The Ivanhoe advanced on a large crater, teetering on the lip until the front track horns tilted, and the tank crashed down. The tracks caught the ground in the trough and began to haul the ironclad up the far side.
With the engine running, the temperature inside was becoming almost unbearable, and the compartment soon filled with petrol vapour and cordite fumes.
Mathers was beginning to sweat. He could feel his chest tighten and his breathing become shallower. The sooner he could finish this, the sooner he could get out. Hardly caring now, he pushed the machine to its limits.
The last obstacle of the course was a steep bank about forty yards long. The other tanks nosed cautiously over the edge, and descended gingerly.
The Ivanhoe raced over the top of the rise, and dashed down the slope at a terrific pace, sparks flying from its tracks. Despite having no suspension, it bounced as it crashed to the bottom of the slope.
Inside, the manoeuvre threw the crew about roughly. Cecil cracked his head on the gun breech; Norman slammed against the engine block, burning his arm. Thrown into the steering column, Wally had the wind knocked out of him. All of them were cursing, except Reggie, who managed a heartfelt, “Dash it all!” They fell out of the sponson hatches, badly shaken, coughing and retching.
Mathers staggered from the tank, gasping for breath, relieved to be in the open air again. The Company commander greeted him with enthusiasm. “Great Scott, Arthur. I was wrong about you. I’ve seen some devilish driving in my time, but that’s the kind of gumption we need if we’re going to stick it to the Hun! It’s always the quiet ones, eh?”
“You know what,” said Frank, catching his breath and jerking his chin towards where Mathers was talking with the other officers. “I’ll tell you this for nothing. He’ll either win us medals for getting to Germany first, or he’ll be the bloody death of us all.”
INTERLUDE ONE
*Sent by carrier pigeon, this was the last message ever received before HMLS Ivanhoe and the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers vanished.
CHAPTER ONE
Four months later…
“RUN!”
Lance Corporal Thomas Atkins of the Pennine Fusiliers could hear the terrifying rhythmic chittering noise behind him, even over the measured thud of his hobnailed boots on the crimson alien soil.
Ahead of them lay the vast expanse of the tube grass veldt and, too far away across it, the Pennines’ encampment.
Atkins and the rest of 1 Section urged and cajoled the ragtag band of urmen, the primitive humans who inhabited this planet, through the shoulder-high tube grass. Bewildered young children shrieked as desperate parents dragged them along.
Naparandwe ran up alongside him. The middle-aged native guide had been the first urman they had encountered on this world and his help had been invaluable. The men, however, called him ‘Napoo,’ army slang for ‘all gone,’ after his initial habit of finishing everyone’s food when they first met. Like most urmen, he wore a combination of animal skins and insect shell armour. His usually cheerful face was drawn, his tanned forehead creased with concern. “Atkins, they cannot keep this pace up,” he said. “They are tired, hungry, terrified.”
“They don’t have a choice, Napoo. Not if they want to live. We’ve got to keep moving.” He stopped and waved past a few urman warriors armed with short swords and spears. “Come on, come on!” They, in turn, herded and encouraged their distressed families.
“Ruined my soddin’ day, this has,” said Gutsy as he jogged past with a young lad on his back. Too exhausted to cry any more, the lad just clung to the brawny butcher’s shoulders, his small chest heaving with dry sobs.
“Saved mine,” said Mercy, the section’s inveterate scrounger, with a grin. “Nobby was just about to start telling jokes. He’s only got three and they’re all bloody rubbish.”
“Look at this, nearly took me bloody leg off!” said Pot Shot.
Mercy glanced down at the lanky soldier’s charred calf-wrapping as he trotted alongside. He shook his head and grinned. “Just be thankful it’s your puttee that kaput-ee, and not you, you grousing sod.”
The incorrigible Porgy, and Gazette, the best sharp shooter they had, trotted along with several new replacements. Prof, Nobby and Chalky had brought the section up to strength. The other new addition, Shiner, had died three weeks earlier when, on patrol, he’d stopped to take a leak. He peed on something in the undergrowth that took exception to the act. Atkins winced whenever he thought of it.
An explosion of shrieks and feathers erupted to their right — Gazette wheeled around with his rifle to meet the threat. A flock of grubbing bird-things, startled by their passing, took to the air with raucous cries.
Atkins watched an urman woman clutching a baby to her breast as she ran, a wild desperation in her eyes. He thought of Flora, his missing brother’s fiancée, now pregnant with his own child. He had only found that out here, after discovering that Ketch, his old corporal, had spitefully withheld her letter from him. She was his Flora, now. Not William’s. Not his brother’s. His sweetheart, waiting for him on Earth. His child, growing up fatherless. Or it soon would be. He’d kept count. Flora would be seven months gone by now. And he was stuck here on this benighted world.
He felt more alone now than ever. More than once, he thought about confiding in Porgy, but stopped himself. That someone else would take your wife or sweetheart while you were fighting at the front was every soldier’s worst nightmare. He doubted he’d find much sympathy, and he feared the friendships he’d lose.
He would do whatever it took to return home to Flora, to his child. He wouldn’t rest until she was in his arms again. But to do that he had to survive the day.
To do that he had to run.
SINCE THEIR ARRIVAL on this God-forsaken planet, Padre Rand, the army chaplain, had watched the Pennine Fusiliers re-dig the parallel lines of Somme trenches into a defensible stronghold, encircling the area of Somme that had come with them, protecting all they had left of Earth.
Without the distraction of constant Hun artillery bombardment, they were able to dig deep dugouts, after the German fashion, with the time to construct them properly, dry and strong and deep.
Now linked by radial communications trenches, three concentric circles of defensive trenches ringed the ground at the centre, now home to a parade ground and assorted tents and crude wooden hutments. Lewis and Vickers machine gun emplacements strengthened the perimeter.
Above it all, in the centre of the small parade ground, the torn, tattered Union Jack hung lifelessly from its makeshift flagpole.
It should be snapping in the wind, the Padre thought, proud and glorious, filling the men with hope and pride. Instead, it seemed limp and forlorn, unable to instil anything in anyone. It looked the way he felt.
It had been three months since Jeffries had conducted the obscene occult ritual that had apparently condemned them all to this place. The Padre had a hard time dealing with that one. That someone as evil as him could have access to such supernatural power as to bring them here while he, with his prayers and his Almighty, barely seemed to accomplish a thing. He felt insignificant in comparison. It challenged his faith in a way the war itself never had, and he felt unequal to the task now before him, caring for the souls of these castaway men.