Or then again, maybe not. One of the large boulders shifted then began to unfold. Six legs extended from underneath and two great curved horns revealed themselves. The huge bulk of the boulder revealed itself as a giant beetle.
Moving quickly, it struck out at the line of men, mandibles scything the air snatching two up and severing them in half. Shouts went up and the Tommies scattered, some racing back the way they had come, others seeking cover among the brambles. Thinking it would afford them protection, some raced toward the tank. The rock beetle snapped angrily at them, catching up with a third man, his screams briefly echoing around the heath until it crushed him.
Gazette squeezed off several shots. He hit the beast squarely, but to no effect.
“Rapid fire!” the order came. A number of men, Atkins among them, opened fire, which only served to aggravate the creature. However, it did buy time for the tank to slowly, haltingly turn round to face the attacker.
Atkins heard the tank’s engine rev above the shouts and screams as the boulder beetle snapped at the fleeing soldiers. Hearing the grating roar it turned its attention to the tank.
“It thinks the tank is some sort of rival!” said Pot Shot.
With a loud, venomous hiss, it ran towards the landship. The mechanised behemoth gunned its engine and lurched forward, two titanic beasts charging each other. They crashed together with the tortured squeal of stone on metal, the tank pushing inexorably forward, forcing the huge rock beetle back. Stunned, it retreated briefly as if considering its next move. It lowered its head and shoved forward trying to lodge its great horns under the vehicle and turn it.
The tank reversed away from the beetle which raised itself up on its legs and hissed, spitting a stream of fluid at the ironclad. It sizzled and smoked as it hit the tank between its front tracks. The tank reversed and the beetle scuttled forward, clearly thinking its challenger was retreating.
“Come on!” Atkins muttered under his breath. A movement on the trail distracted him. Hepton was running clumsily, carrying his camera on its folded tripod before finding himself a vantage point for the battle. Planting the tripod down and splaying its legs out, his eye to the box, he began cranking at a measured pace.
“What the hell’s he doing?” said Gutsy. “Hasn’t he seen what that thing has just done to the Ivanhoe?”
“Give me strength,” sighed Atkins. As much as he wanted to leave Hepton to his fate, the weight of his brother’s fate lay heavily on him. He’d like to think that nobody had left William behind. He hoped somebody might have done what he was about to do. “Gazette, cover me.”
“What?”
He started running toward Hepton as the tank roared its defiance and lumbered forward, snorting smoke. The beetle lowered its head and charged, meeting the tank head-on with a clash of armours. Atkins shouted at the kinematographer, who continued to crank his camera as the titanic battle played out before him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing you idiot! Get out of there!”
“Are you mad?” cried Hepton, shrugging Atkins off. “This is money in the bank. People will pay through the nose to see this!”
Hepton had a point, Atkins thought. Gears grinding, engine screaming, the tank was holding its ground and edging forwards, pushing the boulder beetle back foot by foot. The beetle struggled to gain a purchase on the ground. It spat its acidic venom at the tank again. It splattered thickly against the plate armour, etching and pitting the metal.
The beetle braced itself against the tank’s relentless advance and the landship’s great tracks began slipping in the churned earth. Seizing the advantage the beetle’s great mandibles sliced through the anti-grenade mesh roof before it turned its attentions to the upturned snout of a track horn, where the caterpillar tracks protruded forward from the body of the tank. The metal groaned in protest under the pressure. One tank track stopped and the other carried on running, rotating the tank clockwise before that track stopped and the other ground back into action, swinging the tank back the other way. Atkins realised that the tank was trying to shake off the giant beetle. The rear end of the creature slued round, its rear legs nearly taking out Hepton and his camera.
Atkins grabbed the cameraman by the collar and hauled him back. “God damn it, you’ve got your moving pictures, now let’s go!”
The near loss of his equipment shocked Hepton into action. He gathered in the legs of his tripod, hoisted it onto his shoulder and ran.
By now, the rest of the company had made it across the heath, covered by a rapidly deployed Lewis gun on the far side.
The tank backed away from the creature, throwing it off balance so that it released its grip. Engines roaring, gears grinding, the valiant Ivanhoe threw itself forward once more, clashing with the giant beetle.
The tank stopped for a moment before pitching forward, catching the beetle off guard for a second before it began to push it back. The front of the tank rose up off the ground, forcing the beetle to rise with it. They looked like two primal beasts grappling chest to chest, locked in a titanic struggle.
Pushing the stumbling Hepton across the clearing towards the waiting company, Atkins glanced back over his shoulder and saw the Ivanhoe’s right-hand sponson six-pounder swivel forward. It fired a shell point blank at the unprotected underbelly of the beetle. The force of the explosion threw it over onto its back, a huge gaping wound in its side. The front of the tank crashed down again and the machine lurched unsteadily forwards.
The beetle was struggling to right itself, its legs flailing in the air and squealing just within the threshold of human hearing. The tank drove purposefully up onto the fallen beast and came to a halt on its upturned belly. Then it shifted gears so that one of the tracks fed backward and the other forwards; it began to rotate, the metal tracks grinding the beast beneath it, disembowelling it. The squealing and the frantic leg waving ceased. The tank stopped, re-engaged its gears and rolled out of the pit it had gouged in the beast, its tracks leaving a trail of blue-green blood as it drove across the clearing. The company were cheering and whooping at its triumphant approach. As one, they rushed forward to mob it and slap its flanks as if it were a cup-winning thoroughbred.
“I missed it!” cried Hepton in disappointment as he turned to see the pulverised beetle lying slain.
“Well you got away with your life, and whatever film you did shoot, so count yourself lucky,” said Atkins, delivering the kinematographer into the hands of Sergeant Hobson. Atkins nudged Hepton in the ribs and whispered confidentially, “If you ask him nicely he might do his Charlie Chaplin routine for you.”
THE COMPANY, JUBILANT and in high spirits after the Ivanhoe’s victory, continued marching on through the forest. As the sun began to set the track widened into a tree-lined avenue.
“Holy mother of god!” gasped Porgy as, through breaks in the canopy, they caught their first glimpse of the edifice.
“They seal the edifice at night,” Poilus told them. “Any Khungarrii or Urman outside will have to fend for themselves until dawn.”
“Fine Christian attitude that is,” said Porgy.
“I think we can say they’re probably not Christians,” said Pot Shot.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. They’ve had the Padre for a while now. He’ll be on a mission,” said Mercy. “If he can convert ’em before we kill ’em at least he’ll have saved their souls. That’ll get him to the front of the queue at the pearly gates.
“That’s if these Chatts have souls,” said Atkins. “Which I doubt. I mean, not exactly made in His image are they?”
“Load off my mind then,” said Gazette. “If they’ve got no souls, killing them will be just like reading my shirt.”