The track wheels clanked and squealed, trying to gain traction, but as they churned, they ate away at the very ground supporting the ironclad. Its nose rising up off the ground, the tank began to tilt over the edge.
Mathers smiled though the pain. “You’ve made your choice after all, Perkins. You could have left with the others, been reunited with your sweetheart.”
Alfie ignored him. “We’ve got one chance, sir. We’re tipping. We just need a few more degrees to get the gun elevation we need to hit that thing. I need you to be ready.”
The tank lurched, tilting sharply. The sponson door swung open, banging against the bulkhead. Alfie reached out to grab it, catching a vertiginous glimpse of a steep rocky cliff below them, bevelling out to a shrub-covered slope descending into a canopy of thick jungle below.
A spanner skittered down the gangplank, hit the rim of the hatch with a clang and pinwheeled out into the void.
Blanching, he reached out, pulled the hatch shut, and secured it. He didn’t want to lose his balance and topple out.
“This is it, sir!” He lurched unsteadily towards the loaded gun. Grunting with effort, he gripped the shoulder stock under his armpit and heaved the gun barrel up as far as it would go and fired.
The Ivanhoe’s gun pounded. Above it, the shell exploded against the Kreothe. The concussion wave sent ripples round the gas sac, before tearing out of the upper side. The blast shrivelled the smaller tendrils beneath it and, with raucous shrieks of alarm, the flock of scavengers that swarmed beneath it scattered. The harvesting tendrils holding the tank whipped back up, like cords cut under tension, and the Ivanhoe’s front track horns crashed back down onto solid ground.
FROM THE SHELTER of the trees, Jack and Cecil burst out in a jubilant chorus and Reggie, Norman and Wally joined in.
“The Sub did it! He bloody did it!”
“The Sub and Alfie,” Jack reminded them.
Atkins puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. Jesus, that was close. A slow, burning anger overwhelmed his relief. From now on, he was bloody well in charge. He had orders to get the tank back to camp and, now, that was exactly what he was going to do. It helped matters that the tank would have to return with them to refuel. All of a sudden, he was eager to start back.
INSIDE THE IVANHOE, Alfie, dazed, picked himself up from the gangway and saw Mathers slumped in the commander’s seat. The visor plates had slammed shut with the impact and nothing but a flickering festoon light lit his plaque-ridden face. Alfie clambered forwards into the driver’s seat to check on him.
Mathers’ chin rested on his chest. Alfie gently lifted the officer’s head to check for injuries. His eyes snapped open. “I can feel it, Perkins, a pressure inside my head, in my belly.”
“We need to get out, sir.”
“No.”
“Sir, we’re on the edge of the cliff.”
“You go, Perkins.”
“Come with me, sir.”
“If I go out now, I’ll die. Whatever’s inside me, they’re making me want to go out there. They need me to go out there. They want me to offer myself to those things. But I won’t. I refuse. I absolutely bloody well refuse. I am clothed in iron and armed with cordite. I will not go like this!”
Alfie’s eyes met Mathers’, but the iridescent swirls that looped and whorled within them disconcerted him. “Then just drive forward, sir. Away from the cliff edge.”
Mathers shook his head. “The track gears are jammed.”
Jammed? Perkins frowned and glanced back down the compartment, over the top of the engine. “Then I’ll go back and see if I can free them. You hang on, sir.” The gearsman stepped down onto the gangway and edged his way to the back of the compartment.
Mathers continued talking, raising his voice over the engine. “It’s a bloody good machine, Perkins. How you’ve kept it running these past few months is beyond me. A bloody miracle. I was… wrong about you.”
Alfie shrugged it off. Now wasn’t the time for recriminations, least of all against an officer. “You weren’t yourself, sir.”
“Did you know I had shell-shock, Perkins, before I joined the Heavy Section?”
Alfie didn’t know what to say, but felt that the moment called for honesty. “There… there were rumours, sir,” he called back.
The tank groaned and creaked under him as he edged his way past the gun and Hotchkiss towards the starboard gear panel.
“I was buried in a dugout for four hours, couldn’t move a muscle. Dead man lying of top of me. Bugger probably saved my life. Funny how fate catches up with you.” He waved his hand, indicating the interior of the tank. “Here I am, entombed again. No matter how far you run, there you are. It’s a rum old world.”
Something in the tone of Mathers’ voice made Alfie glance back. Mathers was raising his revolver to his temple. “I wonder if Skarra will be waiting…”
Alfie lunged up the gangway. “Sir, no!”
There was a grinding crunch and sudden lurch. The tank tilted, slipping backwards, sending Alfie reeling back down against his gear station. The weight of the hydraulic steering tail, ironically designed to be used as a counterbalance when crossing wide trenches, was now having the opposite effect and was dragging them over the edge to destruction. He felt the tank pitch steeply as it slipped backwards.
Alfie could almost imagine the scene outside, as if he were back at Elveden, watching one of the tank trials. In his mind’s eye, he saw the rim of the crater, weakened by the grinding of the tracks and the weight of the ironclad, begin to splinter and crumble. Boulders tumbled away, drawing with them steady streams of soil.
He tried to reach for the manhole above him, but lost his footing as the Ivanhoe tilted further and he fell back against the gear station.
The ground beneath the tank slipped away like sand through an hourglass, crumbling under its weight in a gentle but inevitable landslide of rock, soil and roots. The Ivanhoe’s front track horns reared into the air, like a startled stallion, its angle becoming more unstable until, like a sinking ship, it slipped from sight.
A gunshot reverberated loudly inside the iron hull.
Stores broke free and tools tumbled loose, ammo boxes crashed out of their slots. A Pyrene fire extinguisher slipped from its fixings and span toward Alfie. He screamed.
The ironclad went over the edge.
SHOCKED, THE FUSILIERS and surviving tank crew watched as the tank toppled over the rim. From the crater came the sound of tortured metal and rock. Seconds later, there was a loud crashing, an eruption of animal calls and flocks of green-skinned bird-like raptors took to the air in panic from the crater jungle below.
Atkins ran to the edge, Gutsy, Mercy and Porgy hard on his heels. Nellie came running up, in time to see the tank go over the edge. She screamed. Gazette wrapped his arms around her, not so much for comfort as restraint.
Atkins stopped, feet from the lip, and cautiously stuck his head out over the edge. A few loose rocks broke away and tumbled down. “Oh, bloody Nora!”
“Jesus!”
“Buggerin’ hell!”
The drop wasn’t sheer but it was a very steep camber. They could see the twin furrows gouged down the escarpment as if the Ivanhoe had been dragged down into hell, fighting all the way. It was possible to track its path down the crater-side, where it had torn trees and plants from their roots before it crashed down through the canopy hundreds of feet below, to be swallowed by the jungle beneath.