by Pat Kelleher
THE SOPWITH 1½ Strutter climbed away from the trenches.
Wearing a leather flying helmet and goggles and an army warm he’d borrowed from Lieutenant Palmer, the padre—who had never been up in an aeroplane before—experienced the exhilarating terror of take-off and marvelled as the world fell away and he saw the landscape spread out below him. He briefly wondered if this was the view that God had of the world, before remembering with a flush of shame that this wasn’t God’s world. It wasn’t their world. It was no man’s world. He turned around to look out across the veldt towards the great forest in the distance where he knew Khungarr lay, and took a last look at the small island of humanity dug in on its circle of Somme mud. How tiny and frail it looked. And how all the more remarkable it was for that. The experience would have been quite serene, were it not for the loud, determined roar of the engine and the fine spray of lubricating oil, hazing both pilot and passenger.
Tulliver banked the aeroplane and they flew beyond the hills sheltering the camp towards the plateau and the scar running across it that was the canyon. The two sections of Fusiliers waved as Tulliver and the padre flew over. Tulliver waggled his wings in response. He pointed down over the side of the plane. The padre peered over nervously. A bright glint momentarily blinded him as the sun caught the metal wall.
THE AEROPLANE DRONED on out over the Fractured Plain. Tulliver was constantly vigilant for landmarks. This was one. On a world where compasses didn’t work—the damn thing just spun in circles— landmarks were vitally important to flying.
Thirty minutes later and he could make out the Croatoan Crater in the distance. He flew low over the surrounding forest, the whipperwills snapping away from the canopy, and suddenly there it was, the sunken world.
He’d judged his approach perfectly. The discoloured strip of vegetation in the crater aligned. In fact, from a landmark point of view, it was as good as a compass. It pointed perfectly towards the plateau and the canyon with its metal mystery.
He banked round and found the ruins of the ancient edifice and clearing where he’d left the tank crew and where the rescue party should be camped. But he could see neither.
He came round again, lower. He noticed one of the battlepillars grazing idly and he knew it by the crude roundel daubed on its side. He made out scorch marks on the earth, and small craters left by grenades. Here and there were dead bodies in khaki, one being torn at by a pack of small creatures. A battle, then. One that didn’t go well for the Pennines, by the look of things.
He came round again and let off a burst with his forward machine gun, the line of bullets stitching the ground. The creatures scattered back into the forest.
What had happened here? First the tank was lost, and then the party sent to salvage it, and Lieutenant Everson along with it. Had it been Chatts? He had to head back to camp and inform the others that the rescue party had been lost.
He pulled up and caught sight of a small shadow rippling over the face of a mountainous cloud. Was that the creature that had been shadowing him like a hungry shark, or just a phantom, a fleeting shift of cloud? He wanted to be sure.
He pulled back on the stick and climbed up into the canyons between the clouds, looking for his elusive prey. He glanced back. The padre had turned round and was gripping the Scarff-ring-mounted machine gun as if his life depended on it, which it very probably did.
He’d played games of hide-and-seek like this for fun in the French skies over Fine Villas, and with altogether more deadly intent over Hunland. He flew through bottomless passes and towering white rifts. Ragged wisps of cloud blew past like minute-old Archie, but there was no sight of his nemesis. It could, of course, be hiding inside the clouds. That was always a possibility. But he wasn’t tempted to look.
He heard the abrupt chatter of the rear machine gun and turned to look over his shoulder. The padre pointed up and behind the aeroplane. Tulliver banked to get a better look.
Jabberwocks, fiercely territorial flying raptors with long necks, wings like a stingray and razor sharp talons and teeth, had spotted his bus and seen it as potential prey. They could shred the Sopwith, with its wooden frame and doped canvas, in a minute.
Tulliver pulled the nose up sharply. The world dropped away as the bus climbed. The jabberwocks pursued tenaciously, but their raucous cries were soon lost and they fell away, seeking easier quarry.
Tulliver pushed the bus higher. The air up here was cold and clear. Flocks of cloud lay below them, like grazing sheep. He’d never flown at this altitude here before; twelve thousand feet, close to the bus’s operational ceiling. He looked down at the ground and felt that delicious thrill of flight, of being this high with nothing between you and the ground but the wooden seat you sat on.
And then he frowned. What the hell? What was that? He tried to rub his goggles clean of their mist of oil then, frustrated, pushed them up. He felt the altitude’s cold bite into the exposed skin and the sting in his eyes. He had to squint against the cold, the air speed and the oil.
From this altitude, things always took on a different perspective, a bigger picture. The patchwork of fields over Kent, say, or the blasted pockmarked landscape of the Somme. But he’d never seen anything like this. What the hell was that? Below them, the landscape was—
The engine spluttered. He adjusted the throttle and the mixture, but it coughed and died anyway. There was a brief silence and then the weight of the nose pulled the plane down into a dive. The wind began to shriek through the wires.
The Sopwith started to corkscrew as Tulliver struggled with the stick. He had to pull out of the spin, level it out. If he didn’t, the speed would rip the wings off and they’d fall the rest of the way in a folded mess of wood and wire.
Slowly he regained control of the aeroplane and brought it down in a long slow spiral, losing height and speed. The whole thing left him shaking and exhausted. He tried the engine again, but it coughed and spluttered, reluctant to catch.
“If you’ve got a good prayer, Padre, now’s the time!” he yelled as he tried to restart the engine again.
He began looking for a place to land. Two thousand feet, now. Over to his left he could see the crater several miles away. The landscape below was filled with forest, with here and there little oases of meadow and heathland offering hope of a safe landing, but he was still too high and too fast.
Ahead loomed a towering hill of earth that Tulliver recognised as a Chatt edifice, like that of Khungarr. Unfortunately, the large managed clearing around it was also now the nearest landing space. After what had happened to the salvage party, it wasn’t his preferred course of action, but there was no choice.
The engine caught. It coughed and spluttered, one of the cylinders missing intermittently, but with life enough for Tulliver to control his descent over the tree tops into the clearing. It was a bouncy landing and even before they had stopped, Chatt scentirrii were racing toward the Sopwith in their curious springing gait. By the time they had taxied to a stop and Tulliver had switched the engine off, they were surrounded.
Ignoring the agitated Chatts, Tulliver sat in a state of utter funk, still shaking, his heart pounding, and tried to compose himself. That had been a bloody close thing. No need to let the padre know, though. He pulled off his helmet, goggles and scarf, and left them in the cockpit as he climbed out.
“Sorry about that, Padre,” he said brightly as he helped the palefaced chaplain clamber shakily from the aeroplane.
“I think we have other more pressing concerns now,” said the padre, eyeing the nervous-looking Chatts that had now ringed the aeroplane, armed with spears and electric lances.
“Really? Right, then.” Tulliver turned and addressed the suspicious Chatts. “Take us to your chieftain,” he said in a loud, slow voice. He turned to the nearest Chatt. “And make sure you take damn good care of my bus, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
If it knew what he was saying, it gave no sign.
As they stepped away from the Sopwith, the Chatts closed
in about them. Tulliver put his hand down and checked the reassuring weight of the Webley in his waist band under his tunic before allowing himself and the padre to be escorted into the edifice.
They were conducted through dark passages illuminated with niches of luminescent lichen. One of the scentirrii exhaled on the barbed circular plant door and it shrivelled open.
“I’ve seen places like this before,” said the padre quietly. “It’s a gaol chamber.”
“Ah,” said Tulliver, and then he scowled. “I thought I told them to take us to their chieftain.”
They were ushered through the dilated doorway. The barbs around the rim of the contracted plant looked like fangs around an orifice—he had seen too many ugly things on this world to call it a mouth. Once inside, the door cycled shut.
They stood inside while their eyes adjusted. There was no luminous lichen here.
“Tulliver?”
It was a voice the pilot knew and often resented, but he was more than happy to hear it now. “Everson!”
“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” said Everson, stepping forward. “And more to the point, what the hell are you doing bringing the padre?”
“That was my idea, Lieutenant. I twisted his arm, as it were.”
“Well that was a bloody stupid thing to do, Padre, if you don’t mind my saying.” His voice softened. “I trust your mission was a success, then.”
“Yes,” said the padre. “Although as to the exact nature of the armistice, that will be down to you and Chandar to negotiate.”
Everson gestured at the earthen wall of the chamber. “Well, looking at the sterling job I’ve been doing here, we’ll be in for a rough ride, then.” He changed the topic. “How did you—”
“We were forced down, Lieutenant,” said the padre, patting Tulliver on the shoulder “Took some skilful flying to find somewhere to put us down in one piece.”
Tulliver shrugged. It was actually a brilliant piece of flying, even if he did think so himself.
“What happened to you?” the padre asked.
“Ambush,” replied Everson. “They seemed to know we were coming.” There was a shuffling and the odd cough in the gloom behind him. “Corporal Atkins and the men from his section are here, along with Hepton and Jenkins, Tonkins and Riley from Signals. The others are in chambers nearby. We can shout. Well we could, until the Chatts got wise and got one of their dhuyumirrii to douse them with that benediction of theirs. We’ve not heard a peep for hours.”
“So what next?”
The door began to dilate open again.
“I think we’re about to find out,” said Everson.
EVERSON, TULLIVER, THE padre, Hepton, Atkins and his section were escorted under guard up a spiralling inclined tunnel that led them up into the heights of the edifice. They came to a large plant door, with scentirrii guards either side.
“About bloody time,” murmured Everson. “Now maybe we’ll get some answers.”
The guards turned and breathed on the door in unison. It shrank away from their breath and opened.
Everson and his men were ushered into an airy chamber. Light came through a large window at the far end.
Silhouetted against the light was the figure of a man. He was standing by the window looking out over the unfamiliar forest landscape, his hands clasped behind his back, master of all he surveyed. This was no Urman. This man was at ease in his surroundings, in control of them. This man wielded power, but what kind of man could wield power in a Chatt edifice?
Everson made out the familiar outline of a fitted tunic and fitted calf-length boots.
An officer.
He must have known they had entered, yet still chose to stand there. There was only one officer he knew audacious enough to do something of this kind, one man who had the absolutely bloody gumption to treat them like this and expect to get away with it.
Jeffries.
Jeffries, wanted for the double murder of two debutantes back in Blighty. Jeffries, the infamous diabolist. Jeffries, the man who claimed he was responsible for bringing the Pennines here with some black magic ritual, using the Somme as a blood sacrifice. Jeffries, who had almost set them to war against the Khungarrii the moment they arrived. And a man for whom they had been searching for the past four months in pursuit of a way home.
Everson snorted with derision as anger boiled up within him.
The man turned.
“Gentlemen, welcome.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“He Shook Hands with Britannia...”
IT WASN’T JEFFRIES.“I have been waiting for this meeting for such a long time. It’s good to see some familiar faces. Well, I say faces,” said the stranger with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I mean uniforms. I don’t suppose you have any cigarettes? I would kill for a cigarette.”
Atkins felt his fingernails bite into his palms as he clenched his fists in frustration. He could almost weep at the injustice of it. For a brief moment when he saw the silhouetted figure, hope burned bright hot and white within him, like a star shell illuminating No Man’s Land and casting shifting pools of light on the darkest parts of himself, parts he would rather remain hidden beyond the barbed wire of his conscience.
When he and Everson faced Jeffries down in the Khungarrii edifice before he escaped and vanished, Jeffries claimed they couldn’t kill him as he was the only one who could return them to Earth.
Earth. Just the mere thought of the word was enough to make his eyes sting with tears. Not because of Earth itself, but for what it held. Flora. His love, his shame. Seven months pregnant with his child, by his reckoning. Although that wasn’t why he was ashamed. He loved her. She had been his brother William’s fiancée. But William had gone missing on the Somme. His betrayal wasn’t just of William, but their families, and God knows, every bloody soldier in Kitchener’s Army. He was the man they all despised, the unknown man who’d take their sweethearts while they were at the front. “You were with the wenches, while we were in the trenches facing an angry foe...” That was how the song went. He’d sung it in the dugout enough times, and each recitation twisted the knife more.
The thought of her made his very being ache at their parting. His one driving thought was to return to her, to do by right by her, to make up for all the wrong he had done.
But it wasn’t Jeffries. He had wanted it to be true, but then he would have to face the possibility that Jeffries might have lied. He was terrified the truth would leave them marooned on this world forever, like the Bleeker party. Those twin urges, wanting to find Jeffries and not wanting to find him, kept his hope alive.
It wasn’t Jeffries. And some small part of him was relieved.
“AND JUST WHO the hell are you?” asked Everson, angry for letting himself be duped, if only for a moment.
The man stepped away from the glare of the window and into the chamber. Two stately red-surcoated Chatts stepped out of the shadows to attend him, their antennae waving in agitation at the Tommies’ arrival. The man, however, seemed quite at ease with their presence.
Everson could see him clearly now. He, too, wore a uniform. It was grey.
“How is this possible?” wondered the padre in hushed tones.
Everson shook his head.
“Jesus!” muttered Gutsy in astonishment. “It’s a bleedin’ Hun.”
“A bloody Alleyman, here?” said Mercy, shaking his head. “And I thought we had the worst of it with Jeffries. Aren’t we ever to be rid of the bastards?”
The Alleyman ignored them, addressing himself to the officers. He had a proud bearing, born of Teutonic aristocracy. His uniform was immaculate. His hair was black and slicked into a centre parting, and he had a peculiar little bow of a mouth that gave him a petulant look. He clicked his heels together. “My name is Oberleutnant Karl Werner, late of the Jasta Bueller.” He held out a hand.
“You’re a German pilot.” Tulliver’s eyes lit up and he shook the hand enthusiastically. “Lieutenant James Tulliver, 70 Squadron.�
�� Then he studied his host, somewhat aggrieved. “And, if I’m not wrong, I shot you down when we first arrived here.”
The German laughed and clapped his hands on the top of Tulliver’s arms. “Yes. Yes, you did.” He smiled broadly. “You’re a good shot,” he said. “But not too good, I think. As you can see, I am still here.”
The silent Chatts observed the polite introductions intently. Their antennae waved as they communicated with each other using senses beyond the ability of the Tommies to understand. Everson found himself unnerved by their scrutiny.
Reluctantly, Everson put out his hand and introduced himself. “Lieutenant Everson, acting commander of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers. Your English is very good.”
Werner shook his hand. “My aunt married an Englishman. He has a leather goods business in Suffolk. I used to stay there. Before the war.”
“This is Padre Rand, our chaplain.”
Werner nodded and shook his hand, “A pleasure, Father.”
Padre Rand returned a polite smile. “I must say, you’re the last person we expected to find here.”
Everson turned and indicated the Fusiliers behind him.
“And this is Lance Corporal Atkins and his Black Hand Gang.”
Werner’s glance swept up and down the NCO, unimpressed. “Yes, I did ask to see the officers only, but obviously the insekt menschen can’t tell you apart. Never mind; you’re here now, Corporal.”
“Bloody cheek,” muttered Mercy.
Pot Shot rolled his eyes. “Officers, same the world over.”
One of the flanking Chatts spoke in its peculiar breathless, halting way. “What is Black Hand Gang?”
Werner pursed his lips as he searched for an appropriate term that they would understand. “I suppose you would say ‘dark scentirrii,’” he suggested, looking to Everson for confirmation.
Everson nodded irritably.
The Chatt seemed satisfied and resumed its silent conversation.