his attention to the great battlepillars that lumbered towards them.
The wire weed behind them, he thought, was going to present as little problem to these creatures as Hun barbed wire did to their own tanks. In the pit of his stomach Atkins felt the same fear that the Huns must have felt when the tanks first came crawling out of the Somme mud towards them, crushing everything in their path.
Behind them, he could see the first ranks of Khungarrii scentirrii begin to charge, their mandibles open.
He felt his bowels churn.
“This is it, lads,” he said gravely. “Pick your targets.”
He could hear Nobby whimper and Prof’s soothing tone trying to calm the boy. He briefly remembered Ginger. That seemed a lifetime ago. He focused on the wave of advancing chatts marching across the poppy field towards them.
As they marched through the flowers, the closed ranks of disciplined scentirrii began stumbling about. They lost their measured step. The line broke. They began to mill about in confusion as though blinded, like chlorine gas victims.
“What’s happening to them?” asked Prof.
“No idea,” replied Mercy. “But it looks like they’re funking it.”
Gazette sneered. “That makes ’em easier to pick off.”
Others had the same idea. In answer, a volley of NCOs’ orders rang out along the outer front line trench. The air filled with the crackle of gunfire and the reassuring smell of cordite and the chatts began to fall.
A jubilant cheer went up from the trenches behind them, “The chatts are funking it. We’ve got ’em, lads. We’ve got ’em!”
Whatever was affecting the scentirrii, it didn’t seem to be affecting the battlepillars. Atkins’ stomach shrank to a hard knot in his belly as one of the beasts, its great mandibles scything through the tube grass, advanced implacably towards them.
EVERSON WATCHED THE centre of the Khungarrii attack collapse. On the flanks, the chatts broke into a charge. The Lewis machine gun emplacements raked a line across the first wave and the advance faltered.
Tulliver’s Sopwith 1½ Strutter roared low overhead, sweeping along the Khungarrii advance, his machine guns stuttering, enfilading the enemy.
Then, in answer to some unheard, unseen chemical scent command, what was left of the ranks of chatt scentirrii began to withdraw, all except those in the poppy field, who still staggered round as if in a stupor, unable to obey.
Panning his binoculars across the mass of the Khungarrii army waiting in reserve, Everson caught sight of what he presumed was their general. It watched from the howdah of a large battlepillar that had reared up, its head and front legs resting atop a copse of trees, affording a better view as his mount scissored idly at the foliage with large mandibles.
And he knew he’d met this chatt before, deep in the nurseries of Khungarr. He almost felt like saluting him, as he had once done with a German officer who appeared above the Hun parapets one morning.
That felt like an age away.
GAZETTE TOOK MEASURED shots at the electric lancers in the battlepillar’s passenger cradles. Three chatts collapsed, and one fell backwards out of the cradle to land on the ground with a crack. Its companions in the adjacent cradles now turned their attention towards Gazette. Blue streams of electric fire arced from the cradles towards the ground but fell short, incinerating the trampled tube grass.
Gutsy picked the rider off. It fell back, caught awkwardly on the howdah’s side by the reins.
Atkins reached into his webbing for a Mills bomb. “Cover me!”
Porgy looked at him. “What the bloody hell are you going to do?”
Atkins grinned and patted Porgy’s cap as he got up. “Something stupid.”
He dashed off, running in a crouch though the poppies, zigzagging towards another oncoming battlepillar.
Crackling ribbons of blue-white fire arced down around him from the electric lancers.
He pulled the pin from the Mills bomb and threw it. It skittered to a halt in front of the battlepillar.
He didn’t wait to see the great armoured larval beast, unperturbed, continue its relentless progress over it. He darted back to his section, where they laid down covering fire.
The grenade exploded beneath the beast, red-hot shrapnel shards slicing up through its vitals. It reared up, exposing a huge wet gaping wound in its soft underbelly, hot organs slopping out as it toppled over to the side. The huge beast crashed down, twitching.
Some of its riders lay crushed beneath its huge bulk. Others though, scrambled to get away from it. Gazette and the others rushed forward through the trampled poppies to mop up those chatts still left alive.
Around the other side of the battlepillar, thrown yards from its monstrous cracked head, Atkins found the shattered howdah. The contorted body of one chatt lay on the ground, tangled in a snapped cradle rope and reins.
The howdah’s torn silken covering had come adrift from the splintered canopy. There was a rasp of movement from beneath the sheet.
Atkins nodded and he and Gutsy edged towards the cloth. An ivory chitinous arm clawed out from under the breeze-ruffled sheet. Gutsy stepped forward, ready to thrust his bayonet down though the fabric, but Atkins shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s scentirrii.”
He inched towards it. He nodded at Gutsy who drew up his rifle to his shoulder and fixed the shape in his sights.
Atkins caught the cloth and pulled it back with the tip of his bayonet.
The chatt tried to scuttle away on its back. It wore a white silk sash with knotted tassels and its antennae were broken, but they seemed like old injuries. Its vestigial mid-limbs at its abdomen were scissoring frantically. Atkins had been right. It was not a scentirrii, a chatt soldier. It was smaller, its carapace a smoother, off-white colour, its head-shell smooth and ovoid. It drew in a deep breath and forced it out through its four finger-like mouth palps as if weaving the air into a crude approximation of human speech.
“This One is Dhuyumirrii. This One does not fight. This One watches, observes.”
Atkins frowned, but didn’t let down his guard. Something about it was familiar. Chatts all looked the same, true, but the broken antennae?
“I... know you,” he said. “The edifice. Jeffries. You were there. I saved you from the gas. You called yourself...” But the name evaded his memory.
“This One is called Chandar,” said the chatt.
Gutsy turned, bayoneted and shot a charging scentirrii. “Only, this is no place for a reunion,” he warned.
Chatts began to swarm around them. The section fell on the confused Khungarrii with bayonets and clubs and succeeded in driving them back.
“Better give us a hand then,” said Atkins, helping Chandar up. “’Cause we’ve just got ourselves a prisoner.”
An arc of blue fire earthed by Gutsy’s feet, and he turned and fired. A chatt fell dead.
“He’d better be bloody important,” he said.
There was a sporadic ripple of jubilant cheers from the trenches behind them. The main Khungarrii force was withdrawing, but the confuse
d chatts stumbling around 1 Section in the poppy field still posed a threat.
He heard Sergeant Hobson’s voice cut through the cheers.
“Atkins, get out of there. Make for the farmhouse!” he ordered.
Atkins looked along the length of wire entanglement behind them. Over to the right he saw the front of the old Poulet farmhouse flanked by the wire entanglements. Heavily shelled on the Somme, it was now a forward observation post. The ground floor had been converted into a machine gun emplacement, while the first floor acted as an observation platform. It might be their only chance.
One of the milling scentirrii rushed Atkins with a long, barbed spear. Confused they might be, but they still recognised an enemy. Atkins thrust Chandar back towards Gutsy, ducked under the spear thrust and brought his bayonet up, burying it deep between the chatt’s mandibles.
Running at a crouch, the section made for the farmhouse.
Behind them, he heard the soldiers in the trench open fire at the crowd of dazed, stumbling chatts.
Atkins could see the muzzle of a Vickers machine gun poking out of the window of the farmhouse. Past it, he saw angled wooden doors leading down to the old fruit cellar.
“Lance Corporal Atkins, 1 Section 2 Platoon, C Company!” he called out to the machine gun section inside. “We’ve got a prisoner. We’re coming in through the cellar. Cover us!”
“Stoppage!”
“Well get it cleared, man, you know the drill!”
Bloody Nora, the day just gets better, Atkins thought as he shot the bolt and flung open the cellar doors.
“In,” he yelled. “Make for the sap at the rear of the house!”
Prof, Chalky, Nobby, Pot Shot, Gazette, Mercy and Porgy tumbled into the dark hole.
The Ironclad Prophecy Page 4
