by Jake Bible
Nasir vanished in a geyser of flame and smoke. Beatty jerked at the crash of the explosion.
Metemma’s guns thumped. One of Fateh’s six-pounders fired.
“Cease fire!” Beatty shouted, waving one hand. “Cease fire! You’re wasting ammunition!”
Sergeant Ellison also yelled the order. The six-pounder fell silent.
Metemma continued shooting. Plumes of smoke and sand kicked up far from the tripods.
“Morrison. Signal Metemma to—”
Another heat ray streaked from the lead tripod. A fiery explosion consumed Metemma.
Beatty clenched his jaw. Two gunboats were destroyed, and they hadn’t so much as nicked the aliens. His eyes drifted to the Blackwood. Some of the refugees and crew gaped at the tripods in frozen horror. Others jumped over the side and swam to shore.
Letting out a slow breath, he looked back at the Martians. His insides went cold. This was it. One shot and he and his crew were done for.
“All guns!” he shouted. “Open fire!” Wasting ammunition didn’t matter now. He may as well show the Martians they would go down fighting.
Sailors repeated the order throughout the Fateh. The guns boomed. Beatty watched the shells burst hundreds of feet from the tripods, throwing up clumps of sand. He clenched his fists, praying just one bloody shell hit those bastards before the end.
A heat ray flashed over the desert. Beatty closed his eyes.
A quake rocked the Fateh. Beatty cried out as he fell to the deck. Hammers of pain slammed into his back.
He blinked. My God, I’m still alive. Loud pops came from the boat’s stern. Ammunition detonating. Smoke wafted above him. Tortured screams reached his ears.
Beatty grimaced, pushing himself up. Ellison and his Egyptian gunners lay in a heap on the deck.
“You all right?” Beatty called to them.
“Fine, sir.” Ellison bared his teeth and rubbed his shoulder. Two of the Egyptians nodded to him.
Beatty clawed at the bridge, rising to his feet, then slipping. Fateh listed to port. Flames consumed the stern.
“Abandon ship!” he hollered. “All hands, abandon ship!”
He threw open the door to the bridge, ushering out the crew. Beatty ran below decks and into a cloud of smoke. His eyes burned as he checked for any sailors.
“Abandon ship!” Smoke stung his throat and lungs. “Aban—” A coughing fit rocked his body. He searched around him, his eyes narrow, watery slits. Beatty could barely see a foot in front of him.
The deck shifted under him. Beatty slid into the wall. A bolt of pain went through his shoulder. He thought about turning around and getting off this burning wreck.
Can’t. Not until I know everyone’s off safely.
At least, everyone who’s still alive.
Two large forms burst from the smoke. Beatty grunted as they clipped his shoulder.
“Who’s that?” asked a gruff voice.
Beatty recognized the man. Moffat, the Scottish civilian engineer, who serviced the boilers.
“Captain? That you?”
“It is.” Beatty could barely keep his eyes open.
“You’d best get off this boat,” said Moffat. “She’s done for.”
“Is anyone else belowdecks?” Beatty’s face twisted in disgust from the stale taste of smoke.
“I doubt it.” Moffat shook his head. “Fire swept through right quick. I barely got out of the boiler room with this poor bugger.”
Beatty glanced at the man leaning against Moffat’s side. One of the foreign firemen, he assumed.
He turned back to the corridor. An orange aura glowed through the smoke. The Scotsman hadn’t been joking about the fire spreading quickly.
“Go. Go.” He pushed on Moffat’s arm, urging him to get topside. Beatty looked over his shoulder, biting his lip. If anyone below remained alive, he couldn’t reach them.
Guilt clawed his soul as he raced up the ladder, pressing against the wall to keep his balance. Fateh listed at forty degrees.
He made it topside just as Moffat and the wounded fireman plunged into the Nile. Beatty half-ran, half-slid past the six-pounder and hurled himself into the water. He kicked away from the sinking gunboat, eyeing a nearby shoal covered in bushes. Sergeant Ellison and two of his gunners pulled themselves out of the river and crawled into the vegetation.
“The shoal!” he shouted to the survivors, jabbing a finger at the miniature island. “Get to the shoal!”
Beatty stroked and kicked so hard his muscles started to burn. He didn’t stop until he reached the bank. Ellison waved him over to his hiding spot. Beatty checked around him. The brush seemed thick enough to prevent the Martians from seeing them.
He twisted around, peering through the branches. Moffat and the wounded fireman emerged next, the Scot dragging the foreign worker into the brush. Beyond them, smoke billowed from the sinking Fateh. Beatty’s face tightened. He’d lost his ship. He didn’t care that it wasn’t a true warship like the Trafalgar, just a converted paddleboat with some guns stuck on it. It was his ship, and it had gone down with hardly a fight.
“Good Lord,” Moffat stammered.
Beatty looked to the Scotsman, then followed his wide-eyed gaze.
The tripods were a quarter kilometer from the river. His mouth fell open. Their sheer size awed and terrified him at the same time.
The Blackwood floated into view, its deck devoid of people. Some of the refugees and crews swam for shore. Others had already climbed out of the water and run into the desert.
The tripods waded into the Nile. Beatty’s eyes flickered between the enormous war machines to the people still in the water.
Faster. Faster!
A tentacle whipped out from the lead tripod. It snatched a man out of the river. Beatty barely suppressed a gasp as it lifted him high into the air and dumped him into a globular basket on the tripods rear.
More tentacles shot into the water, quick as a frog’s tongue. Every time they came up with a struggling man or woman.
Tears stung Beatty’s eyes. He pounded the ground with a fist. He couldn’t do a damn thing to help those poor souls. Never in his life had he felt so helpless.
When all the swimmers had been plucked from the water, the Martians marched onto dry land, pursuing the remaining crew and refugees from the Blackwood. Beatty prayed at least some escaped those tentacles.
The tripods soon vanished from sight. Beatty and the others remained in the brush, tending to the wounded fireman, a Maltese named Grima. Half the man’s face and torso were covered with dark scorches and bloody wounds. Beatty grimaced at the rank smell of copper and burnt flesh emanating from the man. Still, he ripped off the sleeves of his soaked uniform and used them as bandages. Ellison and one of the Egyptians did the same. Grima softly moaned the entire time. Beatty’s chest tightened. Could they get him to a doctor in time?
Are there any hospitals left in the Sudan?
The small group remained hidden in the brush until nightfall. During that time, Grima passed. With no means to bury him, Beatty conducted a very short, impromptu service, and then led the others to the western bank of the Nile.
“So what do we do now, sir?” asked Moffat.
Beatty stared at the Scotsman. Good question. But he was in charge. He had to come up with some sort of plan.
“We find other survivors from the army or navy, and keep up the fight.”
“How the bloody hell do we fight those things?” Moffat threw his arms out to his sides.
“We’ll find a way,” said Beatty. “We damn well better if we want to live, and when I say ‘we,’ I mean all of mankind.”
He folded his arms and stared at the ground, thinking. Heading back to Atbara was out. The Martians burned the city to the ground. They could continue on to Shendi, twenty-five kilometers south. But what guarantee did they have the town wouldn’t—or hadn’t already—suffered the same fate?
Even if the Martians had destroyed Shendi, they should still be able to
salvage some supplies and weapons, then he could figure out what to do next.
“We stay with our original plan,” said Beatty. “South to Shendi.”
They trekked through the darkness, staying along the river, but not too close. Beatty had no desire for him or any of his men to be dragged off by a crocodile.
When the sun came up, they rested. Beatty set up a watch, with each man, including himself, on duty for an hour. Not only did he have to worry about Martians and crocodiles, but the damn Mahdist rebels they’d originally come to Sudan to fight. He didn’t think an alien invasion would quell their desire to kill any subject of the Crown they came across.
Too many damn things in this desert can kill us. They also did not have much in the way of weaponry to defend themselves against man, beast, or Martian. Beatty and Ellison carried their Webley pistols, though after a thorough soaking in the Nile he doubted whether they’d even fire. Even if they did work, what good would pistols be against those tripods?
What I wouldn’t give for one of those heat rays.
They resumed their march south when the sun grazed the horizon. Beatty estimated they were nine or ten kilometers from Shendi. The absence of smoke or flames in the distance he took as a good sign. Perhaps the town remained intact.
Energized by renewed hope, he picked up his pace, striding up a small rise.
Beatty halted at the top, staring unblinking at the sight before him.
“Something wrong, sir?” asked Ellison.
Beatty didn’t reply. He just kept staring, trying to digest what he saw.
“Sir?” Ellison marched up next to him. “What’s the . . . Good Lord.”
Three fallen tripods lay along the banks of the Nile half a kilometer from the rise.
“What happened to them?” Ellison wondered aloud.
“No idea.” Beatty took a couple of deep breaths, summoning up all his courage. “Let’s go find out.”
Ellison drew his head back. His brow crinkled in an unsure expression. He then stiffened and said, “Yes, sir.”
Webley in hand, Beatty led his men toward the tripods. Had the army in Shendi brought them down? The shadows of dusk prevented him from making out any damage.
He slowed as he neared the first tripod, half expecting it to rise and incinerate him. But the large machine remained still.
Beatty’s heart beat faster as he came within a few meters of the tripod. He never expected to be so close to one and live. Its massive size overwhelmed his senses.
He also noticed something else. The tripod had no holes, no scorch marks, nothing to indicate it had fallen victim to artillery fire.
The group examined the second tripod. It, too, showed no signs of damage.
“Maybe they tripped over their own feet,” quipped Moffat.
They made their way to the third tripod. Beatty tensed, gripping his pistol tighter when he saw a lump lying against the machine’s turret-like top. One of the Egyptians gasped behind him.
Swallowing, Beatty took a cautious step toward it, then another.
The Martian didn’t move.
He bent over running his gaze over the creature. It reminded him of an octopus, about four feet in length, a V-shaped mouth, and two large eyes, now closed. The skin was greenish-brown with gray splotches across its body. Beatty scrunched his face at the rank stench hovering around the alien.
“Hideous looking bugger, isn’t it?” said Ellison.
“How did it die?” asked Moffat. “Doesn’t look like it got shot.”
Beatty stared hard at the Martian, concentrating on the gray splotches. They didn’t appear to be part of its natural skin color. “I think it fell ill.”
“From what?” Moffat took a step closer to the dead Martian.
“I don’t know.” Beatty shook his head.
“I guess the same happened to those two.” Ellison jerked his head toward the other tripods. “You suppose the rest of these monsters got sick, too?”
“Let’s pray that’s the case.” Beatty straightened up.
Ellison looked up and down the tripod. “Well, if these bastards are all off to the great beyond, they won’t be needing these anymore.” He patted the turret. “Imagine what we could do with them.”
Hands on his hips, Beatty gazed at the heat ray and grinned. “I already am.”
War Of the Worlds: Retaliation is available from Amazon here!
