“Cecil’s down!” Alfie fired his revolver. The round ricocheted off the boulder,
“Oh Jesus, help me, for Christ’s sake!” screamed Cecil as he was dragged towards the boulder.
Alfie ran towards it. Time seemed to slow. Around him the air shifted in whorls of effervescent vermillion, parting as he ran and, in the periphery of his vision, orange auras blazed among the rocks indicating the position of the creatures hidden in the rocks around and above him, his fear swamped by an exhilaration.
He scrambled up the side of the large boulder even as Cecil disappeared round the back. Stood on the top, he saw three arthropods huddled behind the rock, arguing over Cecil.
A blue-green blister throbbed on a small rock, the size of a football, near Alfie’s feet. He shouted. They looked up and he kicked the rock down, hitting one of them in the head, blisters bursting and drenching the creature’s face, burning it. Its scream was bright orange, fading quickly to red as it reflected off the canyon walls, before dissipating as it died.
Alfie leapt down, landing on the arm that held the screaming Cecil. He felt the chitinous armour crunch beneath his boots as he fired his revolver point blank into the face of the second. The third tried to scuttle back to the safety of the scree slope, but Jack appeared, caught it by the leg and swung it against the boulder. Alfie heard its carapace crack and Jack let it fall limply to the ground, leaving a dark sticky stain on the rock.
Alfie pulled Cecil to his feet, ducked under his armpit, took his weight and helped him back to the tank. Jack stood his ground before backing towards the tank, picking up Cecil’s fallen revolver and guarding their retreat. The gathering creatures hissed and clicked their mandibles, but kept their distance.
By now the fuel drum had been re-secured, and Alfie could hear Wally running up the engine in readiness to move off. He passed Cecil to Frank, who hauled him in through the sponson hatch.
“Come on, Jack,” Alfie called, one foot on the starboard hatch lip as he prepared to step through. Jack danced backwards towards the tank, his eyes never leaving the rocks.
“Natives are still restless,” he said, ducking as a fist-sized stone hit the tank’s metal track.
“All aboard,” called Reggie, banging cheerfully on a pipe with a wrench.
The ironclad moved off.
Frustrated, the Yrredetti howled and a rain of rocks clattered down against the tank, setting off a rainbow of percussion inside.
“Looks like they’re trying a final attempt to ditch us,” said Frank, peering through his pistol port. Mathers peered through the pistol port in the side of the driver cabin. Damn things were trying to prise a boulder loose and start an avalanche.
“Put your foot down, Clegg. We don’t want to get caught in this canyon.” The tank lurched as it picked up what speed it could.
Several more Yrredetti were helping to lever the boulder free as the tank started to pass beneath it.
Reggie loaded a shell into the breech of the port gun. Norman took a deep breath, gritted his teeth and pushed down with all his weight, levering the gun up so that it was pointed up towards the canyon wall. He targeted the boulder as best he could in the moving tank, and fired. The boulder and the Yrredetti disappeared in a plume of fire and dirt. A cloud of dust rolled down the canyon side, enveloping the tank. A rain of clinker and debris pattered down on the hull, sending verdant ripples through the compartment.
“Yes! Got the blighters. Thank you and goodnight! That’ll teach ’em to mess with old Ivanhoe!” whooped Norman.
Rubble rattled down the canyon sides to be crushed beneath the tracks of the Ivanhoe as, oblivious, it continued on its halting way towards the mouth of the canyon.
Behind it, a lone wail of frustration echoed round the walls of the canyon, before being picked up and amplified by other Yrredetti.
As the dust cloud settled, the blue-green blisters, stilled in the fleeting darkness of the cloud, began to pulse in the rays of the sun once more. On the canyon side, where the shell had exploded, something cold and metallic glinted through the shattered rock in the dust-filtered daylight.
CHAPTER FIVE
LIEUTENANT MATHERS, OPERATING the steering brake levers, peered out of the front visor at the small rectangle of world he could see before him, a world that see-sawed violently as the landship crashed up and down on the swell of ground beneath them. As they nosed up over obstacles, the bright rectangle of sky was snatched away with vertiginous speed to be replaced with lurching glimpses of soil and rock, before he was teased with a horizon line of vermillion-hued vegetation that vanished again abruptly.
Again, Mathers heard the whispering. He glanced at Clegg beside him, the bantam cockney’s wiry arms tense on the driving levers.
“Blimey,” the driver shouted over the noise of the engine behind them. “This place has got more pot holes than Oxford Street.”
Mathers shook his head. He could barely hear Clegg speak, let alone whisper. It must be some resonant engine note he’d not noticed before.
As they left the canyon behind them, the blue-green rock blisters gave way to a cinnamon-coloured soil. Ahead of them lay a rocky plateau scored with haphazard cracks and stress marks from the same geological event that caused the canyon. Cracks and gullies splintered the landscape like crazy paving; some rocky plates tilting, some sunken, some thrust up. Some gullies were too wide for the tank to cross, even though the weight of its hydraulic steering tail was designed as a counter-balance to cross trenches of up to nine feet.
They had to find a way to safely cross the labyrinthine field. As tank commander, that job fell to Mathers, and quite frankly he was glad of it. He was the tallest man in the crew, a real legs eleven. Sat in the small cockpit on the hard chair being jolted and jarred had given him a stomach cramp. Even now he hated being cooped up in the tank for long periods and he found himself tensing, clenching his stomach muscles against the unexpected drops, jolts and bangs.
He had cramp. And a headache. Maybe the fresh air would help. He tapped Clegg on the shoulder.
“I’ll walk on ahead, guide you through.”
It was a common procedure in tanks. When going became difficult it was the commander’s unenviable task to negotiate paths round shell-hole-pocked roads, and he’d done his fair share during night manoeuvres and under fire. There were times when he almost preferred that to being cooped up in an iron coffin. At least here, there was no chance of Fritz sniping at you, and that brought a great deal of relief. On the other hand, you never knew here what you were going to encounter next.
He walked ahead of the tank, checking the ground, searching for narrow enough gullies for them to cross. He could hear things moving about in the bottom of them, slithering and snuffling. He peered over the edge of one, but some form of bruised purple vegetation obscured the gully bed. In a way, he was relieved. He indicated to Clegg to swing right over a gap narrow enough for the Ivanhoe to bridge.
In this manner, the tank crew progressed slowly across the broken plain, having to go out of their way to find a route passable enough to be of little concern to the great metal behemoth. From then on, progress was faster and the jungle loomed ahead. A short sort of crimson brambly plant became more prevalent, its thorns scratching the leather of his calf-length boots.
One caught his ankle and sent him tumbling into a gully; he slipped to the bottom. An accompanying land slither sent dirt and soil raining down onto him. For a moment, disorientated, unable to move, the old panic rose in him again.