The Ironclad Prophecy by Pat Kelleher Read Free Book Online

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.
    Atkins could see the muzzle of a Vickers machine gun poking out of the window of the farmhouse. Past it, he saw angled wooden doors leading down to the old fruit cellar.
    “Lance Corporal Atkins, 1 Section 2 Platoon, C Company!” he called out to the machine gun section inside. “We’ve got a prisoner. We’re coming in through the cellar. Cover us!”
    “Stoppage!”
    “Well get it cleared, man, you know the drill!”
    Bloody Nora, the day just gets better, Atkins