The concussive shockwave smashed into the fragile machines of wood and wire and fabric and sent them spinning out of control.
They were going down.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TOSSED ABOUT BY the repercussing air, deafened and blinded by the brilliant flash of the blast, Tulliver struggled with the controls. It seemed a hopeless task. He could hear Hepton screaming incoherently behind him.
Dragged by the traction of the engine and the weight of its nose, the Sopwith fell from the sky. The struts groaned. The wires shrieked. Loose cotton drummed. Violent vibrations threatened to shake the bus apart.
Dear God, the engine was still going. He’d rip the bloody wings off at this speed. Hampered by a fog of afterimages, he groped around the dashboard and cut off the engine.
As his vision cleared, Tulliver was terrified to see the ground all around him, spinning like a dervish. He had to pull out of the spin; it was death if he didn’t. He played the rudder bar with his feet and gradually brought the spin under control, praying the bus would hold together a little longer. He pulled back on the stick. The vibrations eased and the ground began slipping away beneath him; a flash of horizon and then everything was sky. He was out of the dive and gliding, several hundred feet up.
It was quiet without the engine. His hearing returning, even above the persistent ringing, he could hear the distant crumps as, far off, bolts of energy continued to strike skyward. Trembling and nauseous, he started the engine again and gripped the stick tightly in an effort to stop his hands shaking, biting the inside of his cheeks hard enough to draw blood in order to stop himself sobbing with relief. Not trusting himself or his bus to do anything else, he flew level for a while, to get his bearings.
Searching the landscape for the crater, he saw a telltale trail of smoke hanging in the sky and caught sight of Werner’s Albatros spiralling down at the bottom of it.
He pushed the stick forward and dived after it, following it down; there was nothing else he could do but bear witness. It looked as if Werner had been trying to head back to the Zohtakarrii edifice, but lost control. Tulliver watched as his machine plummeted into the crater. Whipperwills snapped around it as it hit the tree tops. The Albatros stood proud on its nose for a moment before toppling over on its back. The canopy gave way beneath it, breaking its wings as it swallowed the machine in fits and starts, sucking it down out of sight beneath the waving boughs.
Tulliver felt a twinge of regret as the machine disappeared. Werner hadn’t been a bad man, just trying to do his best with what he had. Tulliver suspected that under different circumstances, they might even have been friends.
As the terror drained from him, an almost divine elation at his survival replaced it. Had he not been flying at such an altitude, he would surely have crashed. Werner had been damned unlucky.
What was causing those vast electrical discharges, he couldn’t say, but flying in these conditions was asking for trouble. Still shaking, he flew over the crater, the whipperwills snapping like ineffectual Archie as he looked for somewhere he might put down. He would have preferred landing outside the crater, but he didn’t want his bus to fall into the clutches of the Zohtakarrii again.
He noticed the spindly tower poking through the tree canopy, swung round it and turned towards the Strip. After what Tulliver had just witnessed, it wasn’t the best place to land, but it was the only place. Vegetation was thinner there. There were fewer whipperwills as well, and he couldn’t yet see any build-up of energy along it.
Loath as he was to admit it, he would be glad to have his feet on solid ground again.
THE DIFFUSE FLASHES that lit the sky, and the loud but distant reports, startled the Fusiliers at first.
“Christ, they put the wind up me! For a moment it sounded like a barrage going off,” muttered Mercy.
“Must be a lightning storm,” said Gazette glancing up, unconcerned. “Good job we’re in this crump ’ole of a place, if you ask me.”
“It is the time of the lightning trees,” growled Napoo. “It will pass.”
They heard the putter of an engine and caught sight of the Sopwith as it flew low overhead.
The sight of the red, white and blue roundels cheered them, and several waved, glad to see it.
Everson was relieved to see Tulliver had survived. As the aeroplane came round again, he pointed in the direction of the minaret and, having seen him, Tulliver waggled its wings in acknowledgment.
THE TANK CREW and the Black Hand Gang still regarded each other with suspicion, neither fully trusting the other after the events at Nazarr.
“Well, they seem a little more normal to me,” Gutsy said to Atkins. “Now they haven’t been in the tank for a week, and those fumes of theirs have worn off. Maybe we’ll get a bit more sense out of them. If you don’t keep trying to punch them, that is, you dozy mare.”
“Hmm,” said Atkins, his mind elsewhere. The fumes had caused many problems, but part of him wished the tankers still suffered from its effects, and then maybe they might tell him if they could still smell the remnants of Flora’s perfume on his letter. It was selfish, he knew, but since Porgy’s death, it felt like a matter of self-preservation. Since he could no longer smell it, a sense of fatalism settled over him and he fought to shrug it off.
In the background, the star shell flashes of the electrical bolts continued beyond the rim, their thunderous crashes following more quickly in their wake.
EVERSON WAS STIFF and sore from his fall and still reeling from the shock of meeting Rutherford, as he watched the tank crew and Fusiliers anxiously. If he couldn’t persuade these two sections to get on, what chance had he with the whole battalion? Maybe he was wrong, trying to hold the whole thing together. Maybe Rutherford was right; he should just let them all go their own ways and seek their own fortunes. He shook his head. Hadn’t that been what he’d wanted to do in defying his father and volunteering? And look where that had got him. It might work for some, but for those that did prosper, dozens more would die. No, he had a responsibility to the battalion, the whole battalion. He couldn’t afford to doubt that he’d done the right thing, otherwise what was the bloody point? No. He’d chosen his course. Onwards and upwards. There was no looking back now.
THEY HAD TO cross the Strip. Here, the soil was thin and dry, exposing weathered sandstone beneath. Networks of shallow roots laced the ground as plants tried to leech what nutrients they could from the poor shallow soil. Overshadowed by more fecund flora, the pale, hardy scrub clung stubbornly to the niche they had carved for themselves.
Napoo stooped, brushing sand away from the ground where the sandstone had weathered. He grunted, sat back on his haunches and rubbed his stubbly beard, perplexed.
Nellie noticed the urman’s unease and walked over. It was worth taking notice of anything that caused him concern.
“What is it, Napoo?”
In reply, the grizzled urman swept his hand over the ground, brushing aside the shallow sandy soil to reveal a hard surface underneath.
Nellie’s mouth formed a small ‘o’ of surprise. “Lieutenant! Only! Over here,” she called.
Everson came over as she knelt by Napoo. Her forehead knitted to a frown as she swept her hand to and fro, brushing away further sand as she sought to clear more of the surface. She sat back on her heels, looking at the results of their work. A large, perfectly flat, brushed silver metal surface lay before her. 1 Section and the others drifted over to see what they had discovered.