The Ironclad Prophecy (11 page)

More were emerging now from behind boulders and closing in on the tank.

They charged the
Ivanhoe
. One was crushed beneath the track, and a second was cut down by Wally with a burst from the forward facing machine gun. Half out of the hatch, Mathers wrestled with the creature. A third Yrredetti was using its mandibles to slice through the ropes holding the drums of spare fuel to the rear of the tank. There was a hearting-rending
thung
and a drum fell loose and bounced off the tank’s steering tail and back along the canyon, coming to rest against a couple of small rocks.

Mathers fired at the creature again. It hissed and he ducked down and grabbed the hatch, partially shutting it after him, and bellowed down into the cabin.

“Clegg, for Christ’s sake stop the tank. We’ve lost the spare fuel!”

The tank lurched to a halt, the engine still idling. Mathers thrust himself up, slamming the opening hatch into the facial carapace of the creature, crushing a mandible. He fired point blank into the stunned creature’s face and paused momentarily to watch the head explode in a myriad of colours, creating a rainbow of mist in the air. He looked back over the roof of the tank to where the fuel drum had come to rest. Several Yrredetti were gathered around it and were pounding it with stones. He boosted himself up onto the roof, ran down the rear of the track, leapt off the back and charged towards the insect-creatures, waving his pistol and bawling like a maniac.

“Bloody hell, the Sub’s blood is up,” said Jack as he followed the thumping footfalls over the roof and peered out of the sponson door loophole. “Better give him a hand, lads. Stick close to me, Cecil. Norman, Frank? Keep me covered. Wally, stay with
Ivanhoe
. You too, Reggie.”

“Really? Don’t mind if I do,” said Reggie with relief. “Most kind.”

Jack glanced dismissively at Alfie as he opened the sponson hatch and clambered down. It was a deliberate snub. They didn’t need him. They didn’t want him. Cecil followed Jack out, cocking his pistol as he went.

“Bloody hell!” Alfie muttered, clambering out and joining Cecil by the rear starboard track horn anyway.

A cry from high up on the canyon side preceded another boulder, bouncing down the rocky face, dislodging a tumble of smaller scree that chased it down the slope, like ragamuffins chasing an ice-cream cart. It bounced wide. Norman aimed his revolver and fired. The small figure of an Yrredetti tumbled forwards from its rocky perch to fall into a patch of the blue-green blisterous growths which burst under its impact.

By now Mathers had reached the drum and had shot the three Yrredetti beating it. He inspected the drum. There were several alarming dents, but it was still intact, thank God. Another group of Yrredetti shuffled warily nearby. Mathers roared at them. They scuttled back. Jack reached the drum, Cecil panting in his wake.

Jack nodded at the drum. “Better get this back on the
Ivanhoe
, sir.”

“What?” said Mathers, shaking his head and looking around as if suddenly realising where he was. He glanced around the canyon walls. More Yrredetti were beginning to rear their heads from behind boulders and were crawling down the scree slope towards them.

“Hmm? Yes, you’re right. Can you manage it, Tanner?”

“I can, sir.”

Mathers strode back to the tank, reloading his revolver from his belt pouch as he went. Frank and Alfie crouched by the tank, using the rear track horns and the steering tail as cover, keeping an eye on the creatures that seemed to be getting bolder by the minute, or more desperate.

Mathers thought he heard whispering. He scowled at Frank. “What did you say?”

Frank looked at him, startled. “Nothing, sir. Didn’t say a word.”

“Hmm.” Mathers held his gaze for a moment, then shook his head.

Jack rolled the drum back towards the
Ivanhoe
. Cecil, now dangerously exposed, was edging back towards the tank, revolver raised, wavering, switching targets indecisively. “I got you, Jack.”

“Get it stowed, quickly,” said Mathers, boarding through the port sponson hatch.

On the roof, Frank helped haul the drum into position on top of the other one while Jack, standing on the steering tail, strained as he lifted the drum above his head.

One Yrredetti flung a stone, cracking the retreating Cecil on the back of the skull. The lad stumbled and went down, clutching his head, and his revolver skittered away from him. From the cover of a nearby boulder a couple of Yrredetti darted forwards, urged on by the calls of others. A claw snapped down on Cecil’s foot and dragged him back towards the shelter of the rock.

“Cecil’s down!” Alfie fired his revolver. The round ricocheted off the boulder,

“Oh Jesus, help me, for Christ’s sake!” screamed Cecil as he was dragged towards the boulder.

Alfie ran towards it. Time seemed to slow. Around him the air shifted in whorls of effervescent vermillion, parting as he ran and, in the periphery of his vision, orange auras blazed among the rocks indicating the position of the creatures hidden in the rocks around and above him, his fear swamped by an exhilaration.

He scrambled up the side of the large boulder even as Cecil disappeared round the back. Stood on the top, he saw three arthropods huddled behind the rock, arguing over Cecil.

A blue-green blister throbbed on a small rock, the size of a football, near Alfie’s feet. He shouted. They looked up and he kicked the rock down, hitting one of them in the head, blisters bursting and drenching the creature’s face, burning it. Its scream was bright orange, fading quickly to red as it reflected off the canyon walls, before dissipating as it died.

Alfie leapt down, landing on the arm that held the screaming Cecil. He felt the chitinous armour crunch beneath his boots as he fired his revolver point blank into the face of the second. The third tried to scuttle back to the safety of the scree slope, but Jack appeared, caught it by the leg and swung it against the boulder. Alfie heard its carapace crack and Jack let it fall limply to the ground, leaving a dark sticky stain on the rock.

Alfie pulled Cecil to his feet, ducked under his armpit, took his weight and helped him back to the tank. Jack stood his ground before backing towards the tank, picking up Cecil’s fallen revolver and guarding their retreat. The gathering creatures hissed and clicked their mandibles, but kept their distance.

By now the fuel drum had been re-secured, and Alfie could hear Wally running up the engine in readiness to move off. He passed Cecil to Frank, who hauled him in through the sponson hatch.

“Come on, Jack,” Alfie called, one foot on the starboard hatch lip as he prepared to step through. Jack danced backwards towards the tank, his eyes never leaving the rocks.

“Natives are still restless,” he said, ducking as a fist-sized stone hit the tank’s metal track.

“All aboard,” called Reggie, banging cheerfully on a pipe with a wrench.

The ironclad moved off.

Frustrated, the Yrredetti howled and a rain of rocks clattered down against the tank, setting off a rainbow of percussion inside.

“Looks like they’re trying a final attempt to ditch us,” said Frank, peering through his pistol port. Mathers peered through the pistol port in the side of the driver cabin. Damn things were trying to prise a boulder loose and start an avalanche.

“Put your foot down, Clegg. We don’t want to get caught in this canyon.” The tank lurched as it picked up what speed it could.

Several more Yrredetti were helping to lever the boulder free as the tank started to pass beneath it.

Reggie loaded a shell into the breech of the port gun. Norman took a deep breath, gritted his teeth and pushed down with all his weight, levering the gun up so that it was pointed up towards the canyon wall. He targeted the boulder as best he could in the moving tank, and fired. The boulder and the Yrredetti disappeared in a plume of fire and dirt. A cloud of dust rolled down the canyon side, enveloping the tank. A rain of clinker and debris pattered down on the hull, sending verdant ripples through the compartment.

“Yes! Got the blighters. Thank you and goodnight! That’ll teach ’em to mess with old
Ivanhoe
!” whooped Norman.

Rubble rattled down the canyon sides to be crushed beneath the tracks of the
Ivanhoe
as, oblivious, it continued on its halting way towards the mouth of the canyon.

Behind it, a lone wail of frustration echoed round the walls of the canyon, before being picked up and amplified by other Yrredetti.

As the dust cloud settled, the blue-green blisters, stilled in the fleeting darkness of the cloud, began to pulse in the rays of the sun once more. On the canyon side, where the shell had exploded, something cold and metallic glinted through the shattered rock in the dust-filtered daylight.

CHAPTER FIVE

“The Outlook isn’t Healthy...”

L
IEUTENANT
M
ATHERS, OPERATING
the steering brake levers, peered out of the front visor at the small rectangle of world he could see before him, a world that see-sawed violently as the landship crashed up and down on the swell of ground beneath them. As they nosed up over obstacles, the bright rectangle of sky was snatched away with vertiginous speed to be replaced with lurching glimpses of soil and rock, before he was teased with a horizon line of vermillion-hued vegetation that vanished again abruptly.

Again, Mathers heard the whispering. He glanced at Clegg beside him, the bantam cockney’s wiry arms tense on the driving levers.

“Blimey,” the driver shouted over the noise of the engine behind them. “This place has got more pot holes than Oxford Street.”

Mathers shook his head. He could barely hear Clegg speak, let alone whisper. It must be some resonant engine note he’d not noticed before.

As they left the canyon behind them, the blue-green rock blisters gave way to a cinnamon-coloured soil. Ahead of them lay a rocky plateau scored with haphazard cracks and stress marks from the same geological event that caused the canyon. Cracks and gullies splintered the landscape like crazy paving; some rocky plates tilting, some sunken, some thrust up. Some gullies were too wide for the tank to cross, even though the weight of its hydraulic steering tail was designed as a counter-balance to cross trenches of up to nine feet.

They had to find a way to safely cross the labyrinthine field. As tank commander, that job fell to Mathers, and quite frankly he was glad of it. He was the tallest man in the crew, a real legs eleven. Sat in the small cockpit on the hard chair being jolted and jarred had given him a stomach cramp. Even now he hated being cooped up in the tank for long periods and he found himself tensing, clenching his stomach muscles against the unexpected drops, jolts and bangs.

He had cramp. And a headache. Maybe the fresh air would help. He tapped Clegg on the shoulder.

“I’ll walk on ahead, guide you through.”

It was a common procedure in tanks. When going became difficult it was the commander’s unenviable task to negotiate paths round shell-hole-pocked roads, and he’d done his fair share during night manoeuvres and under fire. There were times when he almost preferred that to being cooped up in an iron coffin. At least here, there was no chance of Fritz sniping at you, and that brought a great deal of relief. On the other hand, you never knew here what you were going to encounter next.

He walked ahead of the tank, checking the ground, searching for narrow enough gullies for them to cross. He could hear things moving about in the bottom of them, slithering and snuffling. He peered over the edge of one, but some form of bruised purple vegetation obscured the gully bed. In a way, he was relieved. He indicated to Clegg to swing right over a gap narrow enough for the
Ivanhoe
to bridge.

In this manner, the tank crew progressed slowly across the broken plain, having to go out of their way to find a route passable enough to be of little concern to the great metal behemoth. From then on, progress was faster and the jungle loomed ahead. A short sort of crimson brambly plant became more prevalent, its thorns scratching the leather of his calf-length boots.

One caught his ankle and sent him tumbling into a gully; he slipped to the bottom. An accompanying land slither sent dirt and soil raining down onto him. For a moment, disorientated, unable to move, the old panic rose in him again.