Everson saw Hepton, pushing through the milling soldiers assigned to the salvage operation as they checked their gear and bartered for final supplies from mates, but ignored him. Everson couldn’t bring himself to like the man. He had been foisted on them to record the battle for Harcourt Wood for the folks back in Blighty. He was only supposed to be with them for a day or two. In the end, he had got rather more than he bargained for, and so had Everson. Hepton had been a constant irritant ever since. He turned his attention to the supply manifest that Sergeant Hobson had handed him.
Hepton spotted him. “Lieutenant, you weren’t thinking of going without me, were you?”
Everson looked up from his clipboard. “As a matter of fact, yes, I was.”
Hepton pulled a face of mock hurt and put a hand to his heart. “You wound me, Lieutenant. It’s my job. I’m authorised by the War Office to make you look good for the folks back home. You want to look good, don’t you? All I’m looking for is a little excitement, a little action.”
“Exactly the things I was hoping to avoid,” said Everson.
Hepton smiled his greasy smile and shrugged. “In that case, I’ll settle for a spectacular otherworldly landscape. Can’t say fairer than that, eh?” he said with a wink, rubbing his hands together.
Hobson tapped Everson on the arm and drew him aside. Hepton, hands behind his back, proceeded to rock back and forth on his heels, pretending to inspect the battlepillar in whose shadow they were standing.
“It might be better to keep him where we can see him, sir,” said Hobson in a low voice. “He’s a troublemaker, by all accounts. If we leave him here – well, the devil makes work, sir,” he said in a low voice.
“Is that your considered opinion, Sergeant?”
“It is, sir. The chap’s a malcontent, a real four-letter man, sir.”
Everson hmphed his agreement.
“Hepton?”
The kinematographer turned at the sound of his name.
“Very well. We move out in ten minutes. You have five to get your equipment together.”
A straight razor grin sliced open Hepton’s face. “You won’t regret it, Lieutenant, you won’t regret it.” He turned and began to wade back through the crowd, waving and calling over the men as he went, “Jenkins, Jenkins, bring my things. Over here, man. Hurry.”
Everson blinked. “Did you give him permission to use one of my privates as a batman?” he asked Hobson.
Affronted by the question, the NCO frowned. “Certainly not, sir.”
“Damn the man.”
THE NCOS BARKED their orders and the men began to embark the battlepillars. They climbed the ladders, one section to a pannier. Six panniers each side, the rear two panniers filled with supplies and equipment. They also carried drums of spare petrol fruit fuel for the tank strapped to the back of Big Willie, and two of the experimental magneto-powered electric lance backpacks and various sets of telephonic equipment.
“Careful, don’t drop anything, lad,” cautioned Corporal Riley as Buckley hauled the gear up into the pannier with Tonkins’ help.
The battlepillars moved out up the hillside towards the head of the valley. The Khungarrii reprisals against the Pennines had also displaced clans of nomadic urmen in the process, some of whom sought the shelter and protection of the British Tommies. NCOs had drilled and trained their men into platoons to replace those of the 13th Pennines who were wounded, missing or dead. The training had worked, mostly. Many of them stood their ground when the Khungarrii laid siege to the trenches, and the jeering from the Fusiliers that assaulted them during their training had turned to respect in most cases. However, many would not board the battlepillars, preferring to run alongside or scout ahead. Everson watched them with an odd feeling of nostalgia. Seeing the urmen in their mixture of native and British equipment brought a Colonial air to the whole endeavour.
1 Section was in the first of Big Bertha’s starboard panniers. Gutsy was leant over the side of the basket. The undulating movement of the battlepillar didn’t agree with him.
“He was like this on the boat over from Blighty,” said Porgy cheerfully. “As green as the meat he sells.”
Gutsy straightened up and whirled round with a raised finger to contest the slur, but he clamped his lips tight as his cheeks bellowed out. He leant over the side of the pannier and threw up again.
“And that,” said Porgy to the section replacements who had edged to the far end of the pannier, “is why he’s called Gutsy.”
THE CANYON WAS less than a day’s travel by battlepillar. It was a lot quicker than walking and, by comparison, quicker than the tank or a Hom Forty. The battlepillars’ size also deterred the more opportunistic scavengers and predators, and they reached the canyon by late afternoon without incident, much to Hepton’s disgust.
As eager as he was to see the mysterious wall, Everson erred on the side of caution. The canyon was a good place for an ambush.
“We’ll make camp here for the night,” he ordered. “We’ll go down into the canyon in full light.”
Knotted ropes were thrown over the sides of the panniers and the men shimmied down, thankful for the solid ground – Gutsy most of all, although it took him a few minutes to find his land legs, much to the amusement of the others.
NCOs began barking orders and the men fell to their appointed tasks. Woolridge saw to the battlepillars. They seemed content to spend the night tethered side by side, nose to tail, like horses. Two sections established a secure perimeter and others unloaded supplies while the men set up their bivouacs.
Gazette set about starting a cooking fire for their section. Porgy, however, slunk off before someone volunteered him to collect firewood.
Half an hour later, he crept back to the fire, a grin on his face and patting a couple of webbing pouches.
“I’d stay clear of 4 Section, if I were you,” he said slumping down on his bedroll. “They’re in a bad mood. And it’ll be even worse tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, bloody hell, Porgy. What’ve you done now?” asked Pot Shot with a sigh.
“Just relieved them of their last gaspers in a game of ‘Housey’,” he said pulling a battered cigarette packet from his webbing. “Fag, anyone?”
THE NEXT MORNING, the battlepillars descended out of the early morning sunlight into the cold shadow of the canyon, past the still-inert deadly blister-like blue-green hemispherical growths scattered over the surface of the canyon walls.
Atkins and his men had found to their cost that these bloated alien lichen contained reservoirs of some acidic substance. They ate away at the rock itself, absorbing the minerals and leaving the shallow circular pockmarks that scarred the rock all around them.
The battlepillars moved down into the canyon as it twisted and jinked down through the rock strata. Round a bend and high up on the cliff face, at the top of the scree slope, Everson caught his first sight of the mysterious metal wall.
The wall was embedded in the rock, as though the rock face had crumbled away to expose it. A glimmer of dawn light caught the face of the brushed silver metal, suffusing it with a warm crimson glow.
The working party began to disembark with their equipment. By the time they returned this way, he hoped the working party might have some answers, but Everson couldn’t resist seeing the thing for himself. He summoned Atkins to accompany him up the scree slope, eager to inspect this mysterious wall up close.
Everson laid a hand on the sheer metal with a sense of wonder. It was flat, smooth, and warm to the touch, despite the chill of the morning air. “Intriguing,” he said as he considered the conundrum in front of them. It seemed so much at odds with what they had experienced of this world so far. When they first arrived, there had initially been hopes of civilisations with gleaming citadels. Their first encounter with the chatts and their earthen edifices disabused them of that romantic notion. This, however; this was different. “You’re right. This isn’t natural,” he said as Atkins scrambled up the last few feet of scree to meet him. “So the questions are; what is it, who built it and why?”