The Ironclad Prophecy (20 page)

“Lieutenant Everson asked me to give you this if we found you, sir.”

Mathers sighed and gestured to one of the waiting women, who leant forwards and took it from Atkins’ hand. She handed it to Mathers. He opened it and held it by the incense burner. “Leave us!” he told them. The women nodded and silently left the hut.

Once they had gone, Mathers took off his leather ‘turtle shell’ helmet and removed his mask. “Can’t see a damned thing in that.” He held the paper towards the flame and squinted at the writing, drew his head back and tried to focus on it.

“Can’t read it. You’ll have to do the honours.” He handed the paper back. As he did so, Atkins saw his face.

“Blood and sand!”

“Corporal?”

“Your eyes!”

Mathers’ eyes were as black as coal with refracted iridescent rainbow swirls constantly drifting, moving lazily over their surfaces to some unknown imperative, like oil on water. Atkins was reminded of his own hallucinogenic episode shortly after they’d first arrived here. Mercy had built an illegal still and used some alien fruit to make alcohol.

“Can you see?”

Mathers learned forward, sharing a confidence. “More than you know. More than you’d want to know.”

“It’s the fuel isn’t it, sir? The petrol fruit?”

Mathers sank back languorously into the furs. “Yes. The way it heightens one’s senses. It’s marvellous.”

“Marvellous? It bloody near killed me and blinded several others.”

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

My Dearest 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...”

A
S 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 was 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.

T
HE
F
USILIERS 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!”