Behind them, he could see the first ranks of Khungarrii scentirrii begin to charge, their mandibles open.
He felt his bowels churn.
“This is it, lads,” he said gravely. “Pick your targets.”
He could hear Nobby whimper and Prof’s soothing tone trying to calm the boy. He briefly remembered Ginger. That seemed a lifetime ago. He focused on the wave of advancing chatts marching across the poppy field towards them.
As they marched through the flowers, the closed ranks of disciplined scentirrii began stumbling about. They lost their measured step. The line broke. They began to mill about in confusion as though blinded, like chlorine gas victims.
“What’s happening to them?” asked Prof.
“No idea,” replied Mercy. “But it looks like they’re funking it.”
Gazette sneered. “That makes ’em easier to pick off.”
Others had the same idea. In answer, a volley of NCOs’ orders rang out along the outer front line trench. The air filled with the crackle of gunfire and the reassuring smell of cordite and the chatts began to fall.
A jubilant cheer went up from the trenches behind them, “The chatts are funking it. We’ve got ’em, lads. We’ve got ’em!”
Whatever was affecting the scentirrii, it didn’t seem to be affecting the battlepillars. Atkins’ stomach shrank to a hard knot in his belly as one of the beasts, its great mandibles scything through the tube grass, advanced implacably towards them.
EVERSON WATCHED THE centre of the Khungarrii attack collapse. On the flanks, the chatts broke into a charge. The Lewis machine gun emplacements raked a line across the first wave and the advance faltered.
Tulliver’s Sopwith 1½ Strutter roared low overhead, sweeping along the Khungarrii advance, his machine guns stuttering, enfilading the enemy.
Then, in answer to some unheard, unseen chemical scent command, what was left of the ranks of chatt scentirrii began to withdraw, all except those in the poppy field, who still staggered round as if in a stupor, unable to obey.
Panning his binoculars across the mass of the Khungarrii army waiting in reserve, Everson caught sight of what he presumed was their general. It watched from the howdah of a large battlepillar that had reared up, its head and front legs resting atop a copse of trees, affording a better view as his mount scissored idly at the foliage with large mandibles.
And he knew he’d met this chatt before, deep in the nurseries of Khungarr. He almost felt like saluting him, as he had once done with a German officer who appeared above the Hun parapets one morning.
That felt like an age away.
GAZETTE TOOK MEASURED shots at the electric lancers in the battlepillar’s passenger cradles. Three chatts collapsed, and one fell backwards out of the cradle to land on the ground with a crack. Its companions in the adjacent cradles now turned their attention towards Gazette. Blue streams of electric fire arced from the cradles towards the ground but fell short, incinerating the trampled tube grass.
Gutsy picked the rider off. It fell back, caught awkwardly on the howdah’s side by the reins.
Atkins reached into his webbing for a Mills bomb. “Cover me!”
Porgy looked at him. “What the bloody hell are you going to do?”
Atkins grinned and patted Porgy’s cap as he got up. “Something stupid.”
He dashed off, running in a crouch though the poppies, zigzagging towards another oncoming battlepillar.
Crackling ribbons of blue-white fire arced down around him from the electric lancers.
He pulled the pin from the Mills bomb and threw it. It skittered to a halt in front of the battlepillar.
He didn’t wait to see the great armoured larval beast, unperturbed, continue its relentless progress over it. He darted back to his section, where they laid down covering fire.
The grenade exploded beneath the beast, red-hot shrapnel shards slicing up through its vitals. It reared up, exposing a huge wet gaping wound in its soft underbelly, hot organs slopping out as it toppled over to the side. The huge beast crashed down, twitching.
Some of its riders lay crushed beneath its huge bulk. Others though, scrambled to get away from it. Gazette and the others rushed forward through the trampled poppies to mop up those chatts still left alive.
Around the other side of the battlepillar, thrown yards from its monstrous cracked head, Atkins found the shattered howdah. The contorted body of one chatt lay on the ground, tangled in a snapped cradle rope and reins.
The howdah’s torn silken covering had come adrift from the splintered canopy. There was a rasp of movement from beneath the sheet.
Atkins nodded and he and Gutsy edged towards the cloth. An ivory chitinous arm clawed out from under the breeze-ruffled sheet. Gutsy stepped forward, ready to thrust his bayonet down though the fabric, but Atkins shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s scentirrii.”
He inched towards it. He nodded at Gutsy who drew up his rifle to his shoulder and fixed the shape in his sights.
Atkins caught the cloth and pulled it back with the tip of his bayonet.
The chatt tried to scuttle away on its back. It wore a white silk sash with knotted tassels and its antennae were broken, but they seemed like old injuries. Its vestigial mid-limbs at its abdomen were scissoring frantically. Atkins had been right. It was not a scentirrii, a chatt soldier. It was smaller, its carapace a smoother, off-white colour, its head-shell smooth and ovoid. It drew in a deep breath and forced it out through its four finger-like mouth palps as if weaving the air into a crude approximation of human speech.
“This One is Dhuyumirrii. This One does not fight. This One watches, observes.”
Atkins frowned, but didn’t let down his guard. Something about it was familiar. Chatts all looked the same, true, but the broken antennae?
“I… know you,” he said. “The edifice. Jeffries. You were there. I saved you from the gas. You called yourself…” But the name evaded his memory.
“This One is called Chandar,” said the chatt.
Gutsy turned, bayoneted and shot a charging scentirrii. “Only, this is no place for a reunion,” he warned.
Chatts began to swarm around them. The section fell on the confused Khungarrii with bayonets and clubs and succeeded in driving them back.
“Better give us a hand then,” said Atkins, helping Chandar up. “’Cause we’ve just got ourselves a prisoner.”
An arc of blue fire earthed by Gutsy’s feet, and he turned and fired. A chatt fell dead.
“He’d better be bloody important,” he said.
There was a sporadic ripple of jubilant cheers from the trenches behind them. The main Khungarrii force was withdrawing, but the confused chatts stumbling around 1 Section in the poppy field still posed a threat.
He heard Sergeant Hobson’s voice cut through the cheers.
“Atkins, get out of there. Make for the farmhouse!” he ordered.
Atkins looked along the length of wire entanglement behind them. Over to the right he saw the front of the old Poulet farmhouse flanked by the wire entanglements. Heavily shelled on the Somme, it was now a forward observation post. The ground floor had been converted into a machine gun emplacement, while the first floor acted as an observation platform. It might be their only chance.
One of the milling scentirrii rushed Atkins with a long, barbed spear. Confused they might be, but they still recognised an enemy. Atkins thrust Chandar back towards Gutsy, ducked under the spear thrust and brought his bayonet up, burying it deep between the chatt’s mandibles.
Running at a crouch, the section made for the farmhouse.
Behind them, he heard the soldiers in the trench open fire at the crowd of dazed, stumbling chatts.