Pat Kelleher - The Ironclad Prophecy

“What do you think, Padre?” he said with a grin, thrusting out his new peg leg. “Mercy — Private Evans, that is — carved it out of a lump of wood he found. Mind you, hurts like the blazes. Rubs something awful on me stump, it does. Me wife were the same about her new teeth when I bought her the highland clearances for a wedding present. Serves me right, I suppose. What goes around, comes around she’d say.”

Everson cleared his throat.

“Sorry, sir. Tea, was it? Right away, sir,” said Half Pint, hobbling off.

The Padre looked down at the scattered papers littering the desk. “There’s a whole world out there, Lieutenant. He could be dead by now. But somehow I doubt it. Man has the luck of the devil.”

“You can say that again.”

“If he’s alive, a man like him won’t stay hidden for long. He needs to show off. He wants people to know what he’s up to, how clever he is. He only has us who would understand. We’ll hear from him again, you take my word.”

“I hope you’re right, Padre. Sending men out to find his trail is becoming too costly. Sending the tank has become the only choice. It’s practically impervious to anything this place throws at it.”

“Running a risk, though, isn’t it?”

“So Sergeant Hobson keeps telling me. The Khungarrii are still afraid of us. Well, of the tank, really. So they seem to be taking it out on the urmen, stepping up reprisal raids against them. You told me they’d a mind to cull us and, after Jeffries betrayed them, it’s probably no more than I’d expect. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

SPURRED ON BY the incessant rhythm behind them, Atkins ran, pushing his men on through the tube grass, harassing and chivvying the urmen onward. The day had started out so well, too, at least for this place…

“Take your black hand gang eve-ward out round the edge of the veldt,” Lieutenant Everson had said. “Napoo informs me that there’s an enclave of urmen out there this time of year. Try to convince them to side with us. The more influence we have, the better our chances of dealing with the Khungarrii.”

That and “keep an eye out for Jeffries,” an order repeated so often that it was now becoming a standing joke amongst the men.

It had seemed simple enough. They’d left the encampment that morning on routine patrol with the new replacements. Everson had ordered that every patrol have an urman guide, and now Napoo led the way down into a small valley through a wood of tall jelleph trees, with their smooth, bulbous trunks and broad, flat damson-coloured fronds.

Behind him, Gutsy and Porgy were talking in low voices. Every so often, a snort of laughter would burst from them only to be stifled as Atkins glanced back. Time was, as a private, when he’d be in on the joke.

Porgy ambled up to him trying to suppress a smirk. “Here, Only, I want you to meet Chalky. He’s a big admirer of yours. Hey, Chalky!” he yelled.

The eager young private came running up the file, “Here, sir!” he said with a salute.

Atkins sighed. “It’s just Corporal, Private. I’m not an officer.”

Chalky looked at Atkins in awe.

“What?” he asked irritably.

“It’s just, the stories? Are they true, Corp?”

Atkins shook his head in exasperation. The stories around his and Everson’s confrontation with Jeffries had started shortly after they returned from the Khungarr raid. They spread like latrine rumours, embroidered with each retelling until men were swearing it was true, as true as the Angel of Mons.

Right now, he was up there with St. George or the Phantom Bowmen. Christ, in some quarters you’d think he’d tricked the very devil himself. But it didn’t happen like that.

That was why Atkins liked it out on patrol, away from the curious stares of those who believed the stories, those who sneered at them and those who resented him, thinking he’d spread them himself for his own glory. In truth, he didn’t know who had started them, but he wished they hadn’t.

He scowled at Porgy and shook his head in disappointment.

Porgy beamed, having got just the reaction he wanted, and steered Chalky away. “Later, Chalky, later.”

Atkins saw a faint smudge in the air ahead, above the trees.

“Gazette?”

Gazette had the sharpest eyes in the section. They narrowed. “Smoke. That’ll be the urman enclave Napoo told us about.”

Through the damson-coloured foliage came a scream. At first, they hesitated. Men had gone charging off in aid of a human-like scream before only to end up gored to death. Then a second and a third pierced the leaden air.

“Stand to!” said Atkins.

The screams continued, mingled with inarticulate shouts of rage. Atkins began to trot along the forest path, keeping parallel to the valley floor. He wanted to try and see what they were up against before they went charging in. A creek roared and tumbled below them, as if to drown the screams, but the urgent notes rose above it. Great wet fronds of saltha weed slapped at them as they passed and small creatures, startled by their passing, crashed away through the undergrowth.

The strains of battle now reached them. Through gaps in the trees they caught the familiar blue flash of Khungarrii bioelectrical lances. Atkins held up his hand and the section came to a halt.

“Load,” said Atkins hoarsely, fishing a fresh magazine from his webbing. He slotted the magazine home, flicked open the magazine cut-off and pulled the bolt, cycling a bullet into the chamber. From the noises around him, the rest of the section did the same, finishing the routine drill within split seconds of each other. They only had twenty rounds and one Mills bomb apiece.

Beyond that, they each had a bayonet; seventeen inches of cold British steel. Some had constructed trench clubs, brutal wooden clubs with hobnails or other protrusions. And Gutsy, Gutsy had his best butcher’s cleaver, Little Bertha.

As the vegetation thinned and the camp below became visible, the source of the screams and blue flashes proved to be a circle of a dozen crude huts, several of the thatched roofs ablaze as the Khungarrii scentirrii attacked.

They were hard to miss. The arthropod soldiers were the size of a man, but thickly built and heavily armoured with a natural chitinous shell covered with sharp spines. Their face shells were broad, flat and ugly with small antler nubs, and long antennae sprouted from the tops of their facial shells. In their abdominal section, they had the two vestigial claw-like limbs common to all chatts. They moved quickly on legs which were jointed so their knees faced backwards, giving them a powerful leap.

Twelve urmen were under attack from three times their number. They fought back with swords and spears, putting up a valiant fight, but they were losing and the encircling scentirrii were closing in.

Atkins motioned to Gazette, who came and crouched down beside him.

“Chatt scentirrii, all right. About thirty of them. Not good odds,” Gazette offered.

“Trench fighting, no. But we’ve got these,” Atkins said, slapping the palm of his hand against his Enfield. “We’ll even the odds a little first before we go down. Gazette, you stay up here with Nobby, Chalky and Prof. Cover us. Go for the head, stop ’em giving off an alarm scent. We’ll make for the huts.”

Gazette grunted an acknowledgement. Atkins and the others scrambled down through the trees to the rear of the huts, huddling themselves against the wattle-and-daub walls. Atkins peered round into the centre of the enclave.

It was a massacre. The crackling blue arcs of the electrical lances threw men into spasms. Chatts with curved swords and some sort of thorny halberd spat acid from their mouthparts between their mandibles. Urmen screamed as the burning liquid caught their faces or arms.