Pat Kelleher: The Ironclad Prophecy

“Shit,” said Atkins. “Gas masks! They’ve got spitters.”

The men fumbled at the canvas bags on their chests and pulled their PH hoods on over their heads. They were a bugger to fight in for any length of time, but they were invaluable against the acid-spitting chatts, as the scorch marks on several of them attested.

Atkins indicated to Gutsy that he and the others should circle around the huts to flank the Khungarrii within.

He lifted his gas hood, took a whistle out of his top pocket and blew. A rapid fusillade of bullets rang out as 1 Section poured their fire into the settlement. Cracks of sniper fire rang across the open ground as Gazette and the others picked off chatts from the hillside.

A dozen fell before the others knew what had happened.

The Tommies let out blood-curdling, if muffled, roars and charged into the fray with bayonets glinting.

Atkins sank his bayonet blade into the thorax of the nearest scentirrii and twisted it, before stomping forward with his boot to drive it off the point.

He swung the butt of the rifle against the head of another. A dark eye burst as it went down, its mandibles opened in surprise, its small abdominal limbs twitching uselessly as it fell. Atkins stepped over the body.

The air was filled with crunching carapaces and agitated chitters as he moved on his next target, a chatt with a clay battery pack and bioelectrical lance. Somehow, these inhuman creatures were able to store and amplify a natural electrical discharge in these devices. The lance spat out a jolt of blue fire, convulsing an urman before he fell to the ground.

He stepped up behind the chatt, staving in the battery pack with the shoulder stock of his Enfield rifle. As the chatt turned, he thrust the bayonet into the soft unprotected innards of its abdomen and tore it to one side, disembowelling it, ripping delicate organs from its body. It dropped to the ground, where it clawed feebly before Atkins stamped on its head.

Napoo’s attacks were as economical as they were devastating, thrusting at weak joints in the chatts’ chitinous armour.

Gutsy swung his butcher’s cleaver down through the skull of another, splitting the head in half.

Mercy, stabbing and parrying with the bayonet and bludgeoning with the shoulder’s stock, whirled the Enfield around through chatt after chatt with a dexterity that bewildered Atkins. All Mercy had ever said was that someone in the Chink Labour Battalions had owed him a favour. This, apparently, was it.

Atkins wheeled about looking for his next target and found none. Chatts lay strewn on the ground, dead or dying. He pulled off his gas hood.

“That’s the last of ’em,” said Porgy, jabbing his bayonet into a twitching chatt to still it.

Atkins looked around, catching his breath. Napoo was calmly wiping his sword with a saltha leaf.

The huts were ablaze, the dry crackles of the flames mingling with the wailing of women and children as the surviving warriors sought out their families, and those who found no comforting reunion realised their loss and wailed all the louder.

As 1 Section regrouped, Napoo sought out the Clan elder. They gripped each other by the forearms in greeting and talked in low voices, all the time casting glances at the Tommies.

Wanting to secure his position, Atkins called Gutsy over. “Take Gazette and Nobby. Go for a look-see. Check downwind. Make sure nothing’s picked up any alarm scent these things might have got off. I don’t want any more surprises.”

The three men shouldered their rifles and moved off.

Napoo and the Clan elder came over to Atkins.

“This urman is Haradwe,” said Napoo.

The urman Clan elder grinned in hospitality, white teeth beaming out of his weathered face, but his eyes betrayed his sorrow and pain. Atkins held out his hand only for the man to reach out and clasp his forearms.

The elder shook his head. “I have heard tales of your Clan, the Tohmii; the Urmen who challenge the Ones and who have Skarra fighting by their side. Naparandwe says you will protect us.”

“If you’ll accompany us back to the encampment, to our enclave, and add your number to ours. Gather your people together and we’ll take you now. Mercy, help them round things up, just what they can carry — and don’t nick anything.”

He saw Nobby running back down towards him through the trees. “Only! Corp! Gutsy told me to tell you he’s found something for you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise, Gutsy said.”

Atkins mouthed an obscenity and followed Nobby as he trotted out of the trees and up a small hillock. Gutsy and Gazette were lying just below the crest. Atkins crawled the last few yards to keep out of sight.

He was aware of an insistent thrumming. “What’s that bloody noise? Sounds like something crunching with its teeth.”

“I think we’ve got a problem, Only.”

“We wouldn’t be the bloody Pennines if we didn’t,” said Atkins bitterly.

Gutsy thrust his chin towards the summit. “See for yourself.”

Enfield cradled in the crooks of his arms, Atkins crawled up the crest on his elbows, lifted his head cautiously above the lip and peered out across the open veldt.

“Fuck!”

He slid back down a few feet in shock and looked back at Gutsy, who gave him an apologetic shrug.

Atkins crawled back to the top again. Not taking his eyes from the plain in front of him, he thrust his right hand back, feeling blindly in the air until Gutsy put a pair of binoculars into it. He peered through them.

There, far across the veldt, he saw chatts. Khungarrii. Thousands of them, column after column of a vast army on the march. Great caterpillar-like beasts writhed along in front, clearing a path through the tube grass, followed by massed ranks of Khungarrii scentirrii, their rear-most ranks lost in the dust cloud of the vanguard.

The rhythmic thrumming he heard was the marching step of the chatts muted by the distance, as they banged swords, spears and electric lances against their thorax plates.

They were marching on the British encampment.

THEY RAN.

Atkins and his men half-jogged, half-walked, sure they were hidden from sight of the approaching army, but cajoling the weary and frightened urmen on anyway. The speed of their initial flight had gained them some ground, but now the logistics of moving families slowed them down.

They briefly stopped to let the last of the stragglers catch up, an urman urging on an old woman, and casting anxious glances behind them.

The Khungarrii were in no hurry to reach the Tommies’ stronghold. Their pace was steady and persistent and their chanting and clicking relentless and pervasive.

Chalky mumbled something. Gutsy bent his ear to listen.

“Nah, don’t you pay it no heed, boy. That racket there, it’s meant to frit you. Don’t you let it get to you. Bloody hell, Jerry’s done worse than that. They’re just chatts out there. No artillery, no trench mortars. Once we’re back in the trenches they can’t touch you, so buck up, lad.”

Atkins was reminded of the Old Contemptibles’ tales of the Battle of Mons, as the BEF retreated across Belgium before an advancing German army. He’d seen photographs in the newspapers and war news magazines of fleeing Belgian peasants, on the move with nothing more than they could carry. Then, the British had turned up and made a stand. And they would here, too. But right now they still had a way to go.

Atkins scanned the sky, hoping Tulliver might be up there in his aeroplane, but he realised he hadn’t heard the insistent drone of its engine all day. Tulliver would have spotted the chatts’ movements in plenty of time. These days, however, Everson didn’t allow Tulliver to go up except for urgent missions. His machine may have been a marvel of modern mechanics but it was made from spit, string and paper and there were things here that would tear it out of the sky in an instant.