An accusing cry went up from Wilson.“Rutherford, what have you done?”
Rutherford stood, looking shocked.
As the Padre went down, the mob fled in panic, and Rutherford with them.
Beyond the trenches, the first shots rang out.
The world faded and the Padre found himself sinking into darkness. There, the nightmare vision he fought to keep at bay, the one he experienced in a heathen Khungarrii ritual, waited for him…
TULLIVER TRUDGED ALONG the trenches to his dugout, lost in a moment of maudlin introspection. He still felt bitter. The RFC had fought for two years to be taken seriously by Brass who couldn’t see how to use them. And now Everson was making the same mistake.
A group of rowdy Tommies filed along the kinked communication trench, singing and shouting, and jostled him from his thoughts. Some wore gas hoods, others covered their faces with scarves or kerchiefs. From all about came raucous shouts and yells. This was far from boisterous high spirits.
One man, a balaclava and scarf round his face, seized Tulliver roughly by the arm.
A mate, catching sight of his double-breasted RFC tunic, quickly dissuaded him. “Leave him, Spokey. He’s Flying Corps, not even a proper soldier.”
The fellow let him go with a grunt and moved on.
“What’s going on?” Tulliver called after the mob.
“The proletariat are rising up!” said another jubilant Tommy, shoving past, rifle in hand. “Some of the boys are off to tell Everson what they think of him. We’ve got no argument against you, sir. You keep out of our way and we’ll keep out of yours.” He ran after his comrades.
Tulliver understood their resentment, even shared it to a degree. The camp had been on edge since the Khungarrii siege and the animal stampede. But he hadn’t expected this.
From up beyond the trench, there were angry shouts and barked orders, answered by jeers as disorderly soldiers rampaged recklessly across the camp, dismissive of the NCOs’ calls to order.
“Damn!” Tulliver shook his head and drew his revolver.
He raced along a comm trench, swerving round the traverses, in an attempt to get to the command post.
The points of several bayonets brought him up short.
He slipped to a stop on the wet duckboards, inches from the glinting steel as a small section of men, led by a Lance Corporal, glared at him.
“Just what the hell’s going on here?” Tulliver demanded.
“Mutiny, sir.”
CHAPTER TWO
TULLIVER POINTED HIS revolver at the Lance Corporal’s head.
Lance Corporal ‘Only’ Atkins didn’t flinch, confident in the clatter of several rifles he heard behind him as they were raised and pointed at Tulliver.
The RFC officer cleared his throat, but didn’t lower the pistol.“We’re not the mutineers, sir,” said Atkins. He glanced over his shoulder at the men behind him. “Lower your weapons, lads.”
“You sure, Only?” asked the tall, lanky one.
“Uh huh.”
The men behind him lowered their Enfields, albeit reluctantly.
Warily, Tulliver lowered his gun too, but kept them pinned with a sullen stare.
“What’s your name, Corporal?”
“Atkins, sir.”
“Atkins? Everson’s Black Hand Gang Atkins?”
“That’s one way of putting it, I guess,” he said with truculence. “Though we prefer 1 Section, 2 Platoon.”
“Oh. Right you are,” Tulliver said cheerfully.
Tulliver studied the soldiers in their worn, ill-fitting uniforms; the tall lanky one must be Pot Shot, no mistaking him. The one who never took his eyes off him, that must be Gazette, the sniper. The other with the roguish good looks must be Porgy. He’d heard the stories that had circulated around camp about them, and the ones about Atkins in particular. He knew Everson trusted him and his section implicitly, and decided to do the same.
Tulliver raised an eyebrow. He held out a hand. “Tulliver, Royal Flying Corps.” Atkins took it warily, and Tulliver gripped his hand firmly. “So you’re Atkins, eh? Glad to meet you.”
His eye caught the telegraph pole overhead, the cable now hanging limp in the mud.
“Damn them. They’ve cut the telephone wires. Signals won’t be happy. You and your men come with me. We’ll have to report the situation in person.”
EVERSON SAT WRITING up the Pennines’ recent fantastical experiences on this foreign world in the Battalion War Journal. They were totally at odds with the dry reports of troop movements, battles and trench raids of earlier pages. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t mad, and if all this wasn’t the product of a febrile shell-shocked imagination. He even thought that might be preferable.
The sound of faint jeers and gunfire leached through the gas blanket.
His forehead creased with annoyance and he looked up as Atkins and Tulliver clattered down the steps into the command post, closely followed by Sergeant Hobson. “What the devil is going on out there?”
“The men are running amok,” said Tulliver in a tone of incredulity, as he paced around, gesturing wildly towards the door.
By comparison, Hobson and Atkins stood smartly to attention.
“Seems to be a bit of a riot, sir,” said Hobson, delivering his assessment with wry understatement.
“Seems?” Everson turned and cocked his head, listening to the gunfire and sporadic shouts. “There doesn’t seem to be any ‘seems’ about it, Sergeant.”
Atkins chipped in. “No, sir. But the majority of the men are staying out of it. Mostly it’s a few malcontents stirring up trouble, but we should nip it in the bud, sir.”
Everson paused to listen to the chaotic sounds a moment longer. “Do we know what they’re mutinying about?”
“You name it, they’re grousing about it, sir,” replied Hobson.
Everson shot a questioning glance at Atkins, who gave a near-imperceptible shake of the head. That was something, at least.
He struggled to subdue a rising feeling of guilt. If the men had known what he and Atkins knew, then they would have cause to riot. For they both knew that the Pennine Fusiliers weren’t the first or only people displaced here from Earth. There had been others. Atkins and his section had found the remains of a party of American emigrants in the Nazarrii edifice. The Bleeker party had been travelling west on the California Trail in 1846 when they suddenly found themselves here, much as the Pennines had. If there was a way back, they didn’t find it and they died here. They survived barely three months. Everson had ordered Corporal Atkins’ Black Hand Gang to secrecy. He needed it kept secret; he believed the only thing holding the battalion together was the hope that they still might be able to get home.
Today, though, it looked like even that might not be enough.
He slammed a fist on his desk in frustration. Just as he was getting on top of things, he could feel them slipping away. But this was the Army and, like it or not, he needed to quell the potential mutiny and reassert his authority, if they were to survive at all.
“God damn it. I hoped it would never get to this.” He looked up at Hobson, his face set, determined, his voice as hard as stone. “Sergeant, read them the Army Act. They get one chance. One.”
“Leave it with me, sir,” said Hobson, saluting smartly and making for the doorway.
“Thank you, Hobson.”
Everson turned his attention to the flying officer, who was still pacing about in an agitated manner. “The gall of the fellows!” he said, still stung by their impudence.
“Tulliver! I’d be obliged if you’d fly over the camp; see if you can’t help break up some of the larger groups.”