It wasn’t lost on Woolridge that even as the others were forced back, he was slowly advancing towards the enemy, as the battlepillars hauled the twenty-eight-ton tank up the steep incline of the crater wall. To stop now would be disastrous. He knew that whatever happened, he must keep hauling the tank. But he also knew he’d need another fifty or sixty yards to do it. Yards that were slipping away as the chatts advanced, although the Pennines were making them fight for every inch.
In front of him, in the forward machine-gun basket, Ferris swapped out the last circular forty-eight-round ammo canister from the forward Lewis gun and swore.
“We’re out of ammo!”
Woolridge dug the driving spikes in again, pulling on the reins. Big Bertha reared up off the ground as the advancing wave of chatts rushed towards it and Big Willie, before crashing down again, crushing half a dozen chatts, their smashed carapaces crackling under Bertha’s bulk like brittle sheets of cellophane.
Several chatts sprang up onto Bertha’s panniers, and from there scrambled up the sides of the beast.
Ferris was hit by a bolt from an electric lance. He went into spasm, lost his balance and slipped down Big Bertha’s face. His webbing caught on one of its barbed mandibles; as he struggled to free himself, the battlepillar’s mandibles scythed shut.
COOPER HAD ALMOST reached the top. Even Talbot found himself willing the man on. There was a blue-white flash from beyond the lip, and the rope he was climbing dropped into the crater. Cooper’s body plummeted down the crater wall, hit an outcrop and pinwheeled out into the air.
“Cooper!”
He hit the top of the scree slope with a sound like a wet sandbag. His limbs flopped at sickening angles. The broken body tumbled down the crater side until it slid to rest against the port track horn of the Ivanhoe. The track plates rolled implacably forward, crushing the body beneath its port track before anyone could reach him; the sound of splintering bone and bursting organs was mercifully lost amid the creaks and screeching of shifting iron plates.
THE CHATTS ADVANCED along Big Bertha’s back towards the driver’s howdah. Woolridge cycled the bolt on his Enfield and fired, sending the first chatt spinning off to the ground. And the second.
There was a loud wrenching and tearing followed by a snap as the load bearing fibre of the tow ropes finally tore, under assault from chatt mandibles. Released from tension, the ropes snapped through the air, hurling chatts from the battlepillar’s back.
Free of its burden, Bertha lurched forward. Woolridge almost lost his footing. He grabbed the side of the howdah to steady himself. He caught sight of the chatt with its electric lance a second before his world was filled with an agonising white light that faded into a consuming blackness.
LEFT TO BEAR the entire load alone, Big Willie began to lose the battle. The weight of the tank dragged the battlepillar back towards the edge of the crater, leaving a great furrow in the ground.
Electric lance fire burnt through the great ropes and Big Willie was suddenly released from its harness, but its freedom was short-lived. Stray electric lance bolts licked its armoured sides, earthing through it, burning carapace and scorching soft tissue. Thrashing in pain, its rear end crashed against the stock of fuel drums, sending them toppling over the crater edge, like skittles, where they bounced down the side in a succession of hollow, discordant notes.
TALBOT WATCHED AS the tank reached the top of the scree slope and abutted the crater wall. The track horns caught the camber of the wall and began to creep the chassis up the steeper slope.
There was a lurch and the tank rolled back several yards, sending the Fusiliers scurrying out of the way. A huge length of rope dropped, piling up on the driver’s cabin between the track horns like a great fibrous stool.
The tank remained still for a moment, and then with a despairing groan of tortured metal, the Ivanhoe rolled back down towards the jungle, picking up speed in a cloud of dust and chippings.
Watching with horror, Talbot flinched at every sound.
With their arms windmilling, the salvage section ran down after the runaway ironclad, as if they had a chance of stopping it.
EVERSON HEARD THE grating, metallic crash and the rumble of the tracks, and knew that the tank was gone again.
And with it, the Pennines’ resolve. They found themselves pushed back by sheer weight of numbers until they had their backs to the crater’s edge. They were surrounded. Trapped.
The chatts closed in around them, bristling with spears, swords and electric lances, mandibles clashing. But they didn’t move in to drive them over.
“I think they want us alive,” said Atkins.
“Works for me,” said Porgy in ragged breaths.
Pot Shot eyed their scything mandibles. “Probably prefer their food live, knowing our luck.”
A large scentirrii stepped forward. It wore a blood-red silk surcoat and its mandibles seemed larger and stronger than any Khungarrii. Its antennae waved. “You are prisoners of the Zohtakarrii.”
The Fusiliers didn’t move, but waited on a command from Everson. He knew they would fight to the last if he ordered them, but what would they be fighting for? Perhaps Bains had been right. This world wasn’t about King and Country and Duty. It was about survival.
“Lower your weapons,” he said, his voice laced with regret. He stepped forwards and offered his sword in surrender.
TALBOT AND THE others strained their ears. It had gone quiet up above. That wasn’t good.
“D’you think they’re dead?” asked Hume.
“If they are, then we’re up shit creek,” said Mitchell. “We’re trapped down here.”
“Maybe they’ve been captured.”
Talbot cupped his hand round his mouth and called up. “Sir! Lieutenant Everson!”
There was no reply. Fletcher grimaced and shook his head.
“Anyone! Hello?”
“We can’t just stay here.”
“Doesn’t look like we have a choice. We were ordered to watch over the tank and that’s what we’ll do until an officer tells us otherwise. It’ll give us shelter, and maybe there are rations and ammo in there.”
With many hopeful, but unfulfilled, glances to the top of the crater, they walked back into the tank’s bower. It was dispiriting to find the ironclad embedded in the vegetation pretty much as they had first found it.
“Might as well be on the bloody Somme. A day’s misery and no ground gained to show for it.”
“Home from home, then, ain’t it?”
“Corp!”
“What?”
Banks pointed into the undergrowth. Something was moving. They backed away, raising their rifles.
An officer, sallow-faced, unsteady on his feet, stumbled out of the undergrowth, his hand out searching for support to steady himself, but the branches and saplings bent under his weight and left him staggering. His skin and uniform were grey, dusted with a powder, motes of which swirled about him in the air as he moved.
“I recognise him,” said Walker straining his neck as he peered into the gloom. “It’s Lieutenant Mathers, the tank commander.” He lowered his rifle and stepped forward “Are you all right, sir?”
Mathers lurched forward as if concussed and suffering from commotional shock, his mouth moving as he tried to speak.
Walker and Mitchell dashed to help him. “It’s all right, sir, we’ve got you.”
Mathers looked up at them. They could see, now, his eyes were rimed with grey powder.
Mitchell saw a gaping hole in Mathers head, filled with something soft and spongy extruding from the shattered cranial cavity. Not brain. He’d seen men with their brains hanging out, and this very definitely was not that.