by Pat Kelleher
“Marvellous? It killed one poor bastard. Bloody near did for me.”
Mathers sat forwards keenly. “That was you?”
“Yes, and I was bloody lucky.”
“Then you’ll know? You have some inkling of what I can see? The enormity of it.”
“Oh, aye, and I’ll tell you another thing. I never want to see it again. It’s enough to send a man mad.”
“Only if you can’t comprehend it. But it’s beginning to make sense to me.” Mathers took a slug from a hip flask. A small sigh of relief escaped his lips.
“What, you’re drinking it now?”
“It’s the only way to numb the pain.”
“Pain? What pain?”
“In my guts. They seem to churn more frequently now, and I long to feel the wind upon my face. In the tank, I can see the noise. I can see your words tumbling from your mouth, warm and soft and inviting but tinged with sharp reds and treacherous oranges. And your khaki uniform sounds shrill and discordant. It does not fit here.”
“Sir,” said Atkins, holding out the orders again. “Lieutenant Everson orders you and the Ivanhoe back to the encampment, effective immediately.”
“No.”
“Sir?”
“Holding on to your paltry trenches, the last few square yards of Earth. You’re clinging to the rock as the tide comes in. Do you really think you’ll ever get home? You’re deluding yourself. Look to the future. This is it. Here. We were promised our reward not in this world but in the next world. This is the Next World. Can’t you see? There is so much more here. What were you? Before the war, I mean?”
“Shop assistant, sir, but—”
“Shop assistant. We can be so much more here. Join me. You can be a lord, Corporal; a baron, if you wish. You’ve seen these people, these Urmen. They can be ruled. They want to be ruled—by us. And those Chatts. We can defeat them; enslave them as they have enslaved mankind here. They’re good at digging, at building. They’re insects. Ants. They can mine for us. Gold, diamonds, silver, rubies. We can stake our claims. We can all be rich as Croesus here, every last one of us. There is enough world for us all. Imagine. A British colony among the stars. A new British Empire where we can all be kings. Think of it, man.”
Atkins listened to Mathers. All the riches of this world were as bitter ashes in his mouth if he couldn’t be with Flora. That was all that mattered.
But the fumes began to pervade his senses, warping them gently, slowly. He had to get out of there. He shook his head, as much to clear it as to signify his rejection of the proposal before the drug seduced him.
“So you’re disobeying a direct order, sir?” he asked as bluntly as he could.
“Order? I don’t recognise Everson’s authority here, Corporal. As Commander of the HMLS Ivanhoe, when we’ve gone dis from Battalion I have the authority to act as I see fit.”
“But, sir, without the tank the battalion can only hold out for so long.”
Mathers waved him away, no longer interested.
“Sir, you if you think about it, you don’t have a choice.”
“Is that a threat, Corporal?”
“No sir, but you will have to return to refuel. You’re at the limit of your range now. Your current supply will just get you home, otherwise you’re stranded.”
Mathers took another swig from his flask and nodded to show he’d heard. “I will think on it overnight, but now I need to... rest. My head hurts.”
Atkins’ couldn’t hide the disappointment and bitterness in his voice. “Sir.” The word dripped with resentment. He turned on his heel and stepped out from the claustrophobic confines of the hut.
INTERLUDE THREE
Letter from Private Thomas Atkins
to Flora Mullins
19th March 1917
Dear Flora,
We’ve found the tank. The good news is that it’s in one piece. I’m sure Lieutenant Everson will be pleased about that. The bad news is that the crew seem to have gone native and, as Porgy said, if you’ve seen the natives, that’s not a good thing!
On the positive side, we’ve had our first proper food after a couple of days existing on emergency iron rations.
I know I didn’t want Nellie Abbott to accompany us, but she really is a good sort. She’s kept up with the marching and hasn’t complained once, even when Gutsy got his feet out for a foot inspection. Talk about plates of meat! If those are a sample of his wares, I’ll not be shopping at his shop when I get back. She packed out a haversack and webbing full of first aid stuff. I’ve no idea where she managed to get it all from, but I’d say Mercy has a rival in the scrounging stakes.
I think you’d like her, Flora. She has a good heart and a strong spirit.
I’m scared, though. For days now, the perfume on your last letter has been fading. I dread the day I can no longer smell it, for on that day you will have drifted just a little bit further from me and Lord knows you’re far enough away already.
Tomorrow it seems we’re going hunting, but given the size of some of the game here, I’m never sure that’s too wise.
I hope you are well. I think of you and our baby often. Will it be a boy or a girl, do you think?
Ever yours,
Thomas
CHAPTER NINE
“Tuppence All the Way...”
AS A NEW DAY dawned, the second Khungarrii attack advanced steadily on the trenches, but the Pennines were ready. The outer ring of fire trenches facing the enemy was fully manned. In the centre were the two full companies of Fusiliers fit enough for duty. Either side of them, ‘Fred Karno’s Army,’ the companies of partially drilled and trained Urmen platoons, stood armed with spears, swords, slings and longbows. They only had about a hundred longbows; still, it was enough to assess their potential. If they didn’t get home first, the Pennines would have to get used to fighting with weapons like this once their ammunition ran out.
Salvaged Leach trench catapults, with a range of two hundred yards, and originally used for hurling grenades, were loaded with stones.
Over on the left flank, a copse of tall saplings had hastily been commissioned as rudimentary catapults. Bent back, ropes held the supple trunks under tension. They had been stripped of boughs, and large woven slings had been attached to their upper ends and the cups loaded with large hard-shelled segmented pods, shrapnel fruit or ‘shrapples’ as some of the men called them. They’d lost several men to the shard-like seeds as they exploded out from their pods. It had been Poilus’s idea. In nature, if you could ever call this place natural, the parent tree would fling these rugby ball-sized seed pods away from itself and the things would burst on impact, flinging seeds and shell in a wide circle with explosive velocity in order to propagate the plant. It was crude and difficult to aim, but they didn’t have to worry about accuracy. Unused to open warfare on such a scale, the Chatts charged bunched up, with little cover.
Everson scanned the oncoming army through his field glasses. Assuming the Chatts didn’t change tactics, his plan should hold together. If it didn’t he had a few surprises up his sleeves, but they were far from inexhaustible.
There had been days on the Somme when Everson had cursed having to stick to a battle plan devised days or weeks before; plans that only worked if conditions were perfect and the enemy did exactly what was expected of them, which they very rarely did. Nevertheless, the plan could not be deviated from and must be followed to the letter. Stilted thinking like that needlessly cost thousands of lives. Here, there was no immutable battle plan to which they had to stick. No pig-headed red tabs ready to march men into a maelstrom of machine gun fire, simply because that was what the original plan had said they must do, no matter what the changes of circumstance on the battlefield. He was free to respond as he saw fit, to adapt his tactics. God help him, there was a kind of exhilaration in that, especially as he watched the Chatts marching towards them.
On the other hand, everything now rested on his shoulders and his shoulders alone.
It w
as a stroke of good fortune that, somehow, the poppies seemed to disrupt their chemical communication and scent orders, confusing the Chatt soldiers, and Everson had no hesitation in taking advantage of it. He would look into whys and wherefores later.
The plan involved something akin to a box barrage, boxing the enemy in, forcing them to attack the centre. That was their cone of fire. The heavy Vickers guns on the flanks would drive the Chatts into the centre, where the poppy field spread out across the alien veldt. There, disorientated, unable to attack or regroup, the Chatts would be in the Lewis guns’ cone of fire, with the Vickers guns then able to enfilade the Chatts from their flanks. It was risky, but less of a risk than letting them flank and surround the encampment.
On the right flank, soft hollow whumps signalled the beginning of the defence as plum puddings soared smokily into the air from trench mortar positions, exploding amid the Chatt ranks, throwing whole bodies and limbs into the air.
THE FUSILIERS MANNED the fire steps, bayonets fixed.
Sergeant Hobson patrolled the fire bays, holding the line. “Look to your front. Hold your fire,” he bellowed. “Look to your front. Hold your fire.”
The men of Everson’s old 2 Platoon stood nervously on fire steps. Behind them in the trench, Sergeant Hobson marshalled them, dispensing fatherly advice, bolstering a crumbling private here, sharing a joke to keep the spirits up there. “Make sure you keep your gas helmets handy, lads. You know what them buggers are like for spitting acid. Woodward, you keep ’em in your sights, son. Skelton, put that magazine cut-off back to its shut position. Did I give you permission to open it?”
“No, Sarn’t. I just thought—”
“You don’t have to think, lad. Thinking gets you into trouble.” Hobson knew they couldn’t afford any nervous shooters. Every bullet that fell short or went wide was wasted and they couldn’t afford to squander a single round. Soon they would have to take the enemy on hand-to-hand, he had no doubt about that. The fighting would be hard and bloody and, for some, it would be short.
“Wait ’til you see the whites of their—Well, wait ’til you can see their eyes, you can’t bloody miss ’em, isn’t that that right, Benton?”
“Yes Sarn’t!”
THIS TIME, THE scentirrii general, Rhengar, held back its battlepillars. As the ranks of scentirrii came into range, sappers cut the lines holding the saplings and the trunks whipped up, flinging their rope slings into the air. Shrapnel fruit arced out across the wire weed entanglements. The seed segments exploded with a velocity that tore through carapaces, decapitating and shredding the Chatts around the impact sites.
The first wave of Chatts used the corpses of the already slain battlepillars as bridgeheads and springboards to leap across the wire weed. Slings, arrows and bullets picked them off and they fell into the waiting thickets, where the barbed tendrils pulled them down into a deadly embrace.
Once over the wire weed, they would again be in the poppy field. “Watch your heads, lads. Fix staves!” ordered Sergeant Hobson. Gas gongs were beaten. “Gas! Gas! Gas!”
Men fumbled at the gas bags on their chests and pulled on their gas hoods that would protect them not from gas, but the acid spit of the Chatt scentirrii.
One man in every bay dropped from the fire step to fix sharpened, vertical twelve-foot staves into the sump of the trenches behind them. They had seen the scentirrii leap over their defences and into their trenches before. This time they would be ready.
Above, the aeroplane roared across the trenches and out over the Chatts, its machine gun fire herding stray Chatts in towards the centre and the field of poppies.
Driven into the blood-red flowers, their meticulous advance began to waver and break. Chatts stumbled blindly, trance-like, jostling each other chaotically. The rear ranks ploughed into the muddled vanguard until they, too, became bewildered and the entire advance disintegrated.
Everson’s fist hammered a parapet sandbag triumphantly. “Yes!” Now it was Lieutenant Baxter’s job.
The machine guns began their deadly harvest.
A FEW ADVANCING Chatts escaped the machine gun fire and leapt into the air, like grasshoppers, dropping down into the trenches from above, spitting atomised mists of acid into the defenders’ faces. Some scentirrii were impaled on the waiting staves. Others shot arcs of electric fire that jumped and earthed around the trench, or through unlucky men. Others plummeted into the fire bays, their barbed spears lancing soldiers.
The Tommies’ bayonets thrust up even as the Chatts plummeted down. Now the fighting became dirty and vicious. Sergeant Hobson swung his trench club again and again, stoving in Khungarrii heads like clay jars.
The sounds of electrical fire whipped down the trenches, mingling with screams of Tommy and Chatt as the mopping up began.
Everson watched Tulliver and his Sopwith harry the retreating Chatts as it swooped down, strafing them, dropping grenades and flechettes. Several Chatts had the presence of mind to turn their electric lances on the flying machine. Most of the blue arcs shot harmlessly into the sky, forking and fizzling into insignificance. One, though, hit its target, scorching a hole in the fuselage. Everson watched as the aeroplane veered off, his observer attempting to pat the flames out with a gloved hand. He vaguely wondered who was up there with Tulliver; he had been told. Maddocks? Maddocks, that was it.
Now Everson had repelled the first attack, he had to figure out his next move. He hadn’t many more left.
SISTER FENTON DEALT with the influx of wounded to the Aid Post quickly and efficiently, deciding who needed immediate treatment and who could wait.
After the confrontation with Captain Lippett, Sister Fenton had shared strong words with Edith. Afterwards she put her to work sorting field dressings and bandages. She wasn’t too worried about the nurse’s absence in the aid post. The girl had to be taught her place. Besides, the Urmen had long ago proved their worth with their native salves that calmed burns, and pastes made from crushed leaves that protected wounds from infection. On the Somme, you could survive the wound but die from infection and gangrene from the smallest cut. Here, their native poultices made all the difference.
EDITH WAS FOLDING fresh bandages when Orderly Stanton popped his head into the tent.
“Edith. You ought to come and see your lot.”
“They aren’t ‘my lot,’ and I’m already in Sister’s bad books.”
“No, but summat strange is going on,” he insisted.
Curiosity got the better of her and she scurried over to the Bird Cage. The shell-shocked patients stood about calmly. Edith went from one to the other. On each man, she saw the same blank trance-like face, each possessing a serenity that had managed to elude him in previous months.
“Townsend, Townsend, can you hear me?” She waved a hand in front of his face. There was no response. His eyes remained fixed ahead. She brought her hands up and clapped them together. Not even an involuntary blink. She took him by the shoulders and shook him, then wheeled around and strode over to another. “Hello?” She snapped her fingers in front of his nose. Nothing. It was as if they were all in a trance.
She went back to Townsend and this time took his hand in hers. He offered no resistance. She tightened her grip, squeezed and relaxed. Townsend’s hand lay limply in her own. She lifted it to take his pulse. It was then that she noticed the swelling on his forearm; the skin stretched taut and hard over it, hard and round like a cyst or a ganglion, firm and resistant to her touch. She pushed his sleeve up and found another in the crook of his elbow. There was another on the back of his neck at the base of the skull. She unbuttoned his shirt and found a further eleven on Townsend’s torso alone. All the others had them too, to a greater or lesser extent.
Captain Lippett would have to listen to her now. This could be contagious, some sort of disease. At least they were quarantined, she thought. She glanced back at them as she stepped through the compound gate.
She hadn’t realised before, but they all stood facing the same direction. Th
ey were facing into the wind...
That alone sent a shiver down her spine.
ALL NIGHT, sKARRA had whispered to Mathers and he knew now what he must do. As the sun rose to penetrate the canopy above, he summoned Atkins to the hut.
“We will go with you on one condition,” he said.
“There are no conditions, sir. It’s an order,” said Atkins. Mathers regarded the belligerent corporal. “One condition.” Atkins considered for a moment, then, seeing he had no option, sighed. “Which is what, sir?”
“We have promised the Gilderra to rid them of this ‘spirit’ that is snatching their villagers. Doubtless, it is some wild animal, but we have given our word.”
“What? Sir, we haven’t got time for this. We need to get back to the encampment.”
“Then the quicker we get this done, the sooner we can return. The help of you and your men will speed up the hunt.”
Atkins turned and paced and turned again, caged by duty and military obedience. “I have your word, sir? Once this beast is killed we return to the encampment?”
“As an officer and a gentleman, Corporal.”
MATHERS STAGGERED UNSTEADILY from the hut, his splash-mask and helmet in place, his gas-mask-topped staff in his hand. Atkins stood awkwardly by his side.
The chief, dressed in his ceremonial finery, the warriors and their families had assembled before the hut.
Mathers raised his staff; silence fell, and he addressed them. “Skarra has heard your pleas and will rid you of the evil spirit that has been plaguing your clan. The Warrior Priests of Boojum and their brethren, the Tohmii, will accompany him on his quest. But we shall return. As a sign of our bond, we leave you the Totem hut of Skarra.”
Across the compound by the great bark gates, Atkins’ section was waiting, webbing and backpacks on, eyeing the tank crew in their painted rain capes and splash masks with suspicion. The tension was palpable and Atkins was keen to get them separated as soon as possible. Nellie stepped forward and kissed Alfie on the cheek, which earned her a glare from Frank and Wally.