The Eternal War (42 page)

‘This trench is lost. We need to sound a retreat to the horseshoe!’

Freeman nodded – his opinion as well, it seemed. ‘Aye, sir.’ The sergeant was reaching for the signal whistle on a chain, tucked into his breast pocket, when Devereau caught sight of new movement. The rear-most lip of the trench was suddenly lined with figures aiming guns down at them. He heard a voice give a command and at once the air was thick with clouds of gunsmoke and the deafening rattle of gunfire. Amid the elongated scrum of struggling men down the entire length of the borderline trench, men in red tunics were flung back against the muddy wall clutching ragged wounds.

Those British soldiers still standing as the gunfire started to falter and empty ammo clips pinged into the air began to disengage from their hand-to-hand duels and scramble back over the lip of the trench to beat a retreat down the slope.

Colonel Wainwright dropped down beside him. With a blood-rush roar he scrambled up the far side, firing his revolver wildly at the withdrawing British troops.

Reckless fool
.

‘James! Get down!’

Volley fire from further down the slope brought Wainwright to his senses as plumes of dirt erupted beside him. He dropped back down with a whoop of excitement.

The rest of the men in the trench carried his whooping cry, and turned it into a regiment-wide jeer at the beaten redcoats, gathering back down on the shingle, taking cover in the relative safety of the craters, behind the ruined stumps of wall by the riverside.

Freeman spat the whistle out of his mouth, grinned at Devereau. ‘Hell, sir … we showed ’em some fight! Didn’t we, sir?’

‘Yes, we did that, Sergeant.’

He looked at Wainwright moving down among the men, swinging his sabre in the air triumphantly. ‘See to our wounded, Sergeant.’ He squeezed past Freeman and a dozen other men lofting their helmets above them on the tips of their bayonets.

‘Helmets back on, you fools!’ he shouted.

Finally, standing beside Wainwright: ‘Colonel! I thought the plan was for you to remain in the horseshoe! Whatever happened here?’

Wainwright shrugged guiltily. ‘True, but it would have been a shame to lose a trench so early in the battle, would it not, William?’

Devereau’s scowl eased.
It would at that.

‘Well … it seems you came down at just the right moment.’

They watched the British troops rallying down on the shingle. Regimental sharpshooters firing off sporadic rounds up at the borderline to keep them from daring to press their attack down on them.

‘Fact is they have a toehold on this side now,’ he added.

Wainwright nodded. ‘We could charge them? They are still disorganized – we have the height and the element of surprise?’

‘But not the numbers. There are over a thousand men down there, and we have just under six hundred. Not enough. Our best bet is digging in and holding fast like ticks on a dog’s back.’

Both men watched the British over the top of their sandbags. Engineers were hastily detaching the landing-raft side-panels and assembling them on the shingle, creating rudimentary fortifications for them to huddle behind; their wounded were being dragged to the relative safety of covered positions to be treated by a field physician. Devereau marvelled at their discipline under fire, so quickly, efficiently, turning a complete rout into entrenchment, temporary defeat into consolidation.

‘Good God … it’s no wonder half of this world is under the Union Jack.’ He stepped back down into the mud, turned to see Wainwright squatting and inspecting the collar pips on the uniform of a dead redcoat.

‘And they’re just a regular line regiment, William. Not even
elite
troops.’

Devereau nodded. There was worse yet to come, then – perhaps one of the notorious regiments: the Black Watch, the Grenadier Guards, the King’s Guard.

‘You did it!’ Both colonels looked up to see Maddy and Becks standing on the lip of the trench.

‘Best get down here, ma’am!’ said Wainwright. ‘They have sharpshooters.’

As he spoke a single shot whistled close by. Maddy scrambled down into the trench. ‘Oh my God! Was that … ?’

‘Aimed at you?’ Devereau nodded sternly. ‘Yes.’

Becks dropped down beside her.

Maddy looked around at the bodies splayed along the bottom of the trench, some still stirring, moaning. She glimpsed ragged wounds, puckered pink flesh, dark blood leaking, spurting. She could smell the burn of cordite in the air, but, beneath that, the other smells of battle: sweat, vomit. And the murmur of pitiful voices of dying men.

She felt ill: light-headed and queasy.

Wainwright noticed. ‘How quickly we forget what war actually looks like.’

Maddy swallowed, pale-faced, choking back her own urge to vomit. ‘I … uh … I came to find you.’ She took a few deep breaths. ‘I sent another message through. To make the rendezvous sooner.’

‘How soon?’

‘I can’t say, but we have a way of knowing when they’re there. And the moment they arrive, we can pick them up.’

‘When?’ asked Devereau.

‘It could be any time,’ she replied.

A grin flashed across his face. Wainwright shared it. ‘Then the longer the British fool about down there on the beach, the better it is for us.’

‘Indeed.’ Devereau turned to Maddy. He lowered his voice. ‘And the moment you send your colleagues back to … What year was it?’

‘1831.’

‘1831 … this world
will
change?’

‘Pretty soon after, yeah. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes a few hours.’

‘It is impossible to accurately predict the arrival time of a reality wave after a timeline event alteration,’ added Becks.

‘But it would be
soon
,’ Maddy reassured them. She glanced around quickly at the shifting carpet of bodies. ‘Soon enough that, you know, you could stop this fighting as soon as I’ve sent them back.’

‘You mean surrender?’ Wainwright and Devereau shared a look. ‘I wonder … would this time wave arrive soon enough for us to both escape the firing squad?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘I … I can’t say when. It might even be a day or so –’

‘Then I think we are in agreement, Colonel Wainwright, that we would rather fight on until the moment this wave arrives?’

Wainwright nodded. ‘Complete agreement, Colonel Devereau.’

Maddy puffed air. ‘All right, but …’ She turned and pointed up the slope towards the horseshoe trench and beyond that to the very top of the hump of bricks in the shadow of the overhanging ruins of Williamsburg Bridge. ‘The antennae array … 
that
has got to be protected whatever happens. Do you understand? If it gets damaged, then this is all over.’

‘Then we shall keep the fight down there for as long as we can,’ said Wainwright. ‘What of my tank? Is its engine still running?’

‘Yeah, it’s running; we’ve got power. And the displacement machine is charged up and ready to use. So that’s good.’

‘So our business is waiting, then,’ said Devereau.

Maddy nodded. ‘I find I do a lot of that in this business … you know? Waiting.’ She half smiled. ‘Kinda sucks.’

CHAPTER 81

2001, New York

Captain Ewan McManus looked up at the sky. The low combed-out clouds above New York were a beautiful salmon pink from the late-afternoon sun. Another couple of hours and it was going to be dark.

Colonel Donohue had his officers gathered around him: company captains, lieutenants, sergeants. ‘We’re up next, gentlemen. Word is the Lancashire Rifles have wet their toes and got a firm foothold for us over there. As you can see –’ he turned round and gestured, past the sappers putting the final pieces of their landing rafts together, to the far side of the East River – ‘the … uh,
mutineers
 … have two lines of defence. A trench works running parallel to the river, from those factory buildings there on the left, all the way along to the remnants of that bridge on the right. Behind that, they have a bow-shaped trench, which seems to curve beneath the bridge. I imagine they will be treating that as a secondary defence position.’

McManus craned his neck along with all the other officers to get a better look.

‘Beyond those two defence lines … we’re into the old Northern defence line. As I’m sure you’re already aware, a Confederate regiment, Virginians I believe, the chaps that up until recently were holding the ground we’re standing on right now, have mutinied along with a Northern regiment. So … we find ourselves in the rather unusual position of having a temporary understanding with the French High Command.’

‘Understanding, sir?’

Colonel Donohue nodded. ‘Neither side really wants this
nonsense
to spread. So the French are prepared to let us go in on their behalf and
sterilize the wound
, so to speak.’

‘That’s very trusting of them!’ called out someone. A ripple of good-natured laughter spread among them.

‘Quite so.’ He smiled. ‘And more fool them.’

Heads nodded. Although it was still officially supposed to be top secret, every officer in every participating regiment was well aware this little uprising was a convenient opportunity for the British to launch their final push against the North. In fact, this futile act of rebellion couldn’t have come at a better time for them. The French were prepared to hold back while the British stepped in and crushed it, not knowing their intention was to continue pushing on, punching through their North’s front line and rolling up their east-coast flank.

‘Captain McManus?’

‘Sir?’

‘I think this might just be a splendid opportunity to field-test our Dreadnoughts before the proper fighting begins … don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Take your company ashore as support for them … but I’d really like to see how well our
experimentals
perform on their own, all right?’

‘Support only, yes, sir.’

‘Rest of you can follow in the second flotilla. Best not have too many of our chaps nearby when those monsters get a sniff of the enemy.’

Colonel Donohue turned round again to look at the landing area on the far side of the river. A low mist of gunsmoke hung above it like a membrane, and every now and then a distant crackle of gunfire was accompanied by another faint plume of blue-grey smoke winking into existence.

‘And God help those poor souls when that happens.’

CHAPTER 82

2001, near New Chelmsford

‘Bob? How much further now?’

Bob eased back on the throttle sticks as the tractor’s big ridged wheels rolled down into a shallow river and splashed arcs of spray either side of them.

‘Information: two miles, one hundred and seven yards from this location.’

The tractor emerged from the river on the far side, leaving two deep ridges carved in the wet mud of the riverbank.

‘Two miles?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Then stop right here.’

Bob did as instructed, easing the throttles down to an idle, disengaging the gears and pulling a braking lever. He looked at Liam. ‘Why?’

Sal nodded. ‘Yeah … we’re nearly there!’

‘That’s exactly why,’ said Liam. He turned and pointed out of the mud-spattered rear window of the cabin. ‘We’ve left a trail a blind man could follow. If there were any policemen or militia called to find this tractor … it won’t be difficult for them.’

It was approaching dusk. The sun was casting a rose-hued glow and long cool shadows across the pastoral landscape around them. Far away to the right, a small village nestled among sycamore trees, and chimneys leaked threads of smoke into a peach sky.

‘If we drive all the way to the rendezvous point,’ he continued, ‘we could be leading a posse of coppers or soldiers right to the window. It’s two miles from here … if we get running, we could be there in what … twenty minutes or so?’

Bob nodded. ‘This is a sensible tactical decision.’

Lincoln groaned and pointed at his old boots – one of them was flapping open at the front where a seam in the leather had split. Long hairy toes waggled through a threadbare sock. ‘My feet are as spent as a pauper’s purse.’

‘Oh shadd-yah! You lazy-bones.’

Liam opened the cabin door and jumped out on to the riverbank. ‘Come on! It’s not far now!’

Bob dropped down heavily beside him. ‘Correct, not far.’

Sal pushed Lincoln out in front of her. ‘We’ll be there soon enough.’

CHAPTER 83

2001, New York

Maddy looked at the monitor in front of her. Another fuzzy, low-resolution, blocky image of what appeared to be a muddy field full of long wooden sheds. She could see a few trees, and a sky growing dark.

Computer-Bob was sending a narrow-thread signal to the rendezvous location, briefly checking every ten minutes for any density fluctuations and grabbing a pinhole image of the location at the same time. It was slowly eating into the full charge they’d had on the displacement machine; of the twelve green charge-LEDs, three of them were dark now.

Another dozen glimpses and they were going to be eating into stored energy they’d need to get Liam and the others back to 1831 and bring them home.

Come on, Liam! Where the hell are you?

He could make out six more landing rafts slowly chugging their way across the river. Devereau watched with growing unease as the soldiers still holding a position on the shingle behind their panel-barriers began to edge away from the middle of the landing area – where the six boats seemed to be heading towards.

‘James …’ he said in the gathering gloom. Wainwright was somewhere nearby. ‘Wainwright!’

He heard Wainwright make his way along the trench, a hasty word of encouragement and a pat on the shoulder for each man he passed. Presently he was beside Devereau.

‘What is it?’

Devereau pointed and handed him his field glasses. ‘Reinforcements coming.’

Wainwright squinted into the lenses, adjusting the focus as he panned up along the box-like hull of one of them. The protective panels were up, hiding whatever troops were inside. He thought he caught the bobbing of a head over the top – some sort of movement from within. He adjusted the binoculars on the flag fluttering lifelessly at the back of the craft, beside the helmsman’s position.