Alfie leapt down, landing on the arm that held the screaming Cecil. He felt the chitinous armour crunch beneath his boots as he fired his revolver point blank into the face of the second. The third tried to scuttle back to the safety of the scree slope, but Jack appeared, caught it by the leg and swung it against the boulder. Alfie heard its carapace crack and Jack let it fall limply to the ground, leaving a dark sticky stain on the rock.
Alfie pulled Cecil to his feet, ducked under his armpit, took his weight and helped him back to the tank. Jack stood his ground before backing towards the tank, picking up Cecil’s fallen revolver and guarding their retreat. The gathering creatures hissed and clicked their mandibles, but kept their distance.
By now the fuel drum had been re-secured, and Alfie could hear Wally running up the engine in readiness to move off. He passed Cecil to Frank, who hauled him in through the sponson hatch.
“Come on, Jack,” Alfie called, one foot on the starboard hatch lip as he prepared to step through. Jack danced backwards towards the tank, his eyes never leaving the rocks.
“Natives are still restless,” he said, ducking as a fist-sized stone hit the tank’s metal track.
“All aboard,” called Reggie, banging cheerfully on a pipe with a wrench.
The ironclad moved off.
Frustrated, the Yrredetti howled and a rain of rocks clattered down against the tank, setting off a rainbow of percussion inside.
“Looks like they’re trying a final attempt to ditch us,” said Frank, peering through his pistol port. Mathers peered through the pistol port in the side of the driver cabin. Damn things were trying to prise a boulder loose and start an avalanche.
“Put your foot down, Clegg. We don’t want to get caught in this canyon.” The tank lurched as it picked up what speed it could.
Several more Yrredetti were helping to lever the boulder free as the tank started to pass beneath it.
Reggie loaded a shell into the breech of the port gun. Norman took a deep breath, gritted his teeth and pushed down with all his weight, levering the gun up so that it was pointed up towards the canyon wall. He targeted the boulder as best he could in the moving tank, and fired. The boulder and the Yrredetti disappeared in a plume of fire and dirt. A cloud of dust rolled down the canyon side, enveloping the tank. A rain of clinker and debris pattered down on the hull, sending verdant ripples through the compartment.
“Yes! Got the blighters. Thank you and goodnight! That’ll teach ’em to mess with old Ivanhoe!” whooped Norman.
Rubble rattled down the canyon sides to be crushed beneath the tracks of the Ivanhoe as, oblivious, it continued on its halting way towards the mouth of the canyon.
Behind it, a lone wail of frustration echoed round the walls of the canyon, before being picked up and amplified by other Yrredetti.
As the dust cloud settled, the blue-green blisters, stilled in the fleeting darkness of the cloud, began to pulse in the rays of the sun once more. On the canyon side, where the shell had exploded, something cold and metallic glinted through the shattered rock in the dust-filtered daylight.
CHAPTER FIVE
“The Outlook isn’t Healthy...”
LIEUTENANT MATHERS, OPERATING the steering brake levers, peered out of the front visor at the small rectangle of world he could see before him, a world that see-sawed violently as the landship crashed up and down on the swell of ground beneath them. As they nosed up over obstacles, the bright rectangle of sky was snatched away with vertiginous speed to be replaced with lurching glimpses of soil and rock, before he was teased with a horizon line of vermillion-hued vegetation that vanished again abruptly.
Again, Mathers heard the whispering. He glanced at Clegg beside him, the bantam cockney’s wiry arms tense on the driving levers.
“Blimey,” the driver shouted over the noise of the engine behind them. “This place has got more pot holes than Oxford Street.”
Mathers shook his head. He could barely hear Clegg speak, let alone whisper. It must be some resonant engine note he’d not noticed before.
As they left the canyon behind them, the blue-green rock blisters gave way to a cinnamon-coloured soil. Ahead of them lay a rocky plateau scored with haphazard cracks and stress marks from the same geological event that caused the canyon. Cracks and gullies splintered the landscape like crazy paving; some rocky plates tilting, some sunken, some thrust up. Some gullies were too wide for the tank to cross, even though the weight of its hydraulic steering tail was designed as a counter-balance to cross trenches of up to nine feet.
They had to find a way to safely cross the labyrinthine field. As tank commander, that job fell to Mathers, and quite frankly he was glad of it. He was the tallest man in the crew, a real legs eleven. Sat in the small cockpit on the hard chair being jolted and jarred had given him a stomach cramp. Even now he hated being cooped up in the tank for long periods and he found himself tensing, clenching his stomach muscles against the unexpected drops, jolts and bangs.
He had cramp. And a headache. Maybe the fresh air would help. He tapped Clegg on the shoulder.
“I’ll walk on ahead, guide you through.”
It was a common procedure in tanks. When going became difficult it was the commander’s unenviable task to negotiate paths round shell-hole-pocked roads, and he’d done his fair share during night manoeuvres and under fire. There were times when he almost preferred that to being cooped up in an iron coffin. At least here, there was no chance of Fritz sniping at you, and that brought a great deal of relief. On the other hand, you never knew here what you were going to encounter next.
He walked ahead of the tank, checking the ground, searching for narrow enough gullies for them to cross. He could hear things moving about in the bottom of them, slithering and snuffling. He peered over the edge of one, but some form of bruised purple vegetation obscured the gully bed. In a way, he was relieved. He indicated to Clegg to swing right over a gap narrow enough for the Ivanhoe to bridge.
In this manner, the tank crew progressed slowly across the broken plain, having to go out of their way to find a route passable enough to be of little concern to the great metal behemoth. From then on, progress was faster and the jungle loomed ahead. A short sort of crimson brambly plant became more prevalent, its thorns scratching the leather of his calf-length boots.
One caught his ankle and sent him tumbling into a gully; he slipped to the bottom. An accompanying land slither sent dirt and soil raining down onto him. For a moment, disorientated, unable to move, the old panic rose in him again.
Mathers had been an officer in the infantry, on the front lines, until one day he found himself under heavy bombardment for days. The dugout he was in had collapsed under shellfire. There was a large bang, and then darkness. And silence. He couldn’t move. He was buried, pinned under the body of an orderly, Hammond, that lay across him, staring at him with lifeless eyes for what seemed like hours, but must have been a lot less. His ears were ringing. Muffled by the dirt, the sandbags and joists, he could hear the barrage going on around him, the shriek of whizz-bangs and, in the breeze that blew gently through the collapsed dugout, a hint of gas. He could barely hear his own voice as he called for help. He knew he mustn’t be seen to funk it in front of the men he could hear digging for him. He had enough gumption about him not to scream, fighting off the urge by biting his own hand while, in his head, he pleaded with a god he barely believed in to let him get out. He promised anything, everything.
When they finally dragged him from under Hammond’s corpse and carried him by stretcher to the aid post, he was found to have no serious injuries. Hammond’s body had cushioned him. He was lucky. But his scars couldn’t be seen.
He was still shaking the next day. The tremors made it difficult to walk, so he was forced to remain in bed by stern matrons.
Commotional distress, they said. Perfectly understandable. Several weeks behind the lines helped him recover. Except that it didn’t. Back at the front, it didn’t take long for his nerves to fray.
He noticed the tremors, the rising panic, and the tic under his eye, whenever he had to go into a dugout. He could hardly sleep. Alcohol helped, initially. Eventually they sent him back to Blighty to recuperate.
That was when he met Major Parkhurst. Damn Major Parkhurst. Man had the bloody temerity to call himself an MO. Bloody croaker, more like. The man didn’t believe in neuralgia. You were either a coward or you weren’t. Mathers insisted he wasn’t, which was all Parkhurst wanted to hear to declare him fit for duty. The trouble was, Mathers no longer knew for sure. He had to prove it to himself one way or the other. Kill or cure, he thought.
The Machine Gun Corps’ new Heavy Section was looking for officers and men. It would be a fresh start away from his old battalion. He applied, hiding the true extent of his condition. He hadn’t realised what was involved until he’d arrived at Elveden. But you couldn’t show fear in front of the men. You were an officer. To do so was to invite a court martial. Every time he entered the tank he could feel the pressure building inside him, like a pot that threatened to boil over, but he managed to control it, tensing his stomach and legs so that he wouldn’t jump at unexpected noises or lurches. Thankfully, it seemed everyone in the tanks was ill from the fumes and the working conditions at one time or another and he found he could disguise the worse of his nervous debility. Here, on this world, however, the tank provided its own medication. The fuel fumes seemed to have a beneficial effect on him, making him less jumpy. He wondered what was in it to make him feel this way, but only briefly. Mostly he was just glad. Even that infernal tic under his left eye, that would fire uncontrollably in bursts, like a machine gun, had stopped recently.
He put it to the back of his mind and breathed deeply.
He realized he wasn’t buried. The cloth of his jacket had just caught fast on the bramble. He tore his arm free, ripping the serge. He heard something in the damp shadows slithering towards him along the gully bed, under the cover of the creeping plant, and he scrambled back up the side of the gully.
As he clawed his way to the lip, he heard a sound over the noise of the tank, and he saw an apparent cluster of boulders a hundred yards away lift itself up, limbs unfolding from beneath it. He had seen one of these things before in a forest, on the way to rescue captured Tommies from Khungarr. They had only survived then by good fortune. A stone beetle, about the size of the Ivanhoe.
Cautiously, it stretched and unrolled itself, watching the tank warily. Clegg tried to turn the Ivanhoe so that it faced their foe; Mathers urged them on silently. The stone beetle was quicker and scuttled round the tank, as if looking for weaknesses. In order to turn more quickly Clegg had kept both tracks running, one in reverse. It would strip the differential if he kept that up and they’d be buggered out in the middle of nowhere with no tankodrome or machine shops. Mathers was sure Perkins would be scolding him.
The beetle crouched low on its limbs, its head down, mandibles scything, all the while watching the tank.
The tank halted, its engine growling. Mathers urged it to do something. It seemed an eternity before the tank began to lurch backwards away from the beast. The huge rock beetle advanced, keeping pace with it. It then tried scuttling round to the right as if to flank it. A burst of machine gun fire spitting across the ground soon stopped that.
Mathers watched, helpless, as the tank tried to fix the thing in its sights, but it was altogether faster and more agile than the cumbersome armoured machine. Mathers threw himself to the ground as a spray of bullets zipped over his head.
“Nesbit!” he roared, the admonition all but drowned by the noise of the tank.
The giant beetle, having abandoned its flanking manoeuvre, now sought to charge the trespasser. Head down, swaying, its great stone stag horns wove through the air. It scuttled forwards again in short, abrupt bursts, the brief spatter from the forwards facing Hotchkiss ricocheting off its carapace, merely giving it pause for thought. It was almost with reluctance that the stone beetle then backed away. It regarded the ironclad hesitantly before slinking away and slithering down into a large gully.
Mathers breathed a sigh of relief. When he picked himself off the ground, a sharp pain in his abdomen almost doubled him over. He frowned and sucked air in through gritted teeth until the sensation passed.
He felt inside his tunic, pulled out his hip flask and took a quick slug of the distilled petrol fruit. Its fumes alone weren’t enough to dull the pain. More recently, he needed something stronger.
The tank slewed round blindly, trying to find its vanished foe. Mathers approached the tank and stood in front of it. He could make out Clegg’s face through the driver’s open visor plate, and waved him on. The tank began to clank obediently towards him as he continued to scout ahead. The crevices and gullies were becoming fewer and narrower, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He hadn’t gone fifty yards when he heard a pistol go off. He turned to see someone fire from one of the tank’s pistol ports.
This stone beetle creature was obviously more cunning than its forest cousin was. It had used the cover of the gullies to come round behind the tank and surprise its rival.
“Swing to port!” Mathers yelled, waving his arms to his right as if he could speed up the tank’s turn by the action. “For Christ’s sake, swing to port!”
INSIDE THE TANK, peering out of the sponson door pistol port, Frank saw a flash of stone carapace and fired his revolver.
“Bugger’s back!” he yelled. Faces peered out of the other pistol ports, searching for the creature.
“Where?”
“It’s behind us,” said Cecil, peering out of the pistol port in the rear door by the radiator.
“Wally, about face, ninety degrees!” yelled Alfie. He nodded to Frank and when Wally gave the signal from his driving seat, they changed gears. The tank began to turn almost on the spot.
“Where is it? I can’t see it!” said Wally, peering though his visor plate. They peered out of pistol ports and gun slits, checking off their positions.
“Not here,” called Jack, swinging the gun round through a hundred and twenty degrees and peering through the gun slit.
“Nor here,” said Cecil.
“Can’t see it,” said Norman.
“Then where the bloody hell is it?”
As if in answer, there was a heavy thud accompanied by an oppressive green synesthetic flash as the creature landed on top of the tank. A noise like nails on a blackboard pierced the bass rumble of the engine as the creature’s feet sought purchase. Blocked by the belly of the creature above, exhaust fumes began to belch back into the compartment, filling the space with a choking black smoke.
Alfie began coughing until spots burst before his eyes.
Reggie took the commander’s seat next to Wally.
“No free rides on this ’bus!” he said, pulling on the brake lever. The Ivanhoe jerked to a halt. Unable to get a firm grip, the stone beetle slithered off the front.
“That’ll teach it,” said Wally with a self-satisfied sneer. “Go on, clear off, you great bleedin’ cockroach.”
It skittered off round out of his limited field of view. Back in the compartment, the crew flung themselves at the pistol ports again. It was too fast for the gunners to get a bead on it.
The back end of the tank tilted up as the creature shoved its horns beneath the steering tail and tried to lever it up. The tank crashed down again as it failed. It tried again.
“Oi!” Wally drove the tank forwards.
“Cecil, take a peek and see what the bleeder’s trying to do, will you.”
Cecil peered out of the rear loophole. “Lawks, it’s coming after us again!”
The tank juddered once more as the back end tilted up and crashed down again.
“We can’t take much more of this.”
There was a brief stillness. Alfie held his breath.
Then Cecil piped up, jerking back from the pistol port in the rear door. “It’s trying for the roof again.”
Alfie found himself looki
ng up at the roof, from where the noise, and jagged green spikes, of scrambling issued. Between them, Wally, Alfie and Frank tried to swing the tank and throw it off, but it clung tenaciously to the roof.
“What the hell do we do now?”
“Aaaugh. Shit!” yelled Cecil stumbling back over the differential. “It’s trying to get in!” After several attempts, a thin exoskeletal tube about two feet long appeared through the pistol port. He reared back and cocked his revolver at it. He watched, open-mouthed, as the end opened and something wet and glistening, like a tentacle, protruded from the chitinous casing.
“It, it’s a whatsit, a prob-sis? It’s trying to suck us out!”
“I don’t think so, son.” Jack edged past Alfie, put a hand on Cecil’s wrist and forced him to lower the weapon. “Don’t shoot in here, Ces. The bullet’ll ricochet.”
“Fellas,” said Norman,warily.
The tank began to rock as the beetle creature above them sought purchase. The rocking became more rhythmic. The tentacle, if that’s what it was, began to throb.
A vile thought took hold as Alfie watched. “That’s not a bloody tentacle, or a proboscis. It’s a bleedin’ short arm!”
Reggie blanched. “A what?”
The rocking became more urgent and the occupants of the tank were being shunted backwards and forwards with every thrust. Expressions of horror and disgust dawned on their faces as they realised what was going on.
“It’s not trying to kill us. It’s after a bon time,” said Norman.
Only Cecil still looked blank.
“It thinks we’re a lady friend?” Frank suggested.
Cecil frowned. “But this is a male tank.”
Alfie braced his hands against the roof as another enthusiastic thrust rocked the tank. “I really don’t think it cares.”
“Jesus! Well don’t just stand there,” bellowed Wally.
The Ironclad Prophecy Page 8
