Pat Kelleher - The Ironclad Prophecy

The black shapeless mass writhed and shifted, extruding new tentacles to thrash against the gas sacs of the Kreothe. Locked in a life or death struggle, the two creatures each fought to dominate and subdue the other, tentacles wrapping, enfolding, and choking.

The flock of scavenger things began to swarm about the shapeless creature, pecking and tearing.

The creature had now gained a purchase on the sky beast’s gas sac and pulled itself up, allowing its form to change and flow, trying to engulf and swallow its opponent.

They drifted off over the crater, the slow silent battle shifting first one way and then the other. It seemed that the epic sky duel would continue until one lost out to sheer exhaustion.

“Only!”

Atkins’ attention returned to the ground. A smaller Kreothe had latched onto the tank and was trying to haul the Ivanhoe up, but the sheer weight of the ironclad resisted its efforts. It lowered several more harvesting tendrils in an effort to increase its grasp on the vehicle.

It proved too heavy for the Kreothe to lift, yet it was unwilling to let go of its prize and, as the wind drove the enormous creature on, it dragged the Ivanhoe backwards with it across the clearing, almost, but not quite, lifting it clear of the ground.

The tank couldn’t get enough traction on the ground to drive in the opposite direction and break free. Occasionally, the tracks would bite into the earth and it would make some small, defiant gain of ground, only to be lifted off again. Atkins could see its guns trying to target the Kreothe above, but they couldn’t get enough elevation.

“Damn! Come on!” said Atkins. “Napoo, stay there with Nellie and Pot Shot, don’t let anything happen to them.”

The section moved off quickly, staying in the shelter of the trees to take cover from the great dredging sky limbs. Chandar lagged behind, hesitant.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Gutsy, dropping back and waving the chatt on with his rifle. “We’re not losing you as well.”

Chandar snapped his mandibles together aggressively, but complied with great reluctance.

The Kreothe was slowed down by having to drag its dead twenty-eight ton weight through trees. The section raced ahead of it. The thinning jungle gave way to hardy shrub for several hundred of yards. Beyond that yawned the great crater, the land that, according to Chandar, did not exist.

Already, those Kreothe at the head of the shoal were drifting majestically out over it.

INSIDE THE TANK, the crew were thrown about as the Ivanhoe was dragged, crashing through a small grove of scab trees. Much to Reggie’s disapproval, they were shouting and cursing, peering through pistol ports to see what the hell was going on.

All except Mathers. The officer was calm almost to the point of indolence, and seemed heedless to the danger, just when his crew needed him the most.

For all Alfie’s efforts, the engine was beginning to show the strain. His petrol fruit-filtered vision was returning to full strength now as the engine fumes flooded his body. He could see from the deep blues and indigos emanating from the engine that it was at the limits of its capacity. The track gears were engaged in second forward speed but it wasn’t making a blind bit of difference. They were still being dragged backwards.

Cecil opened the sponson door, hung out looking up at the underside of the Kreothe, with its tongue tendrils and mouth tubes, and fired his revolver up at it. They didn’t have any effect. “Bleedin’ ’ell!” you ought to see the size of this bugger! It’s bigger than any bloody Zeppelin.”

“Get back in, you daft sod!” yelled Jack.

Cecil ducked back in. “Like a giant bleedin’ jellyfish it is!” He reached out to close the sponson door and stared in horror. “Fuck! There’s a cliff coming up!” he yelled.

The petrol fruit fumes building inside the iron hull worked on Mathers, helping him break free of the ennui exerted over him by the things he carried inside him.

Jack heaved on the shoulder stock of the gun and howled in frustration. “I can’t get enough elevation on the gun to hit it, sir, if I could hit it, we’d have a chance.”

“Get out,” said Mathers. “Abandon the tank.”

“We won’t leave you, sir.”

“You don’t have a choice, I’m ordering you out. If the Ivanhoe’s done for, then there’s no point in you all dying.”

“But, sir…”

“That’s an order, Clegg. And… Wally? Some good has to come out of all this. Tell the Corporal, tell… Atkins, I’ve seen it, Jeffries’ trail. It leads to the crater. It leads there for a reason. It’s the blank on the map the chatts fear, the place that doesn’t exist. The name they will not admit to. Make sure he knows that. It’s more than chatt myth. I suspect it’ll be of some importance to him.”

“Sir.” Wally slipped from his driver’s seat and joined Jack in the starboard gangway.

Cecil opened the hatch again. He could see the precipice approaching fast. Above, he saw the great long tendrils reaching up towards the underside of the Kreothe as it dragged the Ivanhoe along.

“Time to go, lad,” Jack said. He pushed Cecil out of the sponson hatch before the lad could object, and then followed him.

Wally braced himself on the hatch jamb, looked across at Alfie, still at his gear station, and nodded before launching himself from the tank, rolling clear of the tracks.

Over on the other side, Reggie and Norman jumped from the port sponson hatch. “And you, sir?” called Alfie.

Mathers turned and looked at him. “We’ve both seen these things in me. I’m dead already, Perkins.”

“But not yet, sir. And neither is the Ivanhoe . I’m not leaving, sir.”

Neither knew if the Kreothe could bear the weight of the tank without the ground to support it. If the Kreothe could carry its weight then it would sail out hundreds of feet over the crater, where it still might drop to destruction. On the other hand, its weight might just drag the thing right out of the air.

The tank, in one last effort to avoid it fate, roared its defiance as its metal tracks grated and clawed at the ground, raising a cloud of dust that momentarily obscured it, until updrafts from the crater snatched it away.

For a moment, the Ivanhoe held its own against the great sky creature, anchoring it as others drifted on past. The Kreothe’s long harvesting tendrils stretched taut, like an anchor chain against the pull of the tide.

Snorting like an obdurate old bull, the Ivanhoe inched forwards away from the precipice. The men cheered the ironclad on. It seemed beyond all belief that the intrepid machine could take on the weight of the vast creature above. Slowly, however, its little gain was lost and it lurched back towards the edge of the crater, its back end sliding perilously close to the rim. Then, with a lurch, the rear steering tail toppled over the edge.

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.