The Ironclad Prophecy (9 page)

It was nearly an hour later before Nellie was able to beg a fag break from Sister Fenton and slip away to let the Lieutenant know what had happened to his batman.

In the days that followed, she often wished Sister Fenton had kept her back.

S
ERGEANT
H
OBSON ENTERED
the command post. Everson looked up from his desk.

“The chatts are still just sat there, sir. They don’t seem to be doing anything.”

“They’re waiting for a ‘sign,’ Sergeant, and I bloody well wish we had one to give them.”

“The tank, sir?”

“As you so rightly say, Hobson, the tank.” He tapped his pencil on the desk and came to a decision. “I want to see Lance Corporal Atkins. I’ve got a job for him and his black hand gang.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll send him along directly.” The sergeant turned sharply and left.

Everson was about to take another look at Jeffries’ journal when there was a polite knock on the doorjamb.

“Come.”

Nellie Abbott stepped inside, saluted and stood to attention. Unlike the Nurses, the FANYs were run along military lines.

“Yes, Miss Abbott, what can I do for you?”

“Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, it’s about Half Pint – I mean Private Nicholls, sir.”

“Well, if you’re looking for him, I don’t know where the devil he is,” said Everson, vaguely frustrated.

“Sir, he’s in the aid post.”

Everson was a little shocked. “He’s not injured, is he?”

“It’s his leg, sir.

“Oh, Christ, the poor bloke. Not both now?”

“Oh. Oh, no, sir. No, the other one, the peg leg, sir. It tried to eat him.”

Everson wasn’t sure he heard right. “I beg your pardon?”

“It tried to eat him, it did, sir, but he’s all right now. He’s resting. But he won’t be stomping around like Long John Silver for a while, sir. Said to tell you that dinner would be a little late and could I fetch him his lucky harmonica? Said he left it on his desk, sir.”

Everson slumped back in his chair with a sigh and waved her in the direction of the small clerk’s office. She gave a little curtsey and went through.

Everson ran a hand through his hair. There was another knock.

“Come.”

Sergeant Hopkins and Lance Corporal Atkins entered.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” said Atkins.

“Yes, Atkins. Got a job for you. I wouldn’t ask, but our backs are against the wall on this one.”

“Aren’t they always, sir?”

“Hmm. The fact is, Atkins, the tank is overdue. The
Ivanhoe
should have been back several days ago. And frankly if it had, we might not be in this mess with those bloody chatts camped on our doorstep. The
Ivanhoe
has a limited speed and a limited range and, by all accounts, it should have returned yesterday. Now, either it’s in trouble or it’s broken down or the crew are injured or dead...”

There was an audible gasp from the back of the room. Nellie Abbott stood in the small doorframe to the next room, a harmonica in her hand. She leant against the doorframe.

“Miss Abbott, I’m sorry,” said Everson. “I didn’t realise you were still there.”

“Injured?” she said. “Then let me go, too, sir. I can help.”

“You, Abbott? No, sorry. Out of the question. If nothing else, Sister Fenton would certainly have something to say about it.”

“But you said yourself they might be injured, sir,” she said in earnest. “I’ve got first aid training. And I can drive, sir. I ain’t afraid of what’s out there. Sister can spare me. There’s the orderlies and the vets, sir. I won’t hardly be missed.”

Damn the girl, but she had a point. The tank crew were the only ones who could drive the blasted thing. If they were injured... And she could drive ambulances, so she might be able to help if the crew were down. Damn it. Why did they have to be so bloody logical? “Very well,” he said reluctantly. “But only if Sister Fenton agrees.”

“Thank you, sir! You won’t regret it.”

“But, sir –” protested Atkins. “I don’t want to be responsible for a woman, sir.”

“Do as the Lieutenant, says, son,” said Hobson, leaning in with a stage whisper.

“‘Only’ Atkins, how dare you!” retorted Nellie. “I can do anything you can. Don’t treat me like no porcelain doll, then. I’m responsible for myself. Or do you just want me to stay here and cook meals, wash uniforms and tend wounds, is that it? ”

“No!” said Atkins defensively. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that –”

Everson coughed. “It’s done, Atkins. She goes with you. I need you to find the tank and its crew, both in one piece, and get them back here. We can hang on for a few days, a week maybe. The chatts think it’s their god of the dead; it may be the only thing that can save us. I’m relying on you.”

Atkins recovered his composure while Nellie fixed him with a belligerent stare.

“If the tank can be found sir, we’ll find it. Leaves a trail a blind man could follow, so we should be able to track it. And we’ll bring it back if we have to push it all the way.”

The tank weighed twenty-eight tons, so that was highly unlikely, but Everson appreciated the sentiment. “And take Napoo, because Christ knows what you’ll find out there and I don’t want to lose another patrol.

“And take that chatt, Chandar, with you. He seems well disposed to you. We can’t keep him here and we can’t send him back. I have some surprises for his friends and I don’t want to take the chance that he’s spying.”

“But sir –” began Atkins.

“It’s done, Atkins. Find that bloody tank. And keep an eye out for Jeffries.”

INTERLUDE TWO

Letter from Private Thomas Atkins

to Flora Mullins

17th February 1917

My Dearest Flora,

Sometime I feel daft sitting here and writing letters that I don’t know you’ll ever get, but I feel like if I stop writing you’ll just drift away and I’ll lose you forever. Maybe it would be better not to torment myself, to lay down this burden, to forget that you and Blighty exist at all. Some blokes already have, like so many Hun souvenirs that chaps carry round with them from posting to posting until one day they just become too heavy and they chuck them.

You may never read these, but while I write them, I feel like I’m talking to you, like I’m close to you. If I ever stop writing, then not only have I lost you but will have lost part of myself, too, so here I sit, carrying on.

The days have settled into a routine here, although we are having a spot of bother with some of the locals. I don’t think they like what we’ve done with the place. Mind you, if you saw it you’d hardly recognise it yourself. Lovely new trenches. Dry warm dugouts. It’s like the Ritz.

The new lads in the section seem grand. I do wish Chalky would lay off, though. Not strictly his fault. The others egg him on a bit. I don’t know, you do one thing and people go on and on about it. But that’s what it’s like around here.

We’ve got orders to go and find the tank. You can’t put anything down around here without it disappearing. Most people blame Mercy when that happens. To be fair, if anything has gone missing he’s usually had a hand in it. I don’t think they can pin the tank on him this time, though. It’s all a bit of puzzle. They should have been back yesterday. Things might have been a lot easier if they had, but there you go, C’est la guerre, as Gutsy says. Still, how hard can it be to find?

Ever yours,

Thomas

CHAPTER FOUR

“A Wilderness of Ruin...”

Two days earlier...

T
HE CANYON HADN’T
been carved by turbulent river waters. It was a brutal crack, a rift torn suddenly in the skin of this world by some groundquake that sundered the land in ages past. The walls rose almost vertically for hundreds of feet and only in the heat of the day did the alien sun penetrate the bottom-most depths, where great blocks of stone lay strewn where they fell.

The only scraps of vegetation to be seen were large patches of blue-green matter, scattered over the rock-face like lichen, attached to the rock and formed of small blisters of varying sizes that seemed to pulse in direct sunlight, as if breathing. The ones in shadow remained inert, as if asleep. The rocks were pockmarked with shallow circular depressions, where acid from long-vanished blooms had eaten into the surface.

An unremitting rumble filled the rock-strewn canyon, echoing off the walls like some imminent, but never delivered, avalanche as His Majesty’s Land Ship
Ivanhoe
crawled along, pitilessly shattering small rocks caught under its tracks into dust. Grey smoke billowed from the roof exhaust to be snatched up by the breeze and dispersed behind it as the armoured behemoth crept and clanked through the rocky terrain as if sniffing out a trail.

Not that the crew could see much from inside, where the heat and fumes were a microcosm of hell. Progress was slow. With no suspension, the tank had reduced its speed to a crawl, not wanting to belly or throw a track.

The machine gunners, Norman and Cecil, squinted through the machine gun loopholes for threats as the rocky walls, partially obscured by dust thrown up by the tracks, rolled by with mesmerising slowness, without incident or interest apart from the blue-green pulsating growths. Cecil took a brief shot at them with the Hotchkiss to see if they’d burst. The rattle of machine gun fire reverberated through the canyon, causing Lieutenant Mathers to turn in his seat and glare at him.

It also earned him a clip round the back of the head from Jack Tanner, the ex-prize-fighting gunner. It smacked his forehead into the handles of the gun barrel. “Quit that, you dozy mare. You’re wasting ammunition,” he bellowed above the engine’s roar.

For the moment they were riding with hatches open to try and cool the interior. At least without the Hun firing machine guns at them there was no need to wear the stifling splash-masks and bruise helmets, and in the baking heat of the great iron oven, most of them had unbuttoned the coveralls they wore over the trousers, puttees and flannel shirts of their service dress, and undoing the shirts, too.

At the back of the compartment, by the starboard secondary gears, Alfie wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to keep his focus on the back of the driver’s chair from where, every now and again, hand signals for gear changes would come. When he wasn’t doing that, he was putting grease on the gears every thirty minutes or so. He caught a glimpse of a small love heart on the engine casing in front of him, drawn by Nellie Abbot’s oily finger. He smiled. That was one thing he hadn’t bargained on. One of many; this bleeding planet being one of them. But Nellie, what a find she was. She was different. He remembered the first time he met her, here on this world. They had been celebrating their first fresh food and the Fusiliers’ commander, Captain Grantham, God rest his soul, had given permission for a bit of a bash.

The tank crew hadn’t really socialised with the Fusiliers since they found themselves on this world. They were trained to act as an independent unit and that was the way they liked it. It was part of the attraction of the Machine Gun Corps. They bivvied beside the
Ivanhoe
. It rarely left their sight. But that night he’d gone for a walk amongst the campfires. A couple of rowdy bloody infantry had tried to engage him in conversation, but on hearing his accent they began to jeer and josh him. So he’d wandered off and took a piss over a parapet into one of their trenches. Cocky northern bastards. He was on his way back to the tank when he was accosted by a young girl in a long brown skirt and jacket, who took his arm, linking hers through his, and talked as if they were old friends.

“Cor blimey, what a night. I just got the old ’eave-’o from my mate. She’s over there talking to that NCO with the crutch. Well, I can tell when I’m not wanted. Mind you, she needs a bit of perkin’ up, bless her heart. Then I saw you in your coveralls. And I thought aye-aye, you’re from the tank, ain’tcha? I ain’t never seen one up real close. Don’t they look funny, like a huge great iron slug? What kind of engine has she got? I bet she’s a beaut. Can I see it?”