He caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. A fleeting shadow rippled across the face of the cumulus mesa above them. Was there something else up here? A predator? He turned to Maddocks and jabbed a finger in its direction. Maddocks nodded and swung the Lewis machine gun round on its Scarff ring. Tulliver pulled on the stick and banked the bus to look for its source, his head constantly moving as he held up a hand to shield his eyes from the uninterrupted glare of the alien sun.
The shadow flitted into a narrow chasm between two great cumulus tors as he raced up the vertiginous slopes after it, scanning the shifting vista as mountains roiled up and melted together.
High above, a haze of cloud moved across the sun and the shadow vanished along with whatever cast it.
Perhaps it was just as well, Tulliver thought. Nothing up here was ever friendly. The thought that there was a fast and predatory creature existing at this altitude, sliding through cloud like a shark through water, filled him with trepidation. He’d hate to give Everson cause to curtail his flights even more.
Sooner or later, he would have to find this creature and kill it. He knew that. It might be that it was a rendezvous with death, but it was one he would not fail.
He throttled back, dropped below the drifting clouds and found himself over the Fractured Plain. It was a barren expanse of uneven cracked and tilted slabs of sand-covered bedrock that looked as if someone had smashed the landscape with a giant hammer.
He pulled out of the dive and followed the great rift face along the edge of the sunken plain until he saw the gorge that pointed the way back, its mysterious metal wall flaring in the sunlight.
As they neared the valley that the marooned Tommies now called home, Tulliver felt his mood sink with every foot of altitude he lost.
LIEUTENANT EVERSON, ACTING CO of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers, heard the droning approach of aeroplane.
“Back in one piece. Thank God for that!” he muttered, before returning his attention to the ongoing repair work. The circular rings of defensive fire, support and reserve trenches that now protected the precious circle of Somme soil had been pulverised in recent weeks; not by a German barrage, but by an animal stampede precipitated by a storm front of Kreothe, giant aerial creatures that drifted in herds on the wind. The decomposing corpse of one of the jellyfish-like creatures lay up the valley, not half a mile beyond the trenches, like some tentacled, demonic leviathan washed up from the depths. The men had already become accustomed to its stench, having lived in a charnel field of rotting corpses on the Somme.
Hobson, a barrel-chested Platoon Sergeant whose most prominent feature was an immaculately groomed handlebar moustache, followed behind him, catching anything the Lieutenant missed, snatching words with other ranks about undone buttons and the other hundred and one petty breaches of Regulations that blighted the life of a private, even here.
Everson felt the weight of his responsibility keenly. He had gone to Oxford with the intention of escaping the weight of his father’s expectations. With the outbreak of war, in the summer of 1914, he joined the patriotic throng of other young men in front of Broughtonthwaite Town Hall and signed on as one of Kitchener’s volunteers. When his father found out, he was furious. Over his son’s objections, he used his considerable influence to buy him a commission, as a Platoon Commander, in the local regiment. In seeking to avoid responsibility, Everson had found himself saddled with it. He hated his father for that.
The longer they remained here, the harder it was to maintain the men’s morale. He felt the respect they held him in being eroded week by week. They wanted leadership, and all he could offer was survival. It wasn’t enough. A slow drip of deserters sloped off to take their chances in the alien wilderness, whittling their numbers and further undermining the men’s confidence in him.
Now, though, they had a solid lead on Lieutenant Jeffries. There was a deeply held belief among some of the ranks that Jeffries was responsible for their transportation to this hellish place, one Everson tentatively shared. Jeffries was a self-styled diabolist and rival of Aleister Crowley. He was also a con man and a wanted murderer. It was Jeffries’ boast that they were here on this planet as the direct result of some obscene ritual he had conducted, powered by the staggering scale of human sacrifice on the Somme. Before he vanished, leaving them at war with the chatts, Jeffries declared that only he knew how to get them back.
For over three months, they had searched for him and now, at last, they had a lead – the Croatoan Crater. Not only that, they also had the chatt prisoner, Chandar, and a collection of ancient sacred scent texts unearthed at the Nazarrii edifice. They could give him leverage with the Khungarrii, the local colony, on whose territory they had materialised and under whose attacks they had suffered in recent months.
With these, Everson felt he could finally act, rather than react. He could galvanise the men, give them a purpose other than survival. He only hoped it wouldn’t be too late. First, though, he must arrange a salvage party to recover the tank if at all possible.
Following the jinking traverses of the radial communications trench, they turned left and clockwise into the support trench ring. Soldiers saluted as they passed. Some looked him in the eye with defiance. Others averted their gaze. Everson smiled briefly and nodded to all in acknowledgement.
He noticed an awkward figure, his right leg missing below the knee, hobbling on crutches round the traverse ahead of them. It was a hard figure to mistake.
“Nicholls?” The man had been in his own platoon. Half Pint, the rest called him, on account of his constant grousing. He’d lost his right leg below the knee in a battle with the Khungarrii. Anywhere else but here it would have been a Blighty wound, poor sod. Since then, Nicholls had served as his batman, at least until his new peg leg had tried to kill him. Now he was just a Category Man, unfit for active service.
“Sir?” Nicholls attempted to turn but got one of his crutches stuck in the duckboards that ran along the bottom of the trench. “Damn thing!”
“Sergeant, give him a hand.”
“It’s all right. I’ve got it, sir,” said Nicholls from between gritted teeth as he gave the crutch a vicious tug. It came free. He let out a strangled cry and lurched backward against the revetment. The crutch clattered to the ground.
Everson stooped, picked it up and handed it back to him. Nicholls took it, reluctantly, avoiding his gaze.
Everson’s brow furrowed with concern. “Everything all right, Nicholls?”
“Fine, sir,” said the Fusilier. “Never better. Everything’s tickety-boo.”
Hobson leaned forward and pinned the man to the revetment with a gimlet eye, a note of threat in his voice. “Any complaints?”
Nicholls shook his head. “No, none at all, Sarn’t.”
“Very glad to hear it. Hop along now.”
HALF PINT ROUNDED the traverse and shot a furtive glance over his shoulder, to check if he was being followed, but he’d left Lieutenant Everson and Hobson behind.
He stood at the top of a set of the dugout steps and called hoarsely down into the gloom. “It’s me, Half Pint. Someone give us a bloody hand, then!”
There were footsteps and a Tommy, his tunic undone, emerged into the light at the top of the steps. “About bloody time too,” he said. “Where’ve you been? Bains is waiting.”