The Ironclad Prophecy (12 page)

Mathers had been an officer in the infantry, on the front lines, until one day he found himself under heavy bombardment for days. The dugout he was in had collapsed under shellfire. There was a large bang, and then darkness. And silence. He couldn’t move. He was buried, pinned under the body of an orderly, Hammond, that lay across him, staring at him with lifeless eyes for what seemed like hours, but must have been a lot less. His ears were ringing. Muffled by the dirt, the sandbags and joists, he could hear the barrage going on around him, the shriek of whizz-bangs and, in the breeze that blew gently through the collapsed dugout, a hint of gas. He could barely hear his own voice as he called for help. He knew he mustn’t be seen to funk it in front of the men he could hear digging for him. He had enough gumption about him not to scream, fighting off the urge by biting his own hand while, in his head, he pleaded with a god he barely believed in to let him get out. He promised anything, everything.

When they finally dragged him from under Hammond’s corpse and carried him by stretcher to the aid post, he was found to have no serious injuries. Hammond’s body had cushioned him. He was lucky. But his scars couldn’t be seen.

He was still shaking the next day. The tremors made it difficult to walk, so he was forced to remain in bed by stern matrons.

Commotional distress, they said. Perfectly understandable. Several weeks behind the lines helped him recover. Except that it didn’t. Back at the front, it didn’t take long for his nerves to fray. He noticed the tremors, the rising panic, and the tic under his eye, whenever he had to go into a dugout. He could hardly sleep. Alcohol helped, initially. Eventually they sent him back to Blighty to recuperate.

That was when he met Major Parkhurst. Damn Major Parkhurst. Man had the bloody temerity to call himself an MO. Bloody croaker, more like. The man didn’t believe in neuralgia. You were either a coward or you weren’t. Mathers insisted he wasn’t, which was all Parkhurst wanted to hear to declare him fit for duty. The trouble was, Mathers no longer knew for sure. He had to prove it to himself one way or the other. Kill or cure, he thought.

The Machine Gun Corps’ new Heavy Section was looking for officers and men. It would be a fresh start away from his old battalion. He applied, hiding the true extent of his condition. He hadn’t realised what was involved until he’d arrived at Elveden. But you couldn’t show fear in front of the men. You were an officer. To do so was to invite a court martial. Every time he entered the tank he could feel the pressure building inside him, like a pot that threatened to boil over, but he managed to control it, tensing his stomach and legs so that he wouldn’t jump at unexpected noises or lurches. Thankfully, it seemed everyone in the tanks was ill from the fumes and the working conditions at one time or another and he found he could disguise the worse of his nervous debility. Here, on this world, however, the tank provided its own medication. The fuel fumes seemed to have a beneficial effect on him, making him less jumpy. He wondered what was in it to make him feel this way, but only briefly. Mostly he was just glad. Even that infernal tic under his left eye, that would fire uncontrollably in bursts, like a machine gun, had stopped recently.

He put it to the back of his mind and breathed deeply.

He realized he wasn’t buried. The cloth of his jacket had just caught fast on the bramble. He tore his arm free, ripping the serge. He heard something in the damp shadows slithering towards him along the gully bed, under the cover of the creeping plant, and he scrambled back up the side of the gully.

As he clawed his way to the lip, he heard a sound over the noise of the tank, and he saw an apparent cluster of boulders a hundred yards away lift itself up, limbs unfolding from beneath it. He had seen one of these things before in a forest, on the way to rescue captured Tommies from Khungarr. They had only survived then by good fortune. A stone beetle, about the size of the
Ivanhoe
.

Cautiously, it stretched and unrolled itself, watching the tank warily. Clegg tried to turn the
Ivanhoe
so that it faced their foe; Mathers urged them on silently. The stone beetle was quicker and scuttled round the tank, as if looking for weaknesses. In order to turn more quickly Clegg had kept both tracks running, one in reverse. It would strip the differential if he kept that up and they’d be buggered out in the middle of nowhere with no tankodrome or machine shops. Mathers was sure Perkins would be scolding him.

The beetle crouched low on its limbs, its head down, mandibles scything, all the while watching the tank.

The tank halted, its engine growling. Mathers urged it to do something. It seemed an eternity before the tank began to lurch backwards away from the beast. The huge rock beetle advanced, keeping pace with it. It then tried scuttling round to the right as if to flank it. A burst of machine gun fire spitting across the ground soon stopped that.

Mathers watched, helpless, as the tank tried to fix the thing in its sights, but it was altogether faster and more agile than the cumbersome armoured machine. Mathers threw himself to the ground as a spray of bullets zipped over his head.

“Nesbit!” he roared, the admonition all but drowned by the noise of the tank.

The giant beetle, having abandoned its flanking manoeuvre, now sought to charge the trespasser. Head down, swaying, its great stone stag horns wove through the air. It scuttled forwards again in short, abrupt bursts, the brief spatter from the forwards facing Hotchkiss ricocheting off its carapace, merely giving it pause for thought. It was almost with reluctance that the stone beetle then backed away. It regarded the ironclad hesitantly before slinking away and slithering down into a large gully.

Mathers breathed a sigh of relief. When he picked himself off the ground, a sharp pain in his abdomen almost doubled him over. He frowned and sucked air in through gritted teeth until the sensation passed.

He felt inside his tunic, pulled out his hip flask and took a quick slug of the distilled petrol fruit. Its fumes alone weren’t enough to dull the pain. More recently, he needed something stronger.

The tank slewed round blindly, trying to find its vanished foe. Mathers approached the tank and stood in front of it. He could make out Clegg’s face through the driver’s open visor plate, and waved him on. The tank began to clank obediently towards him as he continued to scout ahead. The crevices and gullies were becoming fewer and narrower, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He hadn’t gone fifty yards when he heard a pistol go off. He turned to see someone fire from one of the tank’s pistol ports.

This stone beetle creature was obviously more cunning than its forest cousin was. It had used the cover of the gullies to come round behind the tank and surprise its rival.

“Swing to port!” Mathers yelled, waving his arms to his right as if he could speed up the tank’s turn by the action. “For Christ’s sake, swing to port!”

I
NSIDE THE TANK,
peering out of the sponson door pistol port, Frank saw a flash of stone carapace and fired his revolver.

“Bugger’s back!” he yelled. Faces peered out of the other pistol ports, searching for the creature.

“Where?”

“It’s behind us,” said Cecil, peering out of the pistol port in the rear door by the radiator.

“Wally, about face, ninety degrees!” yelled Alfie. He nodded to Frank and when Wally gave the signal from his driving seat, they changed gears. The tank began to turn almost on the spot.

“Where is it? I can’t see it!” said Wally, peering though his visor plate. They peered out of pistol ports and gun slits, checking off their positions.

“Not here,” called Jack, swinging the gun round through a hundred and twenty degrees and peering through the gun slit.

“Nor here,” said Cecil.

“Can’t see it,” said Norman.

“Then where the bloody hell is it?”

As if in answer, there was a heavy thud accompanied by an oppressive green synesthetic flash as the creature landed on top of the tank. A noise like nails on a blackboard pierced the bass rumble of the engine as the creature’s feet sought purchase. Blocked by the belly of the creature above, exhaust fumes began to belch back into the compartment, filling the space with a choking black smoke.

Alfie began coughing until spots burst before his eyes.

Reggie took the commander’s seat next to Wally.

“No free rides on this ’bus!” he said, pulling on the brake lever. The
Ivanhoe
jerked to a halt. Unable to get a firm grip, the stone beetle slithered off the front.

“That’ll teach it,” said Wally with a self-satisfied sneer. “Go on, clear off, you great bleedin’ cockroach.”

It skittered off round out of his limited field of view. Back in the compartment, the crew flung themselves at the pistol ports again. It was too fast for the gunners to get a bead on it.

The back end of the tank tilted up as the creature shoved its horns beneath the steering tail and tried to lever it up. The tank crashed down again as it failed. It tried again.

“Oi!” Wally drove the tank forwards.

“Cecil, take a peek and see what the bleeder’s trying to do, will you.”

Cecil peered out of the rear loophole. “Lawks, it’s coming after us again!”

The tank juddered once more as the back end tilted up and crashed down again.

“We can’t take much more of this.”

There was a brief stillness. Alfie held his breath.

Then Cecil piped up, jerking back from the pistol port in the rear door. “It’s trying for the roof again.”

Alfie found himself looking up at the roof, from where the noise, and jagged green spikes, of scrambling issued. Between them, Wally, Alfie and Frank tried to swing the tank and throw it off, but it clung tenaciously to the roof.

“What the hell do we do now?”

“Aaaugh. Shit!” yelled Cecil stumbling back over the differential. “It’s trying to get in!” After several attempts, a thin exoskeletal tube about two feet long appeared through the pistol port. He reared back and cocked his revolver at it. He watched, open-mouthed, as the end opened and something wet and glistening, like a tentacle, protruded from the chitinous casing.

“It, it’s a whatsit, a prob-sis? It’s trying to suck us out!”

“I don’t think so, son.” Jack edged past Alfie, put a hand on Cecil’s wrist and forced him to lower the weapon. “Don’t shoot in here, Ces. The bullet’ll ricochet.”

“Fellas,” said Norman,warily.

The tank began to rock as the beetle creature above them sought purchase. The rocking became more rhythmic. The tentacle, if that’s what it was, began to throb.

A vile thought took hold as Alfie watched. “That’s not a bloody tentacle, or a proboscis. It’s a bleedin’ short arm!”

Reggie blanched. “A what?”

The rocking became more urgent and the occupants of the tank were being shunted backwards and forwards with every thrust. Expressions of horror and disgust dawned on their faces as they realised what was going on.

“It’s not trying to kill us. It’s after a bon time,” said Norman.

Only Cecil still looked blank.

“It thinks we’re a lady friend?” Frank suggested.

Cecil frowned. “But this is a male tank.”

Alfie braced his hands against the roof as another enthusiastic thrust rocked the tank. “I
really
don’t think it cares.”

“Jesus! Well don’t just stand there,” bellowed Wally.

Cecil looked at them. “What do we do?”

Moral indignation flooded Jack’s face. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m bloody well not going to do and that’s lie back and think of bloody England.” He grabbed a wrench and took a swing at the now tumescent and dripping appendage. “D’you know, Ces,” he said, “after this, I can see me and you is going to need a long talk about... country matters.”

Frank leered. “After this, I don’t think he’ll need one.”

M
ATHERS WATCHED AS
the giant beetle attempted to mount the
Ivanhoe,
using its mandibles to try to bite and hold the tank’s roof, its legs scrambling for leverage as it began to grind against the rear of the tank. All thought of its own safety washed away in a primal urge too strong to ignore.

The tank juddered forward, but the beetle was determined not to lose its mount and tottered forwards with it, almost comically, still attached.

Mathers felt a hint of shame that the ironclad should be misused so shamefully, as if it had been a faithful beast unwillingly put out to stud. He picked up a rock and hurled it at the creature, but it bounced off. He picked up another one and edged closer, this time aiming at its face. It bounced off a mandible. He felt light-headed, but didn’t stop. Whatever he was feeling, it wasn’t fear; it was... exhilaration. He picked up another rock and, yelling incoherently, he charged. He ran at the tank and, using his momentum, and the starboard gun barrel, in one swift move he scrambled onto the
Ivanhoe
and began smashing at the beetle’s legs, which seemed to be the most vulnerable part. Smoke began billowing out from the smothered exhaust vents beneath the beetle. He was about to leap on its back in an attempt to stove its head in when a sheering screech ripped the sky.